Goal - Intention - Cue
A simple framework for manifesting your every volleyball desire.
As winter turns to spring, SmarterVolley has eased up on the snowy blanket of statistical analysis and the softening soil has allowed the flowers of learning to emerge. What I’m trying to say is that this spring will be less about the What to coach and more about the How. Fortunately, Nick Winkleman’s prose is better than mine and I shared one takeaway from his excellent book The Language of Coaching last week.
Let’s look at another idea this week.
Idea #2: Goal - Intention - Cue Lists
TLoC is, at core, a book about cueing. Winkleman makes the case for the importance of cues (over feedback) and the meat of the book is about making effective cues. I shared how I put a particular class of cues into practice in last week’s Cueing Doubles article. Today, I’ll take a step back and share a method for ensuring your players understand what those cues even are.
How do you do that? Build Goal - Intention - Cue lists with your players.
This method is going to be similar to what many of your may already be doing, but I think it will help fill some gaps. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of you are already making Practice Lists or Improvement Boards or whatever other terms you have for, “your players write something on the board that they want to get better at.” That’s all the Goal - Intention - Cue list is, at heart, but I might have some potential upgrades for you.
Part 1: The Goal
I was asked by a player at a local club to do a private lesson. She wanted to work on her hitting. Cool, sounds good. I talked to her a little bit at the start of the lesson, and had a conversation I’ve had a thousand times before:
Me: “Here’s what I notice about your hitting. I think you could improve X.”
Her: “Oh yeah, I understand what you mean. That makes sense.”
Me: “Great. So why do you think it’s important to do X.”
Her: “Well that will make me have a better approach.”
Me: “Cool. So why is that important?”
Her: (Looking puzzled) “Umm… so that my timing is better?”
Me: “Cool. So why is that important?”
Her: (Sweating nervously) “Umm.. so I can hit better?”
Me: “Cool. So how do we know if you hit better?”
Her: (Questioning her decision to ask me for a lesson and totally stumped.)
Me: “Because you’ll get more kills!”
I make a point of carrying these sorts of conversations to their ultimate conclusion. There’s probably some assumption that, “hit better,” is a proxy for, “get more kills,” but honestly, especially with teenagers, and especially with girls… that isn’t always the case.
For many teenage volleyball players, the tail wags the dog. They start playing volleyball to perform the technique to some standard of correctness rather than letting the correct technique be defined as whatever helps me play the best volleyball, as judged by my contributions to helping the team win.
I sometimes describe myself as the Forrest Gump of volleyball. Partly this is because I’m just some dude from Delaware who has been fortunate enough to constantly have amazing experiences and meet amazing people in the volleyball world. But partly it is because I find myself saying (what seems to me like) too-simple things that somehow get people really fired up.
This class of conversations is one of these Forrest Gump moments. Multiple times a year I see a player’s lightbulb go on when I walk them through the following logical chain:
I am an outside hitter.
I help the team by getting more kills.
If something helps me get more kills, I should do it more.
If something doesn’t help me get more kills, I should do it less.
And I’m oversimplying for effect here. But really, techniqueition is rampant among female teenage volleyball players. The ref never blows a whistle, holds up a finger and says, “1 point… nice approach.” You only get a point for getting a point!
This is a point worth stressing because emotions are necessary for learning. Almost Nobody gets emotionally charged to improve their technique. Players get emotionally charged to improve their technique when it ties into larger goals that are important to them!
So the first step is to establish a measurable performance goal. You may not be able to measure it as accurately as you like, but it must be measurable. What I mean by this is that, “add power to my high ball swings,” is an objectively measurable goal… but many coaches don’t have the human or technological resources to consistently measure velocity of in-game attacks. So player and coach will have to settle for a subjective evaluation of progress. Which is fine!
The lower the level, the more these should be easily measurable, to the point where you can say, “measured by statistics.” The higher you progress in level, the more difficult it is to make statistically-significant progress, which means you need larger and larger sample sizes to differentiate skill from noise. So, “add power to my high balls swings,” is a good goal for a higher-level player. “Hit more balls in the court and fewer balls in the net,” is a better goal for a lower-level player because that can be evaluated in the next match.
A few more examples of what I mean by Goals:
Serve in more
Get more serving knockouts (while still serving in at 90%)
Less than 10% aced in serve receive
No balls overpassed next tournament
Set the Go faster
Get 3 true line kills next tournament
Hit 0.300 In-System
Block more balls
Get 4 digs per set
Part 2: The Intention
Goals are pretty well-defined. And, as you see next, so are Cues. Intentions are a little bit of a fuzzy bridge. Intentions are basically a single-play goal. So for something like, “add power to my high balls swings,” the Goal and the Intention are going to be really similar. The Intention for that Goal is going to be something like, “hit the ball hard,” or possibly, “hit it high and hard.”
The Intention is the effect of the action. In that way, it sort of is a cue in and of itself. And that’s… kind of the point. It’s okay for the player to have times where she’s only focusing on the Intent. That’s actually a great way to play and perform!
