How much time do you spend talking in practice?

A senior coach in an online group proposed the following test:

Time yourself (or have an assistant time you) for the amount of practice/court time you spend addressing the entire team.

I would add, if you don’t want to do the timing in practice itself, record the session. Then go back and take the timing. This has the added benefit that watching yourself coach is always a worthwhile exercise.

Way back in the early days of this blog I wrote a post title The more you talk, the less they train. I wrote it after I watched a young coach spend too much time talking in a session. Definitely not the first or last time I’ve seen that sort of thing, of course.

Anyway, the poster’s point in posing the above challenge was two-fold. First, how much court time are you taking away from the players? Second, can you do the talking you need to do to a smaller group so the rest can carry on working?

Give it a try.

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John Forman

John is currently the Strategic Manager for Talent (oversees the national teams) and Indoor Performance Director for Volleyball England. His 20+ years of volleyball coaching experience includes all three NCAA divisions, plus Junior College, in the US; university and club teams in the UK; professional coaching in Sweden; and both coaching and club management at the Juniors level. He's also been a visiting coach at national team, professional club, and juniors programs in several countries.

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