Volleyball Warm-Ups Gone Wrong!
I’ve pretty much shouted loud and clear the research and MODERN thought processes on stretching, but I still cringe every time I go to a national qualifier and see circles of girls get in a large circle and start to do stretching.
DO YOU WANT TO LOSE? DO YOU WANT TO GET INJURED?
Watch this video and then lets keep talking! (I don’t know Dr. Polka, but he is right on track!)
Did you see the quadriceps? Did you see how weak they got? Do you think you can jump in volleyball with weak quadriceps muscles? and yet we pull our legs behind us up to our tail and say that we feel loose after we finish stretching….right?
So now I ask the same questions? Do you want to get hurt? Do you want to LOSE matches?
Not all coaches know the same information. Does that mean they are bad volleyball coaches? Not at all. Does it mean that they might be bad volleyball performance enhancement and conditioning coaches? Most likely.
Coaches Recommendation:
Your club and/or school should have a warm-up and training routine provided by a knowledgeable professional. What does this mean to Coach Anderson? Your program must be designed my someone holding a Master’s degree or higher in the field. If you find a trainer with a CSCS from the NSCA to write your volleyball program, you are ahead of the rest. As many people of say in Master’s programs, “What I learned from my masters degree is that everything I learned in my undergraduate degree was wrong.”
See you on the court!
Decreasing Vertical?
In a recent article from VolleyballMag.com, Brian O’Keefe wrote an article on his decreasing or at least decrease vertical jump and his desire to stay competitive on the floor. He goes on to discuss his achilles tendonitis and its possible effect on his vertical jump.
To start, one thing to note is that he mentions age. Starting at about age 30 our muscles begin to make a phsyiological adaptation to conserve energy and begin to convert unused muscle into fat. Two bad things happen here; the first is that you are losing muscle. The second is that your strength to weight ratio is decreasing. My favorite line I hear from athletes as they get older is “I haven’t gained any weight since high school.” You may not have gained pounds on the scale, but a comparison of your high school body will tell us many things.
To continue, the muscle you lose to fat is not necessarily the most important change. The other thing changing is that some of your muscle fibers are actually converting into slower muscles. This usually occurs because you aren’t using your “fast” muscles as much as you were previously. (The physiology behind this is way more complicated than I have explained here.) By losing your “fast” muscles, you lose the ability to create large powerful movements using those muscles.
Basically to solve these two problems, the answer is to train. You can gain those muscle fibers back and you can decrease your body fat, but both will be necessary to get back to your starting point.
I’ll continue in my next post…..
See you on the court!
Watch Yourself Perform Better!
One of the most unpracticed techniques in non-elite level athletes is that of mental training. Mental training has many many benefits and has been shown to improve performance throughout many case studies. Psychology is a complicated topic, as it is hard to truly see into anothers mind, so the key to mental training in my opinion is maximizing your own ability to train mentally. Coaches may not be able to monitor this facet of training as readily as they would like, but often times you can see an athlete mentally prepare as they wait on the sidelines or prepare for a match or practice.
WATCH YOURSELF GET BETTER!
First off, if you haven’t had someone video tape a hit, dig, pass or entire match, maybe start there. Then watch yourself. See if you can feel in your body, the movements that you make on the tape. Its the year 2011, every 10 year old has a video iPod or video phone, so get a friend and do this ASAP!
Now that you have watched yourself, the rest is simple. Simply close your eyes and imagine yourself performing the skill you just watched. Research shows that THINKING through the process of performing a skill actually sends the very same signals from your brain to your muscles as does actually performing the skill. Watch yourself mentally perform the skill correctly, with perfect technique! (whatever your coach would suggest that is)
So what does this mean? It means you can get more reps in!
One of the most difficult parts of volleyball is obtaining court time. Use this technique anytime you aren’t playing to get added reps. Coaches can spend time teaching their athletes how to mentally train to get results outside of the gym.
See you on the court!
Coach Joins H2 Saint Louis Volleyball Club
Coach Anderson has officially joined H2 Saint Louis Volleyball Club for the upcoming 2011-2012 season. There are many great clubs in Saint Louis and the volleyball scene is much different than it was back west.
After speaking with some of the top clubs in the St. Louis area, my decision to join H2 Volleyball was an easy one. Not that any of the other clubs in the area lacked in talent, coaching or administration, but rather that the concept, philosophies and goals of H2 were more to my style.
What I love the most about H2 is the positive atmosphere! I feel that H2 although being only 5 years old, is evolving to be one of the elite clubs in the nation. Last year they sent 15 girls to play college volleyball!
If you are in the St. Louis area and interested in playing club, don’t hesitate to shoot me an email. I believe that I will be coaching the 17s team this year.
Also, the H2 St. Louis coaching staff will be attending many high school games this year, so if you see one of us, flag us down! If you are interested in playing for H2, shoot me an email and we’ll get a coach to come out to your high school game.
See you on the court!
Skeptical Theme Edit Header RSS and Email Subscribe
Because I couldn’t find any help on this and the wootheme header complex was a little complicated for me at least I wanted to post a brief tutorial on what I did to edit the email and subscription header.
Find the header.php file, then you will need to change the code to the following:
</ul><!– /#nav –> <?php } ?> <ul class=”rss fr”> <?php $email = $woo_options['woo_subscribe_email']; if ( $email ) { ?> <li class=”sub-email”><a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/onlinevolleyballcoach/News“><?php _e(‘Subscribe by Email’, ‘woothemes’) ?></a></li> <?php } ?> <li class=”sub-rss”><a href=”http://feeds.feedburner.com/onlinevolleyballcoach/News“><?php _e(‘Subscribe to RSS’, ‘woothemes’) ?></a></li> </ul> </div><!– /#navigation –>
You will need to replace the red portion with a link to your feed address. This should work for whatever feed you are using as it only links to an external page.
If you need more help than this, probably I can’t help, but feel free to ask 
See you on the court!
