Why players land on one foot and how to un-train it

Why players land on one foot and how to un-train it | The Art of Coaching Volleyball

Whole body listening (Is this the respect you give your coach?)

How hard are you practicing?

Soccer Elite Academy

Soccer Elite Academy will launch at the end of August 2020, so information about this will be coming soon.

Elite Basketball Academy

Basketball Elite Academy will be starting in January...we will start to announce the sessions list in mid-December.  As soon as you have our gyms rental done we will announce the sessions so stay tuned.

Between now and Christmas

We have all sorts of sessions between now and the Christmas tourney so don't forget to register early for them as they are selling out.

For those of you that missed that we have Two nights of Serving, Serve Reception and Defense, Hitting Harder, Setters and Hitters, Liberos and Serve and a bunch of private lessons.  Don't miss out I felt bad that we had to refuse 13 interested athletes at the Week of Volleyball Skills, so if you are thinking about attending don't wait too long as the sessions since September have all sold out.

A Volley Jolly Session

This two days tournament will run on Monday and Tuesday, December 16 and 17th 2019. The tournament will start at 7-10 pm. The tournament format will be based on the number of registered teams to make sure each team gets as many games as possible.  The 4’s tourney is a mixed tournament, you are allowed one male on each team but it is not mandatory. It can be an all-girls team. The net height will be between the High School senior girls and senior boys’ height. The draw will be designed as a round-robin or pools or double knockout format depending on the number of registered teams. The Sylvia Fedoruk gym. St Nicholas gym and the commons area court will all be used at this tourney. We could have as many as five courts for this session.  Family teams are welcome, all-girls teams, teams with one boy and three girls.  If we have enough teams to run different tiers based on age we will do so but if we do not have enough teams we will run everyone against everyone.  Being the first time this type of tournament has been run, we are still working on the design.  I think it would be fun to include a Christmas treat eating event at the end of the tournament and maybe even a volleyball gift exchange.  But we can set all that up at the beginning of the tournament.

A solution to the expensive volleyball problem.

A solution to the expensive volleyball problem.

For those of you that do not know Volleyball Canada this year has signed a contract to make Mikasa the volleyball to be used at Nationals.  This is a change from the Tachikara balls that were used for each of the age groups in the past.  The problem with these changes is most clubs have to replace the Tachikara balls they used so their teams going to Nationals would have the balls which they were going to use at the competition.  Understanding this situation the academy has approached the JCVC Volleyball Club and has offered to sell their used Tachikara volleyballs for them. (An idea to help all academy participants the chance to get a quality volleyball for cheap)  Everyone has to understand these balls are lightly used as they were not the normal ball the club used as it differed from the ball used for the SaskVolleyball competitions, so the Tachikara balls were only used at the very end of the club teams seasons for a couple of weeks.  The deal we have made is that we can offer the used balls for resale of 35 dollars.  We have 68 of these balls and they will be first come first serve, I will put them in my Van and you can pick the one you want after you have paid for it at our store.  (This is the academy’s idea of Black Friday sale, I am not even sure which Friday is Black Friday…but oh well) 

I will be purchasing 20 of them for academy use.  Not for sessions, the athletes still need to bring a ball to each session they attend and this is a cheaper solution than the normal 100 price tag attached to new quality volleyballs, so get yours as soon as possible as at this price they will not last long. 

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5 keys to making a smooth transition from high school to club volleyball

Kendall Kipp | Outside Hitter at Laguna Beach Volleyball Club

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Anyone who has played both high school and club volleyball understands just how different they are. The transition from one to the other can often be difficult. You finish one season after spending months working hard with your team, then you go back to square one with a new team.

Although it always takes time to fully adjust to the change, the process can be made easier if you follow these guidelines:

1. Be adaptable

Every coach has a different style, and this can make it difficult at first when you’re transitioning into the club season. There might be one skill that you worked on throughout high school season that your club coach teaches completely differently. Being coachable takes practice. It’s a conscious decision to take the corrections your coaches give you and apply them on the court. But it pays off. If you commit to being coachable, you’ll find it a lot easier to make these adjustments.

