CAP II CLIPBOARD Defining ‘game-like’ By Iain Bradbury Head Coach, United States Merchant Marine Academy I
t was preseason for indoor summer league in May, 95 degrees in the gym, but it felt like 140 degrees.
After days of excruciating defen- sive drills, bloody knees and hips, and endless time spent in the weight room, exhaustion really began to set in for all of us. At practice that afternoon, the defensive players were hunched over, drenched in sweat from digging left- back over and over with no transition. Our coach told the assistant on a box to hit harder at our faces. In the next breath, he demanded us to stay in the moment and dig perfectly to our target. It was right around that time that a question started creeping into my thoughts: “What does this have to do with volleyball?” As a player, I could only imagine that my coach was simply doing what his coaches did while he played. As a coach now, I realize that many of my colleagues and peers have fallen into the same trap. The more we begin to ask the question “Why?” within our coaching practices, the more our athletes can develop. You may have heard the term “game-like” for quite some time and for good reason. Be- fore you continue to read, stop a minute: What is game-like volleyball training? You may have in your mind a picture of what it looks like, though it may be hard to defi ne with concrete terms. As a young coach, I thought the defi nition of game-like was “anything that’s like the game.” Realizing the error in my thinking and the lack of real time I spent grappling with the concept, I began to work on a concrete defi nition. I scoured all the resources I had, spent time listening to the greats, and researched endless coaching books.
From Bill Neville’s “wash” scoring, to Anson Dorrance’s “Competitive Cauldron,” to just about any John Kessel talk in the last two decades, I felt that I had a great picture of what game-like was, but still no defi nition. The question remained: What is game-
like?
As a chemistry professor and mentor once told me, “Some of the world’s greatest problems have been solved by breaking them down into the smallest possible chunks.” Tak-
LESS GAME-LIKE (…THINGS THAT ARE NOT IN THE RULE BOOK)
USING AN APPARATUS • BOXES • SERVING MACHINE • BLOCKING PADS • SPIKING MACHINES • AUTOMATIC BALL TOSSERS • PHYSICAL AIDES
ELIMINATING ONE OF THE 5 BASIC COMPONENTS • NOT USING A BALL • NOT USING A NET ETC. • NOT KEEPING SCORE
ing that advice, I grappled with the problem for quite a while. At this point, game-like in our gym means the following fi ve criteria are met: • There is a ball (or something that resem- bles a ball – think balloon, soccer ball, etc.) • There is a net (or something that resembles a net or division of people – think ribbon, rope, line on the fl oor, etc.) • There are lines on the fl oor (or some type of boundary) • The ball/object must travel over the net • The object of the game is to not let that ball hit my boundary area, and to make it hit the opposing team’s boundary area If those fi ve building blocks are incorpo- rated, just about anyone in the world might be able to walk by and say, “Hey, those people over there are playing something that looks like volleyball.”
That is an incredible test for our prac- tices. If it looks like volleyball, chances are it is game-like. In contrast, if we are lacking just one of the fi ve criteria, the activity is not game-like.
In our practice planning, our coaches like to use a game-like spectrum. Incorporating things on the left side of the spectrum make an activity less game-like and things on the right make an activity more game-like: As you can see in the chart above, any combination of the above concepts will alter a drill, activity or game. If, for example, you
have coaches initiating a free ball into an activity that uses a rally score, then you are somewhere on the spectrum of game-like. The more game-like concepts are involved, the more game-like an activity becomes. We like to use this as a barometer of our practice plans, and we like to incorporate very few items from the left side of the list. As you con- tinue your coaching journey, please consider using activities that are more game-like. You may just fi nd that your athletes perform better in matches.
As a coach now, I realize that many of my colleagues and peers have fallen into the same trap. The more we begin to ask the question “Why?” within our coaching practices, the more our athletes can develop.
52 | VOLLEYBALLUSA • Digital Issue at
usavolleyball.org/mag
MORE GAME-LIKE (…THINGS THAT ARE IN THE RULE BOOK)
• USING OFFICIALS • RALLY SCORING • ANTENNAE • BOUNDARIES ARE 9M X 9M X 18M • NET IS REGULATION HEIGHT • SIX PLAYERS VS. SIX PLAYERS • SUBSTITUTIONS • PLAYERS MUST ROTATE
PHOTO: USAV
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