Shadowing Practice: How to Serve A Perfect Volleyball Float Serve - Learn English Speaking with Video

Float serving is a great skill to learn in the game of volleyball.

Not only is it a super easy serve to learn, but it can be super effective.

So what we are going to do in today's video is learn all about the float serve.

We're going to learn how to float serve.

We're going to talk about tips that can help you become a better float server.

I'm going to give you my best insight from my eight

years of playing the game of volleyball to make you a lethal float server in the game of volleyball.

If you could do me a favor, I'll ask that you leave a like on this video, comment down below what volleyball skill I should break down next.

Subscribe to the channel if you are new.

Go check out PME Volleyball Shorts if you want more volleyball content.

With that all out of the way, let's learn how to float serve a volleyball.

In the game of volleyball, once you get to a certain level, there are really only two main types of serves that you'll see out there on the volleyball court.

On one hand, we have the topspin serves.

That could be a standing topspin serve or maybe a jump topspin serve.

And that is where the ball is coming with topspin

because you hit the ball and you snap upon it in order to create speed

and power to try and throw off the serve receive on the other side of the net.

Topspin serves are all about power and using

that to your advantage in order to throw off the serve receive on the other side of the net.

On the other hand we have the float serve

and again this could be seen in the standing or in the jump variant.

Float serves are great because they don't rely as much on power

but instead this floating effect that we can get when we hit a float serve correctly.

What this does is allows the volleyball to move back

and forth literally just like that

And what it'll do is it'll give the server seed more things to think about

when they're trying to pass your serve

If you're able to effectively float serve a volleyball Then they're gonna have to pass serves

that are coming at them like that and honestly I haven't done a whole lot of server seed in my life, but the server seed

that I have done honestly I'd like passing float serves way

less than I do jump spin serves What we're going to

do in today's video is just focus on the standing float serve variant It is a super easy serve

that I think a beginner could learn and I also think it's a serve

that a more advanced volleyball player could definitely use and utilize from behind the service line.

So let's start off this video by learning the basics of the standing float search.

But before we do that, I just want to take a quick moment and thank the sponsor of today's video, Way of Wade.

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And I got to say, with my playtesting in these shoes, I absolutely love them.

Not only is the design super sleek, but they have a built-in insole that adds a ton of bounce to your game when you take to the volleyball court.

I love the way they feel and the level of comfort

that they add to my feet when I'm out there on the volleyball court.

If you know anything about the game of volleyball, it's that you want a comfortable pair of volleyball shoes.

And I can say that these 808s have been that and much, much more.

So if you want to go check out the new Way Wade 808 5 Ultra V2s in the mint colorway, make sure to use the link in the description of this

video to get you a discount off of your very own pair.

Thanks again to Way Wade for sponsoring today's video.

And with that out of the way, let's hop straight back into the video.

First thing we need to talk about

when we're talking about serving is what side of the court we want to stand on.

I think it's usually better to take a preference, whether you go to the right or the left, and I usually base that preference on what your strong hand is in the game of volleyball.

So if you are a right-handed volleyball player, what I recommend is you go more over to the right when you're getting ready to serve volleyball.

And if you are a left hand volleyball player, what I recommend is starting more on the left side of the volleyball court.

Since I am a lefty volleyball player, I'm going to be doing this tutorial from the left side of the volleyball court.

But I do realize that the majority of people watching this video are probably right handed.

So all you really have to do is do the opposite of what I'm doing.

So whatever your strong hand is, that is going to be the side that you start your serve from.

When you serve a volleyball, even though you're in rotation one, you can actually serve from anywhere behind the service line.

So at the end of the day, honestly just choose a spot that is comfortable for you.

Now let's talk about how we get set up before we do our float serve.

There's a couple of important things that we need to focus on here.

First is our feet, then we have our toss, and then we have our actual serve or the swing.

So starting off with our footwork, we want to set up with our dominant foot forward.

Since I'm a left-handed volleyball player and I'm going to serve with my left hand, my left foot is going to start in front of my right foot.

I want my feet to be set up in a comfortable stance around shoulder width apart.

The reason we want to set up like this is

because we can generate power from our hips in the rotation we get when we actually serve the volleyball.

So what happens is when I serve that volleyball, I actually step forward with my non-dominant foot.

What that allows me to do is open up my hips and use them to generate more power behind the serve, giving it more of that float effect, especially if I hit it correctly.

So every time I get set up to float serve a volleyball, I want to make sure I'm starting with my dominant foot forward and my non-dominant foot back.

