h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This was a really useful article for me. Our small team is just at the stage of specializing and learning how to play a penetrating setter, this Guide was great!

I now how a problem in getting each player into their specialist position in each rotation when playing a 5-1 offense - no matter how I work it, I always end up with two middle hitters at front court, or similar. There's 8 in our team, so we have two of each position including outside hitters at #2.

It must be easy, i wonder maybe teams just know they have to swap their players out of their specialist positions sometimes?

Though you have 8 players (3 middles, 3 outside hitters, and 2 setters, I think you implied), it is easy to fix the problem you seem to be having. Your starting lineup should always be (or some rotated version of this):

----net----
S M O
O M S

The switching that was described in the article can be used to (eventually) get the O in the front row to the left side and the S to the right side. The fun part is doing this without messing up your serve receive. When you are serving it's easy.

You would substitute a middle for a middle or an outside hitter for an outside hitter. Don't try to "rotate in" - that might be what is causing your trouble.