The SmarterVolley Holiday Gift Guide

What in the world is in that bag what you got in that bag?

With today being the Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend, I’ve gotten a few questions about coaching gifts and what’s in my coaching bag.

There’s some overlap here with these posts:
If I Had $1000
If I Had $130

But there’s some different stuff in here and these are a little more geared toward gifts for a coach (or that a coach might recommend to a significant other for themselves amirite) rather than pure practical coaching purposes.

Also note: I’m not affiliated with any of these products (except GMS and Balltime, which I explain below), I don’t get any revenue from their sales, and I don’t have any coupon codes. Just some stuff that I find valuable as a coach.

Big Ticket (>$150)

GMS Coaches Clinic
I’ve been affiliated with GMS for a long time. I’m a clinician at 3 or 4 events every year. I love GMS and the clinics were the foundation of me getting to a higher level in volleyball coaching. There’s a couple events still in December or else check out the summer event schedule which is already going up. In my opinion, GMS clinics are the single-best investment you can make as a coach, if you’ve never been.

Balltime Subscription
I’m now an advisor to Balltime, but I started using their product before that. This recommendation would have previously gone to Hudl, since I think video review is so valuable for the coach who has some extra time and money to invest. But I think Balltime has already surpassed Hudl in value and they are seemingly adding new features every month.

Pocket Radar
I wish Pocket Radar was paying me, because their products are super-expensive. But… they are kind of the only one of it’s kind on the market. (Shockingly…) The big bundle will cost you a grip, but it’s significantly upgraded my ability to add spike velocity to players. Even if you can only swing a single hand-held unit, they offer a lot of value.

Arc’Teryx Gamma Pants
I used to be a dedicated one-bagger and I’ve gone on 2-month overseas trips with just 2 pairs of these pants. They hold up pretty well (I think I’m about 5 years with the current pair I have) although not quite the buy-it-for-life that you might get out of some of the more rugged Arc’Teryx stuff. But the Gammas have less of a just-stepped-off-the-mountain vibe, which is more appropriate for coaching. The key here is the cargo pocket without making them look like cargo pants.

This means this is the perfect phone pocket for while you are coaching. I’m a dedicated fanny pack guy since before it was cool (see below), but it’s a little clunky to fumble the phone out of the fanny mid-practice to take a quick video of a player serving. This little slip pocket is perfect to pop the phone in and out during practice. And the zipper is crucial for making sure it doesn’t slide out.

Massive upgrade for coaching pants over generic sweat/track pants. (

Adjustable Club or Kettlebell
Coaches spend a lot of time on the road. And let’s face it, there’s a lot of coaches out there who… aren’t exactly in playing shape anymore. With clubs and/or kettlebells, you can do a full training session in your hotel room. Adjustable clubs and kettlebells allow you to just roll with one of each, which is handy. Even for my home gym, it’s nice to not need 10 different bells.

I have the Adex Wildman Club and the Bells Of Steel Wildman 12-32kg Kettlebell and I recommend both, although I’d probably go with the kettlebell if I had to pick just one. (One note: the Adex “Wildman” Club is a 1.4” handle which is pretty thick. If you’re sub-5’10” or so, you might be better with their 1.2” variant.)

Sensible Splurges ($50 - $150)

SmarterVolley Subscription
Come on people, just $70 a year for all this great information! If you’re not a Premium Subscriber, sign up now. If you are, get a gift subscription for a friend. Substack even has referral bonuses! What are you waiting for?

The SmarterVolley Book Trifecta
I wrote articles about my 3 essential coaching books:
The Language of Coaching
How We Learn To Move
Coaching Athletes To Be Their Best

These are the 3 books I almost always have with me. They are toolkits for coaching any sport that you can continue to dive into again and again. Buy these in a bundle for any coach in your life. (You could arguably swap Rob Gray’s second book, Learning To Optimize Movement, but I think the first is a better introduction.)

The Great Mental Models
I’ll move on after this, in the interest of not making this nothing but book reviews, but this is a cool set of books that was recently released in a full set by Shane Parrish, author of the popular Farnam Street blog. Full disclosure: I haven’t finished the full set yet, but these books are filled with < 30’-long chapters that each flesh out a different mental model. I actually often have trouble finishing a chapter, because I find that concept stimulating thinking about some aspect of coaching. That’s a good thing.

VBTV Subscription
The best source for watching international volleyball.

