So how do we get our players
to make these predictions? Do we recruit
players that we think have an innate ability to track a ball? Do we wait for players with excellent reading
skills to just walk into the gym? The
answer is we train them. Action
prediction ability in sport is neither a magical quality nor an innate talent. It’s a learned skill, and like any skill, it
should be trained from the earliest stages of a player’s development and
continuously honed throughout her career.
As reading is perhaps the most important skill in the game, the more we
know about it the better we can teach it.
A recent study published in Psychological Research offers valuable insights into the elements that
contribute to successful service-reading abilities in volleyball players[1].
Action Prediction Abilities in Volleyball
A team of Italian researchers
examined the role of visual and motor experience in the ability of athletes to
predict the action of float serves in volleyball. The authors compared the reading abilities of
three groups of adult, right-handed females in their mid-twenties. Group 1 consisted of 12 volleyball athletes
with about 15 years of playing experience (experts). Group 2 was comprised of 12 supporters who
had no experience playing volleyball but who had regularly attended to watching
volleyball for at least 10 years (watchers).
Group 3 was comprised of 12 adults with no volleyball experience at all
(novices).
Participants were shown video clips
of two experienced players performing a series of float serves. Videos showed a front- and back-view of the
server. Clips were shown using a
modified temporal occlusion in which only the body movements of the server or
only the ball was shown. Half of the
clips showed the beginning of the action to the point of the server’s contact
with the ball, thus showing only the server’s body kinematics; the other half
showed the moment of contact to the initial falling trajectory of the serve
(when it was approximately at the height of the net), thus showing only the
ball trajectory.
Participants were asked to view the
clips and predict as fast as possible whether the ball was served in our out of
the court. Notably, in the front-view
perspective the ball was not fully visible in the last part of ball trajectory
– when the ball was falling to the floor.
Study Results
What the researchers found was a mix
of predictable and not so predictable results.
The volleyball athletes outperformed the novices in predicting serves
both from reads based on the server’s body kinematics and the ball trajectory –
regardless of the viewing perspective.
These results confirm years of research consistently showing the superior
action-prediction abilities of elite athletes in their sports, including
volleyball.
So what about the watchers? Did their visual experience contribute to
accurate predictions although they had no playing experience? The evidence suggests that it did. Although watchers were again outperformed by
athletes, the watchers outperformed novices in one important phase - predicting
the serve when viewed from behind the server.
According to the authors, since the
late stages of ball flight stayed in view only for the back-view clips, the
watchers’ visual experience seems to have improved only their ability to read
the serve by using this late ball flight information. In contrast, the volleyball athletes showed
proficiency in utilizing both early and late cues from ball trajectory which
were visible in both the front and back view videos.
Significance for Coaching
The participant-athletes’ superior
performance in predicting ball flight based on the server’s body movements
confirms again the profound implications of teaching players how to read. With serve reception playing a critical role
in winning volleyball matches coaches should be eager to incorporate ways to
improve players’ serve-receive reading skills.
So how do we do this?
Serve Receive Actual Serves -
Reading the Server
Serving and passing must occupy a
significant portion of practice time.
Passers should be passing live serves – and lots of them. Success in predicting ball flight in
volleyball comes in part from the twin abilities to recognize cues in the
server’s behavior and then link those cues to results. When coaches toss balls to players or chip
balls in from the sideline, players are robbed of the cues they need to learn
from actual servers and consequently are deprived of valuable opportunities to
link cues with results. Only through
receiving served balls from real servers do players have an opportunity to
identify and interpret the kinematic cues of real servers and develop the motor
experience that is essential to predicting the flight of served volleyballs.
But we can’t just set up serving and
passing games. Like all training, serve
receive practice should be accompanied by effective feedback. We should coach players what cues to look for, ask them
what they see, and guide them to understand the connection between what they
see and how the ball reacts. Practice
with feedback is the only principled basis for teaching the skill of reading.
Importance of Early Ball Flight -
Reading the Ball
In addition to planning lots of
serving and passing games coaches must emphasize the value of early preparation
in serve receive. The instant research
suggests that athletes’ advanced reading abilities are tied to their unique
skills in reading both kinematic cues and
the initial phase of ball trajectory. In
other words, athletes draw heavily from what is happening on the other side of
the net. Emphasizing early visual
preparation teaches athletes that much of their success in service reception
can be determined long before their “technique” comes into play.
NOTES
[1] Urgesi, C., Savonitto, M. M., Fabbro, F., & Aglioti, S. M. (2012). Long- and short-term plastic modeling of action prediction abilities in volleyball. Psychological Research, 76:542-560.
