| Integrating Drills Into Practice
"Coach, can we run that again?" Are these the type of comments being made in your gym during practice? Is this the level of enthusiasm your players bring to matches? If not, we can help. Drills are the essence of a strong practice and the foundation for a strong team. Drills can be cooperative and competitive or both, and with some advance planning, they can be well organized, well run, and well received. Effective, enjoyable practices take place in a safe, efficient, and clean environment. Practices should be inviting and should include a comfortable welcome and a routine warm-up that brings players together and prepares them to work as a team. Coaches and players should have high expectations that each practice will include opportunities for achievement, improvement, camaraderie, and yes, fun! It is essential to establish that players are winners before starting a practice. The success rate for the drills is be higher when coaches make it clear that they believe in the players and expect them to be successful in the drills. Coach, you are ultimately responsible for the motivation of your team. You must demand the best from yourself, and deliver it, before you can demand a high standard of performance from your players. If players believe in you and know you believe in them, they will believe in themselves. If you sell the drills, your players will buy the drills. To select the right drills for your team you must know yourself and your team. To make the drills work you must plan ahead so that you can make the most of your practice time. To keep practices interesting, you must be creative, innovative, or both, and you must have the ability to adapt drills to meet the needs of your team. The drills outlined in this book can be used as presented or can be readily adapted to your program. There are no rules! Change any part of any drill to mix things up or to better meet the needs of your players. Most of us coaches have spent summers and weekends thinking about the season with every intention of being completely prepared ahead of time with a detailed season calendar containing planned practices and drills. Shoot, we may have had the victories on the scoreboard already and patted ourselves on the back for all our early preparation and insight. But despite our dreamin' and schemin' many of us have also seen reality set in the weekend before preseason, when a last-minute blood pressure spike or a bout of nausea reminded us that we had failed to develop our rough ideas into focused plans and put them on paper. A good first step toward developing a season plan is to consider your coaching and support staff. You'll want to take full advantage of any assistants you may have and the skills they have to offer. Decide how to use your assistants before the start of practice and adjust this plan as needed during practice. Think about your players, both as individuals and as a team. Evaluate their knowledge of the game, their skills, and their strengths and weaknesses. Consider their physical and emotional maturity and their learning styles as you select drills and activities to challenge them. Evaluate your coaching and communication style. Making your expectations clear extends beyond issues of performance and discipline. If you want your players to learn to be self-motivated and to develop leadership skills of their own, create opportunities for them to do so. Drill Selection Once you have established the direction of your program and have in mind what you want to achieve in a season, you can begin to develop the general practice scheme for a season. Both coach-centered drills and player-centered drills should be used. In coach-centered drills, a coach is directly involved. The coach provides instruction, controls the pace, and initiates the ball. This type of drill is most often used in the instructional phase early in the season. In player-centered drills, players initiate the ball and control the pace, and the coach's role is to provide feedback and teach as needed. Because a player initiates the ball in match play, it is important to include this type of drill most often. Putting together the drills for a particular practice is not a mindless or random process in which you drop in just enough drills to fill a time slot. The needs of the team and the type of opposition they will face must be considered. These factors change over the course of the season; therefore, your practice plans must change. Preseason drills should offer many repetitions so players can learn and practice skills. The total number of touches (times a player touches the volleyball) should be much higher during this phase than in any other time of the season. Choose drills that afford a lot of touches for each player. Preseason is a time for teaching and for conducting technical checkups on various skills in both individual and group play. Advanced teams, as well as beginning teams, are in learning mode, although at different levels. A high number of touches is necessary at this time, and the repetitions will pay off all season long. The fact that this is a time for learning does not mean that preseason drills should not offer competition. Quite the opposite! Get players' competitive fire stoked early as early as day one. Competitions for doubles, triples, and quads allow players many more touches than 6v6 team competitions. Preseason is the perfect time for these mini team games. Focus more on individual drill selections and less on the multiplayer or team selections during the preseason. Practices tend to be longer to allow for skill repetition, so change drills often to keep players interested. Repeat the skills, not the drills! Midseason is the time to rely on offense, defense, transition, multi-player, and team drills. While there is still a need for skill repetition, it requires less emphasis than in preseason. The bigger goal is to heighten preparation for team play and match opposition. Team emphasis and strong transition work is key during this time. Work on free-ball plays and play short scoring games with many opportunities for players to experience victory. This encourages the desire to