John Kessel edit
Fri, Apr 18, 2025 2:51PM • 55:45
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
volleyball coaching, relationship counselor, learning competitions, guided discovery, joy in sport, perception-action coupling, motor learning, retention, feedback vs advice, Olympic motto, fun in play, small-sided games, physical education, coaching philosophy, athlete development
SPEAKERS
John Kessel, Paul Barnett
Paul Barnett 00:00
John Kessel, good morning to you, and welcome back to the great coaches podcast.
John Kessel 00:06
It is great to be back, and you're looking younger every day here. Married life and children must be good for you.
Paul Barnett 00:15
Well, it's 7am here in Sydney. I'm up early. I haven't had a coffee yet, so we'll see how this interview goes. But you're starting on a great tone by being so flattering, and you're looking pretty good too there as well. Perhaps you could tell us where you are in the world and what you've been doing so far today. Gosh,
John Kessel 00:33
today, I'm in Colorado Springs. Last week, I was in West Yellowstone cross country skiing and and snowshoeing and hiking, looking at the wildlife there, and downhill skiing and doing a volleyball clinic in Utah. So I was skiing Deer Valley and solitude and Brighton with my wife. We got a brand new Subaru wilderness Outback car, and we broke it in driving through all the snow that was falling in the in the Rocky Mountains that we've got. So we've got some pretty good snow right now, but been traveling a lot for sure. I think the big one that that was the most impactful for me was Bangkok doing the FIV B level three. They only do like one of those a year. And we had 35 coaches from 20 different nations that were at the highest level of volleyball. International volleyball federation does a level three course, and I was the lead instructor. And, gosh, it was a blast. Two weeks of Thai food and mingling, and they they still, now, two months after this, all their they have a What's up chat group, and they're just constantly talking to each other about all the things that they learn and how they're doing now. And you know, they're from, and they want me to come to Maldives and Australia and Nepal. And you know, they came from all over the world, Iceland, Norway. It was a marvelous two weeks of breakfast, lunch and dinner together, plus learning in a more formal environment. So been on the road a lot. What lucky to be. So
Paul Barnett 02:24
what a life you had. And I think you sometimes call yourself retired, but you sound anything but retired, you're still traveling at 100 miles an hour. And hopefully we'll see you down in Australia in 2020
John Kessel 02:35
Yeah, I am. The two coaches that were there are very gung ho about bringing me into to Perth and to Brisbane, Brisbane because of the Olympics and Perth because of where he lives. And I said, Well, if I'm going to be in Brisbane in Perth, I might as well stop along the way and help Melbourne and Adelaide and Sydney. And you know, let's just make a loop of the damn thing. And so hopefully that'll come to pass, we'll see be looking
Paul Barnett 03:03
forward to having a barbecue at my place when you're here. But before we get into barbecues at my place, we should talk a little bit of coaching. Because John, I've in preparation for today, I've read back through a lot of your writing from the I guess it's the last 30 years, if not longer, test. There'll be some multiple choice at the end, but I there's so much in your story, and the vision that you have for volleyball and the mission that you have for your life with Lily and bison Lodge. There's so many interesting elements of that when it comes to leadership that that I was so keen to get you back on for for a second interview, so I thought perhaps we could start back in 1970 up. Just for clarity, I wasn't born then, so you three years away from me being born, but that's when you first started coaching. And I'm wondering, how did it all start back then? What was the impetus?
