David, J.J. and Franz...

In an end of the month installment of five important thoughts and quotes from three people who are way smarter than us, we start off with one of the great authors of our generation in the subject of sports and how to coach. David Epstein has published two must haves for any coaches bookshelf: "The Sports Gene" is 2013 and his 2019 opus, "Range." Here, in the newly updated version of Range, Epstein talks to coaches about the future and how we are navigating it.

"In other words: career zig-zaggers are more likely to feel unappreciated while on the path to developing a broad skill set, but also more likely (eventually) to ascend to the highest echelon in their work. This gets at a fundamental conundrum: optimizing for the short-term feels safe, but often undermines development in the long-term." 

Epstein understands and has looked at the idea of hiring with just one task of knowledge but points out that one must overcome that safety and reach beyond for a long term career. By the way coaches, this goes for players too!

Los Angeles Lakers head coach J.J. Redick has shown himself to be a generational basketball mind: his podcasts and  articles and interviews. And in a league full of tradition and old drills and training methods, Redick sees it differently.

"Player development is about putting people in game-like environments and then drilling that versus drilling how to get to your bag. I had a coach tell me this year, I was asking, I was like: This player has gotten better in pick and roll [and they said]: 'Yeah, we have pick and roll study hall. We'll sit there and watch one specific player that does one specific thing really well in pick and roll, and then we'll go out on the court and recreate that environment so he works on those reads."

Reading, game like and practice for the game v. practicing for a salary or a highlight reel is what J.J. is envisioning. It will be a fun season to watch him at the helm of the Lakers.

Franz Stampfl coached Roger Bannister to the first sub 4 minute mile in history. What you don't know is Stampfl was a WWII veteran, prisoner of war, surviving his prison transport ship being torpedoed by a German U-boat and surviving 8 hours in cold, oil-slicked seas and helped coach and organize sports in the camps until the end of the war. He was a stalwart of 'interval style training' and in addition to Bannister helped tennis players and boxers to success and coached 11 different athletes in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics. In a tragic bit of irony, he was involved in a car accident in 1980 that left him a quadriplegic until his death 15 years later. 

Coaching Bannister, Stampfl uttered one of the most obvious but hidden thoughts about coaching: "Training is principally an act of faith."

This resonates so clearly yet is rarely spoken of. Your athletes, the parents of your athletes, even your club directors and athletic directors, they entrust all in you- an ultimate act of faith.

Talking about training, he said, “The coach’s job is twenty percent technical and training, and eighty per cent inspirational. He may know all there is to know about tactics, technique and training, but if he cannot win the confidence and comradeship of his pupils he will never be a good coach.”

This is an area that coaching clinics and you tube videos have steered away from but is even more relevant now than ever. Relationships over reps, trust over technique.

Finally, Stampfl ends this blog with this gem: "Fear is the strongest driving force in competition. Not fear of one's opponent, but of the skill and high standard which he represents: fear, too, of not acquitting oneself well. In the achievement of greater performances, of beating formidable rivals, the athlete defeats fear and conquers himself."

Mic drop...

Insta World

 It started with this...

By just attending this online clinic, you could "become a better CLUB coach in one day!"

Hmmmm...

We all know we live in an insta world. Waiting in line for groceries, school clothes or a Frappuccino has become to much for our insta world. With our hand held computers a buzz, we can manage almost anything from paying our car insurance to making an appointment for an upcoming surgery. 

These modern day conveniences often go unnoticed and under appreciated because they have become a synthetic fabric of American life. 

But we have to be smart enough to know that you aren't going to become a better CLUB coach in one day, don't we? 

Let's take a morning stroll through the namesake, Instagram and see how Parents and Coaches can help their athletes improve...(Please grab a towel as that statement and all below are dripping with sarcasm...)

Here we are learning how to fix a team's problem of "bumps, sets and side bumps!" Cleverly, the coach has the kids wait in a long line for one rep at the skill which is all self produced. Yup, this should do the trick!

