Every team watches video…but are you using your time to your advantage?
The typical video session involves your team watching (hopefully not napping) video and you chatting away about the opponent. As coaches, we feel so strongly in the power of preparation…we’re coaches after all, and of course your team needs to know about an opponent’s tendencies and what to expect. But what if you added video sessions where the student athletes ran the show? What if you gave them an assignment while they watched video? I’ve done this since 2000 and it’s worked wonders for my teams and their volleyball IQ.
Since I’m a volleyball coach, I’ll assign my setters to track our set selections out of serve receive by rotation and the result…kill, error, or zero. They’ll do that for a game or two and find out our team’s tendencies and if they’re actually working. Or I might give my defensive people the job to rate their transition digs…3, 2, 1, 0 and then give the resulting set and hit result. And on and on it goes.
After watching the video, I give the players time to compile their info and get it ready for presentation. That’s right…they’ve got to tell the team what they came up with! It’s great. Everyone in the group has to have a job, whether it’s speaking or writing on the dry erase board, whatever. After giving their schpiel, they’ve got to give the team advice. It usually goes something like, “we should pass better so that our sets are better so that our hitters have a better shot at getting kills.” Of course the coaching staff has probably said that very thing 101 different ways, but it means more coming from other teammates.
Give it a whirl and let me know how you liked it…can’t wait to hear from you!