Handbooks

Volleyball handbook summary review to follow.

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The Volleyball Coaching Bible is one of the best volleyball coaching manuals. The core section covers individual skills and team tactics, but there are also good sections on coaching principles and priorities, effective practice sessions, and winning strategies. There is a good chapter on stretching, plyometrics and conditioning, although resistance training is excluded. The discussion of volleyball statistics and performance evaluation by Jim Coleman is the best primer I've seen.

The poorer aspects of the book stem from insufficient editing, and, from a UK perspective, a focus on US school/college volleyball. Each chapter is written by a different, well-renowned, coach, so the writing styles vary and sometimes the editing has not eliminated unnecessary repetition or inconsistent terminology. Around a third of the book covers US school/college volleyball programmes and playing preparations, and is not really relevant in the UK. However, even at two thirds the content, this is still a great book.

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Conditioning

Conditioning encompasses stretching/flexibility, weight and resistance training, plyometrics and speed/agility/quickness. The best overall conditioning book is Complete Conditioning for Volleyball by Al Scates and Mike Linn. Its weight training section is better than The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Volleyball by Robert G Price. The latter is more accessible but is a slim basic boilerplate construction from a generic manual with limited volleyball customisation. Peak Conditioning Training for Volleyball by Thomas Emma is basically a volleyball-badged version of the author's basketball conditioning book, but covers all the basics and has a comprehensive conditioning programme. Strictly for the enthusiast, The Complete Guide to Volleyball Conditioning and The Complete Guide to Volleyball Conditioning Volume 2 both by Ken Kontor (Editor) are collections of variable articles, some excellent, from the Performance Conditioning Volleyball newsletter.

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Complete Conditioning for Volleyball is the best overall volleyball conditioning book covering flexibility, core stability & power, strength & explosiveness, agility & quickness, court drills, and conditioning programmes. All the exercises and drills are well described with purpose, procedure and key points. Illustrations are good with either single pictures, 2/3 picture sequences for lifts, or court diagrams. The Flexibility chapter consists of a number of static and dynamic stretches. Core Stability and Power covers a series of exercises for training the power zone: abdominals, hips and lower back. Strength and Explosiveness introduces plyometrics with a series of easy, moderate and advanced jumps together with advice on putting together a simple programme. Honing Agility and Quickness comprises basic movement and change-of-direction drills. Court Drills incorporates conditioning with volleyball skills, ranging from simple warm-up and conditioning exercises to more complex drills for volleyball techniques. The Year-Round Conditioning chapter includes beginner and advanced programmes divided into preparation, strength and power cycles. They include selections from the plyometric and core stability drills as well as weight-lifting and resistance exercises. The book ends with a very basic few pages on nutrition.

Al Scates is the coach with the most wins in US college volleyball history and Mike Linn is a college strength and conditioning coach so this book has strong credentials. The book is peppered with motivational examples of illustrious players who played for UCLA and has the inevitable bias to the US college environment, including the 16 week training schedules. There is a refreshingly holistic approach to conditioning rather than just strength training. The strength training itself tends towards more effective compound multiple joint Olympic lift variations with free weights rather than single joint resistance machine exercises for bodybuilders. The strength/power training programme is excellent and consists of whole body sessions for nonconsecutive days with good variations in the exercises. However, in a major omission, the book lacks a basic introduction to weightlifting and there are also no instructions on determining how much to lift and how to vary it beyond the cryptic "lite" and "+wt".

The book is very readable but requires a bit of investigation and effort to use the knowledge in an effective programme. This unfortunately makes the book much less accessible off the shelf than should be the case. However, it's still the best overall volleyball conditioning book around, just not quite a complete self-contained resource which can be followed without thinking.

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Robert G Price is a US bench press champion and has produced a large number of these formulaic boilerplate construction The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training books for almost every sport. There are 5 pages of off-season, pre-season and in-season weight-training programmes and these seem to be the only volleyball customisation. The former two are split sessions designed for 4 days a week. The next chapter covers warming up, illustrated abdominal exercises with a suggestion on choice and an illustrated stretching sequence. There is a brief description of proper form and breathing and then the recommended exercises are described and illustrated with pictures of the starting position and after the lift/pull. They are categorised by major muscle area and grouped according to interchangeability. The final chapter covers techniques and methods, calculating your one rep maximum and when and how to increase weight or number of repetitions.

The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Volleyball is a deceptively slim volume, but packs in a lot of information with multiple exercises per page. It is very accessible and contains all the basic information required to start the training programmes. The problems are that the programmes themselves don't seem to be particularly tailored to volleyball compared with Complete Conditioning for Volleyball or even Peak Conditioning Training for Volleyball and there is some tendency to single joint machine exercises rather than compound ones. However, the split sessions mean the programmes can be used in most circumstances and the exercise categorisation allows easy substitution according to the facilities available.

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Much of Peak Conditioning Training for Volleyball is copied, pasted and paraphrased from the original basketball version, although the emphasis is changed with, for example, less on aerobic conditioning and more on balance training. There is a good introduction to warming-up and stretching with some pre-movement exercises, followed by basic chapters on injuries & recuperation, and nutrition. The conditioning basics discuss aerobic and anaerobic training with example programmes. The heart of the book is the strength training. There is a good introduction to basics and principles followed by exercises for the core and upper & lower body plus a few combination exercises. The exercises are illustrated and the execution described with training tips and variations. The year-round conditioning programme is divided into a core introduction; light, medium, medium/heavy and heavy off-season cycles and an in-season cycles based on sample workouts for 3 nonconsecutive days a week out of season. Movement Training for Volleyball comprises sections, including discussion and exercises, on balance training; plyometrics; speed, quickness & agility; and cross-training options.

Thomas Emma was a successful college basketball player and this book reflects his background. Although the conversion from the original version is more than a simple word-processing search for 'basketball' and replacement with 'volleyball', the antecedents are clear, even without the quickness/agility drills still being illustrated with a basketball court. The conditioning programme is midway between Complete Conditioning for Volleyball and The Ultimate Guide to Weight Training for Volleyball in terms of compound free weights exercises versus single joint machine exercises. The discussion and background content is good but the illustrations are irritatingly inconsistent in style and sometimes lacking in definition. The pencil drawings of the Cro-Magnon lifter are offputting and an image from a picture of an explosive squat which appeared in Complete Conditioning for Volleyball is not credited.

Overall, Peak Conditioning Training for Volleyball provides an accessible comprehensive volleyball conditioning programme plus ancillary exercises. It is not quite as volleyball-focused as the market-leader and the illustrations are poorer although the general background material on strength and conditioning is better.

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The Complete Guide to Volleyball Conditioning Volume 2 review to follow.

Back to Conditioning Books Summary Review

The Complete Guide to Volleyball Conditioning review to follow.

Back to Conditioning Books Summary Review