Dig & Swing (Sara Lippitt)

This week BJ LeRoy is my guest cohost and we chat with Marouane Jafir.  Marouane is an experienced volleyball player with his roots starting in his home country of Morocco!  He has a bunch of cool stuff on his resume like Player of the Year, Player Honors, etc etc.  Basically he's awesome.  He's currently the Club Director of Delaware United Volleyball Club and if you look at his Facebook profile, it looks like his favorite thing to do is fish.

We talk about how he went from a player on the Moroccan National Team to a coach in Delaware and a well regarded CAP Cadre!  Him and BJ are besties so they'll share some fun stories in the mix too.

COVID-19 has completely turned the volleyball world upside down, for good and bad. This week, Pat and I are talking to Tim Doyle and Alex Brodjeski.  Tim is the the current Head Volleyball Coach at William & Mary going into his 3rd season.  Alex Brodjeski is the Athletics Performance Coach at William & Mary and comes from a club volleyball background with Northern Lights.  They recently worked on a research project called Engineering Winning Volleyball.  What they didn't realize was that with COVID-19 hitting the country, their work would be even more important.  This project goes over Return to Play research and suggestions for teams returning to the court after the pandemic. 

You can access their work on my website or click here.

Pat Madia turns the tables and asks ME about coaching younger players.  Over the years, I've turned my focus from high schoolers to the youngins and haven't turned back!  I'll talk about all the things that make me successful, enjoy this age group, and of course - the usual Sara and Pat banter.

Coaches Manifesto from USA Volleyball

OMG.  This is one of my favorite episodes I've ever recorded.  Brian and I get to sit down and chat with the GREAT Trevor Ragan!   Trevor is the mastermind behind The Learner Lab and Train Ugly.  He has AMAZING content on growth mindset, motor learning, and so much more.

We talk about ways to change our coaching habits to make our players better learners.  We discuss one of the most polarizing ideas between coaches (training "ugly" v training blocked) and the misconceptions with it.

This is a longer episode than I usually do, however it's worth every minute!  Enjoy!  Ignore my fan-girling out.  :) 

Sara and Pat talk about starting out as a coach!

Sara's Website:  www.digitwithsara.com

VCT Facebook page:  www.facebook.com/groups/volleycoaches/

Ruckus Drill: 

This is from a couple years ago, but it was a drill that changed my practices from "meh" to "woah", in terms of court awareness and energy.

X vs X (or Y, make it work for your team), players serve. Coach's sole job is to work the flip-score to the best of his/her ability. Points are scored via any meaningful communication made by any player. Open your mouth = 1 point for your team.

Example: Team A serves to Team B. Team B calls the serve in (+1), deep (+1), and the serve receiver herself calls mine (+1). The setter would be calling "here" as she transitions up (+1) and God forbid the passer calls the intended setter's name (+1). Let's say there are 3 individual hitters calling for their set (+1) (+1) (+1). So by the time the hitter has made contact with the set, in a perfect world, Team B has scored 8 points.

Team A could be calling on/off/over (+1) on the pass, along with the set that has been made (+1), and whether the player who was set is swinging or tipping (+1). Without having touched the ball, Team A can score 3 points.

Play the rally out as a normal match generally would. Rally points scored count for 1 point as well.

*Obviously you can adjust this for what your gym values in terms of communication. Adjust if you want them to rotate normally, etc etc etc. Make this fit your system*

Play the game to 99 points. The "game" generally takes ~8 minutes or so, IF the players are consistently communicating the right way.

My other physical therapist joins the show to talk about ankle, knees and hip injuries in volleyball!  Dr. Chad Kuntz is located in Pineville, NC and is the owner of Pr1me Movement!

Pr1me Movement: https://pr1memovement.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pr1memovement
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCZr2ZhTbc_gy194qqhtB5A

So important, I'm splitting this up!  We chat with one of my many many physical therapists, Dr Alicia Allie with Sol Physical Therapy!  We talk about hurt shoulders, jammed fingers, sore backs, and overuse injuries.

Thrower's Ten exercises provided by University of Florida
John Kessel article about ACL injury prevention

Here we go!  I'm so excited to get this started!  Here's a little peak into what this is all about!

This episode, I'm joined by Alexis Lebedew!  He's a jack of trades, sharing his insight across volleyball, gymnastics, and coaches in general!  Alexis has coached with the Australian national team (and even made an appearance in the Sydney Olympics), NCAA collegiate programs, and is currently working with coaches in the gymnastics field in Singapore!

We have a question.... Why do we coach this?  Is it because this is the way we've always done it?  Is it really effective and the best use of our time?

BJ LeRoy from UW-Green Bay / Badger Region is here too!

I sit down to chat with the coaching staff for UW-Green Bay:  Abbey Sutherland (Head Coach), Korey Schroeder (Assistant Coach), and Delaney McCreary (Assistant Coach) to talk about how to build a team culture, what UW-GB has done to shape their program and athletes, and transferring this to the youth level.  So many great nuggets in this episode!  And a fun call back to Trevor Ragan's Anti-Talent Show!

You can catch UW-Green Bay Volleyball on the socials here:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gbphoenixvb
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gbphoenixvb
Twitter: https://twitter.com/gbphoenixvb
Website: https://greenbayphoenix.com/sports/womens-volleyball

David Cordes, the Director Ridgecrest Starlings Volleyball Club, joins me and BJ to talk about punishments.  David is the perfect guy to talk to about this because he's an everyday coach just like us!  He despises the use of punishments in the gym and talks to us about all the ways coaches try to justify it.  Be prepared for a lot of moaning and groaning from me.

Coaches - we are better this.