Mark Burik:
Hello everybody, we're going live on all of our platforms and we should be rocking and rolling Yes, we should. OK, I'm just doing a little sound check to make sure that everyone can hear me. And if nobody stops me or sends me any DMs, then we know we are good to go. Today is Wednesday, August 2nd. And I'll let you guys know that I'm doing something different. So I'm going to build a course through a series of podcasts. So if you're interested, over the next month, we're going to build out our coaching course and I've got our chapter set out, but I want to do it in a different way. So what basically what we're going to be doing is creating a course live and off the cuff and I'm just going to use my brain, my history to be able to teach and share everything from my coaching history. my history as a player and be able to do a bunch of miniature episodes at this time. So let's get started. All right. So today is Wednesday, August 2nd. My name is Mark Burrick. Welcome to Better at Beach. We do everything where we try to get better at beach volleyball. And we have started a coaching certification course that involves, I think it's gonna end up being 16 weeks of classes or at least 32 episodes. And what we want some of our coaches to do. And when you sign up for the certification is you go through the course. We have a bunch of Q&As with each other. Of course, you watch all the tutorials that we're about to create. And as a part of the completion of that course, you guys are going to have a practical session. Now, how do you achieve that practical session? Well, one of our first coaching students just did that. She came to our three-day camp. And at our three-day camp, we. showed her exactly what we're doing. She got to work with all of our coaches. We trained her in why we do what we do, what we're looking for. And she's going to take that back to her club team and give all the rest of the coaches in her club. And of course, of course her players, all of that new information. So we also hope to help our coaches lead our players. And when they do lead those players, we're going to. help you know if you're actually running a good practice. If you haven't coached and had somebody watch you coach, it's very difficult to know if you are doing the best job. Like all other endeavors, right? We have some sort of boss, some sort of person, a teacher, a mentor who's helping us get better at what we do. Now in coaching, a lot of times we go from assistant coach to head coach. That's nice, because the head coach can help you get to where they are or help you see some stuff. But a lot of you, I know a lot of you end up in these head coaching roles, where you end up being the head coach right away of a club team. You end up being the head coach right away of a high school team. And I wanna prepare you for... If that happens, if you don't have any mentor there or anybody observing you during a practice, there are a few things that are absolutely crucial and throughout this series of videos, that's exactly what we're going to be doing. So before we get started and before we start the real meat of the course, got a few announcements and as usual, I will pull from betteratbeach.com forward slash events. Hermosa beach, California. We have a six hour intro to beach volleyball fundamentals course. August 9th to 11th, we have in Hermosa beach, a three day kids camp. August 20th in Hermosa beach. We have an advanced defensive techniques and tactics for women's B and A players. So if you want to come out for six hours on a Sunday to Hermosa beach, or if you want to make a weekend out of it and play a CBVA Saturday and then take our course. on a Sunday, more than welcome. East coasters, Virginia Beach, August 24th and 25th, Brandon is going to be out there running a two day clinic. August 25th to 27th, we're double dipping on you, east coasters, I'm an east coaster, it's cool. But August 25th to 27th, we have a three day mini camp for men's and women's B and A players at Postcard Inn in St. Pete Beach, that's a three day mini camp. So seven to eight hours a day. And then you should, if you're coming from out of town, arrive Thursday night, be prepped to rock and roll Friday morning and Saturday morning. Those are two all days. And then on Sunday, we do about six hours and we get you out of there in time for an evening flight home. That's the design of our three day camp. And this thing has got, we're up to 24 registrants. So this is going to be one of our bigger camps. Now we had one camp that was pretty big like that earlier in the summer, but this August 25th to 27th, St. Pete Beach Camp, it's going to be big and it keeps growing. We're adding more coaches, we're adding more spots. So if you wanna sign up, it's gonna be a big event, it's gonna be a lot of fun, go ahead and sign up. You can find it on bitterbeach.com forward slash camps. September 8th to 10th, our men's and women's AAA camp. Not as many people signed up yet, but that might mean that you get a little extra attention. Who knows? Maybe people are just waiting or maybe September 8th to 10th is a bad date. Time will tell. We're trying to get something going in Phoenix. We are trying to get something going in Seattle. If a Dakine volleyball gets back to us, we would love to do something in Boston and New York. Of course, we will definitely be going back to Cincinnati this year. So we've got a lot of events planned and we will do one