Posts Tagged ‘Coaching Philosophy’
Players Need Challenging Coaches Now More Than Ever
With increased reliance on AI to do the heavy lifting, is there collateral damage in terms of the students’ ability to think critically, perform a thorough analysis of the information, generate their ideas, and develop the capacity to solve problems and accept challenges?
Read MoreThree Ideas Newsletter 7.8.25
Three Ideas for This Week
1. Meaningful statistics for early season practices.
2. Ideas for the first days of practice.
3. What your eyes focus on when blocking.
Enjoy!
Team Bonding To Team Building To Team Culture
Team bonding and team building differ significantly in their objectives and design. Most of what I see are team bonding activities, where the focus is on having fun and building relationships. There is certainly nothing wrong with those things! When I think about team building, I see it as being more focused on how my team can best accomplish shared objectives.
Read MoreFrom Knowing to Doing: Embracing Trial and Error
Take the attributes of a cheetah and apply them to your coaching. How agile are you in changing direction with your coaching methods, decision-making, and experimenting with something new? I don’t see a massive knowledge shortfall in the volleyball coaching community. However, I see an action problem. Taking action means taking a risk. Coaches tend to be risk-averse when trying new methods and strategies, preferring to stay within their comfort zone. Every season is a “rinse and repeat” format from the previous season.
Read MoreTryout Planning and Positional Keys
It’s early June, and high school coaches are scheduling open gyms, organizing summer team camps, and planning the fall tryouts. Early summer is a good time for the coach to evaluate the previous season, assess the strengths and challenges ahead, and decide what they want to implement in the upcoming season. Here are a couple of considerations for the summer activities and fall tryouts.
Read MoreAddressing Athlete Burnout
Burnout is a word we are all familiar with. The number of times the word is tossed around, you’d think it would have a definitive meaning. Burnout is a “catch-all” term indicative of other issues that cause unhappiness.
Read MoreBetter Routine = Better Performance
Most habits don’t start as habits; they start as routines. At first glance, these two terms seem interchangeable. However, the difference is quite stark. Both habits and routines are regular and repeated actions, but habits take place with little or no conscious thought. Meanwhile, routines require a higher degree of intention and effort that leads to positive results.
Read More“Three Ideas” Newsletter
Hello, everyone! Several coaches provided some positive feedback on the video library. I’m glad that the library is providing a resource that is readily accessible. I’ll be putting a video of the week in the newsletter, but you can access the video library at your convenience. On a different note, I enjoy the men’s and women’s NCAA basketball tournaments. I relish the possibility of the “Cinderella” team making it to the Final Four. However, no team from a mid-major conference made it to the regionals. Hopefully, this will not be a trend that will include volleyball. However, I have no reason to believe that volleyball can fight this trend.
Read More“Three Ideas” Newsletter
Hello, everyone! I’m changing the newsletter’s format, hopefully streamlining your reading. Each newsletter will have three thoughts for you to consider in your coaching. They will be brief, but hopefully, you will find them interesting and worth trying in your practices. A spoiler alert: I avoid preaching about the “right” way to do things. I prefer to present ideas that you can experiment with in your practices. Lastly, I will be uploading videos that you will be able to access for free. Each newsletter will have a link for the latest upload(s).
Read MoreThinking About Feedback
Coaches tend to rely solely on verbal feedback, but one could argue that verbal communication is not the most reliable form of feedback. Words can be easily misconstrued. Experimenting with new feedback methods merely requires the coach to possess an adventurous spirit and a willingness to try new things.
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