Bang For The Buck Part 2
Maximizing Feedback
Winter is here. That means club volleyball season is here for juniors volleyball coaches in the USA. Therefore, much of my content is tailored for club coaches. In the past, these have been some of my most popular posts. Check out this summary post which has links to last year’s Club Winter posts.
If you’re not a club coach, don’t worry! Although this article series is tailored for club coaches, the topics apply more broadly, to coaches at any level. I think you’ll still find some insights in here.
Webinar Info: On Monday, January 13 I’ll be releasing my January webinar. The topic is “First Tournament Prep.” For many coaches, the MLK Weekend is either the first tournament or first major tournament. I’ll talk strategies you can use to prepare for, and succeed within, your first big tournament of the club season. This webinar is only for Premium Subscribers, so make the jump today!
The primary challenge of club volleyball is that you don’t get enough practice time. Professional teams get too much practice time; you have to consciously limit reps to not wear down your players. University/school teams get plenty of practice time in a day, but not enough days before the season starts. But juniors club volleyball is a unique challenge in that the season is plenty long enough, but a given practice is often painfully short for what you want to get done. Therefore, we’re highly interested in maximizing the efficiency of a given practice.
In November, the Don’t Plan To Fail article series focused on practice planning, starting with a macro-level season plan and working down to an individual practice template. This article series will focus on practice execution- how to take a given practice template and get the most out of it. In order to do that, we need to:
Maximize Reps
Maximize Feedback
Maximize Engagement
I’ll add the links to additional articles in this series as I publish them:
Part 1 - Maximizing Reps
Part 3 - Maximizing Engagement
Maximizing Feedback
If you don’t get enough reps, your feedback doesn’t matter. Reps are the foundation, but Feedback is one of the main pieces to improving. In many club gyms, there just isn’t enough feedback. The main sources of feedback are:
The game itself. I hit the ball and it goes somewhere. I pay attention to that. I feel what I did and connect to the result. This is the most important source of feedback and I’m going to hit it more in Part 3 of this article. You could call this Intrinsic Feedback, since it has to do with the task itself.
Coaches. For most young players, their primary source of information about the game is their coach. In fact, many young players rely more on coach feedback than intrinsic feedback, which isn’t good. But coach feedback doesn’t have to come at the expense of intrinsic feedback. The two should enhance each other.
Other sources. Video is the primary one here, but things like jump touch, speed timers, etc can also provide additional feedback information for an athlete.
So what are some things we can do at practice to maximize both the quantity and quality of feedback to our athletes at practice?
The 2-20-120 Method
I discussed the 2-20-120 Method in detail in this Tuesday Toolbox post. But essentially what I’m hoping to do here is to reduce the time spent in explanation in practice. I’d like as much of the explanations to come off-court as possible. 2-20-120 helps me do that.
When I observe club volleyball, I see court time as a limiting factor, but not necessarily the time the athletes are willing to be at practice. YMMV, but odds are, if you’re reading SmarterVolley, you’re a pretty dedicated coach and therefore you’re probably finding some pretty dedicated kids to coach. It’s likely impossible to adjust the gym schedule to get an extra 20 minutes on-court. However, it’s very likely you can get some or even all of your players to come to practice 20 minutes early for a classroom session.
Often, you don’t even need 20 minutes to discuss something, so even getting kids there 10 minutes early can go a long way.
Once you hit the court, your “120” is maximized, because your players can respond to the model they now have in your head. Say your “2-20” discussed coverage and you pointed out the details of the middle blocker turning along the net, getting perpendicular, and getting low to cover. Now your feedback can be:
“Yes, way to get perpendicular!”
”No coverage there, turn back along the net.”
”Don’t face the net, face the hitter who you’re covering”
And those details will mean something to your players. You’ll also have to stop less, so you’re also maximizing reps.
Assign Your Coaches (This Includes You)
For every drill, coaches should have an assignment. They should know what they are coaching. And you are included in the “they”. It’s also important that your players know what you are coaching. To extend the above example, if you 2-20-120’d about coverage, and your players get into a drill that involves coverage, they are going to expect feedback about… coverage! So you need at least one coach assigned to that job.
Also, you probably don’t want more than one coach assigned to that job. In a lot of club gyms, I see one of two things:
Coaches talking over each other. So a player gets feedback about her platform from Coach A and then 2 plays later Coach B wanders over and gives her feedback about her feet. This is a recipe for lack of focus.
