Yesterday, I stumbled into one of those little coaching moments that made me stop and laugh at myself. I was working with a very talented athlete who had been struggling with the concept of scoop defense — no matter how I explained it, demonstrated it, or walked him through the movement… I wasn’t able to get him to where he wanted to be using the methods I normally use. He’s a very technical player and was having difficulty transitioning from a standard digging platform to the scoop mentality.
He and his pepper partner were warming up, and all of a sudden, I had a small burst of inspiration and insanity. Instead of the normal scoop progression I’ve done for years, I had him and his pepper partner move much closer together. I told them to keep peppering and to take full swings at the closer distance, as if they were trying to score in a match.
Both of them looked at me like I was crazy, I just asked them to trust me. So, they began pelting each other at the closer distance as male athletes do, and as the balls got shanked, I just tossed them another from the ball cart so they could keep going.
Within minutes, the athlete who was struggling with the technique was doing it naturally. No overthinking, no hesitation, no fear — just reacting to the problem in front of him. I could see his eyes get wide as he started to make the connection in real time, and he was able to incorporate the technique into full court play later in the training session.
The little adjustment I made in their pepper distance is what coaches call a constraint. And if I’m being honest, it’s something I wish I had understood when I first started coaching. Constraint Led Approaches to development and skill acquisition trace back to Karl Newells research in 1986, but the lessons are relevant to this day.
What Is a Constraint?
When we talk about “constraints” in volleyball training, we’re talking about putting boundaries on a drill/game that forces athletes to solve problems in new ways.
– Change the task (your team can only score if you have the serve).
– Change the environment (shorten the court, lower/raise the net)
– Change the roles (liberos must swing, middles must pass).
The beauty is you don’t have to lecture mechanics, strategy, or overwhelm players with verbal feedback. The game itself gives the feedback. Athletes figure it out because the drill won’t let them hide from the problem.
Why It Works
Volleyball is chaos. Every point is different, every touch a little unpredictable. Our players need to be able to adjust in the moment without waiting for us to fix them.
Constraints create that reality in practice:
– They strip away comfort zones.
– They exaggerate the challenge.
– They make problem-solving the center of learning
In the words of John Kessel, let the game teach the game.
“Jamball”: Constraints in Action
One of my favorite examples of constraints-based coaching is a warm up game I have my teams play called “Jamball”, don’t ask me where I got it from. I have long since forgotten. On the surface, it looks a lot like “short court” — two-on-two on a smaller slice of the court — but I’ve widened the dimensions just enough (14’8” x 16’ on one side of the net) to create a different set of challenges.
We’ll run two courts at once, one point games, winners stay on, losers walk. It’s fast-paced, high touch, and deceptively competitive. Because of the size, players can actually transition and take real approaches, but they’re also forced into close-quarter battles at the net. That means more block touches, more jousts, more tooling and tipping — things that can get lost in the weeds in “traditional” drills.
What I love most about Jamball is how the environment does the teaching for me. In tight spaces, defenders learn to read hitters and trajectories faster. Attackers don’t get to blast away if they’re not taking a full approach — they have to adapt and create, finding roll shots, swipes, or delayed tips to win. The block can’t be lazy, because if you’re not pressing, you’re getting scored on or letting your partner get obliterated by a full swing. And because one rally decides who stays on, there’s a built-in pressure to compete for every ball. In short, it’s fun.
It’s not me telling them to read, or transition, or fight through pressure — it’s the game itself forcing them to do it. That’s the beauty of constraints-led coaching. Jamball teaches offense, defense, creativity, competitiveness, and spacing all in one simple package, and the kids usually just think it’s a warm-up game. That’s a win-win in my book, and an excellent ROI for the first 10 minutes of practice.
Moving Forward
As a coach, I’ve always prided myself on being passionate, energetic, and committed to my athletes. But I’m realizing that passion only goes so far without structure. The more I coach, the more I recognize that my job must involve designing environments where my athletes can figure things out on their own in conjunction with feedback.
That athlete yesterday learning scoop defense reminded me of that lesson. If I can use constraints to pull those skills out of my players — to make them fearless, adaptable, and capable — then I’m doing my job. Because at the end of the day, the best athletes aren’t the ones who memorized my voice in their head. They’re the ones who can step onto a court, read the chaos in front of them, and still make the right play.