Analysis of the relevance of the information content given to the players during volleyball timeouts with a 3D device

The timeout in sport is relatively well analysed in the literature.
Nevertheless, no study concerns the relevance of the information
transmitted to the players. Our study aims to determine the rele-
vance of the content transmitted to the players during volleyball
timeouts with a 3D device. We immerged 17 coaches into two
sequences of a volleyball game. They had to think aloud during
the game and talk directly to the players during the timeouts.
Between the sequences, they also had to transcribe and rate all
the observations they remembered. By comparing the observations
made, the speech during the timeouts and the rating of the coa-
ches’ observations, we obtained some interesting results. Few coa-
ches transmitted all the observations considered as the most
important to their players during the timeouts, but this selection
of the information seemed better in a negative game context.
Another result is that the coaches did not seem to be influenced
by the short-term memory as the transmitted content rarely corre-
sponded to the last observations made just before the timeout. This
study offers perspectives in coaching analysis and education as the
3D device seems to be a tool allowing the study of aspects difficult
to attain with other methods.