John Kessel 04:02
Good question. I had played doubles growing up as a kid, but I went to college in Colorado, and a group of Californians kind of basically said, and they're still friends. I just I saw them all in November because of our 50th reunion of Colorado College, and they said, Let's form a team, because back then you there, there wasn't much women's sports. There was just men's and we could form a team that would compete in the NC two ways. So we formed a men's team, and they asked me to coach it and and play player coach as a lefty, setter, outside hitter type thing, and within a few months of that team practicing in what is now the dance studio, when I went back to it, it's not a gym anymore. It's a dance hall. But a gal named Marla barroski came up to me and. Said, We want a woman's team. Can would you coach that? And I said, Sure. And so I started coaching the women's team and forming that and we had pennies just for the first year, and then we finally got uniforms, and we competed all up and down the front range. And I for whatever reason, I mean, I was still going to college, but it was just so much fun to have that as my task after class, because Colorado College is a unique school. They they only take one class at a time. It's called the block plan, and we were the first class to experience it from start to finish. But it started in 1970 and you go nine courses, and you take a course a month, basically, and you become a chemist, and you are a chemist for a month, or you're a geologist and you're out in the field for a month because you have no other classes, and all you're doing is that class, and you get a taste of what it is to be a philosopher or a chemist or an English writing English, because that's all you're doing. And it's still a format that they still follow to this day. It's kind of rare in the educational system, but I loved it, and it allowed me to do a lot of neat travel. And you have a break, you have like, five days off between each of these classes. And so you would get in the car and take off to California to go sand skiing or body surfing or go see family or whatever. And then you file in the car and drive all night back to get back first class on Monday morning. So I started coaching because of California friends, as well as a woman named Marla barrosi,
Paul Barnett 06:46
it's become such a such an integral part of your life. I know you have many pillars to your life, but coaching is is one of the central ones that's taking you all over the world. And I, I had this great quote from you. You say, as a coach, my role is simply to be a relationship counselor between each athlete and their love of the game. And just as a heads up, there's going to be a few quotes in this interview today, but I love this idea of being a relationship counselor. I thought it was such a simple and powerful idea. When did that philosophy start to form?
John Kessel 07:21
You know, I think, well, it starts because you play doubles in any team sport that listeners might be listening into the the way you learn is through repetition of doing. You know, you I mentioned driving a car, nobody, none of your kids at 16 know how to drive a car. Even though they've been in the car for 16 years watching you drive they have to drive the car. So in sport, what we too often get into is the adult game, and you know, the whole size, instead of making it be a much smaller team size. Well, it just so happened, my dad was a doubles beach player in the 40s after World War Two, and we played a lot of doubles with our team to get the reps you need. And any sport, whether it's football, Futsal, is a much smaller team size, and they get more reps. And lacrosse plays a game called Chumash, where you put up a goal and you play two on two and two, the guys face off, and the other two athletes are defender, attacker type things, and the goal is dual sided, and all you're doing is attacking one side and the other team is attacking the other side, and you're playing two on two, and there's three or four Chumash goals. And so this team of normally 11, with everybody else sitting on the bench, is now two on two and getting good. And now the Olympics have three on three, and I think you'll see some improvement in basketball five on five because of the three on three game. And of course, basketball, you can play one against one. And you know, it's kind of hard to play one on one.
Volleyball, it's a lot more game like to play two on two, but it's that small side that develops that love of play. Yeah, not drilling. You're not drilling. You're playing. You're playing two against two, and problem solving the whole time, and dealing with the uniquenesses of your of your sport, whether it's somebody that can wail on you with a stick and knock the ball out of your your pocket or what you know, you have to deal with it. And I think a lot of that is has been kind of lost in our country, at least because of not enough physical education. And I'm going to just say not enough tag games. I mean, the the game of tag nobody drills tag games, you know, you don't go, Okay, we're going. To play tag. So here's the drill we're going to do to learn it. You know, no, you just play tag and you get burned and you get tagged or whatever. And I see something happening in my country, and that is that flag football is growing. It's going to be an Olympic sport in 2028 that's a reason, but it's also, you know, not as big of a team size. And it's like tag kind of, you know, you've got these flags that you're trying to not let them get pulled and and so you're just running around having fun so you can get serious about it. Don't get me wrong, but flag football is, for me, kind of like a fun tag game.
Paul Barnett 10:43
You talk a lot about the approach to teaching skills in your in your writing. In fact, you've got another quote here. You say coaches should stop coaching and start being a better Guided Discovery expert. Now, how does your language change when you do that?
John Kessel 11:04
That's a great question, and I have to say to any coach out here, the young John in the 70s, told them what to do, and that's thought that that was what coaching was, and what I saw was an entire bench and team out on the court when they make a mistake. So you're my you're my bench, they make a mistake, and the next thing they do is their head would world at the bench to me, I'm the coach. And then they do something else, and they make an error, and they turn and look at me for the answer, because I gave all the answers. Well, in doubles volleyball, I grew up with no coach. There were until the Olympics in 96 no doubles player was really coached. You just had a partner and you played and you problem solved. I mean, coaches jobs are to create problems. Young John coach's job was to solve the problems, and I solved them. I didn't let them solve them. Now I realize that my job is to create all these problems and for them to figure things out, and because most coaches you know don't be daunted if you're never coached a sport or coached that sport, because it's way more than this, the techniques, it's who you are as a human and that relationship counselor, and I think my grandmother would be a great coach. [PB1]
He talks about the role of the coach being a guided discovery expert. And to do this one of his jobs is create problems for his athletes to figure out.