international trip that I'm very excited about. Okay. Won't release it yet, but we'll be very excited about our seven day camps in Florida are kicking up sales are on fire. Uh, October 29th, November 5th, November 26th. And we will have a super camp from December 26 until January 7th. If you're not on our email list, go ahead, make sure that you are signed up. Okay. Uh, That's it. That's all from the announcements. So here is what we are going to do now. We are going to get into the nitty gritty of coaching. So I'm going to act as if this was a fresh start. So if it sounds weird on video, it's just because that's how it has to be for the course, cause that's what we're building. All right, welcome to this section of the course. We are going to talk about understanding the responsibilities and roles of a volleyball coach. For some of you, this might seem repetitive. For some of you, this might seem obvious. My hope is that this helps wake you up in some ways that you're not quite woke. So. The important part that we want to focus on is that coaching volleyball is not just about Xs and Os. It's not how well you know the technique. For a lot of young coaches or new coaches out there, you get a new technique or you get a new set of knowledge and that's all you want to focus on and you drive that home. Some coaches only look at technique. They only look at Xs and Os and who's winning. But the way we here at Better Beach coach, the way we want to coach is way more in depth. And I want to give you a few reminders of what it takes to be an excellent coach. Number one, planning. So I'm okay, we're gonna go over this, but I am going to say that if you're a lone coach, You need to be a version of all of this. If you have the ability to have an assistant coach or you get some help, cool. See if you can pad your staff so that you fulfill all of these roles, right? I'm not always a long-term hype guy. I'm like a short-term hype guy. So for me to walk in very excited, a lot of what I do is, honestly, whether you know it or not from the podcast, I'm a teacher, I stay pretty flat. It's not crazy entertainment. I try to be funny, I often fail. So I'm looking for assistant coaches. If I were to build my staff, I would look for assistant coaches that want to bring energy, want to give lots of high fives and want to power that side of it. Also, strict planning and stat keeping are something that as a coach I have a weakness, but I want to make sure that somebody on my staff is actually doing that, or I have some assistance in that. But number one, roles and responsibilities as a coach is you have to plan. Planning in terms of tryouts, planning in terms of if you don't have an athletic director or a club director, you need to plan way ahead for who you're going to order your apparel from, who you're going to order your swag from. You have to have that in mind way in advance. You can't let this stuff creep up on you. Now, if you are about to start a season or you're getting there and you don't know what you're... uniforms are going to look like in a month or two months, you need to get on that now. And you need to start doing that. Okay. You also need to book courts. You have to be the court booker, the manager for this. You have to know where you're going to practice, when you're going to practice. And you have to set a schedule of confirm and reconfirm. So if you have changing locations. I know a lot of coaches, sometimes you practice at a church basement once, you practice at a YMCA once, and sometimes you get a high school gym. You have to know that people forget. Now you could decide to put it on them and say, well, they have to remember they, you know, it's their job. It's also your job. Now I'll share a lot of my stuff from business and marketing, but it comes into coaching. you have to set constant reminders so that it's difficult to forget. For me, that works in the form of my Google calendar. Any time I think that there is an event coming up that I know that is important or something that I have to remind myself of, like, hey, I want to see how this new sales page is doing, or I want to see how Cheryl's new arm swing is going. I have to take her stats from today and the last two weeks, and then I have to set a date in my calendar, and I have to say, on this date, I will measure the last two weeks. Since we changed this on our team, since we changed this with our player, what were the results? You have to set those as part of your plan, okay? Part of your planning not only comes from Quartz not only comes from apparels and registering for tournaments, but part of your planning also comes from how you are going to design your season and then how you are going to design your months and your weeks. If you're not thinking about that, please get your head around that quickly. Because once you've assembled your team or once you know what team you're going to be working with that season, you have to know or take an estimate of where you are. Sit down, start writing some things down. Write them down and say, where are we now? What's the most important thing that we can get to this season? If you don't have a season goal or I hesitate to use the word goal, but if you don't have a season direction, the area or direction that you want to go in, then it's difficult to set goals. Matt, one of our coaches slash employees, right? And he's playing in his game and he's setting these goals and he doesn't know