It has been awhile since my last posting. It has been a crazy couple of weeks for
me. I put on 9800 km on my truck
in the last 4 weeks which mad it a little hard to blog..
Now I am settled in rez in Winnipeg and back with the National women’s team for the last 3
weeks. This summer it is a different
format of training than the last two summers I experienced. Lupo and Scott
( national team coaches) have decided to train the A and B national teams
together for the first 3 weeks. We will then split into 3 teams and play a triple round robin tournament. The coaches of the 3 teams are Danny Da Costa from St. FX, Scott Koskie and myself. Then they will cut down to the A team and will participate in the Pan Am
cup in Mexico.
Also this year Lupo is giving some of the more veteran
players the some time off to recuperate some injuries and refocuss. That means
this is a good opportunity for some younger players to get quality
international experience.
We started the training camp with 49 players from across the
country. The first couple of days
we did ball control and physical testing.
The testing part is interesting because it is a skill too. Some players will test better because
they have completed the different requirements and understand how to recover
and use it to their benefit. http://bit.ly/L0jxtD this is a link to Volleyball Canada’s
website and a draft of all the tests and protocols. I recommend you check them out. Testing is always a stressful time for the athletes. At Brandon University we test 3 times a
year and no matter how we try to calm the athletes down they still stress out
when the time arrives. We had four
players spike touch 3.17meters or higher this year. (10’4” for people like me who still work that way).
After the testing then there was plenty of drills and
competition with everything being statted. Lupo was especially concerned with the setters and their
efficiencies’. Basically how did
the team kill the ball in relationship to each setter. So the teams would stay the same and
the setters would rotate around.
It was a close decision.
In the end Lupo decided to take 33 players included the A
team athletes that returned. Nine
of the players were on the B team with us last summer, so they were more
comfortable this time around.
Kristi Hunter was the most impressive for me as she improved her spike touch 4 inches from
last summer and was now touching 10’2.5” Her coach from Roblin will be extremely proud of her.
In a typical week the team trains 6 hours a day. They have Weds and Saturday
afternoons off plus all day Sunday.
The volume is surprising for the first year athletes. It feels like you eat, train, sleep all
week. Thursday the team quits at 6 pm and they do an hour of yoga. Which is really good to help with
flexibility. It will take awhile
but in the end it will benefit all the athletes.
A typical training session begins with Lupo introducing the
expectations and drills of the day. He then gives the team 30 secs for them to
focus on their own specific goals.
What does each player need to work on. Sometimes the drills will focus on transition but an athlete
might have a personal goal of using less movement in the arms on defense. They would use the 30 secs to then see
themselves and focus on their personal goals as well. Myself I often remind myself to stay positive and to
encourage the athletes. Working
with the national team the expectatons are quite different. It is a big jump up from university
volleyball. Some of the systems we
run in CIS wouldn’t work at the international level because of the speed and
size of the opposition. When Lupo
and Scott swing off boxes the first couple of times people think that is crazy
hard, but soon realize that is what the matches are really like.
After the 30 seconds Scott will run them through some ball
control drills. Scott is the
master of the Ball control warm-up and keeping it different every time. Every once and a while he will throw in
a fun game. One day we played a 1
bounce volleyball tennis 3 tournament.
The ball had to bounce and then you had 2 contacts after to play the
ball over. Most of the time it is
contacts with the ball over the net.
Working specifically on improving movement and the “touch on the ball” After their will be a drill that will
focus on the topic. In this drill
it will have high volume for the athletes. For example we were working on finding the pace and rhythm
in the shoot sets for both leftside and rightside. The athletes would be in groups of three and would hit 10
shoots sets each and then another group would be in. Of course this was all done from a pass and an easier
serve. The best drills are still
serve, pass set hit drills.
After this Lupo will then go into his main drill. He will do 1 drill for an hour and
half. During tryouts it was
sometimes 2 hours of the same drill.
This is tough on some athletes. It requires a lot of mental focus to
stay engaged in the drill for that long.
Now two weeks in it just seems normal. The athletes are doing a great job with their attention. I find that in younger club we need to have 7 or 8 drills to keep their attention. In university often we will have 4 drills over the two hour period. National team 3 drills for 3 hours.
At the end of the practice he will debrief and then they
have 30 secs of time to evaluate what they did in the practice. To note what
they should work on during the following practices.
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