Podcast suggestion: Tell Me I’m Fat
An episode of This American Life called Tell Me I’m Fat. It’s riveting and self reflecting of the subtle biases we take for granted, just by judging people’s appearances. It can ruin lives. Please have a listen.
Season of Giving
There’s a great guy here in town who volunteers his time in a local church gym to host free indoor volleyball sessions. He sets up three nets, welcomes people, negotiates disputes, and tries to get people to play equitably. All for free. Now that it’s the holiday season, and schedules are a bit more free, […]
Migration to Volleysensei.com
The Volleysensei content will now live under it’s own domain at VolleySensei.com. To everyone who is subscribed to the blog and are primarily interested in the volleyball related content, please subscribe there. Thank you.
User interface bug
Multi-language support is a key part of modern smartphone operating systems, and in iOS, the operating system for Apple’s mobile devices, it is partly invoked on the keyboard with a “globe” key on the lower left side of the virtual keyboard. In the newest update to iOS, version 12, this placement of the globe key […]
Visualizing NCAA GPA data
On 5 Sept 2018, the NCAA Research team tweeted out this chart : It reports the average core high school grade point averages (GPA) among NCAA Division I freshman student athletes. So, a bit of a background – the National Collegiate Athletics Association governs just about all collegiate athletic programs in America, and the Division […]
Homographic terms
Many terms in athletic coaching are poorly defined yet form the basis of disagreements. For example, the word athletic is really not quantifiable, and describes some quality that cannot be calibrated, yet is used as a basis of comparing people. In volleyball, the idea of ball control is heavily valued, is generally thought be observable, […]
Volleyball and Newton
I ignited a fierce debate a few months back by simply asking: “the higher you jump, the more force you land with, right? (Yes, it’s a trick question)” I posed the question shortly after the McKibbin Brothers released their video on dealing with knee pain, and a trainer was explaining that you could land with […]
How do you want your set?
I hear a number of common phrases during volleyball play which I discourage athletes from using. This is why. “How do you want your set?” Often advised for new teammates, this question is poorly worded and really does not address what is important for the game. What an attacker wants for a set is often […]
Becoming height neutral
The website Beachvolleyballspace covered the recent FIVB Gstaad Major with an article celebrating the winners, the currently top ranked Canadian team of Paredes and Pavan claiming the gold. The article title (Canadian women dominate Gstaad Major – Japan challenges top teams) makes special mention of the fifth place Japanese team of Murakami and Ishii. Why? […]