But in the spirit of this Guided Discovery, I went from telling you what to do to realizing that making it stick a great book all by itself. Only was happening when they problem solved. It not me telling them the answer. And so now, rather than say, put your right foot forward, I'm going to have a kid stand there and hit him on the side and show on how they're stable and hit him from behind. And you know they'll have to take a step to not lose their balance. I say, well, so which is more stable, side by side or a staggered stance, not a staggered stance. Okay? Now, are you open to your teammates? With your right foot forward? Are you closed? Well, put your left foot forward. Are you open now or close? Oh, I'm much more open this way. Okay, well, we probably want to be open to our routines, don't we, rather than close it off, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you go, do you want to set it too close to the net or too far off than it, which is the good mistake, too tight or too far off? Well, too far off. Yeah. So when your right foot's forward, what's going to likely happen? Well, it's going to drift too far off right? So that's why we put our right foot forward. I mean, I don't tell them like I used to put your right foot forward. I make them problem solve the entire why of the technique, you might even say in this case, and then that goes into all the things that you do in a sport that relationship counselor of why are we doing this? You know, I don't know. It's it's just, I know that 1970 John learned that Hopper quote, the most dangerous phrase in the English language is we've always done it this way. So spot on that hopefully this always learning mode is something that the people that tune into your podcasts are doing. They're in this always learning and quarter and para mode that we want to want to see. I think that other thing Paul is that the Latin phrase of in anternam, curioso, um, curious. I mean, in intern I'm curious. That is, I'm eternally curious. You know, I'm always curious. And. Yeah, I think that that's another skill set or principle that that you can apply in anybody who's listening to the show to be curious.
Paul Barnett 15:14
John, can we talk about Cody, your son for a minute? If it's okay. I It was around about this time last year. We were we were corresponding, and you wrote this, I guess, as a parent, I could really feel the pain in the in the tone of the note Cody had been cut from the final US Men's Olympic squad leading into the Paris Olympics. I think he might have even been the last man cut, and you were thinking on the best way to engage with him next, and I it was just heartbreaking, but I wondered if you could talk a little bit about the way that you did engage with him afterwards, because I know that you've seen this many, Many times to other athletes as well.
John Kessel 16:02
And I think because of my principle of, I love to watch you play, I've always had a chance to sort of share with Cody that the I think the best way to move on from a loss is to give back to others what your insights are into why and what you've experienced on this path. Because the Olympic motto, of course, is city is Altius, Fortius. And those three words, is the US that are matters. It translates to Swift er, stronger and higher. So the ER is what I asked him to realize that he may not have made the time final 12, but his pathway to get there was working on being Swift or higher, stronger and that er, anybody listening, any coach, any athlete listening to this podcast, they can work on their er, because it's personal. I am now a little bit stronger than I was before. There's only going to be one est, you say in both there's an est. Everybody else was working on their ur, and he was the EST, but everybody else in that entire pyramid of 100 meter dash runners were attempting to improve their time be faster and stronger and and everything. So I I love coaches who inject a little bit of Olympism, which is different than being an Olympian. [PB2]
The story he shares of helping his son recover from being the last one cut for the USA Olympic volleyball team, by bringing him back to the essence of Olympism and its challenge to all of us to go swifter, higher and stronger.
