The team is coming off qualifying for the world championships in Italy. There is a super positive vibe with the group.
Our first responsibility is to help select a B group of athletes to help train with the A squad. We had 47 athletes tryout for 8 spots. This was going to be a difficult selection process as a lot of athletes were close in levels. There were 8 NCAA athletes, 5 CCAA athletes, and 34 CIS athletes. In this group there were 9 Liberios, 17 outsides, 8 setters, 13 middles. This includes 4 A team players who had commitments before the world qualifiers.
The first session is always testing. http://bit.ly/L0jxtD. Here is a link for Volleyball Canada testing protocol. They also added some basic fitness levels that athletes can use as test for themselves. The first test was taken from the Canadian Military. The athletes are required to do 30 military push-ups in 2 minutes. The second test was taken from Bobsled and skeleton national team. There is a tremendous amount of crossover between sprinting and jump training. The athletes were asked to complete 200 skipping double unders in 5 minutes. This test always shows quick improvement as there is technique that improves fast. The last test was 75 second side planks. If the hip dipped twice they were eliminated.
The rest of the sessions were game like. Either a type of wash or just straight games. Lupo wanted us to stat everything. I once heard the expression you can't trust your eyes. I once saw a rabbit been pulled out of a hat, not sure how it got into a hat. The stats help show what really happens. I know I personally see players that jump high and hit a hard ball. That sticks in my mind, when you see the whole story sometimes we're surprised.
The first meeting we had as a coaching group, we were asked to select our top 10 athletes regardless of position. After we submitted our list then we were then given the stats to compare with. That was an eye opener for a lot of us. After we got a group of maybes Lupo and Scott designed drills that focused on the outside attackers hitting against a trouble block. We wanted to isolate this group and get a feel of what each brings. Over the years of working with the national team one of the main topics that comes up is that we needed to hit the ball harder. That is one of the reasons VC started to implement the radar gun on attacking. I found the athletes who hit the ball harder on the gun also had more success in the out of system drill.
In the end Lupo and Scott take our suggestions look at their needs and select the group. It is a really positive experience and hearing the groups discussion is always great professional development.
