The Brain Isn’t a Computer: Rethinking “Effective Feedback” in Volleyball
Tama Miyashiro and Erin Virtue are moving the conversation forward. The next step is letting the game itself do the teaching.
When USA Volleyball dropped a new video titled “Structuring a Meaningful Practice | Providing Effective Feedback” featuring Tama Miyashiro and Erin Virtue, I was all in before I even hit play. Two world-class minds talking about how to make practice more meaningful and feedback more effective? Yes, please!
And to be clear — this is a great conversation. It’s the kind of thing I wish every coach could watch. The tone is generous, curious, and athlete-centered. Tama and Erin both speak with a mix of humility and wisdom that comes from years in the trenches.
But — and there’s always a “but” — it also reveals how hard it still is for us as a coaching community to let go of the “mind as a computer” model of learning.
Even when we say we’re building “athlete-centered” environments, we often end up creating upgraded versions of the same old control systems — prettier interfaces, better language, but still built on the same operating system.
Let’s dig in.
The Good Stuff: Empathy, Ownership, and Curiosity
Early in the video, Virtue says something that made me smile:
“The more we can include our athletes, the better. If I’m included in that process, I’m probably going to do it better.”
Yes. 100 times yes.
This is a huge leap forward from the command-and-correct culture many of us grew up in. Coaches who empower athletes, invite their input, and help them co-create learning environments aren’t just teaching volleyball — they’re teaching life.
Miyashiro follows that up with this gem:
“What did you see there? How did that feel? … It’s connecting what they saw, what their body did, what their brain told them to do.”
Again — a huge upgrade from the days of, “You dropped your elbow. Fix it.”
The intent here is beautiful: curiosity over correction. Questions over commands. Reflection over reaction.
If more coaches started from this mindset, volleyball (and honestly, youth sports in general) would look completely different.
Where It Still Misses the Mark: The Brain Isn’t a Computer
But here’s the rub.
When I hear “connecting what the body did with what the brain told it to do,” I know we’re still trapped in the same paradigm that’s quietly steering so much of coaching.
It’s the belief that learning is about the brain processing information — the coach uploads, the athlete downloads, and practice is the software update that improves performance.
It’s tidy. It’s logical. And it’s almost completely wrong.
Players don’t store perfect motor programs and retrieve them later like files on a desktop. They adapt — moment to moment — in response to what’s actually happening. Perception and action aren’t two separate things; they’re a single, continuous dance.
In other words, the body doesn’t wait for the brain’s permission slip to move.
And when we design practices around that reality — around perception, action, and context — athletes start learning the way humans are built to learn.
The Volleyball School Problem
There’s a part of the video where they describe the “volleyball school” model — structured, semi-isolated skill work where players focus on feedback, refine movement, and then gradually increase complexity.
Sounds great. But it’s also a luxury item.
If you’re running the national team, or you’ve got 25 hours of practice a week, maybe you can afford to run “volleyball school.” But for those of us in the high school or club trenches — with maybe six hours a week, overstressed and overworked kids, and a soundtrack of squeaky shoes and whistles — that model starts to break down fast.
For us, every minute has to carry game transfer. We don’t need to add more practice time to get better. We need to make the time we have more efficient and effective.
And that means the game itself — not a coach’s feedback or an isolated skill station — has to be the teacher.
The most meaningful practice isn’t the one where we deliver the best corrections. It’s the one where the environment gives the best feedback.
Upgrading to a Representative Model
What would it look like if we took all the great things from this video — athlete ownership, feedback awareness, reflective questioning — and embedded them inside activities that actually behave like volleyball?
That’s where the ecological approach, and specifically the NAC framework (Notice–Adapt–Commit), can upgrade what’s already good here into something transformational.
Notice: Instead of asking players to recall what they “thought” during a rep, help them tune in to what the game is showing them right now — the trajectory, the timing, the spacing, the rhythm.
Adapt: Let them explore. Create constraints that nudge discovery instead of prescribing answers. As in: “You’ve got to score off a bad pass,” not “You need to set higher.”
Commit: Once they’ve found a solution that works, hold it under game pressure until it stabilizes. No perfect technique — just functional adaptability.
That’s how learning sticks. Not because it’s stored in the brain, but because it’s recreated in context.
The Subtle Trap of “Better Feedback”
One of the most interesting parts of the video is their discussion about when to give feedback — after a batch, not every rep. This is a great step toward autonomy and self-regulation.
But even there, the model is still fundamentally hierarchical: coach gives, player receives.
