How To Serve Overhand In Volleyball Video

The overhand serve can be placed with great accuracy and power and, as you will see in this sports video, is difficult to return.

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Get in serving position
Keep body rigid & core tight
Toss the ball in front of hitting shoulder
Hit the ball & point hand at target

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Todd is the head coach for the University of Central Florida's women's volleyball team. Prior to that he coached as USC where they competed in the division one final four. He has also been a part of the coaching delegation for the USA women's team in the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. He was an assistant at Michigan University early in his career and simply loves the sport and coaching it where ever he is.

TODD DAGENAIS: Again, we have Annie from Castle Rock, Colorado, and she's going to show you how to serve. First thing that we want to talk about in serving, again, is the body position and how we set up. You can see here that as you look down at Annie's feet, you can see that Annie's left foot is forward of her right foot and she's almost in the same position you might see a professional fencer or something like that. But what she's going to do from here is just going to allow her to step on to her left foot as she's serving the ball. The body is locked. The core is in a very tight position here. From this position, she's going to toss the ball with a straight left arm right up to her hitting shoulder. For those of you that are right-handed, you will toss the ball with your left hand in front of your right shoulder. For those of you that are left-handed, you're going to toss the ball with your right hand up to your left shoulder. Now, the next thing that we want to do from this body position is we want to talk about the toss step. When you are serving, you want to toss the ball in front of your hitting shoulder and then step into it at contact. From contact, you want to make sure that your hand is very flat and very rigid, almost like a tennis racket. You're going to go ahead and face exactly where you want to serve and everything is going to step, is going to move, and is going to finish in the direction that you're trying to serve to. Go ahead, Annie, just toss a couple and step right into it and - good. Again. So you can see Annie right here tossing right in front of her hitting shoulder with a very firm arm and a very firm hand. You're going to notice here that her back is not arching or bending forward. It's a locked unit. Now, the serve is the part of the game that you have complete control over. There's nobody that's hitting a ball at you or anything else. You have complete control over this. So if you do some of the things that you just saw Annie do here, you're going to be a great server. And that is how you serve a volleyball.

How to Serve Overhand in Volleyball Video

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