Kevin Boyke

Club

The Most Successful Clubs are:  Player Centered, Coach Run and Administratively Supported

Usually, one of these parts gets more power than the others, so you get a club that’s run by the administration (rather than the coach). Or, it’s coach centered (rather than player centered). All of this brings down the quality of the training, the player’s improvement level and thus the success of the club.  

A club should be focused on improving the athlete. The best person to do that is the coach, so the coach must be allowed to guide and direct the athlete’s improvement. But the coach cannot do this without an administration that supports the plan that the coach wants to implement. The administration helps the coach help the player and in turn the player’s improvement makes the club a success.

Photo by Kevin Boyke

Andrew Bacevich Quote (author of Limits of Power)

“In an affluent society (such as we have here in America) the tendency is NOT to fight… instead we choose to have others fight for us… for what do we need to fight for… when we have everything we need and we have others to do the work.”

Applied to sports, this also rings true.

Photo by Kevin Boyke

13 Going-On 14

Go to the park and you’ll see kids at play. Coach a 13’s team and you’ll see it too. But go over to the 14’s practice and much of the play that you see with the 13’s is gone. They are doing the same drills, but the sense of play is no longer there. It’s more professional, more adult… less enthusiastic, less fun, less joyous, i.e. it’s no longer play, it’s work. 

Some of the work is satisfying work, the kind of work that instills a sense of accomplishment in the player. But much of it isn’t, it’s just work.

So what happened? Only 1 year went by, but somewhere between the age of 13 and 14, volleyball changes and the joyous play starts to leave.  

Go to an 18’s practice and you’ll see the trend continue.

So I asked my 17’s team why they thought the 13’s still love to run, roll, dive and play whereas they have to find motivation to do those things. And (of course) their answers were exactly what all the psychologists have discovered through decades of research (these scientists should just coach a team and ask their players - it would save them a lot of time).

Top Reasons:  Pressure, Overload & Lack of Autonomy.

Pressure:  They talked about how they felt more and more pressure to play well, to earn a scholarship, and to get in better shape. These expectations are not communicated directly, instead they come in the form of statements like:  “You need to talk to your coach so you know what you need to do to start; I scheduled a Private Lesson for you so you can improve XYZ; You need to act this way so college coaches will notice you; You should go to this trainer and work on your vertical.” All great advice, but all communicating the following expectations:  you need to start, you need to be good, you need to get a scholarship, and you need to get in shape. Now if the players themselves made these statements, it’s different. But when adults make them, it’s pressure (which isn’t all bad - high expectations are good for kids). But over time, it all adds up and I think many of my 17’s are feeling the weight of it all. I’m as much to blame as anyone.

Overload:  The life of a So Cal High School Volleyball Player goes as follows:  Play 3 months of high school ball where you play & practice 5-6x a week. Before its over you tryout for club. After high school you get 1-2 weeks off and then club begins. Club is 7 months of practices, tournaments and workouts. WHILE CLUB IS STILL GOING ON, your high school coach holds daily conditioning & then has Spring Practices where for 4-6 weeks you practice with your high school team and then have to run over to club practice. After Junior Nationals (which is a 4 day tournament) you get another 1-2 weeks off (if you’re lucky) before your high school coach (who is acting out his fantasy of being a college coach in the Pac-10) makes you attend Summer Practices and workouts. When that’s over you get another 1-2 weeks before the fall high school season begins and we start this over again. And all of this wouldn’t be so bad, except much of this training is uninteresting, monotonous and something you do because you have to.

Lack of Autonomy:  Studies show that one of the greatest motivators in business is giving your employees autonomy. Let them decide when and how to work. Give them control over their work and thus their lives. In sports (at this age) the adults decide for the players. Parents decide what club they will tryout for, whether they need private lessons, whether they will go to practice or skip practice, etc. And coaches decide what they will do when they get to practice, what drills they must do, how much effort they must give, how enthusiastic they should be, what position they will play, etc. When do the players get to make any decisions about their own lives? How would you feel if all your decisions were made for you? Take the thing that you love doing the most (your favorite hobby) and imagine what it would be like if someone else told you when, how, where and for how long you were going to do this hobby. Would you still like it? No one tells the kids at the park what games they should play, they play what interests them.

And now, after all of this, we expect the players to have fun and enjoy themselves. If I was them I’d say, “look old man, you make me play this sport year round with less of a vacation than you get at your current job, you make all my decisions for me and force me to do what you want no matter how I feel about it and now you want me to be happy? You crazy.”

Photo by Kevin Boyke

Clinic with Coach Avital Selinger & the Netherlands’ National Team

Skill Development

In skill development it is necessary for a coach to first develop their “eye,” which is the ability to look at a player’s performance and know right away what’s proper and what’s improper. Once you have an “eye” for what works, it’s fairly easy to then identify the faults. You’ll see what’s different or what’s missing from the player’s behavior and can then move to correct. The next step is to identify the reason(s) for the faults (what’s causing them to make the error). Is it lack of strength? Lack of experience? Lack of effort or focus? A lack of repetitions? Once these questions are answered, a coach must then devise a plan to correct the fault. This plan isn’t just one drill (or action), but a progression of drills (or a series of actions) geared to take the player from one level to another and to another so that over time they have reached an elite level of performance. 

