PROactive, not REactice coaching at next week's practice...

 The official week one is in the books. 

Many of you played this weekend and much was learned. As a coach, you began to conjure up the next few weeks practices and what to work on before or on the drive home.

The team served terribly, so Monday will be serving practice for an hour and a half and the conditioning, working on shoulders and arms since we can't seem to get a ball over the net or in bounds.

Or maybe our passing was rough. Forget about the fact we were playing teams that were maybe older and better than we were, but come Tuesday's two hours, we will break down passing again! Starting on our knees so we know what a platform should look like! Then tossing balls to partners or maybe even the coaches tossing the balls so our players learn to move their feet, all the while calling out all the things done wrong over the weekend's play!

Sound familiar?

Take a second and absorb this quote from author Todd Beane: "The problem with creating training sessions merely as a response to a match are numerous. 1. It is reactionary 2. One match is unreliable data 3. It thwarts a cohesive learning journey 4. It will leave massive development gaps."

In other words, be PROactive, not REactive.

Volleyball is a random game. Sometimes teams serve great, sometimes terrible but most of the time, probably, in between!

The Brooklyn Nets, as of today, are the number 1 free throw shooting team in the league with a 81.9% conversion rate. Yet, the best free throw shooting team in the Association in its last 10 games had the following free throw percentages:

93.8%

75.0%

81.5%

68.8%

77.8%

84.0%

80.8%

89.7%

95.0%

86.4%

Um...68.85? 77.8? 75.0% This can't be! This is the best professional free throw shooting team in country! (as of 1-9-2022) 

But it not only can be but it IS. It's called regression to the mean and it helps you understand why you don't need to work on serving for the rest of the month after having a rough match from the line.

Another factor is the biases a coach has imbedded in their subconscious. A text from a high school coach a few months ago exclaimed her frustration, after having lost a close and important match in five sets, with "...how do I get a good pass served between zones 6 and 1! It cost us the match tonight!"

With a little follow up, it didn't cost them the match that night. Inexperience, a better, stronger and more experienced opponent cost them the match. But two of the last three points were mishandled serves to the zone 1-6 gap. 

Recency bias in action! Defined, recency bias is a cognitive bias wherein we give more importance to the most recent event. If your team missed their last three serves of a match, chances are you are thinking serving is your biggest hurdle to winning in a few weeks.

It's hard not to get lost in these human thought processes but stop and think, "what is best for my team next practice?" If serving is a rough spot, are you serving in all your games and drills? If it's serve receive, how many serves are going over the net in games or drills or the infamous "serve and chase" with no reception opportunities?

Don't panic, it's a long season. Do you have a season plan drawn up? Where your team is starting and where you want them in May or June and most importantly, what- by month- are you doing to get them there? If you don't have one, buy your assistant and another outside observer a cup of coffee and have them help you put one together. Use this tool as your compass to what to practice and when. 

Don't allow biases and the idea of regression to the mean to dictate next week's practices. Stay the course toward what you want your team to look like in the end and plan accordingly. 

(Speaking of staying the course, apologies to those few who read this blog. After some time spent looking at other avenues, this blog will continue. Please let us know if you have questions or subjects you would like to address. Outreach@azregionvolleyball.org)