Join our journey, subscribe today!

Gamify your way to the top

Jan 04, 2023

When I was 14, I made up a game with my older brother.

We were in the backyard of our parent's house peppering the volleyball around like we normally would. These pepper sessions would always last about 10-15 minutes before one of us would get bored. Something different happened during this pepper session; I shanked a pass and it went rolling up onto the roof. As the ball reached the top and began to roll back down my brother Brian passed it right back to me without skipping a beat.

Immediately we began to experiment with different ways of playing the ball off of our surroundings. Slowly we began to add layers of rules and boundaries until this Frankenstein's monster version of pepper turned into a full fledged game we called 'Roof Ball'. It was a cooperative and competitive version of volleyball that made us develop each skill in order to succeed.

Our 15-minute pepper sessions turned into 2-hour Roof Ball battles.

Each and every day after school my brother Brian and I would do battle on the Roofball court. What used to be a few minutes outside "practicing" volleyball turned into multiple hours a day competing. Day by day, week by week, month by month Brian and I were racking up more hours playing volleyball than anyone around.

We invited our friends and club teammates to play Roofball and would spend "off days" playing beach volleyball at West Valley College where there were free pickup games every Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday.

The results showed: my 16's year my Bay to Bay club team placed in the top-5 nationally. The following season we brought home the clubs first Open Bronze medal finishing 3rd in the country. These results helped me secure a roster spot at University of the Pacific to play Division 1 volleyball.

Little did we realize, but we had gamified the most important aspect of skill acquisition: time on task. We turned a slightly boring task (pepper) and turned it into a full fledged addicting game (Roof Ball). This made up game became the greatest coach I ever had: repetition, failure, strategy, encouragement, creativity, and so much more.

How do I gamify this process for my athletes?

As a coach, I realized that the easiest way to help my athletes succeed was to lower the hurdle to skill acquisition. This means that my focus each and every day in practice is to provide the framework of a game within whatever skill we are working towards.

Even more so, I look to cultivate a club team environment where athletes are celebrated for finding outside opportunities to play (beach volleyball, grass volleyball, roof volleyball, etc.). When each athlete is spending more time on task in a way that excites them the level of the entire team raises with them. Whether it be simple shoutouts or giving out prizes to athletes that hit certain water marks is up to you.

Understanding this gamification process matters in modern day coaching (specifically at the club level where teams may only practice 2-3 times a week). Providing your athletes with the framework to train in a productive and enjoyable way sets them up for ling term success.

For all my coaches, product managers, and leaders which habits do you want to instill in your athletes and direct reports? How can you gamify these habits?

If you can identify the most important task for skill development and turn it into a quantifiable game, your team will be indistinguishable 6 months from now.

Join our journey!

Join our mailing list to receive the latest news and updates. We respect your privacy, and will never share your information.

Close

50% Complete

You are halfway to awesome...

Drop your name and email and we will keep you up to date with the best club volleyball business information we can get our hands on 🤝