Volleyball: Reading Your Future

By: Garrett Dolan, Ph.D., Social Scientist - Rice University

Originally published in: Coaching Volleyball Magazine

HAVE YOU EVER been to a sporting event and were just amazed at an athlete's ability to react to a situation under extreme time constraints? The soccer goalie's ability to block a penalty kick, the tennis player's ability to return a serve, or the volleyball player digging what appeared to be an non-returnable kill-shot. While these athletes may not be the fastest or strongest players on the court, they have a seemingly uncanny ability to anticipate an opponent's actions. They appear to have a better understanding than most where the ball will be. How do they do it? Is it luck or something that can be learned, and thus, taught?

LEARNING TO READ

Learning to "read" in volleyball is not about comprehension or fluency. Instead, it is about developing the ability to recognize certain patterns of behaviors so you can react with greater speed and accuracy. Many of us who played competitive sports have experienced situations when we knew where the next pass was going, or who the player was going to be to get the last-second shot at the basket. Surely, you have heard a coach yelling from the sidelines for his team to react to an emerging scenario because he "could see the play developing." This ability to see patterns, to process visual cues and anticipate a future response, is called pattern recognition and recall (PRR).

PRR skills have been documented in the scientific literature for years. The Australian Sports Commission (2002)found a positive correlation between the ability to recognize patterns and game- based decision-making skills. As recently as 2009, the Journal of Vision, published by the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology, released a study about soccer goalies and how they learned to better anticipate the action of others within the context of a penalty kick.

In volleyball, pro athlete and Director, Membership Development & Disabled Programs for USA Volleyball, John Kessel, has written on the significance of reading stating " ... reading ... is the most important skill in volleyball." He contends that in order to raise the nation's overall competitiveness on the international stage, coaches need to develop practice regimes where anticipatory play is at the core. No longer should coaches focus their energy at the point when a player contacts the ball. A concerted effort must be made to teach players about the conditions that led up to a player's contact. Simply stated, the better a player is at anticipating the game that's developing, the better they will be at predicting what is going to happen next and physically readying herself to make a play. Reading and anticipating allows the player to have more time to make an accurate judgment.

K-12th grade athletes come in all shapes, sizes and skill levels. So, it should be no surprise that some players can read a scenario more naturally than others. This is not to say they are a better or worse athlete, just that there is a range of natural skills. Fortunately, developing PRR is a learnable skill. The challenge however, is that most young athletes' brains are still developing and might not be capable of understanding such information.

Only recently have neuroscientists begun to understand why pre-adults (teenagers) have limited capability to read a developing situation. It appears that the ability to anticipate, interpret feedback, and see the relationship among disparate behaviors within the context of a chain of events is a higher order brain function. Teenagers' brains have less myelin (white matter) in the frontal lobes than adults, and as a result, are unable to transmit the requisite amount of nerve signals that foresight skills require. This will change as teens become adults, but it does leave a special educational burden on high school coaches. If we truly want to meet Mr. Kessel's call for stronger pools of players, our elementary, high school and club level coaches will need to patiently, deliberately and repeatedly practice the skills required for foresight to be commonplace.

LEADING TO LEARN

Teaching athletes to see a play develop is both challenging and easy. It is difficult for the coach because they often have to interrupt the regular flow of practice to create teachable moments, yet maintain a practice environment that emulates the time constrained situations game play demands. Complicating the matter is if the coach is uncomfortable or unsure of the subject and related teaching methods. Nevertheless, the coach's leadership is required for the team to assimilate reading skills. Teaching PRR is no different than any other skill development activity (i.e. serving, passing etc.). If a team really wants to elevate their performance and learn to read patterns, it is absolutely essential for the coach to lead the players through the transition. On the other hand, the tools necessary to teach pattern recognition are readily available to all coaches. They don't necessarily have to cost any money or require any new equipment. With a little creative thinking, any program can set up a training regime to work on pattern recognition.

