Consistent training leads to athletic success!
Every coach should know that when it comes to performing on game day, each athlete wants to play the best they’ve ever played. They want to reach peak performance. High school athletes become Player of the Year and club athletes are offered college scholarships as a result of training.
Everyone wants to know…how does an athlete get to this point? The OTL Volleyball answer: There are many components that lead to athletic success on of which is high-quality training! In today’s world of youth sports, the term “training” is all too often misused.
In most cases, athletes, parents, and coaches freely use “training” and “practice” as if they are the same. Here’s the biggest difference.
Training takes place when a knowledgeable person is teaching, correcting and giving feedback to another person that is ready and willing to learn. Practice is merely the act of repeating what has been taught in training in order to master or perfect a skill. It starts with a solid foundation of training.
If you don’t have quality training from the beginning, incorrect technique and bad habits will bleed into your practices hindering the progress you could be making.
One of OTL’s goals is to provide quality training at an early age. Both training and practice are good methods of learning but a foundation of quality training makes a big difference. With appropriate training, an athlete can gain the most out of a practice because they condition their movements with high-quality reps.
Volleyball Training Leads To Better Team Performance
Without proper training, an athlete just “goes through the motions” in practice developing bad habits along the way. With that being said, it’s important to mention that training can take place within a practice and practice can be incorporated into training.
Training and practice are designed to work together but, as coaches and parents, we don’t want to stunt an athlete’s growth by treating these methods as one and the same. There are times when it is necessary to take a small step back in order to move forward but isolating either one of these methods without the other will lead to regression.
Have you experienced a season in which all you do is practice but it doesn’t seem like you have mastered the skill? If volleyball “practice” has left you wanting more or wondering if you’ve improved, it may be because you have yet to experience quality training.
Many programs claim that “the game teaches the game, so just play”. I heavily disagree and that is for another blog but training is a pre-requisite for playing the game properly. As coaches, our job is to prepare our athletes. Teaching and training them so they are well equipped to perform, not only on the volleyball court but also in life.
Training for a sport demands both physical and mental toughness. It develops perseverance by learning to identify and correct mistakes and it fuels motivation by breaking down big goals into small tasks to accomplish each session. Training lesson’s like these will eventually become life lessons that we know our players can call upon when life brings them similar challenges.
Train for volleyball. Train for Life.
Contact OTL Volleyball today and come visit us and see how we do things differently from other clubs that benefit each and every athlete.
OTL Volleyball
18833 N. 36th Place
Phoenix, AZ 85050
602-908-2463