LOS ANGELES, California — It was a most peculiar sight that greeted any guests or passerby on the new seaside volleyball courts on Loyola Marymount College’s campus on the morning of February 17. A dozen or so highschool women have been enjoying seaside volleyball, or doing one thing that type of, kind of, in some methods resembled it and in some ways didn’t. One approached her assault by doing a cartwheel. One other did a 360. One headed it over the web. John Mayer, head coach of the Lions and the person overseeing the clinic, loved that one.
“I find it irresistible,” he mentioned, smiling. “What else can we strive?”
This whimsical “drill,” if one might name it that — and lots of old fashioned sorts possible won’t — may very well be handed off as aspiring school athletes having a little bit of a enjoyable warm-up, and in some ways, that’s precisely what was occurring. However you then have a look at the nets, and plainly of all of John Mayer’s many abilities, organising nets is just not one in all them: one is males’s top, one a few foot decrease than girls’s, whereas nonetheless one other is slanted from excessive to low.
“Who is aware of what’s happening over there,” Mayer informed the gamers.
Quite the opposite, Mayer is aware of exactly what’s happening over there, and organising nets in his personal mischievous methods is, certainly, one in all his many abilities. What might appear to be a most peculiar sight to the uninitiated is, in reality, what LMU assistant coach Angela White, previously Bensend, referred to as “the following evolution of teaching.”
For 2 hours, Mayer will spend maybe solely 10 minutes speaking, although make no mistake, he’s teaching.
The gamers simply won’t comprehend it. That’s fully the purpose.
Mayer’s delicate and quiet demeanor is kind of the distinction from the extra bombastic and gregarious method of conventional teaching, with constant instruction and a small, finite variety of appropriate, technical methods of performing a talent or activity. Reasonably than preach to the impressionable athletes on easy methods to do one thing, Mayer merely places them in numerous conditions through which they’ll experiment and determine it out for themselves.
“Apply is a search,” he wrote on the day by day whiteboard and emphasised quite a lot of occasions over the course of the primary two hours.
And so, all through the morning, he lets — no, encourages — them to go looking.
“They’re studying easy methods to grow to be anti-fragile.”
“You all the time had that freedom to experiment so it’s OK to fail,” Marine Kinna, a former participant for Mayer, mentioned. “You by no means know what John is pondering.”
He lets them seek for alternative ways to attain on the perimeter, and methods to attain within the meat of the court docket. He lets them discover methods to attain when the web is excessive and the protection pulling, and when the web is low and new angles of assault are introduced. He lets them seek for methods to attain when their solely software to take action is with a poke. He lets them seek for methods to attain when one ball is flat, one other is just too pumped, one is a Mikasa, one other a Wilson. He lets them seek for methods to attain when a shock mini ball is thrown into the combination.
“They’re studying,” Mayer mentioned on SANDCAST: Seashore Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, “however they don’t even notice it.”
Unusual? Goofy? Gimmicky? It’s straightforward to see how one might view it that means. Proof of Mayer’s huge success at LMU, and many years of motor studying science to again it up, would counsel in any other case.
In August of 2015, Mayer, then nonetheless a full-time participant on the AVP Tour and within the midst of a season through which he can be voted the AVP Defensive Participant of the Yr in addition to the AVP MVP, was named the pinnacle coach of the LMU seaside volleyball workforce. He inherited an underfunded program that had gone a mixed 14-29 in three seasons, a mid-tier college in a West Coast Convention dominated by Pepperdine, a fully-funded Nationwide Championship profitable energy.
Inside two years of Mayer taking up, the Lions posted a profitable file and made the finals of the WCC match. Two years after that, in 2019, they received their first WCC title, beating Pepperdine for the primary time at school historical past.
They’ve received each WCC title since.
And Mayer has been named the WCC coach of the 12 months yearly since.
“It’s been enjoyable, and it’s been enjoyable to do it from type of floor zero,” Mayer mentioned. “Nearly constructing a home the place you see it as rubble. Our first 12 months, the funds was $4,000. It was no workers, I shared an workplace with 5 folks, no scholarship cash. As a result of we had no funds, we’d play USC like 15 occasions. Now to see how far we’ve come, I’ve a full workers, two full-time workers members, three scholar managers, six scholarships, four-court facility on campus, we’ll journey to Hawaii, journey to Florida State. We’ve a workforce that might win a nationwide championship.
“It’s additionally cool, you go searching, it’s soccer faculties, it’s USC, UCLA, Florida State, LSU, and little LMU, who has by no means received a nationwide championship in any sport, which is unbelievable. It’s type of thrilling to assume that we may very well be the primary ones to ever do it. It will be a giant deal to the legacy of LMU and hopefully open up some doorways to what LMU can do.”
The truth that “little LMU” is yearly in rivalry to win an NCAA title is a testomony to what Mayer brings as a coach, a job he takes as critically as parenting his personal daughter.
“I feel teaching is about as vital a job as there may be on the planet, the affect you’ll be able to have on lives, on younger folks’s lives, the mentors you could be for adults,” Mayer mentioned. “I feel it’s an impactful place. The difficulty is, we don’t deal with it that means. My daughter’s fifth grade instructor has a sophisticated diploma in training, in arithmetic. My daughter’s fifth grade coach has no training. The requirement is she performed when she was in highschool. There’s many years of analysis on easy methods to run observe. There’s psychology, there’s so many fields to dive in and study. However we don’t deal with it as a career. We go ‘You coached as soon as!’ However this particular person might positively, negatively change their lives and this child or this grownup may need a adverse relationship with exercise, with train and sport. They could make lifelong buddies, they may develop a love for the game due to the best way the coach goes about it, and we don’t respect it the best way it must be.”
