Volleyball Coaching Wizards Podcast

First of all, if you have not already seen our In Memorial post about the passing of Wizard Carl McGown, please check it out. We are making the text of Carl’s interview freely available. Be sure to pass it around to your friends and colleagues. The whole volleyball coaching community should be aware of Carl’s influence and impact on volleyball training and player development. Now back to the podcast. In mid-December, John attended the American Volleyball Coaches Association (AVCA) annual convention. He presented a session about the Volleyball Coaching Wizards project, which he talks a bit about in this episode. John also attended a number of other sessions. We will probably talk about some of those in future podcasts, but in this episode the focus is on some stuff USA Men’s National Team coach John Speraw discussed in his presentations. Feedback, questions, comments, etc. are always welcome! The post Podcast Episode 31: Observations from the 2016 AVCA Convention appeared first on Volleyball Coaching Wizards.

In this episode we take a look at playing time and the expectations related to them. Vital Heynen provides a starting point for the discussion. He shares his thoughts on keeping a squad – and management – happy. The conversation carries on from there. Vital Heynen is the current head coach at German professional team VfB Friedrichshafen. He led the German Men’s National Team team to bronze at the 2014 World Championships. He has coached at the professional level for a number of years, having won a bunch of silverware during his time in his native Belgium. He has also coached clubs in Poland and Turkey. Vital also had a lengthy career as a player in his own right. Feedback, questions, comments, etc. are always welcome! The post Podcast Episode 29: Playing time and expectations with Vital Heynen appeared first on Volleyball Coaching Wizards.

The first ever Volleyball Coaching Wizards book was recently released. In this episode of the the podcast we talk about the book, and about the whole Wizards project that has brought about it’s development. Feedback, questions, comments, etc. are always welcome! The post Podcast Episode 27: The first Volleyball Coaching Wizards book appeared first on Volleyball Coaching Wizards.

What are the most important skills for a coach? Craig Marshall shares his thoughts in this episode. We start our discussion there, and eventually circle back to end there. In between, though, we wander around through a few other subjects. Hopefully, you’ll find them interesting. :-) Australian coach Craig Marshall is a fixture on the world beach volleyball circuit. He has coached teams on the highly competitive World Tour for nearly two decades, with eight podium finishes and a World Championships medal. He has also coached multiple medal wins on Continental tours, including a historic clean sweep of medals at the 2016 Asian Championships. He coached the Australian men in the 2000, 2004, and 2008 Olympics tournaments, and was on-hand in 2012 as well. Feedback, questions, comments, etc. are always welcome! The post Podcast Episode 25: Important Skills for a Coach, with Craig Marshall appeared first on Volleyball Coaching Wizards.

What are the qualities and characteristics of a good assistant coach? In this episode of the Volleyball Coaching Wizards Podcast we get the views from long-time NCAA Division I assistant John Corbelli and share our own perspectives from both sides. John Corbelli is one of the most respected trainers of volleyball players around. This is perhaps no surprise given that he assistant for the USA Women’s National Team under legendary coach Arie Sellinger during the 1984 Olympics. John is probably best known for being the lead assistant to his wife Laurie at Texas A&M where the two have spent more than 20 years together. During that time they’ve won nearly 500 matches, made almost 20 trips to the NCAA tournament (including 2 Final Fours), and have had players earn 30 All-American selections. Fellow Wizards Vital Heynen, Bill Neville, and Jim Stone were mentioned in this episode. Vital was featured in Episode 2 and Bill was part of Episode 16. Feedback, questions, comments, etc. are always welcome! The post Podcast Episode 23: The qualities of a good assistant coach with John Corbelli appeared first on Volleyball Coaching Wizards.

Player psychology is an important consideration for coaches at all levels, and in all sports. How much does it factor into how you put together your practice plans and how your address developmental needs in training with your team? Probably not enough. In this episode of the podcast, Anders Kristiansson starts off the conversation with some observations from his interview on the importance of keeping the psychological aspect in mind when developing training plans and talking with players. 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. This is the second time Anders has been featured in the podcast. You can hear his thoughts on keeping things simple from Episode 11. Feedback, questions, comments, etc. are always welcome! The post Podcast Episode 21: The psychology of training with Anders Kristiansson appeared first on Volleyball Coaching Wizards.

