Philosophy has a great impact in volleyball coaching. Read articles and watch videos by top volleyball coaches and players and see how their volleyball philosophy affects all aspects of the volleyball game.
Why the feedback you give during tryouts can wreck the very evaluation you’re trying to make This one is for the coaches, and I am writing it as one of you. I run tryouts. I evaluate players. I have made mistakes doing it. So take this in the spirit it is intended: as a lesson…
Tryout advice for players (and the parents in the stands) Every summer, thousands of players walk into a gym to try out for a new team. They have practiced all year. They know how they pass, how they set, how they move. And then, sometimes within the first ten minutes, a coach they have never…
Originally published Jan. 24, 2017 · Updated July 2026 Every coach knows the frustration: you tell an athlete the same thing over and over, and they keep making the same mistake. It’s easy to assume the player isn’t listening. But most of the time the problem isn’t the athlete at all — it’s the kind…
Youth volleyball along with sports in general can be a powerful tool for teaching important life lessons. This video and article shares one of the most important life lessons we as coaches and parents can give our players and kids. In it you will learn techniques to help your youth players embrace challenge and change…
Section 1 – Volleyball1on1 OODA Loop Vision Coaching Blueprint Introduction In the last 7 years the biggest change in coaching the sport of volleyball has been “Reading the Game.” Most coaches teach it wrong in our opinion and miss where they can help their players best. We have spent the last seven years researching and…
Get on the bus, youth and beginners volleyball rotation drill is a great drill to help kids learn the important ideas behind rotating successfully on a volleyball court. The concepts taught in this drill are easy to understand with the result that kids just get it and are able to pick up on ideas far faster than teaching
There are roughly 640 muscles in the human body. Athletes spend an inordinate amount of time training and strengthening almost every single one of them. Yet there are six that are often forgotten: the Superior Oblique, Superior Rectus, Medial Rectus, Lateral Rectus, Inferior Rectus, and Inferior Oblique. Or, simply put: Your eyes. The aforementioned six…
So this past week Reid Priddy (USA Volleyball Indoor Olympian Standout) did a Vlog (Video Blog) on a questions I asked him about vision. The question: “Do you have a vision routine for hitting?” His answer is here: This video is interesting on a number of fronts but most interesting as it relates to an…
This series of video is the result of over 3 years of personal research on “Reading the Game” and “How To Slow The Ball Down.” In the videos I review why Karch theories on Reading the Game are wrong in my opinion including why and how they can be dramatically improved! Many of these ideas…
Before you can change any skill on the court – passing, setting, hitting, anything – you must first change one aspect off of it: Your belief in yourself. A lack of self-confidence – often inaccurate and subjective – is far too common in young players, and it results in poor performances, which leads to a…
This video (Video 2) features volleyball high school coaching tips and advice with Andor Gyulai the owner of Volleyball1on1.com. Click here to see Video 1. This video speaks of the philosophies and culture Volleyball1on1 teaches at our summer camps for high schools and clubs. This video shows that there is an formula for winning high…
This video features volleyball high school coaching tips and advice with Andor Gyulai the owner of Volleyball1on1.com. This video speaks of the philosophies and culture Volleyball1on1 teaches at our summer camps for high schools and clubs. This video shows that there is an formula for winning high school volleyball matches! Players should understand this formula…
As you get ready to start this season and review why you and your team failed to achieve the volleyball results you wanted last year I think it’s important to take some lessons from America’s finest. A lesson that can make us better coaches plus a better mentor as we impart this important knowledge onto…
In this video Trevor Johnson offers volleyball coaching advice on coaching men vs. women and how to connect with players. Trevor has a great deal of experience in this area having coached the Men’s NAIA National Champions in 2013 and while coaching the women’s team that took a 3rd in the NAIA.
High school volleyball season is brutal in that team matches start just weeks after the first practice. In this article I am going to quickly explore how we work with high school teams and coaches to learn 70-80% of what they need to know before the season begins.
How do you deal with stress in big volleyball matches? In this video Alan Knipe, USA Head Coach for the 2012 Olympics and current head coach for LBS NCAA Men’s shares secrets some of the top players in the world use to help them perform at their peak.
