Important Dates
Regular Practice Schedule - Click here.
2016 Competition Schedule - Click here.
Power 4 Even - Sunday 20th March.
Power 4 Odd - Sunday 3rd April
FRVBC Olympian Summer Camp
A huge thank you to all the FRVBC Parents, Players and Volunteers who helped make the event a great success once again. To give you a brief idea how much work is involved take a look at the time lapse video below of just a 4 hour section of tear down!
FRVBC Final Finishes can be found by clicking here.
Thanks to Bruno Hald for the images.
Activation Level and Peak Performance
Interesting Article by Bryan Loy
Imagine that you are talking to your coach right before the biggest race of the season. What does he or she say? "Okay, this is it. Today its time to create your championship moment and make your dreams come true. Go show everyone why you have been working hard for the last six months and dominate this race." We think that as athletes we should be most fired up for when it matters most. We may even think that if we are not this pumped up that there is something wrong with us. So many athletes try to get as psyched as possible before the biggest of races. Soetimes when this happens we perform better than we have all season. Other times, we blow up. While understanding a good or bad performance in distance running (or any other discipline) can be difficult, performance may be moderated by activation level, or the degree that an athlete is "pumped up".
There is in fact an optimal amount of activation required for peak performance in sport, and this level is explained by the Inverted-U theory. Performance is best at a moderate level of arousal, but will worsen if arousal is too high or too low (Martens & Landers, 1970). But the amount of arousal or activation that is too high or too low for each individual varies. Research has suggested that activation needs to be at a moderate level for each individual for the best performances to occur. The pattern was confirmed in a study with basketball players, where the best performances were associated with moderate levels of state anxiety, but worse performances were related to elevated state anxiety (Sonstroem & Bernardo, 1982).
The key, therefore, is to learn how to read activation levels and understand how to change activation or arousal in order to reach the optimal individual level. High activation or arousal is what we think of as being "fired up" and is characterized by a higher than normal heart rate and a feeling of readiness to act. In order to reach a high level of activation athletes may use self-talk or can imagine great performances and success. Individuals can also use fast and intense music or an especially aggressive warmup to reach this state (Lauer, 2010). A loud and intense pep-talk would also probably do the trick. High activation states may be ideal for middle-distance races where it is important to be running hard from the gun and to react quickly to moves in the race. It will also be very easy to reach this state at events with a great deal of pressure or many fans, such as a national cross country meet or a large track invitational.
Low activation, however, is characterized by a feeling of relaxation and calmness. In order to lower activation and reach this state, individuals may listen to calming music and practice deep breathing. Some may also read a book or talk to friends about matters unrelated to competition. Athletes may also use a more gentle warmup and try to conserve energy before the start of a race. Many others also lay down before warming up for a race and imagine a calming place, such as a beach, in order to lower arousal or stay relaxed (Lauer, 2010). Reaching a state of lower activation may be more important in the distance races, such as a 10k or marathon, where relaxation through the first half of the race is important and sudden moves early in the race are rare. Individuals are likely to feel relaxed in smaller early season meets or practice and can reach this state easily, whereas it may be more difficult to maintain low levels of activation before a very big or important race. Finally, a coach's instructions can also impact arousal level. An intense speech will certainly elevate activation level, but a few relaxed words or minor instructions said in a calm voice will likely lower activation or arousal.
The best way to determine your optimal level of activation is to pay attention to how your level of arousal before action impacts the subsequent performance. Signs of a higher than ideal level of activation may include feeling jittery at the start line, going out too fast, or feeling drained and devoid of energy relatively early in the race. But if you struggle to really "get into the race" or do not feel very fired up or competitive during the race, your activation level may have been too low before the performance. If your activation level before performance is not ideal, use some of the above strategies to change it and your performance may improve for the better.
View the VolleySmash Demonstration That Took Place at Crossroads
;
Alumnae News
 |
We are excited to launch our FRVBC Alumni Group on LinkedIn. If you have played with FRVBC or coached with FRVBC, you are welcome to join this group and reconnect with old teammates and network with other alumni. We are excited to help young professionals from our program continue to pursue excellence in their adult lives. Join today: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/7022930 |
Front Range VBC Parent Channel
As many of you are aware we have a 'Parent Channel' on Datfish TV that has many videos to keep our parents in the loop with the way we train our athletes. You should be receiving an email each time a new video is placed on the channel. Some of you have had difficulty viewing these so we have also set up a YouTube channel that contains the same videos. The channel can be viewed by clicking here and we suggest you bookmark and subscribe to it once you have accessed the site.
Shoe Sale
We have a few pairs of shoes left for sale. The following sizes are available.
Mizuno Wave Lightning ($70.00) - Sizes 6, 7
Mizuno Wave Bolt ($60.00) - Sizes 7.5, 8, 9, 9.5, 10, 10.5, 11
Contact Jen Youngblood or Steve Colpus if you wish to make a purchase
PLEASE NOTE: CHSAA bylaws allow all HS athletes to attend camps/clinics/lessons during their season.
Permission from your Principal need to be sought in cases where HS athletes are seeking to practice or compete with other teams during the HS volleyball season.
FRVBC on Instagram
Front Range Volleyball Club is pleased to announce that we have joined Instagram. Instagram is a free app that allows a user to share photos with followers. We will be posting pictures of our teams throughout the year through this application. Start following us today! Players- please feel free to start tagging yourselves in these photos. http://instagram.com/frvbc Be sure to tag us "@frvbc" when posting pictures at the gym or at competition.
Team Reps and Parents - Photogrid is a free app that enables a user to input several pictures into one collage that can then be shared with others through Social Media. This is a great option for parents and players to make collages of tournaments to send to us to be shared using our FRVBC twitter, facebook, and instagram accounts. Please keep this app in min
Remember to "Like" us on Facebook
Please make sure you "Like" our page if you have not already done so and encourage your friends and relatives to do so. Almost 1400 fans already have! It is one of the quickest ways to receive up to the minute FRVBC news, information, team pictures and video. We've also linked our page to Twitter so if you're a "tweeter" you can keep up to date with all our news. Click on the Facebook logo below.
Stay Tuned For More
Are the newsletter updates not frequent enough for you? Then you need to follow us on Twitter! You're not on Twitter yet? Then like us on Facebook! (For the really hip, you can add us to a circle on Google+.)Then you'll get all the breaking news as fast as we can post it!
