Coaching Culture

If the coach writes the team standards on the board, John Mayer says they become wallpaper. When the players write them, they come alive.
In part two of JP Nerbun's conversation with John Mayer, head beach volleyball coach at Loyola Marymount and the 2025 AVCA National Coach of the Year, John walks through the systems behind his culture: battle buddies, a competitive cauldron, player-written standards, and culture committees that give every player real responsibility. He also explains why autonomy does not mean anything goes.
If your team nods along to the culture but does not own it, this conversation gives you a concrete blueprint for shared ownership.
Chapters
(00:00) Catching players doing it right
(01:40) Curiosity instead of the hammer
(04:53) The competitive cauldron
(05:49) Intentions and battle buddies
(09:44) Standards the players write
(12:02) Culture committees
(14:51) Autonomy with structure
(16:37) Leading the leadership group
(21:17) The hardest part of coaching today
(23:27) Why coach education matters
TOC 3-2-1
3 Quotes | 2 Questions | 1 Resource
Your fast-track to the episode's most actionable ideas.
"You don't know till you go."
John Mayer
"Autonomy doesn't mean anything goes and you can do whatever. The coach is there to organize and cultivate choices."
John Mayer
"If I just put all that on the board, it becomes wallpaper. But when it's their ideas, when it's their discussion, when it's meaningful to them, it becomes living."
John Mayer
2 Questions for Your Team
Q1: What is one decision about how our team runs that you think you should have a say in, and why?
Q2: Who on this team helps you stay locked in on your intention during practice, and how could you do that for someone else?
1 Resource to Go Deeper
The Competitive Cauldron by Anson Dorrance
John runs a version of the tracked, ranked practice system Dorrance built at North Carolina after watching Dean Smith's practices. It raises intensity through visible standings rather than punishment.
See how the Cauldron works
Key Takeaways
Catch people doing it right, publicly.
Curiosity beats the hammer.
Battle buddies put accountability in players' hands.
Culture committees turn ownership into structure.
Autonomy is a skill the coach cultivates, not a job the coach abandons.
Focus on what you can adapt to, not what feels unfair.
Get the notes and tools:
tocculture.com
Join TOC Coach, community, courses, and live coaching:
tocculture.com
Better Coaches. Better Leaders. Better Culture.

If the coach writes the team standards on the board, John Mayer says they become wallpaper. When the players write them, they come alive.
In part two of JP Nerbun's conversation with John Mayer, head beach volleyball coach at Loyola Marymount and the 2025 AVCA National Coach of the Year, John walks through the systems behind his culture: battle buddies, a competitive cauldron, player-written standards, and culture committees that give every player real responsibility. He also explains why autonomy does not mean anything goes.
If your team nods along to the culture but does not own it, this conversation gives you a concrete blueprint for shared ownership.
Chapters
(00:00) Catching players doing it right
(01:40) Curiosity instead of the hammer
(04:53) The competitive cauldron
(05:49) Intentions and battle buddies
(09:44) Standards the players write
(12:02) Culture committees
(14:51) Autonomy with structure
(16:37) Leading the leadership group
(21:17) The hardest part of coaching today
(23:27) Why coach education matters
TOC 3-2-1
3 Quotes | 2 Questions | 1 Resource
Your fast-track to the episode's most actionable ideas.
"You don't know till you go."
John Mayer
"Autonomy doesn't mean anything goes and you can do whatever. The coach is there to organize and cultivate choices."
John Mayer
"If I just put all that on the board, it becomes wallpaper. But when it's their ideas, when it's their discussion, when it's meaningful to them, it becomes living."
John Mayer
2 Questions for Your Team
Q1: What is one decision about how our team runs that you think you should have a say in, and why?
Q2: Who on this team helps you stay locked in on your intention during practice, and how could you do that for someone else?
1 Resource to Go Deeper
The Competitive Cauldron by Anson Dorrance
John runs a version of the tracked, ranked practice system Dorrance built at North Carolina after watching Dean Smith's practices. It raises intensity through visible standings rather than punishment.
See how the Cauldron works
Key Takeaways
Catch people doing it right, publicly.
Curiosity beats the hammer.
Battle buddies put accountability in players' hands.
Culture committees turn ownership into structure.
Autonomy is a skill the coach cultivates, not a job the coach abandons.
Focus on what you can adapt to, not what feels unfair.
Get the notes and tools:
tocculture.com
Join TOC Coach, community, courses, and live coaching:
tocculture.com
Better Coaches. Better Leaders. Better Culture.

