Coach Your Brains Out

• 1:56 - Hugh’s “retirement” and what his new upcoming role will look like in the next few years..
• 4:55 - Will Hugh ever make a comeback to being involved on court as a coach?
• 9:10 - Should there be more barriers between coaches and players (especially young athletes) in terms of influence?
  • Plus, check out Hugh’s book titled: Championship Behaviors: A Model for Competitive Influence
• 14:25 - How Hugh first navigated the evidence-based approach for coaching and education, and ways that new coaches can implement it.
• 17:13 - Describing the distinction between “what you are” and “what you do”.
• 19:20 - How do we improve our “salesmanship” as a coach?
• 20:43 - Hugh’s strategies for convincing athletes that don’t initially buy into his ideas.
• 22:05 - How to get chips in the “emotional bank account”?
• 23:47 - Is salesmanship an important skill with coaches to develop?
• 27:19 - The downsides of using sarcasm as a coach.

Coach Your Brains Out: The Art and Science of Coaching Volleyball

The Inner Knight: Train and Compete Like a Champion

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• 1:32 - Despite the losses, where does Andy see success in the Pittsburgh Pirates’ development?
• 2:15 - Andy’s predictions for the upcoming season.
• 2:44 - Diving into the idea of attractors and cuing, and how do they fit into the way we interact in our sports?
• 6:29 - Are attractors universal within all athletes when they start, or do they develop from coaching and instruction?
• 9:28 - Examples of attractors in volleyball.
• 17:35 - Andy’s thoughts on constraining with fluctuators in mind vs. with attractors in mind.
• 19:44 - How would Kasey cue or constrain a fluctuator?
• 28:00 - How can coaches learn about attractors to increase their awareness with how they interact with their sport?
• 28:50 - Final thoughts.

Coach Your Brains Out: The Art and Science of Coaching Volleyball

The Inner Knight: Train and Compete Like a Champion

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• 1:13 - What is something coaches can do to easily incorporate ecological dynamics for the first time?
  • Giving more authority to the players
• 10:06 - Loren’s thoughts on the belief that “fundamentals need to be taught first” before there can be any variability in practice.
• 17:51 - More insight into practice design that uses the constraints led approach.
• 34:05 - Attributing a reason for doing something to a specific habit or action.
• 42:05 - Benefits of encouraging players to start a donor sport.

Coach Your Brains Out: The Art and Science of Coaching Volleyball

The Inner Knight: Train and Compete Like a Champion

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• 1:50 - How has Loren explored ecological dynamics in the past?
• 2:50 - What originally pushed Loren to start learning about ecological dynamics?
• 9:47 - Have there ever been instances where Loren has questioned the effectiveness of certain aspects of the ecological approach?
• 13:31 - Does Loren think his teams would have won more if they followed a traditional approach?
• 15:28 - Differences between ecological dynamics and the traditional methods of coaching.
  • Explaining within the lens of junior club volleyball
• 28:89 - While coaching in his old club, what pushback did Loren face when he tried implementing ecological dynamics, and how did he face it?
• 32:23 - Scenarios where just sticking with the traditional methods may have worked more effectively than implementing ecological dynamics despite the research.
• 38:07 - How does Loren respond to players who ask for more direct feedback from their coaches?
• 41:30 - Explaining the usage of principles of movement vs. prescriptive changes to parts of techniques.

Coach Your Brains Out: The Art and Science of Coaching Volleyball

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• 1:26 - Despite research that shows that it’s not as effective as an external focus, how can internal focus still encourage learning in differential learning settings?
• 4:54 - What timing is best for maximizing the effects on the athletes?
• 6:44 - Are there any scenarios where athletes can have errors that are too extreme to be considered “bad errors”?
• 12:53 - How to successfully encourage elite athletes to move out of their comfort zone?
• 16:04 - Would the same improvement that took place when novice players were the subjects also occur with elite athletes?
• 19:58 - What would two hours of practice look like if Dr. Schollhorn was designing it?

