Watch Mark Burik and Ian Satterfield of the United States battle it out with Canada in the Men's Beach Volleyball at the 2019 Pan American Games.

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“I got shots. I got every shot. I got shots for DAYSSS!” Cutty, high line, jumbo, short waterfall, waterfall over the block, chop cross, slime line, pit sizzling seam, deep middle… You name it I got it.”

So you can hit every spot on the court but you’re still getting dug like a pre-school sandbox. Why? Because you just aren’t using them at the right times. Why again? Because you're not looking at the defense before your spike!

You’ve spent hours working on your standing cut shot (which has next to zero translation to the real game) and it falls for a kill… sometimes. When it does hit the sand, you feel great.

But, there’s always that one defender that eats you up.

You dice. You hit hard. You shoot high line and you go away from your favorite swing all because you have to get one of your attacks to hit the ground. You have to try something to get the ball down!

You’ve tried every location and every type of...

This is a challenging two touch pepper drill for beach volleyball. Dig to yourself, look for your partner's sign and hit at either the high or low sign. Two touches. Dig. Look for the sign. Hit to the sign.

Hey guys, I'm Mark. I'm Brandon. We're here with Better at Beach and we are here to bring you our serve receive course. Our serve receive course has 19 full on video lessons for getting you better at serve receive. It takes you from the very beginning, the very basics and all the way up into advanced professional beach volleyball techniques that you're going to need to win a world tour event. So if you're a beginner and you're looking to just get some fundamentals, this is for you. If you are a current professional beach volleyball player and you're looking for great reminders and new techniques to be able to bump your passing up, this is for you. I know that we've had some struggles in our careers with serve receive. This is something that I wish I had. Serve receive...

Next-Level Beach Volleyball Ball Control Drills: Emergency Touch Series to Attack

Emergency Touch Series To Attack

This is a great partner drill for beach volleyball players to warm up our ball control touches, as well as our defensive movements. We're going to incorporate a pass, a tomahawk, and a pokey, all in a defensive or ball control nature. Those aren't attacks and they have to be first contacts that we can set.

As his partner, I'm going to toss him the deep ball that he passes, then I'm going to set him the deep ball that he tomahawks, and I'm going to set him the deep ball that he pokeys. From that pokey we're going to set and hit out of it into a designated target. Watch it on this video.

We're going to warm up another touch and it's going to be a defensive touch. From this drill we have a pass, tomahawk, and a pokey, but I'm going to add a defensive rip. When you send that poke back to the setter, see if you can open up the court, in other words, pass to the...

Block Touch Footwork for Attacking

(This is a transcript of the video below. You can skip to the video if you like.)

A lot of times beach volleyball as a blocker, we find ourselves stuck at the net. When a bang bang play is happening. Maybe I'm a blocker and I just touched the ball that went behind me and I need to make myself available to hit. We just have a simple backwards or lateral leap to create that space from the net. I'm going to block, I got the touch. Now I'm landed and I'm going to step and hop, a big lateral leap, off of the net to create space for my hitting shoulder. One more time block, step-hop and right now I've created about 14 feet of space between me and the volleyball net. All of that is setting window for my partner. If you don't open up, your partner is pinched. If you land and you just wait by the net, now your setter has to be so perfect that they've got a two foot window. Instead, can use a block and a step-lateral leap sequence.

I've gotten good...

Deep Middle Transition Spiking Drill for Beach Volleyball

It is important every now and then to incorporate some type of conditioning into your volleyball training and this is an example of a drill that we can do while still playing volleyball.

Our player needs to hit a hard middle seam ball. After they hit that, they’re going to have to get behind the line, at either half court or three quarters. You can choose - as a coach or somebody who's designing your own drill - how far you want to get behind that line.

In this drill example, we want to make sure that we get behind the line, drop our player to the knees to make sure that we're simulating some sort of defensive action, and then he needs to get up and calmly take an approach, then smack that deep middle seam.

If this drill video or any of my other videos are helping you out and you want to go a little bit deeper into beach volleyball, you can subscribe and you'll get 36 Beach Volleyball...

When you can't get a full squad to practice, there is still PLENTY of live work you can get done on the court. We set our sideline boundaries so that we have about 2 feet of space we need to hit in. Our deep corner swings are set up so they end two steps from the baseline. Make your boundaries as big as you want but CHALLENGE YOURSELF. We also made the rule that our swings in the front half of the court HAVE to have DOWNWARD TRAJECTORY. This also gives us feedback and tells us when we are in a position that ALLOWS US to go for the sharp swings. We hate loopy cut shots. As always you can set whatever rules and scoring you like :) Our sharp swings in the front two thirds are worth two points, our deep corner swings are worth 1 point and our hitting errors net us Minus 1. As a team we got to 11 points 4 times in today's practice. One match initiating from each corner of the net.

 If you like this drill you would probably LOVE our free beach volleyball drill book...

Hey guys welcome back to VolleyCamp Hermosa / Better at Beach! We’re going take you through some Side-out points. We have Alexander Huber from Austria and his partner Leo Williams from South Africa who are both great players on the FIVB World Tour.

How far off are we setting for a perfect set? Most people think they want the ball tighter, but if we look consistently at the best players in the world, they're taking the ball four-five-and six feet from the net so that they have plenty of space and the blocker can't play as much of a role in the game. – Mark Burik

 

If you love this type of video with in depth beach volleyball tips for setting and spiking along with the thought process behind tactics on the professional tour, you can take some next steps!

Download our free beach volleyball drill book

Sign up for our Online Beach Volleyball Courses. Our most popular membership which includes, among other skills, our full setting course and attacking / spiking...

This spiking tip actually has to do a lot more with what you do before the spike than anything else. Most spiking tips only deal with the actually hitting motion but it's important to know that most spiking errors happen because of everything you did BEFORE the attack.

When you’ve just dug a cut shot, or you've pursued a short free ball or a short serve, sometimes you’ll end up on a dive pattern. There is a specific way to get up so that you can be in a good hitting position.

So you're on the floor and you've just passed the ball. Maybe it's a good pass, maybe it's a bad pass, but there's a specific way to get up so that you can be in a good hitting position quickly.

For a lot of people, their natural way to get up when they dive is to bring the back the foot up  and stand. If you take notice of where your feet are when you are lying down, get up naturally and see if you end up closer to the net. That's bad news for an attacker if you're already close...

Beach Volleyball Drills for Hitting with Vision: 3-Person Vision Pepper

This morning we were working on a lot of hitting vision, so we're going to show you a pepper exercise. This is three-person pepper. Like almost every pepper session, we are still using a dig set, hit, repeat sequence. The middle person is going to be the setter.

Here is where this beach volleyball hitting drill  gets a little complicated..

After the set, the person who is about to play defense is just going to leave their hands up high by their face or down in a natural defensive position.

It's important not to reach all the way up or like your hand is raised in a class room. Make the signals subtle and keep your positions game-like. Your hands can just be in a "high five" position next to your face or in a "low five" position in front of your hips and thighs.

The hitter's job is to get to the set first. In this drills the hitter has to get their feet to the ball before they look for the signal....