John Mayer had just won LMU's first conference championship when he started questioning everything about how he coached. He had a system that worked. He changed it anyway.
JP Nerbun sits down with John Mayer, head beach volleyball coach at Loyola Marymount and the 2025 AVCA National Coach of the Year, to unpack the research that pulled him away from being the coach with all the answers. You will hear why a strong learning environment starts with the individual, why his practices open with cartwheels and one-eyed sets, and how handing players problems instead of solutions made them more creative, more independent, and less dependent on him under pressure.
If your athletes execute beautifully in practice but look to the sideline the moment things get hard, this conversation will change how you think about your next practice plan.
Chapters
(00:00) Intro: from elite player to coach
(06:09) What a learning environment needs
(10:14) Do feel-good drills belong?
(14:08) Differential learning and noise
(16:22) The 2019 coaching crisis
(19:49) Letting go of being the guru
(21:37) Earning buy-in with feedback
(26:31) Did it work? Results at LMU
(29:08) How practice shapes culture
(33:41) When new ideas become too many
TOC 3-2-1
3 Quotes | 2 Questions | 1 Resource
Your fast-track to the episode's most actionable ideas.
"I flipped from before I was the provider of solutions, and then I became the provider of problems."
John Mayer
"I'm not as worried about what they like. My daughter likes ice cream. That doesn't mean it's gonna help her perform at a high level. I'm concerned in what's effective."
John Mayer
"These are the sort of people I want to put into the world, not people who follow orders."
John Mayer
2 Questions for Your Team
Q1: What part of practice feels good but does not actually make you better, and where do you feel the kind of struggle that does?
Q2: When something in practice confuses you or is not working, how comfortable are you telling us, and what would make it easier?
1 Resource to Go Deeper
The Nonlinear Nature of Learning: A Differential Learning Approach by Wolfgang Schöllhorn and colleagues
John credits Schöllhorn's differential learning research out of Germany with turning his coaching upside down. This open-access paper explains why adding variation, or noise, to practice can help athletes find their own movement solutions instead of copying one prescribed technique.
Read the paper here
Key Takeaways
Great players don't automatically make great coaches.
Design for the sweet spot between success and failure.
Differential learning turns off the fear of judgment.
A coaching crisis can be the doorway to real growth.
Being the provider of problems beats being the provider of solutions.
Feedback should flow in both directions.
Get the notes and tools:
tocculture.com
Join TOC Coach, community, courses, and live coaching:
tocculture.com
Better Coaches. Better Leaders. Better Culture.

