Change, Ugh!

This post is an excerpt from the paper, “Your Mission Should you Choose to Accept it is to be a Coach“. The paper was written to encourage volleyball coaches to incorporate relevant training into their practices. For some this means making changes.

Many people struggle when they are asked to change. Coaches may agree that the concept of relevant training makes sense, but implementing change may be easier said than done. The following two discussions are included to let coaches know they are not alone if they wrestle with change. Endorsing change will allow coaches to further increase learning, improvement, and fulfillment in their practices.

First Discussion
Parent: Did you like the part of the USAV IMPACT course where they talked about how the game teaches the game.
Coach: Yeah, that’s a cool idea. I like it.
Parent: Can you implement it into your practices?
Coach: Oh we can’t do that because we have to teach the girls how to hit the ball and where to stand. We have to teach the girls and don’t have time to play games.

Second Discussion
Parent: Could the coaches in your club be more effective if the players had more meaningful touches in practice?
Coach: Yes, most of our coaches aren’t very good at doing that and don’t get it. Would you watch my practice and give me some feedback?

After practice…

Parent: You have great rapport with your athletes and they have fun. Do you think they will retain what you worked on?
Coach: Yes, we did my favorite blocking drill for 35 minutes, they better get it, or else.
Parent: I noticed several players standing around and others did not appear to be engaged. Did you see the same thing?
Coach: Oh that is normal.
Parent: Would it help to change drills?
Coach: No, one girl doesn’t like to block, the other one was injured and couldn’t go 100%, and the other girl has had a bad attitude since day one. They just need to focus.

Another more light-hearted approach to accepting change is to imagine that David Letterman was a volleyball coach who didn’t like change. The following are 10 reasons he might give for not integrating relevant training into his practices.

If David Letterman was a Volleyball Coach who Didn’t Want to Change…
1. I have a set of great drills that were handed down to me from my coach and his coach.
2. The club has a system that works. Why change?
3. I like single focus drills because I’m in control. They look more organized, That’s important to the parents.
4. I don’t like to have multiple balls in the air because that makes practice look chaotic and unsafe.
5. It is important to demonstrate to the players and parents that I am knowledgeable about the sport by giving detailed descriptions of skills, techniques, and tactics. The kids need to learn to listen and focus. That is how they learn.
6. When I told the parents that the game teaches the game, they said, “That’s why we play tournaments. Get on the court and teach them how to play!”
7. If the club really wanted me to be a better coach they could pay for me to go to coaching clinics – in Hawaii.
8. I like breaking the skill into parts, because I can explain it better to the players that way.
9. It’s just the junior varsity team. The kids aren’t very good, so it doesn’t matter if we hire someone who has never coached before.
10. When the girls miss their serves, they should run 3 laps. It’s good conditioning and it motivates them. That’s how you teach discipline and skills.

If this sounds like your son or daughter’s coach, it is time to start shopping for a new program.

Improve Your Game This Summer – Try Grilling!

With the summer season on the horizon it is time to focus on sports such as tennis, golf, beach volleyball, or summer platform tennis. Before we get into those sports we’ll digress briefly to talk a little “volleyball”.

Volleyball, Bicycle Riding, and Grilling

Last fall the USA women’s national volleyball team did what no other women’s team has done before. They won the World Championships with the coaching and practice philosophy, “the game teaches the game.”

John Kessel, Director of USA Volleyball Grassroots program, describes how the women’s team implemented this philosophy by talking about the process of learning to ride a bicycle.

Think about when you learned to ride a bike. You were put on the bike, given a push (and a prayer), and off you went.

  • Did you have private or group bicycle riding lessons?
  • Did your parents buy you special shoes, shorts, or other paraphernalia for riding your bicycle?
  • Did you go to bicycle riding camp for two weeks in the summer?
  • Did you do drills where you pedaled down the street with your left foot, then your right foot, then you alternated between feet on the way back?
  • Did you do play in a bicycle league?
  • Did you do team bonding exercises so you and your teammates could bicycle in a cooperative and friendly manner?
  • Did you have a bicycling nutritionist?
  • Did you have someone teach you about mental toughness when riding your bicycle to school?

NO! You got on the bike and you rode it. And when you fell, you got up, got back on the bike, you kept riding, and you got better.

The game teaches the game! The same holds true whether you are Women’s National Volleyball Team or local enthusiasts playing volleyball, riding your bike, playing golf, tennis beach volleyball, or summer platform tennis.

Grilling
Mixed doubles team doing two-on-one grills. Their goal is to improve their overhead to the corners.

The Essentials of Grilling

This brings us to the topic of summer grilling.

If John Kessel was your (fill in the sport) coach, he wouldn’t have you drill and he wouldn’t have you play games that often – you would GRILL.

Games + Drills = Grills.

