This article was republished with the permission of Traning-Conditioning.com

Many teams hold training sessions or regular practice sessions in the early morning hours. Sometimes this is done out of necessity, other times coaches and strength/conditioning coaches believe it’s a good way to instill the value of hard work and determination their athletes.

But is it the best thing for your athletes?

Mike Nitka, longtime strength and conditioning coach and a Hall of Fame member of the National High School Strength & Conditioning Coaches Association (NHSSCA), believes that early-morning training can negatively impact teenage athletes.

Here are the “con’s” to holding early-morning practice or workouts that the article lists.

1. It can contribute to a chronic lack of sleep.

The article mentions the direct correlation between athletes suffering from lack of sleep and sports-related injuries based on studies that have been done..

2. Athletes may not have the proper nutrition base to get the most out of the session.

Many athletes forego eating a solid breakfast because they are shortening the time between waking up and leaving for the practice/workout session. The article writes that this can leave athletes in a glycogen-depleted state early in the morning. As a result, the quality of training suffers.

3. A regular routine of early-morning practies/workouts can inhibit recovery and tissue repair.

“An athlete will only get stronger if they have sufficient time between weight room sessions for the body to repair itself, and early-morning workouts can sabotage this recovery—leading to performance decrements and, potentially, injury,” the article states. And this is especially the case if the team has evening practices or games followed by an early-morning session.

“The recovery process for high schoolers seems to be an afterthought for many coaches,” Coach Nitka said in the article. “High school workouts are about progressively developing strength and power in our athletes. Where do we help them improve their diet choices?  Where do we educate them on how to rest and recover between practices by discussing sleep needs to maximize their ability to compete?”

4. Regularly practicing and training in the morning can lead to increased stress for athletes.

Athletes are already stressed enough, and sleep deprivation can contribute to excessive anxiety. “We already know that athletes are more prone to injury during periods of high academic stress, so adding the physical stress of training compounded by a lack of sleep can create a perfect storm of stress for teen athletes,” the article says.

5. If the early-morning session is a strength/conditioning workout, is it properly supervised?

Coach Nitka has seen first-hand that many training sessions are not properly supervised—at any time, but especially in the early morning.

“I’ve been to schools where the weight room is open at all hours, so kids can get their lifts in. I’d find the door unlocked and kids lifting unsupervised—or supervised by someone other than a qualified strength and conditioning coach, like the seniors on the team,” he said in the article.

This article is republished with permission. The original article appears at Coaching Volleyball.

By John Foreman – Founder of Coaching Volleyball. Coach Foreman is the Technical Director for Charleston Academy. He has served as DI college coach as well as a professional coach in Sweden

Do you have a season-long plan for your team’s training and development? Do you think you should?

Personally, I think it’s a good idea.

Before you agree or disagree, let me clear something up. I’m not talking about knowing exactly what you’re going to work on every practice the whole season. While some people might really like that idea, it’s impractical. If nothing else, things happen during a season that mandate adjustments which could cascade through the whole rest of the calendar.

Instead, what I’m talking about is having something you’re working toward, with an outline of how you’ll get there. This provides the big picture framework for the work you do during the season. It all starts with a question.

Where do I want to be at the end of the season?

Now, your immediate response to that question might involve some kind of accomplishment. For example, winning a championship or reaching the conference tournament. That’s not really what we’re looking for here. Think instead of where your team needs to be to be able to accomplish that objective.

Here’s an example.

The 2013-14 Exeter University Women’s team I coached had as its season goal reaching BUCS Final 8s, being held in Edinburgh that year. From a coaching perspective I had to translate that achievement objective into a target level of competitive play. Having attended Final 8s at the end of the 2012-13 season, I had a good sense of what that was. Reaching that level was thus the “where I want to be at the end of the season”.  I looked at where we were at the start of the season, compared it to where we needed to be, and prioritized our areas for development.

There are two ways you can think about your plan from there.

First, prioritize your work on what will have the biggest impact. Basically, the idea here is to first tackle the thing that if accomplished will move you furthest toward your goal. Once that’s taken care of, you move on to the next biggest item on the list.

