Unfortunately, we came up short. Which was tough. As a consultation, the down official asked us to help pull up the floor tape on the court as the winning team was celebrating. On behalf of my team I less than politely declined his invitation. Timing is something most officials lack at times like those.

On my 5 hour drive back to Phoenix from Las Vegas, I had plenty of time to reflect upon a great weekend. Here’s what I now know about coaching club:

1. It’s Really, Really Hard: Credit goes to those club coaches that can successfully manage a roster over the course of 3 days. I did a horrible job of getting kids the appropriate amount of playing time. In a tournament like Las Vegas, where ever point effects your seeding for the next day, it’s hard not too let your competitive nature win out.

2. Parents – Can Make or Break the Experience: The parents of the athletes on my club team are some of the best. They are passionate about the sport and their daughters. Yet, they have given all of us space to perform and coach as we see fit. Of course, there are countless stories that are the opposite. My assistant found a wonderful article that’s worth reading: http://www.thepostgame.com/blog/more-family-fun/201202/what-makes-nightmare-sports-parent

3. Transition: Even some of the best 18 Open teams in the country have a hard time with 1st ball sideout. Few are going to score a point on their first offensive attempt. Because of that, points are scored in transition. If you want to know what you need to do today in practice? You need to be able to transition.

4. You Need Outside Hitters: In the 18 Open Level, the teams that played late into the last day of the tournament had the best outside hitters. Period. Makes even more sense given how much the game is played in transition.

5. Serve/Serve Receive: I have no data to support this claim, it’s an observation. No one can dispute the fact that SportCourt (or similar surfaces) provide a playing surface that makes junior tournaments convenient for everyone – parents, college coaches and convention centers. However, they have made it tough to develop athletes that can serve and pass. There isn’t enough room to generate a decent spin serve. Nor can you go back and hit a great float serve. My athletes find they don’t have space to hit a decent jump float. Makes for a tough transition to college.

6. Rock, Paper, Scissors for the Rule Book: Is it possible to play by just one set of rules? College has a set of rules that differ from club. Internationally the rules are different from college. High School rules differ from club. Makes it tough to be an official. Especially when a college coach is coaching club and politely asking about the significance of a non-net call. In the final. At 31-30 in Game 2. With a chance to win the match in 2.

My team and I have just two week to prepare for Denver and the Colorado Crossroads Tournament. Lots’ to do.

1.  Allow your athletes to talk you into to compromising the training

Reality:  They will try.  You can’t compromise your way to great.

2.  Allow them to overcome your willingness to coach with their unwillingness to learn. (Keep teaching)

Reality:  It’s the thousandth time you say something that it may penetrate.  Don’t quit on 999.  We have a great blog post on “making changes” that you should read as well.

3.  Fall into the trap of trying to make them “feel better” after a match or tournament in which they performed poorly.

Reality:  Young people need “truth tellers” – not people who know how to blog smoke at them.  Tell them where they are, and what they need to get better.  They need coaching, not just kind words.  Tel them how to be BETTER.

4.  Coach for the short-term reward rather than the long term good of the athlete.  Allow parent pressure to influence you in this regard.

Reality:  At the young ages, our primary goal needs to be fundamentals.  Keep this as your focus.  Your domain is training your athletes.  Don’t let your parents intrude on your domain.

5.  Fail to get the athlete’s parents educated on the sport.  Nothing will fail faster than undereducated sport parents.

Reality:  Take the time to educate parents.  It will pay off!  Remember, you are sales agents first, and change agents second.

6.  Assistant coaches undermine the head coach in front of the athletes.

Reality:  It happens…  A lot.  If you’re an assistant coach and you have a problem with the head coach, you have two options….  Go work it out with the head coach directly, or keep your mouth shut.

7.  Fail to “listen” to the athletes, parents, or other coaches.  Just fail to listen, period.

Reality:  You can only learn with your mouth shut.  Seek to understand first, and then be understood.

8.  Beat athletes down with negativity.  There’s a difference between telling the truth and negativity.  Our athletes need confidence, encouragement, honesty, and trust.

Reality:  We are all guilty of being too negative at times.  Remember, you may think you are being positive, but perhaps your tone is negative?  Take a peak in the mirror from time to time to ensure you are not “a negative coach.”

