The Coaches Car Ride Home
Players, Parents, Coaches and even refs tune in weekly to listen as our father-daughter coaching duo unravels our season and passes along helpful tips.
The Coaches Car Ride Home
Episode 9 - The Coaches Car Ride Home
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Episode 9 of The Coaches Car Ride Home dives into a topic every athlete hears about, but not everyone truly understands: recovery.
In this episode, we break down why recovery is just as important as training, especially in today’s world where sports have become a year round grind. We talk about the real impact of sleep on performance, why stretching and proper warm ups and cool downs matter more than most athletes think, and how tools like icing and foam rolling can help your body stay ready to compete.
Whether you’re an athlete, coach, or parent, this episode gives practical insight into building better habits and taking recovery seriously.
Welcome back to the Coach's Car Ride Home. I'm your host, Lauren.
SPEAKER_00I'm Coach Paul. Hi.
SPEAKER_01We are so excited to have you back on another week of the podcast. So thank you for tuning in. Thank you for listening. If you're new here, I'm Lauren and this is my dad, Paul. We are a father-daughter duo. We coach 14-year-old travel volleyball in South Florida. And we brought this podcast to you guys to bring parents, coaches, and players all together to have more open conversation about the sport, about volleyball. Well, that is the sport.
SPEAKER_00What's going on behind the scenes and things you may not see or realize or know.
SPEAKER_01We missed you guys last week. We were kind of recovering. We had played in Chicago the weekend prior, and it was a very eventful weekend. It was a wild three days.
SPEAKER_00So today we'll talk about recovery.
SPEAKER_01Yes, so today we will talk about all the things we did to recover over the last week and why it is important to recover after big games, big practices, before games, things like that.
SPEAKER_00So right now we're driving to practice, so we have a half-hour ride, so we'll do this podcast on the way to practice. If we don't finish, we'll do it on the way home.
SPEAKER_01Yep, we are in the car, we are excited, we're headed to practice, we're gonna go coach those girls up, so let's get started. Um, so our recap on Chicago. Um we had the most wild travel experience I think we've ever had. Not only coaching volleyball, I may have it might have been the wildest I've ever had in general.
SPEAKER_00There's some really bad weather in Chicago, thunderstorms that were rolling in the middle of the day, and uh if you didn't have a 6 a.m. flight, you got stuck or stranded or rerouted, and it seemed like every player on our team was on a different flight, and they all went in all different directions. Some went to Chicago, some went to Indianapolis, some went to St. Louis, some went back home, some went to Fort Lauderdale. We got on the plane and got off, went home and went to bed, got up the next morning and flew as fast as we could uh to try and get there. Luckily we had afternoon wave and we made it, uh and all of our players made it, but not so lucky for other teams in our club, they didn't quite make it.
SPEAKER_01Other teams and clubs at the tournament as well. You know, we were very fortunate that we had afternoon wave. I think that's the one and only time that I will say that I like having afternoon wave. Um, but there were a lot of teams that had to forfeit their 8 a.m. games because they were still missing so many players that couldn't get there, um, which is really sad.
SPEAKER_00But the lesson is, you know, fly early, but in this case it didn't really help because it was a holiday weekend, it was Easter weekend, and our girls all had school Thursday, so they couldn't fly, take the day off and fly. Some of them did, but they couldn't all do that. And so they had to have midday flights, afternoon flights, night flights. We were on a six o'clock flight, and then we bumped it just to fly standby on like a three or four o'clock flight, and that got canceled. And yeah, so things just happened, and then it snowballed. And what that led to was not just inconvenience, but players and coaches being extremely tired, lack of sleep, all that travel, not being able to get there, stress and worry about how am I gonna make it, what am I gonna do. So all those things lead to probably some of the problems we had over the weekend.
SPEAKER_01We saw a lot of ups and downs this weekend, a lot of roller coaster rides. Um, you know, we had really great moments and moments where we did not even recognize the players on the court and having the afternoon wave with a lot of people having the travel issues, not getting until 3 a.m. that you know that that morning. Um it really did show by our eight or 8 p.m. game that we didn't actually start playing, I think, until probably closer to nine. They just crashed out, you know. They they had a bunch of energy in the first set, in the second set, you just you saw it on all their faces. They just they needed to go to bed and rest and recover. And it that unfortunately was our our big game to keep us in gold, and we missed it just by five points.
