Five Questions With: Marouane Jafir — a coaches’ coach, elite athlete and educator
Monday, October 26th, 2020
In the fall of 2020, the Badger Region began a series titled Five Questions With, where we interview volleyball movers and shakers and share the stories with our members. The first interview was with Marouane Jafir, a great friend of the Badger Region thanks to being a member of the CAP cadre who has visited Wisconsin on three different occasions. Jafir is a former Moroccan national team member, club owner, former college coach and educator for USA Volleyball. Check out the full video interview by clicking here.
If I’m a new coach, what advice do you have for me so that I don’t get overwhelmed with everything?
Your first job is to make sure you’re never somebody’s last coach. It’s easy to come to practice and over coach and design practices that are oriented around lots and lots of drills. Not allowing (athletes) to make mistakes. That will turn a lot of people off from listening to you and learning from you. You might know a lot and you might be very good at what you do, but the way you deliver your message, the way you talk to your athletes is very important. No. 1: They must have fun. If you don’t provide fun, you won’t have anybody that will come back to your gym.
What are your core coaching principles?
When I started coaching, I didn’t have any philosophies whatsoever. I went to the gym and just started coaching the way that I was coached. With that, I started asking athletes to do things that I was being trained to do when I played professionally, and that did not work very well. One of the main things I learned was that it’s not about me. It’s about the athletes. My principles are all centered around my athletes. And that is centered around having fun. My first responsibility is to guide my athletes to be really good people and understanding the idea of being a good teammate, team spirit, team work – all of that stuff. My approach is simple: Create talent develop where my athletes feel safe. What I mean by that is I am not a yeller. My radar is not always on where I am trying to catch somebody being bad. It was hard for me to do that – let mistakes go. But if keep you keep catching players being bad all the time, they aren’t going to listen to you. They are not going to grow. So my coaching principle is to provide an environment that will allow a player to make mistakes. People are playing for club volleyball to learn – and the way to do that is allowing them to make mistakes. Another goal is to keep as many people in the game as possible, and doing that is very hard. And as a club coach, that is hard. Not every player is the same on your team. One player is there for this reason, another player is there for that reason. You have to explain your philosophy and cater to every single one of them so they never quit the sport. My coaching philosophy is not oriented around being the best volleyball player that you can be or hitting the ball as hard as you can hit it or jumping as high as you can. It’s to make sure that my players come back for my next practice.
As an educator of coaches, is it difficult to get coaches (and players) to think about “why” they do things the way they do?
Yes. Because we sometimes know more – we might know more about the science of learning of how a player learns and how some players need to be able to see it to do it or some players need to do it to do it. There are different techniques. When you ask a person and want them to believe what you believe, it’s hard. They have pride. They think they know. It’s very hard for them to listen to you because they have been doing it a certain way before. They might have really good athletes in their gym and say “whatever I’ve been doing it’s been working, so why would I listen to what another coach has to say?” So what I found useful is making my idea your idea without forcing you to listen to me using a guided discovery method. I won’t go up to a coach in my club and tell them have to do something a certain way. I will ask them about their way first. I approach them where I want to learn their way. I want to go on exploration with them to help me understand their thinking behind that game or that drill or that technique. And I’m open minded, and maybe I have to be learner, too. So, whatever we decide together at the end, it’s for the best interest of the player or the person that is learning. It’s never direct where I am right and you are wrong. You have to have conversations with your coaches (and athletes). They are more likely to listen when you empower them. Some people view coaching as “I’m the solution provider and then you are the executor, and that’s it. I’m going to do the thinking for you and you’re going to go do it. That’s it.” Most of the time, that doesn’t work. You have to let them explore. You have to ask them why. You have to guide them to the answer you want them to reach. Then they own that answer.
You’re a former professional player, what do former (high-level) players have to look out for so that I don’t come off as all-knowing or arrogant?
If you go to coach athletes 10-and-under or 12-and-under and you go to the parents and kids of that team and say “I played for the Olympic team,” they don’t care about that. You know what they care about? About how much fun they are going to have. I learned this the hard way. You have to be humble, and that kid don’t care about your career. They care about how much fun you provide. I made this mistake. Why do parents think that coach is better than me? Why would they choose someone with less experience, and why they don’t come play for me? That’s when I realized I had to get coaching education as a former professional athlete on how to teach young players. I had to find a way tap into that part of their brain that would make them love the experience in my gym. And when I understood that, I put all my negativity and how I did it before aside. And I learned from the science and how the game teaches the game. And how the only thing they care about is not the drill you copied from YouTube, but how much fun they are going to have when they’re in the gym. I encourage every coach who played at high level is go coach a 12s team and learn how humble you’ll be.
What have you learned most about yourself through coaching and coaching education?
Coaching education for me, it was a lightbulb moment. You can have excellent athletes or you can have a 12-and-under team. Regardless, the principles and the science are the same. If you believe in science and you believe in how the brain works and how people accept information, you will have principles in place that you can apply at any level. I used to make those mistakes. You’re coaching the same principles just at a different pace and at a different level of the game. You don’t need to be scientist to figure that out, but you have to believe in the science of how people learn.
Check out the full video interview by clicking here.
