I’ve previously posted on the subject of correlations to league success. In that post I used NCAA volleyball data to look at how the major reported related to how a team did in their conference. As you can see from the table below, Hitting Efficiency [ (Kills-Errors)/Total Attempts ] had the highest correlation to match wins, with Kills/Set not far behind. Aces/Set and Blocks/Set are lower, and Digs/Set comes last. In a similar timeframe, Kyle from SoloStats did his own analysis using matches from a variety of levels entered using that platform. Here is a slide from a presentation he put toge ..read more

I came across this question in a Facebook group looking for advice on games to run in volleyball open gyms: I need all of your games that challenge players in some way or another, I am a new varsity coach this coming season. With the way rules are in Michigan I can give them activities to choose from but it cannot be drills or lineups so more 2v2, 3v3, control, ball placement, or hitting/serving games where all of the players are participating at once and I am pretty much not needed other than to explain setup and rules. There are SOOOO many ways to go with this! This coach is basically talkin ..read more

In a discussion about my post on teaching center-line (midline) passing vs. platform angle someone referenced this article. It’s about a study done on passers in the 2019 women’s World Championships. The author of the piece said the objective was to “…test the paradigm that serves in the women’s game are coming to passers so quickly that it is virtually impossible to get behind the ball to pass it effectively.” I am all for research, of course. I also think, however, that we need to be cautious in our interpretations of the findings. Research almost always has limitations. Also, it’s easy to f ..read more

I knew early on Rise above the net: on youth volleyball by Peter Bristotte was going to be a challenging read. It begins with a fairly detailed and wordy introduction. Things didn’t get any easier from there. Frankly, this book needed an editor – both for content and some typo/grammatical issues. It’s listed at over 650 pages! This isn’t to say there aren’t good bits. You just have to weed through a lot of verbiage to get there. The content Chapter 1 is a kind of survey of Western philosophy and how it can link to coaching. There are a few interesting observations, but my guess is most reader ..read more

Here’s a quote from the book The Five Dysfunctions of a Team that I think will resonate with a lot of experienced coaches. Ironically, teams that avoid ideological conflict often do so in order to avoid hurting team members’ feelings, and then end up encouraging dangerous tension. When team members do not openly debate and disagree about important ideas, they often turn to back-channel personal attacks, which are far nastier and more harmful than any heated argument over issues. If you’ve coached for a while, you likely will have had at least one team, if not many, that have had issues with th ..read more

This is the first of what I anticipate to be a series of journal entries. It will cover my work as Indoor Performance Director (IPD) under my broader responsibilities as Strategic Manager for Talent for Volleyball England. My role as IPD is to oversee and provide direction for England’s indoor national teams – from the Seniors down through the age group teams. The latter have mainly been in the U17 and U19 categories, but we’re now thinking of them more in terms of U18 and U20 to line up with CEV age group competitions. We’re also adding U22s, and maybe down the road we’ll add U16s as well. Si ..read more

In a previous post I encouraged coaches to teach young athletes how to throw properly as part of developing volleyball arm swing mechanics. It’s really something that should be part of physical literacy development generally. We don’t always get kids who’ve been well prepared in that context, though. As a result, it’s an issue we may have to overcome. Something that doesn’t help in this context, though, is coaches kind of over-thinking. Let me explain. I was once in a gym observing a men’s pro team practice. On a side court, I could see a team of 13s girls from the same club training as well ..read more

Offensive systems are a frequent talking point in the Coaching Volleyball group on Facebook. I’ve written before on the subject of the best offensive system for young players, and why no high level teams playing a 4-2 system. As such, I won’t go down that path in this post. Instead, I’m going to focus on the idea that a 4-2 system only has 2 attackers. Yes, it’s obviously true that in a 4-2 system (which features a front row setter in either Position 2 or 3) only features two front row attackers. But front row players aren’t the only attackers in volleyball. There are 3 players in the back row ..read more

People love statistics. And why wouldn’t not? The issue is, as coaches, stats are intended to serve a purpose. A purpose, I should note, that’s different for coaches than for parents and other spectators. We want them to tell us one of two things. In the moment, we want them to give us information we can use to make decisions. That could be about personnel. Maybe it relates to tactics. Depends on your situation. The other thing we want stats to tell us is something we can use to assess our training so far and/or to give us our training focus moving forward (remember the two big jobs of a coach ..read more

One of the regular challenges of working with youngsters new to the sport is teaching them volleyball rotations and volleyball court positioning. In this post I will provide some tips and ideas to hopefully make it a bit easier. Before getting into rotation and positions, though, let’s make sure everyone knows the overlap rules. A lot of people get that wrong – including coaches. Teaching the Structure: Thinking in terms of variations and cues How you start teaching volleyball rotations and positioning depends on your offensive system. If it’s a basic 6-6 where the player in one particular spo ..read more