What Has the 2010/11 Season Taught Me Vis-a-Vis Performance Analysis?

1.  The need to sell performance analysis to players. At the start of the season, I thought doing the volleyball statistics for myself as the coach was enough.  It was not.  The players had to buy into the statistics so players can use that to help them understand their own performance.

2.  Take time to explain operational definitions to players. Terms like kills and blocks have specific definitions.  Players need to know those terms so they understand what I am saying when I refer to them.

3.  Give players a match report and as soon as you can. This is so players have objective viewpoint of what actually happened in the match.  If possible, deliver the match report as quickly as possible so the match is still fresh on players’ minds.  Ours matches was on a Sunday and I would compile the volleyball statistics and write up the match report on Monday evening.

4.  Give players a scouting report when you can. Obviously, in the second half of the season when you have the videos of all the teams you played already.  I would watch the previous video of our next opponents to give some subjective coaching points in addition to giving the match statistics of the corresponding team.  Also, I would give some strategies for players to think about before our training session.  I would normally do this on a Tuesday before Thursday’s training session.

5.  Biomechanics is too hard to carry out without assistance or extra training time. With only 1 training session a week, I had to pack as much as I could in those 2 hours and using biomechanics was a luxury I couldn’t afford.  I couldn’t find a way to fit it in seamlessly without assistance or extra training time.

6.  The need to display volleyball statistics in an effective way. The volleyball spreadsheet I created was complex and had way too much information.  I would send out the spreadsheet as it was (a huge table of numbers) and it would turn players off reading it.  So I created some simple bar charts but I would have preferred to do something more appealing.