Training for Youth Volleyball

Hi Gents,
My daughters play club volleyball. They are 14 and 11. They both are interested in strength and like the barbell lifts. I can bring them with me to the gym and wanted to see what you suggested super-high level programming wise? From my estimation, volleyball is very quick bursts of power related to lateral type movement, jumping and squatting. Any issues with bench/press, dead, squat plus some light conditioning as well as general shoulder/tricep work?

Thanks for all of the content!
Dan

No issues with that at all! I would agree with a plan that includes the basic barbell lifts and potentially some plyometric work. Conditioning would depend on their sporting needs. We have lots of evidence for basic strength training in youth athletes, and @Derek_Miles has a big project in the works on this.

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Thanks! I am looking forward to what Derek comes up with!

Hey Dan, so overall I would advocate emphasizing basic resistance training over trying to develop power at 14 and 11. You’re going to get the most yield here as volleyball already emphasizes a lot of power training via the reps they are going to get going through drills and hitting. If they are single sport athletes I tend to advocate away from “super-high level” programming and towards a bottom-up approach to training. The current recommendation for resistance training is 4-5 exercises for 2-5 sets of 4-10, 2 times a week, with a minimum of two minutes rest in between sets. I’ve seen some dogmatic recommendations (no true primary reference that I have come across) that until an individual is squatting at least bodyweight, power training isn’t as warranted. That being said, there is a good meta-analysis that strength training should sit primary to power for youth athletes.

​​​​​​Effectiveness of Traditional Strength vs. Power Training on Muscle Strength, Power and Speed with Youth: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis - PubMed

If you’re really wanting to work on power, I would approach it more from a landing and change of direction paradigm than focusing on increasing jump height at this point. This is of course from my PT lens but injuries don’t typically happen on take off but on landing, the better you can get at that task, the less likely you are to suffer an injury. Here we do have some good evidence that “neuromuscular training” (basically landing training) can reduce risk of injury, especially in female athletes. I would look up the FIFA 11+ if you’re looking for some ideas here.

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I thought I’d chime in, as my daughter “went through” school and club volleyball.
She eventually got to high school, and in 10th grade had to ‘pick’ track over volleyball (only does one sport now).

You really really really need to get their form and technique dialed in now, while you are still in the driver’s seat.
That said: ​​​​​​just squats, deads, presses, and maybe some rows and what-not for the shoulders (I know, citation needed).
All the ‘power’ stuff will come through team practice.
Volleyball is awesome is this regard; I think it meshed nicely with my daughter’s hurdling and long jump.
V-ball is non-stop jumping, quick changes of direction … it is very plyometric-ey on its own to begin with.

It’s very very very difficult to fit in a decent legitimate strength training program once in high school.
If its only ‘club ball’ and its not super-hardcore…yeah, you’ll have some time to get them to lift.
At high school (even jr.high) the team might have them lift weights at school and use their program, which is normally not ideal.
School’s program will be littered with Olympic variants**, one legged junk, banded lifts (dat power curve tho) etc…depends on who is running your program.
They won’t progress well on that, but I suppose its better than nothing/zero.

As soon as high school v-ball is over, club season picks up, but the high school wants their kids in the high school strength&conditioning off season program.
It seems the sh!t goes year round.
So yeah, basically, I could never really get my daughter to lift consistently, for a designated length of time.

My 12 y.o. boy, I’m taking a different approach then the daughter.
I got a simple squat stand (wife uses this set-up as well)
and he is for the most part lifting at home 2-3x week.
This works better than trying to “take them to the gym” IMO…which is what I tried with the daughter a bit.
You can have them lift at home any time and spend better time coaching/teaching them.
“With me at the gym”: its super hard to lift, AND coach the child at the same time.
I do have one super easy day on my own program, if it lines up right, I do take the son on that day and we do it together at the globo,
as they should know how all that “stuff works”: load his own plates, plate math, gym etiquette, safety, getting used to lifting in front of others,etc
At high-school they are going to have to do it on their own.
(and possibly keep their friends from getting injured too, lol.)

Back to the at home gym: you can control things and prescribe loads.
Kid had a rough practice with a lot of sprints and conditioning? skip squats, do OHP & bench only.
Only day to lift (squat/dead) is day before practice? prescribe 80% of what they were LP’ing at the time (better than nothing).
We can generally watch T.V., the game, etc between sets.

Weights will progress very slowly, we might repeat the same weight for 3-4 workouts before “adding 5 pounds”.
We are basically doing 5x5 squats with very little barspeed decay. Last rep on each set there is a barely a HINT of slowdown.
Boy has increased his 5x5-squat 130% over the last 14 weeks and he STILL weighs only ~92 lbs.
We are both anxiously waiting for our 30 lbs of lean muscle we were promised…lolz.

** IF you are very apt at coaching it, and IF the kid learns well, I would begrudgingly teach them the power-clean.
Not from the stand-point that its going to do wonders for their power generation, becasue its not.
Only because when they get to high school, they are very likely going to get programmed those.
It would be better if they knew how ahead of time. V-ball coaches like those, or clean pulls, or hang power snatch.
Its quite sad to take this sort of mentality, but this is what I’m doing with my 12 y.o. son.
Teaching him the power clean 1x week so his high school coaches don’t have him wreck himself.
…or if they see him do a perfect clean (squat, deadlift,etc)…they will leave him the f alone.
This comes from the perspective of a person/father who can Olympic lift himself, and thinks it is an beautiful an awesome sport.
There’s a whole host of better things one could be doing than Olympic variants for general sports performance IMO.

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