Necessary But Not Sufficient

YOU WILL DO WHAT YOU EMPHASIZE!!

When players approach the off-season they often focus on what skill they want to improve on and then work on it while they are playing.

Typically a player getting subbed out, or lack of playing time has more to do with Offensive concepts,… pic.twitter.com/Fo4cSaU2vs

— Steve Dagostino (@DagsBasketball) April 15, 2024

Mine gold. Watch this video multiple times. 

Playing more and better competition are necessary but not sufficient. A professional golfer doesn't go to the range to 'hit balls'. Professionals use deliberate practice to maintain strengths and to decrease weaknesses. 

A professional hits balls out a sand trap for a couple of hours, again and again, until it's second nature. Tiger Woods at his peak finished practice making 100 consecutive eight foot puts. He didn't miss anything inside four feet on the PGA tour that SEASON. 

Pitchers working a bullpen work on specific types of pitches and on location. "Playing catch" with the catcher won't help. 

Practice with purpose. "I'm serving to the 5-6 seam or I'm serving to the 5-sideline area." Leave every practice more proficient at your specific area of emphasis. 

Lagniappe. Competitive warmup from Martin. 

Habit Forming

There is no such thing as an overnight success.

- Habits Win
- Trust the Process
- Incremental Gains
- Everything is Earned
- No Deposit - No Return
- Get 1% Better Each Day
- The Process is the Prize

Time to get to work.

— Greg Berge (@gb1121) April 10, 2024

"We make our habits and our habits make us." 

One percent daily improvement yields a 37 fold annual gain. 

Productive habits belong to productive people. Those inhabit many different areas. 

• Eight hours of sleep daily
• Daily reading 
• Healthy diet 
• Hydration 
• A gratitude practice
• Mindfulness (meditation)
• Random acts of kindness

It takes a minimum of three weeks (some say 66 days) to become an ingrained habit.

There's a habit process: 

• Pick
• Stick 
• Check (track them) 

Be intentional with your habits and experience the rewards. 

Have you organized workout sessions with a teammate yet? 

Lagniappe: A serve receive drill - 

Lagniappe 2. 

G - Grinding tirelessly, no matter the challenge.
R - Relentless pursuit of excellence, never settling for less.
I - Intensity in every action, a mindset of a winner.
T - Tenacity that outlasts all, the hallmark of champions. pic.twitter.com/w7tFTiUzGy

— The Winning Difference (@thewinningdiff1) April 12, 2024

The Journey

Celebrate the journey not only the destination.

Jon Gordon writes motivational books. I've read The Positive Dog, Soup, Training Camp, The Hard Hat, The Energy Bus, and You Win in the Locker Room First.

There's a Navy SEAL adage, "you sink to the level of your training." Prepare for adversity, tough opponents, unexpected events. Successful teams and players keep going. 

Think back to Billerica 2021, overcoming an uphill battle through solid play and especially mental toughness. Melrose trailed 6-0 and 10-3 in the fifth set but went on a 13-4 run to win. 

Or last season, coming back and hanging tough against a strong Wakefield club that went to their sectional semifinals.  

pic.twitter.com/cSHUh2GqCc

— Jon Gordon (@JonGordon11) April 14, 2024

Lagniappe. Follow your coach's guidance while learning more.  

Don't "Have To, Get To"

Get past 'hard'. "Eat that frog" by tackling the hard thing first.

Approach challenges with the joy of competition. Don't "HAVE TO. GET TO." 

She can! 

A coach/PT that uses my plyo system has been using plyos in his rehab process and has coached this amazing 63 yr old woman to hop. Don’t tell me you shouldn’t be doing hopping with young athletes. Plyos are the fountain of youth, start hopping! pic.twitter.com/5aSTSHIoZv

— Matt (@McInnesWatson) April 13, 2024

Your MVB "Brand" is success. So many amazing young women doing amazing things.  