Now we got to talk about the toss.

I would argue that in serving in general, tossing is the most important part of every single serve you will ever do.

The toss needs to be consistent.

In fact, everything when it comes to serving is all about consistency, but most of that consistency just relies on how good your toss is.

When we go to serve that volleyball, we don't want that toss super high and ridiculous.

That is out of control, that is not a good toss, that adds more variables, more things that we need to consider when trying to serving, AKA making it harder than it actually needs to be.

Instead, what we want

that toss to look like is just like this maybe a couple of feet right in front of our head.

A good way to practice tossing the volleyball, believe it or not, is just by tossing the volleyball.

All you need to do is just get comfortable tossing around

this height every single time you go to float serve a volleyball.

I think that's a really good height.

And what it allows you to do is hit that volleyball at the top of your swing, which is super important in order to get that volleyball over the net.

The other super important variable with tossing a volleyball for your float serve is you want to toss

that volleyball a little bit over towards your hitting hands.

So since that volleyball is starting in my non-dominant right hand, what I want to do is just toss it a little bit over to the side.

Just like that.

And why I want to do that is

because I want to give my left hand the least amount of things to worry about.

So when I actually go to serve that volleyball, my left hand has very little things to worry about.

That volleyball is in the same spot every time, I can do the same swing in order to have very consistent results with my float serve.

The last component, the last piece of the recipe to float serve is all about the swing.

The swing for a float serve is a little bit different than your normal swing

that you would use when hitting a volleyball.

This is because the swing that you use to hit a volleyball is all about generating that top spin on the volleyball.

We don't want to do that when we're float surfing.

We want that volleyball to be nice and floaty rather than spinny.

The best way to achieve this is by keeping our serving hand nice, flat, and open.

We do this because when we make contact with that volleyball, we want to have a nice big surface area on that volleyball, a nice flat contact point,

and that's what's actually going to cause our serve to move and float back and forth just like that.

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If we hit that volleyball with a fist, we have no control over what type of float is going to be on it.

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If we finish and snap like we usually do when we hit a volleyball, then we're going to get that topspin.

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We don't want either of those things rather we just want

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that hand to be nice and flat Smack that volleyball nice

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and open and there we go that will give us the floating effect So now

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that we know all of the pieces in order to float

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serve We need to put them together in order to actually have the real thing.

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So step one.

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We're gonna start with our footwork Alright, I have my feet in the right spot.

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My dominant foot is forward.

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I'm ready to go Okay, the next thing I'm thinking about is the toss.

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I have

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that volleyball in the right hand I'm ready to toss it

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in front of my hitting hand aka my left hand I'm ready to go

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and now the last thing

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that I'm thinking about is just all about my contact point I'm keeping my hand nice

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and flat and open And I'm just thinking about hitting

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that volleyball flat in order to complete the float serve Now what actually happens

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when you go to float serve is this fourth step

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that I have yet to mention so far What happens is you're going to toss

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and then actually step forward with your right foot and that is going to open up your hips that I mentioned earlier,

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so you can generate more power when you actually hit the volleyball and make contact on your serve.

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So this is what happens.

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I'm set up, I toss that volleyball, I step, and then I serve through the volleyball,

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making sure my hand is nice and flat so I can get a nice float on that serve.

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Let's look at that again from a couple of different angles.

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I step, toss, serve.

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I step, toss, serve.

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And then one more time, we step, we toss, and we serve.

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One thing I'll say That will be something

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that you will need to work on from a comfort standpoint

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is how you want to finish your swing for me Personally

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when I float served I've usually followed through with

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that swing as I would

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when I normally hit a volleyball on the contrary I've seen

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some people just stop their hitting hand right after they make contact with the volleyball I've tried this out myself

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and what I found is you can actually get some more float on

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that volleyball if you do this

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But it might take a little bit of practice of getting

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used to since it will be a a completely different swing than what you would actually use when you hit a volleyball.

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So if you wanted an alternate swing to maybe try out when you're learning how to float serve, you could try doing everything exactly the same,

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step, toss the swing, but just stop that swing right after you make contact

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and see if you get a better float result because maybe

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that would be what you want to do going into the future.

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That would look like this.

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We step, we toss, And we keep

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that hand right here instead of actually following through with the serve again step toss

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Serve step toss serve

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that is the basic formula to float serving a volleyball Now

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let's break down some tips some tricks some extra things

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that you can use in order to find more success Maybe get some more aces from behind the service line

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when you go to float serve a volleyball The first thing

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that we need to talk about when float serving is all about location.

