Feel Bad First Theory.

First, I need to discuss our weekend.  It was another first for the program.  We went into the UBC T-Birds War Memorial Gymnasium and finally won.  They haven’t lost there since 2010 season.  This win was a total team effort and was a great snapshot of how the team is developing this season.

We lost the first set as they came out firing on all cylinders.  We fell down 7-1 but manage to fight back to tie at 18 before the T-Birds kicked in another gear to win.  The second set we started to find our range with our serving game and put pressure on them.  Winning the second set was a great feeling on the bench.  Our 3^rd set has been difficult for us all season.  Something happens between the break. Friday was no different.  We made every kind of error we could. At 16-6 technical timeout we subbed in some of our younger players, hoping they would battle and try to get some energy back in to our group.  Down 21-10 things changed.  Our rising star rookie Regan Dahl got a stuff block. Everyone was really excited for Regan it was her first in her CIS Career.  She has been primarily used as a serving defensive sub this year. 

Then Shanlee Mclennan went back to the serving line and put  pressure on them.  She served 9 serves in a row and got us tied up at 22. The team was rolling and you could see the stress on the T-Birds.  This doesn’t happen to them very often.  It was as if they relaxed just a bit when the subs went in.  Not expecting them to battle as hard as we did. We won that set 25-23.  It was an amazing comeback that showed the resiliency of this group of athletes.

The fourth set we fell down again, but this time we had lots of confidence in our serving and defensive game. We double subbed to try and get our middles open more and they took off.  Lexi and Meaghan were blocking everything.  With the final point coming on a Meaghan Robertson stuff block to win 26-24.

Saturday was a different match.  I believe we came to play a volleyball game and UBC came to prove a point.   A point they did prove.  They controlled every aspect of this match.  We struggled from the serving line and never gave our self a chance to gain any momentum.  The match was filled with long rallies and good volleyball. We would win one of these long rallies and then go back and serve the ball into the net. Totally crashing all the effort we put in to the point before.

There was some shining lights in this match though.  Rookie Vaovai Aiono was .348 efficiency at leftside. This was the best she has played and to do it against the top team was awesome.  Lexi Loewen in the middle also scored over .350.  We know if we can get the rest of the team on the same page we do have a fighting chance against them the next time we play.

With our the amount of travel we have done in the last couple of weeks, it always allows me time to read.  One of my favourite blogs is the Talent Code by Daniel Coyle.  This week he discusses the “Feel Bad First Approach” of the Green Berets.  Here is a sample but the whole article can be read here. http://thetalentcode.com

Teams spend weeks training for a mission (most of which happen at night). On the day of the mission they follow a two-part routine.

First, they spend the entire morning going over every possible mistake or disaster that could happen during the mission. Every possible screw-up is mercilessly examined, and linked to an appropriate response: if the helicopter crash-lands, we’ll do X. If we are dropped off at the wrong spot, we’ll do Y. If we are outnumbered, we’ll do Z.

After some hours of doing this, the team takes a break and has lunch together. They socialize, relax, and maybe take a nap.

Then they spend the afternoon in phase two, talking about everything going exactly right. They review each move, visualizing each step, and vividly imagine it going 100 percent perfectly.

You might call this Balanced-Positive Approach: equally split between negative and positive, and ending on the positive. Notice the complete wall of separation between the two phases. They don’t toggle back and forth between positive and negative. The two phases are kept as separate as night and day: first comes all negative, then all positive.

I find that most coaches I talk too are engaged in this approach, we are always looking for plan B,C,D,E.  Most matches I start out hoping we will win one set.  If we win one set then we can win 2.  If you win 2 then 3 only seems natural. But when I address the team it is from a position of confidence.  We spend a lot of time making sure the team is prepared so that they feel this confidence and when things do go wrong they have the confidence to try something different to solve the problem.

After covering all the possible things that can go wrong we are then prepared as a coaching staff to make adjustments that will bring confidence to our group.  So we go from bad to great. Just like we did in the 3^rd set last Friday.

