Really interesting concept! I recently started playing volleyball casually after a decade or so of playing competitive video games, and its remarkable how transferrable a lot of the "soft skills" of competition are, particularly from fighting games. Timothy Gallwey's "The Inner Game of Tennis" is VERY popular in the fighting game scene, so I was already familiar with concepts from sports psychology being applied to video games, but its been fun to see how this connection can go the other way as well. Developing a game plan, executing on that game plan, reading and adapting to your opponents options, problem solving when you don't have an immediate answer to something, identifying and addressing your mistakes/bad habits, learning and implementing new techniques, and staying composed in the moment all seem to be somewhat universally useful in the world of competition, with different sports/games emphasizing some of these aspects over others. The big difference seems to be that some of these elements are much more gated behind physical ability in sports vs. other kinds of competition, but regardless I think they make for a really strong foundation for learning any kind of competitive pursuit. Competition is competition is competition IMO

@GeorgeFrazerVB

2 ай бұрын

I'm really glad you agree, and it's super interesting to hear about your experience coming from video games to volleyball. Like I said it's so common to hear people say "yeah well no wonder I'm good at x I used to play *insert sport*, but you never really hear people say the same when talking about things like video games but as you say there's no reason they shouldn't. Also interesting to know that The Inner Game of Tennis is so popular outside of sport but I'm not at all surprised given it's such a great book. I really like the point you make about how some of the mental and competitive aspects are gated behind physical skills, I might have to steal that idea haha as it's really well put!

@Masa6x

2 ай бұрын

Im in a similar boat, I played tryhard comp fps games for years and am pretty good, and try to have the same mentality in volleyball. At the moment I feel like nothing matters until I mastery the fundamental techniques with more consistency, although I guess that also applies to fps. No game sense, strategy or comms matter if you cant shoot back. Im trying to leverage my best physical traits and mindset as much as I can to get good, but volleyball has some skills which I find pretty unintuitive. It took me wayyy to long to be able to consistently aim my bumps and get a decent soft touch on setting. Now I'm trying to mastery stuff like hitting quicks and closing gaps in blocks and its taking time, but once it becomes intuitive, all the fun strategy and mental aspects come into play.

@GeorgeFrazerVB

Ай бұрын

Hey so sorry I didn't see this comment, but yeah you're spot on that the better you get technically the more strategic stuff gets unlocked. Although when you first started playing volleyball did you play many matches? As I'd be interested to know if you found the general competitive skills from your fps background crossed over then? Even though there's obviously less need for tactics at a lower level, I still think someone who has experience with communicating clearly and making basic strategic decisions like "let's serve the worst receiver" would make a big impact.

@Masa6x

Ай бұрын

​@@GeorgeFrazerVB I understand the logic and "macro" strategy for volleyball pretty easy, such as who we are targeting with our receives, what hits they prefer. If our team did scouting reports i'd probably be pretty good at understanding that sorta thing although it's not that high level uni league. What I find difficulty in is actually applying it on the court. I get so focused on trying to execute the skills and thinking about where to position myself that I forget to communicate sometimes, although I am becoming more vocal. I think understanding concepts and being able to break stuff down transferred pretty easily from gaming, knowing what I needed to focus on and isolating it made me improve slightly faster than some other people I know. Its just hard to tell what you're doing sometimes without having a recording of the game, so I'll get the same advice that I already know, but until it "clicks" I can't really execute it or perform the skill properly which is frustrating. I also don't really feel fully in the competitor headspace since I'm mostly at trainings and playing rec atm, so I'm in "learning" mode rather than competing. Feels weird to be hyped and stuff after hitting a nice spike or getting a big block when it's just a training match, although I'm also a bit of a perfectionist.