How do you put your hands when you pass?

Question

My new HS coach told us to lace our fingers, but I have always been taught that you can break your fingers that way. I have already come close to hurting them. What do you think about that? How do you hold your hands?

Answer 1

If you're referring to bumping the ball I wouldn't lace my fingers,  I mean I often am the diver on my team and if I interlaced my fingers I'd break my wrist and mess up my face alot. I wrap my fist, normally my right around my left fist but I can do both, I wouldn't lace, and if my coach had a problem with that I'd just let him know that it's the results that matter.

Answer 2

Wrapping your finger with tape is very helpful when spiking and blocking, and even when serving... but you are not supposed to "lace" fingers. Whatever your "lace" means, it should not have any effect on passing as you should "always" use your forearm to complete a pass (with more and more high school players doing over-handed passing, I am hesitating to say "always"). Some leagues would prevent passing (the first receiving hit) with open hands.

If you were talking about "interlocking" your fingers when doing under-handed passing, it would be your call or your coach's call. USYVL promotes locking palms but not fingers... and I learned my pass in college not to lock anything, just put your wrist together and twist your arm.

Hope this helps.... you might find "no locking" very ridiculous at the very beginning. Just go with your HS coach for now and try something different later.

Answer 3

dont lace your fingers it can break them. wat you can do is make a fist with your dominate hand or your right hand and then take your other hand and cover where the tips of your fingers meet your palms.then tilt your hands to the ground and you good.make shure your thumbs are together! and aginst your hands you dont wanna bend your fingers back

Answer 4

I haven't ever heard that lacing your fingers can cause an injury, but I guess I would have to take your word for it. I have always known that you could make a fist with one hand and cup it with the other one.

Lacing your fingers slows the reaction time and might cause you to misjudge your timing especially if you think too hard about it.

Answer 5

I will agree with everyone.  You should not lace your fingers.  

As long as you have your thumbs and the heels of your hands together, you can put your hands any way you like.  Lacing your fingers is one bad option.  You can put your hands in the "prayer" style.  Again, your thumbs and your heels must be together.  As suggested above, fist in fist works too.  You can also use the palm in palm style.  (Hold your hand like you are going to shake hands only at a slight angle.  I like the left hand out first.  Put the right hand in the left.  Again, place the thumbs and heels together.)  I have even tried just leaving my hands wide apart with just the thumbs and heels together.  (It helped with my landings.)  

If your coach insists on lacing your fingers, try just lacing the fingers at the fingertips.  If your only 2 choices are lacing your fingers and sitting on the bench, try lacing just the fingertips.  You should be able to get your hands apart in time for any emergencies.

Answer 6

I have my four long fingers on my left hand pointed out like I was receiving a low five from someone. My right hand fingers would be on top of my left in the same fashion.  Then i press my thumbs together.  And I kind of hold my four long right hand fingers a little firmly with my left hand fingers so that i can pull my wrists apart from each other (which creates a flatter and wider forearm platform) without pulling apart my hands.  My right hand fingers are still sticking out oddly enough. But it works great for me.

After a weekend of trying to change to this style and practicing with a volleyball, I got quite comfortable with it.

I am the best passer on my 14-man team as a freshman, but my eyesight is a blurry.  I can feel that when the ball misses the middle of my platform, I am still able to keep the ball to where I want it to go because my platform is so flat.

If you cant use this is style, or find a better one. Just remember: the forearms should be exposed as much as possible (without hurting yourself) to get a flat platform, a wide platform will allow for a margin of error, "dont use your arms to pass but use your legs," learning a new habit for anything will feel uncomfortable at first.

Answer 7

This will be hard to describe in email, but I'll give it a shot.

Footwork

As the ball is coming you need to move quickly to the "spot". The "spot" doesn't necessarily have to be the perfect spot, it just needs to be a spot that is better then the one you were in. What this means is that it is more important to be in a "better spot" and completly stable and maybe have to reach outside your body to pass the ball than getting to the perfect spot but being totally off balance and unstable while contacting the ball. (man that is a brutal sentence)

Stability

While contacting the ball ideally you want your body to be totally stable ie. not falling down to your knee etc. Some serves are crazy and you wont have any choice but to almost play defence on it.