how to break his season down into goals. We have to get as micro as possible and see how many chunks we can achieve at a time. So I said, all right, well, what if we took your hitting percentage? And we said, all right, the weakest part of our game and the most influential part of our game is attack percentage. that will play a huge difference. If we can figure out what our attack percentage is now, let's not think about going from 300 to 400. Let's say the direction is increasing our attacking efficiency. What's the smallest increment that we can think of right there? Can we do it by 1%? Can we go from 300 to 301? Yeah. We probably can do that and that's something that is achievable, okay? Achievable is important, you wanna make it realistic, but you also want to say, all right, you know, I measured it, I actually did it. Without planning, without proper planning, you can't do this. So if that's the direction that you wanna go, if at the end of the year, your priority is increasing your attack percentage, then you have to measure what your attack percentage is in week one, week two, and you have to set little milestones. and put it in your Google calendar and say, when are we measuring again to see if what we're doing is working? I'll say that most coaches get lost in the quagmire. You end up seeing these micro problems that happen day in and day out. And you lose focus on where you wanted to go at the beginning of the year. I'm not saying you absolutely have to stick. Hardcore. to one place, one design, one direction, because you do have to put out fires along the way. But if you're constantly changing where you're going to end up, imagine you're Columbus, you got a bunch of angry sailors with you, and every couple days, you change what your destination is. That's hard. That's hard on them. That's hard on you. That means that you have to completely redesign your plans. That means that your players get lost. They think that the work they put in for the last week, now it just doesn't count to anything or doesn't count for anything and they'll get frustrated. So you have to plan and you have to acknowledge that plan with your players. You have to share that. You have to share that with your players, your staff. uh, any parents, if you're hiding this from your parents and they don't know where you're headed, then you, you can't get there properly because nobody knows where you're going. And if you don't know where you're going or nobody around you knows where you're going, nobody trusts you and trust becomes important. So make sure that you are planning out your season and the direction that you're going and we can get to setting goals, uh, and some of the next chapters, but you make sure that you're setting those directions. And now you can plan some of your monthly practices, but keep your eye on that plan. Keep your eye on that long distance direction and make sure that you're heading there. And then every time you're having a practice or you have a frustrating day, you say, well, did what we do today get closer to our direction? And I will also say that you should try to control some of those. Like a championship is not attainable or reasonable for everybody. And. It's hard to control, right? We like to control ourselves, so saying that you're going to end in a championship is very broad. Then you have to break that down into, all right, what was the last championship team to win? What was their hitting percentage? How many digs per game were they getting? What were they doing? Then we have to plan our practices to say what drills, what time spent on this will increase those numbers. So make sure that you are planning as a coach. It's one of your roles, one of your responsibilities. Next thing is good questions. We'll go a little bit out of order here, but a good coach asks great questions. If you're only telling with your athletes. Well, they never learn how to problem solve on their own. What then happens when you're sick, when you can't show up? What happens to them outside of your team? What happens to them next year? So I have a company. I also have a business. My job is to try to equip employees and my players with the ability to work without me. If you're force feeding answers and your players don't know. the reason why they're doing something, they don't know the concept or the principles that they're chasing, then they can't problem solve on their own. There are some athletes, I'm giving you this, there are some athletes that they just need to be told exactly what to do, when to do it, and that's the only way that they'll respond. But you will miss out on a bunch of your players if you're not asking the questions to say, what did you just do? How could it have been better? What do you think went wrong? If you've never responded to what do you think, if you've never responded to a question with what do you think, then. your players aren't learning. You have to get them to problem solve and you have to have discussions with them, not just tell them what to do. So if you've gotten through an hour of practice and you haven't asked a question of your athlete, what do you think you should do there? And allow them to struggle and think through the answer. I think you're failing. I think you have to allow them to try to discover their own answers and problem solve. You can create great players, but if you don't create great problem solvers, if you don't create great leaders, there's