{"id":12998,"date":"2015-07-07T09:00:05","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T08:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coachingvb.com\/?p=12998"},"modified":"2015-07-07T09:00:05","modified_gmt":"2015-07-07T08:00:05","slug":"show-respect-by-dominating-but-not-too-much","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/2015\/07\/07\/show-respect-by-dominating-but-not-too-much\/","title":{"rendered":"Show respect by dominating, but not too much"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignleft size-full is-resized\"><a href=\"https:\/\/coachingvb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/21-0-abs.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/coachingvb.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/21-0-abs.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-12999\" width=\"252\" height=\"189\"\/><\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The picture at left comes from the 2014 beach season.\u00a0To say that the Swedish pair dominated the duo from Ireland in this set is an understatement. You don&#8217;t see many 21-0 score lines at international level events. You also don&#8217;t see a set of abs like #2 has either, but that&#8217;s a totally different conversation.\u00a0\ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I present this photo as a lead in a subject that I&#8217;ve had conversations about over the years. That is the idea to respect your opposition enough to give full effort, and probably thrash them as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Simon Loftus discussed it during his <a href=\"http:\/\/volleyballcoachingwizards.com\/?utm_source=CoachingVB&amp;utm_medium=blog&amp;utm_campaign=post\">Volleyball Coaching Wizards<\/a> interview. His view was that you should respect the other team enough to beat them 25-0 if you can. The Swedish ladies seemingly did just that. Listen to Simon&#8217;s thoughts on the subject of respect and how you approach lower caliber opposition in the following excerpt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe title=\"Simon Loftus on Respect and Playing Weaker Teams\" width=\"800\" height=\"450\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/NXTWm6ZCkls?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I agree with Simon in basically all he says in that snippet. From the perspective of lopsided scores, volleyball is different from other major sports. There is a point objective to finish a set.&nbsp;That contrasts with a proscribed time limit as in football, basketball, and soccer &#8211; or being open-ended like baseball.&nbsp;A 25-0 score line in soccer is definitely running up the score.&nbsp;University of North Carolina women&#8217;s soccer coach <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Anson_Dorrance\">Anson Dorrance<\/a> famously told his teams not to win by double digits. In volleyball, though, that is just being as efficient as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During a conversation I had once with another coach, however, he had a thought on the subject.&nbsp;He said it may be true that for some players\/teams being beaten 25-0 would see them concede they were soundly beaten by a superior team. He also said, though, it&#8217;s perhaps just as likely to be completely demoralizing. I coached on the wrong side of a couple of 0-15 score lines in NCAA Division I volleyball back in the pre-rally days. I can tell you the players weren&#8217;t thinking about how much the other team respected them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Which way the response goes, though, depends. I think it has to do with how the losing team perceives the quality of their own performance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In our 0-15 case, we definitely played strong opposition, but we also did not play well at all. When I coached the Exeter women against Northumbria in the <a href=\"https:\/\/coachingvb.com\/coaching-log-mar-16-2014\/\">2014 BUCS semifinals<\/a> we were WAY over-matched. Aside from the initial shock of just how strong the other team was, though, I think the team largely handled getting pounded pretty well. Our focus wasn&#8217;t on winning, but on enjoying smaller victories. It was similar for the Exeter men playing Northumbria in the 2013 version of Final 8s. The competitive gap was fractionally narrower in that case, but it was still a big one. We went into the match knowing the reality and enjoyed the experience of going up against a far superior opponent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That all speaks to the psychology of being on the weaker side of the court and the sorts of things we as coaches need to think about to prepare our teams for those types of matches. The thought I had during the conversation I mentioned, though, related to being the dominating team. Basically, I said as a coach <strong>if your team won 25-0, or by a similar type of score, then you made a mistake<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I know that might sound counter-intuitive, but stay with me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the interview excerpt above, Simon talks about having non-score related objectives for matches where you face a lower level team. The idea in cases like that is basically to use the opportunity to help the team and players to continue their development. I tie that in with the idea expressed by <a href=\"https:\/\/coachingvb.com\/what-percentage-of-reps-should-be-good\/\">Karch Kiraly at the HP Coaches clinic<\/a> that if you&#8217;re not making some amount of errors you&#8217;re not pushing the envelope enough. As such, you are losing a chance to learn and grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If a team wins a set 25-0 it basically means they didn&#8217;t make any errors &#8211; at least no significant ones. No doubt there will have been less than perfect execution at points along the way. That&#8217;s it, though. If we use Karch&#8217;s benchmark of about 2 good against 1 bad, then in 25 rallies you should be thinking to drop about 8 points due to failed execution (missed serve, hitting error, etc.). That is not precisely what he means, but I think you get the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course I&#8217;m not suggesting we tell our player that we expect to lose 1 point out of each 3.&nbsp;Rather, what we should do is create a scenario where that is the outcome because the things we have the players focus on push them. They are working on new or more precise serves. They are trying new offensive plays. You are using non-starters. That sort of thing. The players are still trying to win each rally. It&#8217;s just that you&#8217;ve introduced factors which are likely to result in more mistakes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Obviously, you can take it too far. If the players are taking too many risks things will get ugly fast and the score might get uncomfortably tight. And if the players get silly about it, that&#8217;s just disrespectful. Best to keep the focus on 1-2 objectives, though each player could have something of their own to work on.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It has been said that to win 25-0 is to show maximum respect to your opponent. I agree, but also suggest it means you lost a developmental opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12999,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[107,112,322],"class_list":["post-12998","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-volleyball-coaching","tag-coaching-philosophy","tag-volleyball-coaching-skills","tag-team-psychology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12998","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12998"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12998\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12998"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12998"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12998"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}