Coaching education: Ideas for improving yourself and your team
Tuesday, March 30th, 2021
By Scott Spiess
Badger Region staff member
As coaches we are always looking for our athletes to continue to improve. We see them participate in a variety of ways including but not limited to school teams, club teams, summer camps, strength programs, beach/grass tournaments, etc., all in an effort to have fun while also improving. After all, “the game teaches the game”. Let’s not forget that as coaches we also teach game, and with that comes a responsibility to continue to learn and improve upon what we know about the art of coaching.
Coaching Education is important to the Badger Region. Every four years (Olympic cycle) coaches are required to complete and report two hours of continuing education related to best practices/methods in the sport of volleyball and the field of coaching. Free options include IMPACT On-Demand, USAVLEARN, and/or attendance at a Badger Region 3C clinic. There are also a wide range of learning opportunities available (at the cost of the coach) such as attending an AVCA convention, Art of Coaching Volleyball Clinic, collegiate coaching clinics, and more. Hopefully the region requirement is easily attainable in the midst of what you already do as a coach to help your athletes and teams get better.
If you’re having a hard time thinking about how to approach “coaching education”, consider that just like athletes, we as coaches all have our own strengths and weaknesses. When starting a path to seek education, take a moment to reflect on your own coaching philosophy. Think about both your successes and failures as coach. We learn from them both and often can learn more from the failures or mistakes. When I think about things that have helped me become a better coach, I think of four areas: online resources, in-person observations, mental skill training, and communication skills.
We live in a virtual world with seemingly endless information available at our fingertips on the world wide web (this doesn’t mean it’s all GOOD information). There are many reputable sites such as the Art of Coaching Volleyball, Gold Medal Squared, AVCA, and USAVLEARN that have free content for skill training, practice planning, and drills. Take some time to seek out new drills or methods that could help your team, with one caveat, understand the why…don’t just throw a drill at your team because some college coach says it’s a good one. That is something I learned, it’s really important to understand why or when to use a drill. Be sure you understand the intended focus and outcome. Understand your personnel and possible constraints. Just blindly throwing a new drill at your team without thinking it through could end up being frustrating for both you and your athletes.
In my opinion perhaps the best way to learn/improve as a coach is to observe and learn from other coaches, in-person. This can be accomplished in many formats. The obvious environments for this are AVCA convention, Art of Coaching clinics, and collegiate or other entity coaching clinics. However, you can also learn a great deal while working camps. Even though you are still coaching athletes in attendance, you are being exposed to new drills and training methods that have been planned by experienced coaches/directors. There is also the down time in-between sessions to have conversations with other coaches in attendance and bounce ideas off each other. Those casual conversations can also happen in your practice gym or at tournaments across the country. Watch other coaches run a practice or observe how they manage certain situations in a tight match. The volleyball community is small, tight knit one and for the most part very willing to share.
Sometimes a team (coaches included) could use some help training the right mindset. What are you doing to help your athletes with the mental aspects of the game? The Learner Lab (formerly Train Ugly) has a ton of great content for focusing on a growth mindset. Or checkout a new app called NeuroFuel, which focuses on visualization, breathing, and mindfulness as building blocks for an elite mindset. Their mission is to provide young athletes with mental tools to maximize their potential as a volleyball player and in life. Other ideas may be taking a practice night to do some teambuilding/cooperative/trust exercises or deciding to do a book study (Energy Bus, Hard Hat, Teammates Matter to name a few) as a team. Then there’s leadership training; some teams use captains, other don’t. All teams will develop some combination of leaders and followers. Are you helping forge a healthy balance within your team? I personally found Jeff Janssen’s “The Team Captain’s Leadership Manual” to be a great resource for developing and enhancing leadership skills in athletes.
The last area I will focus on is communication. As the saying goes, “communication is key”. Learning how to effectively communicate with your athletes (and their parents) is something that can change from year to year or from team to team. It’s important you get a sense of what works for your group and, generally speaking, over communicating will be better than not communicating enough. Consider having interviews or “check-ins” with your athletes every couple of weeks to share things they are doing well and areas to focus on improving. It also gives the athlete a chance to ask questions they may not feel comfortable asking in a group setting. Team goal setting sessions or video review can also spark good conversation and learning opportunities. If these ideas are new to you, seek out other coaches in your club or area who might be willing to let you sit in on a similar session with their team.
Coaching is more than X’s & O’s but one of the most rewarding “jobs” out there. I believe the best coaches are always looking for ways to improve at their craft. Coaches who continue to learn can adapt to different teams and situations while also setting a good example for athletes on what it takes to be successful.
Coaches can document their completed continuing education/training by completing a short form on the Coaches Education page of the Badger Region website here.
