Odd Week Short Takes
August 2022 Edition
I dedicate the first three weeks of each month to indoor volleyball and the fourth week to beach volleyball. Since there’s 5 Mondays in August, I’m using this week to bring in some content that doesn’t fit the ordinary structure of Smarter Volley. Later this week I’ll have a premium subscriber mailbag post, as well as a guest post from a really good volleyball mind. Today is Short Takes post; a collection of thoughts that don’t warrant a full post by themselves.
Previous Short Takes posts:
“Reflexes reflect values,” is a statement I’ve been coming back to as we get to the end of the National Team summer season.1 Good teams are out there consciously learning new things and trying to implement them into their games. But you can really see what a team values by what they do when they don’t have time to think. If you reflexively take ownership (perhaps even: Extreme Ownership?) in times of stress, that’s a value you hold. If you play the blame game, maybe that’s not as deeply held of a value as you thought?
At some point I’ll do a full-length Jamball article. I mention it in this post as “short and narrow-court 2-touch,” but you don’t really “jam” the ball on the beach the way you do indoors. But those of you who have worked with me know my love for this game mini-game. We play once a week as part of the warm up for Canada. I also like a variation I started doing where the coach enters the ball with a high/tight set from zone 6 up into the short-court. It’s a really nice way to practice body and ball control at the net with a controlled-but-gamelike setting.
I’m constantly reminded how much like U-14 volleyball resembles high-level volleyball. At U-14, if you get aced less, you usually win. At the FIVB men’s level, if you get aced less, you usually win. At U-14, offense sometimes just boils down to: “set the middle and you’ll probably score.” And every time you study commit blocking at the international men’s level you find that, “yeah even if they commit, the middle usually scores anyway.”
Teams should screen more when they serve.
Build a library of clips of plays you like. Text them to your team or show them at the beginning of practice.
I’m still buying the dip but it’s been painful lately!
I’ve always come from a “Sideout First” mindset. I’ve talked about this before, but usually sideout is a pretty good indication of level of play. I think it’s often a trap for teams to focus too much on break points (scoring when you have serve) when their sideout game isn’t fully developed.
That said, if you’re a strong team and you had the option of improving your sideout % or break point % by 1%, which would you choose? Mathematically the answer is to improve break point %.2 If your sideout differential is already positive aka you are overall a winning team, then you serve more than you sideout. Improving your break point % would then have a (very slightly) more positive effect than improving your sideout.
This is for sure overthinking it. Just keep siding out.
The most valuable volleyball technology device that I haven’t seen in common usage would be an app that can automatically calculate contact point. Back when I was coaching club volleyball, I had an idea to mount a camera on a gym and then some marked tape on the opposing wall. The idea would be that you could scan through the video and freeze frame on contact to have an idea of contact point. Obviously pretty tedious.
It seems like we shouldn’t be far away from an app that can automatically calculate contact height using some sort of AI algorithm, no? The FIVB does that during the matches, but my guess is that’s using a camera setup that’s well beyond the budget of most teams. I want something I can hook up to an iPad and give players real-time feedback of contact height.
Vert devices are cool but they only measure jump height. A hitter can get a big jump and contact the ball with a bent elbow, and that’s not really helping. Something like a Noah that could calculate contact height and give real-time feedback would be sweet.
At some point, I’m going to have a whole post on how to properly tape down marks on the court. I think a lot of coaches put effort into whiteboard prep, which is all well and good. But I find tape markings incredibly helpful and more impactful on the actual teaching of skill. They also amplify video feedback after practice by giving reference points, both for reinforcement and correction.
I like activities where a team, a small group, or an individual player serves 25 balls and you record the results. This takes a lot of time for an individual player to serve 25 game-quality serves. It goes faster with multiple people. But in order to win a game of volleyball, you need to serve about 25 times. What % of those serves need to be in? What’s an acceptable velocity or trajectory to serve at your level?
When I work with high school programs, I often do an activity where we start practice with a “Serve 25.” If the team can’t serve X-out-of-25 in the court, we don’t get to practice. For good high school teams, this number should be 23. For less-skilled teams or teams with a big skill gap, 20 is acceptable. But just stand back there and hit the ball in the court and get some serves in. Then start adding in layers of requirement: velocity, targets, etc.
I start my Odd Week posts early in the month and add to it throughout the month. By the time you’ll have read this, we’ll have already played at least one match in World Championships.
Assuming Sideout % is over 50%.