SPEAKER_00Uh well, we won the first set, I think, and then we did win. Um just couldn't finish. And you know, we went two and one first day, so we stayed in contention for gold, but it put us in the hardest bracket, I think, on day two that we have ever seen. We're playing USA, right? So they're pretty good teams. And somehow we wound up with three other teams in the bracket that are national level competition teams, maybe even open teams. And uh yeah, we struggled, but uh actually we played well against these teams. We beat one of them, which is one of the best teams in the country. Yep, and uh another one we gave a real good run for the money, so you know we were within a couple points, but again, we struggled to stay focused and to recover from errors and to just kind of keep the pedal, gas pedal down the whole time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so overall I think you know, again, disappointing weekend. You know, we we go in with very high hopes that we want to win, we want to come home with a bid, but at the same time also very proud of our girls. Um and I think you can have both both feelings, you know, in in one weekend. We're very proud to see the growth and see the fight that they did show and see them win and you know deserve that win against the really good team that we did we did beat on day two. And um yeah, we ended up playing Tampa United in our in our last game on um on Sunday before we came home, which is always fun to travel far and play a team that we could have just you know could have drove a couple hours and played them, but it was nice to see some familiar faces and you know the girls definitely had fun.
SPEAKER_00So I think the lesson learned was you have to work really hard and you get what you work for and you get what you deserve. We didn't play to win and we didn't, so we finished middle of the pack, and uh it's a good lesson. So knowing that going forward we need to work even harder and make every point count so that we have a chance on Sunday.
SPEAKER_01So let's go into our topic for this week. Um it's just gonna talk a lot about rest and recover, um just why it's important for athletes, especially younger athletes, to take days off, to make sure that they're stretching, to make sure that they're taking care of their body, to make sure that they're getting adequate sleep every single night, especially on tournament weekends, um, to make sure that, you know, during the summers, if they have months off, that they're being kids. So let's jump in and maybe just ask some questions to each other and go from there.
SPEAKER_00Right. How much do you think is too much when it comes to playing volleyball? Some kids want to play every waking second of every day. Why is it important to not do that?
SPEAKER_01So I think this goes all the way back to you know, choosing one sport. So I think, you know, at a very young age, I was very blessed that my parents put me in every sport possible until I found one or two that I I really did enjoy, um, which can be become a lot, you know, it can become you're playing a different sport every single day. If you're playing two travel sports, you're away, you know, for both on one same same weekend, and it can get kind of hectic and crazy. And, you know, you're asking, when is it too much? Well, I think it's too much when your athlete is complaining of being super tired and being, you know, I don't have time to hang out with my friends, and maybe homework isn't getting done, and grades are starting to suffer, and then maybe their performance is also starting to suffer. Um, without that adequate rest and recovery, you know, they cannot perform to their highest ability.
SPEAKER_00We get some athletes who are the personality, like go, go, go type personality that they just want to do more and do more and do more and be perfect and and be the best that they possibly can be, and that drive drives them to kind of overdo it sometimes.
SPEAKER_01We love that drive, right? Because that drive in turn makes them one of the best athletes in the gym.
SPEAKER_00But sometimes they forget that they might need a day off.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Schedule a day off, and they might need to make sure they stay hydrated and make sure they get eight or nine hours of sleep, you know, a day, especially when they start getting into high school years and they're have to be at school at you know 7 30 a.m. or 7 a.m. and they're up at 5 30 or 6 and they want to stay up all night talking to their friends and playing on their phones, you know, that that the only thing that is gonna suffer is sleep, which is really important to athletes' bodies.
SPEAKER_01You need at least eight hours of sleep, right? No matter your age, it's it's if you don't get that, then you're not really functioning on all gears. And so I think you know, young athletes they they love to stay up and text their friends and be on Snapchat until whatever hour, and then they get up and they have a full day of school, and then they might have an after school activity where it could be a sport, it could not be, and then they go straight from that to practice, and then you know, back home doing their homework, eating their dinner, back on their Snapchat and on their phone, and they might only be getting six hours of sleep, but you know, compiled over a week, a month, a couple months, that's really gonna affect how they're playing. Right.
