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Post by AmeriCanVBfan on Dec 26, 2021 14:00:46 GMT -5
I've never been a volleyball coach, but I have sat in the passenger seat of a car on a racetrack when I was coaching the driver. I've also coached people on how to climb mountains, and then gone climbing with them. So I've literally put my life on the line with my coaching. The main thing I learned is that everyone takes in and processes information differently. As a coach, you have to figure out how to get through to your student. What will work with one may not work as well with another. You have to watch and see whether they keep making the mistake you are trying to coach them out of. If they do, you need to find a different way to coach them. But one thing that is nearly universal is that people tend to be more open to positive reinforcement. Always try to tell them what they are doing that is right. Try to get them to do a right thing, and then tell them to repeat it. Don't just yell at them for doing a wrong thing, although sometimes you do have to call a time out and tell them when they did a wrong thing. (And in a sport with deadly consequences, you have to do that RIGHT NOW. Like, "Exit into the pits this lap. I need to explain something to you that I can't explain while we are driving." Even then, however, you need to try to find a way to tell them what they should do, and not just tell them what not to do.) Racecar driving? Mountain climbing? Who ARE you mikegarrison? Inquiring minds want to know! |
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Post by tomclen on Dec 26, 2021 15:45:45 GMT -5
I once assisted my daughter who was coaching in a Boys & Girls Club league.
It was the juice-boxes. That was always the issue. Put away your friggin' juice boxes. Don't get that sticky residue on the hardwood.
And no matter how loudly I'd yell and try to make them run laps or throw juice-box-empties at them, they just didn't get it. And often these 7 and 8 year olds would start crying. Especially if one of the drink-boxes dinked them in the eye when I threw it.
So, yes, they're soft.
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Post by taxidea on Dec 27, 2021 9:26:33 GMT -5
I spent a great part of my life providing leadership, empowerment, and relationship training/coaching to adults from all walks of life. After awhile, I thought...Hey, I’ve got this going on!
And then fairly recently, I decided (with great and honorable intentions, mind you) to share all my knowledge and experience with young people, including those our society otherwise considers at risk in some regard.
Snap. Crackle. Pop. Uhmm yeah...welcome to the new world, sir.
Check please.
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Post by wonkaman on Dec 27, 2021 11:31:14 GMT -5
Life is full of unpredictable moments. Being involved in coaching leaves you exposed to more of those unpredictable moments. Just when you think you have it all figured out a moment will occur to show you that you haven't. And life goes on.
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Post by oldnewbie on Dec 27, 2021 11:45:39 GMT -5
I've never been a volleyball coach, but I have sat in the passenger seat of a car on a racetrack when I was coaching the driver. I've also coached people on how to climb mountains, and then gone climbing with them. So I've literally put my life on the line with my coaching. The main thing I learned is that everyone takes in and processes information differently. As a coach, you have to figure out how to get through to your student. What will work with one may not work as well with another. You have to watch and see whether they keep making the mistake you are trying to coach them out of. If they do, you need to find a different way to coach them. But one thing that is nearly universal is that people tend to be more open to positive reinforcement. Always try to tell them what they are doing that is right. Try to get them to do a right thing, and then tell them to repeat it. Don't just yell at them for doing a wrong thing, although sometimes you do have to call a time out and tell them when they did a wrong thing. (And in a sport with deadly consequences, you have to do that RIGHT NOW. Like, "Exit into the pits this lap. I need to explain something to you that I can't explain while we are driving." Even then, however, you need to try to find a way to tell them what they should do, and not just tell them what not to do.) Racecar driving? Mountain climbing? Who ARE you mikegarrison? Inquiring minds want to know! It's all about context!     |
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Post by oldnewbie on Dec 27, 2021 11:52:45 GMT -5
Life is full of unpredictable moments. Being involved in coaching leaves you exposed to more of those unpredictable moments. Just when you think you have it all figured out a moment will occur to show you that you haven't. And life goes on. I think the problem is the very worst when a micro-managing control freak of a coach hits one of those unpredictable moments, with the inevitable outcome of taking it out on their players when their plan goes south. |
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Post by oldnewbie on Dec 27, 2021 12:04:15 GMT -5
I've never been a volleyball coach, but I have sat in the passenger seat of a car on a racetrack when I was coaching the driver. I've also coached people on how to climb mountains, and then gone climbing with them. So I've literally put my life on the line with my coaching... I like the idea a lot of a coach literally having to learn to trust of their players after teaching them, and proving it through something like having them belay the coach on a wall. |
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Post by Deleted on Dec 27, 2021 12:18:10 GMT -5
Adults always call kids soft. It's an adult tantrum.