9.  Argue with the athletes parents about what diet the child should be on.  Or whether they should go to church on Sunday or not.  Or whether a family vacation is more important than the Las Vegas Open?

Reality:  How would you like very parent on your team to provide his/her input on your practice plans?  They have parental areas, and you have coaching areas.  Allow their domain over their areas.  Discuss the “gray areas” with the child’s best interest at heart.

10.  Reinvent the wheel and fail to learn from anyone who coached in the 100 years prior to you.

Reality:  Honor all that has been learned.  It’s perfectly acceptable to “steal” great ideas from other coaches.  That’s how we learn.

I hope this helps!!

Mike Wall – Gold Medal Squared

REFERENCES
John Leonard, American Swimming Coaches Association

Our team started out full of promise and hope. We had a very skilled group of guys that were willing to work hard and had a burning desire to win. Every team has its bumps and bruises, but our bumps were such that they derailed our hopes of winning.
One of the big bumps was that our coach was inexperienced and lacked volleyball knowledge. Although he had been successful in lower divisions, this was his first year of coaching in the country’s first division. Practices were often a waste of time. He repeatedly ran drills that lacked clear purpose or had any element of competition. Some of the drills were downright dangerous. In one particularly dangerous drill, there were two volleyballs in play at the same time in a six-on-six environment. Not surprisingly, someone got hurt. Unfortunately for the team, it was our leading point scorer. This event and others led the team to not trust our coach.

Another one of the bumps that affected the team was the fact that our starting setter was the son of the club director. Nepotism isn’t always a bad thing. Arnie Ball clearly made the right choice when he started Lloy Ball in matches at IPFW in the early 90’s. Unfortunately for my team, our setter didn’t have an ounce of Lloy’s work ethic or ability. Our setter got so nervous in close matches that he would start to tremble and sweat profusely. Throughout the first half of the season we lost seven out of eight matches that went to the fifth set. In contrast, our back-up setter was good in the clutch and the team respected him. He was small, but he was a hard worker. The preferential treatment for the starting setter sent a clear message to the team: playing time does not have to be earned.
What was the result for me and my teammates? I did not give 100%. The team didn’t give 100%. My heart and mind were not fully invested in my team. Looking back, regardless of the challenges of that season, I wish I would have been more mature and given 100% effort.

So what does this mean for your team? Research on employee performance in businesses has found that engaged workers give an additional 30% in discretionary effort compared to disengaged counterparts. We often talk about the difference that 1% makes. Clearly, we can’t afford to have disengaged athletes in our volleyball programs.

There are many reasons WHY athletes disengage from their teams. Here are a few reasons for athlete disengagement and what you can do to prevent it.

1. Athletes feel that playing time is either guaranteed or never going to happen. Many superstars feel that their playing time is guaranteed. Many non-starters think that unless a starter gets hurt, they are never going to step on the court. Both groups are at risk of not giving their all. Worse still is the risk of an athlete’s negative attitude affecting the rest of the team.

What to do about it: Design practices to be competitive and fun for everyone. Let the superstars know that how they play in practice will affect their playing time. Don’t show preferential treatment. Praise everyone for their effort, hard work and good sportsmanship. Play the benchwarmers when you can. Remember that you can’t play all players equally, but you can give great coaching to each athlete.

2. Coach made promises that have not been kept. Many coaches feel that they have to make promises of playing time and stardom to get the best recruits. When everything does not go according to plan, athletes often become bitter and give less effort.

What to do about it: Avoid making promises that are contingent upon the athletes performance. When recruiting, give recruits a realistic preview of what your program is like. Let athletes know that they will have the opportunity to work hard and compete in practices, but playing time is not guaranteed. Another important step is to be true to your word. Coaches must maintain integrity with their team and with parents. If you make a commitment to an individual or the whole team, make sure that you keep it. Honesty and fairness can prevent a multitude of management headaches.

3. Athletes feel that they are playing the wrong position. Especially with younger athletes, it is very difficult to know which individual will do well or develop at a position. When parents chime in and let you know what position their child SHOULD be playing, the pressure of playing the right player in the right position becomes more intense.

