In this 6-video tutorial, Cary Wendell Wallin, a former NCAA Player of the Year at Stanford who now coaches at 949 Athletics in San Juan Capistrano, California, covers the 4-step attack approach.
Included are teaching points on changing up your footwork to sync with the set, correct foot-positioning for the break step, upper-body torque, the proper way to land and a lot more.
Helping Cary in this series are 2 talented high school seniors who will play collegiately next fall: Claire Quick (Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston) and Emilie Austin (Westminster College in Salt Lake City, Utah).
In this video, Cary breaks down the footwork one step at a time, covering important teaching points like:
- How to adjust your second step to match the location of the set.
- Why your foot should be facing more sideways than forward on the fourth step.
Arm motion is also a big part of developing a smooth, efficient 4-step approach. Cary covers that here, talking about where your arms should be for each step and how to transfer from the backswing to the attack swing and follow-through.
One important teaching point: Cary frequently sees players make their arms too big when putting them forward on the initial part of the approach. This is a no-no because it often results in a late hitting swing.
Here we see Claire and Emilie demonstrate how the 4-step attack approach looks when it’s all put together. Notice the way they start slow, then explode into their jumps. Also, as Cary points out, they do a good job bending their knees on the approach, which results in a higher jump.
With Claire demonstrating, Cary talks here about how upper-body rotation is essential to generating power on a spike.
A technique point Cary makes here is that it's important to jump off 2 feet and land on 2 feet. This allows players to put their full body momentum behind the hit, and it's also a lot safer.
