THERE ARE NO UNSUITABLE PLAYERS

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THERE ARE NO UNSUITABLE PLAYERS

Now I laugh at the memory of the thousand times in which I asked the highest or lowest ball to all the patient members with whom I played: all competitions, tournaments, seasons in which I tried to correct and fix anything.
Then one beautiful day I asked myself a question: "Is it possible that man always evolves and progresses, while in Volley * what has been taught to me, to my past coaches and to the new levers remains identical in the concepts and methods?
Impossible!"
Today, after many decades since my first encounter with sand and volleyball, I managed to synthesize a game system that, if assimilated, prepared and taught, simplifies difficult actions and improves the percentages of easy ones.
At the base of this system there is a great knowledge of the individual technique of volleyball, but also many biomechanical and kinesiological precautions which allow to improve the performances and limit the functional overloads that otherwise would occur at any sport level.


The game method that I have made "mine" for many years is certainly very expensive for any coach who tries to teach it.

The determination and attention to detail of every single movement stress, and not a little, the attentional qualities of the instructors; but having a person who "passes the balls saying yes and no" has never been liked by amateurs or professionals.

* (n.d.r beach and indoor are two sides of the same sport called Volley)

Together is better

TOGETHER IT IS BETTER

A good coach during a refresher course said to me: "talking to athletes is useless, you just need to train them and teach them how to do things". Nothing to say, I thought. But after so many years spent building something beautiful together with my athletes ... I think that the fact of creating a clear separation between Staff and Team is: "A great bullshit". In my good life as an athlete and coach I have been to many places: cold like Mondovì Piemontese, warm like Corigliano Calabro, where inside and around the team there were many different people, bad, beautiful, tough, fragile, funny ... just what real life is like.
In all situations of sports stress the thing that has always made the difference positively was the lack of a marked line "on the other side", that made by the management, by the staff, by the president.
There have been dark moments during the races, the championships, the playoffs and there will be in any building or beach in the world; and the only way I have understood is to face and overcome everything is: Together. Life offers us events that are not always planned or pampering, indeed sometimes it seems that there is some bad guy who puts all the arduous tests in line ... but people who have the same goals, the same respect for what we have stay close, those groups, those families "make it". In my coaching career I have received many criticisms for this way of understanding a team relationship, work, victory, defeat, but for me the human essence is to feel the taste of the beer at the end of the day in the company of who "Con e Come" sweated at me for the next challenge; because otherwise it would really be a waste of the only thing we can never have ... Time.

Evolving is better

EVOLVING IS BETTER

Many players win everything they can from a very young age, little from semi-professionals when they are still studying or working, and then from professionals they do not emerge or stop.
In a superficial way it seems strange that athletes who are very promising or already winning in the short term cannot keep up with others they were facing, perhaps only a year earlier.
I spend this reflection on the key word that has allowed athletes to win even after many years since their last success (e.g. the 4-time Italian champion: Riccardo Fenili *): Evolution.
Many years have passed since the beach volleyball court was as large as the indoor one, but many protagonists remained the same ... as they managed to adapt to the type of physical, technical and tactical preparation that their sport required ; they understood and trained the characteristics that saw them being the most important in order to continue being competitive.
Having the foresight to see the evolution of the game and the type of ideone athlete is the task of the real coaches who go around the Volleyball fields (beach and indoor); However, it is also the task of the athletes to be able to see the normal evolution and improvement that all the opposing teams have, and that therefore the team to which they belong must also have. Do not be in doubt about the type of game to play the following year, in my opinion, it means stopping, waiting ... and often losing.
Prepare in a more specific way, change the type of game, train less but with a greater idea of where you want to go evolves and safeguards the athlete; it evolves the team, but also the coach himself, who cannot and must not be satisfied with having learned, perhaps won, with a system and proposing it to the point of exhaustion.

(* article on Mr. Riccardo Fenili is in the list of this site)

Simplifying is better

SIMPLIFYING IS BETTER

I started playing indoor volleyball in 1987 and on the second day of training they explained the 6 areas that conventionally divide the volleyball court ... the same in every part of the world.
Then in 1991 I played on the sand at 3 vs 3, 4 vs 4 and the summer of 92 also 6 vs 6. The areas were also always the same there: the 6 of indoor volleyball that I knew so well; Nice is not it?! Simple, correct, immediate to understand; considering the fact that the vast majority of beachers came and went from indoor.
In 1997 I embarked on the path of 2 against 2: beach volleyball ... the Olympic one, the real one, that of the champions.
To my surprise the field was no longer divided into the 6 zones.
In 1999 I joined the national beach volleyball team as a player: - "you are completely off the road calling the areas of the sand field like those of the indoor" - I felt repeated by the expert coaches of the moment ...
Today my athletes and coaches use a division of the field into 9 zones, which I made "mine" by scoutmen all over the world; which for decades have taken over areas in this way. It would have been stupid and archaic not to use a symbolism already consolidated in the Indoor only to try to be different ... thinking that different automatically means innovation and / or resolution.
Simplifying and coding as much as possible in sport means, in my opinion, being able to pay more attention to the game system and technique: the heart, mind, feet and hands would be obliged to be all in agreement on what to do.
The "shot" will always be a slow defensible ball ... even if today we tend to call it "shot", the difficult part is to teach how to make an "impregnable shot".
Simplifying the terminology, using well-known names allows coaches and their athletes to focus on the much more important things in this sport; which specifically means being able to also spend less time correcting a tactic, a call to a pattern or even just catching up seconds during game breaks.

