Spring 2023 Mailbag Part 3
Book Recs, Beach Stats, and the best email subject line I've ever received
Here’s Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them.
A reader asks:
Hi! I purchased all three books and wondered if you had a recommendation for which order I should read them in?
In case you just joined, this reader is talking about the 3 books I’ve recently recommended and shared some impact on my coaching practices:
The Language Of Coaching
How We Learn To Move
Coaching Athletes To Be Their Best
My response was: You probably can't go wrong in any order, but since you're a college coach in the middle of spring season, I would read The Language of Coaching first. I think if nothing else it will give you some ideas to work on cueing with your players and you'll probably get 1 or 2 mini-breakthroughs in tutoring or teaching skills during the spring.
But the Fader book has some pretty nice practical stuff too. I always have it in my bag and often read it on the way to a competition because I think the concepts of MI are really great reminders for the stress of competition. Even though spring matches are only spring matches... they can still heighten some emotions for the athletes. Just leafing through some of the sample conversations in the book and the section of replacing Praise with Affirmation could probably upgrade a couple interactions over the course of a competition day.
Rob Gray I would save for last because it's a little more theoretical and you might want some time to brainstorm on it. Probably more of a summer read!
Given that this mailbag is now bordering on summer, it might be time to break out your Rob Gray, folks!
A beach coach asks:
We are taking paper stats. Really concentrating on the FBSO, Transition and Terminal Serving.
Could you give me some numbers that you think that we should be looking for in those categories?
So in terms of % of the points that you want to win, I always look at it like:
>55% In really great shape
45-55 Slightly above or slightly below par
<45% In bad shape
Meaning, say a team plays a tournament and 50 rallies go into transition. If they win 30 of those 50, they've won 30/50 = 60% of Transition rallies. They have gained a big advantage in that phase. On the flip side, if they win 23 of those 50, they've won 23/50 = 46% of Transition rallies. So they've given up a small edge to their opponents; they've been outscored by 4 in that category for the day.
So broadly speaking, that's what I think about in those categories.
The components of Terminal Serving can vary with the conditions. On a windy day with tough conditions, both Serve In % and Ace % are going to be higher, so there will just be a lot of Terminal Serves overall. On a clear day with good conditions, your teams might be able to Serve In at 90% and get aced less than 15% of the time. But again, I look at trying to have an edge over my opponents, rather than pure Serve In or Ace %.
It’s a similar philosophy for me when I look at FBSO, although I do like this idea of "Make Them Play 4-out-of-5 times for a good high school aged beach team." That means that for every 20 balls we get served, we need to prevent aces and attack the ball in the court enough in order to allow 4 or fewer combined aces and unforced errors. Sometimes this will lead to a high FBSO, but some of that is up to the physicality of my players. But I definitely need to be making them play.
And finally, I received an email from a reader who follows SmarterVolley from a fan’s perspective. With a subject line titled Recurring Nightmares, I had to open that one. To truncate it, he essentially asks the question:
Why do so many teams start a set in serve receive in Ro1?
It's an excellent question. While I hesitate to speculate, I think the fact that it's called Rotation 1 has a lot to do with it. At Gold Medal Squared clinics I present a module called "Rotations 101" and I have been asked several times if, "you have to start in Rotation 1."
You often do practice drills and you have to start practice in a certain rotation. Since you're not usually optimizing your practice rotations, you just default to starting in 1. And since you do that, maybe you get used to starting in 1 and default to it. For this reason I almost never start practice drills in Rotation 1.
I think another part of it is that setters are often good servers. So hey, put a good server back there to start the set when we have serve. And then, for the sake of consistency... receive in 1 also?
I think there's also the notion of, "we like having a setter in the backrow instead of the frontrow, and starting in 1 maximizes the time our setter spends in back and our opposite starts in the front."
So I dunno... probably different for some different teams. Every now and then you do see some teams that are legitimately good in Rotation 1, so some teams are doing it for a good reason. Other teams I think are doing it because they've always done it.
But let’s look at some numbers that I shared in my Rotations And Matchups Workshop:
It’s pretty clear that, on average, Rotation 1 is a problem. The difference between average Setter-1 (Rotation 1) and Setter-61 was 3.2%. That's roughly the difference between 1st and 5th in the conference. Or 4th and 8th. That's a big deal!
And in case you were wondering, here’s average Break Point %2 for each rotation:
S1: 42.9
S6: 44.2
S5: 42.5
S4: 43.7
S3: 42.8
S2: 41.0
All hail starting in S6!
Alright folks, be back next week with more content. Keep the questions and comments coming!
Rotation 2, if you prefer American-style rotation naming.
% of time you score a point when serving.