Recruiting

A large part of the season for most coaches is made up of recruiting.  For myself and our BU program recruiting never really stops. When we finally get our recruits finalized for the next season we have to turn our thoughts on to the next set of grad classes. Since  last January most of our coaching staffs attention is on the 2014 grads and beginning to identify the 2015 class.

In discussion with some of my NCAA colleagues I found that our recruiting process as a Canadian University is very different.  For most of Canadian schools, finding potential players is often through word of mouth and by building of a reliable net work of coaches and friends. We can contrast that to most NCAA programs who have one or 2 assistant coaches where that is a large portion of their workload.

 I rely heavily on other coaches. My first set of eyes are often coaches from Brandon High Schools, Derek Richels and Kevin Neufeld.  Derek has been an assistant coach with us since the beginning of the program and is highly respected in Manitoba. Kevin has been an assistant coach but now primarily acts as a consultant for us. Kevin is a very successful high school and club coach in Brandon. Derek runs one of the top club team in western Manitoba. They often see the athletes for the first time and create our first evaluations.

We have many other friends of the program who will take time to recommend a player or will answer questions about players they know. WE use this network a lot in other provinces where it is harder to watch the athletes in person.  A lot of the recruiting time is talking with these coaching and to start developing a data base of who fits our needs.  Once we get a list of potential athletes we take time to  narrow it down to the type of athlete that will fit into our program and school.

At Brandon University we look for a specific type of player.  We want fast dynamic athletes.  Size of the athlete is not as important to us as the height at which they play the game.  All of our middles and most of our outsides were over 9'9" or 298-300cm on their measured spike approach. The athletes on our team that don't jump that high have special skills, they are very strong in ball control, and/ or hit a heavy ball.  When we are narrowing down our data base for recruiting grade 11 we first look for speed, then spike touch.  It is common for athletes to put 2-3 inches on their spike in their first two years.  Usually the growth happens because of  the athletes commitment to fitness.  

Once we have determined they are athletic enough to play at a Canada West level we then turn to the process of finding out what kind of person they are. We all want strong character players and athletes that will get along with the team. We will discuss the potential athletes with their coaches, opposition coaches, teacher and other parents of athletes on the team. Of course we are in discussions directly with the player and her parents

At the beginning of the recruiting process we are involved a lot with the parents. But I feel the sooner we can work directly with the athlete the better.  This allows us to learn more about the personality of the recruit at a faster pace. After the athlete joins the program our interactions with the parents will drop off to quick visits in gyms or restaurants.  We rely on the athletes to keep their parents informed on what is happening with in the team.  When a parent speaks for the athlete a lot during the recruiting process it often slows down the process more than it helps it. We really don't get a feel for the athlete's personality. I personally believe the athlete should make the decision (with the parents input) of where they feel they fit the best.  I know the parent will do their jobs and will make sure the athlete is safe and going into a good situation.

At BU we hope the parent feel as much a  part of our program as the athlete does.

Every coach will talk to many different players in a certain position.  We have our dream list of who we want but we also have back up plans.  Coaches understand that not all athletes will end up at your school.  WE have to talk to many athletes.  When an athlete decides to join our school we make a big deal out of it.  Luckily for us we have very supportive media.  It is big news in Brandon when we sign a recruit. It will be in the paper and on the radio.

So far this year we have signed 3 prominent players from Manitoba.  Nikki Majewski an outside hitter from Winnipeg, Sara Barker another middle from Winnipeg and Jamie Campbell a libero from Brandon.

The International Trip

I am waiting at the Vancouver Airport. We have been delayed for 17 hrs because of a cancellation of our flight. I am getting heckled by Shayne White from Ontario to post a new blog.

We just returned from a tournament in Barbados over the New Year.  We try to do a warm trip every three or four years.  This particular trip started two years ago at the National Team training camp. Olivier Trudel from University of Montreal was explaining his experience in Barbados the Winter break. We decided then we would join them.