win. The focus at this stage is more on team than individual players. Nearly all drills should have a gamelike competitive quality. Postseason practices are usually shorter and therefore must be extremely efficient. You must be precise in your drill selection because you are now preparing specifically for each opponent, addressing in more detail what the team will face in upcoming matches than you did in midseason. Address opposition matchups within team drills and set up competition to mimic opposition as closely as possible. Beginning teams may need to continue to focus on their own side of the net because their goals and approach to the game will vary only minimally based on the skills and strategies of their opponents. In every season, each practice should begin with a warm-up, progress through several drills, climax with a well-organized competition section, and wind down to a satisfying ending, just like a well-written book. Remember, Coach, volleyball is all about practice and improvement! Matches are played just so we know what to work on at the next practice! Determining how much repetition is too much can be difficult. Most coaches struggle with two questions:
Keep in mind that players come to practice to play. Some coaches get caught up in extensive explanation, and the drill can lose its magic before it be gins. Keep instructions brief and clear and let players learn by playing. Day-to-day practices must include a wide range of activities. Drills should be inviting and exciting so that players are eager to come to practice each day. Let players be inspired by the creative drills you offer. There's nothing better than hearing, "Let's go again!" It can be tempting to give in to players' pleas for more, but it's always best to leave them hungry. Take that energy into another drill. We've probably all overdone a good thing. The ideal time to end a drill is before the players and coaches tire of it. Finally, remember this: Many repetitions in a short time are more valuable than a few repetitions over a long time. In other words, keep the lines short in drills, Coach. No one wants to stand in a long line, and your feedback isn't as effective if a player doesn't get to act on it right away with another try. This is beneficial to the rhythm of a drill also - drills typically flow better with a small group. But the next small group should be ready, and the transition time between groups should be short. A good rule of thumb is to have no more than three players in a line. Just change the groups often. You have evaluated your team. You have selected drills. You might be able to read it and run it! But remember, you may need to make adaptations within the drill to meet your needs or your number of players. Give yourself time. Prepare in advance who will be in the groups or on the teams, who will substitute where and when, and what pace you will maintain throughout a drill. Is a reward necessary for winners? Try rewarding winners with more of the same! For example, the winner of a triples match gets to play triples against three coaches, or the winner of a blocking competition gets 10 extra blocks. This type of reward not only encourages individual players, but it also helps the team. The staff in your gym must be organized with an efficient plan to run drills. Tossing, hitting, and serving are necessary skills for staff members directly involved in running the drills. Coaches and tossers must know (and may need to practice) all the methods of entering balls into drills. Popping balls into play underhand or overhead with a half-swing in order to reduce the wear on a shoulder will give you many more years of involvement. Tossing well is something of a lost art, and doing it while continuously receiving balls from a feeder can be challenging. You may have to arrive early to practice . . . to practice! Coaches must train themselves to pay attention to the task at hand. During a passing drill, give feedback on passing. If the pass leads to a great set and a kill terminates the play, give feedback on the pass. This takes practice. The natural tendency is to follow the action to termination and comment on the end result. Physically positioning yourself so that the specific skill you're working on is your main visual focus may help. Players become more competitive if they are given more competitive opportunities. Do more drills that use a scoring system than drills that don't. Scorekeeping adds a gamelike pressure and generally raises the level of play. Only in cooperative drills that serve instructional purposes should you not keep score. Competitions can be rather basic, such as in counting the number of passes to a target. Or they can be much more advanced, such as scoring in serve-receive, free-ball and defensive transition - all to get just 1 point. It is the coach's responsibility to encourage the joy of competition by showing eagerness to see players achieve the reward. We, as coaches, must nurture the desire to win and the desire to win again. Praise players; actively support their quest for victory even in the simplest competition. Do it with spirit and show some emotion. Slapping hands or allowing time for a quick mini-celebration on the court is important. Encourage this connection - remember that this connection is the reason many players compete in team sports. Allow players who are naturally competitive to lead in this area! Scoring goals for drills should most often be low. A 6v6 team drill will usually be more effective if it ends at 6 to 9 points rather than continuing to 25. Shorter contests offer many more opportunities for victories over the course of a practice or season. Remember, we want to provide many opportunities for success. The more players win, the more they will desire the feelings that winning brings. Short games also allow for easy substitutions and make scorekeeping simpler. Finally, they provide multiple opportunities for water breaks and performance feedback. As you work your way through the remaining chapters and plan your practice sessions, keep these coaching points in mind:
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Integrating Drills Into Practice
