Subtlety

The last volleyball season provided me with a real life example of a principle of learning. It is interesting that the example is one of subtlety. There is a principle that can be expressed to this effect, "You get results based on what you reward." I know there is a better way to phrase it, but I just can't think of it right now. The example is this:

The varsity squad has been operating under a certain standard when it comes to practices. During practice if some individual does not perform up to one of the coaches' standards for effort in a drill, there is some penalty. The penalty is usually some sort of sprints, push ups, or sit ups. Something like that. I think this is a fairly standard idea in athletics. You don't make an appropriate effort in practice; you pay the penalty with sprints. The effort in practice is the desired outcome here, whether the coach consciously desires that outcome or not. This might be a good approach if the drills are all trying to emulate some competitive situation. The problem is that the drills were seldom designed to be like something the team would likely experience on the court in competition. There isn't necessarily a transfer of effort to the competition. Effort was being rewarded, but at the end of the day, it was effort in practice situations that was being rewarded. That was what was trained into the team as a successful outcome.

A second idea being practiced with this is that of team. Essentially if one person is violating this effort standard, the whole team runs the sprint. This one is new to me, and I think it is one of these subtle deviations that take us to a completely different destination. While this team concept is on the surface a good goal, the problem lies in what is being punished and rewarded. With more than a dozen players in practice, and not all of them guilty of the effort violation when the whole team is doing sprints, there is a disconnect between the expressed desired outcome and what is perceived to be the desired outcome. The ones showing good effort are being punished rather than being rewarded. Also it is easy to lose sight of the team building standard when the same few players, or a cycle of players fails to show the prescribed level of effort. This was really foreign to me and my playing experience. I remember occasions in practices when a failure to serve the ball "in" would result in having to do push ups. It would seem entirely inappropriate to penalize the whole team when I missed those serves. A problem here is that the punishments lose meaning. The player with exemplary effort is running sprints along with the ones that are the prime offenders. Effort and lack of effort are being simultaneously punished. While not expressed by the team, I would probably be thinking I have losers for teammates.

These observations lead me to believe that the team is basically being taught that effort in a drill is unimportant, and the most important part of being on the team is performing the drills properly.

Meanwhile I was left to run practices for the JV team. I had free rein to run the practices as I saw fit. There were some subtle differences in the two practices. One of the subtle differences between the JV And varsity practices is that the JV drills were trying to put the players in as many game-like situations as possible. This is an idea that I have loved ever since it was taught to me. I could have stood on a box with a cart full of balls and hit at defenders over and over again. There is some utility in that approach. Instead of some standard of digging X number of balls, the team would score points for each ball they dug and then got a hitter to hit the ball over the net. The former is a useful skill in volleyball, but the latter skills often equate to points scored in a game. That subtle difference in desired outcomes can make a big difference when that type of focus permeates the team's activities.

Another subtle difference lies in how those penalty sprints were administered. With the JV team there would be two or more teams in an individual drill. As mentioned before, the teams would try to score points by doing some set of skills that would be used in the game. The team with the most points would not run the sprints. This subtle difference in what warranted sprints shifts the desired outcome from just effort, to effort towards some concrete victory condition. Rather than training the team to perform drill properly, the focus was on competing to win the game.

These subtle differences led to some fascinating outcomes. Both teams made good progress towards their desired outcomes. The varsity team had a much higher level of skill, and could perform some of the difficult drills remarkably well. They had some excellent practices. They also had some bad performances in practices. In games they were less successful. In hindsight, they got what they should have from the practices. Good practices punctuated with a few moments of brilliance in games. They were a good team, but they never were taught, or learned, how to compete. In contrast, the JV team lacked the polish in practice and in matches, but they had a fight in them that was admirable. While the varsity team at times had horrible effort in games, the JV would regroup and fight. There were often times when they would get into a deep deep hole from bad play, but I can't question their fight. Some of the attempts at a come back from certain defeat were very satisfying to watch. Most of the time those come backs failed, but I imagine that they didn't go home after the match and think, "what if I tried harder." It is a lot easier to be beaten by a team that played better than to be beaten because I didn't try hard enough.

It all comes down to subtle little differences. While the two teams did very similar things in practice, and were rewarded and punished similarly, the subtle differences brought the two teams to very different destinations. I would have loved to see the varsity team play with the kind of fight the JV team had. It would have been something special.