an issue. There's an issue because you're not making the world a better place. You're just making a bunch of followers and you aren't generating a coach for the next generation. And that to me is very important. You have to be able to generate a coach for the next generation, somebody who's going to lead the way. And if people don't know the reasons why you're doing things, because you haven't asked them enough questions, then you have to go. One of the things that I did, uh, in Sweden when I was the head coach for our pro indoor team in Sweden, each player got to run one practice. So on Tuesdays, each player, one at a time throughout the entire season, it said, Hey Muke, it is your turn. So you run the practice on Tuesday, make sure you design it. Here's where we're heading. Here's what we need to work on. Some people freeze. Some people realize how hard it is. Most people end up copying you. But at least they get to sit there in the driver's seat and take ownership of that practice for a little bit. And you can help them and you can have a review afterwards. Now, I realize that some of you have very limited hours and that would be risky. So what I would ask you is make sure that you give 20 minutes. to say, you have the gym, what drill are we doing and why? Why does this make sense? What do you think our team needs? It might surprise you that they're looking at things differently than you are. And how cool would that be? How cool would it be to have a 14 year old who says, I just don't think we're passing well enough, so I just wanna do passing drills. Or this person just wants to work on the skill that she thinks she's weakest at and now that exposes that to you, that answers a question for you. where you say, oh, she worked on passing. This is what she wanted to do. She is not confident in her passing. Now this is a tool that I could use. So I'll say that asking questions is a big part of your roles and responsibilities as a coach. Goal setting comes in with planning. And like we said with goal setting, it's another responsibility. You have to set appropriate goals and you have to stick to them. We talked about the direction. You can't just randomly change goals and not reward them. If you set a goal, reward it, announce it, make a celebration, uh, give it a little high five list things that you can celebrate with your team on a consistent basis because somebody achieved that you have to look for victories in your team and in your individuals and in your coaching staff. And you have to announce those. If people feel that as a group we're progressing or one individual is progressing, that becomes contagious. Right. We have to announce that. Now I do some BJJ, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at Gracie University. It's awesome when at the end of the class, some of the classes, they announce who earned a new stripe or who earned a new belt, right? That means that, Hey, somebody in our group. has leveled up and we are recognizing it. And when you see that somebody else has leveled up, it gives you inspiration. So when you do set these goals for your team and for individuals, maybe it's pass, set, spike the ball over the net 10 times in a row. And then you set the new goal for 12 times in a row. Imagine you just increase that number by two for an entire season, for an entire three month season. Every couple days you get two more reps over the net in a row. By the time you have that, let's just say in, I don't know, in a regular season, 60 days, 60 times two, 120. Now we're at 240 over the net. If we follow that progression, that's a goal to achieve. And then when you compound those over time, Oh my God, does that feel amazing? Okay. So find a way to set micro goals. for your team. One of the ways that you can do that is if you go to betteratbeach.com forward slash level the number two test. From there, that will show you betteratbeach.com forward slash level the number three test, level the number four test, okay? They each lead into the new test. There is a written part where you have to answer questions specific to our technique and our teaching, and there is a physical part. I just got finished talking to a parent who their coach keeps giving them a moving target for what they need to do to start. And this player doesn't know what to do because they did everything that the coach asked them to do and there is just no recognition for that. If you set certain goals for your team and you say, hey, by tryouts, you need to pass to yourself 50 times in a row. If you can't do that, you're not prepared for our tryout. You need to set to yourself 50 times in a row. You need to set against a wall at a certain height, 50 times in a row. These players, you can't just tell them, Hey, go practice. Make sure you practice in the off season. Make sure you practice at home. People need to be spoon fed. And I, sorry to say this, but people need to be spoon fed. what they have to do. So you need to create drills that they can do at home and set goals for them. If you can do that, then they vary specifically. You can ask them, not, hey, did you work? And then some people are like, well, I didn't really know what to work on. Then you can say, I gave you the drill, I gave you the number you need to hit. Did you try to get it? Okay, that is going to be important for goal setting. Because you're giving them very specific advice, very specific drills. If you are not giving your