SPEAKER_00Start slowing down, start risking injuries, start not moving as well, and then their game can suffer too. They might go from an athlete who's really performing well to one that's sliding towards mediocre and not knowing what the reason is, and it might be just as simple as sleep and nutrition.
SPEAKER_01So let me ask you this question. How do you feel, you know, about volleyball turning into a year-round sport? So when I played, we definitely had what two months off in the summer to kind of be kids, go on family vacation, do all of the things, but now we're seeing this sport is becoming year-round, and you know, how do you think that's affecting as well with the burnout?
SPEAKER_00I think it's too much, I really do, and especially at a young age. Because when all you do is one thing all the time, you just get so hyper-focused on that that you can't really function doing other things. And I've seen athletes who go year-round and play multiple sports or just one sport non-stop, and they get to high school and their whole goal is to play on that that varsity high school team, and they achieve that goal, and then they want to throw away the game, they don't want to play in college, they don't want to play again. They they kind of quit athletics altogether, go off to college and start being a kid because they missed being a kid in high school. So there's there's a balance there. And I think it's smart to take a day or two off a week, and I think it's smart to take a month or two off in the summer. Or if if you don't want to take off in the summer, do something that you find fun. Right. Right, go play beach volleyball and play it for fun, not for competition. Go play once a week, practice once a week, or just practice by messing around with your friends on the on the beach court if you can't, you know, drag yourself away. But you know, the the whole thing now of moving tryouts up earlier and earlier and earlier every year, it's you know, as soon as our season's over, we're trying out for the next season. Yeah, yeah. And then we're into you know pre-season training if if they're allowed to, and you know, private lessons nonstop, and it just it can be too much. And you know, I think everybody's afraid, oh, if I don't go year round, I'm gonna lose ground to some of these girls that are going year round, and I want to be the best player on the team or in the gym or in my high school, so I have to dedicate myself 24-7, 365, and it's really not true. It's you need a good repetitive amount of practice, but you don't need it every single day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's definitely becoming a little bit too much, and you know, jumping back to to tryouts becoming early and earlier, you know, it's it's become this super competitive thing. And our club, you know, is making tryouts earlier because that's what all the other clubs are doing.
SPEAKER_00And so we have to stay in competition with them because we want the kids to have the opportunity to play at our club instead of you know committing earlier to somebody else and forced to commit somewhere else and forced to feel like you have to train somewhere all summer long. Right. You know, and then they get worried too about oh school tryouts are coming up in the end of the summer, so I have to train all summer for that. So it's it's tough, it really is.
SPEAKER_01It's it's super tough and I think that's where camps come into play. I think, you know, it is still keeping them in the sport and keeping them competitive, but it's also allowing them to be kids and go hang out with their friends and travel and and do fun. You know, they stay in the dorms most of the times and they room with their friends and they they get to go play, you know, for eight hours or whatever it is a day, but then they also get meals together and things like that too. So I do think there is the bonus there with camps, you know. Um families, if you are gonna miss out on a camp to go on a family vacation, I think that's also very important. Like take the family vacation, um, you know, bring a volleyball on the family vacation. They can always do reps if they really want to, or leave it at home. Yeah, let them let them be kids. Right. Um, and you know, players, if you're listening to one one week off of volleyball is not gonna make you forget how it's gonna make you better because your body's gonna recover, you're gonna feel stronger and more energized when you get back. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And the sport's still gonna be there. It's not going anywhere, I promise you.
SPEAKER_01And your skill is still gonna be there. That's also not gonna just poof vanish. Right. Um, so I think you know, take take that as you will, but make sure that you are taking a lot of rest and recovery, um, as well as making sure that you're doing fun things that you enjoy over your breaks. So, my next question is about recovery. So let's just see what you think is important maybe during tournaments or during the week when we have tough practices. What are some things that you would think are super important for recovery?