And anybody listening to this should go to the IOC website and type in Olympic zone and see how you everybody cut or not is working in this world of Olympism, because it applies to all ages and all kids who are working to be swift or higher, stronger personal and so I asked Cody. And Cody, you know, realized too, that he he had something to give back through what he had learned by not, you know, training four years and not making the final 12. I. Moment, and I thought he did a really good job of it. You know, you can type in Cody Kessel Olympic dream or something like that, and you'll, you'll find his story about what he felt about helping his team. I think that's where it anchors to helping the 12 be the best 12. Even though he wasn't part of that 12, he was there for four years helping them be better. And what a great thing to do as an athlete. And of course, the reality of injury means that some of the Olympus Olympians that you're there are experiencing that, you know, they threw me into the international volleyball Hall of Fame this, whatever it was this November. So that was cool. You know, being being thrown into the international volleyball Hall of Fame and and I did my speech about the mintonet award and all these other things, but the one that ties into the story we're hearing right now, in my mind, so Anna Paula, the great Olympic doubles gold medalist from Brazil, was in third place. And only the top two countries go to the Olympics for, you know, country for the for beach doubles, you don't have three beach teams in you only have two. And she was third. And so the night that she realized that they were not going to be able to surpass the second place team, she went out and got hammered, and the team that was in second, essentially, to shorten up the story, had a gal that had a bad knee, and she realized that same night that her or injured her knee again, and she was not going to be able to compete in Tokyo or Rio, I think was Tokyo day I was talking, and she sent news to the Brazilian Federation, I can't compete. And so they went and found Anna Paula and her daughter came up to her bed, where she was still sleeping it off, and said, Mom, there's a man from the federation with a suitcase and your uniforms and everything for the Olympic Games. And it's, you know, it's, it's in Tokyo or whatever, and it's on the or making it was China. But for me, it was, I knew she had to be on that side of the date line. And she's in Brazil, which is on the other side of the date line. And these she slapped herself awake and got in and took off and got on the plane and arrived 30 minutes before the final cut. That would have meant that she couldn't that team was eliminated, you know, by disqualification. She got to the competition site with 30 minutes to spare. So, you know, she goes to bed drunk and sad about not making it, and wakes up and goes and becomes a gold medalist. That's what Cody was, sort of hanging on to. And we all were, and anybody in any sport doesn't want anybody to get injured, but you know you have to be there as backup for sure.
Paul Barnett 23:26
When Cody went to Princeton, when he started there, you gave him an orange post it note. Can you tell us what was written on that
John Kessel 23:36
in red sharpie? Inc, I made a big three letter word, y, e, t, and on the orange, the red was on the orange, and I can still see it in my mind's eye. And, you know, I think that that's something that any coach of any age, that's a key word, you know, we talked last time on the words try and but and all those things well, yet is an incredibly important word for any kid or or older athlete, you know, because it's yelling, I can't do this. And you just say, yet, I'm here. I know you can. You just can't yet, and I'm not going to go away. I'm here to help you get to that achievement. So I use yet a lot in the gym.
The power of the word yet.
Paul Barnett 24:31
Terrific story. My daughter's due to head off to university in about three weeks. I may, I may borrow that. I may borrow that we shall see. Congratulations. Thank you. We wish. We wish she was staying at home. But never mind. She's off to get she's off
John Kessel 24:47
now my my kids both went as far away as you can get in the continental United States, from Colorado, Bowdoin in Maine, in Princeton, New Jersey, that's as far. As you can get from where they grew up in Colorado,
Paul Barnett 25:02
it's not as normal in Australia to head off to university. It's actually probably the exception, not the rule, because you've been here, you know, we all live on the right,
John Kessel 25:12
on the fringe, yeah? But nevertheless,
Paul Barnett 25:15
she's heading off to the nation's capital. We'll see how she goes, but
John Kessel 25:20
I'm going to interrupt you. Yeah, go for it with the thing that I want to congratulate you, and that is those listeners that have been lucky enough to hear Hugh McCutcheon speak, both directly and as a sort of co host, assistant to Paul Hugh McCutcheon in in November, was selected as the next four years Secretary General of the International volleyball federation and left his job in Minnesota, and that's a huge deal. The the guy that is now the president the top job of the International volleyball federation in Luzon for eight years, was a secretary general. So you have identified Hugh early on in your great coaches podcast, and now he's going to be Secretary General, and in another few years, I would expect to see him being the president of the International Federation for a good eight years so well,
Paul Barnett 26:21
thank you. He was in Sydney. We spoke a lot online, and then he was in Sydney last year, and I got to meet the family, and, yeah, it's been a it's been a friendship that's that's just come through the podcast. And I do love talking to him, because he's a very deep thinker, and he always has an interesting view, on a contrarian view, sometimes on the challenges that leadership brings. And he's so respected and connected all around the world. So no, but of course, John, you were the one that spotted you down there in New Zealand, in a gym in Christchurch and stole him from a rugby America, stole him from a rugby career, and took him over to the US. So I'm sure there's many other people like you that you've spotted on
John Kessel 27:10
your journey. Yeah, I've been lucky to to impact the lives of some people that that, for whatever reason, blossom into, you know, a really, really great leader in their sport and oftentimes in volleyball. But I can say, without mentioning two of their names, one was just recently, and another one was back in 85 they came to play for me in the United States, in the case of the first one, and she came, I'll just say, she came from Japan. And five days into her experience in the training gym that we were doing in New Mexico, she was sobbing, and I went up to her, thinking she was upset, homesick, and through her tears, she said, I have been playing volleyball for nine years, and this is the first time I've ever had fun. And I I bought fell onto the floor. I couldn't believe it. Well, fast forward to Estonia, and a gal that was a 22 year professional player is now learning from me in a FIV B level one how to become a coach, and I taught her the joy of play and the playing and you know, we don't we play volleyball. We don't drill volleyball in front of the fans. We play volleyball and, you know, you've got out of your spirit and all this other stuff, and even the war moves were, you know, fun, two versus 01, versus one plus one, loser becomes the net. All these games small sided get the reps. Games that doubles and triples gives way more than the normal six on six. And on the third day, she was warming up with her husband, actually, and she's about six four, and she was laughing. I looked up at her, and I said, Hey, you have to stop smiling. And she looked at me, and she goes, John, I've been playing professionally for 22 years, and this is the first time I've ever had fun. You're not going to stop me. But again, to go that long in as a professional, in a sport and not have fun. And my head, my head on, both of these athletes exploring now they're both giving back to the sport. She's moved on to become an international level, international Bible instructor, just one athlete. So, yeah, fun, fun, enjoy.
