Momentum depends on mental skills – Coaching Volleyball

In an episode of the Coach Your Brains Out podcast (actually Part 2 of a 2-parter), there was a discussion between Jamie Morrison and Joe Trinsey on whether momentum exists in volleyball. In the exchange, Jamie suggested momentum in volleyball comes down to the mental skills of the players.

I’ll explain.

Basically, Jamie’s premise was that as players improve their mental skills they become increasingly focused on the current moment. The last play, or series of plays, doesn’t matter. Thus, no momentum.

I think we aim to help our athletes reach that level of mindfulness and being in the moment. We talk about having a “next play mentality” or being like a goldfish.

And we also – hopefully – work with our teams collectively to do the same. The individual context and the team context are different, though related, after all.

But neither all our players – especially all at once – nor our team are perfect in this regard. And neither are the players on the other side of the net from us. So momentum is probably a thing at times.

The guys brought up a related topic to this in the show. That’s the impact of timeouts. In the aggregate, timeouts do not have any impact on the sideout probability of the next rally. Joe mentioned studies he’s done and I’ve written about that before. I think it was Jamie who rightly said on the podcast, however, the aggregate figures almost certainly obscure the fact that some teams perform better after a timeout while the opposite must necessarily also be true.