What to do about it: The best teams have players that are well rounded. Spend a portion of each practice in drills where all players get to pass, set, hit and play defense. If you have an athlete that wants to change positions and you can spare the time, let athlete know that you can work with them before or after practice to help them develop the skills for the desired position. Because of hard work and good coaching, I have seen an average outside hitter become an all-American middle blocker and an average middle blocker become an all-American setter.

4. Poor conflict resolution between teammates or between coach and athlete (or parents). Conflict is inevitable when you have a group of athletes competing for playing time and positions. Athletes can clash outside of the gym as well. How a team handles conflict has a huge effect on winning games.

What to do about it. Teach your athletes how to handle confrontation. Let parents know when and where they can address any issues. As the coach, be open to the idea that you may be the problem that is keeping an individual or the team from improving. Create an environment where issues can be discussed and resolved.

When teams are able to discuss WHY there are issues and then move to ACTION to resolve problems, athletes stay engaged. The book Crucial Conversations goes through several steps that are helpful to make it “safe” for everyone to share their side of the story and move through conflict resolution. To learn more on this topic, here is a link to a summary of the book… http://www.peace.ca/crucialconversations.pdf

These four reasons WHY athletes disengage is by no means a comprehensive list. Every team and every athlete has their own challenges. Often players have troubles off the court that get them off their game. Helping athletes resolve challenges is one of the biggest hurdles in coaching. If handled properly, it can also be a very rewarding experiences for coach and player. Be attentive to your athletes. If you see one of your players giving less than their best, take the time to properly address any concerns and help them get back to giving their all. It will be worth the discretionary effort that they give.

Over the last couple of seasons of football (college and NFL), it seemed like there were lots of games that were lost by the kickers.  How often do kickers get praised with winning the game?  For sure, it’s reported that they lost the game.  Yes, it will be reported that xyz kicker kicked the game winning field goal, but do they mean that he won the game for the team in the way that they mean he lost the game?  I think there are a few kickers who do get that sort of praise.  As a Patriots fan, you have to give credit to Adam Vinatieri. This year, the Niners relied on kicker David Akers because the offense couldn’t score in the red zone.

Both of these kickers share a common history as they were both coached by Doug Blevins.  It turns out that Doug Blevins has been hired to work with and train several prominent NFL kickers.  He’s worked with the Jets, the Dolphins, and the Patriots as a coach or consultant since 1994.  The amazing thing about Doug is that he was born with cerebral palsy and coaches from a wheelchair.

There’s a great story about Doug here: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1103994/1/index.htm

After first reading about Doug, I was inspired and wanted to learn more about him.  Here is what is said about Doug:

• “Doug has the perfect kick in his mind”.
• He has insisted on seeing rejection as an opportunity.
• He just sees things.
• “I’ve never seen anyone that knowledgeable about kicking.”
• “You come here, work out with him and it’ll change your mind.”
• Blevins focuses on the mechanics, the science of the kicking game.
• Trainers in every business can learn from Blevins’s teaching techniques. He breaks each motion down to its component parts, then squeezes out incremental but critical improvements. And he knows just how much he can change in a player — and when he should leave well enough alone.
• “Olindo (Mare) knows he can come to me to pinpoint the small things, and he knows I won’t just try to change him for the sake of changing him.”
• Blevins drills unforgivingly on technique and works to give players what he calls the “positive arrogance” they need to excel. “Doug can make you feel invincible,” says the Baltimore Ravens’ Kyle Richardson, another Blevins disciple, who made his NFL debut with Miami in 1997. “He can help you feel so mentally dominant that you go out there and do things that you didn’t feel you could.”
• “He is so precise on the fundamental part of it, so sound,” says Adam Vinatieri.

Here’s another great article about Coach Blevins:

http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/38/coach.html

When it comes to being a great coach, the game may change, but the rules are still the same. Here’s a page from the playbook of Doug Blevins.

1. Understand the game in obsessive detail. “A kicker can miss for a thousand different reasons — the position of his head, shoulder, or arms, or the number and length of his strides to the ball,” Blevins says.
2. Understand, analyze, and develop all of your players’ individual strengths.
3. Don’t try to change people. Instead, work to improve them.
4. When there’s no margin for error, be a perfectionist. Demand continued improvement from your players.
5. Inject game-on-the-line pressure into every practice. Every kick counts.
6. Pace your players. Don’t have them kick so many balls early in the season that their legs wear out.
7. Technical and mental competencies build on each other.
8. Develop chemistry with each of your players.
9. Believing that you can be the best, and sacrificing to be the best, will motivate your players by example.
10. Losers always allow for excuses; winners always perform. Says Blevins: “Great players and great teams walk with a swagger.”