To continue with this example, a player who is laser-focused the whole match on hitting the ball high and hard is going to be pretty far ahead of most volleyball players.
And also… there’s going to be situations where that isn’t enough, since a player likely has an existing limiting mechanic somewhere in their movement prep or finish. That’s where players need Cues. And since volleyball is a sport that rewards being good over time, Goals themselves are not enough. Intention is needed, with the understanding that there’s going to be some degree of variance around that intention, but if the variance is small enough, the long-term goal will still be met.
Examples:
12 year-old player with the Goal of, “Serve In More,” has the Intention of, “Hit the ball hard and up.”
NCAA player with the Goal of “Get more serving KOs (while still serving in at 90%)”) has the Intention of, “Hit the ball with the right power for the depth.”
The Goals here are not dissimilar. You could even argue that the 12 year-old probably just has one serving intention, “Please God help me get this ball over the net!” Whereas the NCAA player’s intention is really multiple intentions (“Drop it short in the 5/6 seam”…. “drive it flat at #10’s chest”… etc) wrapped into a summary. That’s fine.
Let’s talk Cues and then we’ll circle back to more examples of all 3 linked up together.
Part 3: The Cue
Winkleman wants external cues that contain an action, a direction, and a distance.
We’ll dive more into specific cue creation later, but for the purposes of this discussion, we could even substitute cues you’re already using. The important thing here is the linkage of the Goal, the Intention, and the Cue. We’re trying to draw a direct line from a broad goal (“pass good a lot”) to the effect of a play that will help meet that goal (“pass this ball high and off the net”) to a Cue, which is the specific thought that the player could have in her mind right before performing the skill.
So some full examples:
Goal: Serve in more
Intention: Hit the ball high and up
Cue: Finish to the (object high on the back wall)
Goal: Less than 10% aced in serve receive
Intention: Pass the ball high and off the net
Cue: Track through the line (of the serve)
Goal: Block more balls
Intention: Get across the net when the hitter is hitting
Cue: Reach to the baseline
The Process
Sit down with your player(s) and work on establishing some goals. This is where you should have the most say. Not that it’s your job to define a player’s hopes and dreams, but we’re talking about volleyball goals and hopefully their goals align with the team being more successful. If not… those are pretty selfish goals. The most broad individual goals for many players are things like, “earn a starting spot,” or, “make All-Conference,” so you as a coach can help them understand statistical or subjective goals that bridge the gap there.
The Intention is going to be something to work together on. If your Goal is to be a great passer, the Intention can’t be, “pass it at my setter’s feet.” Fortunately, players are rarely off by that much.
When you get down to the Cues, your job as a coach is to help a player workshop them. I don’t believe in magic spells. I love GMS, but I don’t believe that just repeating straightandsimplestraightandsimplestraightandsimplestraightandsimplestraightandsimplestraightandsimplestraightandsimplestraightandsimplestraightandsimple over and over to players will eventually turn them into great passers. “Straight and simple,” is a great cue, because it helps a lot of players make better contact with the ball and thus pass better. It’s effective for a lot of players. But no verbal cue can be the best cue for all players, if for no other reason than players speak lots of different languages! So clearly there are no magic spells.
However, to continue the metaphor, there are principles to help players form good cues. Cues should be short. They should focus the attention externally. Etc. So while you don’t get to tell a player, “this is the cue you must use,” you do get to tell a player, “that’s not a good cue, let’s work on that one together.” A player is not going to helped by standing in serve receive thinking, “make sure my hands get together and my body is behind the ball and I use my arms to direct the ball at a 45 degree angle to the setter and don’t pass it too tight or too far off.” So tell them that and help them come up with better cues.
But I do think the player gets final say on this. I actually find text message works pretty well. You talk about it at practice and then follow up afterwards.
Hey we were talking about cue ideas for your passing posture, here’s some of the ideas we were thinking about:
Start strong
Strong and simple
Simple base
Strong base
Strong through the floor
Push through the floorThink some of those over and see what’s connecting most with you. Let’s talk tomorow before practice and write up what you want to try out on the board.
And then you try out those cues and the athlete reports their findings.
IT’S NOT THE ATHLETE’S JOB TO DO THE CUES. IT’S THE ATHLETE’S JOB TO BE GOOD AT VOLLEYBALL!
Sorry for shouting. The cue is just what they put in their mind before they perform the skill. If they pass better while thinking about that cue. It’s good. If they pass worse while thinking about that cue, IT’S NOT THEIR FAULT YOUR CUE JUST SUCKS!
(And like yeah, every now and then they may need to take 1 step back to make a major mechanical change that will help them take 2 steps forward but that shouldn’t be every single practice. And like yeah, sometimes the practice tasks will be very difficult so their overall performance might be worse, but overall a good cue will not make the athlete worse at volleyball.)
Alright, once I start shouting into my keyboard, it’s time to wrap things up. Let’s talk more cues in future articles.