Key Concepts for Volleyball Coaches
For us coaches to improve our understanding of volleyball, it’s important to understand the fundamental essence of the sport. Below are concepts for successful coaching.
A Strong Team Is Based on These 6 Items:
- Physical Characteristics (size, agility, speed, stamina, power)
- Team Tactics (supported by the players’ technical specialization and skill level)
- Team Experience Level
- Mental Agility (the team’s sophistication in adapting tactics and strategies to changing situations)
- Teamwork and player dynamics
- Team Coaching Ability
Each Movement and Ball Contact Is Part of a Seamless Chain
A player who clearly understands that their movements and contacts are part of a seamless chain can contribute more effectively to the team than a player who sees each action as a separate, isolated event.
A Player’s Role in Every Ball Contact Is to Set Up the Next Play
No matter what the previous ball contact was like, every player must make a focused effort to create a more advantageous situation for the next player to contact the ball.
The Potential for Volleyball Combinations Is Infinite
The combinations of positions, court areas to defend, blocker positions, and player matchups are all infinite. Because of this, we can never prepare for every single situation.
Volleyball Is Dominated by Pre-Play Preparation
We cannot use power or the ability to hold the ball to make up for poor preparation. The ability to effectively control or hit the ball depends on the quality of your preparation.
A Single Volleyball Match Contains 6 Completely Different Games
The six rotations are each a different team formation, and the criteria for evaluating players are different for each rotation. To win a match, we as coaches must observe the game from the perspective of each rotation.
We Must Contemplate Individual Matchups
In each rotation, we must play to our team’s strengths against the opponent’s weaknesses. Tactically, we must highlight our strengths and conceal our weaknesses. This is the key to specialization.
Players Must Be Trained to Compete Against Themselves
Players must be encouraged and coached to become the best player they can be. If they are satisfied with simply being the best player on their team or a better player than someone on the opposing team, they will ultimately lose.
Players Must Be Trained to Consider Each Ball Contact as One of the Most Important Actions in a Game
Once a player achieves this, they must be trained to immediately forget the action and focus only on the next ball contact. The ability to focus on the immediate play is the best guarantee of success and the best way to create a united and cooperative environment for the team’s shared goals.
Each Player Must Have a Clear and Validated Role within the Team’s Strategic and Tactical Framework
Players must understand their role, and that role must align with their technical abilities. Coaches should never expect players to perform well in a tactical setup that is beyond their technical capabilities.
My Overall Interpretation:
It goes without saying that a coach needs a wide range of qualities and abilities, but I particularly felt that a coach needs the ability to observe the whole forest, the trees, the branches, and even the leaves.
A coach must be able to view the overall picture while analyzing the details with high resolution. They must then use that analysis to create a strategy and tactics that fit the team and the players, and then train accordingly.
Writing this out makes it sound easy, but I feel that each of these tasks is meticulous, sensitive, and daunting. On the other hand, it also made me realize that people who can tackle these tasks with passion are the ones who are cut out to be coaches.
The 6 “T”s of Volleyball Coaching
- Teaching
- Technique
- Theory
- Tactics
- Teamwork
- Training
Definitions
System
The apparent method for developing individuals within a play. A system can involve serve-receive patterns, offensive methods, setter movements, spiker coverage positions, block alignments, and back-row reception positions.
We can systematize and describe any player adjustment as a volleyball playing system.
Tactics:
The adaptation of a specific system to match the strengths of your team’s players. As we’ve already discussed, tactics should never be more complex than the technical capabilities of your team’s players in their fundamental individual skills.
Tactics are defined as a coach’s decision to use a system that more effectively leverages a player’s strengths or compensates for their weaknesses. The most important element for understanding tactics is that their development is comprehensively based on your team’s ability. These systems are what you feel best fit the specific individuals you are coaching.
Strategy:
The adaptation of tactics to a specific opponent you are facing. When we develop a strategy, we select a tactic from the range of tactics our team has mastered. We choose elements that are likely to succeed in a specific identified matchup against a predictable opponent.
For example, we have a specific attacker to face a specific blocker. This is a tactical decision related to what our team has trained. This is defined as a strategy. You would develop a general team tactical serving plan—a serving strategy—that should take advantage of the opponent’s weakness in reception. You would develop a blocking strategy, specifically within the tactical menu your team has mastered, that would be most effective in defending against a specific opponent’s attack. Your strategy should change depending on the opponent, or even during a game.
A strategy that is involved in the decision-making for each rotation will be most effective in giving you a better chance of winning than a match plan that does not work against a specific opponent.
Coaching:
The decision-making process for a team to effectively select a strategy for a specific opponent, to effectively select tactics that will be developed during a training period, and to integrate the available elements into a cohesive group.
Effective coaching maximizes the use of an individual’s skills and tactics, thereby developing a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. If a coach can do this, they will be considered successful.
