GMS Waco Reflections
Plus a new Workshop session coming soon.
On Monday, August 15th I’m going to host another small-group workshop. This will be available for premium subscribers only. Our topic is, “Rosters and Rotations.” I’ll share some of my thoughts on putting together a roster and forming those players into a starting lineup and then we’ll dive into attendee questions. Wondering about which player to play as the next-to middle and which player to play away from the setter? Debating between starting in Rotation 1 or 2? You’ll enjoy this session. Upgrade to a premium subscription now to attend.
Recently, I was a clinician at the Gold Medal Squared coaching clinic in Waco, Tx at Baylor University. I love doing these clinics for a lot of reasons. Carl and Chris McGown have done a ton for the sport of volleyball. It was a privilege to know Carl and get to work with him and it continues to be a privilege to share space in a clinic with Chris. I had some volleyball takeaways from both him and Baylor Head Coach Ryan McGuyre that I’ll share below, but the bigger takeaways is that they are just good dudes and family men and some day I hope to be as successful in both volleyball and life as they are. Thanks for leting me hang with you fellas!
Also: I just love talking volleyball and I get to have 3 days full of people listening to me talk. As my wife would tell you, I enjoy this immensely. But honestly, I think I get more out of it than the attendees. When you present at a clinic like this while in the middle of your own season, you feel like you are talking to yourself sometimes. “Okay… I’m telling these coaches that X is important… and I positive that my own players really understand this?”
Top-10 Takeaways
Spend 5% less time optimizing your drills for efficiency and 5% more time creating some fun in your practice gym. Whenever I get in Ryan’s gym I always have the impression that I’d enjoy playing in his practices. Just giving the drill a good name makes it 5% better. See: Party Your Hasselhoff.
Chris McGown’s answer to every volleyball question is, “simpler mechanics.” And I find that usually that answer is correct.
Adding to that point, when you’re trying to get your team better in an area, the temptation is to look for something new. Often the solution is something that you, “already know,” but are tolerating a lower standard of execution in the practice gym. Chris tightened me up on some passing stuff and I think my Canada guys are going to be better for that.
Backrow attacking is a confusing topic for a lot of people. NCAA volleyball seems to be right at this merge point. My advice to NCAA Women’s coaches is generally, “if you’re trying to go from not-making-the-tournament to making-the-tournament, the best thing you can do is stop setting the backrow attack and stop blocking it. But if you’re trying to go from 2nd round to Final Four, you probably need to figure out how to hit it and how to block it.”
When teams link the concept of, “my base defensive positioning is also my defensive positioning against a middle attack,” they get better at defense pretty quickly. At the high school level, you can dig middles and that takes pressure off your block and allows them to read. When I present this idea in the defensive systems session, I see a bunch of lightbulbs go on.
Know what footwork patterns you want your hitters taking in serve receive and transition. In my experience, coaches that come to these clinics spend a lot of time thinking about approaches as 3-step or 4-step when in reality, most balls that are attacked involve more than 3 or 4 steps, because you attack following some sort of serve receive entry or transition move. You can debate 3-step v 4-step all day, but the debate is kind of meaningless to me. What matters is, “how am I going to get from serve receive to attack where I need to?” or, “when I block this hitter, how do I get off the net and then create an approach to attack?” Since those tasks require different distances and angles, I don’t really care about the 3-step v 4-step debate.
I need to add on to my first Hitting Toolkit article, but just those fundamentals are really challenging, and more so on the women’s side. I see so many more girls reaching across their head to spike a ball, whereas men are more comfortable falling out backward as the ball pushes that move. Nevereverever reach across your head to spike is a good rule of thumb for hitting.
Teaching your middles to tip properly is worth automatic points and very few people naturally do it right.
Teaching setting is really intimidating for a lot of people. It seems to be the number-1 position where coaches feel, “I wasn’t a setter, so I can’t coach setters.” Nonsense. You don’t have to have a setter’s touch on the ball to understand the footwork and mechanics and be able to demo them at a slow speed without the ball.
Ryan’s presentation on team culture was fantastic. My biggest takeaways was his line about being, “accountable to,” vs, “accountable for.” As he said it, “anybody can call their teammate out for being late to practice. But are you willing to show up at their door the next morning and give them a ride?” Ryan’s Sideout Session was a great workshop. He’ll be busy with pre-season, but if any of you are interested, I could probably get him on again after the season to present on team culture.