team or your athletes home drills or at home homework or something to do as an optional improvement, then the people who might want to work hard or could work hard, they just get lost because they're not quite sure what to do. The hard workers like the 1% that will always go home and get reps, they'll find a way no matter what. It's really nice if they have a direction from somebody who's a little bit smarter, somebody who sees their path and wants to create a path for them. So then you could give those drills to them and give those goals to them. Right. So you just don't go haywire. We know a lot of workhorses who will just work as hard as they can, but it's kind of in the wrong direction or it's in a direction that you don't need them to go, okay, for the people who could work. If they were given direction and you haven't, you're not giving them anything. Okay. So then they'll choose not to work because it's too confusing to start. You need to spoon feed people. So if you're going to set goals for them, you absolutely make sure that you give them the tools to achieve those goals. And if you're sending them home to do things, you absolutely make sure that you give them those tools so that they can do those things that you know, we'll help them get better. Okay. Or you can always have a meeting with them and say, what drills do you think you'd like to improve on or. What could you do at home to improve your passing? And then when they say something valid, you say, yep, okay. Do that X amount of times. Easy answer. Right now, another role and responsibility of a coach is clarifying. You need to be there to answer questions. So like we said with questions and clarifying these might sound very similar, but you are there to make things less cloudy. And I know that sounds obvious. But if you don't allow the time for questions, then you're not clarifying. If you don't present a place or an environment where it's OK or there is time to ask questions, you're not presenting a maximal achievement environment. One of the things that we do when we break after a drill or after a section of practice, I say to everybody, hey, guys. What was the hardest part of that for you? And we sit there until we get an answer. A lot of times, this helps socially too. People think that they're the only person who is doing something wrong, the only person who's failing it, the only person who's having trouble with it, just because of a confidence issue, right? If somebody else announces that they're having a problem, all of a sudden they're like, oh, man, I'm not the only screw up here. Somebody else is having a problem with that. And then it gives you... another opportunity to explain. If you go on a monologue but it wasn't initiated by one of your players, you might be talking for 10 to 15 minutes answering nobody's questions but saying what you want to say. If you're not answering anybody's questions then why are you talking right? You should be clarifying for them. So if you're the coach that likes to have those end of practice talks, or you like to talk a lot during practice, which I would really encourage you to start timing your talks and having an assistant coach or a person as soon as you break, or as soon as you break or you start talking, set a timer and say, how much time did I spend talking instead of my players actually repping? If you're that person, then you should design it so that you're answering people's questions and we do that as well with business. Like creating this course, we generated questions from our community so that we can create a course and create little chapters. Make sure that you guys are doing that as coaches. You are clarifying questions that they have and making things clear for them and giving them opportunities to improve and giving them spoon fed opportunities to improve. The next two are very important and probably the most important. So I'm sorry that I saved them for the end of the video, but the betterment of people and the creation of community. If you are a coach and you are not actively thinking of how to build a community, how to create an environment, how to create an attitude that you want to see. then you're doing it wrong. If all of your conversations are Xs and Os, get your elbow back, put your platform together, make sure you get your hands up early. If you never talk about how somebody acts towards somebody else, or what they're doing for somebody else, or how to make their gym or their environment a better place, how they can make somebody a better person, in my book, you're absolutely failing. Sport is here to make our lives better. Okay, sport. is here to make our lives better. It helps us, hopefully, the lessons help us become better people. We have to be able to point those things out. If you are talking nonstop Xs and Os and technique, but you're not talking about life problems, issues, interpersonal relationships. You're failing your players, you're failing your community, you're failing your team, you're failing your company. These are conversations that we have to have to have a better life. So if you're not creating a community, you're not getting everything that you could out of this environment. One of the ways, and I'll spoon feed you guys, one of the ways that we create a community is on our camps, our seven day camps, we ask everybody to. randomly find a partner or assign them to a partner because we're spoon feeding them and then they