We find that there are many benefits to the international trip. The first benefit is that it creates an "us against the world" mentality.  When we travel within Canada most of the time the athletes will have family and friends that will come and watch. But on a trip to Barbados it is just our team. We had 8 days to really connect.  I always enjoy watching the different groups head out together. When I was first starting out in coaching I would plan every waking minute for the athletes, but now I leave a lot of free time.  I find that this is the time when true bonding takes place. This is because people are choosing to do things together  A perfect example was Donata and Regan taking surfing lessons together. They both had fun and really grew to know each other as they struggled and succeeded together.

Second benefit is that we can work on different volleyball situations without the pressure of league involved. We can play different people in different positions or use different subbing combinations.  This tournament was set up perfectly for us. We would practice in the morning have lots of time for beach and exploring. Then play a match at night.

The third benefit is learning to adapt to different situations.  We are pretty spoilt with are ability to maintain routines. But on this trip a bus driver showed up 40 minutes late, humidity was incredibly high and we went through more practice clothing than we thought.  There was a party on the deck of the hotel and we just had to roll with it.

We also learned a lot about responsibility and respecting the game of volleyball. The idea of managing their time in the sun, getting enough food, making sure each other is in a safe situation.

This was the best team trip I have taken. I have been on a lot of great ones in the last 20 years. Even though we finished 3rd the benefits heading into our second semester is tremendous. This is going to be a grosz finish coming up.

Where did the confidence go?

We have just finished our first semester of our season. Presently we sit 3rd in Canada West at a 9-3 record.  This is one of the best records we have had at this point in a long time.  We had reached as high as #2 ranked team in Canada.

This year’s version of the Lady Cats is one full of passion and commitment; it is fun to go to work every day.  The athletes and coaches are all working at pushing themselves to new levels of skill and knowledge. What more can a coach ask for.

In our last match of the first semester we played an extremely scrappy team in U of Sask Huskies.  They are an unranked team that really makes you earn ever point.  Friday night we were able to sneak out with a 4 set victory and felt pretty good about how we played.  On Saturday for some reason things changed.  The Huskies came out serving and defending extremely well.  The match felt as if we were on our heels all night.  This year, the team has been able to overcome adversity and come from behind to win matches like this. Instead of making the big confident plays we found ourselves making  lots uncharacteristic unforced errors the more the match progressed. A good example of this was the second set we were up 24-19 and couldn't side out. Losing the set 26-24. This is the first time all year we haven't been able to close out a set we were up. We ended up 2 sets to 1 and then confidence disappeared again. In discussions with our players they felt that their routine was good after they committed an error, but struggled to regain focus after their teammates made a couple errors in a row.

After the match during our team debriefs one of the athletes stated "it felt like we were always chasing the ball, when we played the other matches we were ahead of the game." That is some great insight. We constantly talk about remaining in the moment.  When an athlete or a group of athlete are fixated on the last error, the last play they find themselves reacting to the next.  It is human nature to question and to focus on the error but in this moment it helps no one.

The question now was after the loss do we get right back in the gym and continue to work or do we take the couple days offs we traditionally take at this time of year. Both had valid reasons.  If we get back in the gym we have a chance to show our commitment to each other.  We have a chance to talk directly about the mental side of the game and create situations where they need to be aware of the next play.  In contrast this is a crazy time and with no bye weekends the team has been going for 10 weekends straight, they have major final projects, final exams and look tired. We need to build back up our confidence.

Building confidence in a player is difficult. Wayne Goldsmith, the author of Coaching Brain Blog, states that Confidence = Self Belief X Evidence. The whole blog can be read here http://www.sportscoachingbrain.com/coaching-self-confidence/

Self belief we can't control, but evidence we can. Wayne Goldsmith says of course evidence occurs when you're winning.  It is easy to see and understand that. But when winning doesn't occurs evidence must be found. Evidence is what the athlete does on a daily basis. What are the situations that athletes are put in? What are the standards the athletes are held too?  We have been discussing as a team how we feel our fitness will come into play late in the second semester and into the playoffs.  Instead of practicing on Monday and Tuesday we decided to have team workouts weights or circuit training.  This way the athletes can see each others commitment directly in this situation.  They can see how hard each of them tries in the circuit. If they see a player giving their all it is hard to go half speed beside her.  This is a great way to build back our belief in each other’s commitment.

