Mental Checklist for Setters

I really enjoy Mark Lebedew's At Home On The Court blog. Every once in a while he posts a gem from the past, like links to videos of old Olympic volleyball matches. It is a great blog to follow for student's of the game. Today's post, Setter's Rules - Match, details what a setter he played with did when he went into a match. It's a sort of mental checklist for setters. Like he says, it isn't going to guarantee that you will win every match, but it is a good place to be. There is a component of the knowledge your setters should have before a match, things to watch for during warm ups, and then how to implement them during the match. Whether you're a setter or a coach, take a look. It will be helpful. I'm sure other positions would be well served developing a similar mental checklist for the demands and responsibilities of the position played.

Lesson from Karch's Timeout

I was watching the USA vs Brazil match yesterday in the 2015 FIVB Grand Prix, and there was a mic on Karch Kiraly during one of the timeouts. I've enjoyed some of the articles, quotes and stories I've heard about his coaching, so I was listening. He looks at one of his players and says something like, "What are we looking at?" The player then takes on an expression of a student trying to recall information when put on the spot in class, and she says something to the effect of, "We have 4 here, 2 here, and watch for 8 coming around." while pointing where they would appear on the net.

I know I have the numbers wrong, but that doesn't really matter. Rather than giving the scouting report on what the opposing team will have available, and something of their tendencies, he went to one of his players. This was a beautiful statement on what he does as a coach. There is a scouting report on the opponent. The players know the scouting report. The players know there are expectations of them, and they rise to those expectations. I think this really speaks to the team culture he has instilled.

This isn't necessarily something everyone will be able to do. High school coaches aren't going to have the resources, and probably time, to put together and teach a scouting report, but we can still think along similar lines. Teach the team and expect them to respond. Let them know those expectations are there. Let them rise to the expectations. Build a culture of success.

Point Distribution for Set Wins

Something intersting in Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game is the idea that winning X number of games should put the team in the playoffs. I don't recall the specific number, and it will be highly specific to American major league baseball, but the idea in interesting to me. I think it is one that might have application in volleyball.

Some years ago I saw a coaching video by an NCAA Division I women's volleyball coach saying that on average W out of 25 points come from kills, X from blocks, Y from aces, and Z from opponent errors. I don't recall the exact numbers, but I believe the number of kills was around 16 or 17. I hadn't thought about it that much in the meantime, but Moneyball jostled things a bit in my brain. Because I don't remember the specific numbers, and I think the numbers will vary by competitive level, I decided to collect some data to see what these numbers are.

I'm starting with a spreadsheet to collect the data. It's pretty basic. It has columns for kills, blocks, aces, opponent errors, and just for comparison team errors. I'm just collecting that information for the winning team of the set. At the top of the column is the average points per set. At first I was just including sets that ended at 25 so the math would be simple, but I later decided that more data would give a better average. To incorporate more data, but still keep the data relevant and easy to parse and use, I included the score for the winning team in a new column, divided the sum of all kills, blocks, etc by the sum of total points, and multiplied by 25 to get the average kills, blocks, etc for a 25 point set win. I copied the sheet so there is one for FIVB men, FIVB women, NCAA men, NCAA women, high school boys, and high school girls. Thus far I have only entered data for 4 matches from this year's FIVB World League finals. They are USA/Serbia, France/Poland, USA/Poland, and Serbia/France. The FIVB matches have a handy end of set graphic that includes all this data, so it makes gathering the data relatively quick. I don't need to watch a whole match with a clipboard to get it.

The Numbers So Far
4 matches from 2015 FIVB World League

So in the average FIVB World League finals match, the winning team scored 13 points on offense, almost 3 on blocks, and 1 or 2 aces every set. They scored almost 8 points on opponent errors. Assuming a good distribution of sets, the two outsides and the opposite are looking at 3 kills per set each, and the two middles will get about one or two kills per set.

A few things stood out to me. First the number of kills is lower than I thought. I thought that at the level of play going on at World League the number of kills would be closer to 15. In a couple there were 17 and 18, but for the most part they were floating around 10-14. Even the longest set in the data so far with a score of 27 points, the kills are only 14. I thought blocks and aces should be higher as well. Blocking and serving is stronger than what I expect to see at the college level, but I guess covering hitters and serve receive are comparable to the blocking and serving. Opponent errors are higher than I thought it would be, but I think that is probably due to errors being an inclusive category for service and hitting errors.