In the NAC approach — and in ecological coaching more broadly — the goal is to design environments where the game itself provides the majority of the feedback. The coach’s job is to sharpen the environment, not deliver the answers.
Think of it like designing a video game level: the obstacles teach the player what works. You don’t need to pause the game every ten seconds to explain gravity.
Change Is Hard
Let’s be honest: change is uncomfortable.
Especially for coaches who’ve had success doing things the old way.
If you’ve built your entire coaching identity around precision, repetition, and technical correctness, hearing that learning doesn’t actually work that way can feel like an existential gut punch.
But the best coaches aren’t defined by what they know — they’re defined by their willingness to relearn.
We talk to athletes about embracing discomfort all the time. It’s time we apply that same courage to our own craft.
And here’s the good news: the shift toward ecological coaching doesn’t mean abandoning everything you’ve done. It just means reorganizing it around how players actually learn — through exploration, attunement, and adaptability.
In the End
Tama Miyashiro and Erin Virtue are asking the right questions, and they’re doing it with a humility and warmth that deserves real praise.
But our challenge now is to go further — to build practice environments that don’t just include athletes in the process, but depend on their perception and adaptation to function.
It’s not about teaching athletes to think like computers. It’s about trusting that they already know how to learn like humans.
Maybe the next USA Volleyball video won’t be about “effective feedback.” Maybe it’ll be about designing feedback loops that don’t need us at all.
That’s the future of meaningful practice.
We’re all trying to build better environments for learning — ones that honor the chaos, the creativity, and the humanity in sport. That’s what makes this conversation worth having.
If something here made you pause, disagree, or see your own coaching a little differently, I’d love to hear it. Drop a comment and share how you’re exploring these ideas in your gym — or what still doesn’t sit right.
And if you’ve found value in these reflections on the ecological approach and the NAC Method (Notice. Adapt. Commit.), consider becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps me keep questioning, writing, and sharing ways we can coach humans — not machines.
Loren - Much love for your un-ending energy and passion for this. I really admire your willingness to speak truth to power and continually champion this new and exciting opportunity to fundamentally change how we coach. Please continue! :-)
I think you're selling the conscious brain a little short. In terms of movement fluidity and efficiency, etc... very little argument from me on anything you're saying. However, I think you might consider a few things:
1. There's evidence that foreknowledge of expected events changes how your body responds to them. For example, if you walk down a hallway and somebody pops out in a Scream mask, you'll like get a fright. If I tell you, "walk down that hallway and somebody is going to come out and try to scare you," you will likely not startle much.
This doesn't necessarily contradict your NAC model, which I think is a good one. However, when I read your articles, I hear that there's essentially *no* control by the conscious part of the brain and it's all in-the-moment response to environmental stimulus. I think that overstates the case a bit. Of course, coaches have just as much potential to screw athletes up here: If a coach says, "okay be ready for the line, but also watch her hitting cross, and oh, she might also tip," that's not so helpful.
2. I think you correctly point out that the coach attempting to exert conscious control into the athlete's movement strategy often backfires. However, I think you undersell the important of *somebody* organizing strategy/tactics and/or how players synch up to each other. It is certainly possible for players to organize together as a team and get offensive and defensive systems synched up. However, group dynamics are such that this often means that the player with the strongest personality, highest social status on the team, or the most well-spoken and assertive player gets to define the system.
Or also, consider that the system on your current team is going to be very influenced by the coaches of your previous team. For example, take the tipping strategy I refer to as a Scrape Tip. By now there's dozens of coaches using this effectively with their teams. Some of their players would self-organize that strategy on their own (indeed, I systematized it after observing players who naturally did it). Some players would likely never come up with it unless guided or instructed to do it. And then there's a third category of players who WOULD self-organize and discover that strategy, but they are still hearing the voice of their coach last year who told them that tipping is bad and you need to try to swing at every ball you can.
3. Finally and related to both of these: one of the main purposes of strategy/tactics in sport is to fool common pattern recognition. For example, players quickly learn that an opposing hitter jumping up with a straight arm and fingers pointed up to the ball indicates a tip. So they learn to crash up for the tip. However, at a certain level of competition, hitters are capable of throwing the ball deep. Also, a well-organized defensive system can say, "when we see the outside hitter indicating tip, zone 1 and zone 4 players crash for the tip, but zone 6 player needs to stay deep for the deep throw."
This is where explicit direction can be valuable. It can be both true that zone 6 player can correctly recognize that most likely result of what they see is a tip but also that they still shouldn't crash up for the ball because they have other teammates to play that ball.