A PREMIUM ON EFFORT
I think sometimes kids make mistakes. But if you’re lackadaisical, or you aren’t giving 100% effort or you have a bad attitude or being negative, I’m certainly open to repercussions. Those two things, you’re attitude and your effort are two things that are 100% in your control and it’s a choice and they can choose to change that.
Now again it kind of goes back to your coaching philosophy. For some coaches their response to a lack of attitude or effort might be to yell at them which could work, right? You could yell at them and it could increase their effort. But I might pull the kid aside and I might say how are you feeling? I would ask a couple of questions because I don’t want to make an assumption that the lack of effort is due to laziness. I want to make sure nothing is going on first: hey is something going on? Are you okay? And if all those answers are ya, I’m okay I’m just frustrated. Well, if you’re frustration is causing the lack of effort then my job is to help you be the best that you can be.
What I know about sports performance is that if I allow you to give half of your effort then I’m allowing you to be mediocre and I want better than that for you. I’m not going to allow you to be mediocre. That’s what I’m here for. I’m not doing my job if I allow you to practice at just mediocre because you know what happens, that transfers into mediocre performance and I'm not going to let you fail, that’s not going to happen. So I want you to sit out of this drill until you are ready to give 100% effort and being a good effort.
You throw them back in there and give them a chance to redeem themselves. You tell them what you want, you know, here’s what it looks like; I want you going all out for balls, I want you communicating with your teammates. You’ve been quiet. When they get frustrated they go quiet. I want you communicating on the court louder than anybody else. I want you to be responding with a smile. Whatever it is you want to see from the athlete you have to communicate that and then hold them to that behavioral standard.
Unfortunately, most coaches don’t hold their athletes to a behavioral standard; they just hold them to a performance standard. You can’t control performance. You can certainly influence it with your attitude and effort. You can increase your probability that you’ll get the right outcome. Once you hit a ball or make a toss on a serve, all they can really do is the best that they can do. So to punish them or to focus on those outcomes is really quite pointless. It just undermines what the coach wants to do in the long run.
GIVE THEM WHAT THEY NEED
They’re all athletes. They all want to be great and they all have different issues that they work through. So what I try to do is work with that person individually and figure out what’s best for them in that moment whether it’s the National Team level or the College level or even high school level. It’s just about figuring out what that person needs in a given moment of time and doing what helps meet those needs.
I always tell coaches, one of my favorite sayings is if you give them what they need then you’ll get what you want in the long run. The National Team guys are more mature, they know their bodies well they understand the mental game, their volleyball IQ is a lot higher so I think what you’re doing at that level is checking in, refining, maintaining. But at that level you still have social dynamics and pressures. I mean the pressure is pretty high for them and this is what they do for a living. At the college level, they go to school and it’s a whole different experience. It’s certainly a whole different ball game in the types of pressure they’re experiencing. Pressure is pressure so if we can peel some of those back in terms of the way that we coach and the way that we interact with them then we certainly want to do that.
Honestly it comes down to wanting them to truly have the best possible experience, that’s what we really want for them. Yea, it’s the National Team but I want you to have fun, I want you to enjoy volleyball, I want you to enjoy practice today, I want you to play hard, I want you to feel good about yourself. You still want those things for them. You genuinely want them to have a great experience and it’s truly special and they should be able to feel that. Not very many people get to do that.
LITTLE VOICES
There are confidence issues at every level. Every human being has situations where you battle with that little voice inside your head, sometimes confident, sometimes not confident no matter what the situation. If it’s a sports situation or a social situation or an academic situation, there are going to be things that contribute to those feelings.
Actually, confidence is an attitude. It’s not just a feeling; it’s also paired with thoughts and behaviors. When you feel confident and you speak confidently you probably behave confidently. But when you don’t feel it, you probably don’t feel very positively and your behavior follows whether its poor body posture or head down or slow movements or your words, whatever it is. Everybody battles that.
DOES SPEED MATTER?
With the speed guns, it’s an outcome. The coaches that use the speed guns crack me up. It would be like asking a person to drive your car on the freeway at a certain speed without a speedometer.
If we’re going to tout process and if process and routine are going to be the most important things, then why are we calculating the speed which is an outcome? If they’re doing the process correctly and their technique is good then speed should come. You always have a speed v. accuracy trade off in a task like serving and our philosophy is that accuracy is more important.
Say they can hit it at 75 miles per hour. Is that the goal? It depends on what the coach wants. We (UCLA) get criticized a lot for our serving philosophy because we might miss more serves because we believe in serving tough so we might miss more serves. But we also serve more aces then other teams in the country. It’s about what you want as a coach; do you believe in just putting the ball in? Do you believe that if the player before you misses the serve do you just get it in? I don’t believe in any of that.
If they’re hitting it the best they can, does the speed matter? So the kid tells the coach hey, I hit it the best I can and the coach says that was 62 and I think you’re capable of 65, do it better. What good is that if they hit it the best they could? Why does speed matter?