Paul Barnett 29:53
I did an episode last year, I think, on values, where I just. Together a pile of audio clips from all the great coaches I'd interviewed talking about values and the way they shaped themselves, or the way they shaped the team. And then at the end, I said, Look, top four values I've heard these great coaches talk about, and I respect integrity, accountability and joy. And as a as a, as a as a CEO, I've been to I've been doing this podcast for four years now. I've been a lot more focused on bringing a bit more joy to counter balance the daily grind of excellence. And I think that's something I've learned from Pew as well. You know that excellence is a grind, and joy does two things. One, it makes that grind easier. But the Valerie condas field, the great gymnastics coach, he just said, Joy amplifies learning. You know, it empowers it. And I think it's a very powerful idea. And I think you're right, we forget it a little bit because things get so serious.
John Kessel 30:58
So listeners bring joy and use chat, G, P, T or something to capture all the moments that Paul's podcasts have done, joy in their words, and listen to this deluge of joy.
Paul Barnett 31:15
Well, let's, let's move on from joy. Let's talk about learning, because you put me onto the book, faster, higher, stronger, by Mark McCluskey, and it was your description of it that actually got me interested. And it was quote, things in sport are no longer athletic battles, but learning competitions, learning competitions. And the reason it connected with me is because the workplace is the same. You're in a race to learn at a speed not just greater than your competitors. It's gone beyond that. You're trying to learn faster than the change that's occurring around you. But John, if I just step back and think about it from a little higher level, what have you learned about cultivating this skill of learning in others?
John Kessel 32:00
Well, I know that I was lucky to have Professor Emeritus, Carl McGowan, helping me, and enters Professor Emeritus of motor skill learning, and to be reading the books about motor learning principles to practice by Dr Richard Schmidt. And while a lot of the other terms, like ecological dynamics, which is a rabbit hole your listeners can go down to in a sports world, constraint based learning, those the thing that is important is that root word of learning, and how do you learn faster, is part of it, but also, how do you retain it? And when we first did motor learning, we would could show that you learned it faster this way, randomly, over blocked and and whole versus part. And I was a huge part teacher, and now I, you know, the research is saying, hey, hole is far better. I mean, relating back to learning to ride a bike, I think is a really good way for your CEOs or corporate people to understand, because everybody listening has ridden a bike. Well, you know, how did you learn to ride a bike? You didn't have a higher a bike riding coach. You didn't have a bike riding drills. You didn't, you know, go to bike riding summer camp. You rode the bike by trial and error and falling well, then there's this thing called training wheels, and the research shows that that slows the learning down. And then finally they come to the how do I learn faster is with a balanced bike, because the core part of bike riding is balancing. And so now you go buy a bike for kids, and then they balance the bike, and they learn to ride the bike faster.
So if they haven't watched it. The sports people should go watch a clip called the backwards bicycle, because that'll help your listeners understand how things are specifically learned. Because this guy can ride a bike for 30 years, they've switched one thing on the handlebars that the wheel goes left and the handlebars go right, and it takes him eight months to learn to ride a bike again. Even though he's been riding a regular bike, and the bike is regular, it just made one change, this thing, and it took him eight months now. It took the kid, his son, only three weeks, to figure it out. Human youth, much more plastic brain, you know, much more designed for learning when we're younger, because we have to survive.
