Volleyball Tips for Jump Serving

Question:

Got any tips on learning how to jump serve?

Answer:

The key to the jump serve is contacting the ball in such a way that creates topspin.

I’m assuming you want to develop a hard serve, not a jump floater.

Basically two ways to contact the ball…

1) elbow to wrist action and snap the wrist, or

2) get your hand in a “hand curved” position at pre-contact (cobra). I prefer the cobra because you’ll have more ball control.

Basically, if the hand is in cobra, even if you miss hit it a little, it’ll still go in. If you rely on elbow to wrist action and snapping the ball, errors can still occur. Topspin is what you want.

I would chunk down the skill first. First, just work on the hand contact before doing the full approach to jump serve.

Also, learning the cobra technique is easier when jump serving because you need to contact the ball more behind your head in order to serve the ball up more vs when spiking at the net.

When learning to jump serve, a key is to focus on aiming high. Pick a spot on the ceiling and aim for it. The goal is to get the ball over the net when first learning to jump serve while making the ball spin.

I'm becoming a big believer in learning to serve a hard topspin jump serve when first learning to play volleyball because of the benefit of learning how to contact the ball correctly. For example, if you first start out by learning float serves, you likely develop a habit of hitting the ball flat and hard so it doesn't spin and floats instead. I've seen many players struggle learning topspin and I believe it has to do with the fact that they focus solely on serving flat floaters and never learning spin. I believe it's a tough habit to break.