Podcast 22 – Two coaches talking, with Ruben Wolochin

03/14/21 • 56 min

Coaching Conversations Archives - Coaching Volleyball

The core concept of Coaching Conversations has always been coaches simply getting together to talk. This episode is really just that – a recording of a pair of coaches talking about what’s going on and what they’re thinking about. In this case, it’s myself and my friend Ruben Wolochin, who you may remember from Episode 20.

Since it didn’t have a specific unified focus, I was tempted to call this “The show about nothing”. 🙂

Not surprisingly, the conversation wanders around, touching on NCAA scheduling, covid vaccinations, Athletes Unlimited, and several other topics.

In the episode, I mentioned the new women’s league former Hawaii coach Dave Shoji is involved with. You can learn more about it from this episode of the MasterCoaches Weekly Buzz show. We also referenced the Volleyball League of America. I had a couple of guys from the VLA on during the original Conversations series.

I referenced some changes to the management structure of the German volleyball league. Here’s a story (in German) about that.

I also mentioned Benfica playing in the Portuguese Cup. I had a bunch of focus from that club on for an interesting Conversation about different staff roles and support functions at a pro club. As Ruben noted, Benfica beat Mamede in the quarterfinals the day we recorded this discussion. The next day they beat A.J.F. Bastardo in the semis, to set up a final against Sporting CP. Unfortunately, they lost in 4.

I brought up the back-to-back nature of play in the men’s Big West Conference, which features Long Beach and Hawaii. It’s a structure we’ve seen a number of conferences adapt for the women’s season this year.

And for the record, the longest trip for Medaille in the men’s AMCC – at least currently – is to Saint Vincent College (Latrobe, PA) at 4+ hours. Our two other away trips for the 2021 season are Penn State – Behrend (Erie, PA), and Geneva (Beaver Falls, PA).

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You can find a complete list of the initial series of Coaching Conversations here.

The post Podcast 22 – Two coaches talking, with Ruben Wolochin appeared first on Coaching Volleyball.

Since it didn’t have a specific unified focus, I was tempted to call this “The show about nothing”. 🙂

Not surprisingly, the conversation wanders around, touching on NCAA scheduling, covid vaccinations, Athletes Unlimited, and several other topics.

I referenced some changes to the management structure of the German volleyball league. Here’s a story (in German) about that.

Support the podcast by becoming a patron.

You can find a complete list of the initial series of Coaching Conversations here.

The post Podcast 22 – Two coaches talking, with Ruben Wolochin appeared first on Coaching Volleyball.

Previous Episode

Podcast 21 – Medaille staff conversation leading up to our first match

On February 24, 2021 the Medaille College men’s team played it’s first match of the season – an away fixture at cross-town rival D’Youville College. Ahead of that match the staff – who were in Episode 6 – jumped on Zoom to talk preparations for that match. The discussion covered in-match duties, preparations, line-ups, and more.

In the episode, one of the things that came up is the DataVolley training we did with Jeff Liu featured in Episode 10. You can see my discussion of the Medaille men’s season in my log entries.

Support the podcast by becoming a patron.

You can find a complete list of the initial series of Coaching Conversations here.

The post Podcast 21 – Medaille staff conversation leading up to our first match appeared first on Coaching Volleyball.

Next Episode

Podcast 23 – Talking warm-ups and concussions with David Gil from VERT

David Gil has become a frequent conversational partner of mine going back to the Coaching Conversations original series. I had him talk with members of the Medaille women’s team about preparing for preseason. He was on with a strength coach from Florida State to talk about building athlete work capacity. And it started with him joining the head coach of James Madison to talk about using performance data in coaching.

The foundation of this conversation is the subject of warm-ups, whether pre-match or pre-practice. Because David had recently been looking at (and talking about) some concussion data, that ended up being a thread of our talk as well.

In the episode David refers to the work of Dr. Kerry MacDonald – Director of Sports Science & Sports Medicine for Volleyball Canada – with regards to the concussion topic. Although it’s not on that subject, here’s a conversation David and Kerry had on training periodization challenges.

And there’s that old blog post that stimulated the “controversy” that motivated David to email me: Are your warm-ups wasting valuable time?

David also joked about some conversations we’ve had before about using the mile run as a fitness test, which i something I’ve also blogged about in The mile run for volleyball players.

Support the podcast by becoming a patron.

You can find a complete list of the initial series of Coaching Conversations here.

The post Podcast 23 – Talking warm-ups and concussions with David Gil from VERT appeared first on Coaching Volleyball.