Take a Ha (or Two)

Volleyball is a sport. Hopefully I won't get too much of an argument when I make that statement. And as with most sports, it involves physical strength and endurance. You have to train for it, practice the different skills often, and make sure you're in good enough physical condition to be the most effective on the court. You have to have strong legs to block and to play defense. Strong arms to serve and hit. Strong hands to set and to tip. Overall, if you're going to play volleyball, just like any other sport, you have to be physically strong and "in shape."

But volleyball isn't all about being physically strong. By any means. Volleyball involves something that my high school coach used to call mental toughness. Unlike most other sports, being mentally tough in volleyball is more important than being physically tough. And of course you can argue that you have to be mentally strong in any sport you play, which I have no doubt is true. But in volleyball, it's different. I like to think of it like this:

A volleyball game is fairly long, usually somewhere from an hour to two hours. However, in that hour or two, think about how much time is spent actually touching the ball for any individual player. Even if you're the setter or the best player on your team, and the ball is always heading your way, the amount of time spent being in contact with the ball is very short. In an entire five game match, I would guess that the average player touches the play for a total of 10-15 seconds (this is only counting contact with the ball while it is actually in play).

So, in a sport where you actually have physical contact with the ball for such a short amount of time, a lot must go into the time before and after you touch the ball. And here is where the mental game is so important.

In volleyball, you have a lot of time to think. And unlike on a test in school, this can be a dangerous thing. The more time you have to think in the middle of the game, the more time you have to psych yourself out and let your nerves get to you.

This is why in volleyball, being mentally tough is so important. You can't let the little pressures and stresses mess up those 13 seconds you get to change the outcome of the game.

When I was in high school, my team went to a week long camp called Guy Enriques Team Camp every summer. There were some incredible volleyball players at this camp, and many of them took the time to talk to all of us players about things like mental toughness.

The one thing they taught me to do in pressure situations is to take a "ha." Ha is the Hawaiian word for breath. Before you serve, serve receive, or the whistle blows, the players at this camp told us to take our has. At first I thought it was dumb; I didn't think taking a breath before I served or passed would make a difference. But boy was I wrong.

Taking a ha before I begin play actually made a huge difference in my volleyball career. Every time I took a breath, it would remind me to relax, and just play how I know I could. Once I started taking my ha, I truly did notice a difference in my presence on the court. I was calmer, more relaxed. I would't let little mistakes get to me, and some of the best games of my life were also some of the closest ones This helped me prove to myself that I could handle pressure situations and play at my best when I really needed to.

Being mentally strong is not always easy, and it took me years of playing volleyball to develop enough mental toughness to perform under pressure. But sometimes all it takes is a deep breath to calm those nerves and set your mind on the track to success (and victory)!