Someone posted in a coaches group asking “What conditioning consequences do you implement and for which actions ? (Tardies, unexcused absences, missed serves, drop balls, etc)” My reply to that post was:
Next to none. If you want consequences for game elements (e.g. missed serves) factor them in to how your score/count. For off-court issues I look for something that contributes to the program to make up for what was taken out of it. Didn’t get your physical paperwork in on time? Spend an hour helping the trainer with their inventory.
Like many coaches of my generation, these sorts of “conditioning consequences” were regular practice in my early career. After all, that’s what I experienced as a player and saw in other coaches. It was the default setting in my coaching brain. As such, it was the go-to, particularly in the quick decision moment when something negative just happened on the court. (See Why Do We Think Physical Punishment is a Good Teaching Tool in Sports?)
I’m not that coach anymore. Haven’t been for a while.
It was a process, but gone are the days when I automatically think I need to make the team do sprints for something like letting a ball drop. I have been moved in this direction by a number of factors. Learning about research findings on punishment is part of that. Looking hard at what these punishments actually do with regards to the athletes physically is another.
And a big one is learning to take the emotion (and to a degree the ego) out if it. They aren’t making volleyball mistakes on purpose. They aren’t trying to make me look bad. The errors are usually coming from honest effort (specific behavioral issues aside). Why should I get angry, unless it’s at myself for not doing my job well enough? Especially if I’m also yelling at them.
Then there’s also the question of looking at things more deeply to understand the root cause. For example, instead of jump straight to punishing the outcome of a ball dropping base automatically on the assumption of a negative attitude or lack of attention, I consider whether there isn’t instead a problem with players reading the play and/or knowing whose ball it is. In other words, I try to treat the disease, not the symptom.
So now, when I see the following I can’t help but wince. Someone posted it in response to the question I started this post with, saying it came from a college (JUCO, I think). It came in the form of a graphic with that college’s branding, which I have stripped out.
I will say, the first one does line up with the sort of thing I talked about in Non-volleyball consequences. I’m a bit surprised that the one on Study Hall hours doesn’t match that sort of philosophy. Same with the one about gear.
A big stunner is the mile rule for missed practice. If you’ve read my post on volleyball players doing the mile, you’ll have a good idea of my response to this. Someone misses volleyball practice so you have them do something that’s actually detrimental to their development as a volleyball player?
The late for practice suicides could, at a certain point, start getting into the realm of being abusive. Even if it doesn’t, depending when you do them, they could negatively impact the player’s ability to train effectively.
Also, I want conditioning to come from what I do in practice, not from punishments. In fact, if I’m punishing with extra conditioning, I very likely am over-conditioning the player(s).
Punishments as Consequences
Now let me get in to this whole use of “consequences” when people really mean punishment. Everything on the list above may be a consequence. They are also, however, punishments. Using the term “consequences” doesn’t change that fact, and everyone knows it.
This is not me saying there should be no consequences. Quite the contrary. There are consequences everywhere. You hit the ball out of bounds you lose the rally. Maybe you lose the set, and potentially the match. Or maybe you get knocked off the court because you’re playing Winners. Those are consequences too. They’re just non-punishment consequences.
So the question then becomes, as coaches, how can we utilize non-punishment consequences to encourage the actions and behaviors we want (yes, consequences can be positive!), and discourage those we don’t? Particularly when it has to do with what happens on-court.
Think about it in your own coaching.
P.S. No, I don’t have punishments (by whatever name) for losing games or other competitions in practice. I prefer to focus on “toward” motivation rather than “away from”.