Athletes can also contribute to the evidence by helping each other out. They need to be engaged in each other’s success. This is easy when things are going well. It is when things are difficult that the positive words and pats on the back are most in need.  This is something we have to keep working at and pointing out every day.

The Time Out

We are on a bit of a winning streak and are sitting 5-1 in the league.  The team is training well and making improvements.  As coaches we are continually trying to move our group forward. During this past weekend we sat down as a coaching staff and had a good discussion about how we wanted our time outs to work.

One of the main elements we decided  on is to be positive and keep the discussion about remaining in the moment.   I find the easiest thing to do as a coach is to discuss the errors that have been occurring. In reality at that moment what has happened before must stay in the past.  We want our focus to be about what we must do so we can score now.  We need to give a specific message to our team.  Quite often when I am mentoring young coaches I watch and listen in their timeouts and discover they often rattle off 7 or 8 different things for the team to focus on. This is too many points for the group.  Another mistake I find that inexperienced coaches spend a lot of timeouts talking about energy and communication. They are very generic things. I believe that we should focus on things that are specific. A good example is a ball falling in between two people.  As a team we need them to make a decision faster.  We want them to decide the person who is in the best position to make a positive play.  We have a rule, back row calls off front row, middle back calls off back left and back right.  This is specific, not just a general discussion on call the ball. 

How we get the athletes to reach this is also important. We will often ask questions to specific athletes in the time outs. I feel that asking questions to specific players draws them out of their heads and into the conversation.  This gets the team thinking of a certain situation and they come to an agreement together. "They are scoring a lot from the right side today.  Is there anything we should be doing that can slow her down? If we serve a different location will that have an affect on the type of set?" This allows us to guide our team to the answer we are looking for. Of course there are times when  we need to build confidence in the team and quickly state a solution give them the answer. The thing is current research  has shown that retention happens better when we people discover skills and strategies for themselves.

Against some teams we will use our time out as a strategy.  Most coaches I have come across tell their players that after a timeout you should take a little bit off and put it in.  We use this to our advantage.  Jaki Ellis off of U of Alberta would go on huge runs of points when she was serving against us.  We really struggled with the pace of her serve. Finally we decided to try  to save the timeouts for when she would be serving.  Our hope was she would serve a bit easier allowing us to side out more effectively. It seemed to work for us.  Now we discuss timeouts as part of our game plan strategy.

The last thing I would like to mention is a phrase my friend Ken Briggs from MacEwan University use to say to me. "Don't over coach"  To me this was wise advice.  I repeat this to many young coaches.  Too often we look for a quick fix when steady is the way to go.  Simple clear timeouts are the most effective.

Advice on Coaching from a Musician.

I was reading the Blog Talent Code.  It is written by Daniel Coyle the author of the book with the same name.  In his blog he was talking about an Eagles documentary he watched and directly about how Glen Frey learned to write songs. http://thetalentcode.com/2013/08/13/how-to-be-creative-starring-jackson-brownes-teakettle/  if you want to read the whole article.

Reading this blog really resonated with me.  His message of musical development can easily be about developing as a coach.

 Here are Danile Coyles steps that he took away from the documentary about learning to be a great song writer.  I then put my spin on how this relates to coaching.

1. Proximity,
Glen Frey learned how to be a song writer after he moved in above Jackson Browne and saw how Jackson wrote songs.  He discovered it wasn't just a moment of inspiration.  I feel the same process applies to coaching.  The more gyms a coach can get into and the more coaches you watch or work with, the more success you will have.  I used to think I worked hard as a coach at planning until one summer I met Frank Enns.  Watching the detail Frank put into his practice and game plans was amazing.  Compared to him I felt that I was just showing up to the gym throwing a ball out.  I was a drill coach, worried about a good drill that was cool not the purpose of the drill. I learned that taking time to make a proper practice plan would lead to success in games.