Additionally, volleyball is a ‘visual-motor’ sport with an emphasis on the ‘visual’. Visual motor skills refer to the players’ ability to coordinate vision with the movement of the body or our motor programs. Vision is involved in all of our movements in volleyball. It is important that we understand that vision is a component of all the skill areas, and particularly the coordination between the eyes, arms, and hands.

According to statistical studies conducted by Dr. Gil Fellingham, the most important fundamental (motor program) for winning volleyball matches, in both men and women’s volleyball, is our ability to receive serve. If this is the case, what are we doing to improve our ability to receive serve? This gave me pause for thought. If vision is so important, more important than the motor, then we need to incorporate some visual training keys in addition to our motor keys. We all are competent when it comes to teaching the fundamentals of passing. We talk about putting our wrist and hands together, having our arms straight, making a simple move to the ball, and facing the ball and angling our platform. However, we also need to train our players to read the game, or in this case the server. Again,

“One of the great coaching debates concerns whether the ability to read the play in team sports is innate or trainable. Some coaches describe it as the player who is a good driver in heavy traffic, the player who seemingly knows what is going to happen next, two passes before it actually happens. While they may not be the fastest around the court or field, their ability to accurately forecast a game’s future means they always seem to have all the time in the world” (Farrow).

The evidence overwhelming supports the notion that seeing and reading the game is a learned trait.

What is the best way to help the player learn how to read the server? Currently the most common practice is “highly directed in nature, with detailed instruction and feedback as to correct behavior being provided” (Abernethy et al., 1999, Farrow et al., 1998). However, there is another method which may be more advantageous to learning how to anticipate where the serve is going. This method is called guided discovery (Williams, 2002). Guided discovery emphasizes that the receiver determines what they need to look at to anticipate where the server is going to hit the ball. In this case, they would need to spend considerable time, unless we as coaches direct them to “information rich” areas (Magill, 1998). An information rich area in serving would be to direct the passer to look into the contact zone rather than at any specific cue. They would then have to determine for themselves what information is pertinent in anticipating where the server was directing the serve.

So how do we utilize the above information when teaching our passers? I think that there are two parts to passing: what you do before the serve (Pre-Serve), and what you do during and after the contact (Serve).

Pre-Serve
• Identify the passing seams and responsibilities with the other passers, i.e. I have your short or deep.
• Look at your target, i.e. where do you want to pass the ball? The powerful impact of visualization has long been proven as an aid in performance. I would like my receivers to visualize where they want their pass to go.

Serve
• Look at the server’s contact zone. Remember this is an information rich zone.
• See the direction of the serve. I like to call this the line of the serve.
• Get ahead of the line. I like for us to make the first move with our hands and arms because they are faster than our legs. Prepare your platform angle early so that the passer can make slight adjustments if needed.
• Look at the pass. This is where we gain valuable information about our angle. Was it too great? Not great enough? Etc.

What we are trying to do is develop players who can pass the ball at a high level for a long period of time. We know that if we do this, then hitting efficiencies will improve and our ability to side out will increase. If we can do this, then we will win more games. To do this most efficiently, we need to learn how to read the server by looking at the information rich areas and visualizing where the pass should go. I believe that if we can help our players see the right things and use the correct motor programs for passing, then we are well on our way to developing players who seem to have all day to make the play.

