Power is more important than control

This is about baseball but not really. It’s more about volleyball and physical development. Trust me. Be patient.

There are certain baseball pitchers known for dominance, being unhittable. Post-WW2, the most known of those are probably Bob Feller, Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson. There are a ton of others who fall by the wayside due to injury, etc. Through age 28-30, they all walked a ton of batters, had little control. After that age, all three dropped their walk rate by at least one per game. They were all in the majors for many years before finally harnessing their control.

There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of major league pitchers who had great fastballs and learned control after reaching the majors. But what of the opposite? What about the pitchers who came to the majors with control but without the ability to throw ‘cheese’?

Here’s the list:

Notice anything about that list? Uh-huh. There’s no one on it. I went back to 1945. There are no pitchers who reached the majors and then suddenly found a dominating fastball.

Does that hold true for other sports? You bet. Football quarterbacks are the same–either they reach the NFL with the ability to zip the ball into tight spots or they become career backups (or out of the league quickly). But the reverse (the Feller-Ryan-Johnson)–that’s going on right now with Josh Allen in Buffalo. Experience and reps can teach a QB touch and location, but not zip.

So what does any of this have to do with coaching, Jim?

If you frequent volleyball forums or happen to be around club and high school practices, you’re going to hear a phrase pretty regularly: “Not so hard, just get it in.” The whole idea of ‘get it in’ is repeated regularly–and coaches emphasize this point by mandating physical punishments (like burpees, etc) for hitting a ball out of bounds or serving wide. Kids are smart. Pretty quickly, they learn to NOT hit the ball hard. They learn that they MUST control it first and foremost.

See the problem? Using baseball as a guide, there’s 75 years of precedence that control-first does not lead to speed later. Why would it suddenly work here with volleyball? (It doesn’t)

If you are teaching young people to be good hitters in volleyball–you need to *Encourage them to take big rips at the ball. *When they take big swings, they’re going to hit the net, miss the ball, sail it to the back wall. Oh well. Don’t penalize this–praise the big swing. *Let them swing aggressively during competitions even if you lose points *Don’t worry about the scoreboard. In the big picture, few people care about Jr High win-loss records. Just as few care about club tournament wins. When you look at it, the only place where wins really ‘matter’ for youth sports is at the high school varsity level. Keep that in mind. *Remember–these are adolescents! With young people (under 15-16), they are still busy developing physically. The tall kid in 7th grade may be awkward because they grew 6″ in a month…but next year?? Oh, what a different world!

And for all of these things, you have to be patient. The payoff isn’t instantaneous. It comes down the road, a process taking months and years. Really.

As a personal example:

When I coached high school, I also coached the Jr High program (7th + 8th). In six years running those junior high programs, I NEVER had a team with a winning record. But those Jr High kids developed–and none of them had a losing record on JV or Varsity in High School–because during Jr High, they developed ‘fastballs’–which by HS, they were learning to control. They could pound serves, quick-sets, and high balls…and it was always enjoyable to watch the teams that beat us 1-2 years before in Jr High ball stand in shock as they were beat 15-3, 15-3 by the same kids they wiped out previously.

*YOU* can do that with your program. All you have to do is let kids develop the fastball. Let them make mistakes. And then in a year or two, enjoy having your own Feller, Ryan, or Johnson in your lineup!