To become the best you are capable of becoming is never about what you say you want to be—it’s always about what you do to become your best. Two “musts” if you truly want to become your best—must own up to what you do or don’t do—must demand that people hold you accountable.

— Kevin Eastman (@kevineastman) April 13, 2024

Embrace work. 

No such thing as an overnight success! Read this from The Carpenter👇 pic.twitter.com/bILrsxQPuC

— Jon Gordon (@JonGordon11) April 13, 2024

Benjamin Franklin declined the family business (candle making) to embrace a longer trade, apprentice in printing... nine years. He took articles, cut them up and rearranged to improve his writing.

Navy SEALs have six months of grueling training, culminating in "Hell Week," before earning their SEAL trident. Then they undergo an additional two years of training before deployment. 

Born in 1475, Michelangelo crafted 'The Pieta' at 24. People asked how he created something amazing so young. He answered that it's not a miracle if you've trained for over a decade for ten hours a day. 

Whether you adhere or not to Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hours" to develop expertise, mastery does not arrive overnight. Gladwell got "Haterade" and responded. 

"There is a lot of confusion about the 10,000 rule that I talk about in Outliers. It doesn't apply to sports. And practice isn't a SUFFICIENT condition for success. I could play chess for 100 years and I'll never be a grandmaster. The point is simply that natural ability requires a huge investment of time in order to be made manifest. Unfortunately, sometimes complex ideas get oversimplified in translation."

Lagniappe. "Repetitions make reputations." 

Triple Sundae - Preventing Ankle Injuries

From my basketball blog, Preventing Ankle Injuries

Lagniappe. Effort 

"Effort is fully replenishable.

There is no need to save any of it.

Leave every bit you have on the playing field"

– Coach Krzyzewski

— Coach Mac 🏀 (@BballCoachMac) April 13, 2024

And super bonus material, Shepherd's pie, Southern Style

What's in Your Head?

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A firehose of thoughts stream through our brains daily. Filtering them productively adds value. 

1) Use positive affirmations. Tell yourself a worthy story about yourself. 

2) Evaluate yourself by actions not by intentions. Everyone wants high performance. Without preparation and work, intentions are fool's gold. 

3) Focus on advancing the team's story. Great teammates, coachable players who are never distractions add value. 

4) Self-belief has positive impact. 

5) Don’t rent negative space in your head. 

Lagniappe. As in basketball, players must "convert" from defense to offense quickly. This video emphasizes that conversion and the need for availability for offense. 

Six Things Are Probably Too Many

In Jocko Willink's MasterClass, he told of a "Teams" (Navy SEALs) guy who said to tell him three things because that's all he could remember.

Yeah, but...

1) Organization - I like this... think about the game as serve, receive, attack, block, defend. Yes, it omits setting, your quarterback. Most sports share an elegant symmetry. 

2) What is your MVB skill? There are only so many positions and more candidates than spots. Force your way into one. 

3) "Winners are trackers." - Darren Hardy, The Compound Effect  Tracking implies attention to detail. Remember that Coach Scott Celli is a mathematician. Volleyball is a game about efficiency. Track your workouts, your vertical, your serve percentage. 

4) Work on your athleticism. For most young athletes that means either finding a program (Melrose had a 'bigger, faster, stronger' program) or becoming your own coach. Jumping rope, weight training, plyometrics, yoga, "whatever it takes." 

5) Win "The Head Game." Athletic success demands mental toughness. MVB developed many athletes with elite mental toughness, too many to name. A lot comes with experience but resilience comes with conditioning, leaving your comfort zone, and learning other techniques (power positions, visualization, affirmation, mindfulness training). 

6) Keep a notebook. It's your book, your diary of progress. It can be personal, sport-related, general information. York book contains the all of the above. The top players in every sport record their journey. 

Just as twenty-plus years of players have done, you got this. 

Lagniappe. Coverage. Every team has theirs.