SPEAKER_00Um, I think nutrition and hydration, I think rest that we talked about already, um, stretching, and then just having some downtime to allow your body to heal. Um I'm older than everybody, you know, around us, and it's harder for my body to recover. And I know when I go play beach on a Sunday, I'm shot for the rest of the day sometimes. Or when I go to the gym, you know, it takes longer to recover. So I'm really in tune to listening to your body. Your body will tell you when it feels better and when it's ready to go back to the gym or back to the game or or wherever. So just kind of take the time and listen to what your body's telling you. But you know, stuff like knee pain in a in a young person or ankle pain in a young person, those are you know, like red lights. If they're telling you they have pain, it's time to step back because it's only gonna get worse. And these repetitive use injuries can gather and grow with time, and then that's not something you're gonna want to deal with down the line. You you have friends that and yourself happened to you through high school and in college. Why don't you talk about that?
SPEAKER_01I have a very good friend, and she's also a coach, maybe we'll bring her on sometime, hopefully. Um, she's had back surgery and we're not even 30 years old, and she had to have back surgery because of the repetitive, you know, jumping and landing, and back when we were younger, you know, when we were 14 years old, there was no such thing as strength training all of your muscles around to preserve your back and preserve your bones and muscles. Um, and so we just overused our back all the time. And I have, you know, two, three herniated discs and it it is just usage and we knew, you know, playing the sport that it was probably going to happen because of usage, but at the same time, we uh you know, nobody wants that to happen to you. So I think now doing preventative things before we play, so we warm up, we make sure we have the adequate warm-up, we make sure we have a cool down, we make sure that we stretch.
SPEAKER_00Also, you you have a couple of friends, high school and college that had torn ACLs. And that's we don't know what the cause is. It could be landing wrong or whatever, but it could also be repetitive use just from years and years of you know, straining and stretching, they might have little tears and little issues that turn into bigger and bigger issues until something gives way.
SPEAKER_01You see a lot with shoulders as well, you know, overusage with shoulders. I have some players that will complain of, oh my shoulder is tight and my shoulder is sore, and um I usually just say, Okay, well, why don't you just rest? Why don't you not swing as hard this practice? We make sure that if something's bothering them, that they feel empowered to come and tell us that because we never ever ever want someone to push through the pain and push through something that could cause an overuse injury. Uh, you know, it might look like maybe just don't block as much, maybe don't be jumping as much. If you're a player and you have something that's bothering you, whether it's a knee, an ankle, a toe, a finger, something, make sure your parent knows and make sure that your coach knows as well. Because you don't want to be overusing it and then it turns into something worse down the line.
SPEAKER_00Another good thing to think about too is number one, your parents can get you medical help if you need it, but your your coaches, some of them might be actually trainers. We have coaches in our club that are trainers, or you might go to a private coach or someone who's a trainer. Those people have been schooled and trained to help with these types of injuries, preventing and recovering from them. So use those resources. Or at high school, you might have a trainer that's assigned to your athletics department. Use those people, and then when you get to college, you're always gonna have a trainer there to make sure that you're you're in in good shape. And then also the ones that are at tournaments, they're there for you as well. Um, they're not your personal medical assistant, but they'll answer your questions, they'll tape you, they'll help you with ice, they'll help you with recovery after a long weekend or a long day. Yeah. So use all those resources that are available. Don't just suck up the pain and go home when you have things available to help you get back quicker.
SPEAKER_01If you think about it, I mean, you remember when I was in preseason in college, and even during season, I would text you or call you every day and tell you about the ice bath that I took that day. Or, you know, we had scheduled time to be in the trainer's room before practice, making sure that we're putting the heat packs on, um, putting the heat packs on our shoulders, or making sure we're getting taped or stretched out, or doing some sort of recovery process. And we weren't practicing more than what these kids are doing. So, you know, if they're working just as hard and for just as many hours and in the weight room and all these things, and they're not doing recovery, you're gonna see more injuries and you're gonna see more sore muscles and things like that. Um, okay, well, let's jump back. You mentioned all the things about what recovery means to you, and you did say something about hydration. I think hydration is not looked at enough. Um, another really big thing that I took out of playing at the collegiate level was that we had a trainer who would weigh us before and weigh us after practice. Now, this wasn't a weigh-in to see how much we weighed, it was to see how much water we lost in sweat. And she had a calculation, I don't remember exactly what it was, but she would tell us, okay, this is how much water you now need to drink to recover from what you lost. And I think especially living in South Florida, that is something that is so important because on the weekends, you know, when they are being kids, they're out on the boat, they're out at the beach, they're out at the pool, they're they're doing stuff outside, they're playing beach volume outside, and you lose so much water through your sweat. Not only water, but electrolytes and salt, potassium, all of those things that need to be replenished.
