If your preventing problems, sometimes your really not helping!

Parents I have seen three times in one year kids have panic attacks on the volleyball court when things were not going well in their performance. I also know these kids and they have helicopter parents who try to prevent there kid from having to deal with anything. I have also found that kids have a crushing paralysis when I comes to dealing with the challenges in their own skills or strategies. Most don't want to here what they need to do to improve and they don't want to figure out the corrections with guidance. They want to be told they are great, get a little advice so long as it doesn't tell them the real negatives, and then they expect a quick fix. Kids need to be taught to apply them selves despite adversity and that any thing worth having is not easily earned. Here is a great article to articulate what a problem this has become. Click Here, Thanks for lead Nik

Setter foot work:

The objective is to be able to set from pin to pin with a perfect or non-perfect pass. In short from anywhere to anywhere. At any tempo would be nice but that really comes down to your personnel and probabilities. There are also some options that are going to allow the hitter to create their own shot and help reduce setter errors. Like setting a high safe ball at 5x5 (five feet off the net and five feet in from the side line) from a bad pass allows the hitter to do the work of scoring.

Lets talk about non-perfect pass footwork:
Foot work is the key to making work. By starting from an open position (shoulders and hips open to the passers) taking and taking split step as the ball is contacting the passers arms greatly increases the setters ability to get to almost any ball. From the open position  and split step the setter can get to balls passed out over the front of their right shoulder by going (Right, Left, Right,) and balls passed towards the right side line that are out over the left shoulder with (Left, Right, Left) If the setter is unable to get both feet down and set squared to the left side, the setter can pivot of the last step as they make contact with the ball while squaring to the left side. Here are few examples pay attention to the setter in white.
 Here is a good Right Left Right and it gets set to a front row hitter who makes a great shot high over the block

The first set in this clip has poor footwork with the setter drifting into the net. The second set is the one to pay attention to.  Right Left Right Foot work

A nice Spin Set

Left Right Left

Setting location, distance, and depth as the keys to a setters strategy when dealing with non-perfect passes. The objective is to score, so what height, what distance off the net and how wide or inside should you set to score the most points. Here are a few graphs from the a study by Gil Fellingham to help you make those choices. The show how high the probability is for the ball to be killed depending on the three dimensions mentioned.

                                                Distance off the net

Height & Distance of set

Who it gets set to

There is no "I" in Coach

Coaching is the artful balance of teaching, leading, and managing. That being said where do you begin trying to improve your self as a coach. At City Beach we rank leadership as the highest valued skill set a coach can have. Leadership is the lynch pin of the three. Knowledge of the game and teaching methods are highly important around here but it is all for not if players won't listen to you. A player has to know that your actions are for their benefit not your own. It is only then that they will trust you and only then can they find their own motivations to improve.

Here is a great clip from the Harvard Business Journal about leadership (click here) and it would appear that the greatest failing of leadership is the leaders own ego, and the faulty path taken by those who are self centered.

Improving your game

We often her about how someone is a natural athlete which odd since science has proven repeatedly that doesn't exist.  I sometimes her about how two players should be put on team together because they were on the same school team, club teams, and they had the same coaches. This logic is usually motivated by folks that are uniformed, or are just being to hyper about their child's self esteem, or how the family looks. No two kids will have the same amount of benefit from a coach, it's not possible. Its not the coaches fault it's the fact that the kids are individuals that causes this. Two brother from the same family can me very close together in age but yet have totally different perceptions of life growing up. The point being is that no one can account for what a player was thinking. Most of the kids are hearing identical messages 90% of the time, but in the end one will have improved more because they made better use of their own thoughts. Two kids can be set the same slight out of position ball. Player A thinks about how to handle the bad situation better next time and Player B is thinking about how it's the setter fault. Learning from feedback and learning from mistakes makes all the difference. A growth minds set can helps players be much more productive.

Follow this link for a clue into why people learn differently  CLICK HERE

How to be growth minded