Coaches, slow down. A tryout story.
A coach who had never met her asked a player to move five feet and change her platform in the middle of a tryout. What happened next is why we tell players to say thank you and play their game.
What happened
At a tryout, a coach the player had never met walked over and asked her to move five feet and change how she held her platform. She did what she was told. Her passing fell apart for the rest of the session, and she left the tryout thinking she was a worse player than she was.
Why it fell apart
A skill a player has done thousands of times runs on its own. The moment she starts thinking about her body parts, it stops running on its own. Motor-learning research has shown this for twenty years: an internal focus, on the hands or the feet, gets in the way under pressure, and an external focus, on where the ball should go, keeps the movement automatic.
A tryout is the worst possible moment for a technical change. It is the one hour when a player most needs the skill she already has.
What we tell players
If a coach you do not know asks you to change something big in the middle of a tryout: say thank you, and keep playing the game that got you there. A good change is worth learning in practice next week, where it can become automatic before it has to hold up in front of an evaluator.
What we tell coaches
Slow down. Give the player a chance. Watch her play before you change her. The tryout is for seeing what she has, not for fixing it, and at St. Johns Volleyball Club that is how our own tryouts run: Coach Andor watches, then places.
More from the gym
- The screens beside our courts replay every rep. Here is why.A player sees her own arm swing a few seconds after she made it, while the coach is still talking. What delayed video review does for a 12-year-old, and why we built it into the gym.
- Volleyball Pattern Training®, explained for parents.Why the squat she lifts with is the squat she passes from, what the eight VPT episodes cover, and why every club practice starts with thirty minutes in the strength room.
- What her first club practice looks like, and why.The first five minutes on the court, in one take. What a new player does in her first practice at the facility, what the coaches are watching for, and the one thing parents can do to help.