Coach Your Brains Out: The Art and Science of Coaching Volleyball

The Inner Knight: Train and Compete Like a Champion

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• 1:46 - Dr. Schollhorn’s journey through sports during his childhood and how it guided him towards studying the differential approach.
• 5:09 - When and how can coaches effectively use differential learning?
  • The importance of effective communication
• 12:32 - Breaking down Dr. Schollhorn’s recent study on serving and passing in volleyball.
  • Three main groups: Control, traditional (repetitive drills), and differential approach
• 16:29 - Dr. Schollhorn’s response to people doubting the actual usage and effectiveness of differential learning in sports.
• 21:48 - Why corrective feedback isn’t a particularly effective form of communication. 
• 24:47 - Describing the relevance and differences in usage between pedagogy and andragogy.
• 28:33 - Going back to the previous volleyball study mentioned, why were there significantly greater results in the retention phase for athletes in the differential learning group when compared to the other groups?
• 31:37 - Given that the differential learning group didn’t do the same exercises as the athletes in the other two groups, what exercises were done?
• 35:28 - Would Dr. Schollhorn focus at one part of the motion/technique at a time, or mix up other parts in between (eg. focusing on the toss first - arm bent, left arm or right arm, etc).
• 38:07 - How important is it to Dr. Schollhorn that when focusing on changing parts of a technique, the athlete is still focusing on the goal of the drill (eg. serving to a certain spot).

Coach Your Brains Out: The Art and Science of Coaching Volleyball

The Inner Knight: Train and Compete Like a Champion

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• 1:22 - Explaining “archetypes” and how they can be useful when scouting athletes or teams.
  • Similar to Jamie Morrison’s idea of storytelling
• 6:42 - How adding variability and “noise” can strengthen the defensive and offensive system rather than break it.
• 7:41 - Beginner players run into variability while advanced players create variability. Why is that?
• 9:52 - The added benefits of linking archetypes with experiences that players have (e.x. drills in practices, or even plays).
• 11:41 - How John related players he encountered for the first time in the World Tour to players he had already played before in the AVP in scouting reports.
• 12:33 - As a highschool or youth coach where time is limited, what would be the Number 1 idea to present to the players?
• 14:40 - What avid blog readers can look forward to in the upcoming months (a lot of the posts that Joe mentions are already uploaded!).
  • Read Joe’s blog here: https://smartervolley.substack.com/
• 15:39 - Joe’s pick for winning the NCAA Finals at the time the podcast was being recorded.
• 17:02 - How advanced is the statistical analysis of Beach Volleyball at this point?

Coach Your Brains Out: The Art and Science of Coaching Volleyball

The Inner Knight: Train and Compete Like a Champion

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• 1:48 - What are some specific games/drills through which Joe enforces this idea of “making the other side play”?
• 7:47 - Balancing freedom of play and potential development at the younger ages with increasing competition and competitive success.
• 15:27 - Joe’s thoughts on scoring games/drills where there is a “minus” component.
• 18:39 - Explaining the idea of “game teaches the game” and its role in development.
• 25:08 - When it comes down to smaller techniques and motions, leaving the athletes to self-organize specific constraints

Coach Your Brains Out: The Art and Science of Coaching Volleyball

The Inner Knight: Train and Compete Like a Champion

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• 1:23 - Why does Joe call himself the “Forrest Gump” of volleyball?
• 3:17 - What can readers gain from becoming subscribers of Joe’s blog?
  • Become a subscriber here: https://smartervolley.substack.com/
• 6:10 - Creating a blog vs. publishing it as a book: Billy’s and Joe’s thoughts on the differences and benefits.
• 7:34 - Joe’s experience coaching the Canadian men’s indoor team over the last summer: what he learned and gained as a coach.
• 11:48 - Exhausting traveling experience for the VNL games.
• 14:03 - Joe’s thoughts on “momentum” within games particularly at the juniors level, and how it compares to the college and professional level.
• 21:43 - Identifying the upsides and downsides of building off momentum and/or treating it as a placebo.
• 23:49 - How can coaches destabilize a “bad solution” and give players the tools to create a more effective solution?
• 27:56 - Joe’s approach to stats at the junior level compared to the college or professional level.
   

Coach Your Brains Out: The Art and Science of Coaching Volleyball

The Inner Knight: Train and Compete Like a Champion

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Support the show by becoming a Patron

• 1:26 - Checking up on Harjiv: with the start of the NBA season, how has he been doing?
• 3:07 - What is “specificity” in relation to motor learning and practice design?
• 6:43 - Why should the specificity of practice and the specificity of movement be separated from each other?
• 10:16 - Defining variability and describing its benefits.
• 11:22 - Attributing specificity of practice as the “what” and the specificity of movement as the “how”.
• 13:09 - How do variation and specificity relate to each other?
• 14:38 - How does specificity and variation fit into volleyball given how chaotic it is?
• 17:00 - How does Kasey interact with the chaos of volleyball?
• 19:40 - Can we be specific while also having changes in variability?
• 25:48 - What is the thought process behind increasing and decreasing variability within the baseball setting?
• 27:18 - Are there instances where some kinds of variability may be more or less effective than others?
• 31:09 - One large and implementable takeaway from this episode.

Coach Your Brains Out: The Art and Science of Coaching Volleyball

The Inner Knight: Train and Compete Like a Champion

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