dr.ricky online

Author: drricky

  • Improving Quads 2: Reduce seams

    Improving Quads 2: Reduce seams

    The convention of most teams in beach quads format is the “diamond” formation when receiving serve – the players orient themselves with three players staggered in a V formation, and the setter at the apex nearest the net.

    Diamond formation

    The idea here is that the ball is passed close to the net where the setter is then able to send it to one of the two player flanking to finish the kill. As discussed before, using the net as a orientation system has its disadvantages, but another issue with this strategy is the three-person receive formation. The weakest point of any serve receive formation is the “seam” between any two players, where communication is weakest, particularly with athletes conditioned to keep their eyes on the ball at all times (an issue to be addressed at another time). And in the “diamond” formation, there are two possible seams, one on either side of the middle back player. A simple fix is thus to reduce the number of seams — use a two player receive strategy.

    • Even with the larger sized court, two people are sufficient for serve receive passing – in fact, the doubles game was played on the larger sized court for quite a long time.
    • Communication is clearer – unlike a middle player flanked by two potentially mobile barriers, each receiving player only has to deal with the edge of the court, which could potentially be out.
    • It frees up a player to run a quicker attack or fake, increasing the odds of a side out.

    The key here is to have confidence that the passers will develop the range to control the service, and have good communication with the setter.

  • Falsifiability

    Falsifiability

    In an earlier posting on detecting the signs of pseudoscience, I quoted an article which mentions unfalsifiability as a property. This is actually a pretty good early test for understanding if something is science-based, and attends to a common misunderstanding about the scientific process.

    Whenever the phrase “scientifically proven” is used, your critical thinking alarm bells should go off – because much of scientific progress is based on disproving things. Unambiguously proving a hypothesis is actually quite difficult and rare, but what happens more frequently is disproving the counter-hypothesis, because all you need is a simple break in the logic or a sample contrary to it. When a conjecture or concept withstands extensive attempts at disproof is when it enters the field as a major theory.

    Let’s try this out. Take the statement that “All cars have four wheels”. It’s kind of difficult to figure out how to prove this, but finding a single car that has three or five wheels is sufficient to disprove it. A single example of an object falling at a different acceleration rate would be sufficient to disprove what we know about gravity, or a single core sample of fossils forming at a different order would overturn evolution – but after hundreds of years of attempts, these theories have stood their ground. And good scientists continue to think about ways to show that something accepted as true may be false. Which is an important feature – falsifiability is key. And the failure of these tests add to our confidence in these major theories. If you cannot devise a test that will sufficiently disprove the statement, it’s likely outside of science, no matter what the trappings.

    Let’s look at an example of something which is unfalsifiable. This is taken directly from the product description page of VitaminShoppe, a prominent sponsor for the AVP (US domestic pro beach volleyball tour):

    Naturally detoxifies and boosts your immune system

    Can you think of a test that will falsify this statement? What kind of trial could be done to definitively show that something does not “boost the immune system” or “naturally detoxify”? Near as I can tell, this falls into the category of unfalsifiable, sort of like the claim that a machine detects ghosts. When evaluating promises made through coaching advice, improve your critical thinking skills by asking how you can falsify a statement. And this is how we progressively increase confidence in practice.

  • A nuclear option

    A nuclear option

    On the Facebook group Volleyball Coaches and Trainers (VCT), a coach shared a rule with regards to juniors beach volleyball tournaments held in the Chicago area – an optional one, in which any team, at any time, can request that no hand setting be used for the remainder of that particular match. It’s a bit peculiar, since it does open the possibility of changing the parameters of a match when it is already in progress. Then again, I don’t see it as being too different from the current AVP tournament format that changes the scoring system and let serve penalty at match point. But the stream of comments (I think over 100 at the time of writing) demonstrate a substantial objection to it, using words like “ludicrous” and “stupid” – mostly to defend the practice of hand setting.

    The VCT group is not open to public perusal, but many commenters decried the rule as depriving their teams of a tactical, if not critical, advantage. There are even those coaches who would forbid their teams from playing in tournaments that did not allow hand setting. Which is puzzling to me – volleyball variations happen all over the world, and as far as adaptations are concerned, this one is pretty mild. I’d say the 9-man game with race-based selection baked into the rules is far more controversial. As an act, hand setting on the beach may look esthetically pleasing, but is functionally disposable – historically, the team with the highest win record, Misty May and Kerri Walsh, employed hand setting sparingly, often not at all. Notice that the rule in question is a nuclear option: it bars the requesting team from hand setting as well. When invoked, it applies equally to both teams in a sport that is supposed to value versatility and grit. So why see this as some kind of attack on learning a skill instead of an opportunity to diversify the game?

