Odd Week Short Takes

I dedicate the first three weeks of each month to indoor volleyball and the fourth week to beach volleyball. Since there’s 5 weeks (or at least, 5 Mondays) in November, I’ll use this week for some random odds and ends that don’t quite fit into full articles. Tomorrow I’ll post a guest article from one of the smartest analytical minds in volleyball. Guess who?

ALSO: On Wednesday, Dec 8 I’m doing an online workshop with the one and only Riley Salmon. We’re going to talk Serving and Passing and break down some video. We’ll also do some live Q&A and open it up to Smarter Volley subscribers. I want to keep the session small enough for everybody to participate and get the chance to ask questions and interact, so the first 10 subscribers to post a comment can join the session. (Update: 6 spots left.) (Update update: all full) No cost! The session is at noon PT, 3pm ET. I’ll put the video up later that week.

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Potential hot take: many (most?) juniors and NCAA teams aren’t helped by having a libero set. We know hitter efficiency is significantly higher off a hand set than a bump set, even accounting for the same dig location. It’s not uncommon to watch matches between NCAA teams and see the liberos bump set every ball, even when they are behind the 3m line. The effect of having to bumpset in front of the 3m line seems to habituate many liberos to look to bumpset in every situation.

Why not have the non-libero (whether that’s a backrow outside hitter or a defensive sub) set? Are their hand sets going to be worse than the libero’s bumpsets? Doubtful.

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I used to urge juniors volleyball coaches to train players in multiple positions. I emphasize that less now. Learning rotations is a significant endeavor for young players. Learning multiple postions in all your rotations can be a challenge. Now, I recommend keeping a player in one position, but altering your rotations to allow each position to contribute multiple skills.

For example, instead of alternating players between outside and opposite, choose one or the other, but don’t hide your opposite in every serve receive. Instead of playing a player one game middle and one game outside, play them middle all the time, but have them stay in the backrow for at least one rotation, etc.

It’s sort of the same thing, but I think doing it that way puts more of the cognitive load on the coach (“how do I adjust my rotations,”) rather than the player (“how do I learn all these rotations?”).

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“What do you see?” or, “What did you feel [on that pass/hit/etc]?” is too broad of a question to ask young players. They’ll get lost and don’t know where to start. Try phrasing things in either/or terms. “Was your second step on the 10’ or somewhere else?”

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I’m diving into Rob Gray’s new book on motor learning. Big implications on teaching. I’ll have a review soon.

The Jocko Podcast recently did a mega-series on the Psychology of Military Incompetence. Great listen for coaches and/or anybody in a position of authority. I see coaches making plenty of the mistakes they talk about in this podcast. When you have a little success and all anybody around you says is, “yes sir,” it’s easy to think you know everything.

David Epstein’s book Range is a worthwhile counterpart to the wave of Deliberate Practice literature that has been popular among a set of the coaching population. I wouldn’t say it’s a refutation of Deliberate Practice, but it highlights some of the short-comings of a practice scheme organized around repetition of a narrow range of highly specific skills.

As a parent of a 2-year old daughter I’ve been interested in Montessori education. One thing that strikes me as a lesson for coaches is the emphasis on observation in their teacher training. Over the past year I’ve tried to cultivate a voice in my head that, when seeing a player do something on the court that seems a bit off, says to me, “stop and observe.” Where before I would charge in and correctcorrectcorrect that player, I wait a beat and observe. Sometimes I can tell the player knows they made a mistake. Sometimes I realize they were trying something out and going through the learning exploration process. Sometimes I can see they were goofing off. Sometimes I realize they were doing the drill the way we did it last week and they didn’t hear the change I made. You can never go wrong with stepping back and observing for an extra beat.