have to make a secret handshake whatever, you have five minutes to create whatever song and dance you want. But when they do this throughout the week, then we say, Hey, go find your handshake buddy. They find their handshake buddy and they get to smile with that person every day. They're connected with that person. Even if they have no outside conversation with them, they have that handshake. Okay. When I went to play to practice with Paris volley, uh, top France, pro a France, everyone on that team. had like a double tap and a little fist for when they saw each other. When they entered the locker room and when they said hello to each other, they all had a certain way of saying hello and there was a secret handshake for them. This creates a sense of belonging. Remember that your volleyball practice as a coach, it can be the only thing that's good in somebody's life for a little bit. And if you're not the one, if you're not the one who's taking advantage of the opportunity to lead somebody, lead somebody young or make somebody's day or life better or make them better for when they do go home, you might be the only role model they have, whether you're coaching adults or kids. you might be the only chance of a role model that this person has. And you can't let that slide. You can't let that go. Become a role model. Ask about their lives. Talk about stuff that's tough to talk about. Ask them how things are going. Get involved and see what you can do, okay? Because... If you don't, you're missing out on the joy. You're missing out on the rewards and you're missing out on your future team. Because if you don't start creating an environment now, if you don't start creating a community now next year, when you coach it's, you're just going to be like, Oh, we have crappy kids. Ah, we got crappy parents. And you're going to say that you're in and you're out when you've done nothing actively to control that or steer it in the right direction. You can't just blame attitudes, blame people, without creating an environment or activities that actually influence it. So it is okay, if not encouraged, to try to find outside barbecues, outside social events. If you're running classes or running a company, then you create these social events where people can meet outside the court and get to talk outside of life, okay? You can create community service events. Whatever it is, you have to put it on your list as a coach. I must create a beautiful community. And if you don't know how to do that, message me. We'll come up with some ideas. But start putting your head around, how many times this year in this season have I done something in activity outside or gotten off of the court, off of the X's and O's and technique stuff and workout stuff? to say that my goal, my only goal with this is to make sure that these friendships are bonded tightly and that these people are becoming better people and they have an opportunity to talk to somebody and enjoy somebody's presence outside of what could be, who knows, but what could be something terrible going on at home or in their life. Are you creating the environment to help encourage a great community? The way that we can do that is also our check-ins, which means that you're asking your players how they are, how their life was. I've said this in a few of our podcasts and a few of our episodes, but F-O-R-D Ford. You can ask about their family. F, hey, how's your brother? How'd your sister do in her competition? Shows that you care and that you're listening to their family. Okay. You also might get insights into their home life. which is an important opening for conversation. F, that's family. O, occupation. If they have a job, if they don't have a job or they're still of school age, then you ask about school. You ask how that test was. You ask how their new role at work. If their boss is still yelling at them. Whatever O is, but that's occupation, which you could treat as occupation or education. R is relationships. as a community leader, as somebody, you should know what's going on. You don't have to know all the details, but you should know if, you just have to open up the conversation so that if somebody's in trouble, they can talk to you, they can come to you, okay? So we talk about relationships. If you don't wanna talk about their romantic relationships, then you can for sure talk about their friend relationships. Like, hey, I saw you. Haven't been hanging out with Chase in a while. You guys all right? Are everything cool? Anything happen? You can start asking those questions so that you open up the doorway and then dreams, what are their big life goals? Things that they're excited about. Try to remember those. And anytime a player comes into your gym, you should try to address each individual and volleyball teams are normally small enough to do this, but try to address each individual with one of those questions, an F-O-R-D question. Family, occupation or education, relationships, either friends or romantic, and dreams, something that they are chasing, pursuing, or really want to do in their life. Okay. So I think if you can tackle all of those roles and responsibilities, that you have gone a long way as a coach. And if you have any questions about that, I'm happy to answer them. Just shoot me a message or post in the Facebook group. That's all for me today. Really appreciate your time. And I'll see you in the next lesson. I'll see you on the sand. Bye bye.
