The Most Comprehensive Volleyball Education Experience We’ve Ever Created
How do you learn to coach like a pro? You get trained by a pro. With Jim Stone, we’ve lined up one of the best.
Jim is the “coach of coaches.” For 30 years, he’s developed the best players at the collegiate and national levels, and has enjoyed successes that most coaches only dream about. And now you can get direct access to him and his expertise through the Head Coach Certification, Level 1.
When you enroll, you’ll get instant access to one of the most comprehensive and in-depth explorations of the game today. You’ll hear Jim’s coaching insights and success secrets… and learn about everything from coaching philosophy, team chemistry and skills development to match management, talent scouting and injury prevention.
Plus, you’ll be able to learn in the comfort of your home or office, working at your own pace, without spending hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of dollars to travel to a coaching clinic across the country. Everything you need is right here at your fingertips.
Certification includes:
- 6 video hours of A to Z volleyball instruction
- Instructor Jim Stone, USA youth national team head coach
- 13 core modules of 50+ video lessons
- Transcription of each lesson
- 13 quizzes
- “Members only” access to the Jim Stone Academy online forum
- Bonus videos and reference materials
- Status as an AOC Certified Level One Head Coach
- A digital badge to display on your website, email, etc.
- A digital certificate you can print and display in your gym
If you want to become a better coach, run a successful program and win more games, enroll in the Head Coach Certification, Level 1 today… and unlock the coaching secrets waiting inside!
Already been through Level 1 of our Head Coach Certification? Check out Level 2 today!
Level 2 goes through advanced skill development techniques, coaching philosophies and in-game strategies used by some of today’s highest-performing programs.
Bill Szczesniak –
The Head Coach Level 1 course is well organized, and is a great resource for any coach. The use of text, video and white board makes learning enjoyable and reinforces key concepts. All beginning coaches should definitely complete this course and it is a great review for all coaches.
Well done!!!
Jason Marchant –
I really enjoyed going through all of the content available in this course – I know I will continue to come back to it more in the future to refresh my memory on certain topics. I am really hopeful that there will be a level 2 course developed not too long from now!
Tom Begley –
I have been coaching for years and there were still things I learned. Very comprehensive for any coach.
Javier Rivera –
This is the best laid out computer based training I’ve taken. Jim Stone did a great job explaining the topics in an easy to follow format, with great videos and useful resource links.
Recommendations: 1. There are some minor fixes that could be done to ease jumping from one topic to another. 2. Review the transcripts, they seem to be computer generated and don’t really follow what Jim is saying.
Overall it was a great experience, keep it up! I look forward to additional courses of this caliber.
Tim Weil –
Excellent Course! It provides a great cohesive overview of various aspects and principles of coaching volleyball. Jim has a great communication style and effectively integrates sectional overviews along with video analysis, white board explanations, and interviews with outside guest experts. I highly recommend this course for new coaches and for all current coaches looking for a refresher class. Thanks Jim for all the effort in pulling this together and look forward to new instructional offerings you might be developing to further assist coaches.
virginie.decarne1 –
Great course where Jim Stone and team are handling all the fundamentals for the coach. Great video analyses and clear.
I personally liked a lot the whiteboard writing, a tool that many of us use and the open-minded thinking of Jim Stone regarding different ways in coaching volleyball. Thank you for the effort and time and I look forward to the next.
mlundy12 –
Thanks to the expertise that Coach Stone possesses, I now understand the nuances of the game of vb, a sport that I truly have a passion for. Thanks for your patience Coach Stone!
Lorenzo Ayala –
I thoroughly enjoyed the course material! It was a needed refresher to remind myself of things I haven’t focused on and a help to keep my players and team moving in the right direction. I can’t wait to take the next course!
Jamie Messer –
I coach two middle school teams with girls ranging from ages 10 to 13. I have been coaching now for eight years and I am always trying to learn something new. I really enjoyed this class. It is hard to find material on coaching a lower level team, most everything I study deals with more high school and college levels which is good but a lot of those things my kids aren’t capable of doing yet. It was nice that there where things touched on to help me understand how to make my team better. I would like to see more material on coaching young kids. My kids and the kids we play aren’t capable of attacking so blocking is sort of useless, i would like to see a class on defense for young kids without a block. Looking forward to more classes.
Blake Krause –
Most of the main concepts were things that I was familiar with, but each segment gave me some new perspective or reminded me of how to approach different planning/practice/match situations. I appreciated the examples. I would have liked a video segment on effective use of back row attack in the hitting section and some libero tips in the serve receive/defensive sections.
Tim Davison –
I have been coaching volleyball for over 40 years and took this course to see where I was in the art of coaching volleyball. I enjoyed taking the course and although I did not learn a lot of new things, I found some things that I could become more efficient at, learned some keywords that may be more effective and just had a good time with the course. I would highly recommend it for the new coach, a high school level coach as well as the beginning to mid-level club coach. I also look forward to higher level certifications that hopefully are in the works.
