Don't Plan To Fail - Part 2

Plus, the Practice Planning Webinar download

It’s almost winter. That means club volleyball season is almost 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.

Winter Wrap-Up

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: Typically I do webinars at the end of a content mini-cycle in order to give bonus information to premium subscribers. In this case, since the topic is Practice And Season Planning, I wanted to run this webinar before practices really kick off. If you’re interested in getting access to the Practice And Season Planning webinar, become a premium subscriber and head down to the bottom of this article, below the paywall.

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Other articles in this series:

Don’t Plan To Fail Part 1
Don’t Plan To Fail Part 3

What Do You Actually Want To Teach?

Many club coaches have the feeling of club season seeming so far away until… BANG! Practices are starting. Many of you reading this actually have jobs and contribute to the world outside of volleyball. You’re probably thinking about all sorts of things throughout the day. If you sit down 30 minutes before practice to plan it out, you’ll (a) resort to doing whatever you did last practice or (b) you’ll be very reactive to whatever happened last practice, for better or worse.

Neither of these mindsets are a recipe for sustained growth of a team. Your job as a coach is to be the captain of the ship, looking out into the distance with a steady hand, calmly navigating… alright, you get the point. Don’t yank the steering wheel all around and don’t forget to teach transition footwork.

Any of you who are Stephen Covey fans will be familiar with the Big Rocks concept. To summarize: if you fill a jar up with sand, there’s no room for any big rocks. If you put the big rocks in first, then there will be room for some smaller rocks and eventually some sand.

To analogize to a volleyball practice: if you fill up the practice by reacting to small moments from the most recent practice/tournament (the sand), you’ll find that you under-trained the big system pieces that take time to get in place- the Big Rocks.

Club Season Big Rocks

As I said in the previous piece, there’s 3 things you have to plan for in a season, especially a club season:

1. Team Systems

2. Practice Content

3. Playing Time

College teams can and do change team systems. But college teams have a combination of (1) continuity and (2) consistent level of play. Most club coaches are missing one or the other. If you had a group of 10 kids on a U-15 team and you’re all moving up to U-16, you have a lot of continuity, but every kid is changing their level of play, and you are as a coach. If you coached U-17 last year and you’re coaching U-17 again this year, you have a consistent level of play, but you probably only coached 1 or 2 of these kids last year, if they were playing up a year, etc.

This means that making a plan for Team Systems is critical. Think about your Offensive Systems. Without creating a whole article in and of itself, you’ll have to decide what different sets you want to run, the tempo you want to run them at, and how any of these sets change from first ball, to transition, to easy transition situations such as freeballs. Then think about your Defensive Systems. How do you want to defend different sets? How do you want to block against them? How familiar are your players with these concepts?

Practice Content means the drills you’ll run and the overall structure of practice. How do you like players to start practice? Do you meet at the whiteboard? What sort of 6v6 drills do you run, how are the scores kept, and how are the teams shown/communicated to players? What drills do you have in place to teach the core fundamentals that need constant training?

Playing Time is a final decision. You should have a playing time policy! If you plan to get certain kids in “when you can,” you’re either not going to get them enough playing time, or you’ll be forced to squeeze them into games when you wish you could roll your starters the whole time. Should playing time be the same in pool play as the playoffs? Should it be the same in the early season as opposed to the late season? Unlike most school coaches, especially NCAA coaches, club coaches also sometimes have situations where a player needs to get playing time at a certain position that’s different than their ideal role on your team. Maybe your libero needs to set some balls to be prepared for next high school season. Maybe your middle has been recruited as an outside for college. Etc. Again, make a plan for how you’re going to get these things done.

How I’m Doing It

First I’ll share my season outline from the previous article:

Pre-Season: November → Dec 21 (“7” weeks, about 8 team practices + some individual or small group workouts beforehand)
Mid-Season 1: Jan 2 → Jan 26 (4 weeks, 8 practices + 2 tournaments)
Mid-Season 2: Jan 27 → Feb 23 (4 weeks, 8 practices + 2 tournaments)
Post-Season 1: Feb 24 → April 13 (7 weeks, 14 practices + 3 tournaments)
**Break**
Beach Interlude: April 29 → May 25 (4 weeks, 8 practices + 2 beach tournaments)
Post Season 2: May 26 → June Something (4ish weeks, 8 practices + a tournament before AAUs)

We know that we can’t forecast the whole season perfectly, so you’ll see that my Big Rocks are more specific in the beginning than they are at the end.

Pre-Season Big Rocks
- Get Offensive Systems in place. (Greens/Reds, Push/Pull/Flash, High Balls)
- Get Defensive Systems in place. (Base, FB/DB, L/R/M, Off/On/Over)
- Teach the flow of practice and our important drill pieces (Atomic Speed/Spiking, 4-Way Passing, 2-Way Hitting, Doubles, 4s, 1-Way 6s like Aceball)
- Meet with each player individually. See where they are after the high school season and make sure they understand their role on this team. Listen to what they think their strengths and weaknesses are.

Mid-Season Big Rocks
1. Get super-sharp on fundamental skill execution. Use the clear feedback from competition to see where we need to upgrade. (Setter entries, hitter footwork, defensive positioning, etc)
2. Test lots of lineups. Give different players lots of chances. Figure out if we’re better with the libero in 5 or 6.

Post-Season 1 Big Rocks
1. Upgrade Decision-Making. Learn from the competitions in the Mid-Season blocks in order to make great decisions (Green/Yellow/Red, MTP/MTP, etc) at the Qualifiers.

Big Interlude Big Rocks
1. Get everybody feeling fresh physically and mentally. Meet with every player individually at least. Maximize clarity for the last 2 months of the season.
2. Learn from the environment. Get out of the groove of the April. Do new things, form new habits, set ourselves up for June.

Post-Season 2 Big Rocks
1. Play to our strengths. Maximize each player individually and as a team. Do what we’re good at and play way from our weaknesses.

Other Applications

If you’re a U-14 or younger club coach, you probably have some different priorities and curriculum. You need to pay more attention to players playing multiple positions. I have some of that in my plan, but, since I’m coaching a U-17s team, players have more defined positions than they do at U-14s. You’ll also likely plan for less refined offensive systems and spend a little more time on freeball/downball defense and transition hitting.

NCAA coaches have a less-integrated spring season. Since it doesn’t flow directly into the fall, it’s not a true “pre-season” the way a club or fall season can be planned. This also allows some additional experimentation. Spring is a great time to test out the possibility of changing positions. With early-season matches having an impact on RPI, you might not have time in the fall to mess around with position changes; you need to use the spring season for that. Spring season is also the time to experiment with some different practice and teaching structures. For example, if you’ve never integrated radar guns, instant replay, or other tech into your practices, spring is a great time to experiment with that.

NCAA and pro coaches also need to plan for how their scouting reports will be integrated and change over the course of the season. If you have a relatively inexperienced team, it’s likely that throwing every scouting technique you have at them right up front will overwhelm them. Think about the big pieces of scouting and gameplanning you want to have in place early in the season, and the 1 or 2 pieces that you’d like to add as the season progresses.

How are you all filling out your season plans? Drop me a line in the comments and let me know. In the last part of this series, I’ll discuss how to go from Big Rocks to a specific practice plan.

Practice Planning Webinar