    Hand setting is the golden calf of beach volleyball – some coaches insist on seeing it executed, without objectively quantifying its effects on team performance. But challenging the assertion of it’s inherent superiority is the topic of another post, the key point here is that the game is completely playable without hand setting, and in refusing the participate due to a small restriction, what are we really teaching our kids? Are we not participating because we cannot get things our way? Should we not focus on the opportunity offered to learn how a different related culture works? How we answer these speaks to what we prioritize as coaches, and that could be the difference.

  • Recognizing Sports Pseudoscience

    Recognizing Sports Pseudoscience

    In a recent discussion with BJ Leroy of USA Volleyball, I encountered a paper by Bailey et al (2018) published in the open access journal Frontiers in Psychology, titled  “The Prevalence of Pseudoscientific Ideas and Neuromyths Among Sports Coaches“. Since the journal is open access, the paper is readily available to download and read. The paper is basically a study on the pervasiveness of pseudoscience among sports coaches, even with ideas that have been long established to be untrue. Dr. Ed Couglin wrote a layperson friendly (albeit Irish-centric) interpretation of the paper.

    Suffice it to say, pseudoscience is rampant in sports culture, and pervasive in beach volleyball. I’d say much of the sponsor economy is built around pseudoscientific beliefs, but I’ll address those specific examples in future articles. What I’d like to share here is an excerpt from the Bailey paper, that outlines some properties of pseudoscience which will help you identify it. Bear in mind, this also applies to how people may argue their points online.

    • Unfalsifiability
    • Absence of self-correction
    • Overuse of ad hoc immunizing tactics designed to protect theories from refutation
    • Absence of connectivity with other domains of knowledge
    • Use of unnecessarily unclear language
    • Over-reliance on anecdotes and testimonials at the expense of systematic evidence
    • Evasion of genuine peer review
    • Emphasis on confirmation rather than refutation.
  • Court behavior beyond the game

    Court behavior beyond the game

    When people picture beach volleyball culture, they usually just think about just the game. People don’t seem to have to think about how the ball, or the net, or the court itself got there. Like the illusion of cooking shows on TV, these things didn’t actually magically appear – specially in public parks and areas, someone had to lug all the equipment there. Someone had to lay down lines, set up the net, bring out the balls. And someone has to break it all down and clear it away at the end of the day.

    In many venues, that someone is one person, or a very small group of people. The same dedicated people who will usually come week after week, spend the money out of their pockets to sustain the active social gathering. Oddly, though, this labor quickly becomes invisible. Players come to a venue simply assuming that they are entitled to challenge onto the courts, and fight to hang on to the courts. The commonly used “challenge” system can mean that those who have worked hardest to maintain a venue can end up using it the least.

    The unspoken injustice shows up in the gambit where players try to find that optimal timing to arrive late enough to avoid helping with set up, and leave early enough to avoid breakdown, while conspiring to form stacked teams to play as much as possible. Or in some cases, openly await the availability of the court set up to “steal” it from the ones who have worked on it. Anecdotally, I’ve observed self-professed “advanced” players disdainful to assist in these matters, more concerned about spending time warming up or stretching out — with the unspoken implication that the this is the appropriate burden for novices.

    Many communities have these selfless organizers and abused leaders, who do this for the love of the game. Afford them a bit more respect, and help to sustain the community. Offer to play with them, specially if you are borrowing their equipment. And at the very least speak your gratitude. Curb the entitlement, for those who rise in recognition often do so on the shoulders of the dedicated silent lovers of the game.

    Dedicated to the memory of Sammy delaSchott.

  • Improving Quads 1: The net is not a player

    Improving Quads 1: The net is not a player

    Although a great deal of the instruction describes beach volleyball primarily as a doubles game, many, if not most, people are exposed to it in the 4v4 format. These articles focus on tips and discussions that improve the quads game.

    Conventionally, the quads game is treated as a novice version of the sport, with many players thinking that they can “graduate” to the doubles game. But the number of variables and potential plays are much greater with four players than two, and thus, it is a far more complex game to master. It combines many of the potential strategies from indoor volleyball, and couple it with the environmental challenges of beach volleyball, and while it can appear to be less daunting to a novice due to the greater number of people supporting any one player, communities of quads teams fall into limited set strategies and seldom progress to more sophisticated plays.

