"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!