Then I had the opportunity to work with Rod Durrant ( U of Calgary),Keith Hansen (Red Deer College) and Ron Thomson(GPRC). All three of these guys showed me how to run a practice.  They were all strong on demanding  the best out of the players yet keep a positive relationship with them. I would watch their practices and then go back to mine and try to emulate what I saw in theirs The last 8 years I  have been blessed with the opportunity to work with National Team.  Lupo Ludwig and Scott Koskie  and before them Naoki Miyashita and Mike Ling coaches with our national team have allowed me to build further on my knowledge of the game and the proper planning needed.  The summer of 2012 in particular Lupo and Scott allowed me to sit in on their practice planning session.  This helped confirm my thinking and to expand on how to build a great practice.

2.Habit,

 If you want to be a coach then you need to coach.  This is why it is difficult for some players to transition quickly to coaching.  There are a lot more skills to coaching than just being able to explain a skill or system.  Dealing with people is ever changing and a  techniques for this is often learned through trial and error.  In my developmental stage I would coach everything I could. I would try different techniques that I thought would work on different groups and mimic coaches I knew until I found out what works for me.  During my crazy time of coaching in my 20's I coached or assistant coached 11 volleyball teams in one year.  To be honest most of that time wasn't very productive but I was involved. Unknown to me I was learning how and when to jump into a drill, when to wait it out for the players to figure it out. I was immersed in coaching.

3. Looping,

Daniel explain looping as circling back over the process, looking at it and then redoing it. Change a piece of the song and then go over it again. Same thing is involved in planning a practice.  I need to write it down get a feel for what I  want to accomplish. I try to plan the next practice right after we finish our recent  practice while it is fresh in my mind.  I write down the basics of a plan that I want to accomplish.  Then in the morning I will go over the ideas and then put them into a detailed practice plan.  I count reps, I put the players in the drills in the order we want them appear in the drill.  If a player needs an extra set of reps we will build that in.  For example a hitter vs the world drill.  We would go Shanlee first, Tori second, Gil third then Shanlee again.  Everyone on the team hears and  knows the order and the drill runs smooth in transitions.  After this process of planning I look for mistakes,  I often try to match up certain players in the game play.  We often don't go A vs B, we split them up.

4 Wrap up
Very few coaches get to start at the top and are successful.  Most have to work their way through different coaching levels and experience in order to get to their top.  I still am searching out new information and trying hard to stay up with the current research.  The best professional development I usually have is discussing skills and planning with other coaches of all levels.  I find having to explain why I do things to beginning coaches is another way for me to check on my own reasoning.

I often get asked if I have a message for  up and coming coaches.  I guess the message is to be ready to put the time in the gym.  Coaching  is a fun and rewarding career  but takes a lot of focus and passion.

Camps and teaching.

I have been hearing some complaintsfrom different people because I have been neglecting my blog.

I have no excuse as to why it took so long for another entry, I just found myself distracted with other roles that I need to fulfill for my team.  This summer I am part of the organization and presentation of 11 volleyball camps over an 8 week period. These camps are used as fundraisers for exhibition travel and scholarships.  I find that fundraising has taken up a big chunk of this summer.  We have planned a special trip for our team and we need to fund raise close to 50k this summer for everything.

I really enjoy the camps and working with the young athletes and coaches. it gives me a new perspective on learning.  Especially when we are working with the 11 and 12 year olds. I haven't been a part of this many camps in a summer since for 15 years.  Seeing different camps and their structure has led me to think of why and how camps are organized.

I find that often we start off at the young camps without putting things into context. The main purpose of volleyball is to score on the opposition.  This is usually done through an attack. Quite often we would start with partner passing and working on passing and setting skills.  These are two really important skills but neither lead to the score.  I find that in young volleyball we have a celebration when we get three contacts. Pass to a pass to a pass.  to me that isn't the way volleyball should be played.  The last few years we decided to start our camps off with attacking.  Since that is the ultimate goal,  I feel we should start there.  In the Edson And Vermillion Camps we had young athletes (11-14 years of age), so this was a bit chaotic. But with starting with attacking and reinforcing the attack we had more attempts than ever before.