The second way to look at things is in terms of building blocks. These are elements of the team’s play that contribute to bigger picture objectives. For example, you may decide that you need to feature your middle attack more to increase your offensive efficiency. Building blocks to that could be better passing, more aggressive decision-making by the setter, improved setter-hitter coordination, etc.

I should note, these two ways of thinking are not mutually exclusive. You can certainly think in terms of building blocks and they prioritize which block to work on first in terms of impact. In fact, I’d say that’s a pretty good way to go about things.

And this whole process is a kind of fractal thing. By that I mean you should use the same basic thought process as you move to shorter time frames. That’s where you take the bigger picture plans and start to fill in more detail. As an example, you could decide that serve reception offense is your prime focus for the next two weeks. From there you develop your individual practice plans so they work to develop the skills and tactics required.

The overall point is that you should always be moving in a defined direction – and short-term direction should be defined by the longer-term intent.

This article was provided by Coaching Volleyball

By John Forman

I had a reader question come in asking about setter training. The coach asked:

I would love to get your take on how that you train setters. From day 1 to day whenever. I’ve been training setters for a while but I would love to have a different idea of what others do to make a setter (I like the thought that setters are born rather than made but hey, its not always like that, haha.) From Feet to Hands.

Setter training is a lengthy subject, so I thought to address the question as a sequence of posts rather than to try to just tackle it all in one go. Let me start with the question of identifying good setter prospects.

It’s a classic joke that setters are the short players who aren’t really tall enough to be effective hitters. Certainly, this sort of identification process (if you can call it that) has been used. It probably still does in some places to this day. Needless to say, this is hardly the best approach to take, which at least some folks have figured out. There’s a lot that goes into being a good setter. Here are my thoughts on the subject.

Physical

For any team running a 5-1 offense, there is a decided benefit to having a tall, left-handed setter. Height means the setter isn’t a blocking liability (could be an asset in the case of someone like former US National Team setter Lloy Ball). Being a lefty means the setter can be an attacking option on the second ball, which keeps the opposing defense honest and creates problems for the block. For systems which rely on back-row-only setters (like many 6-2 offenses), these attributes are much less significant, though a bit of height to save tight passes on the net certainly comes in handy still.

All setters, no matter the offensive system, need to be quick on their feet. No doubt the immediate thinking there is that they need to be able to run down shanked passes, but even in teams where that isn’t as much of a problem, a quicker setter will be able to set from a stable position more often than a less quick one simply by getting to the ball with more time to prepare and execute. That stable position means more accurate and consistent sets.

Hands

You will often hear coaches debate the question of whether you want to prioritize good hands or good feet when picking a setter. My personal view is that if a player can’t get to the ball then it’s not going to matter how good their hands are at all. Others make the argument that good hands can make up for poor feet, which certainly is true. I think, however, that hands are a skill that can be developed. Quick feet are much more an inherent ability, though certainly improvements can be made.

Vision

It is important for the setter to know what’s going on around them – both on their side of the net and the other. They need to see what their hitters are doing and how the block is positioned. This is largely a function of peripheral vision, but also of knowing match situations and being able to read developments.

Mental

The mental part of setting is the one that most often gets overlooked by coaches when picking a setter. They see physical attributes like good hands and think that automatically translates into good setter material. This is not always the case. however. The ability to read the game, know what’s going on, anticipate plays, and make quick, decisive decisions are all key features for the setter position. Your team is going to struggle if the setter lacks in any of these areas. The setter also needs to not be a “diva”. Setting is inherently a quite selfless position as it’s about giving others the glory of the score. The setter also needs to be a fairly stable personality. They cannot be prone to roller-coaster emotions. A player who lacks the mental side of the setting position is someone who sets rather than a proper setter.

Leadership

The setter is in the middle of everything in volleyball. While they do not need to be team captain, they do have to be someone the other players respect. That can come about in a lot of different ways. Some setters are vocal and overt leaders. Others are more quiet in demeanor, but project their influence anyway. Because the setter is being looked at by the rest of the team all the time, they have to be a consistent presence on the court, making good decisions, staying calm when things get crazy, and communicating effectively with their hitters.

Not all of these attributes are ones we coaches can pick up on right away, of course. It’s easy to see the physical attributes through observation in drills and the like. The mental and leadership aspects take a bit more time to assess, however. Still, we need to make the effort as best we can, not just to find good setting prospects, but also to identify developmental needs in the setters we’re looking to bring along.

