When starting the sports initiation process with young players in a sports specialty, the doubt about which sport is the most appropriate usually appears. In this article we will focus on how volleyball can be a perfect sport for sports initiation.
Volleyball is a sport that, apart from requiring its players to have good physical and mental preparation, training and constant practice, requires a series of specific physical qualities and abilities.
Volleyball needs
- Eye-hand-target relationship
- Ball transmission precision
- Jumps at the right time and place
- Accuracy in the coordination of a movement and a hit
- Constant changes of positions in space
- Move from one position to another and maintain it, ensuring that the player does not suffer muscle or bone-joint injuries
- Dynamic balance or recovery from this after falling in a jump
- Independence and coordination of members in a given action
- Appreciation of trajectories (high, low, parabolic, tense …)
- Appreciation of distances (companions, lines, network …)
- Appreciation, changes and control of directions
- Appreciation, changes and speed control
- Domain and differentiation of the space in which a relationship moves with the elements that participate
As we can see, most of these needs can be trained and improved, to a greater or lesser extent (ability to perform jumps, coordination, precision …), but in others it is necessary that the player already has innate abilities (appreciation of trajectories , distances …).
Focusing on learning volleyball, a distinction must be made between “sports initiation” carried out in schools and extracurricular activities and “sports training” carried out in sports clubs.
These processes are divided and related as follows:
Ignoring the sports training section that corresponds to sports clubs, and focusing on the “school” section, since it is the place where the first steps of the sports initiation process are normally carried out, we must bear in mind that it is broken down as follows:
The relationship that exists in volleyball between the basic contents and the specific contents must be taken into account, because they almost have to be taught at the same time to be able to practice this sport correctly. That is where one of the main difficulties lies when it comes to teaching, learning and practicing this sport.
Basic Physical Education
Focusing on the sports initiation process, it is broken down as follows:
Motor goals
Skills
- Basic motor skills: Travel ; Jumps; Turns; Manipulations
- Specific motor skills
Capabilities
- Perceptual-coodinative abilities: Laterality; Balance; Perception; Coordination; Rhythm.
- Physical abilities
The sports initiation process encompasses basic motor skills and perceptual-coordinative abilities, while the sports training process encompasses specific motor skills and physical abilities. Although all skills and abilities are worked on in the two processes, the difference is the importance given to them and the work that is focused on each of them.
The sports initiation process usually begins around 8-9 years of age until 16, the age at which the sports training process takes over.
Finally, and to put more emphasis on this process, I am now integrating the different technical elements of volleyball in the basic physical education section. To make this process simple and clear, I divided this section into the four main blocks with which I agree, especially since they are the ones that taught me in the Master’s Degree in Physical Education. This process gives the following result:
Basic physical education
- Eye-hand coordination: Finger touch; Touch of forearms; Come on in; Hitting on safety and high serve; Low hand defense; I hit the auction.
- Dynamic-general coordination: Displacements; Falls; Individual blocking; Hover forward; Race-beaten in the auction.
- Body diagram: Fundamental positions; Flexibility of positions; Awareness and coordination of the different segments that participate in an action; flight-suspension-fall in the auction and in the block.
- Spatio-temporal perception: Flexibility in the serve; Reception; Abandonment of the spatial “I” and differential occupation of space; changes of direction and speed; Flexibility of movements; Auction; Back and side pass; Individual and collective blocking.
Despite the fact that many people may consider volleyball a complicated and difficult sport, only intended for players who already have a good sports base, this article tries to demonstrate the opposite, since there is no contraindication for the use of volleyball in the sports initiation process, as long as the aspects to be dealt with and worked on are clear.
Bibliography
- Monge Muñoz, MA The basic tactical complexes (KB) and specific (KE) in volleyball. (2003)
- Monge Muñoz, MA & Aragundi Castro, C. Volleyball and its didactics. (nineteen ninety five)
- Vázquez Lazo, JC Sports in the school environment: sports initiation –global concepts-. (nineteen ninety five).
