Chapter 1 Selected Reading #2
Three-to-One: The Volleyball-Specific Rest-to-Work Ratio John Speraw
Principle Basis: Specificity, Adaptive/Progressive, Planned Recovery, Transfer Skills Study Questions:
• What is a 3-to-1 ratio? • How has rally scoring changed the athletic skill development priorities in volleyball? • How can practice be designed to create a training overload?
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three-to-one, rest-to-work ratio is reflected by the amount of rest versus the amount of work expressed in units of time. A three-to-one ratio requires three units of rest time for one unit of work time. If an exercise is done for 20 seconds, the rest period will be 60 seconds. This ratio closely resembles the energy system requirements in the game of volleyball. When training, coaches and athletes should keep this ratio in mind when designing conditioning and practice programs.
Warm-up As an assistant coach and while doing research on my book, I learned quite a bit about the concept of how athletes should train for a specific sport. While an assistant coach at UCLA, I was in charge of doing the warm-ups. I really became aware that running around in a circle for 20 minutes to get warmed up isn't the proper way to do a warm-up when you're getting ready to play volleyball. You're not getting the right things warm. When I came to UC Irvine, I had some extensive discussions with our strength and conditioning coach, Eric Burkhardt. I told him what I was really interested in doing and he was very excited by the idea, because most coaches just do what they do simply because that's the way they have always done it. I wanted to make sure and continue making sure that in my coaching career, I don't just do things simply because that was what I had been doing. I want to do what is best based on science, not tradition. Eric has done extensive research and written some papers on the rest-to-work ratio in conditioning. We talk a lot about how we should apply warm-ups to make them specific for what we are doing in terms of volleyball. It was really a collaborative effort between the two of us—a very positive thing. The first thing we talked about was warm-ups and making sure that we are warming up appropriately for a fast twitch, explosive sport. We do a lot of speed and agility drills as part of
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our warm-up. We try to do low-intensity, explosive movements. For example, doing light jumps that prepare us for big jumps is probably the best and most efficient way to warm-up. We incorporate whatever movements that are done while playing volleyball but at less intensity for a warm-up. We do blocking trips, light warm-up jumps, jump rope, footwork drills and light sprint work. Here's an example: • Light jog around the gym (twice). • Side steps across the gym lengthwise in both directions. • Crossover steps across the gym lengthwise. • Light sprints. • Jump rope—we do this by partnering up two players. One jumps rope while the other does 25 push-ups and 25 sit-ups. This is done for three rounds. • Blocking trips. • Run to the net and do low amplitude approach jumps without hitting the ball. • We finish by doing shoulder warm-ups. A variation to this is that we substitute ladder work instead of jumping rope. This works on foot speed. The warm-up is continuous with all athletes participating at the same time. This gets us ready for the work to be done at practice.
How Rally Scoring Affects Conditioning Volleyball conditioning has changed because of the new rally scoring system. The old threeand-a-half hour matches now last only two hours. This puts a premium on skills and their explosive execution. It's now more of a power game as opposed to power endurance. An hour-and-a-half less game time is a significant change in the approach to conditioning. In addition, with the introduction of the libero, your middle blocker who is jumping all the time now goes out of the match for two rotations, which means this individual has additional rest. These changes really focus on the demand of developing power. The three-to-one rest-to-work ratio is effective in developing this new emphasis on power development in today's volleyball. Because of this we focus our three-hour practices on playing volleyball and making it part of our conditioning. You also have to understand that the NCAA limits practice time to 20 hours a week, so we have to set our priorities based on the game. We practice three hours a day, five days a week, which gives us 15 hours. Then we lift four days a week for one hour, which totals 19 hours and this puts us just under the limit. This means that our conditioning is limited to the summer and the period of time between our fall practice block and when the season starts.