Other Spring 2024 Tuesday Toolbox Articles:
In the previous Coaching Eyework article, I shared a question from a reader:
I am wondering how to watch a match as an aspiring head coach? Assuming 1 assistant or maybe none at all. I’m just a couple years into this, have only been an assistant, but want to be a head coach at the high school varsity level and possibly the high school club level. I can talk to the team about mindset/motivational stuff, but feel like the game moves a bit fast for me right now so it’s tough to know what to watch for, and I feel like I lose credibility if I’m only talking about mindset.
I don’t want to say results-based things like “pass better” - I don’t think that’s usually helpful - but I want to be able to bring up SIMPLE tactical/technical changes that could help going forward in the match. What should I watch for? Should I watch our side of the net more, or the other side? (I also want to be able to watch a Nebraska match, for example, and be able to do some simple analysis to work on my coaching eye. I’ve started watching opposing middles to see if they’re often shadowing/committing to our middle, for example.)
Long way of saying: I want to be able to watch a match in real time and have something useful to say about the actual volleyball, in a way that can help the team, without giving them too much to think about.
In Pt1, I mostly discussed practice eyework. To summarize:
Develop your eyework by watching one thing at a time.
Let your players know what you’re watching and what they can expect feedback on.
Say what you see.
Don’t say what you don’t see.
The questioner is asking about what to look at during practice, because it’s going to be hard to have effective coaching eyework in a match if you don’t develop good habits in practice.
In order to easily create more Substack content fully flesh out this concept of coaching eyework, we’re taking one more detour before we get to what to watch in a match. Today, let’s talk about how to watch video.
How To Watch Video
This could be a multi-part series in and of itself1, but let’s keep things simple and practical for now. I discussed some aspects of how to watch video in the Tournament Review section, but I want to keep this tailored a little more for beginner coaches.
I want to focus less on team-specific analysis, like you might in the Tournament Review. Instead, I want to view this more as practice for the coach.
What’s so great about watching video? You can pause it, watch it again, watch it in slow motion, etc. Basically, you can watch any play as much as you need to in order to understand what happened in that play. This is the power of video.
I don’t believe you need to be an elite player to be a good coach. This is a convenient belief for me to hold because… I wasn’t an elite player! Luckily for me, there’s plenty of evidence in many sports that coaches who were not elite players can be great coaches.
But one advantage that former players can sometimes have is that they can usually see the game pretty well. A lot of times, coaches are used to seeing the game at about the same speed that they played at. So if you played high school varsity, you can probably get a feel for that level as a coach, but you might feel that the NCAA game moves too fast for you. Players who never advanced past NCAA might feel that the pro game is a step fast for them, etc.
Simply getting coaching reps will get you up to speed. But video is a great tool in your toolbox, because it allows you to slow things down in order to see what’s really happening. Maybe you have a tough time really seeing how a defender moved for that ball, or what a blocker’s hands did as they went over the net. On video you can watch things slowly, or watch the play over again, or pause it. This allows you to get a feel for things.
One of the most effective ways to develop your coaching eye is to watch the same play 3 times: fast, slow, then fast again.
For example, watch your defender sprawl to dig a ball.
Then slow it down, watch it either slow-mo, or pause it several times. Look at the body positioning, the feet/legs, the arms, when the hands come together, etc. Pause the video and see where the ball is and how the platform is coming together in relation to the ball at various points in the flight path. Get a feel for the move.
Then watch it fast again, see if you notice details at game-speed that you didn’t catch the first time. You can always run this cycle a few times. The more you do it, the more nuances you’ll see.
Example video can also help. For example, I’ve posted a ton of gifs and short video clips of good examples on here. If a play happens that’s similar to an example I’ve posted, compare them. See if you can see the differences. Slow them down if you need to, and then see if you can get a feel for the contrast when you watch again at game speed.
Watch For You Or Watch For Them
Watching video in this way isn’t the most efficient way to get usable information for your players, because it’s going to be slow. It’s also going to be less-targeted than the way I describe watching video in the Tournament Review article. If you have DV/VS, you can be a little more targeted because you can just scan through certain skills like attacking or passing and see what catches your eye.
If you’re a club/HS coach and just scanning through the raw video a parent took, then just take it as it comes and see what catches your eye.
I like a balance of these two ways of watching video. Sometimes you need to be super-targeted, in order to give your players usable information for the next practice. But you also need to work on yourself and develop your coaching eye, since that will improve the accuracy of the feedback you give at practice.
Give this a shot and let me know how it works for you!
And will be, at some point.