SPEAKER_00Don't just drink when you're thirsty, drink to recover. Drink it after practice, drink it after tournament, you know, enough water, probably more than you think you need.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, add some electrolytes into your water as well. Great supplement to just have a little bit of extra boost into your water. But yeah, I think water hydration, that's a big one. You know, once once you feel thirsty, it's already too late. You're already slightly dehydrated. Um, so definitely keep an eye on that. Make sure during water breaks, during practice, you're you are consuming water. I love the kids that go over and take one sip and come running back, but that is your time to make sure that you're staying hydrated.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so what about stretching before practice, after practice, before and after tournaments, using a foam roller? What's the best thing? What do they teach you to do?
SPEAKER_01So, you know, before practice and before games, you see a lot of teams doing these warmups, right? They're called dynamic stretching warm-ups where they're they're running back and forth to the net and they're doing certain stretch poses. I think sometimes kids and players might take it for granted a little bit. You know, they kind of just go through the motions while they're chatting with their friends and they're not actually taking it serious.
SPEAKER_00There's a reason for it.
SPEAKER_01But there is a huge reason for it. It's it's to help get your muscles warmed up, but also stretch them out so that you're not starting to play with tight muscles. Um, and we do lots of jobs. Reminders hey, this is your time to be stretching, like not chatting, and I think that's also important to remind your players of that because that's gonna help you what prevents injury. Um, so the stretching, you want you know, to elongate your muscles, you want to bring blood flow to your muscles before you start doing high impact training on them. Now, the stretching afterwards is gonna do just about the same.
SPEAKER_00It's gonna stretch out those muscles that you just used, cool down, cool down and restore the blood flow, which is the healing part.
SPEAKER_01Yep, yep, and restore blood flow, but also just making sure that you you stay loose because once you stop playing, you become really tight. And you and I know this as we're older. If we sit down in between, you know, games when we're playing beach and we sit down for more than five minutes, we feel like we need a whole nother warm-up. Right. Because your body starts to cool down and your muscles get tight again, and that's what you do.
SPEAKER_00So what about what about ice after practice or a tournament?
SPEAKER_01So ice is really good when you have a certain spot that's you know, either maybe a little bit of overuse or or tight. It's gonna help inflammation and swelling in that spot. A lot of times players you'll see them do it on their knees or their ankles or something that's been bothering them that they're still able to play, but they want to help it recover and not swell after they're done playing. So ice is good. It's good in a limited basis. Like you don't want to have ice on your ankle and then automatically just jump in and try to start playing without warming your muscles back up. Um after the the full day of playing, ice is okay to minimize swelling, especially if you had maybe a recent ankle injury or something that you want to continue to take care of. Um, the other great recovery um tip to do is to foam roll. Now, foam rolling is when you have one of those, I don't know how to explain it, a foam roller, but it's a rolling. Yeah, it it looks like a big cylinder and you'll see people carry them around. Sometimes they're in a smaller size, um, sometimes they're ribbed, sometimes they're just plain. Um but what foam rollers do is they roll out the muscles. So if you have any tight spots or you know your hamstrings are tight or something like that, it helps stretch them a little bit more than just your standard stretch. Um and foam rolling is actually a phenomenal recovery tool um for athletes to help their muscles recover faster from when they have maybe a heavy lift or a big practice or something like that.
SPEAKER_00And then I've seen them or for the for a while on our team, the big thing was those massage guns. They all had to have that big massage gun for their shoulders or for their legs.
SPEAKER_01Those are great too. It's you know, those are gonna again help warm up the muscles, work out the knots. Um I don't see anything wrong with them. I think they're awesome. So any type of pre- or post workout practice game recovery. Yeah, is gonna really be helpful. So that's what we have for you this week. Uh we hope you enjoyed it. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, you can always email us, comment below. Um we're always looking for topics, so please give us some that you really want us to talk about. Um and we are excited. We have our next tournament coming up, not this weekend, but the following ASICs.
SPEAKER_00So we're recovering right now? We are recovering. Start prepping for that and get out there and win some games.
SPEAKER_01Yep. So thank you. Have a great week.
SPEAKER_00All right, bye.