Orlando Carrillo –
I have been a club Coach in Chandler,AZ for 6 years now, and I have leaned on AOC the last 2 years as my virtual asst. Coach. This past season my 15U won our Regionals in Championship division, and with the upcoming season we plan to go Open. This course taught me a lot about the little things and new things to take into season. The detail on blocking, setting, and team management are areas that stood out to me. What I would have liked to see are a couple drills to enforce areas in topic. A lot of times Coaches run out of ideas, and need fresh drills. Thank you AOC, for this course and I look forward to level II.
Cindy Bryant, Director, Momentum Volleyball, Powhatan, VA –
The Head Coach Level One Certification was exactly what I have come to expect from Art of Coaching–comprehensive, understandable, well -done!
Kraig ORourke –
Jim, you’re an exceptional presenter and I really enjoyed this course. I will recommend for all my club coaches and look forward to future Certifications.
One thing I’d appreciate being covered in more depth is the last section on injury prevention. The course talks about the importance of good mechanics, but there is nothing presented for the novice coach to really carry into practice. I think there are a handful of really common mechanical errors that injure a lot of players and they could be demonstrated visually, along with the proper corrections to help coaches prevent them in their own athletes. Landing on one leg after the attack is a common one, another is the shoulder issues caused by blocking the arm swing by failing to rotate through, properly. These are very common and easily avoided, once coaches and players know what to look for. Thank you!
David Valdez –
I liked how the course covered many aspects for level 1 coaching. I appreciated how simple the explanations were. Course was easy to follow and I thought the explanation of body mechanics and movements were excellent. Jim Stone presented additional information in this course I haven’t seen in other certifications. Thank you! Looking forward to additional AOC certifications!
Walter Collazo –
Thank you for putting together this course. Extremely well organized, comprehensive coverage of all aspects to run a team. Well suited for the novice or more experienced coach. Well worth the investment in time and money. Looking forward to Level 2.
nathan lovelace –
Very constructive and informative course. this is my second year as a club coach with limited volleyball experience and this course has helped me gain a much better understanding of the game of volleyball.
Shannon Colosimo –
This course is excellent!! It is vey well said and organized. It hit all the major components of volleyball. Mr. Stone kept my attention and a learned a lot of new things. The setup of the course is fantastic for a busy person who needs to break the course up over a few weeks to get it done. Highly recommend it! Hope there is a Level 2!!
Jackie Rindy –
I found the course informative and helpful. New coaches can learn a lot. Hoping they do some additional level certifications to delve deeper into some of the strategy and planning portions of coaching.
Richard Staudt –
While I have seen and heard much of this information previously, this was a very clear and effective way of presenting it. It covered most all of the bases and made it clear when a decision was up to the coach’s style or the team’s ability, not the “my way or the highway” approach of some other trainings.
Matthew McLeary –
Enjoyed the course tremendously. Thanks to Coach Stone and his contributors for a well thought out and effective means of introducing the art of coaching volleyball. The quizzes compiled were a great means of interaction with the program. One thing that I would have appreciated more was if Coach Stone went further into rotational overlapping. I greatly look forward to taking future courses and hope to attend a clinic in 2018. Proud of having the badge! Thanks again for this great resource!
Jamie McDougald –
I have been coaching a long time and this course just refreshed my memory and made me think about a few things differently. I enjoyed it and cannot wait until another one comes out!!
Doug Campbell –
As a long-time coach who is USAV CAP I certified, I didn’t have very high expectations going into the course, but I’m always looking to learn and share wisdom with my players. I have to say, after completing the course, Jim Stone and his guest speakers went into details I was expecting in their level 2 or 3 course. They did a great job of presenting the information in logical chunks and while I was hoping to skip around, I can see now why they force you to watch in the order presented. Having the video, the transcription, and links to additional details on a per video/segment basis was very helpful for me to dive further into a topic if desired.
I’m looking forward to putting this great info into use and better prepare my teams. I’ve been raving to my other club coaches to take this cert. Level 2 cannot come out soon enough! Can’t imagine what you’ll cover in that course! Thanks Jim Stone and AOC!
Henry Claytor –
There is a ton of good information here and I made notes on every single subject. I have already used alot of the things taught in this course into my club practices and has made a huge difference with my team.
vazquez12 –
I think this course is very good for new coaches, as it gives a good basic overview of the many aspects of the sport. I have coached for seven years at the high school, junior high, and club level, so most of the course was basic review for me. Again, the course is great, but I think it’s much better suited for new coaches, maybe with not much strategic knowledge of the sport. I look forward to seeing what other certifications the AOC comes up with in the future.
Esa Virta –
Head Coach Level 1 training includes a lot of good and needed info to work with your team. There is also a lot of extra material to go through when ever you are facing some new thing in your training. The training is given in a way that also a person who does not speak English as a native language (like me) can understand it well.
I am really waiting for more – statistics and libero trainings in the first place!
