Always Question and Evaluate

A recent blog post by Mark Lebedew really resonated with me. I've been examining a lot of the foundation principles of what I do as a coach lately. The coaches I learned the principles from use them because they are established and based on observation and statistical analysis of the game. The problem is that the game evolves over time, and like Coach Lebedew says, the conditions of the game might indicate some other approach.

Some of the approaches to the game I see that bother me are often based on older, less current observations. Those observations might not even be based on statistical analysis. I suspect many are based on notions some coach had many years ago that were supported mainly by confirmation bias. At best some of them are based on a time when rules did not allow certain things that are now permitted. I'm thinking mainly of perimeter defense here. One of the main ideas is that you get on the perimeter of the court and everything in front of you is in play and anything above you is out. There are two problems with that. One of them being that the vast majority of balls that are hit in play will be far enough away from the players' base positions that it requires a spectacular play just to contact the ball. Shot charts will help illuminate this fact. All the data I have personally collected and have seen other collect indicate perimeter defense is putting the defenders out of position to make basic plays. The other problem is that players could not dig with their hands in the days when perimeter defense was developed. You did want all playable hits in front of you. Now you can dig with your hands, so if there is a reason to be farther forward, you should do it.

When I started to study the game a decade ago, the data suggested the positioning for perimeter defense would put you in the right place to dig about 10-15% of hits without diving. Moving the zone 6 defender to about 20 feet off the net raises that to about 40% all hits, and that is just for the middle back defender. I'll take 15% of hits being high to where the defender has to dig above the shoulders if one player will be in the right place to dig 40% of the other team's entire offense.

With that in mind, question everything. Take all the principles and fundamentals that make up the body of your volleyball knowledge and put them under the microscope. Collect data to see if you should keep them or discard them. This is probably largely something that has to be done during the off season, but that is something all coaches should do. John Wooden would study some element of basketball during the off season. His success as a coach is well known. Take the time and collect data to validate what you are doing, or find some other way to get the results you desire.

Volleyball Highlight Video Commentary

I came across this video today on youtube. It is a top ten video of volleyball sets. I've seen a lot of these kinds of highlight videos over the years. Some are better than others. I've seen some of these particular clips before. They are some great plays, but there is something going on in all of these that younger players could learn from (and some older ones for that matter).

Before I mention what that lesson is, let's look at what happens in the clips:

10. Middle blocker sets the outside from the back row.

This is the middle's serving rotation, and he is assuming the on court responsibilities of the libero until the other team sides out. The video doesn't show the full rally, but the setter was likely the first touch, or the dig went to short in zone 5.

9. Setter with a one hand set to the opposite on a pass going over net.

Here a setter is jumping for the one hand set to prevent the ball going over the net on the pass. The blockers jump with the setter, leaving the opposite with an open net. The setter is back row, so the blockers should be jumping to attack, not block. They should be.

8. Set with the foot to save a ball going way out of bounds.

Playing with the foot is legal, but rarely a good idea, or necessary. In almost every case the player would be able to make a better play with his hands. This might be one of the few exceptions.

7. Middle setting the outside on an overpass.

I really like this one. The blockers on an overpass usually will jump and swing. It's just something you do when you're on the net. It should be automatic. Here we have a player taking advantage of that and setting the outside. The other side does a really good job getting to the net to try to block the swing, but that just opens up the net for the outside.

6. Libero setting the middle from short in zone 6 for a quick in zone 4.

This is just a nice play. Usually the libero is going to go to either the opposite, or one of the outsides. This is a tough set to hit effectively, and it works so well because the defense probably thinks it is going to anyone but the middle.

5. Set to zone 2 from the other side of the net.

Just a spectacular play. Any time you can salvage a rally keep the ball alive when the ball crosses the net out of bounds is a win. Getting a kill while doing it is even better.

4. Libero setting the middle from short in zone 6 for a quick in zone 4.

Almost an exact copy of number 6 above.

3. Set to opposite from past the end line in zone 1.

Similar to number 5 above, but it's the other end of the spectrum. Getting the ball over the net when the second touch is like this is a win.

2. A bump set over the head by the setter going out of bounds to a middle hitting a quick.

I have seen a great setter make a play like this in a drill with just setters and middles in practice, but the middle didn't make an approach. Seeing the middle not give up on the play and be ready is what we want to do as players, and what we want our athletes to do as coaches. I could almost say I love this video for this clip alone.

1. A bump set over the shoulder by an out of position setter to a middle hitting a quick.

Similar to number 2 above, but it's a little different. I like 2 better, but the same goes for this one. The middle didn't give up on the play and was ready. That's why this clip is here.

Of all those clips, only numbers 1, 2, and 9 are sets from the setter remotely close to being in position or within the team's offense. Numbers 3, 5, and 8 could be the setter, but they aren't plays I would say are even close to within the team's offense. Half of them are sets to hitters who don't have a lot of warning, and it wouldn't be unexpected to see them not ready to swing 4 of them to middles hitting quicks.

