And Now For Something Completely Different

I slowly and tearfully put the numbers down for a little bit

The last few months of SmarterVolley have been really numbers-heavy. That’s sort of my thing. But, just like an NBA center trying his hand at acting, I’m going to steer out of my lane and change the focus of this Substack for a few months.

Honest tossup here but I’m going with Kazaam.

So if I’m not calculating more ways to parse The Triangle, what will I be posting on SmarterVolley this February, March, April? I mentioned in a previous podcast or Q&A that can’t find now that I have 3 books that I carry with me. Given that I am not homeless anymore but still travel very light, carrying a physical book is a big commitment of space in my bag. So what are my 3 most essential coaching books?

The Language Of Coaching by Nick Winkleman

Coaching Athletes To Be Their Best by Rollnick, Fader, Breckon, Moyers

How We Learn To Move by Rob Gray

I actually don’t read a lot of coaching books. (Although there is another one that I’ve recently read that I can’t stop thinking about… a few of you who I’ve harrassed into reading it have felt the effects as well, but I haven’t processed it enough to publicly share thoughts on it just yet…)

I like to be a little more methodical and systems-oriented in my coaching practice. I like to absorb a lot of ideas from outside the coaching world, but I would rather read the classics again and again than important a new mediocre ideas. But. There’s a time for new (and hopefully not mediocre) ideas. And that time is going to be: now.

I’m going to let one of these 3 books be the centerpiece of the discussion each of the next 3 months. None of them are volleyball-specific, although a few of them reference studies that apply directly to volleyball. But all of them have concrete, immediate takeaways for volleyball coaches. I’ll recap them briefly, but I’m not going to make it a book review. What I’m going to do instead is say:

1. Read all 3 of those books.

2. Now that I assume you’ve read the books, or at least skimmed enough to get the core ideas, I’m going to share some ideas.

You readers are a pretty diverse mix, but the majority of the readers are either NCAA coaches or American club coaches. And I think both groups are in a time of year where you’re looking for some new stuff. NCAA coaches generally use spring as the time to experiement. And the middle of the club season is a team when many club coaches are looking for something to shake things up or upgrade on the push toward the end of the year.

So, with that said, let’s dive into The Language Of Coaching (TLOC, from here on out) and see if any of this hits you.

---

Idea #1: No Feedback, Only Cueing

The most core idea of this book is that focus of attention matters. Winkleman is a big follower of Gabby Wulf’s research, particularly that research showing that external focus of attention results in better performance and learning than internal focus of attention. Therefore, we really like cues that are external in nature.

But also, we really likes cues.

Winkleman takes great care to differentiate between DESCRIPTIONS of a movement, DISCUSSIONS of better movement solutions, and CUES. For me, just the differentiation between those 3 (really 2, once you lump Description and Discussion into the same not-cueing bucket) categories is a game changer.

What we really care about is the Cue, the last thought in their mind before performing the movement. That is ultimately what’s going to affect performance in the short-term and learning in the long-term. This is in contrast to feedback, which only occurs after the play. Coaches love feedback, and players learn to love feedback- or at least reflexively look for it.

We know that attention affects success in sports. It’s a common-sense truism. “Pay attention!” To what? That’s the key, isn’t it? Beyond common sense, research of Gabby Wulf and others shows that the focus of our attention (external or internal) affects movement performance. If attention is critical for an athlete, how much of what we say at practice should assist the athlete in how to focus attention for the next play? How much should train their attention skills?

Maybe all of it; or at least most.

I was doing a serving clinic for a club the other day and I had the experience I’ve had about 10 billion times now as a coach.

Joe: Explains some things.

Player: Tries a few serves.

Joe: “What I want you to focus on is X”

Player: “Okay”

Player: [Serves a ball]

Player: “Oh man, Y happened!”

Joe: “True, but we’re focusing on X right now. Try another one, and really focus on X.”

Player: “Okay”

Player: [Serves a ball]

Player: “Oh man, Z happened!”

Joe: [Smashes head against the wall]

But actually, I rallied and kept driving the player toward maintaining focus on one aspect of the serve. In this case, the external key “finish down the line [to the target].” Simple enough, and usually an incredibly powerful one for intermediate-level servers.

Joe: “You can’t re-serve the last ball. Just take a breath, see the line to your target, and finish down the line.”

Player: [Does it]

Joe: “Same focus. The last serve is over. Take a few seconds to visualize the line to your target, and focus on finishing down the line.”

Player: [Does it]

Joe: “Okay, what is your focus now?”

Player: “Finish down the line.”

Joe: [Faints with happiness]

And, as often happens (especially in a blocked setting like this), the improved attentional focus on one piece of the serve, when paired with a resonant external key, really helped. The player hit several excellent serves in a row and was really fired up. Learning is fun.

This sort of interaction happens all the time. I simple blocked serving tutor at a clinic is about the easiest place to drive attention toward a next-rep focus with a resonant external key. This gets wayyyy harder in a team setting where the ball is being played out. There’s always something to critique.

What I’ve been increasingly finding effective is this idea of No Feedback, Only Cueing. Of course, as Winkleman notes, this has to be paired with time to discuss the action. You can’t just say, “Finish down the line,” over and over again to somebody who doesn’t understand what you mean by that. But increasingly I find success by separating the discussion from the cue. And in fact, the whole point of the discussion is to find the cue with the player!

Ideally this is pre-practice, so that player can ask some questions and I can get a feel for how the cue resonates with that player. Basically, “what about this doesn’t make sense to you?” asked in a few different ways. And then once we have that cue or family of cues¹ we're going to end the discussion by saying, "alright, so all we're going to do is lock in on X the whole time you're working on that. I'm not going to distract you with a bunch of other feedback, and you are not going to distract yourself with a bunch of other internal feedback."

This is hard for players!

I notice that many players really have a hard time making a play and then saying, “sweet, that was what I meant to do.” There’s always this feeling of, “umm, well, I could have done this other thing different or better.” Like self-nitpickery is some sort of desirable social trait. Teach your kids to knock it off! Your martyr complex is not helping the team.

And critically: model this for them! Don’t tell them you want them to be focused and then lead them in a tail-chasing stream of constantly-changing cues and feedback. Try a No Feedback, Only Cueing practice and let me know how it goes.

Relevant side note: in a previous covid-era podcast, I talked with motor learning PhD Andrew Strick about observational learning. The quick takeaway is that watching video of ourselves perform a skill is likely not as helpful as watching video of a model perform the skill. If we translate words into images and visualizations, then this meshes with No Feedback, Only Cueing pretty well. Feedback creates an image in your mind of yourself, whereas cueing creates an image in your mind of a desirable model performer. Also: feedback is often given after some sort of an error, so the players are learning to recreate the image of an error in their mind, rather than of a well-performed skill.

Another side note: Schollhorn touches on this more than once in his CYBO interview. Corrective feedback is often taken as criticism, which activates the frontal lobe, which shuts off learning.

1. To use the serving example, we might vary between, “finish down the line,” “toss down the line,” “toss and finish down the line,” “drive it down the line,” etc.