 

Saturday Second Helping

"Choose a job you love and you will never have to work a day in your life." - Confucius

Recently the blog shared TLC - talent, leadership, competitiveness. Success comes before work in one place...the dictionary.

Commit to personal growth. The MVB blog can help. Click through to an interview with Rod Olson, coach and author of The Legacy Builder. In his books, he discusses "Speaking Greatness."

Three key points for today.

1) Make it 'crazy fun'. Your coaches can't wait for late August because they love volleyball, the competition, the work. Coaching is a 'relationship business'. Even coaches like Bill Belichick who seem only 'task-oriented' have people skills. 

2) "Don't trust anybody without a limp." Sports have costs...time, money, sacrificing your body. Arriving anywhere near your asymptote of excellence (high ceiling) is tough. 

3) "Begin with the end in mind." Daring to consider yourself a potential championship team implies the "COTE of armor" - "confidence, optimism, tenacity, and enthusiasm." Coach Scott Celli and his staff have an obligation to help you write a great story. That comes with preparation, top physical conditioning, and mental toughness. 

UCONN women's basketball coach Geno Auriemma has to tell players struggling or not playing, "It's hard. I know." Working hard doesn't guarantee elite results. Failure to work hard guarantees poorer results. 

Lagniappe. "This is an equal opportunity team." 

"You have an obligation to compete - to really really compete. This is an equal opportunity team. When you prove you can do something, you will get an opportunity to do it." -Geno Auriemma

You need to be earning it or focusing on learning it. Every day.#MarchMadness2024… pic.twitter.com/E8T8e7R65C

— The Winning Difference (@thewinningdiff1) April 4, 2024

Somewhere in Melrose there may be an eighth grader who does the work to become an elite MVB athlete. If at the beginning of November, she's one of the top six players, she's going to play. Take that to the bank. 

Lagniappe 2. Most people need to be pushed to do their best. Not everyone. Bill Russell said, "my ego demands the success of my team." 

"Don’t do the easy wrong; do the hard right.
You have to go against your nature.
It’s not in everybody’s nature to get up every morning & work.
When we don’t have a challenge, we are not our best. That’s what drives us." -Geno Auriemma
📽️@WDWconvo pic.twitter.com/X6Tq4RAzAJ

— The Winning Difference (@thewinningdiff1) April 2, 2024

Coaches can't make you want success more than we do. 

 

Winning Points

"Because of the self-confidence with which he had spoken, no one could tell whether what he said was very clever or very stupid." - Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

Strong teams win points.

Good teams can beat lesser teams by scoring off their errors. Poor teams are victims of both their mistakes and opponents' ability.

Become more.

• Total focus. Win this point.
• VDE - vision, decision, execution... read the play, make good decisions, execute.
• Skill - attackers need multiple solutions
• Improvement at 'keeping the ball up'
• Efficiency at 'putting the ball down'

Do more. 

• "Champions do extra." - James Kerr, Legacy
• "Repetitions make reputations."
• "Do five more." - Dan Pink
• Do the unrequired work. 
• Workout with a teammate...drag them into the top 10 percent.

Eliminate avoidable mistakes. 

• Communicate. No campfires. Call the ball in the seams. 
• No rotation errors.
• Stay out of the net. 
• "Hitting selection." Follow coaching about rate of setting outside, middle, back row, opposite. 

Learn analogies. 

Growth means leaving your comfort zone. It is said that the price of an Olympic Gold figure skating medal is experiencing 20,000 falls. A young girl told a competitive mogul skier, "I love how you ski. You never fall." The skier heard something more. She wasn't taking enough risk, not letting her ability out. By having the will to fail, she became a champion. 

Swagger up. 

Believe. Every game on the schedule is a winnable game. Melrose has won many games against top clubs both at home and on the road. You can only be as good as your belief in yourself. 

Metaphorically, bring a tank. 

Lagniappe. Ball placement. 

Protect Your Culture

Bill Walsh said, "The culture precedes positive results. Champions behave like champions before they’re champions; they have a winning standard of performance."

