The importance of ball trajectory recognition in volleyball

What’s the most important thing to develop in young volleyball players? Technique? Tactics? Physical skills?

As a coach, do you ever notice that kids can form a great platform, yet somehow they still can’t quite get the ball to their arms properly? Or that they’re standing in the correct ready position, but the ball still drops a meter in front of them and they don’t move toward it?

Ball trajectory recognition

At VolleyballXL, we believe that kids should be trained in ball control from the very beginning of their volleyball journey—but the most crucial skill of all is ball trajectory recognition.

Ball trajectory recognition is needed in every part of the game. Overhead passing doesn’t happen in every rally. Forearm passing doesn’t either. Blocking is only necessary when the opponent is attacking—and only when they’re attacking in your zone. But ball trajectory recognition? That’s alwaysrelevant: during your serve toss, during a set, an attack, a pass, a block… Always.

We could throw in all the technical terms like spatial awareness, timing, or proprioception, but the key takeaway is this: as coaches, we need to understand that training a good feel and a better understanding of the ball’s flight path is what benefits young volleyball players the most in the long run.

Moving to the ball

You can have the most beautiful platform, but if you don’t move to the ball in time, it won’t work. You might have excellent hitting technique, but if you don’t recognize where the ball will drop at the ideal height for you, you’ll end up swinging under it. You could be a setter with a textbook-perfect overhead motion, but if you don’t track where the pass is going in time, your set won’t be accurate.

In short: ball trajectory recognition.

Drills specifically for ball trajectory recognition

Train this every single practice, whether you’re working with volleyball under 12 or older youth players (u12, u14, u16). VolleyballXL offers an entire collection of drills online to make this a standard part of your training sessions.

Instead of playing tag or doing simple shuttle runs, create a warm-up that strengthens and improves trajectory recognition combined with ball control. A fun example of this is the drill “ballfriends”.

If you’re a VolleyballXL member, you can use the filter to search specifically for Ball Trajectory Recognition drills. Not a member yet? Click here to join.

Remember: ball trajectory recognition… Always.