Comparing team errors to opponent errors is interesting. I don't have anything handy that shows what's happening visually, but there were 5 sets where the winners had more errors than the losers. There were another 3 where the errors were the same. Out of a total of 16 sets, that leaves 8 where the winners have fewer errors than the losers. Conventional wisdom is that you should have fewer errors than your opponent. Yes, half the time that has happened, but almost 33% of the time the losing team committed fewer errors. The two highest kill sets (17 and 18) were two of the sets where the winners had more errors than the losers. Perhaps the more important comparison is between team kills and team errors than the comparison between team and opponent errors.

It will be interesting to see how the point distribution numbers change with more data and at other competitive levels. From what I have seen it looks like a goal of 13+ kills per set and a good ratio of kills to errors will win matches. I'm still debating whether I should go back and include all opponent data. When I collect data for matches that I have to watch and tally the points I will collect it by default. I just don't know if it should end up on the spreadsheet. We'll see. More to come.

Bad Quotes

I saw one of those quotes turned into an image that people like to share on social media that I thought couldn't be further from the truth. It was, "Everything you are against weakens you. Everything you are for empowers you." by Wayne Dyer. I see his quotes pop up every once in a while. I don't have any personal experience or feelings about the man. I don't really know anything about him for that matter, but this quote really rubbed me the wrong way.

For starters, this quote is contrary to the body of scientific knowledge in exercise physiology. We don't get stronger by going with the flow. We don't lift progressively heavier weights to get weaker. Sticking with a training regimen that is easy isn't going to do much good. It just isn't the case.

Secondly, this quote flies in the face of everything competitive sports stands for. We get better as players by pushing ourselves to try things that are hard. We get better by playing against better competition. We are likely to get worse by playing easy competition. If our backup players aren't competitive with the starters, we need to handicap the starters, or have them play a game that is unfair against them to make practice games a bigger challenge. It is the very act of struggling against competition that drives us to get better and improve.

As a coach and student of the game we aren't going to do ourselves any favors by only listening to and learning from those we agree with. We aren't going to get much better just listening to and believing them. If we hear something we believe, we are going to be better off listening to, and then verifying whether it is true or not. That will lead to understanding. That will lead to knowledge. That will lead to real improvement. When I say I do one thing over another, I can then say with certainty that I do it because I collected data that support the decision. I will not only know what, but why. When someone asks why I have the middle back defender in that position, I can say that 40% of all attacks will go to that spot. Likewise when I hear something I don't agree with, I will get better by collecting data that either supports or does not support that idea. Then my decisions are informed.

The quote just doesn't work for me. I can't say that it is absolutely wrong, but I don't like the ways that it is right. If all I do is surround myself with people I agree with, my conviction to my world view and philosophy will strengthen, but it is the kind of echochamber strengthening that doesn't stand up to scrutiny. It is empowering, but it doesn't make one strong. Embrace challenge. Question, test and challenge what we have been taught. That will lead to understanding and improvement, and that is the ultimate empowerment.

Book Review: The Big Miss

The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods is a reflection of Hank Haney's time as Tiger Woods' swing coach. It is an interesting peek at the private Tiger, and a small glimpse at what could be the driving psychology of this elite athlete. It is very definitely about golf, and it is full of jargon that is quite frankly over my head. There are a few ideas that I'm not sure how they transfer to volleyball, but I would like to explore them.

The big miss is a recurring theme throughout the book. While it is never discretely defined, its meaning is fairly clear. The big miss is a particularly bad error. Recovery is difficult and usually means there will be subsequent errors. The big miss is especially bad in that it is something that is avoidable. The big miss often happens when trying to make a big play, usually a tee shot or over some hazard. The golfer tries to drive farther, or takes some unwise risk to shave off strokes. But technique breaks down, or the placement of trees and hazards is misjudged. Subsequent strokes are more difficult, or penalty strokes are applied. The end result is what should have saved a stroke ends up costing more. In terms of competitive golf that might mean 3 or 4 strokes more, and the golfer could drop from the lead, or within contention, to several positions back. An unwanted curve in Tiger's driving is mentioned several times. Haney had him work on a slightly shorter drive that would minimize the effects of that curve. While the distance off the tee would be about 10 yards shorter, he would avoid the big miss and would have a better score at the end of the round.

