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Showing posts from December, 2015

Coaches: The Doctors of Sport (or...Who's In Charge?)

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I'm always impressed by the way doctors have created and managed the medical hierarchy. As a coach, my medical staff has always been managed according to the wishes of our doctor. Specifically, if something is wrong, you see the doctor, the doctor will diagnose it, then you see someone else for treatment. That is, the doctor is the hub, and manages everything else, relying on experts in a range of specific fields. I'm not criticising this process, I completely agree with it. But I'm always impressed with the strength of this structure. I suspect it is harder to harder to manage, with more and more sub-disciplines of medicine developing all the time. I also suspect that because the doctors were the first on the block, so to speak, this has helped with with their point at the top of the food-chain. Recently I was coaching a team where someone organised physical treatment support, which was a fantastic addition to the program. Unfortunately it is a very long time since

The Art of Beach Volleyball

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For some reason last night I remembered an article I wrote about 17 years ago. I thought I'd post it unedited, below. This isn't for everyone - but you might enjoy it! Introduction The intention of the following article is introduce some ideas and concepts and relate them to Beach Volleyball. The ideas are not necessarily new, but the context may be different. The idea is to challenge the way we look at the sport. Technique, Skill and Art We often talk about Technique and Skill, but rarely about the Art of playing Beach Volleyball, and we only sometimes notice it when it occurs. Often it is too subtle to see clearly. Point Scoring There is a popular school of thought that, in Beach Volleyball, you have to Side-Out to win. Beach Volleyball is not a Side-Out game, it is a Point Scoring game. The winner earned their win by scoring more points than their opponent. You can win a match 15:0 with exactly the same number of Sides-Out as your opponent, just as you ca