The title The Ecological Approach to Volleyball Coaching, by Robert T. Allen, is part of a series of books published as “The Technical Guides of Volleyball Hub Pro”. At the time of this writing (November 2024), they’d published 9 books in about 12 months. That pace of publication, and the quite generic appearance to especially the most recent books, had me immediately suspecting AI generation. Or otherwise that they are generally of low quality.
Pushing me further in that direction is the fact that the author lists nothing about volleyball, or even sports, in his bio on Amazon (none of the other authors in the series even has a bio). Also, in the book’s Amazon listing it describes the book as “Created by leading volleyball coaching education website Volleyball Hub Pro…” and, “…coordinated by Robert Allen…”. Definite flags, especially when a visit to the website provides zero information on who’s involved.
So why I did buy the book?
I decided to check it out to see whether it was at least of some use in support of what you can read in books like Learning To Be an “Ecological” Coach by Rob Gray. While Gray does offer a few volleyball examples, it’s not central. I wanted to see if this book could potentially be a more narrowly focused resource for coaches.
The book
I can’t speak to the other books in the series. It is pretty clear to me, though, that AI at least largely wrote this one. I’ve used ChatGPT on writing projects. The language and structure of this book looks a lot like what I’ve seen there. By that I mean it’s pretty bland and formulaic. It’s also repetitive – possibly because of a need to fill out a full book.
And a thing that really screams AI writing is a mistake in the middle of the book. I can’t recall the specifics as I write this, but the text talks about doing something as a volleyball skill that isn’t actually something anyone does in volleyball. It was one of those “Wait. What?” moments. Had to read it a couple times to be sure I wasn’t wrong that it was misrepresenting an action.
Structurally, there are also some weird formatting issues (I read the Kindle version). For example, page breaks where they aren’t needed and missing page breaks where they should be. And the chapter titles don’t show up in the Table of Contents. That’s probably more a lack of professionalism in preparing the book files than an AI thing, however.
Finally, there are quite a few citations in the book. There is not, however, a bibliography. Nor are there any footnotes. So are these real research papers? Maybe they’re hallucinations, as AI has sometimes been known to do.
The content
As I mentioned above, the book’s content is fairly repetitive. This includes a weird FAQs chapter at the end that practically just goes chapter by chapter providing a short answer to the question at the heart of each (e.g. “What is Ecological Dynamics?”). It sort of begs the question why one needs the rest of the book.
I also mentioned language above. In a guide like this I’d expect something that simplifies the more academic elements. Unfortunately, though, in much of the text that doesn’t really happen.
There are a couple potentially quite useful chapters towards the end of the book. One is Chapter 19 – Applying Ecological Principles in Youth Volleyball Coaching. The second is Chapter 21 – Transferring Ecological Principles into Competition. Both are along the lines of practical guides and have useful ideas in them.
There is also a similar type of approach in Chapter 20. That focuses on physical development, like strength training. I’m more hesitant on there, though. It’s probably something more for strength coaches than your average volleyball coach who doesn’t have that sort of training.
Would I recommend it?
So would I actually recommend this book? No, I don’t think so. Yes, there are some useful bits to be sure. Overall, though, it’s a poor quality product. And you can probably get the same information in the same manner by asking ChatGPT.
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