The Poetry of Reality...

April 16, 2020. “The American Medical Association (AMA) believes decisions about public health should be made based on science, evidence and data.” 

April 29, 2020. “Across the country, governors have been forming pacts.Those leaders are highlighting the importance of using science and advice from health officials rather than politics to choose when to reopen the economy.”

April 16, 2020. “The health and welfare of more than 300 million Americans deserves more than political 'instinct.' Physicians and scientists are taught to base all decisions on foundational rigorous scientific principles, the best evidence available and the expertise of medical and public health professionals.”

April 13, 2020. “In separate announcements, the governors said they've agreed to let science, not politics, determine when to lift social and business restrictions.”

April 12, 2020. “Any plan to reopen society MUST be driven by data and experts, not opinion and politics.”

April 15, 2020. “Along with expanding testing and tracing, governors across the country are highlighting the importance of using science and advice from health officials rather than politics to choose when to reopen the economy.”

April 2, 2020. “The COVID-19 pandemic raises our awareness of the importance of science, both in research and international cooperation.”

March 18, 2020. “In a recent column (“I’m skeptical about climate alarmism, but I take coronavirus fears seriously,” Ideas, March 15), Jeff Jacoby sought to reconcile his longstanding rejection of the wisdom of scientific expertise when it comes to climate with his embrace of such expertise when it comes to the coronavirus.”

In the days, weeks and months that follow, as our cities and countries reawaken to a new world, we can take solace in the fact that maybe the idea of science has reentered our global conversation. 

Science has been trivialized by politics, polarizing rancor and mistrust in recent years because the findings didn't parallel the wants of those dismissing it.

But now it is life threatening. People have reengaged with science. They have dismissed claims of quick cures and baseless over the counter ideas to stay healthy. This remerging of science into our daily lives should be used not just to thwart a pandemic knocking at our doors. It should be used for daily decisions and future discussion.

Many of you have heard the phrase "science based coaching" and maybe you have embraced it or maybe you are still on the fence. 

But what this glacially important time in our history has shown us is that the frauds and hucksters trying to make money at the expense of public fear and confusion cannot be taken seriously if science is your basis of information.

As a coach, your principles should be rooted in science, not conjecture or opinion. Find those principles based in science and watch your teams learn more with better retention and transfer and more engagement. 

Let us know if you need information to help you with these decisions. We can point you in the right direction. In the meantime, check out the USAVed website for some insightful science based videos on how our top athletes are trained. 

The wonderful Richard Dawkins quote says it all. "Science is the poetry of reality."

Tribology's secret weapon...

You don’t have to be a tribologist to understand it.

But you are affected by it every day whether you know it or not. And now might be a good time to think about how you can use it to YOUR advantage!

A tribologist is someone who studies the science and engineering of interacting surfaces in relative motion. Included in that is the science of friction.

We aren’t talking about friction in the sense of two objects creating heat or how tires grip the road. We are talking about the theory and the uses of just such an idea.

One such company that has embraced the idea of LESS friction is Amazon. It was originally called “Cadabara” but when a lawyer misquoted it as “cadaver” the founder Jeff Bezos went with the less confused Amazon. 

When it started, it was online books, compact discs, computer software and hardware and videos. Part of the idea was to take the friction out of buying these categories. Bookstores often had thousands of books in shelves all over the store and after a drive, 20 minutes searching and then finally asking a clerk who told you they were out of stock, you had spent 45 minutes to an hour trying to buy this book. Amazon took the friction out. Go online, find the book, click it, check out and in 2 minutes the book was coming to your door. 

 In 1997, Amazon’s stock opened at $18 a share. Fast forward 23 years later, the stock is at over $2,400 per share (as of press time). Most all of us now shop on Amazon for almost everything including groceries, clothes, hardware, software and of course, books. One of the big reasons for the success of Bezos’ company is his ability to take the friction out of sales. Find it, one click and it’s on the way to your home. No hurdles, no travel, no friction. 

This idea can also work in reverse. If you are one that wants to stop eating oreos at night before bed, apply some friction and make it harder for yourself. Don’t buy them or have them in your home so if you want them you will have to go to the store before bed, an idea after a long day that is very unappetizing.

If you are using too much social media, apply some friction. Take the password memory off of your phone so every time you sign into a website you have to put the e mail and password in…every time. After a while, studies show, you will not use that app as much if at all.

Our society is so frictionless we rarely even notice. Drive thrus are a way for restaurants and coffee shops to get you to order from them with very little friction: you need not leave your car, it’s put into your hand and now you can pay with the swipe of your cell phone instead of carrying cash or a credit card. Friction free! 

Our daily clicks eliminate friction. Online payments, watching movies or t.v. series with one click, almost any subject in academia is a click of your laptop, register to vote online, talk to friends across the globe, conduct business, it’s all a keyboard away!

So how does this affect us as coaches? How can we utilize the idea of eliminating friction into our Coaching? Dr. Joe Baker says, “Coaches need to stop seeing themselves as transmitters of information and start seeing themselves as architects of the optimal learning environment.” What does that friction free optimal learning environment look like?

Maybe on a visual level, there is a white board with the practice written on it including player names or numbers onto every drill. The coach takes the friction out of every drill and transition to another one by naming the drills so the players recognize them and assigning the players their positions to eliminate the friction and wasting of time. 

On a feedback level, long drawn out explanations will lead to a loss of attention and then the inevitable friction of trying to get that engagement back. Quick cues, little to no extra feedback, one focus and especially not stopping drills to talk to just one player about their improvement.

How can a coach get conditioning into their practice with less friction? Including it into the practice by sprinting to positions, sprinting to shag the balls and sprinting to grab water is an easy start. And then just playing the game itself, which is the best way to get into volleyball shape; play volleyball!