This episode of the podcast actually takes a different course than most in that it features a question submitted by a listener. He basically asked the question how as coaches we can avoid having all the responsibility (blame) dumped on us when the team doesn’t perform as expected – whatever that might mean. It’s a really interesting thing to think and talk about. Mark’s blog post with the quotes from NBA coach Gregg Popovich mentioned in the conversation can be found here. John’s blog post on the subject of proving ourselves as coaches. We also mentioned the episode with Tom Turco about post-match talks. Feedback, questions, comments, etc. are always welcome! As this episode proves, we actually do pay attention to them and you might even make your way into the show. If nothing else, you let us know people actually listen. :-) The post Podcast Episode 19: Avoiding being the scapegoat for losing as a coach appeared first on Volleyball Coaching Wizards.

The benefits to be had from incorporating more random or distributed (game-like) training in your practices as opposed to the old-school block style of training (basic repetitive skill execution) are often discussed in coaching circles these days. In this episode of the podcast Tom Tait, who knows a thing or two about skill acquisition, talks about how you can still do skill coaching in a game-like environment and how we need to allow our players to develop their athleticism in that way. Tom Tait is basically the father of Penn State Volleyball. He was the first coach for both the men’s and women’s teams, having handed the latter off to Russ Rose. He developed the men’s program into a consistent NCAA championship contender before eventually also handing that off. Since then he’s been focused on coaching education, working with the US national team program, and continuing his work as a professor at Penn State. In the discussion a graph is mentioned which shows why random training is superior to the block alternative, based on scientific research. Here it is: This was presented at the USA Volleyball High Performance Coaches Clinic in 2015. John was there and shared what was discussed in Going beyond maximizing reps. We also referenced the desirability of being as efficient as possible in our practice planning and implementation. That was talked about in the Jan De Brandt episode. Feedback, questions, comments, etc. are always welcome! The post Podcast Episode 17: Better results from random training with Tom Tait appeared first on Volleyball Coaching Wizards.

It is often the case that we, as coaches (and teachers), either coach to the middle of our squad or focus more attention on the weaker players to try to bring them up to everyone else’s level. From the perspective of maximizing gains, this can make sense. As Wizard Joel Dearing points out, though, we cannot ignore the best players in the team along the way. That is the focus of this episode. Joel Dearing coached at NCAA Division III Springfield College for 30 years and accumulated over 700 wins. That’s good enough for a Top-10 standing in the record books. He mainly coached the women at Springfield, but also coached the men for seven seasons, and in his last had the team end the year ranked #1. Joel was five times selected AVCA Regional Coach of the Year and coached 10 All-Americans. He is a member of the board at the Volleyball Hall of Fame, a long-time part of the USA Volleyball Coaches Accreditation Program (CAP) cadre, and author of the books Volleyball Fundamentals and The Untold Story of William G. Morgan – Inventor of Volleyball. Feedback, questions, comments, etc. are always welcome! The post Podcast Episode 15: Coaching your best players with Joel Dearing appeared first on Volleyball Coaching Wizards.

In volleyball, as in life, it is often beneficial to break things down in to smaller, more manageable chunks. Mike Lingenfelter talked about this in his Wizards interview, sharing his “High 5” concept of providing his team with five progressive objectives for each set. That idea is the focus of this episode of the podcast. Mike Lingenfelter is the co-director of the Munciana Juniors volleyball club and coach of its 18s Samurai team. After his own playing career, he started his coaching at the college level, but eventually found his niche in the juniors age group where his teams have won four national championships, were national runner-ups an additional four times, and earned three third place finishes. His high school teams won three Indiana state championships and he was selected Indiana state high school Coach of the Year three times. Mike is a regular coaching presenter and clinician. Feedback, questions, comments, etc. are always welcome! The post Podcast Episode 13: Breaking the game in to parts, with Mike Lingenfelter appeared first on Volleyball Coaching Wizards.