2. Manage your time

Another thing you have to adapt to is a new schedule. When moving from high school to club season, my schedule completely changes. In high school season, I have lifting and practice every weekday unless we have matches, which are usually twice a week, and weekends off. In club season, however, I have practice two days during the week and two days on the weekend, lifting on days I don’t have practice and tournaments on most weekends. This forces me to shift my schedule for homework, eating, sleeping and free time. Club also sometimes requires you to miss a day or two of school for travel tournaments, so it’s important to communicate with teachers and stay on top of your work.

3. Get to know your teammates

Coming off of high school season, you will be used to playing with girls who you know really well and know how to play with. But when you start practicing with a new club team you often have a lot of new teammates. It might be harder to play together at first when you don’t really know each other, but as you practice more you will become familiar with each others’ playing style. Besides just spending time together at practice, one way to get to know your teammates is by scheduling team-bonding outings. Whether it’s hanging out as a team at someone’s house or just getting food after practice, it’s important to build relationships with your teammates off the court.

4. Set goals for the season

Since the two seasons are back-to-back, it’s easy for them to blur together and start to feel long. One way to keep yourself energized is by setting goals for the season, personal or team. This will help you stay mindful and on track when you’re practicing. It will also help you avoid burnout. For me, goals are a huge motivating factor. I get excited because I want to do everything in my power to achieve those goals, and each practice becomes an opportunity to get closer.

5. Be prepared to work hard

The first month of the club is one of the most important parts of the entire season. It’s where you establish the culture for your team, build the foundation and start defining roles. One of the best parts of the new season is that you have the opportunity to start fresh. If you were on the bench for your high school team, you get a new chance to earn your spot on the court. And if you started on your high school team, you have the chance to prove why you should continue to do so. If you work hard each day in practice, you’ll not only improve yourself as a player, but you’ll motivate your teammates to do the same. This will set you and your team up for a successful club season!

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Kendall Kipp, a 6-4 outside hitter at Laguna Beach Volleyball Club in California, has committed to play at Stanford in the fall of 2019.

Wearing Ankle Braces: Busting myths and preventing repeat injury

In “jumping” sports — especially volleyball — athletes are at a high risk of an ankle injury.

Read some research

https://www.cramersportsmed.com/first-aider/to-brace-or-not-to-brace-that-is-the-question.html

https://www.cramersportsmed.com/first-aider/debunking-the-ankle-braces-impairment-myth.html

Physics holds the secret to volleyball’s highly unpredictable “float serve”

Physics holds the secret to volleyball’s highly unpredictable “float serve”

https://arstechnica.com/?post_type=post&p=1584291

I have never seen this before.

Practice

I think it says it all.

Want to Paint the Van

I want to paint my van looking for a talent airbrush or wrap auto painting center willing to collaborate on the project.

The Canadian Elite Academy (which is a training center for high school athletes) is seeking an autobody center who is willing to accept the challenge of designing a one of a kind Ford Transit Van which will be an eye-catching driving piece of art which announces the mandate of the academy. I currently have stickers on it but I would like to go to airbrush instead. I do not want to dictate what the design should be, I want to work with an autobody artist who is talented and willing to coop on design and create something truly unique. After saying all of this I am not sure what it would cost and how much it would cost me to have it done? Basically, this is an exploratory email to see if there is any willingness out there in the facebook world of an autobody will to explore this idea. It might be way past my cost ability or no airbrush or wrap artists who have auto work experience and willing to tackle the partnership challenge. Currently, the academy is into Volleyball, Basketball, and Soccer but will be expanding.

