šŸ New practice video time (again)

Stanford's Pocket Drills

Welcome to The VolleyBrains Weekly. Itā€™s that time again!

Here's what we've got this week

  • Practice video time: Steven Vanmedegael šŸ”„

  • BQT: Big Quote Time, Tamaā€™s edition šŸš€

  • Stanfordā€™s pocket drills šŸ¤“

  • Nobel Prize learning stuff šŸ“

Steven Van Medegael on VolleyBrains

Today we launched a new Practice video session on volleybrains.com

This is our 9th practice video article. We are very grateful to have college and pro coaches showing their availability and of course, their trust in what we are doing.

The coach we featured:

Steven Vanmedegael is the head coach of Knack Volley Roeselare.

Roeselare is a very well-known European team with a strong historical presence in the European Champions League.

In 2023 Roeselare was the runner-up of the CEV Volleyball Cup.

They won the semifinal against Italian club team Piacenza. In the final, they lost to Italian stronghold Modena in the golden set after achieving a 3-0 win at Modenaā€™s home court.

Check out the rally that starts at 2:47 to get a glimpse of Roeselareā€™s ā€œnever-give-up attitudeā€ against the star-studded team of Modena. (The team of Bruno Rezende and Earvin Ngapeth)

Together with Steven we went over the footage ofĀ a double practice day.

A serve-receive training in the morning with a specific emphasis on increasing overall serve velocity and an afternoon team session.

In the full edits coach Vanmedegael willĀ go into detail on:

  • Expecting perfect execution from the 1st ball touch onwards

  • The advantage of having experienced athletes 'co-coaching'

  • The importance of using and being able to defend power tips

  • How he recreates game-like stress situations during practice

  • How Roeselare goes about serving error management

  • and so, so much more

The practice videos are 63 minutes long and timestamped.

Click below or go to volleybrains.com.

67. Practice videos: Steven Vanmedegael - Knack Volley Roeselare

What is actually happening in the training gyms around the world? Today we have Knack Volley Roeselare's head coach Steven Vanmedegael going over a full practice day.

volleybrains.com/practice-roeselare

No single cue works for everyone.

In coaching, in work, in raising kids, in lifeā€¦adaptability is key.

Many golden nuggets in our Masterclass with Tama Miyashiro.

Looking for chances to teach.

In the Stanford practice sessions Kevin Hambly mentioned doing, what he called, little pocket drills here and there during practice.

Doing a short exercise in between drills (just before a water break) to add reps in specific moves like:

  • hitting overpasses

  • wiping balls off the block

  • picking up balls out of the net

  • ā€¦just be creative here

Try it out yourself. Have fun!

Supercharge learning!

Weā€™re not going to talk about quantum electrodynamics this week.

Donā€™t get all nervous, now. We never will. šŸ˜…Ā šŸ«£

But if we can make you think about how to supercharge learningā€¦you bet weā€™re going to mention that.

Leveraging ā€œthe power of teachingā€ for better learning is made famous by American Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman.

The Feynman Technique:

  1. Select a concept to learn.

  2. Teach it to a child.

  3. Review and refine your understanding.

  4. Organize your notes and revisit them regularly.

Maybe not completely relevant but our VolleyBrains members will remember coach Knipeā€™s Masterclass where he talked about the importance of clarity and being able to write things down.

Culture by design

We spent a lot of time talking about our culture being by design being intentional. And once again, going back to the idea of being able to write it down. Everybody has a job description, but in a team, there is no such thing, even though we imply there is.

So we'll take our team and we'll divide it by position. Theyā€™ll get together and write their job description.

What does it means to be an outside hitter in our program? On blocking on defense on, on our offense, serving whatever, all the different areasā€¦what they're going to commit to doing.

And they have to present that job description to the group.

And what they're saying to the group is: "This is what we're going to do." So we're stating it, we're writing it down. And then we're asking you to hold us accountable for this. And it's okay for you to hold us accountable because we're telling you, we know this is important.

Alan Knipe

The Feynman Learning Technique

Supercharge your learning and become smarter by using the Feynman Technique. Devised by a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, it leverages the power of teaching for better learning.

fs.blog/feynman-learning-technique

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Humblebrag over.

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See you in 2 weeks.

Matias