This video could be a good thing to show young players as a teaching tool. In each of these clips, and those ones to the middles in particular, the hitters are ready to make a play. They are expecting to hit, and that makes these highlights instead of hitting errors. At some point in practices, this should be on our minds and in our instruction: Make yourself available and be ready.

Volleyball Basics - Zones of the Court

Volleyball courts are divided into zones based on service order. The back right area is zone 1. It is roughly the area where the first server will start the match, assuming no change takes place after the serve. Front right is zone 2 and the second server, middle front is zone 3 and the third server, front left is zone 4 and the fourth server, back left is zone 5 and the fifth server, and middle back is zone 6 and the last server in the lineup.

Coaches will frequently signal which zone should be served with one to five fingers for zones 1-5 and a fist for zone 6. Where exactly a team places the boundary between front and back zones varies. Some will place it at the attack line, others halfway between center and end lines. There is no right or wrong place for the boundary. The important thing is to know where the team you play on or coach places that boundary. It is entirely possible to have the front/back boundary be the attack line, and the back zones are divided into short and deep halves.

Some places I have seen use the zones where the players typically hit as position names instead of the position names most in the United States at least are used to. Outside hitters are 4's, middle blockers are 3's, and opposites/right sides are 2's.


Volleyball Basics are intended to present some of the fundamental volleyball knowledge that everyone serious about the sport should know.

Set Distribution from UCLA vs BYU Jan 16, 2015

With the new men's college volleyball season underway, I am looking to watch volleyball and track some kind of stats that are not otherwise available. Tonight #4 UCLA played at #7 BYU. BYU took the match in 3 sets (25-12, 25-17, 25-17). The rankings this time of year are not always the greatest. They are more about expectations than any track record on the current season. Both teams are trying to fill some big shoes. UCLA in particular is a young team. They should get better as the season progresses, but they are rough right now.

The available video for the match was primarily from the side. This makes a lot of stat tracking difficult. I decided to track something I haven't done before, set distribution. Set distribution is something that can be easily extracted from standard volleyball box scores. Just take the hitting attempts for each player and divide by total team attempts. A team that distributes the ball really well might have the two outsides and the opposite each getting about 25% of sets and the two middles getting about 12% a piece. Typically teams have one player who receives a whole lot more. I wanted to get a little more (and different) information.

What I decided to do was look at set distribution by set type, rather than by individual hitter. I tallied sets to the hitter in zone 4 (front left), zone 3 (quicks in the middle), zone 2 (front right but also including back row sets on the right side, or zone 1), and zone 6 (middle back). I also tracked setter dumps. I did not include free balls, hits on the second touch, or over pass hits. To get a little more out of it, I tallied whether the hit was an attempt at a First Ball Side Out (FBSO) as a 1 and other attempts as a 2. I circled kill attempts that scored to get kill percentage.

















There was a pretty big discrepancy in kill percentages by set location, and FBSO percentage. UCLA was only more successful in sets to 6. BYU had a hitting efficiency of .400 for the match to UCLA's .139.  UCLA had 53 attempts at FBSO compared to only 29 for BYU. Some of this is due to the volume of serve receive opportunities that happen when the score is lopsided.

I think the biggest factor in UCLA's low FBSO% is passing. There wasn't a big difference in service aces, but UCLA had a lot of passes that took them out of system. UCLA had 10 more service errors than BYU on 27 fewer service attempts. Some of UCLA's service errors might be due to altitude, but altitude should only account for about 3 feet of extra travel according to this discussion of baseball at similar altitudes. This match was won (and lost) by serve and serve receive. UCLA gave up a lot more points in service errors, and their offense was hindered by bad passing. On the other side of the net BYU had only 7 errors on 74 serves, and they were in system for more of the match.

Why Open Source Volleyball

Looking for information about volleyball can be a challenge. Usually the information you want is in a book or taught in an expensive clinic. Freely available information is not always good and is often an advertisement for the aforementioned books and clinics. Some very basic tools, like a blank stat sheet, can be difficult to find, if not impossible. In this day that lack of information is a little unusual. I am making this blog as a project to do my part to remedy this information deficit.

In software development there is an open source movement. Open source is based on the free exchange of ideas and collaboration. While it is mostly applied to software development, the "open source way" is an amazing model for this project. The bullet points on that page are great mile markers on this journey. The open exchange of ideas, creation through collaboration, improving through successes and failures in experimentation, the best ideas win, and building communities. Those core ideas really resonate with me. I not only want to be the best coach I can be, and have my players be the best they can be, but I want my competition to be the best they can be as well. Healthy competition against great coaches, teams and players will bring out the best in me and my athletes. Strong competition will help raise the image of the sport, and elevate the game.