Grilling is the process of incorporating technique, tactics, mental toughness, and even nutrition into match-like practice activities. Components of successful grilling are listed below:
• When there is relevant or game-like training, there will be a greater transfer of skills from practice to competitive situations.
• Numerous research studies have shown that athletes have greater retention when grilling is purposeful, and favors “random practice” as opposed to “blocked practice”.
• Effective grills allow all players to be involved in meaningful ways, i.e. there is no standing around. By setting different expectations for each player it is possible to include different abilities in many grills.
• Players can develop short positive cues that will serve as technical or tactical reminders. For example, backcourt players may use the cue “lobs go in” as a reminder to hit every lob in the court.
• Keeping score provides players with an incentive to play their hardest on every point.
• Good grills are easy to understand and explain. They should be given a name so they don’t have to be explained every time.
• Grills may be constructed so that players will be pushed out of their comfort zone. Failing in a grill should be viewed as an opportunity to improve.
• Develop grills that end with a natural conclusion, such as when a player hits a shot out of bounds.

There are hundreds of drills.  With a little creativity you can convert them to 12 to 15 grills to cover all aspects of your favorite sport. With a little ingenuity players can vary the scoring and rules for their grills to include everything from technique to mental toughness – all in a game-like situation.

Want to improve this summer – try grilling!

Grilling
Backcourt player lobbing the ball in 2-on-1 grill to improve her play out of the screens.

Video Capabilities Available for Coaches at All Levels

Forty years ago, only the top sports programs used video tape analysis to enhance an athlete’s performance. Video tape equipment was extremely expensive, it was temperamental to use, and the quality of the tape was inferior, by today’s standards.

Over the years, Dartfish established itself as a leader in sports video analysis. Its software allowed for easy analysis of an athlete’s performance, including slow motion and side-by-side comparisons. While Dartfish products were a significant improvement, their system was still fairly expense.

Today, most cameras and cell phones have the ability to capture high quality video and multiple apps allow for video analysis. In short, it is possible for parents, little league coaches, and tennis professionals to video their athletes and provide instant feedback.

For example, Ubersense allows coaches to record high definition video and playback frame-by-frame. It includes slow motion analysis, zoom and advanced drawing tools, and the ability to compare videos side-by-side. In short, coaches have access to video capabilities that far exceed the capabilities of 40 years ago, at a fraction of the cost.

In addition to Ubersense, parents and coaches may want to consider apps such as Coach’s Eye, FastCam, or SloPro.

Wanted: Best Coaches in the Country to Coach Bad Players

As the fall sports season rolls around, parents have to deal with the issue of who is going to coach their kids’ (fill in the sport) team. Will the coach know how to deal with young kids? Can they teach skills? Will the kids get to play a fair amount of the time? And God forbid, will the coach be a pedophile?

There is an axiom in individual college sports such as golf, tennis, skiing, track and field, “Players with A-level talent always beat players with B-level talent. It is not possible to coach B-talent to beat A-talent”. Right or wrong, some coaches believe that rule holds true in youth sports also.

In other words, many winning college programs have coaches whose primary strengths are recruiting, motivating, and organizing. They have winning records because they recruit more players with A-level talent than other coaches and they do a better job motivating them and keeping them happy.

John Calipari recently addressed this axiom as it relates to team sports. He was asked whether it’s difficult to get young blue-chip talent to jell as a team. In other words, how difficult is it to coach a group of A-level talent players?

The $5.2-million-dollar-a-year coach responded, “I’ll tell you what’s hard – coaching bad players.”

If it is really difficult to coach bad players and A-talent always beats B-talent, then why bother coaching bad players or players with B-talent? The answer is simple. All superstars begin their careers as bad players, even if they have A-talent. And the number of athletes with B-talent, or less, far outnumbers the elite players who play in the Olympics or major championships.

Hats off to Calipari for being able to recruit and manage elite athletes. He is a successful coach based on the number of games his teams have won.

Kudos also go to the coaches who like to work with bad players and those with “B” talent or less. In fact, a case can be made that this group of coaches should occassionally grace the cover of Sports Illustrated.

In other words, we need to have the absolute best coaches at the entry level, not on prime time television. Having the top coaches mentor young athletes when they start playing a sport will keep kids in sports and motivate them to be active for life. That will solve a lot of the problems facing our society.

 

Welcome

Welcome!

Over the years I have worked in various sectors of the public and private sector. This includes managing sports programs in private and non-profit organizations. What I learned from that experience is that many of the principles of sports and the business world are interchangeable.

As well, I have conducted research on many aspects of the economy, including major industry and cluster analyses and state level employment and economic forecasts. The performance of the economy impacts sports teams. As well, the performance of sports teams can have an impact on the local economy. My experience in this area taught me that there is no free lunch, i.e. everything is related in some fashion.

Sadly, I have watched parents fight under the bleachers at their siblings’ baseball games and watched in horror as recreation departments had no clue about the differences between games, play, sports, and athletics. It is no wonder the country has an obesity problem among our youth.

I have known child prodigies who burned out by the time they were 15 years old and I have experienced the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat. At the same time I have experienced the joys of coaching players when they hit their first volleyball serve in as well as when it became necessary for them to move from the area to become top ranked national athletes.

Sports is a microcosm of life. The intent of this blog is to touch issues related to sports other than the numbers on the scoreboard.

Best wishes.