Walk into any school gymnasium during a Grade 7 PE volleyball unit and you will see the same thing: kids swinging their clasped hands at the ball like they are chopping wood. The ball rockets off their forearms in random directions. The rally dies. Everyone groans. The teacher blows the whistle and re-serves.
This is the single most common mistake in youth volleyball, and it comes from a misunderstanding of what passing actually is. Passing is not hitting. Passing is directing.
The Platform Is a Ramp, Not a Bat
In our National Spike program, the first thing we teach — before serving, before setting, before anything else — is the forearm platform. The correct passing position looks like this:
Hands together, one palm cradled inside the other, thumbs parallel and pressed down. Elbows locked and rotated inward so the flat, fleshy part of both forearms faces the ceiling. Shoulders shrugged slightly forward and up to firm the platform surface.
The key concept we repeat constantly is: the platform is a ramp. You do not swing it. You angle it. The ball arrives, contacts the flat surface of both forearms simultaneously, and the angle of the platform determines where the ball goes. Want the ball to go forward and up to the setter? Tilt the platform slightly back. Ball coming in high? Drop your platform angle. Ball coming in low? Get your knees bent and your platform under the ball’s trajectory.
Why Kids Swing (and How We Fix It)
Kids swing their arms because their instinct is to generate power. They think they need to send the ball somewhere with force. In reality, a well-placed platform pass uses the ball’s own incoming momentum. The arms barely move. It looks effortless when done correctly, and that effortlessness is exactly what makes it difficult to teach.
We fix this in three steps:
Step One — Wall Passing. Athletes stand two metres from a wall and pass a tossed ball against it repeatedly. The wall provides instant feedback: if the pass is clean, the ball rebounds predictably. If they swing, the ball ricochets at odd angles. We do this for the first two weeks of every block until the arm swing disappears.
Step Two — Partner Passing with Freeze. Two athletes face each other. One tosses, the other passes, then holds their platform position frozen after contact. The coach checks the angle, the elbow lock, and the shoulder shrug. This builds awareness of what the correct position feels like.
Step Three — Moving Platform. Now we add footwork. The ball is tossed to different positions and the athlete must move their feet to get behind the ball before presenting the platform. This is where it starts to look like actual volleyball — but the arms still do not swing. The legs do the work of getting into position. The platform does the work of directing.
The 3-Contact Rule
Once the platform pass is reliable, we introduce the three-contact rally principle that forms the backbone of competitive volleyball: Pass to the setter (contact one), set to the hitter (contact two), attack over the net (contact three).
Every rally starts with the pass. If the pass is poor, the set is poor, and the attack is either impossible or predictable. A team with disciplined passing will beat a team with one flashy hitter nearly every time.
What This Looks Like in Practice
By about week four of our Spike Foundations block, most athletes can sustain a basic rally using the pass-set-hit sequence. The improvement from week one to week four is dramatic and visible. Parents who watch from the bleachers often comment on how different their child’s technique looks compared to school PE.
That is not because our coaches are doing anything magical. It is because we have the time — 55-minute sessions dedicated entirely to volleyball — and the ratios — 1:10 to 1:12 — to give each athlete repeated, corrected practice.
If your child has an interest in volleyball, take a look at our National Spike program for details on the fall block.