What drives the decision to start in a certain rotation? That is the question addressed by Mark in this clip excerpted from his interview. Ideas such as matching up on the basis of serve reception and other factors, and starting with the strongest rotation are discussed.
Category: Wizard Quotes and Clips
Structuring preseason
What does your preseason training structure look like? That is addressed by Mark in this clip excerpted from his interview. He addresses some of the challenges that coaches in the professional game have to deal with in terms of player availability. He lays out the primary objectives of preseason development and provides a basic framework of how he looks to plan things. One of the potential surprises for many volleyball coaches is that Mark doesn’t do any of what he calls traditional conditioning.
Expectations and playing time
In this excerpt from his Volleyball Coaching Wizards interview, Vital Heynen talks about how he develops and manages expectations both internally with the team and externally with management. He also shares his philosophy on distributing playing time among his players.
Vital led the German National Team to a bronze medal at the 2014 World Championships, then Poland to gold in 2018. He won numerous league and cup titles coaching in his native Belgium, and has also coached professionally in Germany, Poland and Turkey.
Note, John & Mark expand on Vitals comments in Episode 29 of the Podcast.
Things not working quite as expected
In this excerpt from his Volleyball Coaching WIzards interview, Vital Heynen talks how sometimes the things you try in your coaching can have unanticipated effects.
Vital led the German National Team to a bronze medal at the 2014 World Championships, then Poland to gold in 2018. He won numerous league and cup titles coaching in his native Belgium, and has also coached professionally in Germany, Poland and Turkey.
Putting together a coaching staff
In this excerpt from his Volleyball Coaching WIzards interview, Vital Heynen talks about the approach he takes to putting together the best possible coaching staff. His comments are likely to prove useful not just to head coaches, but also to assistant coaches in how they approach working in their position.
Vital led the German National Team to a bronze medal at the 2014 World Championships, then Poland to gold in 2018. He won numerous league and cup titles coaching in his native Belgium, and has also coached professionally in Germany, Poland and Turkey.
Note: John & Mark expand on Vitals comments in Episode 2 of the Podcast.
Keeping non-starters engaged
Keeping players who are not in the starting team happy, or at least not causing problems in the team dynamic, is a key factor in coaching success. In this excerpt from his Volleyball Coaching Wizards interview, Paulo Cunha talks about how he manages the psychology of non-starters and how he deals with professional players who find themselves watching things from the bench.
From 1987 to 2007 Paulo was a coaching education lecturer and course director for the Portuguese Volleyball Association and Portuguese Volleyball Federation. He coached his nation’s Junior National Team from 1986-1992. His club teams in Portugal’s 1st Division won 8 national titles, 7 Portuguese Cups, and 6 Super Cups. Paulo’s coached in 12 European Cups and in 1998 became the first Portuguese coach to reach a European cup final four. Three times he was awarded Coach of the Year by the Portuguese Association of Volleyball Coaches.
Keeping players fresh
In this excerpt from his interview, Mark discusses his philosophy on training time and intensity. In particularly, he talks about the need to make sure players are as fresh as possible for competition, not just in the short term, but also in the broader context of the full season.
Coaching the team’s best players
In this excerpt from his Volleyball Coaching Wizards interview, US college coach Joel Dearing talks about the need to avoid just focusing our coaching on the weaker players on the team. He says we have to make sure we also give the best player sufficient time and attention.
Joel Dearing coached a total of 40 seasons of collegiate volleyball – mainly on the women’s side, and mostly at Springfield College. He recorded over 700 NCAA Division III victories, putting him in the Top 10 all-time. He head to Springfield men to a final #1 ranking in his final season coaching them. He was the AVCA Regional Coach of the Year 5 times. Joel coached 10 All-Americans. He is the author of two volleyball books, is on the board of the Volleyball Hall of Fame, and is a long-time member of the USA Volleyball CAP cadre. In 2019 he was inducted in to the AVCA Hall of Fame.
This topic is one John & Mark take on in more detail in Episode 15 of the Podcast.
The psychology of training
In this excerpt from his Volleyball Coaching Wizards interview, Swedish coach Anders Kristiansson talks about the psychology of training. Specifically, he discusses the need to consider the mental impact on players of focusing on things they aren’t doing well or where they have developmental needs.
Anders Kristiansson, who currently coaches in Japan, is a coach who influenced other top coaches. He coached teams to 26 combined men’s and women’s championships in his native Sweden, then went on to win 15 titles in Belgium and 3 more in Greece. His teams played in four CEV Champions League Final 4s and twice reached the final. Anders also coached the Swedish national team during its strongest period of international performance. He lead the team to a silver medal at the 1989 European Championships, the nation’s best ever tournament finish.
You can hear further discussion of this concept in Episode 21 of the Podcast. It also features in the Wizard Wisdom book.
Importance of specificity in training
In this excerpt from his Volleyball Coaching Wizards interview, Tom Tait talks about the importance of making training specific. He uses as an example, hitters who primarily practice attacking without a block struggling to be effective when faced with opposition.
Tom Tait is essentially the father of the Penn State volleyball programs – both men and women. He led them both from their early days as club programs to their promotion to full varsity status. He eventually handed off the women’s team to Russ Rose, but kept coaching the men for several more years. In that time he reached 6 NCAA tournaments and reach the finals in 1982. Tom was the 1986 Volleyball Monthly National Coach of the Year. He is a member of the inaugural indication class to the AVCA Hall of Fame.
This topic is something John & Mark expand upon in Episode 17 of the Podcast, as well as in the Wizard Wisdom book.