The Practice Pit is a way of structuring and organizing punishments over the course of a practice.  Sometimes during practices it is not reasonable to stop and administer punishments.  The Practice Pit is designed to provide a method for administering punishments in one lump some, while providing a more game - like punishment.
   Pit drills are used to help condition volleyball players while giving them ball contacts.  These drills usually require a lot of movement and a high number contacts in a relatively short period of time.  Usually the players spend a majority of thier time running and diving around the court, which some players consider punishment.
   The Practice Pit is centered around assigning weights for punishable offenses that are then tallied and administered in some sort of pit drill at the end of practice.  Below is an example of a record sheet that can be used for the Practice Pit.
The record sheet has each player that is involved in the practice, and the punishable offenses being empahisized for the practice.  For each of the offenses a 5 second allottment of time in the

pit is given to the player.
  The coach has the ability to set up the Practice Pit in such a manner to emphasize errors that may need to be minimized.  For example, if your team is having problems with overpasses in serve recieve you may assign a Practice Pit penalty of 5 seconds for each overpass.  Other examples of punishable offenses could include, not covering the hitter,

not following a ball out of bounds, touching the net, tipping out of bounds.  The important thing to remember is that the players must know what they are going to be punished for before the practice begins.  The players should also be told when they have incurred a penalty.
   The record sheet gives the coach the ability to monitor an individual, or teams performance in practice to see if errors are diminishing.  The record sheet also gives the coach a way of monitoring individual players' performance in practice.  The coach also has the ability to compare and contrast practice and game performance.  Do players that touch the net more in practice also commit blocking errors more in the games?  The record sheets should be made available for players to review so that they may keep track of thier own performance.  The coach should give positive feedback to players that are making improvements in their practice performance.  If the record sheets are showing decreases  in the number of overpasses a player has, especially one that has problems with them should be praised when they errors begin to diminish.
   Another advantage of the Practice Pit is the ability to adapt punishment drills to the errors the players are committing.  A player who is committing punishable offenses while blocking could do the Get Out of the Hole drill for thier punishment.  It is easier to choose one drill and use it for every player, but like the punishable offenses the drill chosen for punishment should be known by the players before practice begins.  For some players this may be more incentive to improve thier performance during practice.
   Not everything involved with the Practice Pit should be a negative, a punishable offense that involve more time in the drill.  You should build into your practice pit positive reinforcement opportunities to encourage the efforts of your players.  An example of this could be a SHP, or Super Hustle Play.  In this case a player would be rewarded for an extraordinary display of effort by reducing thier time in the Practice Pit by 5 seconds.  Try and make your positive reinforcements as specific as possible, and focus on plays that may be difficult for your players to execute.  Another example could be a 5 second reduction for tooling the block.  This is a skill that is difficult to master, but players may be more likely to try and practice it if they know they will be rewarded for properly executing a successful tool shot.