Another example of the big miss is in Tiger's tendency to 3 putt. Putting is a significant percentage of strokes in a round of golf. Par on a golf hole is generally set so the golfer should be able to 2 putt and still be par for that hole, or a wedge onto the green and 1 putt. I don't know the actual numbers, but based on that 1-2 putt average on a par hole, an 18 hole round is going to have 18-36 putts for a scratch golfer. That's anywhere from 25-50% of the strokes on a round. The coach would tell him not to 3 putt. He would tell him that if he didn't 3 putt, no one could beat him.

I'm not sure what the specific application is for volleyball, but thinking in terms of the big miss in high level strategy seems worthwhile. This may involve a different skill for each player. It may be tendencies in particular serve receive rotations. Perhaps this is something to keep in mind while evaluating where the team and individual players are in their development. Does the setter have some tendency that leads toward cascading errors? Does the libero get down after a serve receive error? Look for was the big miss can manifest itself in your players and teams.

The concept that intrigued me the most, and is the most likely to transfer to volleyball are the 9 shots. In golf the 9 shots are straight, curve left, and curve right each at a low, medium, and high trajectory. Tiger would go through each of the 9 shots with each of his clubs as part of his pre-competition warmup. There are two places this could translate to volleyball that I can think of, serving and hitting. There are perhaps 6 serves (one to each zone) and each could be practiced from each of the three basic serving locations. They could also be practiced as a float serve and a topspin serve. Alternately you could practice serving to the two gaps between passers and the two gaps between the passers and sidelines. Those 4 serves could be practiced short and long, float and topspin, and from each of the serving locations. For hitting there could be down the line outside the block, the seam between blockers, the angle inside the block, tooling the blocker, going high off the hands of the block, below the block between the blocker and the net, and tips. Those might be harder to effectively practice without actual blockers as is usually the case in pre-match warmup hitting lines. It could still be valuable to do as a sort of mental checklist before competition so our hitters are primed to do it during the match without having to think about it.

There were a few ideas that while they might not have a good volleyball equivalent, they still may have value. At least I think they are interesting.

First there was the idea that Tiger was too concerned with winning and not as much about getting better. Sometimes winning is out of our control and we just lose to a better team. If we do better than the last time it can still be a positive outcome.

Second there was the idea of playing to win vs playing not to lose. The end result in both cases is the same if successful, but the underlying psychology is the problem. I have heard (and will someday find the research in the literature) that the mind will kind of tune out the negative in a statement like “don't serve the ball out”. The brain will interpret that as “serve the ball out”. I have observed good coaches that are miked during timeouts instead making positive statements like “serve the ball in”. Playing not to lose seems like it will end up being subconsciously turned into playing to lose.

Third is the notion that changing things at competition is bad. Tiger was described as a constant tinkerer. He was always trying new swings, and new practice methods. Sometimes without informing his coach. Sometimes those changes started being implemented during a tournament. The results were rarely very positive. We shouldn't be experimenting with things our players have never practiced. That's just bad.

Something that was mentioned briefly, but not really elaborated on, was the idea of conscious peaking. Tiger would try to practice during the week, and during the greater golf season, so that he was playing his best when it mattered most in tournaments. When the competition should be heating up, Tiger was just getting started. I'm not sure how to apply this to volleyball, but it is an interesting idea that might bear further examination.

Something not expressed in the book, but something I thought of while reading, is the idea of keeping a notebook or file on players. This is something that I really should have been doing in a more organized fashion. It would be handy to maintain a file on each player and what their strengths and weaknesses are. This would be very useful in my goals for the player's development and for discussing with the player their own goals for development. It could show progress through the season, and season to season.

Overall The Big Miss was an interesting book. I got a few ideas for how to improve as a coach. I got an interesting peek into Tiger's psychology, but I don't think that will really help me in my coaching. Looking at Haney's coaching was interesting. Tiger would be a challenge to coach. It probably won't be directly helpful, but I will probably be a little more critical of my coaching in the future in a good way. I don't know how much it will help others, but it might be worth a shot, more so if you are also a golfer.