The Best Way to Structure Practice as a High School Volleyball Coach

Want a winning practice structure that builds a championship culture? Here’s how to make your practice plan work for both skills and mindset! Grab more coaching tools → https://coachfreetraining.com
 
Most coaches think their practices are effective… but when athletes show up late, waste time, or go through the motions instead of pushing themselves, it’s a clear sign something’s missing. In this video, I’m breaking down my 3-part system for creating practices that build connection, mental toughness, and competition—without adding hours to your day.
 
🎯 Learn:
The #1 "must do" in the first 5 minutes of practice
A proven mindset routine to boost mental toughness
Simple ways to coach pressure (not just hope they handle it)
How to end every practice with reflection and confidence
 
🎙 I’m Coach Bre, mental performance coach for girl athletes and co-founder of The Elite Competitor. I’ve led teams to 4 state titles, and I’ve learned that great coaching starts with intentional structure—not just drills.
 
🕓 Key Moments
00:00 Introduction: Importance of Practice Structure
00:28 Starting Strong: Pre-Practice Routine
01:36 Building Connections and Mental Training
03:09 Training Adversity and Competitive Drills
03:47 Reflection and Final Thoughts
 
📢 COACHES – What’s one thing you include in every practice? Drop it in the comments!
 
📌 Want more tools to help your athletes thrive?
🔹 Grab our FREE mental game training → https://coachfreetraining.com 
🔹 Learn more about the Plug & Play Elite Mental Game → https://elitecompetitor.com/plugplayemg 
🔹 Follow us on IG → @elitecompetitorcoach

Head to coachfreetraining.com to grab our free training for coaches to quickly level-up your team's mental game!

Transcript

1:04

Coaches, one of the most important things that you can spend your time on is how you structure your practices. This makes a huge impact in the culture, in your athlete's ability to compete, and you can get this wrong really fast. And so I'm gonna go over the three things that you should be including in your practice structure if you wanna build a winning culture in your gym. I just got done with practice, just took 10 minutes. Those are my kids over there waiting for me to be done. But I wanna talk about today's practice because there, the, the three components are there. Number one. When they get into the gym, they need to be moving right away. And so I hate it when athletes like get into the gym and they dilly dally and no one knows who's setting up the nuts. And then it's like I have to tell them not to be like, Ooh, let's school, let's go get going and practice. So I changed this a while ago where I've got a whiteboard in my gym. And I highly suggest if you don't have a whiteboard, get one. And on the whiteboard I have a pre-practice plan. And so they come in, all athletes know exactly what to do when they hit the gym, and it usually includes some sort of reps that I don't wanna waste time doing in practice. So like they're getting blocking eye coach volleyballs, they're doing blocking reps, they're doing some passing ropes, they're, they're doing these quality things. And I only rotate through like three or four different pre-practice activities. So they are right away. Active and engaged. Okay. I also have a system for who is setting up nuts, so it's not like a question of who's gonna do it today. Okay. Hi. Hi. And that also eliminates a lot of just like, well, team drama honestly, but just so that they can get going right away. Okay, so have a system for who's setting up the equipment and then have a pre-practice so that they're getting ready. If you coach on a field or outside, like same thing, you can have a pre-practice on my clipboard. You could have a captain, make sure that they're in charge of it. Second thing, make sure that they's some sort of connection. In my pre-practice, I do have connection as well. Like I either have them like high five or they'll come into the gym and on the other side of the board there's like a check-in process. So they check in on like what their goal is for the day. How much sleep they had, how much water they've had, and that's not to micromanage, it's just to help them be more aware. And I also position myself at the whiteboard, so I'm checking in with them and giving them fist bumps as they're coming in with some sort of connection. I. That way. Now for us, we like you also, this is number two, you have to be intentional with training what you value. A lot of coaches say they value coaching the whole athlete. They value the mental side of the game. You know, they value, but they do nothing in their practice to actually reflect that. And so be intentional with how you're doing it. And so for us, after we do pre-practice, I call everyone together and we do our mental training. So I'm having, like I am coaching the mental side of the game. I'm coaching their mental health because it's so important. It does not matter. How good of a practice plan you have and how much skill you're teaching if they cannot mentally be able to respond to the pressure of the game. And we coach at a high level. We've just won our four state championship like. The pressure is on, the target is on our back more than ever. If my athletes cannot be mentally tough, it does not matter what I'm teaching them. So we build time in. We build five minutes a day in to do mental training. If you wanna know exactly what I do, go to coach free training.com. I lay out the mental skills that I teach every day with my athletes, but we spend five minutes. Doing that. So we do something called the three two Run Brave. It's our daily mindset routine. It includes some breathwork, some visualization, some affirmation, a little journal time. But like honestly, it's five minutes and it makes my practices run so much more smooth. But for you, it's like you've got to build time into like what you value, like how are you actually doing that in practice? And the next piece of it is make sure that you are training adversity. Make sure your practices are like putting your athletes in situations where they're having to respond to adversity. So they're game-like, but they're also competitive. And we intentionally do that by like making sure that the groupings of athletes is equitable, that we're making sure their athletes are challenging themselves. On our board, we have everything written out and everyone has a number and they're making sure that, you know, they know there's quick transition, so there's no dilly dallying waiting around. We're making it challenging for them through a scoring system as well. We do the competitive cauldron, things like that so that they're. Feeling the pressure. So that practice honestly feels harder than the competition. Okay. And then lastly, end with reflection. I always end with some sort of circle. We used to like link pinkies and do it, and then, but everyone was like too sweaty and couldn't do that anymore. But basically we circle up and everybody reflects on their goal for the day. Did they need it? How did it go? And then they give a shout out to somebody else. So it's a reflection, but also like recognizing the good in what other people are seeing. As a coach, I wanna make sure that I am making sure that. You know, girls are getting shouted out. So whether I'm doing that or just kinda keeping a mental inventory, so to make sure people are kind of like getting affirmed. But those are the essential practice structure things that you need to have in place. And I think I said it was gonna be three and that ended up being four. But the first one, make sure they're doing something right away. Make sure there's a pre-practice on the board, they know what they're doing, there's no dilly dallying. Make sure that there's some connection in there as well. Have it in your practice structure, what you value. We value the mental side of the game because we know how important it is. Because I'm coaching at such a high level, they have to have it. We can't just say we have mentally tough athletes and not train it. So put it into your practice plan. And again, if you wanna know the mental skills that I teach my athletes in less than five minutes a day, head to coach freetraining.com. Make sure your practices are game-like and they're competitive and athletes are, you know. Have opportunities to train the adversity of the game and then finally end with some sort of reflection and, and there you go. So if you want to know more, you can also head to my next video on this like simple hack that I do at the beginning of practice in involving pre-practice. It's a simple hack for connection with your athletes that really has made a big difference in my coaching. So you can head to that video next.