Zen

Two days ago, I had one of the worst days of practice I have ever had. Nothing went right, every touch on the ball felt awkward and wrong. Instead of doing something to help the team each time I played the ball I was doing the opposite. My hands felt sticky, my legs heavy and most importantly, my head was elsewhere. No matter what I did I couldn’t get myself into that place that an athlete needs to be in to do well. And after spending a lot of time replaying that day in my head, I think that I’m starting to understand why.

Here’s the main reason: My focus was misplaced. I don’t mean focus as far as concentrating on the game. I was most certainly focused on the task at hand. But specifically, I was focusing on things that were of absolutely no value to me at the time.

Let me explain the way practice was structured that day. Morning training consisted of a warm up game called Hagebau, a game based on the principles of soccer and volleyball, which has become just as competitive as anything else we do down here. This day, the “young” team, made up of the younger players on the team, killed the old and set the negative tone for what would be a terrible day for me. Afterwards we did a bit of straight setter training and a few light drills afterward. The night training, and I count this as the worst of the two, was basically a competitive practice with scrimmage-like drills taking up all of the two hours.

The thing that worried me most about playing so poorly on this day was the fact that I had a good feeling going into the day. I’ve felt an improvement in my game over the last few weeks, and felt that I had been training well, doing my job and working hard to get better every single day. My serving felt stronger than it had in a long while, my hands felt light like I could do almost anything with the ball I wanted to. In short, I felt strong. So, going into the day, I was full of confidence, I knew that I was improving and I was looking forward to getting a chance to continue.

But somewhere along the way, my priorities got mixed up. Instead of going into that night competitive training with the mindset that I was going to keep improving, focus on the aspects of my game that needed work and just work hard, I came in thinking only about winning. Now, winning is absolutely one of the most important parts of playing sports. Anyone who says different is not being honest with themselves or anyone around them. But, focusing on winning, especially while playing, is a complete and utter waste of time.

The concept is nothing profound. I don’t claim that what I’m saying is innovative or deep. However, I do believe that it is something we lose sight of all the time.

For example, when I walked into the gym on Thursday night, I had already had a full training earlier in the day where I didn’t feel very good about my game. Like I said, my legs were slow, my hands didn’t feel very good, I didn’t feel like I could make solid connection with the ball. I knew all of these things, I felt them somewhere in the back of my mind but when I got to training and I saw that we were going to have a competitive game like practice I immediately started thinking about winning each drill. We warmed up, did hitting lines and served. And I still didn’t feel good about my game, but I remember still thinking, when the games start, hopefully I’ll be able to switch it around.

What happened? The team I was on lost every single set that we played. Zero wins and five losses. And we switched around a lot so I brought the losses to both sides of the net. As a setter, I take a lot of responsibility for those losses. No one has a bigger influence on the outcome of a volleyball match than a setter.

The funny thing is, I spent the whole time worrying about the score, worrying about the refereeing, worrying about the difference in how hard the free balls were to my side of the net compared to their side of the net. Worrying about losing…

I finally realized afterward that these were the things that a loser would think about. These were the things that I hadn’t been spending my time on for the past two months.

So, what should I have been thinking about? Well, that’s the tough question. The more I think about it, and this is for me personally, the more I think that getting better and being a great player is based on working on your weaknesses all the time. More than that, it is identifying your weaknesses on any given day. Maybe today your legs are tired and that means that you have to work that much harder to make sure you move your feet and get to the position you need to be in. I have a tendency to drop my hands when I set and not take the ball as high as I should (something I did all of Thursday without doing anything about it) and I have to remind myself all the time to take the ball high. We all have lots of things that we have to work on and it is a constant struggle with yourself to keep working on those things. But the only way to get better is to focus on them and correct them and continue to develop as a player.

Second, I think all great players have the ability to drop all of their insecurities when they get on the court. This is directly related to focus because once you drop that insecurity you are free to just play the game. All of a sudden, winning doesn’t reflect positively or negatively on the player because it is what we can call an “outcome goal”. We all know that winning is not 100% dependent on how well we play, there are several factors that influence the outcome of every match or game. Luck, weather, opponent’s ability, refereeing, teammates, these are all things that can make even the best performance a losing one. Without insecurity, a player can play without distraction, the only thing that matters is their performance and knowing inside their heart that they have done all that they could do to help their team. They can be courageous and they can play without pressure because the only important pressure comes from inside, and usually, a player who plays this way wins. Once you forget about winning, you generally win and that, for me, is a zen-like state.

So, that’s where I’m at right now, trying to lose all of my insecurities. Trying to take what the coaches tell me without saying, “But….” Because they don’t want to hear an excuse and an excuse only holds me back from my goals. When I make a mistake, the goal is to correct that mistake and do it right next time, not to get angry at my hitter for not putting the ball away so that I don’t look bad. I lose sight of this all the time and it doesn’t do anyone any good, and I think if we’re being honest others do too, and it all comes from being insecure about our own abilities and what others, whether it’s a coach or spectators, etc…, think about us.

Friday was a much better day and even though I’m sure there will be more bad days at some point, I’m trying to stay zen. Until we lose in Hagebau again that is…