Beach volleyball spiking drill for parents and partners: Pass, Set, Spike, Catch

Here's a great beginner drill for volleyball that works on ball control and spiking.  I get to meet lots of volleyball parents who just want to help their kids get better but they don't know how. This basic hitting drill for volleyball is an easy way for parents, coaches and friends to help the volleyball players in their lives get some extra reps.

If you want to practice attacking on your own and do some drills at home, you can also think about drawing a big box on a wall somewhere. If you can throw a very high ball to yourself, bump it, set it and then spike it into the box, you get a point!

Basically what we're going to do is have one person, the player, use three touches. They have to pass to themselves, set to themselves, and then hit at a target or a catcher.

Parent: If you're a non volleyball player, if you can catch it, that qualifies as a good hit from the player. Just...

So often, I’m asked questions about the best ways to warm up or workout for beach volleyball. Professionals have extensive warm up routines that armor their joints and work on their weaknesses. Most players want to know how to hit harder and we have plenty of technical cues for that but first, you should start doing the shoulder exercises that will protect you and strengthen you.

If you’ve been anywhere near a volleyball court in your life, you’ve seen somebody rubbing and rotating their hitting shoulder while their face winces in pain. You can't keep hitting hard if your joints and muscles aren't primed to handle that load over time.

In this article, we are going to prepare you to spike harder. You can have the best technique in the world but without the proper volleyball training OFF the court, you'll only hurt yourself and lose weeks of practice in the process.

Why are shoulder exercises so important for beach volleyball players?

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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...

Do you want to become a better attacker in beach volleyball? It can be an absolute pain to come up with drills and exercises that help you get better at hitting. Do you know the right things to work on? Are your drills game-like? Do they just give you something to do or do they actually help you score more points and win tournaments?

YouTube can be a nightmare in terms of actually collecting enough information to become actionable. I decided to create this post which assembles all of my favorite beach volleyball hitting drills. If you want to hit harder, get better vision, and get kills consistently, look no further than this post. You won't be able to do all of these at one practice so feel free to bookmark this post on your browser so you can refer to it again and again.

I LOVE feedback so use the comments or just send an email and let me know what you think or what you want more of!

Enjoy

Advanced Beach Volleyball Hitting Drill: Cross Court Over The Net Pepper

This...

If you're interested in this blog on mobility, which is one element to getting you jumping higher for beach volleyball, we think you'd love our 60-day strength and conditioning course to get you jumping higher, hitting harder, running faster, and developing into the beach volleyball player you've always wanted to become. We also run beach volleyball classes, private lessons and training camps for adults and juniors in Hermosa Beach, CA and Salt Lake City, Utah. We run volleyball vacations in exotic locations around the world. We can even run beach volleyball clinics for your group, club or team in your hometown! Send an email to [email protected]

Beach volleyball and indoor volleyball are both highly dynamic uni-lateral sports. That means that a lot of the actions we perform are one-sided. When you take an approach, the majority of the force is stopped and redirected by one leg. When you go up to serve or hit a volleyball, you use one side....

We also run beach volleyball classes, private lessons and training camps for adults and juniors in Hermosa Beach, CA and Salt Lake City, Utah. We run volleyball vacations in exotic locations around the world. We can even run beach volleyball clinics for your group, club or team in your hometown! Send an email to [email protected]

Can a strong core increase your vertical jump for beach volleyball? Absolutely! Let me tell you why.

Do you know those wacky inflatable flailing arm guys that used car dealerships use? The plastic ones that are just big tubes of flowing air. Imagine one of those guys trying to jump.Their top side would topple and flop because nothing in the midsection is holding anything stable. If your core can’t stabilize your spine so that your upper body and lower body sync up, you cannot be powerful.

Your body has to learn to stabilize itself so you can stop, start, and change directions on a dime. When you...

Passing in beach volleyball is a bit like breathing: So ordinary, so mundane, so seemingly automatic, that you rarely ever think about it. And passing, like breathing, is so critical to your life in beach volleyball that you will not survive without it. 

Yes, passing can be boring. But it's often the most boring skills in sports that prove to be the most valuable. In golf, there is a saying: Drive for show, putt for dough. You want to know a skill that is not interesting or fun to practice? Putting. In basketball, free throws and dribbling rule; not dunks. Football? We're talkin' 'bout blocking, y'all. Blocking. Name a sport, and the most critical of skills are the ones you so rarely notice on television , the ones you will never see on Sports Center or the viral beach volleyball Instagram account, Bounce Beach. 

No, what you see are the bounces, the big swings that get the crowd going. But do you know the skill that precedes those bounces and highlights?...

We also run beach volleyball classes, private lessons and training camps for adults and juniors in Hermosa Beach, CA and Salt Lake City, Utah. We run volleyball vacations in exotic locations around the world. We can even run beach volleyball clinics for your group, club or team in your hometown! Send an email to [email protected]

Beach volleyball coaches and players everywhere use the word ‘shoulder’ pretty loosely. Nine muscles are responsible for the movement of your upper arm. That movement is controlled at the shoulder joint.

If you play volleyball, chances are you’ve experienced some version of soreness or tightness in your shoulder region. If you want to last as a volleyball player and you want to learn how to hit harder, you have to learn how to strengthen and protect your shoulder joint and all of the muscles around it.

In your body, your shoulder joint has the biggest range of movement across the most planes. This...

Beach volleyball players are known for our strong shoulders and rightly so. These poor joints take a beating. Strength plays a small but important role in a player's ability to spike (or attack) and serve better. A big range of motion is definitely more important but if you're trying to spike volleyball with a limp spaghetti noodle, you'll never win a tournament. You have to find the perfect combination of range, speed, and strength. All of these things will add up to great spiking technique and harder hits.

Players will often train for strength too heavily, add-on bulk, and then lose the range of motion in their shoulders. I've seen this happen with baseball players and volleyball players alike.

When your training routine makes you move heavy things at a very slow speed, your body gets very good at just that, slowly moving heavy things.  When you get ‘monster’  big, your muscles can also get in the way of each other. We aren't even going to harp...

What kind of upper body strength does a volleyball player really need?

To be honest, not a whole lot! Well, let’s put it this way: adding bulk to your upper body would be a mistake. It puts more stress on your back, knees and hips than you would like. Being strong only goes so far in beach volleyball. Strength without mass is key. But let’s dive into the nitty gritty.

How much should I workout my upper body for beach volleyball?

It would be hard to say that additional strength could be a bad thing. Additional strength without additional weight would be a fantasy for every beach volleyball player. It’s good to be strong but when we dedicate hours to it when there are more important things to cover, there’s an issue. For example, would you rather be very strong and suffer season ending shoulder injuries throughout your career or would you choose medium strength but be able to finish seasons with a healthy body?

Beach volleyball is essentially...