BRING YOUR BRAIN TO PRACTICE

PRR is an acquired skill. At its most fundamental level, the ability to read developing plays requires a heightened level of awareness for what is going on around the ball while it is on the other side of the court – not at the point of contact or when the ball is on your side of the net. When the hitter is attacking, the defense should already be moving towards an optimum cover position and be in place as the strike occurs. The time demands to accomplish this are measured in fractions of a second; thus to be good at anticipatory play, athletes need to consciously work to develop a procedural memory (i.e. like muscle memory) without the need for conscious control or attention. In other words, athletes need to teach their bodies to read and react on a subconscious level to ensure the fastest results. Failure to do so handicaps the defense's reaction time.

Fortunately, with a little practice, players can develop a library of techniques to read plays. A powerful way to think about teaching these skills is to create a conceptual framework to help athletes group different techniques by time of occurrence. This is a useful approach for situations when speedy recall is needed because it minimizes the number and degree of factors that may confound an athlete. Also, a framework acts like a map that gives coherence to the multitude of options available.

1. Pre-Game – study the past

• It is crucial for players to learn to think with series frame of mind. That is to say, work at thinking about a play as a series of interrelated actions with each step in the process building upon the previous one, culminating with the hitter contacting the ball. For example, a play starts with a dig, and if the setter gets a perfect pass where she doesn't have to move, she will likely do what comes most easily and naturally - send a good set to the outside hitter. Assuming the outside hitter gets a set right where they want it, they will most likely hit cross-court to the number 3 or 4 position. In this scenario, because the defense was watching how good the libero handled the serve, they can begin to anticipate where the ball will end up (i.e. front-and-center of the net into the setter's hands). Once they get used to seeing plays as a series of events and not just an outcome, their ability to do PRR will come quickly. Some of the most common attack patterns worth studying are: serve-outcome, pass-set-attack outcome, or block-dig-set-attack-outcome.
• Statistics – statistics are powerful tools for PRR. Done correctly, they can quantify information about past behavior and can present information in ways that are useful for seeing patterns. Many coaches use statistics to study player tendencies and to determine a team's strengths and weaknesses. Certainly there are many types of statistics that can be tracked, but for teaching young players, there are three in particular that are helpful to know:
• Which position is hitting? - probability of a certain position hitting the ball over the net
• How effective of a hitter are they? - hitters scoring percentage
• Where does the ball go? -probability of where the ball will land on your side of the court

Ideally, each team should have statistics about their opponents to help them guide their strategy. However, if for some reason that is not possible, there are some broad generalizations that can be quite insightful. A good rule-of-thumb is for outside hitters to receive between 50-60 percent of all sets, with the middle and right side hitters splitting the difference. This is very powerful information because it tells you which position will be sending the ball over the net (i.e. outside hitters 50-60 percent of the time). Blockers now have a critical piece of in-formation to guide their efforts. Based on an analysis of NCAA 2009 Volleyball Statistics for 617 Divisions I-III schools (as of 12/09), the average number of kills per game is 12.1 with a "hitting percentage (kills – errors/at-tempts)" of 20.4 percent. When these two variables are analyzed together, it tells you that on average, university teams make 53 attempts at scoring. When this is combined with the information about setters' tendencies to pass to a certain position, defenses can better anticipate who will be hitting the ball and how well they will do on average. This gives the coach strategic insight and the option of making some defensive adjustments accordingly.