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In fact, I would argue that location in serving is everything.

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And you can have a serve that might not be as powerful, but if you put it in the right location, then you can be successful with it.

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As you can see behind me, there's 30 by 30 square feet of core on the other side of the net

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that I have to work with when I serve a volleyball.

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And most of the time, volleyball teams will have three players that will make up a server seat.

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One player will be right in the middle, Then we have somebody over here on the right side.

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And then on the flip, we have somebody serve receiving on the left side.

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Most of the time, what you don't want to do is put that serve directly on a player.

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So if there is a player standing right here, what I don't want to do is float serve that volleyball right at him.

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That would be the easiest possible pass that he would have to make even if it is a good serve.

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Instead, I think there are four good spots that on a normal float serve you should aim for.

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We have a seam right here in between these two serve receivers.

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There's also another seam right here in between these two serve receivers.

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The other two really good spots to serve would be down

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this end line right here in between this serve receiver and the boundary line of the court.

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And, yeah, you might have guessed it, the exact same thing on the other side of the net.

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This boundary line right here between this serve receiver and the boundary line of the court.

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We always want to be able to aim our serve where a player isn't, or where there are two players that might have to take responsibility for passing that serve.

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Volleyball can completely be a mind game at times, and the more mental pressure

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that you can put on the opposing team gives you a higher chance of being successful when it comes to serving.

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So a great way to practice your range of motion

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when it comes to serving is simply by working on serving different spots on the volleyball court.

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So a great drill that I can use to work on the location of my serve

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So it is simply by taking a cart full of volleyballs

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and working on all my location serves I'm gonna start on the left side of the court

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And I'm gonna try and hit each of those four spots

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that I mentioned earlier when it comes to my serve Let's try for the first one

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As you can see that was pretty close I didn't quite hit

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that serve in bounds But if that volleyball were to have hit the line

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that would have been a great serve to put pressure on the other team Let's try that again

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That serve looked a lot better.

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It landed inbounds, it was in between the sideline and that serve receiver.

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That's a great looking serve right there.

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Let's try for that next spot.

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That looks pretty good right there.

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I would say it was in between two serve receivers, making it so they have to make a decision on who's gonna pass that volleyball.

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Let's hit the next seam.

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That right there was my best serve yet.

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It went deep in between the seam.

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I'd make an argument that that was probably going to be a pretty effective serve in the game of volleyball.

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Last but not least, let's hit that fourth spot on the opposite sideline, try and get a good float serve.

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And that right there looks pretty good.

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If you are looking to improve your float serve, I would recommend hitting those four spots on the volleyball court.

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Those are the highest percentage places on the volleyball court

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that you have to succeed when putting the other team out of system or getting an ace.

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The last thing I think we should talk about

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when float serving a volleyball is throwing in a short serve every now and then.

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Let me paint this picture for you.

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Say I'm back here serving.

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I served maybe three, four times in a row.

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A great thing

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that I can now do since I'm already having success from

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behind the service line is incorporate a little bit of a curveball, throwing in a short serve.

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Pretty much all of the same rules for float serving a volleyball apply when it comes to serving the volleyball short.

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The only thing that really changes is you just add a lot less power when you actually make contact with that volleyball.

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You want that volleyball to land within the 10-foot line on the other side of the net, But not arcing super high you still want

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that volleyball to flow pretty close to the plane of the

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net You want it to be more of a dart that just kind of dies rather than a

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Kind of serve if you know what I mean.

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So let's use that same scenario.

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I just talked about I'm out of service run of four

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serves in a row I'm gonna now throw in a short

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serve to even throw more of a curveball on the serve receive on the other side of the net

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and give Them even more of a hard time receiving my serve here I go

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And as you can see really the only thing that I did there was just add a lot less power.

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Not only did that volleyball die on that end line, which is a great serve, but it also died short.

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Meaning that would be an even more difficult serve, especially if that serve receiver is expecting a normal float serve.

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It is just a great little mind trick that you can use

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and another way that you can add another location that you can float serve on the court.

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Honestly, you can float serve every single tile on the other

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side of the volleyball court with enough time in practice practicing your angles, where to hit the volleyball, and how much power you need.

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You could hit whatever shot you desire.

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To finish off the video, I'm just gonna give you one quick at-home drill

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that you can do by yourself if you don't have access to a gym or a net to practice your float serve.

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All you need is the same thing

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that we've used in a bunch of all the tutorial videos that I've made a trusty old wall.

