Teaching Coaches to Train Athletes to be Great Learners

There is a flow to a volleyball game, each play is unique. The speed, the variations, and the decisions athletes make comes from the learned experience athletes develop in practice. Athletes must train and learn to play from their learned experiences of the game. The job of a coach is to facilitate growth in the athlete’s ability to not only master the physical skills to be successful but the cognitive skills as well. Learning has little to do with athlete’s natural gifts, instead learning occurs when athletes are challenged and struggle. Often, we teach a specific athletic outcome, instead of developing the total learner. The goal of this presentation is to provide examples of how to present and transfer information to our athletes to be universal learners and how to challenge athletes to thrive outside of their comfort zone.