Here’s a review of Volleyball Coaching Wizards – Wizard Wisdom shared on Amazon by a German reader. First the original German, then the translation.

Wer eine Übungssammlung erwartet, wird enttäuscht. Für alle Anderen ist das zweite Buch der Volleyball Coaching Wizards ein riesiger Gewinn. Endlich mal wieder ein Buch, dass sich mit der mentalen Seite des Spiels befasst und Technik/Taktik zum Glück außen vor lässt. Aus meiner Sicht gehört dieses Buch als Pflichtlektüre in jeden Trainerlehrgang – egal auf welcher Ausbildungsstufe. Statt wie im ersten Buch reine Interviews abzudrucken, haben John und Mark einzelne Aspekte aus zahlreichen Interviews heraus genommen und diskutieren diese entweder selbst oder stellen andere Interviewausschnitte dagegen. Hier bieten sich Lernchancen für jeden Trainer. Absolute Leseempfehlung.

Anyone who expects a collection of exercises will be disappointed. For everyone else, the second book of Volleyball Coaching Wizards is a huge win. Finally a book that deals with the mental side of the game and leaves technique/tactics out fortunately. From my point of view, this book is a compulsory reading in every coaching course — no matter what level of training. Instead of printing pure interviews like in the first book, John and Mark have taken individual aspects out of numerous interviews and either discuss them themselves or put other interview excerpts against them. This is where learning opportunities are offered for every trainer. Absolute reading recommendation.

Here’s a review a reader of the first Volleyball Coaching Wizards book posted on Amazon.

As a volleyball coach I was pleased to find a book dedicated to my sport. While I’ve read some great coaching books, such as the ones by Phil Jackson and Bill Walsh, they are both American and about basketball and football respectively. So I very much appreciated not just the technical volleyball aspect, but the fact that the coaches interviewed were from not just the USA, but also Europe and Australia. In particular the interview with Giovanni Guidetti is worth the price of the book alone. His views on coaching and learning are inspirational and thought provoking. The book covers a wide range of volleyball coaching, so not everything will be relevant to each reader (e.g. beach volleyball and college volleyball were less applicable to me), but each coach interviewed had higher level themes relating to coach player interactions that sat above the technical application. Recommended for any volleyball coach.