Kids aren't soft. They are surviving through a pandemic, through adults turning school board meetings into fistfights, through patients telling doctors how to perform medical evaluations and treatments. They are hit with ideal body images, ways to think and yet, most are thriving, finding ways to navigate the world.
The problem is that they have options. Athletes know they can transfer. They aren't stuck with a power-hungry coach and that upsets people who believe coaches should be in total charge and that players should just be grateful for getting college paid for (blah blah blah).
There's a lot of reasons to complain about kids but being 'soft' isn't one of them.
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Post by getbusy on Dec 27, 2021 12:47:25 GMT -5
I really hope some coaches look at VT. Lots of great advice here. It seems pretty simple. Everyone wants to be respected valued and liked for who they are as a person. Attacking, embarrassing, demeaning the athlete as a person does nothing to motivate them to get better. Abuse is what it is. The teams that excel all have one thing in common. A coach that values them and promotes a healthy POSITIVE team culture. The coaches really can make or break an athlete. Who they like and promote vs who they don't regardless of who is actually better. So to all the young athletes out there. Pick a school who the coach really has watched you, wants you and likes you. It's not about your skill alone.
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Post by mikegarrison on Dec 27, 2021 12:50:14 GMT -5
I've never been a volleyball coach, but I have sat in the passenger seat of a car on a racetrack when I was coaching the driver. I've also coached people on how to climb mountains, and then gone climbing with them. So I've literally put my life on the line with my coaching... I like the idea a lot of a coach literally having to learn to trust of their players after teaching them, and proving it through something like having them belay the coach on a wall. Belaying on a climbing wall is no big deal, really. Getting a belay on a ledge 400 feet above the talus and many trail miles away from the nearest road is more of an issue. I had a friend, an excellent climber and excellent climbing instructor (better than me at both skills), who took a buddy and the buddy's two sons up Mount Rainier. On the way down somebody stumbled in the wrong place, and they all ended up in a crevasse. My friend was killed. |
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Post by oldnewbie on Dec 27, 2021 13:10:09 GMT -5
I like the idea a lot of a coach literally having to learn to trust of their players after teaching them, and proving it through something like having them belay the coach on a wall. Belaying on a climbing wall is no big deal, really. Getting a belay on a ledge 400 feet above the talus and many trail miles away from the nearest road is more of an issue. I had a friend, an excellent climber and excellent climbing instructor, who took a buddy and the buddy's two sons up Mount Rainier. On the way down somebody stumbled in the wrong place, and they all ended up in a crevasse. My friend was killed. I've only ever top-roped. My older brother has climbed every major wall in Yosemite. First time I was ever on a rope was about 70 feet with an overhang. At the top I just stepped off into space without a thought, because I trusted him completely. Later that same year, two high school friends who were just starting out set up a rope in a tree, and I would not step off from 6 feet off the ground, because I had no trust. Very sorry to hear about your friend. My brother always tells me that the approach to a big wall is often much more dangerous than climbing the wall itself, since you are scrambling over talus and scree with a very heavy pack with all your hardware. |
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Post by AmeriCanVBfan on Dec 27, 2021 13:21:13 GMT -5
I hope we're not letting athletes off the hook here. We all know (I assume) of Diva players who don't want to; listen to their coach, share floor time, and think every set should go to them.
Soft may not be the right word for them but they certainly are allowed a very privileged existence in the volleyball world.
At some point that treatment stops (sometimes) and that becomes an adjustment some can handle while others portal out.
