Welcome to The VolleyBrains Weekly. The game is the game....

Jim McLaughlin’s Masterclass is LIVE

We had a 2-hour+ long video call with AVCA’s Hall of Fame coach, Jim McLaughlin a short while ago.

Coach McLaughlin holds the distinction of being the only coach to win both Division I men's and women's volleyball championships.

In this week’s newsletter, we’re going to share Jim’s answers to one of our VolleyBrains questions.

The full article with 20 video clips is LIVE (and kicking) over here.

Jim, what are bad recommendations you hear about coaching or training volleyball?

(Jim was very adamant to answer this question...I had skipped over it for some reason during our call and we came back to it at the end, hence the references to earlier moments in our call)

You brought this up earlier and it was really nice what you said. You talked about structure. And I just want you to think about this. I thought more about this question than any other question. We started out saying, there's a lot of opinions and you gotta be careful of those opinions. We wanna study facts.

So I thought about this. I hear people say all the time, you've gotta play and you've gotta play. And it's true. If you follow motor learning and greater transfer, and the appropriate regulatory stimuli. Yes, we're gonna play. So we have to play. Most of our practices should be about playing. But in order to take your game to another level, there's gotta be some structure.

Because the bigger the game, the fewer the reps. So can we put some people, in some situations where it's a smaller group, we're controlling the environment, we're regulating the feedback, we're still on the court making the same move with the same speed. There's some transfer, but there's also gonna be some return quickly. And they start to understand.

The way the brain works is they now can dial in and be mindful about what their body's doing.

They can be mindful of the situation, they get to repeat it over and over, for 15 or 20 minutes. And then we go to the game. And now their brain works differently.

They start to understand situations, early cues, how to respond, oh, I'm inside against one blocker, what do I do? And I don't worry about what my body's doing. But at some point when you become an expert, it all converges. You know what your body did in this situation. And what it has to do to respond to this situation.

So I heard this thing that Kobe Bryant said before he passed away about how you have to have structure. You just can't play street ball. You've gotta have structure to elevate your game and then plug it in.

It was exactly what I believed. If we're teaching people how to move. And then teaching them how to see. Then we can have some very explicit methods where we map it out and define everything. And go into the implicit where we're kind of guiding them in their mutual discovery.

So it also increases the speed of learning. And it helps them retain and recall at a faster/higher level.

Now, I hear coaches and club coaches say, we don't have much time. So we just have to play. But you can still divide up your minutes in a way that helps accelerate the learning process. I just wanted to say that to you because you brought up structure.

And then the other thing is. The game is the game. We can learn so much by studying the game.

I'm doing a study right now on recycling and I'm learning a lot about the men's and the women's game and how it's a little different right now.

But you gotta study. You just can't make things up. You gotta test these great ideas, these great intuitions. And see if they're valid or if they violate some of your principles. That to me is a big deal. It was my favorite question. It goes deep into the teaching process, defining your methods. Getting better at your methods. Because your methods influence everything you do.

The most important thing as a coach, is to become a coach that believes in their methods. And of course, you gotta do it the way you need to do it. But make sure they are sound methods. And they're supported and defended by some science and some of the things we believe.

But anyways, I could go on and on about that, but you brought it up so I wanted to respond to it.

Matias: I think in pro club volleyball, what you just said about segmenting the game. So you take one part out of the game to make it more clear, and then you put it back into the game. To augment the comprehension about, what to do in this type of situation.

Well, that should happen more often in pro club volleyball, because coaches mostly are so reactive.

Oh, we lost and we lost because we didn't get enough kill blocks, which is already something rather ignorant to say. Or we had too many block outs. So this week we have to train our block more. Then by accident you have three kill blocks, or your smaller setter has two stop blocks, and then you think it's fixed.

And then, oh yeah, but we missed a lot of serves. And the next week you're gonna train your serve. You're continuously chasing what's happening, and you're never cementing fundamentals. Of course we're talking pro volleyball, so maybe there's no time or no place for that. But there should always be place for that, because that's the only thing there is. That is the game. Segment it out, and put it back in.

I really loved your answer.

Yeah. I used to call it putting down fires.

The best coaches build a team. They have their big rocks. They know where the team's at and where they want the team to go. They really study what the team needs, what the individual players need. There's individual development. There's a foundation of fundamental centers.

You can build whatever you want if you have a secure foundation. A solid foundation.

I see in 9 out of 10 coaches that instead of building the team with these big rocks, they just are trying to fix things that are broken. Instead of building the team.

You're exactly right. These coaches talk about, you gotta be thinking outside of the box. You gotta be creative. Yeah.

But don't make stuff up.

See you next week!

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Thanks for your support.

That's a wrap. Have a great week!

Matias