Hence my desire to equip my teams with a call code both in the side out phases; both in the Break phase, which always had a common, clear and precise communication between the two architects of the game: the athletes.

PLACE 8 - THE IMPORTANCE OF NOT TAKING ACE

The best Italian team ever formed by Paolo Nicolai (selected by the youth DT in 2006) and Daniele Lupo (talent discovered by Giorgio Pallotta) is dominating the international and Italian scene at the same time.
In Italy of Indoor Volleyball our receptors-strikers of over 2 meters are in the world elite; and also thanks to the many sons of art born in ours: all federal volleyball is going strong.
By analyzing this "magic moment" it can be seen that in truth it is not a magic, but in truth the result of a job done in selecting, preparing physically and mentally ... ELIGIBLE athletes.
The evolutionary process of volleyball has meant that where before there was room for shorter and better athletes with the bagher, now there is an urgency to have high attackers who do not take ace: the "defender" Daniele Lupo is 194 cm ; Osmany Juantorena hitter of the Indoor national team is 200 cm with a frightening elevation.
With incredible servers like Zaytsev, Nicolai, Evandro, Brouwer, the positive reception is now tending to look for in the center of the field (place 8 for almost all the world volleyball); and not like in volleyball a few years ago, where the Positive Reception was only the one that allowed the early days.
Having said this, I would like to get to what I have been teaching successfully since 2008, namely:
"Reception with systematic crossing of the first step".
A heresy says someone, a genius says others; I only say that, being our sport in continuous evolution, I had the need to create yet another Technical Revolution.
I remember the words, now much clearer than then (1991 maxi camp Parma) of one of the greatest volleyball players ever: -I don't care how you get the wall on the other side, it just matters that it works for you! - (Vladymir Tchernichov).
The front and side bagher (then) that I did so much as a crush and free; the bagher with very rapid movements of my fast feet that gave me so many satisfactions .... it was only a ramshackle motor compared to the racing bike that beginners have in their natural and innovative bagher at the same time, but which is slowly being replaced by an incessant, constant, stressful teaching of a technique that is now obsolete compared to current beaters.
To understand that you have lost too much time, patience, money still following the same technique as the bagher of at least 30 years ago (I was taught it in 1987) ... we have to start again from the title of this article:
"Seat 8 - The importance of not taking ace".
If unique talents such as Giorgio Domenghini, or monstrous athletes like Ivan Zaytaev have understood, learned and used this technique first of crossing the first step of reception, it is only because they have had the "luck" to do other things in the youth teams. While workaholics at work like the Italian champion Riccardo Fenili were doing endless hours of moving faster and faster with their feet, the big boy went to play basketball in the Umbrian playgrounds ... and "Giorgione" played football ... where they both created a much wider motor base and applicable to top-level sport.
Professional athletes are machines that make a sport in particular, but at least three more could do well (belief now of a shine).
The basic concept that they taught us many years ago and that continue (for lack of ideas) to offer us in coaching courses: "the team must first receive well", but this is absolutely FALSE; since to play both high and low level you just need to have the ball in play!
If you observe a child playing on the street he will leave you stunned with his natural movements as he tries to stop a ball thrown sideways.
We must be the ones to learn from "our athletes", and not always and in any case the opposite; if the new Talent immediately adapted to the usual technique we would lose 5-10 years of evolution, and many players; who if intelligent would bother to do things for them against nature.
The field has become huge for the attackers, huge for the batsmen, huge for the catchers and not being able to count on our "feet faster than the opponent's beat" must make us try something new!
So I summarize what in my opinion are therefore the main features for playing modern volleyball in the reception and lift phase:
1) occupation of the maximum possible space through the first reception crossing step;
2) minimize direct ace by constantly trying to receive the ball in zone 3 / 8-8;
3) to train tall athletes to dribble (wall players in the beach and indoor central);
4) accustom the attackers to play often with the ball raised from a distance from the net placed 8 and 6.
One last but not least thing:
The next time you head to the bar, showing which foot you move first ... you will be surprised to see that you don't take steps like shrimp. "GM