Volleyball Life Lessons

New Coach: Adam Ewart

Introducing a New coach to the Academy. Adam Ewart

Adam was a setter that played high school, club, and provincial team. He left the province and played on various Military teams while in the Canadian Navy. He played one year of college before moving back to Saskatchewan. He has spent the past 26 years coaching at various levels in the province. Highlights include: spending 8 seasons as an assistant coach with the U of S Huskie Men’s Volleyball team capturing a bronze and silver medal at the U Sport National Championships, 2004 NTCC gold medal with Team Sask , 2012-2015 Chaos Volleyball Club 4x Provincial Champions, 2015 SHSAA 5A High School Boys Silver Medalists, and most recently 2019 U14 Boys Div. 1 Tier 2 Western Canadian champs. The first session Coach Adam will be offering is the two days of Serving on November 25 and 26th.  The unfortunate thing is that this session is also sold out, however, it does not have a waitlist as of yet.

A wild week at the academy.

Wild time this week we have five private lessons and four days of sessions and a pickup game on Friday.
The week of volleyball skill session is new this year designed for older athletes and is four days of two-hour sessions. 
It starts with coach David Chuong doing Defense and Freeball on Monday
Then coach Darren Cannell doing transition, hitting and blocking on Tuesday 
Wednesday has coach Michele McKeown doing Serving and Serve Reception
Thursday is coach Toako Chie Imamura focussing on Setting and Hitting
The Friday winding up with a pickup informal gameplay night.

It was well-received and sold out quickly, which is awesome but it also has a waitlist of 14 athletes and with cancelations, there will be 11 athletes who will not be able to attend.
This just reinforces the need for athletes to register early to avoid the disappointment of missing out on a session.

Fantasy Future

Wow, would it be cool for a session on the beach in Mexico?  Answer no way it would be hot...lol.

Fanatic Volleyball Players.

Full-time athletes at the academy is a question I get often.  We are trying to avoid the subscription academy model where you pay X amount of dollars to attend a daily session.  It is not a bad model, I just believe that it attempts to place the sport above everything else in their life.  Family, school, religion, other sports and many other aspects of the busy youth of today should be placed higher than my academy.  Other sports teach skills which are transferable to volleyball, I have found soccer players to have very fast foot speed, tennis players have great spike and serve technique and eye-hand coordination, while dance and gymnastics athletes have good jump training and body awareness and video gamers are good at strategy, communication, and sometimes leadership.  The athletes who select a single sport too early in life tend to be lacking in some elements to make a well-rounded athlete.  For all these reasons, the “come to the sessions” you want model put the ownership in the athlete and their support group to make a skill development plan which fits into their busy lives and into their ongoing skill development.  Only pay for the sessions you attend and only pick the ones that fit your skill level.  The skill level is determined by the athlete and their support group and not the academy coaching staff.  Some athletes will attend every session for a year to try to prepare for a future tryout to a team, some athlete use the academy to supplement the coaching they are getting on their current team, and some athletes just want to hear a different coach’s view on how to do as skill.  Exposure to a variety of different coach styles is important in an athlete”s development.  In short, fill your life with music, arts, sports and people and a well-round human will emerge...too much of one sport, art, Fort nite or any aspect of life will create a fanatic single-dimensional human, variety is the spice of life.

But as a businessman, I welcome the fanatic volleyball players who attend every one of my sessions.

Session selection

 I just realized that the clinic on the 28th is for advanced.  My daughter is not quite 14, and is not what I would consider 'advanced' in her hitting technique.  Is this going to be a problem? Will she be in over her head?  I know of another one of her teammates that is the same skill level as my daughter, and was also interested in this clinic.  Please advise!

