How to Dig a Volleyball: Technique, Posture, and Drills
To dig a volleyball, get low in a balanced ready position with your weight forward, form a flat platform with your forearms, and let the ball rebound off your arms toward the target. Great digging is less about swinging at the ball and more about being in the right spot early with a still, angled platform that sends the ball back to your setter.
A good dig keeps the rally alive and turns a hard attack into a playable ball. Master the posture, learn to read the hitter, and rep it with the right drills, and your defense becomes the engine that starts your offense.
What Is Digging in Volleyball?
Digging is the defensive skill of controlling an opponent's attack and keeping it off the floor. A dig usually deals with a hard-driven spike, so the ball arrives faster and lower than a serve. Your job is not to pass it perfectly. Your job is to get it up, high and toward the middle of the court, so your setter has a chance to run an offense.
Passing and digging use a similar forearm platform, but they are not the same. A serve-receive pass handles a slower, more predictable ball with a controlled push to target. A dig reacts to a fast attack, absorbs power, and often happens on the move or off balance. Because the ball is coming hard, quiet arms and early positioning matter more than a big arm swing.
What Is the Correct Digging Posture and Platform?
Every clean dig starts before the ball is even hit. If your athletes are standing tall or flat-footed when the hitter contacts the ball, they are already late. Build the posture in this order.
How Do You Dig a Hard-Driven Ball?
A hard-driven ball gives you almost no time, so the work is done with your eyes and your feet. Read the hitter's approach and arm swing, then get stopped and low before contact. Digging on the move usually sends the ball sideways, so plant, set the platform, and let the ball come to you.
When the attack is out of your platform's reach, teach emergency tools so the ball still stays up. An overhand dig uses open hands to control a ball at chest or head height. A pancake slides one hand flat under the ball as the body hits the floor. A collapse dig drops one knee and lets the athlete extend low to a sharp cross-court angle.
Custom Volleyball Clipboard (2 Sided)
Diagram your base defense, mark the dig lanes, and show players exactly where to be before the swing. A full court on one side and a rotation grid on the other keeps timeouts fast and clear.
Where Should Defenders Line Up to Dig?
Individual technique only works when players are in the right place. Most teams run a perimeter defense: the blockers take the line and angle at the net while the back-row diggers spread to cover the deep corners and the tips. Each defender reads the block, then digs the ball that gets past it.
The key idea is to dig the seams the block leaves open. If your blockers take the hitter's line, the line digger moves off the sideline and defends the deep corner behind them. The off-blocker pulls off the net to cover tips and roll shots. When everyone knows their zone, hard hits have far fewer places to land.
Bars are the block. Orange circles are diggers covering the corners and middle. The off-blocker (OB) pulls off the net to cover tips.
What Are the Best Volleyball Digging Drills?
Digging improves fastest with reps that mimic game speed and force players to read a real attack. Rotate these three into practice each week.
A coach hits down from a box or platform at a single digger. Start controlled, then add pace. Reps a repeatable low platform against a true downward angle.
Partners dig, set, and hit in a continuous rally. Add a target so every dig must travel to a set spot, not just up. Builds quiet, angled platforms.
Diggers rotate through a defensive spot as hitters attack live. They must read the swing, get stopped, and cover their zone, then sprint off for the next player.
Volleyball Digging FAQ
Digging is the defensive skill of controlling an opponent's attack with your forearm platform and keeping the ball off the floor so your team can set up a counterattack.
A pass handles a slower serve with a controlled push to target. A dig reacts to a fast, hard attack, so it relies on early positioning and absorbing power rather than swinging at the ball.
A pancake is an emergency dig where a player slides one flat hand along the floor under the ball as their body hits the ground, letting the ball rebound up off the back of the hand.
Read the hitter early, get stopped and low before contact, set a flat platform, and keep your arms quiet so the ball rebounds up instead of flying off a swing.
Feet wider than the shoulders, knees bent, hips low, weight on the balls of the feet, and hands apart and in front so you can form the platform late.
Start with controlled reps like coach-on-a-box and target pepper, focus on a low still platform, and train the eyes to read the hitter's shoulder and arm before the ball.
Diagram Your Defense on a Custom Volleyball Board
Great digging is a team system, not just one player's technique. A dry erase board lets you show base positions, mark the dig lanes, and adjust coverage in real time during a timeout. Build yours with your team name and colors.