“For a certain time before someone contacts a volleyball, there is a zone abundant with information for those who may play it next.  Servers can’t escape this data leakage … so passers earn themselves a real head start if they learn to mine that information-rich zone – it certainly did for me.  This ability to extract clues has many names – reading, anticipation, etc – but whatever you call it, it’s the premier skill in volleyball.” Karch Kiraly

References
Abernethy, B., Wood, J.M., and Parks, S. (1999). Can the anticipatory skills of experts be learned by novices? Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport, 70, 313-318.
Farrow, D., Chivers, P., Hardingham, C., and Sachse, S. (1998). The effect of video-based perceptual training on the tennis return of serve. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 29, 231-242.
Farrow, D. (2008). Reading the play in team sports: yes it’s trainable. Australian Institute of Sport Coaching Magazine.
Magill, R. A. (1998). Knowledge is more than we can talk about: Implicit learning in motor skill acquisition. Research Quarterly for Exercise and Sport. 69, 104-110.
Muller, S., Abernethy, B., Farrow, D., and Barras, N. (2006). Which visual cues do world-class cricket batmen use to anticipate bowlers’ deliveries? Coaches Report to Cricket Australia.
Williams, A.M. (2002). Visual search behavior in sport. Journal of Sports Sciences, 20, 169-170.

Immediate Feedback
Serve a ball and you get immediate feedback without a coach saying a word. Did the serve go in? Was there spin, or did it float? Did you hit the zone you were aiming for?

The Great Equalizer
Most servers in the world today are serving floaters. Even in international men’s volleyball more and more 6’7” behemoths are hitting nasty little floaters. Why? Because they know how tough it is to pass. Us little guys should be thrilled to know this because you do not have to be tall or jump high or hit hard to be an effective server. You can strike fear in the hearts of passers everywhere by mastering the float serve.

Steady as She Goes
There is a balance between serving tough and minimizing errors. If you are never making errors you are not serving tough enough. But if you are making a lot of errors you are hurting your team. The key is to see how tough you can serve while minimizing (not eliminating) errors. Once you find that serve, stick with it! There is no need to hit it harder or try to paint the end line with it. Conversely, you should not back down when the score is tight or the pressure is on. This last idea is unpopular and controversial, but I believe that the very essence of mental toughness is to do what you have trained to do regardless of the circumstances. While many teach that there are certain situations where you should never make a service error (after a time out, following a teammate’s service error, etc.), I believe that you simply need to ‘hit your serve’. How many service errors have occurred because the server has changed her serve to ‘play it safe’?

Aces Happen
To continue the point above, it’s unwise to go for the ace. Just hit your good serve to the right zone or at the right player and good things will happen, including aces. Going for the ace means abandoning the serve you have been working so hard to develop and increasing the risk of making an error. Develop a good serve and hit it relentlessly at your opponent. Aces will happen. (Isn’t that what Forrest Gump said?)

Improvement IS Addictive

Dr. Steve Bain

If you hang around the University of Washington volleyball program long enough you will either read it on a white board or hear Jim McLaughlin tell his players, “improvement is addictive”.  As Coach McLaughlin knows, this catchy phrase is more than a motivational mantra.  The meaning lies in the fact that the acquisition and refinement of skilled movements are a prerequisite for survival, as even the most basic of goal-directed movements – such as the seeking of food or water – are learned.  Thus, given the life and death significance of skilled movements, it is not surprising that our brains become wired to ensure that we will repeat life-sustaining activities by associating those activities with pleasure or reward.  Whenever a reward circuit is activated, the brain notes that something important is happening that needs to be remembered, triggering the release of the brain chemical dopamine, telling the brain to “do it again.”
In the case of skill learning in sport, our motivations are driven by the desire to return to the rewards we have experienced in the past, and to the environmental stimuli that mark the way to such rewards.  It is primarily through its role in the selective reinforcement of associations between rewards and otherwise neutral stimuli that dopamine is important for such motivation.  Whatever the mechanism, brain dopamine seems to act on connections in the brain to “stamp in” response-reward and stimulus-reward associations that are essential for the control and execution of skilled movements.  In other words, what fires, gets wired.
To see how this would play out in skill learning, consider that the connections between neurons in the brain have the ability to form maps of all possible movements required to be successful in any given activity.  Each time that we perform a successful movement, the neuronal connections associated with that movement are active for a brief period and that activity persists after the movement is complete.  If any movement is followed by a positive reward, then the entire motor map is bathed in the reward signal carried by dopamine into this area.  What would this combination of events produce?  It would produce a permanent increment in the connection strength only among those neurons associated with the recently produced movements.  What would these connections map after repeated execution and exposure to dopamine?  The connections would map the expected value (i.e. reward) of the movement and provide the motivational impetus to “do it again”.
The association between improvements in skill learning and “addiction” is that drugs of abuse, such as cocaine and amphetamine, have the ability to hijack the same brain connections that are involved in reinforcement learning.  These and other drugs stimulate the dopamine reward circuits, which in turn create powerful and enduring alterations in motivational networks that lead to maladaptive behaviors.  The dopamine association between motor learning and addiction is itself only symbolic as the brain mechanisms that underlie skill learning are in no way equivalent to the hedonistic forms of addiction associated with drugs of abuse.

