By Jon Wong, Texas Tech Assistant Women’s Volleyball Coach

What is the training goal today? How hard are we going to practice? Do our players need to taper before our match this weekend? Are our players taking too many jumps this week or are they not taking enough jumps?

These days, thanks to the copious amounts of technological options available, you can find answers to those questions. The sport of volleyball is being taught at a very high level across the country, and these tech tools can make practice and training feedback more readily accessible and can help foster a great teaching and learning environment. Each program has different needs and resources, and here are some data points and metrics we use at Texas Tech to help us design training plans and set practice goals throughout the season.

With these devices, we can monitor the intensity of our training sessions, and it helps us map out our training goals to get the most out of our team on any given week. This technology has played an important role in helping us manage the health of our players through a long and demanding season. We use the devices in-season and out of season—focusing on rest and recovery—and we work closely with out sports medicine and strength staffs to ensure we are utilizing and analyzing the data appropriately.

Practice Intensity/Periodization

Each week, we meet with our strength and conditioning and sports medicine staff to help determine the intensity/jump load of each practice. It may look like this: HIGH-MEDIUM-MEDIUM-LOW. After each training session we look at the data and it may reveal: HIGH-HIGH after the first two sessions of the week. This helps us modify the next practice days so that they become LOW-MEDIUM or LOW-LOW to offer ample recovery time heading into the weekend for our matches.

The ability to manage our players’ jump loads on any given day, week, and month allows us to consider how we manage their long-term health across the season. The technology that our players wear, which is secured with a belt/strap, collects different data, and we can measure metrics such as the total number of jumps, average jump in inches, and percentage of their max jump. We can also collect landing breakdown information (percentage of high-impact landings) and work breakdowns (sets by energy and intensity); more on those in a minute.

At the end of every practice, we can look at the data, which helps us look at the total number of jumps taken, sets of energy used, and the intensity; then we can plan upcoming workouts. If we are heading into a weekend with matches on Friday and Saturday, we will want to have our higher jump days early in the week and taper to lower jump days in the middle of the week to ensure our players are resting and recovering by match days. One note: even on low to medium jump days, that does not necessarily mean the practices or lower intensity and energy.

If we had a low jump day, we know we can plan a high intensity/high jump practice with more individualized training for attackers/blockers. They will get more reps, and the sets of energy will be higher. For example, during a high jump/high intensity practice, our outside’s sets by energy can be as high as 15. This means that she played 15 sets of volleyball during that high intensity/high jump practice.

Another feature we like to use and implement during training is the landing breakdown. If we see trends with specific players/position groups—as far as a large percentage of high-impact landings—we will review film and evaluate their individual technique to see if there is something they are doing that may cause such landings. We find this helpful, especially when working in conjunction with our sports medicine staff, to identify any chronic or even acute injuries over time.

At the end of the day, the health and well-being of our student-athletes is our No. 1 priority, and the use of this technology helps us stay on track.