Hand setting in beach volleyball can be a challenge until you’ve mastered proper technique.

We clock a lot of hours every month coaching beach volleyball. What we have found is that there are seven common mistakes players make that are limiting them as hand setters. Overcoming these seven deadly sins on the court can make the difference between crushing a match or getting crushed. Nobody wants to get crushed. 

If you're looking to improving your hand setting on the beach as fast as possible, try out our course on setting!

To help, we’ve put together this video demonstrating the seven deadly sins of hand setting in beach volleyball, but more importantly, proper technique that puts you in charge of the volleyball – and ultimately the court. So don’t be the player with “dainty lady” hands, or a slapper. A balloon catcher. Or ol’ “crab hands.”

Be sure to check out our other beach volleyball training videos for coaching...

Watch Mark Burik and Piotr Marciniak’s 2019 AVP Chicago Gold Series match against John Hyden and Theo Brunner.

Do you want an AVP Pro to give you live critique and advice on YOUR GAME? 

Aside from actually practicing, there is NOTHING as crucial to your development as studying your own game and practice film. Professional teams from all sports spend 100’s of hours analyzing themselves on video from workouts, practices and competition. It’s time to get with the program. Purchase our One on One Video Analysis session and get a 45 minute detailed breakdown and review of your footage.

You will receive live feedback on all aspects of the game from ACTUAL PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS! You can expect to be coached on strategy, mechanics, offensive and defensive systems, overall performance and execution, and decision making.

DO NOT MAKE THE MISTAKE OF THINKING IT SIMPLY FEELS RIGHT!

Film a practice or a match with your phone or camera. Send it our way....

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 is a...

Whether you're a seasoned vet, a complete newb or a coaching looking for important things to focus on, we think this article is going to provide a ton of knowledge that explains how to spike a volleyball with detail and clarity. We looked and it just is not easy to find a top to bottom explanation with demonstrations of good hitting technique for volleyball players. 

If you like this, then you'd absolutely LOVE our beach volleyball courses and workout programs. Feel free to check them out and if you have any questions at all, send an email to [email protected].

If you want to learn how to hit a volleyball, you've come to the right place. Let's dive in.

Want to learn how to spike a volleyball? Not too fast! Pass and set still matter.

When we are trying to learn how to spike a volleyball, we commonly forget about the first two contacts.  Whenever you're trying to get better at spiking a volleyball, whether in practice or studying, make sure that...

Volleyball Magazine recently announced that our Head Coach, Mark Burik, will be a contributing journalist for their publication! Burik has written numerous articles for Avp.com, authored a beach volleyball drill book for BetteratBeach.com and runs beach volleyball lessons, classes and training camps in Hermosa beach through VolleyCamp Hermosa.

Mark enjoys sharing his thoughts on life, adventure, success and motivation.

Look for his articles titled "Player's Perspective with Mark Burik" on http://www.volleyballmag.com/ where he will be sharing his views from inside the player's tent at each AVP event this season.

You can also follow him on his social media accounts.

Instagram

Facebook

Twitter

LinkedIn

Ed Chan of Volleyball Magazine had this to say,

"Its clear that Mark has earned a strong following on social media through his positive messages and incredible work ethic. People want to hear what he has to say so we had to get him on the team."

Congrats Mark!

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?

...

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.

Join the Better at Beach Elite Performers Tribe and Stay Connected to the Best Minds in Beach Volleyball. Our community forum gets your most important beach volleyball questions answered by top level coaches and professional players. Consider it a full time Q and A with Professional Beach Volleyball Players! Just $1.99 a month! https://www.betteratbeach.com/offers/4THMDqSg

“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...

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...

In beach volleyball, it doesn't really matter if you're Phil Dalhausser, one of the best blockers in history -- if not the best -- or Nick Lucena, one of the quickest and best defenders in the United States -- if not the best defender in the United States. No matter who you are or what your talent level, you're going to need ball control, and an ability to make emergency touches accurate and targeted. 

It's the nature of the game that not every touch will be perfectly off your platform, into the awaiting hands of...