But this learning, motor learning, how do you learn faster? That's one thing I saw early. What I didn't see until more researchers started to get to it is, how does it get. Pain. How does it get stay? How does it stick again? Because there's clear examples of you can do it this way, but the retention is less and therefore this is a much more effective way of learning. And I think one of the things I would say to, you know, I'm very anti punishment, especially physical punishment. And it's partly because if the principle of physical punishment was a great way to learn, then when you misspelled cat, your first grade teacher would have told you, give me 20 push ups or, you know, I mean, they would be physically punishing you in first and second grade, because it's a principle of learning. But you need to go back to learn how to be a teacher if you're going to if they did that to you. So at the same time, the example I'm going to use I did in Utah, there were three courts, I blew the whistle, and the kids came in for the very first time. Probably half of them walked in. And then I guided a question. I said, you guys, if this group of identical twins walked in like you all did, and those of you that jogged in or ran into me, sprinting into me was the other set of identical twins, and you always ran in at the end of the season. Who's going to learn more volleyball faster? And every kid goes, the kid that runs in, and then I go, you may do so then I walk away, I don't say anything else. And the next time you blow a whistle, they all run in. Well, what is that? That's a form of conditioning. Volleyball is a sprint sport, short sprints, and I'm going to whistle them in over a two hour practice, maybe 10 times or whatever. And they're I'm going to be over here one time and way over here another time. Another time, and they're going to sprint further, and the other groups get to sprint less and and I then tell them, you know, we are not going to waste our time doing lines, doing wind sprints. We need the net is here. Our Exploratorium is here. It's built right here. We don't have the net in 10 more minutes, but the net is here now, and we're going to use a net the entire time, because we train in reality. And I, as a young coach, didn't train enough in reality. I trained in as we talked about last time in this practicing for practice versus perform for performance I was practicing. So practice looked pretty not was going to happen in the game, in reality. So that was a huge mistake I made. [PB3]
His examples of uising guided questions to help people learn, and the example he gives of a backwards bicycle to illustrate it. He summarisys this as grills not drills approach to prsctice.
But learning effectively comes down to, you know, more than just the actual ball and implement and skills that you're doing. You know, it has to be based in the reality of how you compete. I think I this, I I'm not going to, I can't say that there's the Timberwolves head coach, and he said, at some point in time, just recently, last year or so, I would rather have an athlete do 30 shots contested than 1000 shots with no reality based challenge contesting. I mean, he was like way in these two huge gaps, and I loved it, because when they play somebody's in your face magically all the time, and that's the reality of what you have, versus doing things without that reality, You just get better faster, and you remember it deeper, longer than everything else. That's that's the other part that didn't exist. Years ago, we didn't see the retention part, and we now know that retention isn't increased by forgetting it and then having to re remember and then do something else, and then, oh, I have to re remember it. That's how you get it to retain. And instead, I used to do 50 in a row, you know, and it looked good, but it's not reality.
Paul Barnett 39:33
I often reflect on this because it is applicable in the workplace, but there's a time lag that comes from empowering someone to learn it themselves, rather than you just doing it for them. And that managing that time lag is is, I think, what becomes crucial. But you talk a lot, I. About a core philosophy you have, which is grills, not drills. So you've, you've found a way of managing that tension, of not just resorting to a drill, but taking time to grill. Could you? Could you just talk a little bit about that and how it works?
John Kessel 40:19
Well, I think on a huge scale, it's kind of interesting. If you type in, I think we talked about it maybe last time, but if you type in to Google volleyball drill, you get, last time I looked 32 million choices, which means you would spend, I don't know how many lifetimes learning a new drill each day, or, you know, three drills of practice, and you never get good at volleyball, and our Men's National Team probably does a half a dozen drills, or drills, that's it. So somewhere along the way, the best only do this and the beginners are learning all these drills. Well, I was just a drill collector. My recipe box would fill. I had Bob Bratton's 300 plus volleyball drill book, and then, oh, I bought the 400 more drill book, and I was in heaven, and I was teaching my kids all these drills, and none of them transferred really into the game. Because if why do we do everything we do? We want to all our practice. We wanted to transfer to the competition. And the 99% of the drills I see, of those, 32 million are not effective, transfers into becoming a better player. In fact, the majority of them are teaching you how to be worse. That's an article that I could share with you. It's called from positive to you know, from positive to great.