Attila Kontor –
It was a clean, simple, complete progressive knowledge share. It’s containing the complete core of the volleyball game. For me that was valuable information especially the videos where Jim presented what he talked before.
sam Strong –
It was great. It got down to the point with all of the topics but also gave great information for each.
I think the only thing that could be added would be the top 2-3 drills for each that could be implemented.
But other than that this was great and I would recommend it to every coach!!! 🙂
Angelica –
From being a Player to Official to Coach, I knew a great deal of the sport should be played and how to recognize offenses, defenses and tendencies. This course helped a great deal in how to teach skills, why coaches use different systems and how to look at items such as stats and patterns for my players at different age groups. Overall, I learned a lot, it is a great course.
Matthew Howell –
I’ve been a volunteer assistant coach at a small high school for a couple of years now, with not a lot of background other than just enjoying playing the sport. This class gave me a lot of ideas for how to help the team improve and for how to help the head coach do her job. This was a great resource that I plan to review again at least once before next season. Looking forward to any future classes as well.
Kasandra Davis –
Thank you so much for this course! It is a great overview of volleyball and incorporates different coaches to reinforce learning and show different perspectives. I am looking forward to a “level 2” or specialized/advanced course where training will go more in depth and get into more nuanced training. Maybe pulling many perspectives together on attacks where 31s, 1s, hut, shoots etc, are explained as to translate into actionable training techniques.
Overall great overview and I appreciate the additional resources links in each section to do a deeper dive. Thank you!
Matthew Faull –
While the plethora of volleyball coaches I’ve encountered have been skilled, passionate, and committed; I’ve run into more than a handful of coaches who accepted the position with little or no experience of how to coach. This course proved accessible at the entry level, but with more than enough meat to it that any experienced coach would come away with a better system to implement with their teams. I’d recommend this course at all levels. The videos of the collegiate coaches from the clinics ensure that this course id reliable, consistent, and valid.
Brian –
I have been coaching volleyball for over a decade. I have attended several clinics and subscribed to several coaching based content services, and belong to many volleyball coaching groups over the years. I got more out of this course in a much more condensed version than all my many clinics and other online resources. I believe you can always keep learning but man this would have saved me some major growing pains as a new coach all those years ago. I have enjoyed the way Jim presents the game going back to when he use to run his training solutions service. I would highly recommend to any coach looking to get a great base knowledge of how to fill their coaching tool belt that will put them right path to success or any old coach just looking to refresh or remind of fundamentals that they may have forgotten or never learned in the way this course presents.
Kuddos AoC and Jim, Can’t wait for level II when or if its coming.
Dave McLeod –
Really enjoyed taking this online course. It was easy to follow along and was nice to be able to take it at my own pace. The auto save feature allows you to come and go at your convenience!!
Chris DeFoe –
Excellent ! I think to enhance this course, it would be great to have a few specific resources attached to each module. For example, when talking about injury prevention and warm-ups, maybe have a link to a specific routine for warming up that includes all of the aspects that were spoken about. When talking about passing, maybe a few drills that have the proper progressions for teaching it. etc. etc.
David Perkins –
We were looking for coaching courses for our club coaches to get everyone on the same page and maybe speak the same language. This course was great! Very informative, covered the basics and expanded on the advanced. Completing this course will be a basic requirement for our coaches in the future.
James Lubischer –
Great course! Thanks much Coach Stone. Terrific idea to include transcripts of the videos.
steven millhouse (verified owner) –
Regardless of your level of expertise this course provides a terrific base line for a successful coach. I loved the use of video clips to reinforce the subjects being discussed as well as the guest speakers that expounded on different topics. Beneath each video is a video or two from different coaches and different viewpoints that help teach the lesson. Another key feature is being able to either comment or ask questions in a forum for each topic covered if you have feedback or questions. Wonderful and even though I’m finished I plan on re-watching the material often! Some of the videos are so well done and so well explained I’ve considered showing them to my athletes!
CoachJenRob –
A wonderful and complete course. All the coaches in our program will be taking the course. I specifically like the breakdown of skills before entering into offense and defense. Thank you for providing this training.
Douglas Porterfield –
Jim Stone does a great job laying out the course and it’s content. Using multiple layers of media to reinforce each lesson, with video examples of techniques, guest coaches, and supporting videos from other resources gave more depth to the course . The online forum for additional questions and responses was very helpful as well. I will definitely be accessing this as a resource for years to come. It will also find it’s way into team meeting with coaches and with players.
mdhunter19 (verified owner) –
As a first year club coach, this course was very beneficial. Highly recommend it.
Brett Bennett (verified owner) –
Regardless of your experience as a coach, this course provides great opportunity to develop and approach things from different angles. The course is excellently presented in a user-friendly platform and provides great information. Overall you will develop a better understanding as a new coach or benefit from re-visiting some coaching fundamentals. This is a very enjoyable course!
Michael Mata (verified owner) –
This is my first year as a club coach and this course has definitely been beneficial for me. I would definitely recommend.