Drills in Depth - Moving Forward with John Mayer
John Mayer is an incessant learner who is always looking to know more about himself, his sport, learning and teaching, and the players he works with. Perhaps more than any other successful coach I know, John shows an unflinching willingness to completely rethink anything he does. His humility and drive to learn keep him constantly exploring. He is also the head coach of the 4-time West Coast Conference champion Loyola Marymount University Women’s Beach Volleyball team. He also has a podcast you may have heard of.
What are Drills in Depth? - Read here
The Drill
Who: John started experimenting with Moving Forward with his LMU beach team in 2023. While he plays the game with college-age pairs, it became clear during our conversation that the principle of play that underlies the game is important for any age. Since the game is only a slight departure from regular doubles play, there is no reason it can’t be used by any age or experience group. John suggested some modifications that would help less-skilled players, like making the court smaller. Given the number of courts and pairs that NCAA beach coaches are typically working with, John will usually only work with one court (so two pairs) at a time for this game. Since there are usually multiple courts, they will play a ladder game, in which winners move in one direction, from one court to the next while losers move in the opposite direction.
What: Moving Forward is a series two-ball wash sequences played for a certain amount of time. Each wash sequence begins with a serve and the rally is played to its natural conclusion. The second ball is entered by the coach to the serving team, which then has to play the ball (mostly) cooperatively to the receiving team. The serving team often has to create a particular situation with the coach-entered ball but then play continues normally. John will ask that team to do things like “hit a diggable shot” or “challenge the puller” by setting off the net and hit the ball into the blocker’s half of the court. John uses these to create more realistic transition opportunities. He told me, “Since we can’t rely on transition to come up as much as we like naturally and this game might have the biggest effect on transition movement and touch, we add in the trans ball.”
When: John’s practices tend to have a flow to them, with players moving from more artificially-constrained activities to more natural play as the sessions go on. Moving Forward falls in the middle of the spectrum so he’ll usually use it in the middle of a practice. Given the specific situation it is designed to highlight, John will use Moving Forward when passer/setter or digger/setter relationships need more attention. It appears that this game could be played much more regularly with less-skilled players that may not have the same habits as more-experienced players have. With such players, it would likely be played more in the earlier parts of a season in order to help players build awareness of relationships.
How: John likes to play four two-ball rounds for a total of eight rallies, closely mimicking the side changes in beach volleyball, which occur every seven points. John typically doesn’t have any consequences for errors on the serve or entry ball, mostly because they’re not really the point of the game. If there is an error on either entry ball, John enters an additional ball. The team with the most points at the end of the timed round moves up the ladder and losers move down. If there is a tie, then teams play a single-point sudden death tiebreaker with no constraints on how the ball is played (because there usually are some extra constraints). Speaking of constraints, that’s what makes this game unique. John added one simple constraint to Moving Forward that makes the game what it is. In order to be eligible to score the point, a team’s setter can only move forward to play the ball. Any movement in other directions (backwards or to the sides) results in their team only being able to prevent the other team from scoring (a wash). John sometimes uses what is called the “Jacinda rule” in the LMU program; if both teams wash out (in this case, both setters move backwards in the same rally), then scoring resets and either team can score again by keeping their setter moving forward.
The Depth
Who: If you listen to John’s podcast, you are aware of his exploration of Ecological Dynamics and the Constraints Led Approach to skill acquisition. You don’t need to know much about those terms or be interested in learning about them, you can see much of how they work in John’s use of Moving Forward. First, John recognizes that most of the work he does as a coach is in creating environments in which players can learn better. In Moving Forward, the addition of a simple constraint creates an environment in which players pay attention to how they work together without relying on John telling them how to do it. During play, John says his primary job is to observe. One reason for this job is that he is the referee during play, calling out when teams make or miss the criteria for scoring. This keeps him on task so he can also help guide players’ attention and intention. John doesn’t like to stop play or do much talking. As John has developed as a coach, he has realized that he doesn’t want to coach using “directive statements”, telling players what to do. (This is something he first learned from mindset coach Lorraine Davies.) In his experience, relying on statements like these as a coach creates either “obedient soldiers” or rebels and he doesn’t want to coach either of those types of players so he relies much more on questions. But his questions to players aren’t just about how they’re playing. He’ll check in with them about their emotional states, which may lead to him calling a time out. “When you’re given hard problems to solve, you can get foggy, or in a rut, or stressed” so he gives them time to take a breath and talk to each other. Collaborating with players is important to him and he’ll regularly have debriefs with them. He uses those debriefs to solicit feedback from the players about how to tweak and improve the activities that he tries with them (see the “Jacinda rule” above). That’s a big piece of the trust that he has built over time at LMU. The players are willing to try a lot of things that John thinks up because they know that he’ll change if they give him their honest feedback.
What: It’s important to look at not only the constraint that John used to create Moving Forward but also what that constraint is designed to guide attention towards. Stipulating that setters can only move forward in order to score is about far more than skill training, it’s about bringing awareness to relationships between players. John noticed that pairs would often play too much like individuals, meaning that a passer or digger would always try to put the ball in the same place, regardless of the context within which their contact would happen. Likewise, setters would start moving to the same place every time before looking to see where the ball was going. John looked for a way to help partners “stay connected”, saying that partners should have a “synchronistic” relationship, in which they are working together and for each other’s benefit. (That relationship is in contrast to “antagonistic” relationships, like those between opponents over the net.) The contexts in which play happens create different needs that players must constantly adjust and respond to. Players find themselves in a wide variety of situations before they have to set and both the passer/digger and the setter need to be aware of how those situations allow or hinder what they can do. This is what Moving Forward is about. In order to score, players must not only respond to situations but do what they can to shape those situations in favorable ways.
When: I mentioned above that John’s practices tend to flow from more constrained to more natural activities but that doesn’t really tell the whole story. John’s practice structure is different than many. John’s practices regularly start with differential learning activities. What this means is that players will be doing volleyball things while also doing some very un-volleyball things. While there are motor learning-based reasons for engaging in differential learning, John also likes it because it “dims the judgemental brain”. When each player is trying to find how many innovative ways they can hand set the ball while playing over the net pepper, players stop worrying about what they look like or what others are thinking of them. Then, as practice goes on, players are more comfortable continuing to explore different ways of playing. They keep trying different ideas or focusing on different areas that they might not if they are judging themselves strongly or feel that others are judging them. This positions players to exploit what they have learned as practice (and the season) goes on.
How: I’ll spare you a lot of the academic terminology used in Differential Learning and Ecological Dynamics but here’s one term that is the foundation of this game, “education of attention”. One of John’s main goals in any activity is to help players notice where relevant information for decision making is coming from. But, as John indicated with his feelings about “directive statements”, he doesn’t want to tell his players what to with the information that they gather. At most, John will tell them where to look. But he won’t tell them what to see. He does this by asking questions like, “what did you notice about your partner’s body position?” and then follow that question with “what happened?” Instead of setters “sprinting without purpose”, John said they would gather information first, trying to notice what situation their partners were in and what that meant for them. Pausing before moving is more than a way to see where the ball went, it is a way to gather information about your partner, what they just did, and what they will be able to do next. John has seen big changes in players’ intentions and performance in playing Moving Forward. Particularly, John commented on seeing big improvements in setter accuracy and first touch intention. These improvements are probably not because players have improved their skills but because they’ve improved their awareness of what will benefit their partner.
Have questions for John? You can ask me here or you can email John directly.
Pictures provided by Ben Wood. You can email him here. He’s benwood.creative on Instagram.