It’s that time of year again. New Year’s Day is when so many of us make resolutions for the year ahead. Do you have any where your volleyball coaching is concerned?
I will admit that I’m not really one for setting resolutions in this way. I understand that people do it as part of a look-back/look-ahead reflective process. Why, though, should flipping the calendar over to a new year make me suddenly want to do this or accomplish that. It tends to take things out of context and make it all a bit artificial. It also can be vague or overly ambitious. That’s probably why so many resolutions fail rather quickly – often with negative consequences.
I personally prefer to take a continuous development view of things and make resolutions in a proper context. Let’s take a coaching example – blocker training. It’s all well and good to say I want to get better at teaching players how to block. What happens, though, if I’ve got a team of short players? No matter how good I get at blocker training it isn’t going to help them. All the time I spend on my blocking development is time I could put to better use on something that could help the team. I could work on defense or running a faster tempo offense. See what I mean about the context?
Here’s a personal example.
Back in 2013-14 my season focus was improved team and player communication. In particular, I wanted to work better with the Exeter university women’s team. It was, for me, a key area of improvement from the prior year. I made a concerted effort to keep it top of mind in the new season. I solicited feedback from the team captain along the way. Heading into the term break, I also surveyed the players for their input. My hope was that I could use the results to continue improving on my ability to communicate with and motivate them, both as individuals and as a group.
So where do you want to improve your coaching and what are you planning on doing about it?
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