Beginning Typical Week Being a Bobcat.

Start up of the 2012/13 season is well under way.  As always with this time of year the athletes are working hard and improving Daily.  The first week of school we gradually built up the volume until we are at a super high level right now.

A typical week for the athletes right now is

Monday

They have weight training in small groups with our Strength Coach Sean.  Right now it is a very basic program making sure everyone is caught up to speed.  Then we will have practice from 4-7pm.  Usually a small group from 4-5pm, example would be setters and middles.  Then from 5-6pm the whole team will train together.  The hour with the whole team is dedicated to our systems. We focus  a lot on the defense to transition part of the game.  With the Mikasa ball we feel the game is played a lot more out of system than it used to be played.  Then the second group will work on skills from 6-7.  This way everyone has 2 hours of practice but also a good hour working on things specific to their positions.

Tuesday

Morning starts with a track workout.  This is a great team builder.  It gives each player a chance to see how each other work.  It also has lots of positive peer pressure when an athlete thinks they are done but see their teammates keep pushing, they keep pushing too.  The photo’s are from this weeks track work out.

Tuesday we also practice 4-7, different groups than Monday as we have to juggle around some class schedules.

Weds

The athletes are asked to work out on their own with weights today.  With Brandon being a small school we have only a limited number of courses.  This makes it very hard to get everyone in the gym at the same time.  So we trust the athletes to get this done.  This is an important part of our program and the athletes must understand that they need to lift or do the circuits on the days scheduled.  We have planned this for optimum recovery and results.  During the pre-season physical training is a priority over being fresh for tournament matches.  If the athlete skips a day it affects the whole team.

This week we have our first meeting with Dr. Skinner . He is coming in to create our standards.  We have three over riding values on our team.  Be loyal, Bring honour to the program, Put the team first.  These are brought from the last year to the next year.  But each year is different so we have to have  adifferent set of standards for the team.  With Dr. Skinner we come up with these standards.  We have already discussed what each of the values look like and don’t look like.  For example what does being loyal mean when you are coming off the bench?  The team came up with; cheering for the players on the floor, looking for weaknesses within the oppositions defense, being ready to go when called upon and also knowing the game plan so you can execute it when you have a chance to play.

Know as a team we have to decide on all the things we brought up which are the most important ideas and methods.  These we want to write down and hold each other accountable for.  Each year the team comes up with their own.  Last years can be seen here http://coachingbobcats.blogspot.ca/2011_09_01_archive.html

We also normally practice from 4-7pm the same as we have all the way through.

Thursday,

Thursday the team is required to do a circuit in small groups.  This one involves a little less jumping and more bungy cords, working on footspoot and trying to create an overspeed situation with the team.

Then we will practice from 4-7.

This week we are travelling to Briercrest to play our first exhibition matches.  WE play Briercrest College at 8pm.  This team competes in the Alberta Colleges League. It is a good chance to for our rookies to compete before they face CIS competition in Regina Fri to Sunday

Weekend.

This weekend we play in the University of Regina Tournament.  We have a great pool.  We play University of Manitoba and University of Sask on Friday.  Round out pool play with last years national silver medallist U of Alberta.  Then depending how we do play an A side of B side playoffs.

I will update how it went next Tuesday.

We also had the opportunity to take our team photo's, head shots and video introductions for each player.  We had a fun time with this.  Alex Beshara he is our Communications Officer Social Media.  He documented the event for us.