{"id":3392,"date":"2014-05-16T09:00:05","date_gmt":"2014-05-16T08:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/coachingvb.com\/?p=3392"},"modified":"2014-05-16T09:00:05","modified_gmt":"2014-05-16T08:00:05","slug":"let-them-figure-it-out-for-themselves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/2014\/05\/16\/let-them-figure-it-out-for-themselves\/","title":{"rendered":"Let them figure it out for themselves"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A while back, Mark from At Home on the Court flagged an article (no longer available) about then US Soccer coach Jurgen Klinsmann on his Facebook page<\/a>. It is critical of the American sports culture of having overly controlling coaches (and parents) in terms of what’s happening on the court\/field. Basically, they aren’t willing to just allow players to learn and figure things out for themselves. It got me thinking about my own coaching philosophy<\/a> and how I developed as a player myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I only ever played one season of volleyball with a proper coach. That was back when I was in high school. When I was on the club team at university the captain ran training. Occasionally, the women’s team coach gave us some input. For one season we had a little help from one of the local high school coaches. I played in a lot of open-gym sessions and all summer long played doubles. As a result, I was largely self-taught as a volleyball player – figuring things out for myself along the way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe that contributes to my own coaching style. I tend to shy away from giving my players specific instructions during play. I noted this in my post about calling service targets<\/a>. Instead, I see my roll as more trying to help them recognize situations. I want them to come up with the solutions on their own. Those lessons are much more likely to stick than if I tell them what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then again, maybe it has nothing to do with my development as a volleyball player. Maybe it’s more to do with my general orientation as an educator. When I was in my high school Computer Science class I once spotted an error in the program the teacher wrote on the board. I raised my hand and told him the program wouldn’t work. He looked and spotted the mistake. Then he laughed and told the class, “John will make a good teacher because he makes you figure out your mistakes,” or something to that effect \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Circling back … is it an American thing to be overly controlling in a sporting context? I need more evidence. You have to look at the way coaches in the popular sports in other nations work. In the US, football and baseball coaches are extremely involved from a play-to-play basis. It’s different for basketball and hockey where the action is more continuous. Plus, we have to consider the training context as well as the competitive one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In any case, it’s also worth thinking about adding unstructured play<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Do coaches – from volleyball as well as other sports – control things too much and not allow players to learn and figures things out for themselves?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[107],"class_list":["post-3392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-volleyball-coaching","tag-coaching-philosophy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392","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=3392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testsite.coachingvb.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}