And I, as a young coach, I used to teach things that were negative mistakes versus positive mistakes, and every sport has these. I'll just give volleyball as a simple example. It's always better to serve the ball over the net out long than it is into the net. They're both errors. They both result in the other team getting the point. But when you learn from the beginning to hit it over the net, long you not only are showing that you've got more power, but you make the other team that you're practicing with go in or out and look, I think it's out. Oh, I was right. Or they might call it in, even though it was out. And all these good things can happen when you hit it in the net. It's never good. And each of my sports skills have a good way to make a mistake and a worse way to make a mistake. And I taught the worst way. First, as a young coach, everything I did was the worst way, and now I'm teaching the the more letting you make a mistake, but the mistake, as you evolve in your skill set, is going to always be a good mistake, because there's teammates to save the ball or gives me more room to hit the ball than the one that I used to teach, which is too tight to the net or too low or all these other things. So I don't know if that answers it fully, but I'll tell you, I think it's pretty cool how you and Macquarie University and the things that are happening are are impacting more than just, you know, sport, I think it's fantastic. Can
Paul Barnett 43:43
I ask you about that more than than sport? Because you you talk about this idea, perception, action, coupling. Now you describe this as what you see determines how you move. And I just paused when I read it, because I think it's got applicability away from the court. But how have you used it away from the court to influence whether it's your own kids or all the people, people around you that you've been teaching?
John Kessel 44:15
That's usually done after the fact, where you can kind of show how that coupled there. And this is a lot of Rob Gray's work out of Arizona State, if you want to go dig into the root guy that really, I think his podcast might even be called perception and action coupling. I'm not sure, but I just listen.
But in in almost any sport that's antagonistic, and even to a degree, golf and things that where the ball is just sitting there waiting for you hit it, the number one skill is reading. It's. Anticipating. It's seeing as soon as you can, perceiving what's going to happen, and it's coupled to your action that you're going to do. What we see determines how we move. Flat out, that's the most important thing to sometimes realize. And what I see determines how I move. Means that I'm I want to give myself as much time in high speed sports as possible in order to discover the more likely place to be at this right place at the right time, which also takes a lot of practice. You know, I just I, but I, as I think about technique, you we started talking Paul about how the relationship counselor, you know, for me, the person who feels appreciated is going to always kind of do more than you expect. And appreciating a kid of any age is a is a really important job of a coach. And you know that John Wooden poem where he talks about it, no written word nor spoken plea can make them man what he should be, nor all the books on all the shelves is what the person you know, the teacher is himself. It's you know who you are as a teacher that is not the words and everything else. And I say relationship counselor, because I want to know more about the kid than just their volleyball skills, and we talked about it last time. For sure, the thing that I have come to realize a point blank statement that the only kids who don't get better are the ones who don't come. Everybody else that comes into that gym is going to get better, how much varying degrees, but the kids who don't get better are the ones who don't come. And so my job is what we talked about last time, you know, never be a child's last coach. My job is to get create a place of joy, a place of to want to come. [PB4]
And it's really important, I think, at least in this country, it's 16 and under, where we don't have a whole lot of mass transit, and so the only people that can get you to the gym are your parents. They're being late isn't the fault of the kid. Usually, it's because mom and dad had something else to do and then they finally got the kid to get in the gym. So I, you know, I don't ever really punish kids for being late, because at least at 16 and below, as they're older, that becomes more of a hey, you've got a car. You need to be on time, type situation. But
Paul Barnett 48:10
I don't know. I think this is, I like this idea of what you see, determining how you move, and I think about it as parent and you know, it's very easy to not not intercede, or not get in the way of what your kids are looking at on social media or or what they're watching on TV, or the books they're reading. But I think that's abdicating responsibility a little bit. And I think it's the same as the CEO what people see in the workplace will determine how they move. And this is really, you know, if you're not surrounding people with the right messages, whether it's blogs, posters, emails, audio, whatever it is, you're not going to influence how they move. And I think it's a very I think it's a deeper idea than that, and I think there's a very strong link between the two. But it hadn't, you know, I would probably have thought about it as you know, what they see is how they think. But I like this idea of taking it a step further and saying, Well, no, what they see once is
John Kessel 49:05
how people move. So I have a question for you. What is weight? Mean?
Paul Barnett 49:14
The word weight, my wife would my wife would tell you it means too much beer, but she's a fitness teacher, and she's often spelling it
John Kessel 49:22
wrong. It's spelled W, A, I T, what
Paul Barnett 49:27
does weight mean? I would say frustration. That would be my that's the first word that comes to mind.
