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- The VolleyBrains Weekly: Kill the player within!
The VolleyBrains Weekly: Kill the player within!
Julio Velasco dropping the mic.
Welcome to The VolleyBrains Weekly. Get ready to feast on a heaping plate of coaching wisdom.
Here's what we've got this week
Mr. Velasco will set you straight
Dan Friend's Knights of the Round Table
John Kessel lowers the net!
Russ Rose-isms
You wanted a bit of a shorter email, we actually listened...for once.
For the smoothest 'viewing' experience press the 'read online' link at the top right of this email. Over there all clips will play in your browser without redirecting.👍
I had to kill the player within!
The Olympic Gold medal match of Atlanta 1996 is my 'favorite matchup' ever.
The Netherlands vs Italy, 5 nail-biting sets, the Italian team of legends against the 'Orange' Dutch underdogs.
Julio Velasco was the coach of team Italy.
We're busy editing our video call with Julio for volleybrains.com. Today, we have a first snippet.
Julio Velasco: To become a coach you have to kill the former player that you have inside of you.
The greater the former player was, the higher the risk of not understanding the difficulties others have.
The full article soon on volleybrains.com
— volleybrains (@volleybrains)
1:44 PM • Jan 20, 2023
Julio was inducted into the International Volleyball Hall of Fame in 2003 mainly because Team Italy completely dominated the international volleyball scene in the early 90s.
His bio on the IVHF reads:
Julio Velasco de-emphasized the specialization trend of the 1980s. He emphasized the concept of the “square”. Of 'team unity' where the team was better than the sum of its players. He was meticulous, well-prepared, and very demanding, but AND he knew how to win.
Took the liberty to improve that last line a bit.🙃
Team culture, baby!
While talking to Lewis University's head coach Dan Friend, I was amazed at how meticulous he was about helping his group of incoming freshmen grow into a group of accountable young men.
Assigning 'big brothers', using 'goal books', having weekly task lists and talks, prioritizing mental health, assigning required reading...
They don't mess around over there.
Dan Friend (@dfriend67) of @LewisMVBall talks about how he and his coaching staff invest in instilling team culture from day 1.
On how to approach conflict, and not be scared of it.
More on volleybrains.com
— volleybrains (@volleybrains)
6:11 PM • Jan 20, 2023
More on Dan and Lewis University over here.
Make them play the game!
Next to this exceptional newsletter, that you can't live without anymore...am I right?
There is so much awesome content out there. Go ahead you have my permission.😅
This is what John Kessel had to say about 'scaling' the game for our young players on the Coach Your Brains Out podcast.
Scale down the game for our young athletes that enter the sport of volleyball. It's on us to make it fun, to get rallies going, to actually make the game 'a game'.
Lots of great insights in this episode.
From the @CoachYourBrain podcast with @JohnKesselUSAV for @GMSvolleyball.
— volleybrains (@volleybrains)
12:41 PM • Jan 20, 2023
Or in plain text:
Coaches put their setter on the net or they stand on the net to throw balls to get hit. These kids are coming up on this humongous wall, that they can't hit over or they will hit the net and the coach will say: 'Stay out of the net'
And you're going, what are you setting the ball so close for?
So scaling is important. And there's a video out there called 'playing volleyball like a kid' where I build a 16-foot high net instead of 8. On a 36-meter court instead of 18. 18 meters wide instead of 9.
I had a bunch of AVP and college beach coaches. And we filmed this video, and in an hour of filming these very skilled athletes rallied ONE time. In an hour of filming. Because 'the scale' was twice as big as they were used to.
We asked the adults: What's it like to play on this court? "It's exhausting and I'm not having fun". Because they're not. So if I were to say the most important scaling, even if you can't change anything, well play two on two.
Just stop playing six on six. Every chance you can get play two on two. Because you work on your weaknesses, and you touch probably at least every other ball. And that doesn't happen in six on six.
The video John talks about is linked up below...
Don't get caught up in the sketchy '80s synth soundtrack near the end of that clip though. 😉
Triple R's.
Dropping some realness to end this week's newsletter.
Some Russ Rose Realness, that is!
That's it!
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See you next week!
Have a great one.
Matias