Symbolism aside, the concept that motor learning involves reward circuits in the brain is still very powerful, with important implications for our own coaching practices.  Among the many possible implications are these:
1.  Enacting training environments that are structured to elicit successful skill execution are of paramount importance.  As coaches, we must keep in mind that the skills we are training will be tightly coupled to the reward stimulus and specific brain circuits.  This is yet another piece of scientific evidence supporting the motor learning principles of training specificity and the superiority of whole training over part.
2.  Players that are able to attend to task demands will improve faster (see Tom Black’s post on learning how to learn).  In our gym, we refer to this attentional focus during practice as iMode; aka “improvement mode”.  The cognitive effort required by players to achieve and maintain iMode is extremely high and once you make this demand of your players it becomes very easy to tell when your players are in iMode vs. survival mode.  It is now extremely rare for our own players to descend into survival mode during practice.  However, when they do, we know that learning is not possible and for everyone’s benefit, we send them home.
3.  Instruct players to focus on the results of the task (the reward) vs. the structure of the movement.  Research has shown that an external focus of attention is able to enhance motor learning in both experienced and new learners.  Dopamine’s actions on brain reward circuits may well be the reason why.
No doubt there are many other implications linking motor learning principles with the brain’s reward circuits but at the very least, knowing that improvement is addictive underscores the importance of creating practice environments that maximally stimulate the brain circuits that are responsible for skill learning.  As a coach, this is an incredibly powerful tool and once you harness it, you will be addicted!

I have been lucky enough to correspond with an educator from Australia, Lorraine Davies of “Mindset Mastery” who has tried valiantly to deepen my understanding and get me to see the glaring defects within my own thinking. It’s been quite a journey for me to analyze my own fixed mindset traits, and attempt to correct them, so I can hopefully teach better habits to my own athletes.

The initial reason this grabbed me was the undeniable effect Ms. Dweck’s mindset studies had on performance. People displaying growth mindset traits worked harder, learned better, and improved faster that those displaying fixed traits. Maybe we all can intellectually understand this, but it becomes much more difficult to see examples of people consistently living it, especially as we become convinced of our own status and knowledge. An easy pitfall for coaches and educators of all levels. The equivalent for an athlete would be someone convinced of their superiority, or talent, or simply worried about perception. Which is probably more  common a problem of athletes attempting to learn a skill while desperately wanting the acceptance of the group.

I think sharing our knowledge of volleyball to each other is really important, but I’m not sure it means much if we don’t embrace this topic first.

If the quality of our practice, if our level of engagement to learning, are the most critical factors towards our improvement, don’t we have to take great pains to teach our athletes and students how to learn? And, what does that even mean?

Dweck’s studies, as well as Ms. Davies’ work with students labeled as troubled, have given a lot of weight behind research suggesting students who are taught about the brain and how it learns are much more likely to display the growth mindset behaviors of focus, effort, and learning thereby improving performance. So, maybe day 1 of practice is a little brain lesson with our teams. Maybe there’s even a fun and creative way to do it.

We can always look at our game’s greatest player, Karch Kiraly, and observe how he developed skill as a player, and how he’s gone about growing ability as a coach for our USA Women’s National Team. There may be no finer example available to us as to how to approach each day with a growth mindset.

And finally, here’s a quote from Ms. Davies in one of her emails to me. It hit me square in the nose when I read it, because I could understand so completely how I could fall in this category, and how hard I would have to work to be in this for the right reasons:

“It might be helpful to know that I deal with a lot of fixed mindset educators and parents (with the inherent cardinal rule to look smart at all times) who really want to know – but not do. The relevance being the accompanying defensiveness, too often expressed in their annoyance/irritation after their initial joy hearing about mindsets because it fills in so many blanks. I find they generally deal with their need to regain feeling ‘smart’, by rejecting/attacking me – the messenger. In essence no biggie, BUT to really feel self-satisfied they reject growth mindset learning. Knowing that this creates more fixed mindset students, staff, athletes etc really disturbs me.”

