Laws of Coaching

Making the transition from a player to a coach is similar to the transition from being a teenager to an adult. You slowly begin to develop a new identity based on things you enjoyed in the past and people who you admired. This is also the stage in your coaching career that you grow and learn the most. I am fortunate that I have played and been around some of the best volleyball coaches in the nation to start my transition from playing to coaching in the right track. I feel that sometimes when collegiate players finish up their eligibility and decide to start coaching, they think they know it all. Yes, they may know a lot of drills from all the practices they attended in the past, but do they truly know how to make their team improve on a consistent basis? Here are some ideas that I think will help young coaches make a smooth transition from playing to coaching.

1. "Failure to prepare is preparing to fail" - John Wooden
Be organized and plan what you are going to do ahead of time. Plan out your practices so you can effectively work on areas that are weak and know what your team will be doing during pre-game warm ups. Knowing what drills you are going to run and how to run them and assigning player roles in those drills before practice will save time.

2. Explain why things are the way they are.
When correcting a player's form or movement, explain to them what corrections they need to make and why that correction is better than their previous form/movement. It is also very helpful to make an analogy to explain a correction.

3. Players can only improve when they acknowledge they did something wrong or incorrect...the same goes for coaches.
Coaches make mistakes also and a lot of young coaches have power trips because of the title "coach". If you make a mistake or did something wrong acknowledge it/apologize, learn from it, and move on. Your team will have greater respect for you in the long run. Ignoring mistakes is what hinders growth as a player and a coach.

4. "You don't know unless you go"
That was a saying my setter and one of my best friends told me (I think he heard it from Jeff Stork or Marv Dunphy. As a coach you have to be willing to take risks and think outside of the box. Maybe it's coaching your team in a totally different system than what you played in college, or training players in positions they never played before, either way you may come across something valuable. The fear of failure often keeps people restricted to "safe" ways and actions when it impairs their ability to learn and grow. "In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure."
-Bill Cosby

5. Be a sponge
Being a coach may mean you're in the gym all day seeing the same people day in and day out. You must go out and see the rest of the volleyball world. Meet and talk with other coaches, stop by and watch some tournaments just for entertainment and not recruiting purposes. Here at Wichita State I hear our head coach Lambo talking to numerous coaches throughout the day on his cell phone, talking about a different theories or philosophies. The more viewpoints and philosophies that you pick up from others will allow you to create a greater unique coaching identity that one day might influence another young coach in the future.