Index Cards

Like a whiteboard, but in your pocket

Quick note: If you haven’t checked out the In The Gym section, you might enjoy it. I post actual practice plans, and often some related images or example video clips in there.

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I love whiteboards. If you know me, you know I love a good whiteboard. When my situation allows it, I like to have a neatly-kept, information-rich whiteboard. Here’s an example:

This is from last year, when I was coaching a club team. That club, NC Coastal out of Wilmington, NC does a great job of providing coaches with a whole bunch of whiteboards to write up practice and share information with their players. Since there were multiple whiteboards, it was possible for me to leave stuff on one side of a whiteboard from practice to practice.

For example, on the above whiteboard, most of that didn’t get written up by me each practice. I would erase and write-up the top left corner, where it has the date and a few Big Rocks for that training block or particular practice. I might update that every practice, or I might keep the emphases up there for a few practices in a row. Same for the top-middle portion, where I would generally keep some long-term stuff about being good teammates, the mental game, etc.

The right-hand portion with initials and a whole bunch of numbers for each player is for speed/power training. (You can see that there’s times for short sprints on the left, spike velocity on the right, some jump touches in there as well, etc). As you can see, most of that is written up by players, as they do their workouts. I curate it before practice by erasing most of it and updating personal bests.

The bottom left has printed out sheets, so I’m obviously not writing that. So all that’s left is that bottom-middle portion, which just has the practice plan and a few places where groups/teams are written up with places to score the drill. Pretty simple and not the most elaborate thing.

I’ve written before that I Don’t Spend Much Time Planning Practice, because I spend more time building out Big Rocks and a consistent Template that then I can bring to life in just a few minutes.

Well, you could also say that I Don’t Spend Much Time Writing The Whiteboard, because I keep most of it up from practice-to-practice, and the stuff that needs to change from day-to-day is minimal.

And therein lies a challenge: a lot of times you can’t do that. In fact, here’s a picture of my current whiteboard from last practice:

Kinda pathetic eh?

But this is the reality I have this year. One of the downsides to launching your own club and starting small is renting gym time, rather than having your own facility. And because of that, I don’t have storage space for a nice big whiteboard. Eventually! But not yet.

Because of that, the only thing I can really logistically haul back and forth to the gym is this little 2’ tall guy from Walmart or wherever I got it. So you can see here: no practice plans, no long-term stuff, etc. Just enough space for all the players to write their speeds and scores and goals on there and for me to take a picture to record it at the end of the day. But hey, that’s got value.

Enter: Index Cards

It’s nice if players can see the practice plans, but it’s not critical. And the back of that little prop-up whiteboard has some big tear-off sheets of paper that I can write stuff on in permanent marker. It’s a little clumsy, but I can still end up showing players some stuff or referring to some things. So I can get by with that.

But coaches still need to know a plan. Hopefully, as the head coach, you know the practice plan. But:

1. You might have other coaches at practice.

2. There will be parts of your practice you won’t totally remember.

You all know I love my Moleskine Notebooks, and I do plan out my practice blocks in one. However, it’s not ideal to run practice out of a Moleskine. They are just a little too big and clunky — they don’t fit in a pocket, if you them down at practice, they’ll get lost, etc.

My preference is to plan practice in my Moleskine, then have a nice whiteboard I can write things up on, and then refer (both for myself, assistants, and players) to the whiteboard and basically run practice off the whiteboard.

But if I don’t have a whiteboard? I use index cards. Here’s an example:

Big Rocks in the top-right of the front. And then I have the practice schedule, along with 1 or 2 emphases written in blue for each drill. Those are the things that I’m coaching in those drills. And honestly, that’s the purpose of the index card. At this point, I can run some of my go-to Practice Templates in my sleep in terms of the timing and flow of practice. But what requires mindful engagement is what you’re actually coaching in each activity.

Because I also write an index card for my assistant coach. And the key here is that both coaches are not necessarily coaching the same things in each practice. For example, here’s the front of cards for the next practice as I write this article:

My card is on the right and my assistant’s is on the left. You can see that they are similar but they have some different coaching tasks during each part of practice. This allows coaches to not step on each other’s toes and gives each coach a clear focus.

This is good to do when you have a whiteboard, but one nice thing about an index card is that your assistant coach can have a little more personalized script for them during practice. Many head coaches in club volleyball struggle to utilize their assistants, because assistant coaches might not be as experienced, and you don’t have time for lengthy pre-practice meetings, like you might have on a college staff. Even when I was an assistant on college or pro staffs, I would usually write my own little cards to remind myself of what my head coach tasked me to do.

I also timed myself while writing these cards. It took me 8 minutes and 26 seconds to write up both cards. That sounds about right. You might notice that the theme with all of these tactics for practice planning and execution is to spend less time thinking, “okay what drill should we do tonight,” and more time on how to more effectively teach the game of volleyball from a consistent set of flexible drills and games.

Give Index Cards a try and let me know how it goes for you!