How to Avoid Aces in Volleyball?
If you are playing volleyball and giving your opponents too many points on aces, you are surely losing the game intentionally. Aces are easy to avoid only if you know the right ways to return the serves back.
Aces in volleyball can easily be avoided by studying the serving pattern of your opponents, practicing against aces, strengthening your arms and legs muscles, using your DS strategically, and keeping your opponent confused during their serve.
So, if you are giving too many scores on aces, this is not the end of the world (and yes you are not alone). Even international players miss multiple consecutive aces. So follow these steps and your game will improve.
Protect the Aces Hotspots With Defensive Specialists
When your opponent has already scored an ace against you, they can try to serve the ball at the same place again. So, always ensure that you are covering that place well for the rest of the match to avoid giving them any extra points.
Defensive specialists (DS) can easily be used to stop aces in volleyball. If your team is weak in saving aces, always ensure that you put your best defensive specialist at the most vulnerable position where your team is likely to give the points on aces. This way, your DS would be able to return the ball to the opponents easily.
Practice With Your Teammates, Especially the Server
Whenever you are doing practice, dedicate some special time for aces training. Your server can try to do practice for scoring aces, while you can do it to avoid them. This way, both of you are getting trained at the same time, which will eventually help your team.
But remember that volleyball is a team game, and even when you are completely trained to return the serve, the opponent can always target your weak team members. So always ensure that you are also training your weak team members against aces, so your team comes out at the top at the end of the day.
One of the interesting ways to do that is to challenge your teammates in practice so that every one of you gets better in the game.
Make your Body Flexible
Those players who have the strongest arms can return the serves easily without giving aces points to the opponents. This means that you need some exercises to make your body flexible enough to return the serve.
Remember that the serve is usually the fastest throw from your opponent, so your body should also need to be strong and flexible enough to return that throw. Making your arms swing hard is the easiest way to return the serve on point.
The flexibility of legs is equally important in avoiding aces, so do not hesitate to do leg exercises as well to avoid aces.
Keep Your Feet Moving
Whenever your opponent is about to serve the ball, make them confused with your foot moment.
Many top players of the game serve the ball by seeing the foot movement of the opponent player. One of the best ways to avoid aces is to keep your feet moving so that your opponent is unable to guess where you are going to move after the serve.
This is especially true when you know that your opponent will try to score aces in any case.
Research on Your Opponents
Sometimes your opponent is trying to score the ace intentionally, so you have to keep a close look at them to avoid giving them a score.
If you are playing a friendly match, you would already understand the strength and weaknesses of your opposition, so you would be in a better position to defend the aces.
And if you are playing a professional game, try to do a bit of research about the servers of the opposite team.
Search for the servers of your opponent team on the internet, watch their videos and see if they try to target one specific location every time they serve.
How do they like to serve, and what is their power pose before scoring the aces? If you manage to know these things, you will easily be able to stop the aces against any type of opponent.
Don’t Confuse After Giving One Point on Ace
You must not become predictable, or else your opponent can score a lot of aces against you. Sometimes an aggressive opponent can score a whole spree of aces against your team, and you have absolutely no clue about it.
For example, in the following video, you can see Japan scoring six straight aces against Canada, and tensions in the Canadian camp are evident. Players seem tense as they are already sure that the Japanese players will score more aces.
You need to avoid such a situation. So even if you have already given your opponent an ace point, focus on the next serve and don’t let the previous points disturb your game.
Reconsider your Volleyball Outfit for Perfection
Your volleyball outfit also plays a critical role in the flexibility of your body. If you are taking your outfit lightly and believe that it is not gonna cost you, I have bad news for you.
You are the most vulnerable player on your team if you are not wearing the right type of outfit for the game, so do not compromise on your clothes, or else you are going to give a lot of aces points to your opponent.
The same stands true for volleyball shoes, as they can impact your serve returning capability to a great extent.
Final Thoughts
Whenever you are going into a volleyball game, you need to take care of every single point that you are giving to your opponents.
And this can only be done when you are investing the right amount of energy to save the aces.
Don’t forget that a single ace can lose you the game, so you must practice enough to give any opportunity of aces to your opponent.
What do you think is the most useful tip in avoiding aces? Do you have any other tips that are helpful in avoiding aces? Let other players know your own methods to avoid aces.
Ahmed is the founder of Ball and Net Sports, a platform where he writes about volleyball.
As a professional volleyball player who has participated in various national and international level volleyball competitions, he loves to teach other volleyball enthusiasts about the game.
He is now a professional volleyball coach who organizes volleyball camps and social events for talent hunting for top volleyball teams.
As a volleyball talent-hunting specialist, he loves to teach people how they can make their game better in the fast-paced volleyball environment where it is extremely difficult to get quality content free of cost.