• A third variable to help defenses is to understand where the hit will likely land on the opposite side of the court. Based on the tendencies of the setters to pass the ball, observations of hundreds of games, and a very limited set of game statistics, it is reasonable to say the majority of hits will travel cross-court and land in the blue zone identified below. This observation passes the logic test because most of the sets are going to the outside hitter, and the vast majority of outside hitters are right-handed individuals whose arm swings naturally drive the ball cross-court. Conversely, the ball is least likely to land in the yellow zone because of the blockers presence. (See Fig. 1)

2. During the game–watching the present

The athlete that is present "in the moment" can derive a lot of information about an opponent. In poker, for example, when a player is about to take an action and has a detectable change in behavior like a twitch or fidget it is called a "tell." A "tell" can inform you about the player's state of mind and what the player is about to do. In volleyball, players can pick up auditory and visual performance cues (i.e. tells) to indicate what will occur next. Common cues include:

• The server almost always looks at who they are going to serve the ball to
• The hitter's movement, across court or not, as the ball is being passed to the setter tells where they will hit from
• The coach calling out a play number
• The natural inclination for players to do what comes easiest – read preceding statistical comments
• The body posture of the hitter as they begin their attack can tell what angle the ball will come over the net
• The quality of the set will indicate whether or not a hitter will tap the ball
• The mental state of the hitter. If they are frustrated because they have been blocked a number of times they will almost always try tips until their confidence returns
• How the setter receives the ball. If the ball is in front of the setter it is highly unlikely they will set it behind them. Whereas, if the ball is behind the setter, it is very unlikely the ball will go forward. If the set is perfect and on top of the setter's head, watch to see if the back is arched. If so, the setter is communicating their intention to send the ball behind them.

3. Post-Game - thinking forward

Good "readers" are able to catalog cues and statistical information in their subconscious and then quickly tap that information during games. The speed of play often doesn't allow for athletes to consciously breakdown a play, think about what their opponent is doing, and then predict the right reaction. All of this work needs to happen on an unconscious level. The ability to recall and react is directly related to the athlete's ability to catalog information.

In competitive sports it is important to look backwards before going forward. The ability to do PRR requires practice and repetition for successful adoption. Coaches that are concerned with educating their players understand this and will use game results to reinforce training principles. Three proven methods for teaching after a game include:

• Asking players to compare actual game results with the statistical generalizations they have memorized.
• Requiring all athletes on the bench to literally track on a real-time basis the series of events that lead up to their opponents sending the ball over the net. By using a clipboard and taking notes, especially those that relate to the opponents' activity most closely related to their position, players will increase their ability to retain the information. Moreover, this is a powerful way for players to continue growing as athletes and to keep them engaged in the game. Players acting and beginning to think like coaches by sharing information with their teammates is a great way to build camaraderie and reinforce PRR.
• Watch actual game films. Similar to the preparatory work before a game, after is no better teaching tool than to have athletes watch their performance with the aid of a coach that loves to educate his players. Slowing down the game and examining the actions that lead up to the ball coming over the net and talking to players about what and why they reacted the way they did is like an express lane to enhanced performance. Coaches that watch films (i.e. mental training) and then go to the court to practice integrating the new information (i.e. physical training) will provide their players with a better education than those that just go back to the court for a traditional workout. Reflective learning is an often forgotten and unappreciated method of educating others.
• Reward their performance. At first, reward their efforts to develop PRR skills. Then as the season progresses, begin to reward players for their performance and not just the privileged ones that got to play. Find reasons for players to be re-warded for their contribution to the team's efforts. On approach, is to reward those players that do a thorough job tracking the opponent's play series while on the bench. Another approach would be to pick a play where successful PRR skills were utilized successfully and share it with the rest of the team.

SUMMARY

Pattern recognition and recall skills have proven to be effective in many sports. However, in volleyball there does not appear to be a widespread adoption of training regimes where anticipatory play is at the core. In order to bolster the nation's overall competitiveness on the international stage, prominent experts are calling for that to change. Teaching reading skills to players may seem daunting at first because most coaches and players were not exposed to it when they were at the same age. Fortunately, with some patient and deliberate efforts, players can be taught to quickly grasp these skills.

Acknowledgement: I would like to thank John Kessel, Director, Membership Development & Disabled Programs for USA Volleyball, for his advice and encouragement with writing this article.

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