SUBSTITUTIONS
Subbing is fragile. What you might do is sacrifice a point in the short term to get what you want out of the athlete longer. Most coaches won’t make that sacrifice because they are so focused on the outcome: they want to win NOW. The thing about John that makes him unique is he does not fear losing. And when you don’t fear losing you’re able to make decisions that are long term decisions instead of reactions in a moment. And that allows you to stay with kids and they’re not going to always be at their best and they are going to have an off day and it’s hard to build trust and confidence in them. You sometimes have to stick with them so they know in the end that you believe in them, and that’s important.
COACHING DISSERTATION
In terms of my dissertation, I can't think of anything off the top of my head that truly surprised me, mainly because I have studied coaching for so long. However, I did think the model and the explanation of how the components; for example the environment, the system, the coach, helps us understand why so many coaches are unsuccessful. They have too many breakdowns in the background components. They don't have good relationships or they haven't created the right culture or they aren't consistent in who they are. So all of those things detract from their ability to coach and to get the kids to buy into what they are coaching. The greatest coaches have very little cracks in the armor of their program.
I always tell coaches, one of my favorite sayings is if you give them what they need then you’ll get what you want in the long run. The National Team guys are more mature, they know their bodies well they understand the mental game, their volleyball IQ is a lot higher so I think what you’re doing at that level is checking in, refining, maintaining. But at that level you still have social dynamics and pressures. I mean the pressure is pretty high for them and this is what they do for a living. At the college level, they go to school and it’s a whole different experience. It’s certainly a whole different ball game in the types of pressure they’re experiencing. Pressure is pressure so if we can peel some of those back in terms of the way that we coach and the way that we interact with them then we certainly want to do that.
Honestly it comes down to wanting them to truly have the best possible experience, that’s what we really want for them. Yea, it’s the National Team but I want you to have fun, I want you to enjoy volleyball, I want you to enjoy practice today, I want you to play hard, I want you to feel good about yourself. You still want those things for them. You genuinely want them to have a great experience and it’s truly special and they should be able to feel that. Not very many people get to do that.
LITTLE VOICES
There are confidence issues at every level. Every human being has situations where you battle with that little voice inside your head, sometimes confident, sometimes not confident no matter what the situation. If it’s a sports situation or a social situation or an academic situation, there are going to be things that contribute to those feelings.
Actually, confidence is an attitude. It’s not just a feeling; it’s also paired with thoughts and behaviors. When you feel confident and you speak confidently you probably behave confidently. But when you don’t feel it, you probably don’t feel very positively and your behavior follows whether its poor body posture or head down or slow movements or your words, whatever it is. Everybody battles that.
DOES SPEED MATTER?
With the speed guns, it’s an outcome. The coaches that use the speed guns crack me up. It would be like asking a person to drive your car on the freeway at a certain speed without a speedometer.
If we’re going to tout process and if process and routine are going to be the most important things, then why are we calculating the speed which is an outcome? If they’re doing the process correctly and their technique is good then speed should come. You always have a speed v. accuracy trade off in a task like serving and our philosophy is that accuracy is more important.
Say they can hit it at 75 miles per hour. Is that the goal? It depends on what the coach wants. We (UCLA) get criticized a lot for our serving philosophy because we might miss more serves because we believe in serving tough so we might miss more serves. But we also serve more aces then other teams in the country. It’s about what you want as a coach; do you believe in just putting the ball in? Do you believe that if the player before you misses the serve do you just get it in? I don’t believe in any of that.
If they’re hitting it the best they can, does the speed matter? So the kid tells the coach hey, I hit it the best I can and the coach says that was 62 and I think you’re capable of 65, do it better. What good is that if they hit it the best they could? Why does speed matter?
SUBSTITUTIONS
Subbing is fragile. What you might do is sacrifice a point in the short term to get what you want out of the athlete longer. Most coaches won’t make that sacrifice because they are so focused on the outcome: they want to win NOW. The thing about John that makes him unique is he does not fear losing. And when you don’t fear losing you’re able to make decisions that are long term decisions instead of reactions in a moment. And that allows you to stay with kids and they’re not going to always be at their best and they are going to have an off day and it’s hard to build trust and confidence in them. You sometimes have to stick with them so they know in the end that you believe in them, and that’s important.
COACHING DISSERTATION
In terms of my dissertation, I can't think of anything off the top of my head that truly surprised me, mainly because I have studied coaching for so long. However, I did think the model and the explanation of how the components; for example the environment, the system, the coach, helps us understand why so many coaches are unsuccessful. They have too many breakdowns in the background components. They don't have good relationships or they haven't created the right culture or they aren't consistent in who they are. So all of those things detract from their ability to coach and to get the kids to buy into what they are coaching. The greatest coaches have very little cracks in the armor of their program.
We want to thank Andrea for her time in this interview and we encourage all of you to read her dissertation entitled, "It's Not What They Do, It's How They Do It; Athlete Experiences of Great Coaching."