Tuesday Toolbox: Itsy-Bitsys

Keep the flow; get better

Sorry this one is a day late; I thought I had it scheduled but it was still sitting in drafts. Enjoy!

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I’ve been doing Itsy-Bitsys for a while without really knowing what they are called. Fortunately friend-of-SmarterVolley Tod Mattox provided a great name for them when I was explaining how I implement this concept. So what is an Itsy Bitsy? It’s a short burst of something in the dead time between drills or games when players are rotating on and off the court.

Here’s the most archetypal use of an Itsy-Bisty:

You’re coaching a U-15 club team. You want to play some Make Them Play Queens to work on all the good stuff that drill works on. You put one setter on the receiving side and wave everybody else through in groups of 3. Since you have 12 people on the team, the groups aren’t perfectly even, which is good- the teams will change as players go through the line, mixing players up and likely giving them some reps in different positions, etc.

We love this stuff, get the game teaching the game, use the constraints-led approach, etc, etc.

But then, there’s always some more stuff we want to do. We want our players to get good at lots of little things like pancaking or blocking footwork. We also might want to do conditioning explosive power work.

Itsys-Bitsys are a way to help fit all that in.

The idea is that we’re going to do a little bit of something while you’re waiting to do the main thing. Let’s go back to our MTP Queens example.

If you win, you stay off. If you lose, you come off on the side of the court where the coach is waiting to give you a pancake rep before you get back in line.

Let’s face it, this isn’t the most complex idea ever. The devil is in the details. Some things to think about:

Don’t Overdo It
1 pancake. 1 rehearsal of blocking footwork. 2 squat jumps. That’s about what we want to do. In the above example, if those 3 players come off and each do a pancake, by the time the first player is done, she’ll be just about ready to join #s 10 and 11 to form a team to come on the court. If you stop to coach up the pancake, and then give her another rep, and then another explanation… the kids on the court are going to be waiting and then it will slow the drill down and now you’re a terrible coach. Don’t be a terrible coach.

Not Everybody Has To Do It
Ideally you set up your Itsy-Bitsys to hit everyone. But if you’re a little unsure of implementing this and you want to lower the stakes, just pick 1 or 2 players each drill. For example, you might pull your setters aside and say, “hey, every time you come off the court today, find me and I’ll give you a toss to practice [that hand position, that pivot footwork, whatever].” For beginning teams, I often target the weakest and most inexperienced players who may not be confident or skilled enough to play many balls within chaotic rallies. These players will regularly go 3-5 minutes without a meaningful play on the ball, which disengages them and ensures they won’t progress. So say, “when the rally ends, find me and I’ll give you one toss to practice making a nice controlled pass back to me.”

Be Familiar With What You’re Doing
If you want players to come off with a pancake, don’t have the Itsy Bitsy be their first time ever doing a pancake. You’re going to have to stop and coach it too much and players will be confused and frustrated. Use the Itsy Bitsys for either skills players are familiar with, but hesitant to try in a match (beginners) or skills that are random enough that you can’t get enough reps in practice (advanced).

For NCAA teams, you likely have multiple courts, so you can even do things like, “when you lose, come off and hit 1 serve to target on the B-court before you cycle back in.”

Incorporate Physical Training
Have players do one max approach jump to a target, 3 quick low hurdle hops, or a short sled push every time they come off. Be creative and use your space and equipment constraints, but you’d be surprised at how much meaningful physical training can be worked into a practice without breaking the flow of the game.

This is also huge for beach programs, because the player:court ratio is way worse on the beach than indoors. Well, from the playing perspective, it’s way better. But from a coaching standpoint, it can be a nightmare because court time is expensive and putting 12 kids on a beach court means 2/3 of your players are sitting around picking their nose at any given time. Since even a mini-game like 8-Ball takes 4 mins or so to play, Team 6 (on a 12-player court) is going to wait between 8 and 16 minutes (depending on if you’re waving both teams or doing winner-stays-on) to get on the court.

So what I see is juniors beach programs using a ton of pure 1-and-done waves or at most something like a 3-ball wave. But that ability to play through a slightly longer game is so critical and also FUN. Well, incorporating your physical training into this wave format gives real, meaningful work to the players that are off the court, which allows your on-court games to go longer. It might look something like this:

2 teams are playing, the team that’s “up next” is watching, strategizing, reffing, or just chatting up with their teammate. Then you have 2 teams doing physical training and the team that was “just off” resting and shagging and maybe getting some coaching.

In this hypothetical, Team 2 beat Team 1, so they get to stay on. Then Team 3 comes into the game and Team 4 moves from physical training to up-next. Team 6 moves into the physical training and Team 1 (who just lost) comes off to rest.

Team 2 beats Team 3, so Team 3 comes off and Team 4 comes on. Since Team 5 did physical training twice, they move to up-next while Team 1 moves into physical training.

And so on, with Team 2 now behind Team 3 in the order since they won-to-stay-on.

It’s easy enough to keep track of.

8 minutes of physical training seems like a lot, but, if you’re doing power exercises instead of conditioning then you’ll be doing something like a 5-second burst followed by 55 seconds of rest, so they shouldn’t be dying when they come back on the court.

Did You Like This Article?
If so, you’ll like my Running The Template seminar. The goal is to help teams break out of the middle-of-the-pack by getting twice as many quality reps out of practice. Itsy Bitsys are just one of several ways I show to make these upgrades. Dates are filling up, so contact me now to reserve your weekend.