September 02, 2024 | Tagged Motivation,
How to improve your volleyball performance
Performing our best on and off the court when the stakes are high is a key habit to cultivate. Performing well consistently at volleyball becomes a habit through specific skills and daily disciplines. Many people mistakenly think a person has limited control over their performance but it's not so. Elevating performance requires discipline and intentionality like all worthy life endeavors. Check out this important article for ways you can become a more confident, stronger, and consistent volleyball player.
What is performance? Performance means accomplishment, completion, or execution of a particular action, deed, or procedure. Performance results in a person or community’s competence or achievement.
How do we judge performance? By what measurement, criteria, or standards would we determine a performance to be successful? One of the biggest struggles in athletics is navigating the disconnect between how a student-athlete perceives his or her performance, how a parent perceives the performance, and how coaches/professionals perceive the performance. Misalignment between these three creates frustration and confusion for all.
Tactical Performance measures how effective a student-athlete is at the strategy of the sport: how reliable, consistent, and mechanically accurate they are in the execution of the task.
Adaptive Performance measures how innovative and flexible, creative and inventive the student-athlete is during a performance. How well can they read and react to the opposition?
Consistent Habits of Great Performance:
Skill Mastery--- Skills are solidified in muscle memory, therefore all mental attention can move to adaptive performance once enough muscle memory is developed. Too often, players have deficits in the tactical aspects of their skills (not enough muscle memory) which render their brains busy and overly focused on the execution of these skills, in effect shutting off their adaptive performance. For example, a player may struggle with consistency when serving. In practice, this may not stand out clearly but in a game, it will be highly exposed under the pressure of the moment.
Mental toughness--- mental toughness is found in the running inner dialogue student-athletes have in their mind. How tough they talk to themselves—“Confidence”, “Love and serve the game and others”, “I'm ready” versus fearful or severe language such as “I hope I make this save”, or “I keep making mistakes!”
Calm under pressure—the higher the pressure, the more performance can be negatively impacted. Pressure exposes skillsets and mental toughness. In the big moments of life when pressure is very high, great performers have learned to excel under pressure by being calm and focused, serving the best interest of the team, and diminishing all negative effects.
Habits of success—stats don’t lie. You are what you repeatedly do. Serving is mathematical and not based on chance. The hard reality is that most people have not put the time into serving consistency. Performance doesn’t improve serving it reveals it. If you can go out each morning under a pressured situation and serve to specific spots on the floor, then you know you should be able to your serves consistently in the game. A key aspect is practicing under pressure. What are you doing to increase the stakes when you are practicing? For example, if you miss your serve, you owe two wind sprints or ten burpees. Having an unpleasant consequence can raise the stakes for the serve to create game-like scenarios.
Volleyball Performance
To play volleyball to the best of your ability requires discipline mentally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually.
Physical is the most obvious. A strong muscle is a fast muscle. One of the most important tasks for volleyball is to build strong, quick, fast muscles and great skill execution. The most important is your vertical jump. Ask yourself, “What am I doing daily to improve my vertical and skill?” Athletes between the ages of 8-11 should focus on specific skill set training to improve the strength of their muscles. This is the best age to improve athletic performance.
According to researchers, athleticism is best developed through participating in multiple sports and disciplines through the ages of 11-15 years. The best combination of these sports is complementary such as volleyball and yoga, swimming, and basketball. This protects the body from overuse injuries and provides balance to the mind and body.
Physical well-being is crucial to optimal performance. Hydration, sleep, and nutrition all have highly researched and documented benefits.
Next is mental excellence on the volleyball court. You need the mental toughness to work on your weaknesses and be objective about your skill set. You also need quiet, unshakable confidence that allows you to move through the pain and success of volleyball without discouragement or burnout.
Third is emotional excellence. Emotions require discernment. Sometimes you don’t want to work out. Sometimes you feel the coach doesn’t like you or you don’t like the coach. These feelings can interrupt your success. Wisdom comes from understanding feelings give us important messages, but they are not a god. They have a voice but not THE voice. Not listening to your intuition is foolish as is becoming subservient to your emotional whims.
Finally, spiritual excellence is a component many people miss or bypass but often it can be the most important. Your soul or spirit is aligned with your heart- the wellspring of your energy and passion. The spiritual core is your missional purpose and the bedrock from which all actions and behaviors emerge. Faith is not merely what you say but more importantly how you live. What you believe and your inner faith and soul will be revealed in your daily words and habits. If a person needs a life transformation, it always happens at the heart level.
Hey NBC Volleyball Student-Athletes! We love your work ethic and commitment to greatness. Thank you for being part of the NBC legacy of volleyball and life excellence. We believe in you and your future! You are strong, resilient, and wise enough to find great mentoring and friendships with those who further your God-given dreams!
About NBC Volleyball
Starting in 1979, NBC Volleyball focuses on the total development of a student-athlete physically, emotionally, relationally, spiritually on and off the court.