Performance Training

Performance Training concentrates on the team and on the individual’s responsibilities in team play. They are delivered in intensive one- or two-week camps.

There are three curriculums in the Performance Training category: Rising Elite, Emerging Elite and Elite. Rising Elite takes the Skillz camper into their first real encounter with the intricacies of team-based, linked-action play – the “three touch” volleyball of the Olympics. Athletes are taught the skills of all positions, whereas in Emerging Elite the accumulation of several years of year-round training and competitive play enables athletes to concentrate on a specific position. This is fine-tuned through revision of individual technical form and repeated rehearsal of team game tactics. An athlete might spend two or three years training in these curriculums before being ready for the Elite curriculum.

At the Elite level, athletes are already competing in national leagues or are members of their national youth team. Coaches give as much emphasis to analysing the athlete’s mental processing of the competitive circumstances of a game – understanding what it will take both as a team and as an individual to win the match – as much as they do on perfecting the athlete’s playing technique.
Training in the appropriate curriculum, even when it needs to be repeated, is required in order to make steady progress. Repetition and patience are key words in the vocabulary of volleyball training.