Prepping for contact

overlap the fingers of one hand perpendicular over the fingers of your other hand. Bring the thumbs and the thumb-side of your hands together. Lock your elbows. Shrug your shoulders forward. Bend wrists down to flatten out your forarms. Arms are away from your body. Try to make contact on the flat platform of your forarms and not down on the hands.

The Contact

You may have heard coaches telling you not to swing your arms and to use your legs to pass the ball. This defeats the purpose of the stable platform, besides it is your arms that contact the ball. They may have said this to avoid a lever type of swing from the shoulders.

Prior to contact you need to place your "platform" (your forarms) in a postion that will "rebound" the ball toward your target. Passing comes down to placing a stable platform/rebound angle in a position to achieve the correct bounce towards your target. We help this by not letting the ball just bounce off our arms but by pushing at it (not swinging at it) with the forarms. THINK THAT YOU ARE PLAYING THE BALL AND THE BALL IS NOT BEING PLAYED OFF YOU. Follow the ball, watch it right into your arms.

After contact.

Dont follow through with your arms. Your arms should almost be in the same position as they were before you made contact. The passing motion is very small, but you are "playing the ball" and not just letting it bounce off you. Your hands should also still be together in the proper passing postion. Think of yourself briefly posing for a photographer after the contact. This photographer wants to get a picture of you in perfect passing form and not a pic of someone with their arms swung up over their head or theirs hands having come apart.

Coach yourself.

Watch where your pass went, and if necessary make the necessary corrections to your rebound angle. For example, If the ball went up and came down on the attack line, your platforms rebound angle was too high at contact. If your pass goes over the net, your platforms rebound angle was too low.

Practice

When starting out, it will take some time to get comfortable with reading the path of the ball properly. In practice (on your own), dont change your arm platform (bending your elbows etc.) just to make contact with the ball on your forarm. Let the ball hit you in the shoulder if necessary. You need to develop your ability to properly read the balls trajectory and changing your pasing every time will prolong how ling this will take. This will help your brain to better understand that you were in the wrong position for the flight of that ball.

Mindset

When receiving serve in a game, your mindset should be "I want the ball, please serve to me" you have to want to be the player on your team who passes the ball. If you're thinking "please don't serve to me" there's a chance you might get the hook from your coach.

I don't know if this make any sense from reading text but I hope something in this answer may have helped you.

Good luck and practice, practice, practice!

Source(s):

Coach and player

Answer 8

I do not advise lacing your fingers. Very dangerous. Instead: cross one hand over the other at a 45 degree angle. Bring your thumbs together so they lay beside each other touching, over the rest of your fingers. Remember though, you want to hit it with your forearms, for a flat surface so the ball will go where you want it.

Answer 9

ok first of all...

NEVER LACE YOUR FINGERS!! you are soo right you can break your thumbs as well as your fingers. There are a few ways that i was taught how to put your hands/fingers...

Ok your arms should be straight in front of you. Also (I am pretty sure you now this already but) you dont hit with your fingers you hit with your lower arm. Now for your hands. Here are some ways:

1. Make a fist with your right hand (i am assuming you are right handed). Wrap your left hand around your right hand with your thumbs on top.

2. Ok the next way has always been difficult for me. You overlap your hands (flat hands) to make an "x". You can put either hand on top or bottom which ever one is more comftertable. Now fold your thumbs inward so your hands close. Your fingers should not be sticking out that much at the sides.

There are some other ways, but these are the most common and best ways to put your hands when you hit the volleyball...

i understand your problem though. In one camp, i had to use the second way which was hard for me. I talked to the coach at explained that that way i could not use. She understood and told me that if I could hit that way and was taught like that, that would be fine. So just talk to your coach about it. If he still says you "have" to hold your hands that way,then i guess it is not worth playing on the team! Your choice...but if i were you i would talk to the coach...

good luck!!

♥

Answer 10

Never lace your finger, worst idea possible.  I make a fist with my left hand and then fold my right hand around it.  I don't know where your coach came from but thats a basic rule of volleyball not to lace your fingers, the possible damage to your fingers along with the lack of control of the ball, this coach should be fired.