These are just some of my own thoughts. I’d love to hear others’ views. In terms of specific areas. Here’s what I look at for setters in terms of target position, hand placement, weight transfer, and pushing the ball out.

Coach Forman has coached US college volleyball for many years, as well as coaching and running a Juniors program, and got his start at the high school level. He was a very successful coach at both the university and club level in the U.K., and also coached professionally in Sweden, as well as having worked with pro teams in Germany.

This post appears on Coaching Volleyball and is republished here with permission

Thoughts on planning practice and selecting drills for each session.

By John Forman

Coach Forman is currently the assistant volleyball coach at Midwestern State University. Before that he was the Head Coach of the professional women’s team at Svedala Volleybollklubb in Sweden

I once came across a question from a fellow coach.

Has anyone set up a database of drills/games/etc with a template for practices? e.g., in your template you can select from a variety of warmup items, then pick an individual skill, then a group skill, etc… so you wouldn’t have to a) remember every single drill since they would be in a database, b) hand write practice every day, etc.

I understand why something like this would be compelling. On the one hand, when I first got into college coaching I worked for a woman who was very structured. She was a facilities planner, so she liked her practices scheduled out basically to the minute.This sort of practice organizer is right up that alley.

On the other hand, there are definitely lots of options for drills and games. It can be hard to remember them. I’ve got some thoughts about this, though.

Why so many?

First, there is something I wrote about in the 1000 different drills post. Some coaches proudly have a large drill collection. They constantly swap drills in and out of their practices. As I talked about in that other post, though, this could actually hamper player learning.

Perhaps more meaningfully, always using different drills means time spent explaining them. That’s time not spent practicing. Remember, the more you talk, the less they train. If you have limited practice time, you need to get the absolute most out of it.

It only takes a few

Having said what I did in the last section, I definitely get the desire to mix things up and keep it fresh. We do need to keep player attentions in mind in our practice planning. That means changing the challenges and the focal points. Jan De Brandt and Teri Clemens, who we interviewed for the Volleyball Coaching Wizards project, both are proud of never running the same practice twice.

Here’s the thing, though. You can create an ever-changing practice plan using only a handful of exercises.

This starts with the understanding that you want to make things as game-like as you possibly can at all times. This is a simple function of the science of motor learning. You can’t always create actual game situations, or do things in a 100% game-like fashion, but you want to get as close as you can. If you have this idea in mind, it will likely cut down quite a bit on the number of possible drills you might use.

The second thing to understand is that so long as you make the exercises as game-like as you can get them, then what really matters isn’t the drill or game itself, but the feedback. That means you can use the same exercise for multiple different purposes simply by shifting the focus and feedback.

Finally, bonus points and other scoring systems can let you use even a simple 6 v 6 game in any way you like. Want to work on serve reception? Consider something like the points for passes system. Want to work on first ball sideout? Give a bonus point when the team does it, and/or to the serving team when they can prevent it. Want your servers attacking seams? Give them bonus points for doing so, regardless of the pass quality.

And of course you can also focus on something by having each rally begin in a certain fashion. Or if you want to run a wash game, you can have the follow-up ball(s) work a certain way. Let’s say you want to work on out-of-system hitting. You could start the rallies with a ball hit at the setter so a non-setter has to set the ball.

The point is you can work on just about anything you want in a simple 6 v 6 game by changing the way rallies are initiated, how you score them, and where you focus your feedback. And you can get really focused by using a second chance approach.

Get the point I’m trying to make here?

My own approach

I’m like Jan and Teri in that I probably don’t ever run the same practice twice. Teri actually goes even deeper in her interview (featured in the first Volleyball Coaching Wizards) and says she never had a list of drills. She just created whatever she needed when she planned practice. I approach things in a similar way.

Yes, I do have some standard drill and game structures that I use. By that I mean they are 6 v 6, or small-sided, or have a winners rotation, or something along those lines that is familiar to the players. This avoids the need for teaching new drills all the time. From there, though, I set up the ball initiation, scoring, and feedback so it focuses things on what I have for my priority that session.

I’m not saying this is the best approach for every coach. We all need to have a practice planning system that works for us. This one works well for me.