Your culture doesn't change overnight.

Bill Walsh's Guidelines on How to Build Your Culture:
[Thread] 🧵 pic.twitter.com/ebLRxwRTWP

— Coach AJ 🎯 Mental Fitness (@coachajkings) April 10, 2024

Doc Rivers says, "Fight for your culture every day." 

During tryouts, before the basketball season elsewhere, something went missing from a player's locker. The captain spoke up. "That is not who we are. Whoever did this, don't come back tomorrow." Not everyone returned. 

Players can metaphorically "take things" from teammates. Jon Gordon uses the term "energy vampires." Teams with high aspirations need everyone 'on board' - shared vision, shared sacrifice, shared outcomes. 

Be a great teammate. Always add to the culture. Never be a distraction. 

Lagniappe. 

Ubuntu

Recently readers learned about MUDITA, "your joy is my joy." We should review the concept of UBUNTU.

Relish being part of your team, the MVB shared experience. 

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Lagniappe. Increase your 'tools'. 

"Iron Sharpens Iron"

MVB goes up against the iron in the non-league schedule, playing some of the toughest competition in Massachusetts volleyball. 

Melrose hosts Division 1 and Division 2 state champions Newton North and Westborough. 

Melrose has Saturday matches at Frontier and at Duxbury.

Add the annual improvement of the ML12 and MVB fans and players are in for an entertaining season. 

 

Speaking Better

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Challenge yourself to improve as a speaker. This serves you well in school, at work, at job interviews, and with the media. 

Your communication skills are part of your total impression. Make it an acquired skill by practicing. 

Lagniappe. Step-by-step approach, similar to hitting. 

Carry Each Other

Great achievements require collaboration. Remember, "great offense is multiple actions" and "great defense is multiple efforts." Players earn recognition with family support, teammates, and coaching.

Celebrate team. Happiness for another's success is a skill. "Mudita" means "your joy is my joy."

"How can we do this better" includes everything - communication, attacking, blocking, serve receive.  

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Make "Team First" your priority as you tell your story. 

Lagniappe. 

Lagniappe 2. Tips (hitters, take notes!) Think about what goes into successful hitting. It starts with the first touch. 

- Not just about 100% in hitting

- It starts with the first contact

- The attack doesn't just start with an approach

- Communication with the setter

- Adapt to the conditions 

- Read the defense

- Always have multiple weapons

- Get your body ready

- Self-reflect

- Never hit to just one direction

- Best player's mentality

- Great players are always learning

Ponies, Horses, and Unicorns

This share comes from my basketball blog. Coaches get to experience exceptional players only rarely.  

The ponies assembled on the baseline awaiting instructions. Ponies with pony legs and eager eyes, preparing to run as ponies do.  

The trainer watching over projected the future, imagining horses and hoping beyond hope that someday one pony might become a unicorn. 

"Do your best. Have fun. Two laps around the court and do not cut corners." Winners do not cut corners. 

A few ponies galloped around the gym, others trotted, and a few lumbered. Some cut corners despite the admonition not to. 

Dribble the arc. "This is the 'three-point line', the spacing line. Dribble right to left around the line with your right hand and return left to right with your left. It's not a race, control the ball, eyes up." 

The trainer had run many ponies over many seasons, no longer able to recall being a pony.  

"Now, repeat with 'crossovers' every third dribble, change of direction, change of pace. It's not just changing hands. Crossover with the ball back to your shoetops. Explode out of crossovers." So many times he taught this. So few players mastered them. 

Later the ponies dribbled with speed up and back and still later passed two balls back and forth in three lines. Some continued to gallop, aware of flying basketballs. Others struggled to move and handle the ball. 

As hours and days passed, the trainer saw some ponies differently, as a few showed equine explosiveness and maneuverability. Yes, some of these could become exceptional horses. 