Lessons from Football

One of the greatest things I ever learned about coaching is to learn from other sources and then compare it to what I already know about volleyball and motor learning. After learning about some new drill or information, there are some questions I should ask (and answer). Will it teach proper skills, technique, and/or tactics? Are the training goals important within the context of a volleyball match? Will it actually provide enough benefit to warrant the amount of time required? Will it make my athletes better? Will it help them make better choices? Will it promote a competitive drive? Some of these can be answered by critical reading and learning. Some might be moot because the intended outcome isn't crucial to success during matches. Some might require a little experimentation.

When looking at volleyball drills other coaches share, it is essential to run it through that filter to see if the drill is going to be useful. Other sports can also offer insight. As an example a book about coaching soccer was recommended because of a coaching concept that could easily be applied to volleyball. Using that concept has enhanced teams I have coached. That concept is the competitive cauldron. I'm not really going to talk about that now, but I wanted to use it as an illustration of the idea of borrowing from other sources. Look to other successful coaches, regardless of sport, and learn from them. Apply what can help, and don't worry about the rest.

That brings me to a recent experience. I'm a firm believer in the idea of learning from others' mistakes so you don't have to make the same mistakes. The lesson might not have the same personal weight, but it is still a lesson learned. This lesson was a little of both, in a way. I came to a realization watching someone else's “mistakes”, but they made me reflect on some of my own.

The experience in question was the culmination of a full season of watching the high school football team. I noticed (with the caveat that I have never played football at any level beyond flag football) early in the season (and from previous years watching the same system) that the play calling was fairly predictable. The offense could almost be summed up in 4 basic plays. Run left, run right, run down the middle, and pass over the top. There is a lot of variety in formations, motion, and who is getting the ball, but there are basically those 4 options. I would guess that the ratio of run plays to pass plays is about 4 run plays for every pass play, and that might be generous. The pass plays are probably as successful as they are because they run so many times that the secondary falls asleep. At the same time, the pass plays are not very reliable, probably because they don't get a lot of in-game reps.

With that in mind, it's a little astounding to me that the quarterback would go and get the play from the coach on the sideline, and then run it in to the huddle every down. On the surface the system is very simple, but there doesn't seem to be a suitably simple method of signaling plays from the sideline. It made me wonder if the system is so bloated with complexity that the sideline conference is necessary to convey simple instructions. I would think the team uses a stock set of formations, routes, and individual plays. That is a small set of signals. One for formation, another for routes run by receivers, and a third for what they are going to do with the ball. They could even shorten it further to a small amount of set plays that can be boiled down to one signal for times when speed is desired.

This eventually made me reflect on my season coaching the boys volleyball team. In one sense I was completely different from the football coach. I usually let the setter call all the sets on offense. On occasion I would give direction due to things the other team was doing, difficulties we were having, or to give a little more for the other team to think about. For the most part I let them run the show. In another way I was similar to my perception of the football coach. The amount of offensive options amounted to around 50+ possible permutations of offensive combinations. That amounted to an offense that was more complex than it needed to be, and it was all because of coaching decisions I made along the way. And that is not even taking into account that the team's average lifetime experience with competitive volleyball wasn't much more than how far along we were in the season (about half the team were first year players, almost all the rest had only one year previous experience).

I think the football coach would benefit from simplifying his offense to a few core plays with primary signals, and then have a few more multiple signal plays that cover the other stuff. That would speed up his offense, and get the next play running more efficiently. It still doesn't help the variety of play calling, but it addresses one of the big issues of his system. Similarly, I think my offensive system would also have been better if I had it reduced down to a few core plays. After a bit of doodling, I figured I could probably get it down to 3 or 4 core plays that could work for whole matches, and then 2 or 3 “trick” plays that shouldn't be run very often. With 3 core plays, there are at least 12 permutations (more if you consider both middle blockers and the outside hitters switching front row/back row). That really simplifies the offense.

Before each possible hit had a signal (with up to 4 hitters). Before each serve the setter would try to signal 3 or 4 sets to the hitters. I faced the same challenge if I wanted to call something from the sideline, and it was usually easier to just call a timeout. Sometimes the setter, due to inexperience, would call sets that would put two hitters in the same place. Without already having some positioning priority, this was a problem for getting a decent attack across the net at best, and an injury risk at worst.

With a simplified system of about 3 core and another 2 or 3 “trick” plays, the setter or coach could use one signal that assigns sets for all 4 possible hitters. Hitters won't be running into each other, and blockers will have to make tough decisions to cover all the hitters. It will be something that can be used in practice and in matches, enhancing the training effect. This is something I will use moving forward.

This was adapted from a blog entry I originally posted November 3, 2014 on http://agentminivann.blogspot.com/

Welcome

Welcome to Open Source Volleyball. This is the new home of my volleyball blog. Here I will talk about the modern evolution of volleyball. I will take the things I have learned in my time as a player, student of the game, volunteer for college programs, and coach at the middle school, high school and college level, and present a synthesis of that knowledge. I would like to see the sport grow, and the level of play elevated.