This is our typical start to camp.

I believe timing is the biggest struggle for the athlete when learning to attack, so we start there. Once they figure out when to begin to move towards the ball the rest seems easier. We have the athletes Start right from a set ball the very first time they try to attack.  A setter will toss the ball straight up to them self and try to set the ball for the attacker.  The attacker is told to wait for the ball to leave the setters hand then begin their approach.  One of the big problems is the setting skills are really weak and we haven't covered it yet.  But just ask them to push the ball as high as they can into the air and you will be surprised how well the drill works. 

From this point we work backwards, now we ask for the attacker to make sure they are taking off on two feet as they jump.  We will continue this until most seem to get the two feet take off. Then we ask the right handed attackers to face the setter when they take off and make sure their left foot is closest to the net.  Then we move on to trying to get a longer second step and so on.  The athlete now has a context of what they are trying to do.  

Once we have a basic grasp of attacking we then move to passing.  Our goal is to keep passing fairly simple at this level.  We us two simple cues. First is platform, strong straight arms that are level. The second cue is the ball goes where you lean.  This allows the athletes to make adjustments on their own. If I need the ball to go further ahead, I need to lean forward more, need the ball to go more to the right then I just lean more to the right.  Leaning this way helps create a  natural platform that is oriented towards the target.

Then we will put the two skills together.  The athletes will self set over the net to a passer, just like a freeball in a game.  The ball is then passed to the setter and then caught.  We have the ball caught  so the set is more controlled for the attacker.  We tell them the pass and the attack are the two most important concepts and we need to make sure our second contact is good. The setter will toss to self  and set to an attacker just like we did in the first drill.

We will have the attacker stay in for 4 attacks in a row.  There is a tendency for young coaches to have the athletes follow the ball. One contact and cross the net.  But I believe they need multiple reps at the same skill.  That way they can hear a correction and try it right away or figure out an adjustment on their own with passing. We will have three groups attacking along the net at the same time. Splitting the court into thirds. this will allow for more reps and less people standing around. 

At the start of the drill it might seem scrambled but we have found if we stick with it long enough they will get better.  When I first started to coach camps through this more discovery method I found it was hard to let go of the control. One skill coach controlled drills always look smooth but when we apply them to a game situation they break down.  How often do we hear the phrase if my team only plays like they practice.

The next progression is to split the three groups up into two and split the court in half.  We now play a  modified game.   It is basically the same start to the drill. A ball is set over the net to a passer. The ball is passed to a setter who catches it.  Then a  self toss and set to an attacker who attacks it.   Now we have two or three defenders on the other side of the net.   They try to dig it up the ball and catch it for second contact.  The setter then self toss and set a hitter on their side and a game continues.   

This leads them closer to a game and they see all the concepts of what is necessary.  All this happens in the first two hours of the camp.

 From this point the athletes understand the basic flow to a game, now we can begin to teach the other skills and have the athletes understand where they fit into the game.

I do believe there is a need for one skill drills, but only after they have an idea of where the skill fits into the game.  Then we can break the skill down more and use the one skill drills as a method where they feel what the skill should be like.  But we then need to put the skill back into a game situation, or a part of the cycle of the game.

We believe the best passing drill, is pass-set-hit.  The best serving drill is serve-pass-set-hit.  The best blocking drill is pass-set-hit-block. The best defensive drill is pass-set-hit-block-dig. The more we can put the skill into the context of the game the better the athletes understand its use and why it is necessary.  I once heard Karch Kiraly speak and he said something along the lines that he couldn't beleive how many drills women teams do with no blockers.  In a match maybe only 2 percent of the game is played with no blockers. 

The first 2 weeks were at Jasper Volleyball Camp.  I wrote about this camp in a blog post last year. http://coachingbobcats.blogspot.com/2012/07/jasper-volleyball-camp.htm.