The USA Volleyball certification program for coaches begins with IMPACT, a mandatory course for many club and school coaches. At a high level the program covers: sports medicine/risk management, ethics, coaching philosophy, motor skill development, drill development, and parents.
The second phase in the certification process, the Coaching Accreditation Program (CAP), is more extensive. The CAP I course is based on the book, Coaching Volleyball – Building a Winning Team. The course focuses on basic skills (forearm pass, overhead pass, serving, spiking, serve receive, blocking, individual defense), developing offensive and defensive systems, game-like drills, putting together practices, strategies and tactics, and coaching philosophies.
Highlights from a recent CAP certification held in Durango, Colorado follow:
The game teaches the game. Skills are transferred best in game-like situations. 
- Never be a child’s last coach. Give them a love of the game.
- Principles matter more than methods.
- A good coach will tell his/her players, “Your job is to show up with a smile on your face. My jobs are to send you away with one.”
- The pleasure of competition should always exceed the pressure of competition.
- Effective coaches will tell their players what they want to see them doing, not what they did wrong.
- Teach the whole rather than the part, for example teach the full spike rather than breaking it down in parts.
- The power of story is an effective way to teach – guide your players’ discovery through story.
- If punishment worked, prisoners would be angels.
- A team’s practice must be deliberate and focused.
- Kids don’t know how much the coach knows about volleyball until they know how much the coach cares about them.
- Specificity is a key in motor learning. Give students specific cues such as “Good job reaching for the ball.” This is more helpful than being a cheerleader and saying, “Good shot.”
- There is a greater transfer in skill from random training rather than block training.
- “Streaks Happen.” 50% of the time an athlete performs above their average and the other 50% of the time they perform below their average.
Every coach has a different philosophy and approach to helping their athletes learn. Philosophies may vary, but quality programs will be based on the above mentioned fundamentals.