Here we are teaching the vaunted golden trope of "wrist snap" to an unsuspecting athlete who will learn, IF she stays with the sport, just how worthless this whole exercise is. (BTW, if you are still trumpeting the value of wrist snap to your athletes, you have not studied the science of attacking and are perpetuating the biggest myth in volleyball...)

With this one 7 second, in depth coaching video, you can fix your serve receive. Thank goodness says every coach and parent.

With this drill, your athlete can become a better hitter. She just has to transfer jumping on a box in the middle of her approach into jumping without a box into her game. 

Towels are always an excellent substitution for volleyballs being they are the same weight, make up and shape. If you can swing a towel at a high rate of speed, you will instantly become a better hitter.

As every coach knows the one key of "pinching shoulders" automatically leads to passing dimes.

Every coach and parents dream: their athlete harnessed up, on their knees and replicating a volleyball swing. This will SURELY take them to the next level of attacking. 

The idea of "pressing" will make you a better blocker!

And after this strenuous practice, let's use the greatest volleyball drill of all time to help with the transfer of all the skills we have learned today.

With tongue FIRMLY in cheek, it's important that as a coach or a parent, you see through these online offerings. Like all of social media, ANYONE can present ANYTHING with the idea of likes, hearts and followers. 

But if you are a serious coach, we hope you noticed some of these in the videos:

• How many drills were from the SAME side of the net?
• How many drills were initiated by the Coach?
• How many of the drills gave just ONE thing to get better at the skill showed?
• How many of the drills are using the science of motor learning?
• How many of these drills LOOKED like the actual game of volleyball?

The answers above should be your warning signs going forward. We have no beef with any of these Instagrammers nor do we follow or have any interaction with them. The only part they play is they were lucky enough to come up in the 15 minutes spent on Instagram looking for volleyball content.

(In fairness, there was one video left off which was a science based snippet on what to look for when blocking. While only 15 or 20 seconds, it did bring the science of the skill to the viewer but again, a blocker isn't going to get better in 15-20 seconds.)

We bring this to your attention for two reasons; first, many, many coaches use social media to find drills and learn skill training. A higher number in fact then attend coaching clinics, work with coaching mentors or read books and science journals. One-click coaching is taking over our sport to the detriment of our athletes and parents.

Second, parents look at these videos and are sucked into sending their kids to the camps and clinics associated with this nonsense. Most parents are uninformed about how learning is done, how skill is developed. Their default is often more, more, more at the expense of the quality of what is being taught and who is teaching it.

Coaching AND playing volleyball do not happen in one day. Not in one drill, not in one focus of that drill. Coaches and volleyball players get better by doing; by playing and coaching. Hits and misses, mistakes and successes, triumph and failure. But an insta society doesn't have time for that- we want it NOW. We need it NOW!

Coach, you aren't going to become a better coach in one day. Dad, your son isn't going to become a better blocker in 7seconds. Mom, your daughter isn't going to excel at serve receive because she watched a video on pinching shoulders.

Patience is the hostage of our insta world. But it's the currency of development. 

For a change, stand in line for your caramel macchiato this week...

It ALL Matters...

Observed a man the other day in the "trainers only" section of the gym he was working at. He was managing the fitness of two middle aged female clients at the same time. He would look down at his phone and then go to one and show her what he wanted her to do. In this case, she sat on a chair with her back against a wall and spread her arms out against the wall and moved them up and down. While she was doing this, he looked at his phone again and went to the other woman whom he had start doing a version of 'supermans,' putting her left foot up and leaning forward with her right hand and then alternating. At no time did he check on the form or even whether the two ladies were doing the exercises he prescribed. He gave no feedback, no help and just kept looking at his phone for his next exercise to fill his hour slot.

Emblazoned in bold white block letters on the upper back of his red logoed work shirt was the word COACH.