John Kessel 49:35
It stands for, why am I talking? I Yes, and it's again, it's that whole thing I think we talked about last time, you have two ears, you have two eyes and only one mouth. And as a young coach, I was just verbally giving feedback and words and you know, the more you you know told, the more you confuse them. Yeah, now I am much more effective and efficient and short in my words, which is part of motor learning, they're called cues, rather than long, rambling sentences or whatever, but, but I did learn something recently from Daniel Pink, he, he, because I do talk about feed forward over feedback, because in feed forward, you can work on what's to come, and feedback you're talking about what's already happened, you can't change so. But he pointed out the value of saying asking for advice rather than feedback, and that really resonated with me, because when I talk to you, can you give me feedback on how I'm doing here today, Paul, you know you're going to have some negative in there, or you're going to deal with it. If I say, Can you give me some advice? It's totally different in our relationship. You're more of a mentor. I'm just here to listen to your thoughts and your wisdom, I see the two words as totally way more important to deal with advice and ask for advice rather than feedback, so that's something I've learned recently.
The power of asking for advice instead of feedback.
Paul Barnett 51:15
So John, maybe we could just finish with a quote of yours about hallways, and I'm wondering if you could share the quote, perhaps how it shaped you a little bit.
John Kessel 51:30
Yeah, I you know, you know, there's a classic statement of the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step, and then at the end, you get to this journey at the end, you you know you summit it. You climb Mount Everest or whatever. When you think of any journey, whether it's in corporate world or in the sports world, you have a start that you do your best with the knowledge you have, and you're going to be a hell lot smarter at the end, what you have to be comfortable with is the concept of the hell in the hallways of getting to there. And for me, it's a kind of a double entendre, because it's not only the journey outdoors, like the wilderness and bison peak lodge stuff, you know, for me, but all our kids, the vast majority of our kids, are in school and have to go through hallways. And they go from this class to that class, and yet the hallway is sometimes the hardest part of the of the trip as well, but I like to think of it with that whole journey to the end. But there's hell in the hallways. Sometimes you could say there's hell on the trail or hell on the journey, but the hallway comes from what we talked about earlier, constraint based learning. Where you put hallway, you put walls on the side to constraint things so it's a little bit easier to get through, rather than the whole vast field. That's how that ties together, too. Wow. This has been fun.
Paul Barnett 53:12
You actually said it. I've got it. I put it on a yellow sticky note when, when I read it, you said, when life opens one door, it closes another, but it's hell in the whole ways,
John Kessel 53:22
yeah, but it was a great yeah, that's a really good way to close this out. I agree. I mean, I think, I think you're making a difference in way more people's lives after we're done here, I'm going to share with you a story from a coach I've been mentoring for years. He's 70 years old, and long story short is that a 13 year old wrote her paper about him and how he helped his life, and he had no idea. He had no idea. And his mom found the letter and sent it on to him, because she got an A or something, you know, and he was just in tears because he goes, I had no idea it's that whole ripple effect of of how you can make a difference, and you don't even know it. And I think that applies to what you're doing in a lot of ways. You don't know how many ripple effects and impact you're making, but I appreciate the chance to talk with you again. No, thank you. Good to see you. And Oz,
Paul Barnett 54:28
yeah. No, thank you, John. I have a, I have a I made a new friend last year, which is increasingly hard as you get older. Great friend called Matthias. And he, he, he started listening to the podcast, and he said to me, Paul, you know these he has no background in coaching, and I don't think he's really interested in sport, to be honest. But he said, Paul, these people that you're interviewing, he said they're like invisible mentors. They sort of, they stick around with you in your head. Yeah, after the episode, and it was really great idea, because in my life, the people that I've interviewed, you know, and I've they've helped me in innumerable ways when I've been faced with the challenge in the workplace or at home, and I really like this idea of invisible mentors. And I think that story you just shared is a great is a great example of that happening through someone's life.
John Kessel 55:24
It's been awesome. Thank you,
Paul Barnett 55:26
John. It's always good. Happy New Year. It's always good to chat with you. We will, we will. I've, uh, I've got some more of your writing to read through, so we'll do that, and we'll, we'll put a part three together. But it's always, always fascinating to listen
John Kessel 55:38
to my mentor. Thank you, John, take care. Talking to you. Have a good breakfast.