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Basically what I'm going to do is aim for a spot on this wall

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that would be higher than the plane of a volleyball net.

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When I reach up on a men's volleyball net, I can just barely get like the top of my middle finger over the net.

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So this bar right here is going to be what I'm aiming for when I'm practicing my float surfs.

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So now that I know the spot that I'm going to be aiming for when I practice my surf, I'm gonna give myself a little bit of distance, I'm gonna get set up as I would to serve a volleyball,

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and all I'm gonna do is use that wall to serve a volleyball.

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Walls are a volleyball player's best friend.

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They act as a natural rebounder, and they just allow you to get rep after rep after rep practicing your serve.

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I highly recommend that if you want to work on your float serve, all you really need is a volleyball and a wall, some time and effort to put into practicing that float serve.

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Just like that.

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So that's going to do it for today's video.

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I think we covered everything that you need to know about float serving a volleyball.

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Thank you guys so much for watching.

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If you like this video, make sure to leave a like.

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Comment down below which volleyball skill I should break down next.

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Subscribe to the channel if you are new.

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And if you're not new, go check out PME Volleyball Shorts.

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I make a ton more volleyball content over there, and I think if you like what we got going on in this channel, you will like what's going on over there.

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Thank you guys so much for watching.

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I'll catch you guys in the next video.

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Peace.

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Bye.

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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This B1 speaking lesson is built on the video “How to Serve A Perfect Volleyball Float Serve”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: serve, volleyball, float, toss, serving. This video has 250 sentences and 3678 words to shadow. The speech runs for 16:39. The speaker talks fast, about 221 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 84% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
volleyball noun	/ˈvɒlibɔ(ː)l/	A game played on a rectangular court between two teams of two to six players which involves striking a ball back and forth over a net.
float verb	/fləʊt/	To be supported by a fluid of greater density (than the object).
toss verb	/tɔs/	To throw with an initial upward direction.
receiver noun	/ɹəˈsi.vɚ/	A person who receives something in a general sense; a recipient.
topspin noun		A rotational motion, especially that given to a ball, in which the upper surface spins in the direction of motion.
dominant adjective	/ˈdɑmənənt/	Ruling; governing; prevailing
seam noun	/ˈsiːm/	A folded-back and stitched piece of fabric; especially, the stitching that joins two or more pieces of fabric.
generate verb	/ˈd͡ʒɛn.ə.ɹeɪt/	To bring into being; give rise to.
surf verb	/sɝf/	To ride a wave on a surfboard; to pursue or take part in the sport of surfing.
boundary noun	/ˈbaʊndɹi/	The dividing line or location between two areas.
colorway noun	/ˈkʌləɹˌweɪ/	Any of the schemes of two or more colors in which a design is available.
curveball noun		A forespin pitch thrown by rotating the index and middle fingers down and resulting in motion down "curve"
footwork noun	/ˈfʊt.wɜːk/	Any movement of the feet, especially intricate or complex movement, as in sports or dancing.
sideline noun	/ˈsaɪdlaɪn/	A line at the side of something.
variant noun	/ˈvæɹi.ənt/	Something that is slightly different from a type or norm.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
set up verb	/ˌsɛt ˈʌp/	To make ready for use.
break down verb		To stop functioning.
check out verb		To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.).
open up verb		To open.
throw off verb		To confuse; especially, to lose a pursuer.
finish off verb		To finish completely.
make up verb	/ˌmeɪk ˈʌp/	To constitute, to compose.
move back verb		To reschedule (something) to a later date or time.

Sentences worth repeating

Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:

We're going to learn how to float serve.
I think that's a really good height.
Let's try for that next spot.
Let's hit the next seam.
Say I'm back here serving.

Grammar in this video

The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:

Structure	In the video
Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now	haven't done · have done · have been
Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it	could be seen · be set · is hit
Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing	swing, which is · line, which is
Superlatives the -est / the most … — the top or bottom of a group	the most important · the least amount · The best

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 77 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, gonna, don't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “th” sounds: lethal /ˈliː.θəl/, width /ˈwɪtθ/
The “sh” and “zh” sounds: rotation /ɹoʊˈteɪʃən/, shoe /ˈʃu/
Long words — get the stress right: consistency /kənˈsɪs.tən.si/, incorporate /ɪŋˈkɔɹ.pɚ.eɪt/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like volleyball, float, toss.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: How to Serve A Perfect Volleyball Float Serve - Learn English Speaking with Video

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