9.18.2007

On Enlightenment

This post is going to be meaningless to 99.99999999% of the world. However, I found a link today that made me very happy.

I'm on a new volleyball team this season. We're going to be running a 5-1 offense (one player plays setter all game regardless of where they are in the rotation, and the other five of us play hitter), and two of our players haven't run this type of offense before. Games start next week, and we still haven't had all 6 of us together even once. So Thursday night, we are getting together to run through our rotations to make sure everyone is comfortable before our first game.

Well, I was on the lookout for information on the 5-1 to share with my teammates, and I found this site. If you page through, you will see that it has little icons to represent all six players, and uses animations to show how the players shift around during the game. It is actually quite complex, but once you play it a few times, it becomes second nature.

Now, the reason for this post. I have said about one million times, I would give just about anything to have someone teach me how to pass better. It is one of the most basic skills, and it is the one in which I'm most erratic. By far, the thing that happens to me most frequently is that I pass the ball off of my right arm only (you're supposed to take the ball equally on your right and left arms simultaneously), and I shank the ball out of bounds. Well, on this "how to pass" page, they had one tip that I think has changed my life. It says:


Hands Together: With your hands together, try to receive the ball towards your non-dominate side.


I'll excuse the typo, because I think this is what I've been missing my whole volleyball career. It seems so obvious! You tend to favor your dominant side, so if you concentrate on your non-dominant side, it will even out. I played pickup at the YMCA tonight (7 games where I was on a team of two -- me & Frank), and I concentrated on my non-dominant arm the entire time. I still shanked a few passes, but I easily noticed the difference.

This is the secret of enlightenment -- concentrate on receiving the ball towards your non-dominant side!

1 Comments:

Blogger Pat D. said...

While true, I am assuming you still spike the ball with the dominant hand :) Always good to find something like that...
Hope the new season/team goes well!

Dr. D

9:52 AM  

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