Should You Teach The 'Split Step' to Juniors?

I've been involved in a lot of discussions about the 'split step' in passing lately. I thought I'd compile a few ideas in one place:

It is an old idea, but has never been widely adopted.
Smart people have written about it in relation to elite adult athletes, for more information you should read that. For one of them, click here.
Yes tennis players do it, but in tennis they practice the very specific timing a lot. From a coach of elite adult tennis players: in volleyball the only time it would really be appropriate is on the really fast serves, ie >120kmh. The rest of the time it is not worthwhile. (credit Mark Lebedew)

The 'purpose', the way I read it, is to be able to be 'faster' to the ball - a noble quest. Or is it?

Let's generalise a lot and say that children go through a Four Stages of movement when they learn to pass:

not moving at all (which is when coaches yell, 'move')
moving in the wrong direction (which is when coaches yell, 'go for it')
reading the ball but not moving because they are unsure who's ball it is (coaches go back to yelling, 'move')
not moving much and passing just able all the balls that are theirs (which is when other coaches think the player is lazy but they are actually doing a great job and the setter loves them because they can easily read where the pass is going to go)

Now let's ask these questions:

In all of these Stages, is speed of movement (as opposed to decision making) the critical failure?

The answer is clearly and resoundingly, 'nah, probably not, too many other things to work on'.

If I had regular one hour individuals with an elite, old (for a junior) libero would I spent time on the 'split step' ?

The answer is clearly and resoundingly, 'maybe once in a while to fill in time because it gets really boring doing individuals otherwise.'

I've written about simplicity a lot and here are my simple skill models to help all junior players. For a downloadable version: Click Here

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