We never stop someone from attending a session or not as we are trying to not evaluate the athletes in that way.  They get enough of that from tryouts and team play.  Each session is designed to be individual training so athlete at all different levels can benefit from the session.  The hitting harder session builds on the basic hitting style and is considered advanced as it is meant for the athletes who have the ability to spike but just want to increase the power.  Athletes who attend a session too advanced for them do tend to be frustrated attempting what the coach is asking them to do and they are physically not there.  However, it can allow a more mature view of where they should be heading in the skill as they progress which can be used to form goals.  Each athlete is different in their approach to skill development.  Some are very skilled at development on their own and take the instruction given at sessions and go home and will work on it until it becomes muscle memory others will only strive to better themselves when in front of a coach in a formal practice setting.  Some athletes are very self-motivated and others are peer-motivated and then their are the coach-motivated athletes, each brings a style to the Academy session.  This variation makes it difficult to develop an evaluation or suggestion for individuals who have only been seen in a few sessions.  When working in developing a team a coach needs to work hard in determining a current skill level in each athlete to allow the use of said skills in a unified team.  At the academy we look at the athlete’s current skill level and suggest changes based only on the focus of the session without comparison of the athletes skills to other athletes or a team’s need.  This is a unique coaching perspective but does force the ownership of which session to attend to each individual athlete and their support group, like their parents, team members and team coach.

Now if that is not the best non-answer I have given today I don’t know what is...lol

FAQ -Frequently Asked Questions

1. What happens if the Athlete cannot make the session in which they have registered? The registration fees can be transferred between sessions and between cycles. Flexibility is the key and will allow athletes to work around their playing schedule and their busy lives.

2. The ratio of athlete to coach is 10 to one. The coaches will be selected based on the skills at coaching individual skills. Dr. Darren Cannell is the head coach and will be in attendance for most of the sessions but he is aware that there are better coaches out there for some of the skills.

3. How is information communicated with the participants? Everyone who registers for a session is added to a mailing list. Anyone on the list has the ability to remove themselves at any time from the list.

4. How do I decide which session my offspring should attend? Sessions are all designed to be individual instruction which means participants can attend any session they want. The academy has had sessions in which 50 years old Master National team members are in the same gym as grade seven participants. The sessions for the same reason also have males and females in the same session.

5. How are the costs of a session used to cover the costs in the academy? Firstly, the sessions have taxes added to the cost, which is GST and fees which are used to cover the software costs and credit card fees. Secondly, the biggest cost for the academy is the gym rental fees. Third, the coaches who are the major reason why the sessions are successful are paid as it allows the academy to attract the best of the best. Forth, insurance, equipment, software development, accounting fees, lawyers fees, corporation fees, and other fees. The goal has always been to try to keep the cost of the session as cheap as possible but at the same time covering the costs of running the academy.

6. What are free or open sessions? The academy believes that participants need to touch the ball as often as possible for them to reach their potential. The academy runs many open and free session to reach this end. The costs for these types of sessions are the free or minimum cost to cover the gym rental costs.

7. Is the academy seeking sponsorship? The academy is a for-profit corporation but is attempting to bring down the costs of sessions so it would embrace sponsorship. Keeping this in mind the greatest need would be to gain sponsorship to cover the pickup game nights gym rental fees so we can offer those events free.

8. What are the reasons for canceling Sessions? Sometimes the school gyms that we rent are needed by the school and it can happen on short notice, so we send a memo out to the participants to the email with which they registered. For this reason, it is important that you use an active email so you will get these notices. The other reason sessions might be canceled is due to lack of registrations, the academy does not cancel sessions when there are enough registrations to cover the gym costs. In fact the few participants the better the ratio of coach-to-athlete and according to Head Coach Darren, he enjoys those sessions more as you see the changes with the participant's skills when you can pay more attention to their skills. This is also the reason private lessons are so popular.

Waitlist email full of code what is going on?

To get on a waiting list you need to go to the session in which you are interested in attending then registers for it.  If it is full it will state as such and then it will allow you to add your name to the waitlist.  If and when a spot becomes available due to a cancellation or the academy finds another coach to help in a session then the waitlist people will be contacted via email.  The email

will state that a spot has been open for them and they can confirm they are interested in attending by payment for the session.  It costs nothing to be placed on the waitlist but when the email is sent stating the spot is open, interested parties have to pay a quickly as possible because if payment is not made the open spot will be given to the next person on the waitlist.

