Outsides In Volleyball

By Sean Byrde

Many people watch professional volleyball and think, “how the hell do they get that high up?” Well, the secret lies in their training. For volleyball, many professionals do very intense training, like plyometrics. Plyometrics are essential to any sport that requires extremely explosive movements. By training your lower body to be faster, your muscles can stock up power to launch yourself off the ground like professional volleyball players. But as we talk about jumping, the question of, "how high do the best volleyball players touch" often comes up. Yuki Ishikawa is an outside hitter on the Japan VNL Mens team. Born December 11th, 1995, Ishikawa grew up Japan. He started his volleyball journey at the young age of 10 and climbed to the top of the rankings through his exceptional speed while on the court. In the 2024 VNL season, Yuki Ishikawa scored almost 180 points and 155 of them were off of attacks. The key to Ishikawa’s success is his monstrous, 351 cm spike touch. This high touch and the speed that he would reach his highest point are key factors in his performance seen on court. This reach allows him to out pace blockers and hit around, or even over them. Though Yuki Ishikawa is a phenomenal player, his success ratio when hitting was not enough to take the #1 spot. Slovenian volleyball player, Toncek Stern, is statistically the most successful outside hitter when It comes to attacking. In the 2024 VNL season, he had a 54.53% success rate whenever he would get set. Though this number docent look impressive, when you are scoring an average of 21 points per game, the consistency is truly impressive. Many people consider Karch Kiraly to be the most decorated volleyball player of all time. Before he became a coach, he played on the U.S. Volleyball team, winning them 2 olympic gold medals in the summers of 1984, and 1988. Later, he pursued beach volleyball, also winning an olympic gold medal for the US in 1996. After all of these wins, he continued to reach higher, moving on to coach the U.S. Women’s Volleyball team. Under his coaching, his team won an Olympic bronze medal at Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games.