For a decade, he has co-hosted the podcast, Coach Your Brains Out, alongside Billy Allen, now the assistant coach at Stanford, selecting the brains of coaches in each trade and sport, from skilled golf coaches on the PGA Tour to pitching coaches with the Los Angeles Dodgers to the tight ends coach of the Miami Dolphins. Throughout COVID, when schedules have been cleared and Mayer had further time on his arms, he scheduled a weekly zoom assembly with a bunch of people with PhDs in fields associated to teaching and motor learing. That 12 months grew to become one thing of a hinge level in Mayer’s fashion as a coach.
“It’s non-linear. I talked concerning the coach being the supplier of an answer, however once you strategy issues from an ecological perspective, the coach is the supplier of issues,” Mayer mentioned. “I’m not right here to say ‘That is the best way, that is how you need to do it. Right here’s a novel motion downside, now go and attempt to clear up it. Now, this can be a laborious downside, I’m right here to assist, however what else are you able to strive?’ I’m nudging them to discover, nudging them to experiment. They’re having to self-organize, adapt, experiment, discover. They’re studying easy methods to be anti-fragile, problem-solvers, all these abilities which are game-changers.”
By no means the identical teaching expertise
It’s that very fashion that introduced Kinna to LMU. A local of Guethary, France, Kinna starred at Lynn College as an out of doors hitter. When she determined to make use of her ultimate 12 months of eligibility on the seaside, she had no scarcity of gives, with a standard energy in UCLA calling, in addition to “little LMU.”
Her boyfriend, DJ Klasnic, knowledgeable participant and common listener of Coach Your Brains Out, advisable Mayer, each due to his teaching acumen and his resume as top-of-the-line defenders of his era on the AVP Tour.
“He already had an concept of how John views seaside volleyball and the way he might assist me as a participant,” Kinna mentioned. Even Klasnic, nonetheless, couldn’t have foreseen the exponential progress Kinna would expertise below Mayer.
Previous to transferring to LMU, Kinna had performed restricted seaside volleyball. She was initially recruited as a left-side blocker…and wound up competing as a right-side defender … on court docket two … on a top-five workforce within the nation. And completed 29-10.
“I by no means had a coach, so I used to be actually uncooked. After I got here to LMU, I do know lots of people have a tough time adjusting if they arrive from one other coach, however as a result of I had no background, it was tremendous straightforward for me to grasp it as a result of I had nothing to match it to,” Kinna mentioned. “We needed to determine it out as a participant. Generally it takes extra time to determine it out, however once we do determine it out, you’re extra fulfilled. He’ll provide you with hints, little key factors, he’s going to provide you a end result to attain however you need to determine easy methods to do it. All through that interval of studying about your self, that’s the way you’re going to determine easy methods to do it. It’s nice to have a much bigger toolbox. You’ll strive stuff you assume won’t ever work after which impulsively it really works actually, very well.”
Was this new fashion unusual at first? After all. When coaches get into the sphere of teaching, the tendency is to fall again on a mode of teaching that resembles how they have been coached, perpetuating a string of top-down, one-way-is-the-correct-way fashion of educating that’s sluggish to evolve. Mayer admits that’s how he started, too, although it’s definitely not how he presently shapes his practices.
“This ecological view is that this relationship with the atmosphere and we’re going to let the physique self-organize and we wish to be as adaptable as doable. It’s extra about what number of instruments can I add? Even when they by no means use it, we’re opening up extra athleticism,” Mayer mentioned. “It’s a far more enjoyable strategy to coach our sport. That’s why it’s so enjoyable. It’s by no means the identical teaching experiences.”
It might probably make for fairly a shock typically when athletes switch into this system. Take Macy Gordon, a defender who received 79 matches at Cal Poly previous to transferring to LMU. Given her success, it isn’t shocking that the shift from Poly coach Todd Rogers’ fashion to Mayer’s took a bit longer than it did Kinna.
“She got here to LMU and poor lady, she was so not used to these things,” Kinna mentioned, laughing. “She took so lengthy adjusting to it as a result of she was so used to a different sort of teaching. I’m 100% certain it’s completely different and a few of them ask why are we doing this?”
Why are they doing this? Permit the outcomes to talk for themselves: In Gordon’s lone 12 months at LMU, she completed 30-6, the very best file of her profession, surpassing her earlier season-high win complete by 4.
Mayer is the primary to confess that his fashion of teaching is breaking standard norms, that even he isn’t certain it’ll land, that he’s studying proper alongside the very athletes he’s educating.
“John informed us that we have been type of an experiment, that I don’t know if this fashion of teaching works,” Kinna mentioned. “I feel that’s the factor about John, he’s all the time studying. It’s uncommon. Coaches could be closed-minded and have one imaginative and prescient. John is all the time studying one thing new. Now I’m certain he’s doing one thing completely different. I feel it’s nice.”
True sufficient, Mayer mentioned that when he and Allen co-wrote a guide, Coach Your Brains Out, in June of 2019, he’d revise a lot, if not all, of the fabric.
“I’m nonetheless younger as a coach, 2018 was my final season [as a player],” he mentioned. “I’m nonetheless looking for that voice.”
He’s nonetheless practising what he preaches, and writes on his personal whiteboards: That observe is a search, even for the person who has already discovered a lot.