Weeks and months passed. No more ponies ran, only horses, and the smoothest and most graceful of them began to emerge, a unicorn. A trainer doesn't make a unicorn. The unicorn simply becomes, nature's transformation as beautiful as the caterpillar to butterfly. 

Years passed and the trainer's dream emerged. Others saw the unicorn, too. She was more fluid, more functional, more everything. 

Few remember Secretariat's trainer or even the jockey. That is how it should be. Secretariat wasn't a normal horse, his oversized heart heralding more horsepower. 

The unicorn became a four-year All-Scholastic, Dream Teamer, and a McDonald's All-America nominee. I still remember the first day pony. 

Not many coaches enjoy the privilege to watch even one metamorphosis. Find your unicorn.  

Lagniappe. 

Dean Smith on doing the right thing: "You should never be proud of doing the right thing. You should just do it."
• It is being honest.
• It is having integrity.
• It is living your purpose.
• It is treating people with respect.
• It is having principles and values. pic.twitter.com/LIg0X0r8Kg

— Coach AJ 🎯 Mental Fitness (@coachajkings) April 8, 2024

Lagniappe 2. 

“We recruit really talented NBA players that are willing to not make it about themself. To be a part of a winning group and to go for all the championships,” Dan Hurley

Good players want a starring role on the team.

Great players want to star in the role the team needs.

🎥… pic.twitter.com/bSyAmRhC4z

— The Winning Difference (@thewinningdiff1) April 9, 2024

 

Smart Vocabulary and Flow

Smart vocabulary isn't what you think. It's Marquette Men's Basketball Coach Shaka Smart's lingo making a difference for their program. Today's message promotes having a winning vocabulary and being immersed in the psychology of "flow." 

Successful programs have their own language beyond the usual volleyball lexicon of attacks, kills, roofs, and tools.

The Marquette Wire shares some of Smart's.

Here's an example: 

Lost In The Fight:

• Definition: Unconsciously doing everything you can to achieve a goal you are working towards, blocking out anything else.
• Quote: “When we get lost in a fight, what I mean by that is we let go of all the other stuff that can creep into the mind, the doubts, anxieties, worries, all the stuff on social media,” Smart said.

There's a psychological concept at the core: "Flow." In a flow state, a participant has full immersion in the process, blocking out distractions with total engagement. 

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the "father of flow." At the peak of your athletic power, you 'lock in' on the game and the crowd, noise, fatigue, and even pain fade away.  

The 8 Characteristics of Flow

"Csikszentmihalyi describes eight characteristics of flow:

1. Complete concentration on the task;
2. Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback;
3. Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down);
4. The experience is intrinsically rewarding;
5. Effortlessness and ease;
6. There is a balance between challenge and skills;
7. Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination;
8. There is a feeling of control over the task."

Lagniappe. Also in the Marquette Wire is this Smart Advice:

Win Anyway:

• Definition: Finding a way to come out with the victory, regardless of what happens in the game or who you’re facing on any given day. 

Teams that "win anyway" earn signature wins over equal or superior opponents. Have a mindset to do "whatever it takes." 

Lagniappe. "Automate your technique." Your attack footwork, your defensive setup arise from thousands of repetitions.

 

Lagniappe 2. Watching other teams practice (basketball) helped me as a coach. There's organization, efficiency (high tempo, more players involved) and application to refine skills and strategy. Readers know more about VB coaching than I. 

Accountability

A lot of young players should study how Paige handles herself on a daily basis

She is truly special

“Everybody can make a big deal about that one single play, but not one single play wins or loses a game” - Paige Bueckers

(Via @thewinningdiff1 🎥)
pic.twitter.com/Cv4FkEYN6o

— Hoop Herald (@TheHoopHerald) April 6, 2024

Media savvy, recently discussed, includes accountability. It's tough to hold ourselves to the highest standards.

Games are the sum of individual plays. You may know these:

- "Great offense is multiple actions."

- "Great defense is multiple efforts." 