Your team meetings tune the car, but practice is the road.
JP Nerbun, Betsy Butterick, and Nate Sanderson take on a question a coach brought to JP: what do you do when there is almost no time to build culture outside of practice? Their answer is that practice is where athletes experience culture most and where a coach can push hardest on it. You will hear how to move values from the wall into the practice plan, why going hard is a skill you teach, a four step cycle for giving athletes reps at the behaviors you want, and what changes when you start from where your players actually are.
If your values live on a wall and you are not sure they live in your gym, this conversation gives you a place to start tomorrow.
Chapters
(00:00) Intro: practice is culture
(04:27) Values in the practice plan
(06:32) Where coaches go wrong
(09:07) Awareness, opportunity, reinforce
(13:10) Purpose, structure, and focus
(17:33) Efficient, game-like practice
(22:10) Your mindset toward mistakes
(26:46) Mental skills in 30 seconds
(32:35) Start where players are
(38:07) Your own experience of practice
TOC 3-2-1
3 Quotes | 2 Questions | 1 Resource
Your fast-track to the episode's most actionable ideas.
"A lot of times the way that we've used some of those classroom times or those team meeting times, or those connection times is really like pulling into the pit stop and tuning up the car, but then we're putting it back out on the road. And practice is really the road."
Nate Sanderson
"The standard isn't a standard until we start actually holding that standard with our players, and the majority of those standards are being held within practice."
J.P. Nerbun
"It doesn't help them to tell them what they're not doing. It does help them to make them aware of the opportunities they have, to signal an opportunity before they're in it."
Betsy Butterick
2 Questions for Your Team
Q1: Where in our practice plan do our team values actually show up, and where do they only live on the wall?
Q2: What part of practice makes you feel like you are getting better, and what part leaves you wondering why we are doing it?
1 Resource to Go Deeper
The Gap and the Gain by Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy
JP brought this book into the conversation. It separates measuring yourself against an ideal from measuring against where you started, a useful lens for any coach who catches themselves saying their team should be much further along.
Find the book here
Key Takeaways
Practice is where culture lives, not where it gets tuned.
A standard is not a standard until you hold it in practice.
Going hard is a skill, so teach it.
Efficient, game-like practice tells athletes you value their time.
Intensity is a rhythm. Frustration is a rep.
Start where your players are, then check your own reaction.
Get the notes and tools:
tocculture.com
Join TOC Coach, community, courses, and live coaching:
tocculture.com
Better Coaches. Better Leaders. Better Culture.

Billy Armstrong wants every player he coaches to chase one truly impossible goal.
In part two of this conversation, three years after his first appearance on the podcast, Bergen Catholic head coach Billy Armstrong digs into the goal-setting philosophy behind his program's vision: making Bergen the best place to play high school basketball in America. Billy explains why he pushes players toward impossible goals instead of realistic ones, why every player builds a quit list before setting any goal, and why becoming elite at anything requires doing fewer things, not more.
If you missed part one, start there for the personal transformation behind all of this. Either way, this is a coach thinking seriously about what he's building and why.
Chapters
(00:00) Intro: The Vision Behind the Program
(01:31) The Impossible Goal
(07:21) What Every Athlete Should Experience
(10:32) Why Over Who
(11:59) The Quit List
(16:04) Consumption and the Elite Mindset
(18:57) Elite Means Doing Fewer Things
(21:48) You Can't Coach Mad
(26:25) Getting Brutally Honest
(31:10) The Backpack Exercise
TOC 3-2-1
3 Quotes | 2 Questions | 1 Resource
Your fast-track to the episode's most actionable ideas.
"Bigger goals create bigger people."
- Billy Armstrong
"In order to be elite at anything, you've got to do fewer things in life."
- Billy Armstrong
"You can't coach mad. Everybody you coach is somebody's pride and joy."
- Billy Armstrong
2 Questions for Your Team
Q1: What is your one impossible goal, and who do you need to become to get closer to it?
Q2: What's one thing on your quit list that would buy you back the most time and energy this week?
1 Resource to Go Deeper
Soundtracks by Jon Acuff
JP references this book's filter for the thoughts that keep coaches from having hard conversations: is it true, is it kind, is it helpful.
Find it on Amazon here
Key Takeaways
Everyone Needs One Impossible Goal
Ask Who, Not Why
The Quit List Comes Before the Goal List
Elite Means Doing Fewer Things, Not More
Brutal Self-Honesty Ended the Avoidance
Put the Backpack Down
Get the notes and tools:
tocculture.com
Join TOC Coach, community, courses, and live coaching:
tocculture.com
If you missed part one, catch it at tocculture.com.
Better Coaches. Better Leaders. Better Culture.