Good Intentions
The foundational piece of skill development
In my Summer School 2026 article, I summarized how I apply Nick Winkleman’s book The Language Of Coaching.
An athlete’s intent is the most important influence on the outcome of a play/movement/action. Intent is what they want their movement to accomplish and their internal visualization of what that looks and feels like. Coaches should prioritize influencing an athlete’s intent and constantly check for understanding. Attention is how athletes change their intent or modify movements as intents change. Attention is the currency of coaching and influencing what athletes “pay attention” to is a critical job of coaches.
In a previous article, I talked about this idea of Goal - Intention - Cue. A lot of players don’t really play to win. They play to… perform the actions that resemble the game in a way that’s been taught to them. Meaning, their goal is not necessarily to kill the ball, it’s to hit the ball in accordance with the norms of the way they’ve seen volleyball played. They wouldn’t say it that way, but that’s how I interpret the way many volleyball players perform.
This really matters because Intention is the single most important determinant of how your body moves. In the triad of books I recommend for our Summer School study, Rob Gray’s material offers this insight: that human beings are problem solving machines. As a person plays volleyball, their brain/body is attempting to solve problems at a mostly sub-conscious level. They are not running a “motor program” the way that Schmidt would teach (and that I was taught when I first started going to Gold Medal Squared clinics), but are instead adapting to solve the constantly-novel problems.
Therefore, your Intention is basically the conscious brain expressing to the rest of your self what you want to accomplish with the action. That does seem to guide behaviors.
However, (and here’s where I think that the “muscle memory” analogy does actually provide some insight, even if it’s not necessarily literally what happens) the way I see a lot of players play is that their Intention starts to become, “play the way I’m supposed to play,” instead of, “play to win the point.” Or should I say…
Setting Intention
One of the reasons you need to buy Nick Winkleman’s book, is that he shows how words affect intention. Try it right now. Find a nearby wall and stand a couple feet away. I want you to push the wall…
In a way that would make as little noise as possible.
In a way that would make a lot of noise.
Like the wall is brittle and you want to chop it in half.
Like the wall is solid and heavy and you want to topple it over.
Like you want to push yourself away from the wall.
If you visualize all 5 of those scenarios to set an intention before you act, your body will do different things. Your acceleration into the wall will be different if you’re trying to make as little noise vs as much noise as possible. You would probably contact with a different part of your hand. If you’re trying to topple the wall over you wouldn’t strike the wall suddenly (like you would in scenario 3), but instead you would make gentle contact and then gradually build force. You’d likely have one foot back so you could drive from your legs into the wall. In scenario 5, you’d probably make gentle contact and then build some force, but you’d have your legs in close to the wall so you can push yourself backward.
The point is, your brain works by imagining a task and then aligning to complete that task.
When we coach volleyball players, helping them understand the task is really important.
