Publication:

Influence of small ball training on the serve reception performance of male university volleyball players

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the volleyball players' ability and efficacy in serve reception, and whether it can be effectively improved after serve receive training with a small ball. Methods: In this study, twenty male volleyball players in Level 1 from Taiwan's University Volleyball League were recruited as research participants. The participants were divided into two groups by stratified sampling to undergo a six-week training program: 10 in the small ball training group (SBTG), and 10 in the normal ball training group (NBTG). The volleyball machine was used in the experiment and the ball speed (from the volleyball machine) was 38 mph (= 61.16 km/h, = 16.98 m/s). The time interval was set at 8 seconds for each reception. The serve reception performance of both groups was evaluated before the training (Week 0), at third week (Week 3) and at the sixth week (Week 6) of the training. A two-way analysis of variance (group x weeks) was applied to analyze the data. If a significant interaction between the factors was found, the simple main effect would be assessed. If the interaction was not significant, the main effects would be assessed. Results: The results revealed a significant difference between two groups (p ＜ .001). The results of the analysis also showed that the serve reception efficacy of participants in both groups gradually improved as the number of weeks increased, while SBTG achieved significantly greater results than NBTG at Week 6. After six weeks of training, the scores of the two groups increased by 20.40% (SBTG) and 6.01% (NBTG), showing that the training were effective indeed. Conclusion: The main finding was that both small ball and normal ball training had a positive effect on serve reception, while the influence of small ball training was more significant.