The King of Blocking, Craig Skinner's lessons.

Nebraska goes all in.

February 25, 2023

Welcome to The VolleyBrains Weekly.  We're one day early, and that's awesome. 

Let's get our volleyball on. 

Here's what we've got this week

  • Craig Skinner's lessons

  • Gustavo Endres; the King of Blocking

  • 'Culture work' with Greg Carvel

  • The Huskers are putting all chips IN!

For the smoothest 'viewing' experience press the 'read online' link at the top right of this email. Over there nearly all clips will play in your browser without redirecting.👍

What coach Skinner would tell his younger self.

You know it's one of the first questions we start our VolleyBrains interviews off with.Because we're all about that self-reflection over here. 🤗

Check out Craig Skinner's answer

I probably wasn't very patient when I was younger.

I was trying to get to the next thing faster. Trying to get to the next skill quicker. I think you need to spend more time, on whether it's teaching a skill or teaching a system for your team. I was doing drills all over the place. 

You have to have a core set of drills, that you feel are important for your team. And you need to do them over and over and over again for 2 reasons. One to improve. And secondly, to develop confidence in your players. 

If you do different drills every day in practice and there's no continuity between days and weeks, then it's harder for players to get better. It's harder for players to develop confidence in themselves and the team. 

So I was just pretty impatient. Both as a coach and then also professionally. I just wanted my career to go a little bit faster than it was.

For coach Skinner's full Masterclass, that's over here.

It's key...

The King of Blocking.

No need to second-guess me here. Between 2001 and 2008, Brazilian middle blocker Gustavo Endres was the best blocker in the world.

During that period Brazil won 5 World League's, an Olympic Gold medal in 2004 a Silver one in 2008 and the 2002 and 2006 World Championships.

The list of Gustavo's individual blocking awards is way too long to type out...

I really won't, I've got a newsletter to ship here.😅

Gus's main blocking characteristics are displayed in the clip below, you'll see:

  • his solid starting position (without a miss)

  • that little bounce before executing his cross step

  • his big cross step

  • 'trademark' perpendicular and super solid form

There are more assets to his blocking game (reading game, attempts to trick setters, being a badass🙃...) but the ability to execute this cross-step without a fault every single time he executed it, made him one of the best to ever play the game.

Pillars of your program

Last night we did a video call for one of our upcoming Masterclasses with Jennifer Petrie.

For our Euro readers, Jennifer is the head coach of the San Diego Torero's. San Diego went on an incredible run last season and made it to the National Championship semi-finals. Jennifer was named the 2022 AVCA National Coach of the Year.

In our call coach Petrie went deep on their 'culture work', what the pillars of their program are, and what they stand for.But most importantly that these pillars are actionable, how they add another layer of strength to their culture. (and that they are not just the vision of the coach and...that's it)

Connected to all that, we have another Greg Carvel clip, talking about UMass's verbiage and pillars.

Taking it back to the first-ever edition of TheVolleyBrainsWeekly where we first featured Greg Carvel.

Go BIG Red!

The Nebraska Cornhuskers announced 'Volleyball Day', which is coming to Nebraska's Memorial Stadium next August.

Giving the word to Coach Cook here: 

"This is going to be a special day for the sport of volleyball in this state. At Nebraska, we're always aiming to 'Dream Big' and raise the bar, and there can't be a much bigger way to do that than to play a match outdoors in a 90,000-seat football stadium.

We're excited that we're going to be able to include three other local schools as well to make it a statewide celebration. A Nebraska volleyball ticket is one of the hardest tickets in town to get, so we're pumped that this match will give so many more fans an opportunity to come to watch us play and be part of a historic day."  

What I'm reading is:

'We'll shatter the current attendance record, you better be there, and to everyone wanting to shatter our new record, good luck.' 💪🙃

Go over here for our OG Masterclass with John Cook, the head coach of the Nebraska Cornhuskers. 

That's a wrap. Have a great week!

If you like this newsletter, please forward to other coaches and players. It only takes 10 seconds. Producing the content and writing this takes me 3-4 hours every newsletter. Your support and help make a huge difference! Can't thank you enough! ❤️ 

Matias

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