    Given the opportunity to teach quads players, I ask teams to let go of their ball control orientation with the net, a system that I also apply to beginning doubles players. Many quads teams fall into this idea of the diamond formation, where a setter is situated at near the middle of the net, and the other three players attempt to pass the ball to that spot near the net. This is derived from the indoor volleyball 4-2 passing formation, and thus appears to be relatively easy to communicate specially among players who have had exposure to indoor volleyball culture.

    But this approach demands precision passing to a set location on the court. This effectively creates a very high bar of body control, and is also poorly adaptable. By pegging the plays to specific coordinates on the court, the players are often taken off balance by factors like the weather, or just a strong float situation.

    If the team moves their coordinate system from having one team mate pegged to the net, and instead shift their passing focus to the area bounded by the imaginary boundaries formed by the four players, less precise passing becomes acceptable. This also frees the entire team to move as a unit, gaining confidence in having assistance nearby as they track the ball, instead of trying to change the distance constantly as the action moves nearer or farther from the net. Moreover, setting is also simplified, since the ball is brought to the attacker, rather than trying to coordinate interception of a ball being forced to the net.

    Adopting a team oriented control strategy as opposed to a court oriented one is more easily implemented when the athletes aren’t coming from a conventional indoor volleyball cultural background, where this more malleable passing formation can appear confusing.

  • Just that way

    Just that way

    On a hot Texas summer day for regular pick up beach volleyball, I was asked to fill in on a doubles team by someone seeking a break. My soon to be partner for this game seemed agreeable until we got onto the court, where he made his distaste for sharing the court with me clear after the second serve. He refused high fives, didn’t speak with me, and when I sought to get eye contact, he turned his back to me. During the game, if I ever performed the first contact, no matter the quality, he made it obvious that he was never going set. No, not attempting to score using an on-two strategy – the ball would be simply lofted clumsily into the opponents’ court. These acts of self sabotage were so blatant that our opponents were crying out, “Set him the ball!”.

    I did what I could to be supportive to a player intent on pretending that he didn’t depend on me — rescuing shanks, trying to cover clumsy defensive attempts, and setting him up as often as possible — even with clear disdain for my existence. I even thanked him for the game afterwards, before walking away.

    Now I have played with difficult partners before, and this situation was definitely up there. But I couldn’t puzzle out exactly why he behaved that way – was it something in my behavior? Why would he agree to play only to commit seething team suicide? I wanted to learn so that I knew how to improve. I asked some of the other guys who were on the same court what I did wrong, and just about all of them said that I did nothing wrong. At least one person sheepishly apologized for the situation, and attributed his behavior to being “very competitive”, “hating to lose”, and he’s “just that way.”
    But they all continued to play with him. With the other partners, he at least played as a team mate, so the refusal clearly directed only to me.

    While I may never know why (though many years of height discrimination has perhaps toughened me to summary rejection on the volleyball court), I did notice that despite witnessing explicitly rude behavior, he had no problem getting partners for later games. This action had no social consequence, if anything, he may have been rewarded for it. The very people witnessing this tacitly accepted the behavior.

    I see parallels between this and how women must feel when put in a sexual harassment situation. How often they must have had to put up with rude behavior, justified by “he’s just that way”, and “boys will be boys” — only to watch the very same men get promoted and empowered, sometimes it appears for the very behavior that civil society should condemn. The problem comes because of being complicit in the system. One does not speak up because some day you may want the same person on your team.

    So, what to do about this? I don’t know. I need to contemplate on it, to understand how to shift volleyball culture to mitigate this behavior, because such insecurity belies the seed from which serious hate grows.

  • “Call me off”

    “Call me off”

    I hear a number of common phrases during volleyball play which I discourage athletes from using. This is why. 

    “Call me off”

    This phrase is most commonly uttered when a player realizes that she had gotten in the way of her teammate who was likely to be in a better position to play the ball. Anecdotally, I tend to observe older players use this phrase on younger players, both as a way of establishing authority, but also as an escape from social consequences of admitting to a mistake. It’s a reversal of blame – not only is the original player not responsible for being unaware of her partner, it’s also her partner’s responsibility to be aware of her.

    I consider using this phrase aloud as a way of escaping responsibility, rather than learning from the circumstance. These circumstances, however, are good teaching examples of body awareness, and acknowledging that every movement one makes on the court can inadvertently affect the partner.

  • T-shirt: Gluten is OK (mostly)

    T-shirt: Gluten is OK (mostly)

    Testing out Teespring. New shirt design: Gluten is mostly OK.

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