Often lost in the frustrating work of coach developers  was a recent post on a social media account:

These coaches are  lifelong learners, working to get better each season, each practice, each drill, each interaction with players and parents. Often times, their egos don't demand attention and it's only after a players career has concluded that the athletes realize how integral that coach was to their success. 

For a modern world of instant gratification and acknowledgment, this idea becomes so inconsequential that striving for  a lot of coaches, those interactions becomes a waste of time and energy.

Unless, of course, you are one of their athletes.

One outside hitter, an All-State selection  her sophomore year on isn't playing into college. She's a dynamic 5-10 athlete that can pass in serve recieve and is a good blocker. She would have added value to any school she chose. 

But being the go-to player on a team with bad leadership can be more of a curse than a blessing. Every loss was pinned on her effort and mistakes. Close wins were her fault because she couldn't carry the team on her back. She began to get naseaus before matches in both high school and club and would sometimes get sick. After matches, win or lose, she felt depressed and relieved. Why, she asked herself, would I want to put myself through this for four more years.

Her coaches had gutted her passion and ripped from her captaincy her self esteem. She was the excuse, the reason for failure, the one that could never reach the potential cast upon her by short sighted coaches who thought "pushing" her was healthy and the best option.

Another player, an All-State selection in the northeastern US had this to say about her coach. “I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I was constantly reassured that I was going to be a 6-rotation player who rarely sat the bench. Instead, I was a 0 rotation player who rarely saw the court. If my own coach didn’t believe in me, why should I keep playing? I eventually realized I didn’t want to play, I just wanted the truth.”

“I remember seeing my coach during highschool season. She’d say ‘Great game Ally, I can’t wait to have you as my go to outside!’ I was ecstatic. Come to find out she’d said the same thing to 3 other girls.”

This player also walked away from offers, her self effacy bullet riddled. Another player who walked away from opportunty because an egotistical coach had blindly made decisions without any idea of the repurcussions.

Coach is an often used title in a lot of organizations. Life coaches, sport coaches, mental coaches, nutrition coaches. All with a purpose but how many have the credentials to claim legitimacy? In the US, coaching is a hobby for most. There are coaches on the sidelines of your daughter's volleyball tournaments that have not studied training ideas and methods, they don't have a coaching philosophy and maybe don't even use science to help them decide practice regimen, drills and recovery. For so many parents, they just don't know because they don't do the research on clubs and coaches. They listen to the stories told them about the scholarships and grandeur ahead and jump on board, only to find out the Titanic is equipped with a net.

We will leave you with this parent letter. It is both alarming and helpful if you are a parent looking for coaching qualifications in your athlete's upcoming season. 

"I have no idea of who or even if this message will be seen by anyone. However, I still want to get my perspective out there. I am a parent of 3 girls who played volleyball even into college… I am now a grandparent of a granddaughter who wants to play volleyball. My perspective is that nothing has changed in the qualifications/vetting process of coaches in all levels of volleyball. I watched a simple game in an Anthem league today and saw the same issues that were present when my 38 year old daughter played . Coaches are not trained and are not for the kids learning the game but winning. Something needs to change, especially in the training/vetting of coaches. My daughters had some wonderful coaches, and some truly awful coaches and human beings. One was definitely a pediophile  and I was the only parent on her team that was not ok with him. This was a 14 -1 team that went to nationals. My daughters played at various levels but we experienced such awful coaches at all levels. I would love to see standardize coaching.

We have 9 grandaughters and we have offered to pay for tennis and golf and anything other than volleyball for them. How sad especially since 2 of our granddaughters have a 6’4’ inch dad and a mom who is 5’10” and played at nationals at least 4 times. 

My husband and I literally had PTSD watching this simple league today and the awful coaching.

My daughters still love the game of volleyball but they  know that it comes with some absolute awful not vetted coaches both in club and schools and they dont know if they are willing to put their daughters through what they endured."

Coach, you matter. Club Director, it DOES matter who you put on the floor to coach your athletes. Parents, be picky and do your homework. 

It ALL matters...