The Mental Side of Volleyball

The mental side of sports is on the up and up and becoming more of a topic of conversation in every sport. Volleyball is no different. As the level of play gets higher, your physicality and skills have to improve. However, it is arguably more important that your mindset and mental game improve. Some of these mental holes that are easy to get into are situations that all athletes have delt with in some form. The ones I break down here are ones that I personally struggled and struggle with the most. Here are some ways that I have found help me work around them.

As the game gets faster and the opponents get better, it is extremely difficult to keep your mind on track. Let me give you a few personal examples. One that we are all too familiar with is the almighty negative self-talk. It can be played off in so many different ways “I’m too hard on myself”, “I’m just competitive and want to win” or “I just suck and want to be better”. Any way you want to justify the negative things that you say to yourself, it never gets you to a better place mentally. I personally fell victim to the “I’m just competitive and want to win, so I’m really hard on myself”. The things I would say in my head were things that aren’t worth repeating and only served the purpose of tearing myself down. What I thought was going to help me and motivate me only made me feel like less of a volleyball player, athlete, teammate, and human. Negative self-talk isn’t something that’s easy to pull yourself out of, we all fall into saying things in our minds that simply aren’t helpful. The best advice I can give for this bad habit is to realize that you “being hard on yourself” in a negative way has absolutely no benefit. If you want to be hard on yourself do it in a way that is actually going to help. Hold yourself accountable to doing something right over and over again. Hold yourself accountable to things that are tangible and within your control. Lastly, have keys or phrases that will bring you back to having a small focus. You can’t fix everything at once, take one thing a day/practice that will help you improve.

The mental side of improving is a beast that is still kicking my butt to this day. There is no better feeling than seeing real growth within yourself or your team, but there is also no worse feeling than seeing a decline or plateauing. This is a personal struggle of mine. The feeling of putting in hours and hours of work and not feeling like you’ve improved at all is so deflating. The feeling of plateauing is, in my opinion, the worst feeling as an athlete. Not seeing change day after day when you are working your butt off can leave you feeling helpless. I wish I had answers to this one myself because, I’d be in a better headspace. From what I’ve experienced from this the best advice I have is, you have to find a smaller focus. If you are so focused on a broad idea or skill to improve on, you’re not going to see the gains you want to see. If you go into every practice or training session and think about a small and very specific change that you want to make, you will feel and see the improvement. Then when the next practice comes and you master your next small specific change, before you know it you’ve made a lot of progress.

Maybe the worst of all mental slumps in sports is the feeling that everyone in the gym is staring at you and thinks you’re bad. Ill set the scene for you… It’s my freshman year at UW and I come into a gym that is full of veteran hitters who have been there and done that. In my mind, I’m just some kid who is trying to learn the system, learn how to manage collegiate athletics, and having to jump into volleyball right away. In my head, I was the worst in the gym. I couldn’t think straight because all I could think about was how my performance wasn’t up to the standard of the upper classmen. What I soon came to realize was that every player in the gym had their own shit to be worried about. They all had their own projects and skills that they needed to improve on. The truth is, no one is paying as much attention to you as you think and probably no one cares or is thinking about your own skills as much as you are. It doesn’t matter what people think of you. If you truly want to get better, then you have to stop worrying about what other people thoughts are and to stop trying to please everyone. Your improvement is up to you and not dependent on anyone else. Put your head down and grind.

My favorite one… YOUR PROGRESS IS YOUR PROGRESS. Put your blinders on and don’t look sideways. This is my favorite saying because it is something that everyone falls victim to. If you look at other people’s progress and improvement and compare it to your own, you’re toast. Everyone improves at a different pace. If you have your mind set on the things you want to get better at, what is happening around you shouldn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that your teammate is getting all the publicity and looks from all the schools, your development as a volleyball player has nothing to do with her. Your progress as a volleyball player and human is YOUR progress. NOT your teammates, not your parents, not your coach’s. Take pride in your progress, take pride in your journey. The saying “don’t look sideways” applies to absolutely everyone. If you ride the bench you don’t look to the starting players and wish you were them. You put your head down and grind. If you’re on the starting lineup and getting all the awards under the sun, you don’t look at the people on the bench and thank god you’re not them. You put your head down and grind. Especially when you are feeling like you are on top or at a good place with your skills, you don’t look back at all the people you’re better than. There’s always someone better than you, chase them and keep your eyes on them.

I’ll get off my soapbox here and debrief. These are battles that I’m still fighting, and they're only getting harder. The mental side of volleyball is so hard. It’s SO hard. I have dug myself in some pretty dark holes mentally and have had to pull myself out. To be honest, the mental side is only getting harder. Building a good mindset that allows me to pull myself out of negative talk and bad mental habits is going to be crucial for me as I keep playing and it is crucial for any level of sports.