Fanny Pack
I’m sure there’s plenty of companies that sell fanny packs. Personally I’ve had this one for 5+ years so it seems to be working out well. They key here is big enough to hold your phone, wallet, keys, not so big that it’s awkward to wear around your waist.

Pocket Monkii
More fitness gear for travel on the road. These are basically like a TRX-style suspension trainer that you don’t have to mount. You just sling it over a door and shut the door, trapping the strap and allowing the straps to hang. I found hotel doors to be especially robust, so they work well for this. You can’t do full pullups with it over a door, but you can add a bunch of other rowing motions- handy for your days on the road. You can’t fly with a kettlebell, so this is a nice additional supplement for travel.

(Full disclosure: I have the older variation and it looks like they changed the design slightly, but seems to still be good.)

Watch
You can’t coach without a watch or a whistle. Lots of people have Apple Watches, but personally I feel like they would be a bit distracting and I’ve no real desire to make that leap. I’m sure there’s plenty of brands of watches that work, but I have this one, which also comes with a heart rate strap. Obviously I don’t wear the heart rate strap around day-to-day, but I like it for workouts- I’ve tried out a few <$200 watches with heart rate monitor capability built in. They seemed to only work for steady state running, and not interval or circuit training where your heart rate is going up and down and/or your body position is changing a lot. YMMV but I like the chest strap for workouts. Otherwise… I think a watch is basically just a watch as long as it keeps time and has a functioning stopwatch.

Stocking Stuffers (<$50)

Electric Whistle
The other indispensible coaching tool. I’m not sure there’s a big difference between brands, but an electric whistle is way more useful than one you have to blow.

Floor Tape
Cheap, get some! I find 1/2” to be the most generally useful.

White Board Markers
4 colors is all you need. Chisel tip or bullet tip, your choice.

Light Stand and Cell Phone Clamp
Video is one of the biggest upgrades for any club coach. If you don’t have access to a Volleymetrics-style IP camera mounted in your gym, then you have to rig something up with a tripod/light stand and a camera clamp. If you want to shell out for a full camera setup, by all means, go for it, but a simple cell phone clamp will get you a lot of what you need. Even just recording 20 min of 6v6 at practice gives you a lot of valuable info.

Moleskine Notebook
Those of you who know me know that I’m rarely without my precious aka Moleskine notebook. Specifically the 5” x 8”, hard cover, dot-grid version. I have several year’s worth on my bookshelf and I refer to them often. Nowadays, I carry two: one for coaching and one for personal life organization. There’s something about writing things down that soaks into your brain better than any electronic organization. (Although I do use Google Calendar)

Me, when I can’t find my notebook

Gum
I’m a gum chomper. The more stressed or annoyed I am in-match, the harder and faster I chomp. Falim is a Turkish brand that’s hard as a rock and lasts a long time. Highly recommended.

Tape Measure
In full disclosure, I have a slightly different tape measure from IKEA. I’m pretty sure any tape measure will be just fine. It’s handy to have one of these in your coaching bag. You know, for measuring stuff…

Tod Mattox’s Book Of Lists
Friend-of-SmarterVolley Tod Mattox recently completed a pretty cool project where he went around to a bunch of coaches and asked them to make a “List Of 10…” And then he made it into a book. I contributed to this project, as did a ton of other coaches- from well-known FIVB and NCAA coaches to some I’ve never heard of. Somehow, despite a bit of a breezy concept (come on, a bunch of top-10 listicles, I do Smarter volleyball here, with like numbers above 10 and stuff), this is actually one of the mostly densely-packed coaching books I’ve ever read. Because every coach had to just write a 10-item list with 1-2 sentences per item, they can’t explain everything in depth- meaning there’s very little filler and you might actually have to think about what some of these coaches meant. And just check out Chapter 1:

Take John Dunnings list and compare it to Doug Beal’s. Or take Kevin Hambly’s and compare it to Jason Watson’s. What’s similar, what’s different? Why did one coach include something and another didn’t? You could “read” those 8 pages in 8 minutes… and then easily spend the next 8 days just thinking and reflecting on some of those things.

There’s also at least 20 submissions that I thought, “yeah, this book was worth it just for this one page,” but I’ll be obvious and say that Karch’s submission, which leads off the book, might take the cake for me. If you did nothing but take his list seriously and make sure those 10 things were happening in your practice… you’d be way ahead of the game. Seriously, get this book!