Volleyball is a great sport. It is one of the sports that young athletes can enjoy and continue playing throughout their entire lives. Both young and old volleyball players can see great improvements in their game with sports specific exercises.

Volleyball is a very explosive sport that requires unique strengths. Each position puts a specific demand on the body.

To prepare your body for those demands, you need to train it for those demands. That is the concept behind sports specific training. This type of training puts the body through drills that mimic game situations and enhance volleyball specific needs for strength, as with the serve or kills, or flexibility and agility, as with digs and jumping skills for playing the net.

The problem with the coaching and training that goes on in many schools and colleges is the "one size fits all" training method – lifting in the gym and running. These generic routines do nothing to help you on the volleyball court.

Think about the bench press for instance, an exercise that many coaches have their volleyball players perform. A bench press is designed to build strength and size in the chest. That is all well and good, but think about the game of volleyball and game situations that come up. Where would that move help? It would not.

Another reason that sport specific training is vital is that it trains the body as a whole, which is how it is used during a volleyball game. In other words, there are no bicep curls or shoulder presses, instead the entire body is challenged in creative and effective ways to prepare it to handle the demands of the sport. There is also a great emphasis on core strength which is vitally important for stability and strength. The core is the bodies powerhouse and the source of it's balance and strength.

Lastly, a solid sports specific training routine will greatly reduce the chance of injury to the athlete. This is because of the state of preparedness that exists in the body after training specifically for the sport that is being played.

One example of a volleyball specific exercise is the dig and reach. You want to go into a lateral lunge (the same position you go into when you perform a dig) and then come back up on the standing leg, not allowing the other foot to touch the floor. Then you go back into the lateral lunge and repeat the sequence until failure. By standing on one leg you are building incredible core strength, and by repeating this motion you are preparing yourself for the game situation. In my training, we add resistance bands to this move to create flexibility and power in the lower body as well.

If your volleyball training routine does not incorporate volleyball specific training, than it is not complete and you are not reaching your potential. The body is an amazing thing and when trained properly it is capable of amazing things. Anyone can do sports specific training and, frankly, most people prefer it over repetitive gym workouts. It is also a time effective method of working out because the exercises are so incredibly effective.