Volleyball Spike Tips 
Improve Your Spike Approach, Armswing and Hitting Accuracy

Improve Your Volleyball Game By Developing Proper Hitting Technique By Increasing Your Armswing Speed and Attacking The Last Two Steps of Your Spike Approach 

The volleyball spike is the way for a hitter to send a ball over the net past the block into the opposing court with force in an effort to score a point. 

After you've learned how to spike a volleyball there's some kind of crazy satisfaction that hitters get, when you take a good aggressive spike approach, make high contact with the ball at its highest point, and then spike the ball past the block into an open space on the opposing team's  court for a point.

In the video above, this Kansas State hitter perfectly demonstrates how to spike a volleyball using a   three-step spike approach. 

She's a right handed hitter so she steps on her left foot first ...which she uses to propel her closer to where she wants to contact the ball...this is her directional step...and this should be the slower step she takes...

The last two steps...(right foot then left foot) occur almost simultaneously..and should be the fastest, most aggressive steps in the entire spike approach because these are the steps that propel her upward and into the air, helping her contact the ball at her highest possible contact point above the net. 

In a four step approach, once you've made the first two steps of your spike approach that get you closer to the ball, you then  start your arm swing motion, swinging both arms back ..before swinging them both forward. 

Both arms swing forward at the same time the last two steps are taken which lifts you into the air, like a plane that has taken off at the end of the runway. 

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A post shared by Coach April (@coach_apchap) on Feb 16, 2019 at 2:29am PST

In the air, you pull back the elbow of your hitting arm, keeping it above the level of her ear while the arm is above her head.

Holding your elbow high and using a bow and arrow type movement to make contact with the ball so that it clears the net, you bring your hitting arm forward so it contacts the top third of the ball. 

The fundamentals of a good hard volleyball spike are...:

• a fast arm swing rotation with a 
• a high reach keeping the elbow high along with 
• contacting the top third of the ball ...all combines to 

...create a high paced hit with a downward trajectory that sends the ball into the opposing court with force and intensity.

It's important when you spike the ball that your hand makes contact on the TOP third of the ball, if not then your spiked ball will not have a downward trajectory into the court, but instead will go sailing long towards the back wall and out of the court. 

Below is the volleyball hitting drill I send players home to do as homework ..they do this to specifically work on increasing the speed of their armswing rotation for their spike swing.

Now you can do it too. 

No need to guess where you need to go now? Here are three options: 

1. Learn more about Spiking by clicking the related links below. 
2. Follow the suggested reading on our Sitemap page    Learning How To Play (Sitemap)
3. Or visit the pages in the How to Play Volleyball section in the drop down menu at the top of the page to get started. 
4. Before leaving this page Say "Hi" to Mr T.T. MUGB the Lion, wearing the #7 jersey below. 

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