Coaching Self-Analysis

Jim Stone recently put up a great blog regarding improving as a coach. And he’s right–it can be really awkward to have someone else watch your practice…though Jim was nice enough to do that for me some time back–thorough and it changed how I do certain things.

So–I decided to self-examine how I am running practice. It’s Jr High season–important for context because teaching 13/14u is different than a HS varsity! Also–we’ve got 20+ kids on one court and one day/week, it’s 46 kids and one coach!

SEMI-TANGENT: The stuff below is in the order of Stone’s bullet points so if you open the link and read his stuff, this follows along. (It’s also worth going through his other stuff–there’s some stuff there that is pretty profound in getting you to think about things for your own growth…it’s one of the things I’ve loved about knowing Jim for the past 30 [eek] years…there’s a lot of thought going on in that brain of his!)

TIME MANAGEMENT:

7 minutes set-up; 2-3 minutes for questions/administrative reminders like when the bus leaves; 3 minutes dynamic stretching; 10 minutes jump-serving sequence; 1 minute switch to serve-receive; 20-25 minutes serve-receive; two 2-3 minute drink/bathroom break; 20-25 minutes serve-receive; 30 minutes 6v6 with freeball entered; 30 minutes ‘regular’ VB.

Time spent explaining total: 12 minutes (about 14% of the practice)

Drink breaks: 5 minutes this time

Minimal transfer drills: None…though on other days, I suspect some would call them minimal-transfer…those would be 10-15 minutes.

Warmup time: 3 minutes. I don’t know what Jim means by ‘unfocused ball-handling’…so…not charted.

Shagging volleyballs: As needed–but since I have so many kids, I try and make sure that when a group comes off the court/rotates out, they shag while the drill on-court continues. We’ll call this 2-3 minutes though because with so many kids, balls get away and cause things to stop.

Post-practice evaluation: Formally? None. Informally, 15 minutes (the length of my drive home)…and then roughly the same time considering the last practice before I create the next practice plan.

Player interaction before/after: Limited…but with Jr High practices, they go straight from school to practice and then have parents waiting for pickup, so opportunities are limited. The other limit is being a male coach alone with only 1-2 players in a building–won’t do that. Communication otherwise is handled via school’s text-app and email.

***So…while I work on eliminating the coach talking moments…it’s still 1/7th of practice. I’m costing my team a ton of contacts. All I can think is “My God, how bad was this when I was starting out as coach???”

Total non-volleyball time in a 90-minute practice: 7+2+3+5+12 = 29…yowsers….1/3 of practice.

COACHING FEEDBACK:

Feedback–verbal and visual. After matches, statistics as well. Written as requested. Video–not within practice but we’ve used video links to Youtube, etc, to illustrate things such as how to rotate.

I’d like to think I’m providing a more positive feedback on how to build up desired behaviors, but I catch myself saying “Don’t ______” a ton…frickin’ bad habit I’ve been aware of since seeing Harjiv Singh’s 2019 presentation with John Speraw.

Delay before getting to repeat the skill–none if we are working on a skill (block practice…), otherwise it depends–is sometimes 2-3 minutes if in the middle of a 6v6 drill.

No stoppage during the blocked segments. None during the 6v6 regular play. 7 stops doing 6v6 starting with freeballs. Feedback was team oriented (where to go on a freeball, identifying freeball, etc)

Player listening: Surprisingly, yes…recency bias but I “feel” they pay more attention than the high schoolers. This makes me wonder if the HS situation is the nature of HS students OR if I am talking to much/not providing proper information.

Feedback is for everyone. I was able to make comments to all players at some point during practice. Really I think I have the reverse issue than Stone worrying about talking to those who get playing time too much–I think I MAY be spending NOT ENOUGH time talking with them.

PRACTICE FORMAT:

Are the players challenged beyond current abilities? Yes–absolutely. The question in my mind (also thinking of my HS team)–am I going too far with the challenges? Am I asking them to aim too high–and potentially discouraging them with failure because the challenge was too hard? …related to this–is this an issue related to me being in my first year with the program, so that it is as much about adapting to a new coach as anything else?

Game related constraints–with the Jr High, I have not encouraged focus on one aspect of play, other than by having distinct serve-receive practice separate from 6v6 play.

Do I start play with a serve? 50% of the time.

Do I have specific, measurable objectives? Other than targets for when a drill ends, no. This changes with matches–I keep track of how many times we are successful using three contacts compared to our opponents to emphasize playing the right way. With Jr High–I’m sitting here writing and struggling to think how I can incorporate this into my practice planning. Obvious area for improvement, I reckon.

Am I working on strengths or weaknesses? Neither? Looking at the plan and practice–it’s ultimately about serving and serve-receive. Whether a strength or weakness, those are necessities and can never be good enough. I have not thought about practice in terms of improving a strength or eliminating a weakness. Trying to emphasize playing-time for as many people as practical, is this a way to think with this group? Or is strength/weakness easiest to modify by making lineup adjustments?