Billy, what do you remember about playing with your dad?

Um, like he said, he was very aggressive.

Um, he would grunt when he hits.

[laughs]

Uh, he'd get in, get in fights.

[laughs] Um-

I didn't have fights.

Uh, but, uh, yeah, any, any final thoughts as we wrap up?

So that being said, how-- like could you walk us through just kind of your approach to learning and growing as a coach? And not just from like that, the, the physical and technical piece of it, but also those, those other components that emerge in coaching too.

Yeah.

I think one thing this podcast, doing it for 10 years, has taught me is just how important it is to be, like I said, curious and a learner.

And for me, it's like a superpower that I feel as a coach, you have this burden to be an authority and an expert on stuff.

Um, and you wanna have all the right answers, um, otherwise you're a fraud.

And I just-- My mindset is just, just be learning.

And like it just gives me so much freedom to, you know, go into a meeting with my notebook in hand, and all I'm thinking about is like, how can I learn from this? Um, how can this, you know, get something out of this? Um, even if it's like I'm speaking to the team, like just be upfront about it.

But let's start with just kind of that origin and inspiration behind it.

Is, is that something you could talk a little bit about in terms of, like, how you've seen this approach, this kind of ecological systems approach to coaching now influence the freedom through which an athlete play-- competes with?

Yeah.

I-- So I think to give you an example, in the past, um, one thing in beach volleyball we see a lot of players struggle with is a deep serve that's kinda like at their neck, right? Um, that's kinda hits their body in the midline.

And I would get very prescriptive and wanna s- you know, give them the answer and say, "Hey, you need to open up your side and, you know, set up an angle outside your body and like tilt all the..." Like all these little things which, you know, one of the quotes I like is that the body cares very little what the coach tells it.

[chuckles] Like it, it's just reacting to the environment and so, you know, it's hard to remember all these things about what to do with your elbow.

Um, but now it's more adding the freedom in is, you know, we call it it's the constraints-led approach.

So you give them a constraint like, "Hey, you need to start shallower," and so you're gonna get a lot more interactions and it just naturally happening to you deep.

And I wanna, I would be curious kinda what that experience has been like for either you as a player and/or now in those that you coach and kinda what have been the main-- Have there been certain things that you feel like have created the best, um, conditions for a breakthrough to occur?

Like if you found that to be the case and you're just like, no, no, just, just tell me what's up.

Yeah, 100%.

I think it takes practice like anything else.

You ask better questions, they get more comfortable giving honest answers and not just stuff they want the coach to hear.

As we've been going down this, learning more about this, I went back and we're writing our book, so going back through some of our old episodes.

Stuart Armstrong, we had him on a long time ago, John.

And like re-listening to that, like now that I understand a lot of the language more, it's pretty cool to go back through it.

But yeah, Billy, would you want to go to your thoughts on it?

How would you guys make those decisions? How would you communicate it?

Yeah, this was for sure our toughest thing all year.

And we moved around a lot.

We had a lot of partner switches, some travel team switches, and it was really hard.

We had a lot of players come to our office wanting more clarity and wanting to know why.

And it was a hard balance of... giving them some clarity and stuff for them to work on without strictly just comparing them to somebody else.

Um, it was kind of how we tried to go about it, like steer it towards what they can get better, but then they leave like, you know, wanting more clarity.

Uh, so I guess for, for Billy, I guess, what have you found, you know, first with, uh, maybe some of the limits in implementing it, like where have you felt like there's, you know, drawbacks to it and where have you found struggles doing it? And maybe some areas where there's been resistance with, with players.

blood it's no writing books

No, I always saw myself for sure as a volleyball player first and a coach as a way to like make ends meet and kind of like an offseason job.

That's not to say I didn't like, you know, put everything I had into it and try to do my best.

But there was for sure a level of detachment as far as like, ah, if my 15s team doesn't win this weekend, you know, it's not the end of the world.

Like, it's just like I'm helping them out more than it's like.

Coaching college and being with these players every day, you definitely are more invested, especially after a year or two.

You really get to know them.

And do you guys see a difference in how you would coach, say, Billy, your club teams when they were your 15s versus Stanford versus if you're coaching professionals? And John, you've kind of coached all the levels as well.