On a learning level however, friction can be a decisive element in whether a player retains and transfers what they learn or not. A drill with just one skill done over and over and over, called a “blocked” drill may disengage an older athlete from what they are doing and now the drill becomes a waste of time for both athlete and coach: no learning is accomplished.

But take that drill and give it extra reps at different skills, add scoring, make it game like and now, with lots of friction applied, the athlete must focus more on what they are doing thus learning at a much higher and faster rate than before. In this instance, friction is a welcome addition to practice.

What other ideas can you think of to utilize friction in your practices, in your season? Not just for you but for your athletes, parents and Club Director or Athletic Director?

There is efficiency to the idea of less friction which saves  wasted time,  spawns practices that move with pace and are able to accomplish more and athletes that stay engaged. The idea of adding friction can help athletes stay involved mentally and physically, reach beyond themselves and retain and transfer what they have learned in practice much more effectively.

You don’t need to be a tribologist to understand the idea of friction, just look around. How did you read this blog? In the mail? Probably not.

Enjoy the frictionless life we lead, use that extra time wisely and take that extra time to make yourself the best coach you can be.

It’s an investment that will never be lost.

Closed for Maintenence...

Take a few minutes.

Relax.

Reflect and react.

Closed for Maintenence

"You haven't taught them..."

There are some coaching principles that we have shared with you over the years of this blog. Some of them might be contrary to what you have learned from past coaches, how you were trained or what your team may have won with and so you discount it for obvious reasons.

But there is one of these coaching principles that is woven into our everyday lives. So much so that we don’t even think about it BUT we use and rely on it every day.

The idea of game like!

My friend Keaton is a pilot in training. He is mid 20’s and loves to travel which has lead to his journey into flight school and soon, perhaps, flying your family on your next vacation. How confident would you be if the only thing Keaton had used in his training was a simulator and had never flown an actual plane before? 

Even Keaton wouldn’t be comfortable with this although it would be much cheaper and less school time for him! "Simulators are a great way to train for flying, however they are not completely sufficient for learning to fly. Even with a full motion simulator, some things just don't substitute for the real thing. Using a standard flight school simulator like a Redbird and even with the full motion on, it is very hard to simulate the feel of a plane bouncing around in updrafts and downdrafts and creating that turbulent feel. The biggest issue probably comes from the layout of the cockpit. In your standard simulator, buttons, levers and switches are in very different locations compared to the actual flight deck of the aircraft. Often times I find myself searching for a button and realize it's not where I think it is and that throws me off a little bit. In my opinion, the best way to simulate flying an aircraft is to actually fly an aircraft."

Bruce Lee was a revered martial artist having learned and even invented different disciplines. But even this iconic master understood the benefits of game like training. “Knowing is not enough, we must apply. Willing is not enough, we must do.” 

He also punctuated the idea with this quote about un-game like training. “Too much horsing around with unrealistic stances and classic forms and rituals is just too artificial and mechanical, and doesn't really prepare the student for actual combat. A guy could get clobbered while getting into this classical mess. Classical methods like these, which I consider a form of paralysis, only solidify and constrain what was once fluid. Their practitioners are merely blindly rehearsing routines and stunts that will lead nowhere.”

Let’s take this to our everyday lives. Living in Phoenix in August, how comfortable are you calling up an air conditioning company who will send a repair person out that has ordered “Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Repair” by Roger Fischer from Amazon, all 352 pages, as their primary means of experience?

How reliable is the driver next to you on the 202 that has only read the Arizona driver’s manual and jumped behind the wheel? How satisfied will you be when you leave the Starbucks, drink in hand, made by someone who had only read the drink manual? How much will you pay to see the band that has learned how to read music but never picked up an instrument?

These are silly inclinations but it goes to the fundamental truth, or in this case, coaching principle. We get good at what we do.

Here is where we tend to go into our separate corners; the Blocked army vs. the Random army. It has to be one or the other of course because Coaching is ONLY black and white. Right? 

Of course not and we are not suggesting that you throw a bunch of 9 year olds out on the court with a ball and say play and expect much productive to happen! What we are saying is quite simply this: Your players will learn more about playing the game of volleyball if they train by playing the game of volleyball. (You can insert ANY sport in place of volleyball or for that matter, almost any skill!)

There is one other ancillary benefit to training more game like. Players love to play! If you think I’m wrong, then let me ask those of you who play on an Adult team in our Region or beyond. How many practices did you have this season? How many drills did you run? 

We love to PLAY this game. Players will learn more, be more engaged and will be able to train more WITHOUT a coach and learn intrinsic lessons that will make them better. 

One of the tragic parts of being in Coaching Education is when we see nodding heads in our IMPACT or CAP classes and then we head to the gyms to see our wonderful enlightenment being left in the manuals.

The greatest teacher probably in the history of USA Volleyball, Director of Sports Development John Kessel still struggles with this as he talked about recently on the Coach Your Brains Out podcast. “I’m still learning because I’ll do what I think is a pretty good clinic and if I come back and watch them a week later and it’s like, ‘Did you go to the clinic?’ I haven’t seen any change! So my biggest weakness is still as a teacher. As (John) Wooden says, ‘You haven’t taught them if they haven’t learned,’ and I’m saying learning is happening because they change or they do it more effectively.” t taught them..."

So we want to end this with one simple request for your next practice, something that is easy to do and a start toward a game like practice. Everything comes from over the net. Passing drills, games, etc. Every ball comes from over the net to a player. Put this into your next practice plan and you are well on your way.

Training in reality is a staple to the success of whatever we choose to do. Very few people on the planet can pick up three balls and start juggling or put on a pair of ice skates and not fall a few times. We learn by doing, by failing, by going again. Let’s play volleyball more, not just for the good of our teams but for the good of our sport!