So, here are some things that might help to develop this growth mindset culture within our volleyball team:

- Give a class on the brain before the season begins
- Tie this lesson into practice all year long. Develop a common language to understand when learning is occurring and how our brain’s are changing
- Cite the behaviours you’re seeing in your athletes that you want to see more of
o When you give praise, it should be about them. Take yourself out of it. It’s not about pleasing you, it’s about you guiding                           them to what they can become.
- Language is everything. Way more than the pretty banners, slogans and flashy goals we post throughout the gym (especially if we’re doing these things to fulfill a perception). The best gauge we have to the growth mindset culture within our gym is the language used with each other and to ourselves. Setting some standards and some things we will and won’t say could go a long way.

And, finally, most importantly, remember:

The Cardinal rule of the growth mindset is: Learn, Learn Learn (even if that means looking bad, or embarrassed sometimes.)
The Cardinal rule of the fixed mindset is: Look Good/smart/talented (even if that means not learning)

It’s not an absolute, it’s a continuum, and by focused effort, and careful reflection, we can push ourselves and our athletes (if we’re willing) further and further towards the growth mindset scale.

So for sure, let’s study the game, teach the skills, and analyze our methods. In the end, we love to coach and play volleyball and compete in this wonderful sport. But maybe before it all, let’s really attempt to understand what it takes to learn and improve to the best of our ability.

The goal is to clearly identify the little things that make a big difference in the outcome of matches. Then, go to work this Spring getting better at those details.  Why?  I had one quote in my locker at BYU when I played for Carl – “When I tend to think of the awesome consequences of little things, I tend to think there are no little things” – William James.  We should be obsessed with “little things” and work to know if we are in the right “little thing forest.”

My favorite blog right now is thetalentcode.com by Daniel Coyle.  You can subscribe to the blog on Facebook or Twitter.  I’d suggest doing both.  The latest blog post talks about great coaches being more like construction workers, than those come up with “killer ideas.”  Rather than subscribing to the concept of a killer innovation to win, great coaches are obsessed with the little things.  Daniel Coyle writes about Bill Belichick and his film breakdown sessions -

This is not an accident — this is, in fact, his construction-worker mindset in action.  This mindset focuses on three qualities, which can be approached as questions. Think of these questions as the filter in a great coach’s mind, governing his attention and action.

• 1) Is it Replicable? Is this a one-off fluke, or is it an action that can be applied in a variety of situations? Blocking technique matters on every single play. If Belichick were a guitar teacher, he wouldn’t care about that kick-ass solo — instead, he’d obsess about thumb position and finger angle, the stuff that matters on every single chord you play.
• 2) Is it Controllable? Is this something that has to do with effort, awareness and planning? If you watch the breakdowns, you’ll see how he makes heroes of players who pay attention, who anticipate, who get to the right spot at the right time. If Belichick were a high-school English teacher teaching Huckleberry Finn, he’d make heroes of the students who are first to spot the themes and connections in the text, because that’s about awareness and effort.
• 3) Is it Connective? Is it related to a successful outcome? Belichick understands that every big play is built on a scaffold of solid technique. So he focuses, like any good construction worker would, on the foundational things that made success possible. Each of those small moves (the perfectly executed block) is in fact vital, because without it all the good luck (the big pass play) never happens. If Belichick were a sales consultant, he’d focus on the first ten seconds of the sales call — because without a warm emotional connection, the sale would never happen.

For those of you new to Gold Medal Squared, Chris McGown is the son of GMS Founder Carl McGown.  Carl started the BYU Men’s Volleyball program back in 1991, eventually winning two NCAA Championships in 1999 and 2001.  Chris is now the head coach of the program his father started, and has the Cougars sitting at #1 in the country.

To follow Chris and the team, you can visit the BYU Men’s Volleyball page at http://byucougars.com/home/m-volleyball.

You can read more about this past weekend here, or watch a pre-season video on Chris and the Team here.