Situations I would often do this in are for the elite high school and club players (College destined super star) on teams with mediocre talent that are rolling along in second or third gear through practice and still dominating. My goal with these players is multifold… READ MORE!
This is a girls high school volleyball match evaluation with Andor Gyulai. This is a team Andor Gyulai coached during the summer and unfortunately we are not seeing allot of the things that we worked so hard on during the summer to get good. This video is a reminder of some of our teams guiding principals on the court as well as with regard to our coaching philosophy.
In this post I wanted to reference some important resources to help when using science to develop a team game play principals and a volleyball coaching philosophy. This article is less about sharing opinions and more about referencing other studies and articles in order to have a foundation from which to analyses your own philosophies.
In this video Andor Gyulai reviews the verbal cues: Specificity. This is an important cues to use early and often with new volleyball players at it is an important foundation for coaching! This is also an important practice and drill design philosophy.
Perhaps my number #1 Core Principal as a Coach is to help my volleyball players become better learners! I like to say: “My #1 Goal is to make you better life long learners that strive for Kaizen”. Kaizen means constant never ending improvement. In this video I go through with my players how they can become better / faster learners of anything including volleyball.
During the Orientation Stage of the OODA Loop you are processing what you Observe. Your mindset is thus critical to understanding and getting meaning from what you see. The Growth Mindset is a simple idea discovered by world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck in decades of research on achievement and success. Teaching a growth mindset creates motivation and productivity in the worlds of business, education, and sports, especially volleyball.
This video features Andor Gyulai using the conscious competence learning matrix to help teach a youth player volleyball. In this video the player is moving though stage 1 to stage 2 and stage 3 of the learning curve.
In this video Andor Gyulai demonstrates why he feels the OODA Loop verbal cues are better for coaching volleyball particularly when teaching volleyball skills, reading the game and volleyball strategy. The video addresses a common problem many coaches have helping young players spike better.
Volleyball players organize their movement patterns when performing a volleyball skill in advance. As the action or skill gets more complex so the reaction time increases as more time is required to organize the system for movement initiation. In this post we explore the idea and give examples.
In volleyball, sports and war shaping the mind of your opponent is critical to winning. John Boyd described as the most influential military theorist since Sun Tzu created the OODA Loop combat training system as a better way to attack the mind of your enemy and win. This proven and tested system is the foundation of most military strategy today and has literally been tested in the trenches to win above all others.
Today I want to share what is a fundamental shift in the way I feel volleyball should be taught! The ideas I will be sharing today build on coaching concepts first introduced by Karch Kiraly and others known as “Reading the Game”. After over 3 years of research through my own observations as a player…
After over 3 years of research through my own observations as a player and coach I realized the Reading – Planning – Doing system can be vastly improved, specifically how we as coaches teach players the process of how we as humans respond to stimuli (predominantly with our eyes), which is the basis of how all volleyball skills and sports are performed.
Did you know one of the biggest breakthroughs in the “science of coaching volleyball” today is called “Reading the Game”? Most of the ideas related to this were first introduced by Karch Kiraly (considered the greatest volleyball player in the sport) on his retirement and transition into coaching just a few years ago during a presentation at an AVCA Convention in San Antonio, Texas.
In our work with Dr. Bill Harrison (Sports Eye Doctor to Top Sports Stars) we have discovered humans cannot think and see at the same time! Yet many coaches ignore this fact and because of their own coaching styles and lack of knowledge about vision actually negatively impact their players on the court during matches.
This video was filmed between Set 1 and Set 2 of the match. This is another powerful video which reveals how Andor makes the most use of the limited time focusing on specific players and goals as well as changing the collective energy of the group. Again you will notice the Socratic method of coaching and how Andor takes the players down a path that he wants. This video shows how brilliant coaches interact with their team changing the collective energy during breaks.
Andor is a big believer in “On the Bench Coaching”. In this video viewers will see how Andor interacts and communicates with players on the bench and some of the topics he focuses on. If you are a coach looking to have a bigger impact in the lives of players beyond just playing volleyball this video shows how easily and effectively “On the Bench Coaching is”.
Call Now