SmarterVolley Turns 1
Thanks for being along for the ride.
Almost 1 year ago, I published the first SmarterVolley article
Over the past year I’ve used the term The Triangle approximately 10 billion times over the course of various articles.
The Triangle Series
Winning Points And Losing Points
Points Of The Triangle: Terminal Serving
Points Of The Triangle: First Ball
Points Of The Triangle: Transition
These 9 articles (particularly the first 5) form the core of everything I talked about this year. Someday I’ll write an article called Most Practice Doesn’t Do Anything about how it’s difficult to tell whether you actually got better at volleyball from a particular practice. As you get to a higher level at anything, it’s hard to continue to get better. That’s why I’m a big fan of having a particular focus. Just because you have a focus doesn’t guarantee you’ll get better at that thing, but it gives you a better shot.
Team Profiles
Part of the Triangle concept is to create a Team Profile. You can create that profile for an individual match, to explain the results of that match. More powerfully, you can build a team profile over the course of a season (or part of a season) in order to better understand your team. The Team Profile exercise helps you understand the Triangle profile of your team so that you can (a) train your weaknesses and (b) play to your strengths.
Triangle+
Sideout Profile: Defensive Strength
Expected Sideout v Expected FBSO
These 6 articles are what you can think of as “Triangle+” concepts. They are all related to the First Ball concept, but take more of an “Offense/Defense” approach.
In addition to those, we have the Sideout and Break Point by Pass Quality series:
Sideout By Pass Quality Pt1: In-System
Sideout By Pass Quality Pt2: Semi-System
Sideout By Pass Quality Pt3: Out-of-System
Break Point By Pass Quality Pt1: In-System
Break Point By Pass Quality Pt2: Semi-System
Break Point By Pass Quality Pt3: Out-of-System
Other Content
In addition to the main content framework, you have these months that have 5 Mondays instead of 4. I’ve been calling them Odd Weeks and using them for Guest Posts, Short Take Posts, and Mailbags. If you haven’t caught all of them, here they are. In particular, the mailbag posts have been some of the most popular on the site.
Guest Posts
Short Take Posts
Mailbags
A typical novel is about 100,000 words. I’ve published in the ballpark of 150,000 words this first year on SmarterVolley, with about 50% dedicated to indoor, 25% dedicated to beach, and 25% general coaching philosophy that could apply to either surface. In addition, I try to use video clips, gifs, graphics, and pictures of LL Cool J drive home the points of the articles.
Most of this has been freely available, but I want to provide value for subscribers as well. We’ve had a bunch of great small-group sessions where some coaches from the highest levels are talking shop and answering questions live for SmarterVolley subscribers. If you haven’t gone premium yet, I think you’ll get even more value in Year 2 than Year 1, and it will help me keep this project going another year. Thank you.