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Post by mikegarrison on Dec 27, 2021 14:08:24 GMT -5
My brother always tells me that the approach to a big wall is often much more dangerous than climbing the wall itself, since you are scrambling over talus and scree with a very heavy pack with all your hardware. One of my worst climbing injuries happened that way. I was in a field of large talus (small boulders?) and one of the rocks I stepped on gave way. Sliced my knee open pretty good. This was hours away from the trailhead. It was a long, painful, slow hike out. The bandage I had put on it totally soaked through with blood. Much of the hike out was on a very popular trail (the Pacific Crest Trail), and there were tons of people there with dogs. I swear, every dog on the trail was intensely interested in sniffing my bloody bandaged knee. Ended up in the ER with them power-washing the grit out of the wound. I still have a scar on that knee. I refer to it as my "do it yourself knee surgery". Anyway, there was one time when I was the instructor on a rope team and one guy on the team refused to take instruction. He had gotten sick, and was dehydrated, and wasn't thinking straight, but the thing was that he had been a problem for weeks. He was so defensive about everything that he just wouldn't accept any help from anybody. I was more than half expecting him to go unconscious, when we could have tried to treat him, but with a conscious adult you simply can't (legally) force medical treatment onto them. Anyway, I promised the other two students on his team that I would make sure something was done about it, and the next day I went to the class organizers and told them he needed to go. He was kicked out of the class because none us were willing to go back into the mountains with him again. I also remember a time when I was instructing at a driving school and one of my fellow instructors had a student that she refused to go back out with. It was a pretty sad deal -- he was a terminal cancer patient and apparently this was something he wanted to do before he died, but his strength and motor control had become pretty impaired by that point. As she said to me, "I'm sorry that he's dying, but I don't want to die with him." However, they eventually found an instructor who was willing to ride with him for the rest of the day. |
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Post by Maui’s Hook on Dec 27, 2021 14:47:59 GMT -5
Adults always call kids soft. It's an adult tantrum. Kids aren't soft. They are surviving through a pandemic, through adults turning school board meetings into fistfights, through patients telling doctors how to perform medical evaluations and treatments. They are hit with ideal body images, ways to think and yet, most are thriving, finding ways to navigate the world. The problem is that they have options. Athletes know they can transfer. They aren't stuck with a power-hungry coach and that upsets people who believe coaches should be in total charge and that players should just be grateful for getting college paid for (blah blah blah). There's a lot of reasons to complain about kids but being 'soft' isn't one of them. I disagree. But it probably has more to do with our differences in what we each feel the use of the term 'soft' is as it pertains to athletes vs personality traits or character. To some, soft is a physical attribute similar to skinny fat, pudgy, or even fluffy; to which I don't believe is its use by the OP. Others may see soft as a personality trait that caves to pressure from either an internal or external stimuli, or both. This view may mean that 'soft' is the opposite of the recent coaching crowd favorite overly used term of 'grit'. In recent years there has been a large focus on not just athlete's, but school aged kids mental health and developing ways to become more mentally fit or strong. To me that's either an indicator or an acknowledgement of a lack of individual ability to deal with a plethora of stressors; or its a great marketing plan for psych majors whom have been told for years that they have a worthless major and so they have created a problem for which they are already versed in the ability to solve. I am going to go with the former as the latter was brought up as more of a jab at psych majors since there wasn't really a way to poke fun at comm majors in this instance, but I digress. While I don't believe this a binary topic, I do feel that there are many who project their own issues or anecdotes into this topic by instantly jumping onto one side or the other of the argument without first defining what the terms are. In this case, a kid who caves to societal or peer pressure by not allowing themselves to honestly fail at a skill while learning, I believe is soft. Another indicator that someone may be soft is if they lack accountability. In volleyball, when a coach has explicitly said to take an aggressive swing down match point or serve a high speed tough serve the kid doesn't for fear of failure is soft. So maybe the underlying use of 'soft' is a kid that lacks confidence or self esteem. Sure they're soft, but that doesn't mean that they will always be soft. They can learn and be trained to have confidence and be gritty and tough and all those other adjectives that we plaster around whiteboards and locker rooms. The cool thing about a kid who is soft is that they just haven't learned how to be the opposite of that in this particular application. There may, and probably are, other aspects of their lives that they may have the utmost confidence in their ability and if a coach can find out what that is for each athlete of theirs that is soft, than those parallels may help the athlete to be less soft. Do coaches need to also adapt? Yes. It was mentioned earlier that coaches that bully aren't coaches or something like that. I agree. A coach that berates, belittles, attacks, coaches hard, demands, etc; better know their audience. 'Old school' coaching's only failure is translationary, if that's a word. The nuance of 'old school' coaches was primarily lost in translation between generations. I'm sure there are retired old school coaches that could come out of retirement and still coach their teams very similarly to how they once did while finding success, but they first knew their audience, had built relationships and trust and never broke them. There are aspects of Russ Rose's practice gym or Mick Haley's or a number of others that I would not implement in my own. It's not a knock on how they did it, rather an understanding that I lack the communication and nuance for it to work in my own. We celebrate the Coach K's, John Wooden's, Geno Auriemma's, Pat Summit's, Kay Yow's, et al. Do we really understand their effectiveness as communicators? If effective communication is receiver based, as coaches do we ask our kids to learn our language or is it on us to learn theirs? I don't believe the transfer portal or NIL are aspects relating to a player's firmness. They are two additional factors why more kid's feel empowered to leave their current situation, but not necessarily a barometer as to if their current coach is too hard on them or they as athletes are too soft for that program. So yes shawty , I believe some players are soft and coaches do need to adapt...or we could just give everyone a trophy and see how that pans out.  |
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Post by joetrinsey on Dec 30, 2021 12:04:24 GMT -5
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