Volleyball

A typical recreational night is two hours at a gym or a park, three or four short games against rotating opposition, with everyone shuffling one position clockwise each time their team wins the serve. You will spend most of it standing and waiting, then moving hard for two seconds. Points last five to fifteen seconds. Between them there is a lot of talking, which is not optional: because three people share every play, calling for the ball out loud is the difference between a rally and two teammates watching it land between them.

Finding a game is the real barrier. The gear is the easy part.

1. 1

   Find a session before you buy anything. Search your city plus 'drop-in volleyball' or 'open gym', and look at community centres, university rec programmes and local leagues. Most run beginner nights where balls are provided.

2. 2

   Turn up to a drop-in as a single. Volleyball is one of the few sports where arriving alone is normal, because teams are formed on the night.

3. 3

   Say you are new when you arrive. It changes nothing about whether you get to play and it stops people setting you up for shots you cannot hit yet.

4. 4

   Spend the first few sessions only on passing. Getting the ball to a predictable height in the middle of the court is the single skill that makes you playable.

5. 5

   Buy your own ball once you have been three times. By then you will know whether you want indoor or outdoor, and you will have something to practise against a wall with.

Volleyball has a steeper entry than most team sports because you cannot slow the ball down. In football or basketball a beginner can hold the ball and think. Here the ball is in the air, you have half a second, and a mistake ends the point immediately. Expect your first few sessions to involve a lot of shanked passes flying into the next court. It is also the rare sport you cannot meaningfully practise alone: you can serve and pass against a wall, but everything else needs at least one other person. Budget a couple of months of regular sessions before rallies start feeling controlled rather than chaotic.

• Swinging the arms at the ball when passing. The platform should stay still and the legs do the work.

• Watching your own pass instead of moving after it. The play continues whether you are ready or not.

• Standing flat-footed between points. Being on the balls of your feet before contact is most of the reaction speed you need.

• Trying to spike in week one. Hitting hard is the most visible skill and the least useful one until you can pass.

• Playing barefoot on grass or in worn running shoes indoors. Both are how ankles get rolled.

07

Looking after ankles, knees and fingers

Ankles, knees, fingers

• Ankles are the most common volleyball injury, usually from landing on someone else's foot near the net. If you have rolled an ankle before, a lace-up brace is worth wearing from the start.

• Knees take the impact when you dive or drop to pass low balls. Knee pads are standard indoors and stop the bruising that otherwise makes you flinch away from low balls.

• Fingers get jammed on blocks and bad sets. Warm them up, and keep the fingers spread and firm rather than loose on contact.

• Beach play adds sun and heat. Sand reaches temperatures that burn bare feet, and there is no shade on a court.

One session a week is enough to keep improving for the first year, and most drop-ins run two to three hours. Two sessions a week is where progress gets noticeably faster, because the skills are contact-dependent and fade between long gaps. Leagues typically run a fixed night for eight to twelve weeks. If you can only manage one thing between sessions, twenty minutes of serving and wall passing keeps the touch.