A 25-23 set usually has a shanked ball, attacks into the net, service errors, net violations and so forth. Each of those plays contributes to the outcome. Exceptional focus, playing the game possession by possession forges championship teams and winning players. 

Lagniappe. 10 Touch Drill. Go get it! 

What's the Lesson?

"All you paid is the looking price. Lessons are extra." 

What's the analogy? Think hard about that for a minute. 

Card players hold their cards "close to the vest." They don't show you everything. You might hold a setter dump, a cut shot, a slide attack, or a shoot for the right moment. What separates elite players is their ability to "take over" a game when it's needed. 

What's your conclusion? Expertise comes at a price. Experience has another price. Mastery costs the most. 

San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich says, "pound the rock." He also says, "you can't skip steps." If it takes a hundred hits to break the rock, keep pounding. Former Alabama Coach Nick Saban says, "It takes what it takes." 

When you see a player, a coach, an 'expert', you see the superficial part of the iceberg, you don't see the ninety percent below the waterline. 

You do "X" amount to become good enough to make the team. Earning a role takes more. Becoming "more" requires even more. 

At the University of North Carolina, young Michael Jordan told Assistant Coach Roy Williams, "I'll work as hard as any player ever at Carolina." Williams answered, "You have to work harder than that." 

Lagniappe. Longer video...break it down, take notes. Get "the whole hand on the whole ball." 

Get Past Hard

"Hard" is the 'Weigh Station' on your destination to success. You climb so many steps. 

• Skill development (camps, off-season teams, experience)
• Strategy (game understanding) 
• Physicality (personal training, weight training, plyometrics)
• Resilience ("The Hard Stuff")

Some teams have no history, no tradition, no role models. You grew up with them; relish the chance to be one. 

Becky Hammon said, "Being resilient is both a character trait and a learned skill. The tough part about being resilient is you can only develop this skill through going through hard stuff."

Resilience is the process of bouncing forward through adaptability, grit, and toughness. pic.twitter.com/tgHoiV4l0q

— Coach AJ 🎯 Mental Fitness (@coachajkings) April 7, 2024

Redemption takes time. The 2009 team earned its Sectional Championship after having lost to future D1 powerhouse Central Catholic in 2007 and 2008. Melrose's Hannah Brickley and Colleen Hanscom both earned All-State honors and later Melrose High School Athletic Hall of Fame status. Hannah was the only MVB star to earn All-State recognition three times and the first MVB player to play in four consecutive sectional finals. Which is why I call her "the queen of Melrose volleyball." 

Lagniappe. Using your head? 

Beware the Narrative Fallacy. It's About TLC.

Stories help us organize the world. They help us 'order' the world into cause-and-effect. The problem is that they often aren't true.

Someone gets a job and we attribute it to politics or nepotism or a favor, when they simply were deemed more qualified.

Regardless of the 'narrative' surrounding teams, high performance usually follows TLC - talent, leadership, competitiveness.

Talent. "It's not the X's and O's, its the Jimmies and Joes." The Roman philosopher Seneca gets credited with "luck is when preparation meets opportunity." Few wins or seasons are decided by luck. 

Talent derives from blends of size, athleticism, and skill. Experience helps and Melrose has mostly cheese and few holes. Like the past three seasons, MVB has opportunity at the primary outside hitter with the graduation of Sadie Jaggers. Someone has to step up and assume that role. 

Leadership. Leadership arises from both coaches and players. Melrose has an experienced staff with MVCA Hall of Fame Coach Scott Celli at the helm. And player-driven leadership matters as players on the court have the immediate opportunity to drive and interrupt runs. 

Competitiveness. What does that mean? 

• Play harder for longer.
• Create advantages. 
• Close out games. 
• "Win anyway." Find a way to get it done.
• Concede nothing. Do not quit. 

Lagniappe. Push through. Melrose has fared well in jousts as a lot of dual sport (volleyball-basketball) players had strength, size, and jump to compete. Today's video makes technique suggestions. 

Lagniappe 2. Setting tweaks.