This semester has been one experience after another for my coaching journey. I took on the head coaching role at a high school, I am taking on more responsibility as an assistant coach at TWU with the women’s team, and school is more difficult.
I decided early in the season to take an extra class: Kin 567 Human Motor Performance. I wasn’t sure that this would be a good idea with my schedule. However, I have learned a ton from our prof, Nikki. This course has definitely enhanced my coaching effectiveness and practice design strategies. To that end, I decided to put off starting my research project until I get a little further into Research Methods with Carolyn and finish Nikki’s course.
I have asked Nikki if she would like to be involved with my research project in some way. She agreed that we could work together on it. However, she warned me that she hasn’t really done much field work.
So where I’m at right now is wanting to do something to do with international volleyball tactics and bring in something with perception-cogitative skills that Nikki could consult with.
Research methods has been a bit of a grind so I am considering taking it as an in person course at UBC in the second semester as it works with my schedule. I am also Seminar in Body, Exercise, and Society next semester. There is also a Seminar in Sensorimotor Control. These classes all work with my schedule because they happen in the mornings. So I am just trying to figure out if the time investment is worth it.
I have really enjoyed taking an in person class and I think I would like to take at least one next semester. I don’t know if Research Methods actually makes me a better coach. However, I don’t want struggling with those topics to hold me back in my academic pursuits so it might be worth taking twice or auditing it the second time.
Please let me know your thoughts.
Darrin, thanks for the blog post. I really admire you for going after some extra courses in the masters. This shows great initiative. Research methods is a requirement in most masters programs and while you may find hard to link its relevance to becoming a better coach, I would suggest that is does develop some core competencies like problem solving and critical thinking. If you are struggling I think it would be good to do it a second time.
I think that Nikki would be a great partner to pursue some type of study in volleyball. You need to think of the type or research question you are asking. Perceptual Cognitive skills is a very broad area and likely where it can be demonstrated in volleyball is effective decision making. So one question might be whether international volleyball players are better decision makers that national players. The challenge may be in what area of the game do they make better decisions? Serve, defending or attacking. The game is so fast that I suspect that most decisions involving gross movement patterns are preplanned and therefore the execution of a given play is dependent on the preceding and final ball movements. It makes sense that faster and more options in the attack will put more pressure on the defence. There is probably some correlation between a good first pass and the success of the attack or attacking options that could be exploited (probably some studies on this). This might also be a good question as well. Does ball flight time affect scoring? As you are probably aware from Nikki’s class, the physiological human “hardware” takes time to create movements after a given stimulus (the stimulus matters – visual system is slow). If you look at gaze control it takes about 100 ms to actually recognize a visual stimulus, then anywhere from 100-200 ms or more to produce a movement that executes a given skill (including time for micro adjustments ie. feedback loops). The point here is that the international game (ball play) is likely faster than other levels of the game. Hence the players are either primed for decisions, have great anticipation or pattern recognition skills, or selectively know what they need to attend to at a given time. Given your background in video analysis, you could examine ball flight time as a dependent measure of volleyball. My prediction would be that flight times at the international level are shorter, particularly on successful plays (those that result in a point). The underlying perceptual cognitive element is that the defending team has less time to make decisions that will result in a defensive point or an opportunity to transition play. Anyway, I am a just spit balling a few ideas and will leave the final decision to you.