It’s a good question, and a harder one than it sounds. A private lesson can build skill and understanding faster than almost anything else in a young athlete’s development. But a private lesson also happens in a vacuum. It isn’t the game. It isn’t teammates who don’t play the way you want them to. It isn’t the pressure of a game going the wrong direction in front of a packed gym. Private lessons are a classroom for one specific piece of the sport at a time, and that makes them both powerful and limited.

So before a parent or athlete ever decides to book the court, they should ask one question: what are we trying to solve? At Delta, we see a surprising number of athletes walk in for a private lesson and, when asked what they want to work on, answer “I don’t know.” While we’re always glad to spend an hour with a young person who wants to get better, signing up for one-on-one time without knowing what you want out of it wastes the one advantage a private lesson has over practice: focus.

Here’s when that focus actually pays off.

When a new role needs support

Volleyball can look like the same six skills no matter where you stand on the court, especially once rotation puts everyone everywhere. It isn’t. The differences between hitting outside and hitting middle, or between back row defense and running out of system offense from libero, live in small details that are hard to isolate in a full practice and easy to build one-on-one. An athlete who just changed positions walks into practice with a head start if they’ve already worked through those details in a private lesson.

When rapid advancement is needed

We hear a version of this from parents often: “my daughter isn’t getting playing time because the coach plays favorites”, “my son is clearly better than the kid ahead of him, some families just get more chances than others”. While we are also parents, and understand where that worry comes from, we can almost guarantee that this isn’t the case. In our years of coaching, and years around coaches who run programs at a high level, we’ve never seen a coach with the time or motive to keep a kid down on purpose. Coaching ten to thirty athletes toward a winning season doesn’t leave room for that. What actually happens is simpler: when everyone trains together at the same practices, everyone improves at close to the same rate, and the pecking order holds. If an athlete wants to move up it, they need to outwork the player ahead of them, not just match them. That’s exactly the gap a private lesson can close.

When parenting influence isn’t working

Sometimes a parent can see precisely what their athlete needs to fix and exactly how to say it, and the athlete still won’t hear it from them. That’s a normal part of growing up, but it doesn’t make it any less frustrating for a parent who wants the best for their kid. An outside voice, a coach, a teacher, a counselor, can often land the same message a parent has been trying to deliver for months. About a third of our private lessons aren’t corrections at all. They’re figuring out what a parent already knows their athlete needs, and finding the way to say it that actually gets through.

When a second opinion is needed

Team coaches explain things in their own language, and sometimes that language doesn’t land the first time. A private lesson gives an athlete room to ask the question they didn’t want to ask in front of the whole team, and hear the same idea explained with the time and patience a full practice doesn’t always allow.

When confidence needs rebuilding

Not every private lesson is about a skill gap. Sometimes an athlete just needs to walk through a serve, a read, or a routine enough times with someone in their corner that the nerves around it go quiet.

Private lessons are a real way to gain ground fast. They are not a substitute for playing the game, and they’re not a replacement for the coaches an athlete sees every week. They’re a supplement, and a good one, for the athlete who still wants to grow.

If your athlete is looking for guidance, a second opinion, faster progress, or simply a clearer way to understand what they’re already being taught, that’s exactly what a private lesson is for.