One coach will talk over the other, and then the assistant coach will just go quiet.
Honestly, (2) is probably better than (1) since, “too much feedback is worse than none at all,”1 but (2) is certainly not optimal. By assigning which coach will give what feedback during a drill (and sticking to it!), you make sure that the lines of communication are clear. Just as players will put out more when the task is clear, coaches will give more and better feedback when their coaching task is clear.
Get The Geometry Right
In the previous article, I discussed how the geometry of your drills can maximize reps, but it can also maximize feedback. Simply put: where you stand affects the quality and quantity of feedback you give your athletes.
For example, in my article Cueing Doubles, I share some strategies to maximize feedback in a simple Split-Court Doubles drill. Here’s what that setup looks like:
Where you stand affects what you’re going to coach and how well you can coach it. If I stand here…
I’m in great position to coach the servers on the near side. In fact, I probably have the ball cart with me, so I can grab a ball and before I hand it to the server, I can give them a piece of feedback- or actually “feed-forward” or “cueing” in this case, since it’s about the serve they are about to do. However, this positioning is terrible for coaching the passers on the other side. If I want to optimize passing feedback in this drill, I’m going to stand in one of these two places:
Now I am close to a passer and it’s easy for me to give them a piece of feedback as they come over to the receiving side. This also works well for coaching the setting in this drill, although this isn’t really a drill where I prioritize setting feedback. Split-Court Doubles is primarily a serve/pass drill for me, so I’m going to prioritize that feedback.
A good rule for optimizing the geometry of your drills is:
Coach your players right in the face.
A significant portion of communication is non-verbal. If players can only hear your words, they don’t get all the other information from your non-verbal communication. Also, if your players can see your face when your speaking, they will hear more of the words you say. Also, if you can see the face of the player you just spoke to, you can judge whether or not they understood what you said. Coach a player in their face, and then look at them.
There’s also a proximity issue. If you shout across the gym at a player, they might be able to see your face, but now the distance is affecting the quality of communication. A good distance for communication is: if you both took a step toward each other and reached out your hands, you could give a high five. So 6, 7, 8 feet away is about right. Sometimes you can’t be quite that close, but do your best.
Also, consider where a player is going to be to finish an action as well. For example, in a 2-Way Hitting Setup:
If I stand there, I’m in good position to make eye contact with the setter after she sets the outside hitter. I’m also in good position to judge the distance off the net and how she finished. If I’m giving feedback on those things, this is a good place to be. On the flip side, if I stand here:
I can see the Hitting Window really well and give feedback to the setter about that. I’m also in good position to give the hitters feedback as they cycle off to get back in line. This is my most common coaching position to coach 2-Way Hitting.
Get The Frequency Right
Finally, there’s your frequency of feedback. Good rules of thumb are:
More blocked activities lend to more frequent feedback.
Single-skill activities lend to more frequent feedback.
Earlier in the practice lends to more frequent feedback.
So for example, early in a practice, if we’re doing Split-Court Doubles as I outline above, I’m giving a piece of feedback to the servers every single time they prepare to serve. It shouldn’t be novel feedback. For example, it might just be saying: “finish down your line” every single time before they prepare to serve.
But, for example, in 6v6 toward the end of practice, I’m no longer giving technical feedback every single play. That would be overwhelming and cause players to be too internal. Instead I’m likely just adding an “energy narration” during the play. For example, as the play is going on, I’m probably shouting stuff like:
“Yes! Way to dig off the net!”
”Come on! Get in there and cover!”
”Love that transition!”
I’ll save anything that needs to be processed beyond emotional resonance for the breaks between rounds. So after 2 rounds of Aceball, I might call players in to the board and say, something like:
“Okay, we talked about upgrading our coverage, how’s it looking out there?”
I probably have something in my mind and I’m checking for understanding. Do they realize that the middles are coming in tighter and are more prepared to cover? That’s a good thing and they should realize it. But do they also realize that there’s no 3rd coverage person because the setters aren’t following at all and we let that one coverage ball drop a few plays ago? If they do, that’s awesome and shows an improvement in understanding, if not execution yet. If they don’t, I’ll point it out.
Give some of these strategies a try and maximize feedback at your next practice!
Inner Game of Tennis