It has been stated that some people do not see the necessary information on the email stating that they have been transferred from the waitlist to a participant email due to a setting on their phone.  If you run into issues with your phone displaying a whole pile of coding, then try a desktop or laptop to see if it clarifies the issue.

Here is the more technical answer to why this happens sometimes…

This is an issue on their PC and how their email program is interpreting the email message. Some email programs will display multi-part messages as garbled code. Anti-virus programs will sometimes “break” multi-part email templates up and cause them to display as raw HTML code.

This is not a common issue, but if they are using an anti-virus program, then to fix this problem they may need to change their anti-virus setting so that it accepts multi-part email messages. If they need more guidance, they should refer to or contact their anti-virus software company directly.

It is not something we can figure out for them on our end, but doing a web search like this would reveal that this happens to PC users in some circumstances or versions of Outlook or other email programs. The point is not to let the email program or anti-virus program to modify the content of the email coming in and allow the email program to display exact formatted message correctly. That is why if they use an online email service or a mobile device, they would see the correctly formatted email we send.

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What session do you think is suitable?

This is a question that I am asked often by parents and participants.  I try my best to write up the descriptions of the sessions to help interested people understand the level which is taught.  This email response is one that I gave to a parent in the last few days.

I try not to make a suggestion based on the skill of the players as they get enough of that with their tryouts and team coaches, I do my best in the session descriptions to describe the type of session which will be offered and hopefully the athletes will be able to decide if the session is for them.  For newer players, the word Basic will be used in the session as the footwork will be taught and a step by step instruction.  Sessions with the work advance on them or where I state the player should have an ability to attend the session, for instance, the setting session is for high school starting setters and will be for players who can set and are looking for the next step of the instruction, not the basic hand position or footwork.
 
Having said all that, sessions are for all genders and all ages, we will not refuse attendance to anyone, if the players and the parents think the session is good they can show up.  The lack of politics, evaluation and individual instruction at the sessions is refreshing for both the coaches and players.  We try to make the session individualize enough and challenging enough that everyone will benefit from any session we offer.  Yes, some athletes will be in way over their heads but it is not a competition, each athlete should hopefully leave a session better than when they walked in, they should not compare their skills with others and then it is fun for all involved.  
 

Basketball Elite Academy

We have a vision for the Academy which states “Taking the Skills to the Next Level”.
The academy’s next level is the introduction of the Basketball Elite Academy.  It will begin offering sessions on the week of January 6^th, 2020.  We are seeking interested Basketball coaches (mature, good at working with school-age athletes and willing to coach the odd sessions every so often).  If you know any such person please pass on my name on to them.
All the systems and methods learned while building the Volleyball academy will be used to make the Basketball Elite Academy.  We hope to develop the same level of sessions and coaching making it as popular as the Volleyball Elite Academy.  I (Dr. Darren Cannell) will be the head coach for the Basketball Academy setting up the sessions and assigning coaches.

Taking Your Skills to the Next Level

Sessions are selling out. Today I opened the academy manager page and this image was what I saw.  Thank you to all of you volleyball people for helping to make and develop the format for the academy.  Your suggestion, comments and feedback help to shape the format.  We tried developing our own system, used about four different systems and researched close to 13 others before settling on the current Corsizio system for registration.  During the last three years, we compiled a list of interest participants, developed a communication program, recruited a great list of interested coaches and a list of sessions that fit the needs of the athletes. We will continue to request suggests and comments to help us continue to improve and make the academy better tomorrow than it is today.  But if you don't register early you will not be able to attend a session as we do not want to mess up our coach to athlete ratio as it drops the level of instruction at the sessions.

Register now for future sessions