John Mayer and I are close to releasing our book Coach Your Brains Out: Lessons On The Art And Science Of Coaching Volleyball. We’re very proud of it, and we think it’ll be something you’ll enjoy if you’re not a coach but interested in learning.
To whet your appetite, I’ll be posting some excerpts from the book over the next few weeks leading up to the release.
The following is about deliberate focus from the Practice chapter…
Fall In Love With The Boring
Practice isn’t as fast-paced and exciting as it looks in a Rocky movie montage. You don’t turn on “Eye of the Tiger,” punch some meat, run a flight of steps, and suddenly transform into the heavyweight champion of the world. Real training and learning is a long deliberate process in which you constantly strive but may never reach the top of the steps.
Real professionals show up day in and day out hungry to learn and improve. Here, Billy talks about the importance of training with a deliberate focus.
I thought by the time I became a professional player I would be done with passing. At that point I would have mastered the fundamentals, and my time would be spent working on acrobatic diving digs and hitting perfect cut shots from twenty feet off the net. But after decades of practice I’m still working on passing.
Stranger still, I enjoy it more than ever. When I come in with a specific focus, like setting an early angle or reading serve depth, even a simple serve and pass drill becomes a challenge. Where once I would fly through hundreds of mindless reps to “get in a rhythm,” I now feel more progress in a fraction of the time with no wasted reps. I feel myself learning, and it’s addicting!
Now I love to squeeze in some extra serve and pass with my partner before or after practice. One we’ve been doing lately is a scored server versus passer, alternating server every time. This simple game has become part of our pre-match warm-up. While other teams are getting warm, we’re competing and getting better!
I’ve learned that we never graduate from the fundamentals, we continue to inch our way forward even when the gains become smaller and smaller. And when I’m pushing myself to implement one deliberate focus, even the ‘boring’ drills become exciting.
Thanks for reading. Be on the lookout for more excerpts and the full book in June!
