🏐 Glenn Hoag blazes trails.

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Just this single message today (normal service will resume next week):

Former Canadian men's National Team head coach Glenn Hoag lets us take a look into his ongoing coaching voyage.

Remember your personal coaching voyage is ever-changing also, whether you're conscious of that or not.😇

The ever-evolving approach to coaching.

Glenn, what did you change about your overall coaching approach over the years?

You evolve as a coach. I was a middle blocker and when I started coaching my vision of coaching was all from the opposing team attacking me.

I kind of developed my own scouting platform and stuff back in the day. There was no Datavolley and things like that. Still to this day, I use my scouting method to guide how I see the games we prepare.

I tell my scout man, that I got to do my own scouting first.

I'll do one match full scout by myself with my method. And then we'll cross-reference with some Datavolley analytics. Afterward, we confirm if my findings were right or not.

All this helps me to get ready for the game, how to integrate the opponent, to see certain behaviors and maybe find little things that might make a difference. Or to better understand if they're going to change something, if they make an adaptation during the game, just so that I know where I need to be reactive on.

I did change also though. I of course learned about how to use Datavolley et cetera.

So it's been 20 years since my coaching days at Paris Volley. Paris was all VHS cassettes and hours and hours of work. Now it's so much easier as these new platforms come up.

But I wouldn't say that I changed anything major on that aspect of the game.

Except for how to deal with athletes of course, I made many changes there.

I was pretty old school before, I was coached by a Japanese head coach and a tough coaching style was the way.

I think players are more intelligent now, and more globally aware.

With the Canadian program at the beginning in 2006, when I came there, I had to make radical change to the whole playing philosophy.

I was very, very strict about what we wanted to see and probably until Rio I was fairly straightforward. We needed to be a better-skilled team, a more digging team, and that was my way back then to implement that.

We were just a net-playing team, there was no relation between block and defense.

And so we 'imposed' a lot of things. And I imposed the systems in a very, very strict fashion. As the players evolved, then you kind of let them take over a little bit more.

So that was a transition, a process that was a little bit tough at the beginning.

But then you see your athletes maturing and then you say, okay, well it's time for me to take a step back.

They know this, this and this now, I need just need to repeat this and that.

They could perform. They could take more leadership and decide for themselves.

The one aspect that I found interesting, especially with the national team is working with many, many specialists. We had a slew of specialists and that's a group dynamic on its own.

Working well together with them, that was kind of a learning curve as well. Because everybody wants to contribute, everybody wants to give their own thing, or everybody thinks maybe that their part is more important than the other parts.

But you need to keep all of this in balance in the end, the main goal is to get the team ready. Right!

I heard a quote the other day that said: 'I need to get these soldiers over the hill.'

There's no time for discussion at this point. I need to conquer that hill. And right now... I have no time for opinions, it's battle time.

So it's kind of that analogy. It's something I heard just recently. I don't remember where, but it was interesting.

Glenn's Masterclass can be read over here...

Next on VolleyBrains.com

• AVCA Coach of the Year Jennifer Petrie's Masterclass is going live in a few days

• Head Coach of French top team 'Paris Saint Cloud' Alessandro Orefice invites us into his gym for another practice video series.

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That's a wrap. Have a great week!

Matias

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