One of my favourite computer games as a little kid was Tonka, it was a construction game where you were the guy in charge of a building site and would have to click on the digger and the lorry and crane to make them clear the stuff and build the thing. If in the middle of driving the digger you got bored and tried to then use the crane, the little foreman helper guy would tell you off saying “finish one job before you start another!”. I think that idea applies to not just to building things in Tonka, but also to coaching.
Picture the scene, you're a volleyball coach and you go to a coaching conference and learn about something new, arm swing mechanics lets say. So you go back to the team you coach all excited to teach them about the circular arm. You do one session on it, you touch on it again for one drill the next week, you remind a couple of players about it the week after, and then... that's it?
What I'm getting at it is something that I've been frustrated by as a player but also struggle with as a coach, which is when you are trying to implement or work on something new with players or the team, when do you stop actively pushing it and focus on other things? Ideally once everyone has it nailed right? But, and especially for coaches not in a performance context who might only have 1.5h/week with their team, it's not really realistic or sensible to spend a third of your time every week working on circular arm swings. Trouble is 30 mins once also isn't enough to really get the hang of it, so what do?
There's some areas where I think coaches go wrong in not being strict enough to stick at something until it's nailed. A common example for me is block defence systems. A discussion for another day but I think basically every team in England should be playing spare block cover, so it's something I've made every team I've coached in England do. We spend a lot of time at the start of the season doing it and crucially we don't stop doing it and working on it explicitly in drills until we get to a certain point with it. What is that point? It's the point at which the players are doing it, or at least trying to, when we play 6v6. As then they're getting their practice doing it whenever we play 6v6, they're holding each other accountable if they don't do it, everyone understands it, so now we don't really need to spend time in drills doing it because the gameplay is covering it.
Another good example would be serving. I took the advanced men here in Norwich over summer and we did lots of work for several weeks on learning to jump float serve, reason being once everyone knew how 'have a go correctly' i.e. do a rep with correct feet feeding the ball at the right time etc then whenever we play games (which is ~50% of the session) they get a chance to keep practicing.
Where I think coaches go wrong, would be if they did 1 session or drill on jump float serving, and then left it. To me there's almost no point doing this. It's not enough time for most people to pick it up to then try it in a game setting so they aren't going to progress with the skill in any other contexts, it's just for that drill and then that's it. Unless you're very clear 'guys look we don't have time to practice this more, but i'll teach you this now once and give you the info and drills you need to practice at home for those that want to' then again I think doing just one drill on it once is somewhat futile.
My point basically is that if you decide something is worth working on that is a novel skill that's functionally different from not doing it, i.e. it's not hitting a bit harder or passing more consistently, but jump vs not jump serving, triple blocking vs not triple blocking, etc then you need to work on it enough times to get it to the level where the players do it in game, and then it somewhat takes care of itself. What I've experienced a lot is a coach gets all excited about something 'guys guys pipe pipe pipe we're gonna use pipe more' they work on it for 1 session and then what it feels like is they get distracted by the next thing and forget all about the pipe and we never really get the hang of it. Instead in my opinion what would be better is they keep on it until it gets to a level they're happy with, which in my view is roughly when it's being used autonomously by the team in a game context.
Final point on this is with staying on players individually. My blocking footwork for example is quite poor and I remember my coach in Sweden immediately being on me to change it (I need to open up much more as keep my hips way to square when swinging, for those interested) and I tried to but would often forget and get distracted by whatever else was happening in the game, and he really stayed on me for a week or so and then didn't really mention it again. I know that it's ultimately my responsibility as a player to work sort it out as he'd told me what I was doing wrong and I knew I hadn't sorted it. But it also got to me that he didn't stay on me, had he given up on me fixing it? Did he just forget or get distracted? It's slightly different but feels like the same thing here and I think helps me make the point I'm trying to which is as a coach, if you think something is worth working on or changing or improving, then stick at it until you get the change you're after.
Obviously sometimes you have to cut your losses if something isn't working and come back to it, but I think these cases or my blocking example it's important to communicate it. If my coach had said George I'm not gonna keep on you about this because I've told you enough times, but I expect you to go away and get this sorted, and I'll follow up in x weeks if you haven't and we'll make a new plan to sort it, that would've (I think) really helped me and keep me motivated.
Might've gotten a bit incoherent there, still new to this blogging business and first time writing about coaching like this. Hopefully something useful up there somewhere. I know what I mean in my head but hard getting it onto the page, but just like my blocking footwork that's just something I need to stick at!