A good first step in such a plan is to develop “action words,” which are verbal cues that elicit the correction. These cues must be words of action. They should be something that the athlete can understand and relate to. Then, provide visual feedback in the form of video of them doing the skill followed by video of experts performing the move correctly. The most difficult and important step is to get them to feel it. You have to get them to do it right so that they can feel what that’s like. In volleyball we call coaches who can do this “trainers.” Give me a player and a ball and I can use that ball to get the player to do the move I want, and I can do that over and over again until it becomes habit. Do do this requires of me a certain skill set (hitting and tossing) as well as that coaches “eye” we were just talking about.

Photo by Kevin Boyke

Changing Culture

The one thing in life that we know will always be true is that all things change. Life is impermanent. It’s not the same world that it was a minute ago, even a second ago. And yet, most people choose to resist change rather than to embrace it.

As coaches, we are change engineers, constantly trying to change the behaviors, the skills, and the physical conditioning of our players. In my experience, changing players physically through the implementation of new training systems with new progressions and teaching methods is the easy part. The hard part is changing a player’s mindset and especially changing a team’s collective mindset (their culture).

Changing culture entails changing attitudes and habits which are often ingrained and deeply entrenched into people’s minds (both conscious and subconscious). It requires everyone to share common goals, to sacrifice together in pursuit of those goals, all while maintaining a focus on moving forward. That last part is key, because if we take a look back, we often become enamored with the past which includes some good things, but it also includes all those little nasty reasons that caused all those loses which we are trying to eliminate by changing the culture.

Turing losers into winners doesn’t happen overnight. And it’s not done by changing just a few things, but rather by changing a thousand little things that add up to a collective whole that influences all those within it to achieve.

Again, it’s not easy. I’ve found that losers are comfortable being where they are. They have all the excuses and seem to revel in being downtrodden. For them it feels like the change we don’t want happens in a second, but change we do want takes months of sacrifice, hard work and suffering (there’s some truth to that). And even the winners on a team have a tough time with the process because they want it all now and therefore become impatient with themselves and especially with those around them when they aren’t winning immediately. 

Change requires dedication, commitment and a focus on the goal ahead all the while realizing that it will take time. Many are called but few choose the path toward excellence.  And it’s all about the choices we make. Make the choice to change or make the choice to stay the same. And if you choose to change remember… this is no place for tourists.

Photo by Kevin Boyke

TVN (Norway) Rolling

(Source: youtu.be)

What Are You Doing

Ask yourself some simple questions as you plan your workout today. Are you making them better or are you just making them tired? Are you being productive or are you just keeping them busy? Is what you are doing focused on need to do activities that reflect the demands of the sport and the needs of the individual athletes? How does today’s training session relate to yesterdays training and how does it lead to tomorrow?

We Have 2 Feet

Sounds obvious, but watch how many of your players are only moving one foot. Many players will push off their right foot when going to the left, but will actually shift onto their right foot, allowing them to push off of it when going to the right. Essentially they are only using the right foot to move. And the reverse will be true for others. In a sport where every second counts, especially when on defense, this shifting and pivoting can cost you points.  

Once you identify these players, you’ll notice other things that come from this habit. They will only be able to roll in one direction. They will only be able to crossover and run in one direction. Or they will crossover too early. And the most common negative result of poor movement skill is… falling. Players who can’t move fall down and the ball falls with them.

Correcting this habit is easy. Just force them to do it right in repeatable situations with the ball delivered in an obvious manner so that they don’t have to think too much about the ball, spending more time focusing on their feet. A partner drill where they toss to each other works great because it’s all of those things plus you can get a lot of reps in a short amount of time.  

Just like a basketball player needs to be able to layup with both their right and left hands, a volleyball player needs to be able to move quickly and efficiently in all directions.

The Secret to Success

I went to the bookstore yesterday and I searched the words, “secret to success.” And I got over 200,000 hits. There were over 200,000 books that claimed to have the “secret to success” and they were all in the bookstore. 

I thought, WOW… there are over 200,000 secrets to success? 200,000 things no one knows about except this author. That’s a lot of secrets. And these secrets are yours for only $19.95.

Now when I was young, I will admit, I read a lot of these books. And so you can trust me when I tell you… there isn’t any “secret” to success. It’s common sense.

To be successful at anything, you need to do 2 things: you need to work as hard as you can and you need to be passionate about what you are doing.

You need to work hard, because that’s the only way we get better.

And you need to be passionate so that you stay motivated to continue to work hard, because we don’t improve overnight - these things take time.

And that’s no secret. But you don’t sell books when your title is, “Wanna Lose Weight? Try Really Hard and Don’t Give Up.” Or “Wanna be a Great Volleyball Player? Work Really Hard all the Time.”

Instead you title your book, “The Secrets of Being a Great Volleyball Player.” Or, “The Secrets of Weight Loss.” Then you spend the next 200 pages basically saying, “work hard and stay at it.”

I guess I’m not going to sell many books.