At the time, it seemed like the silliest drill I’d ever done.

Two days before p1440 Huntington Beach, at the end of the 2018 season, our coach, Leandro Pinheiro, had us jumping over a bench -- to begin our approach.

I’ve long been a supporter of making everything as gamelike as possible. It’s always made the most sense to me: Train how you play. When you play, you sure as heck aren’t jumping over benches to begin an approach. You shouldn’t be jumping at all.

But Leandro saw something in my partner, Myles Muagututia, and I that he didn’t particularly like, and he wanted to fix it. All week long, we were getting ahead of the set, so when we went to swing, the ball was either on top of our head or a little behind us. We lost power, precision, and vision in virtually all of our attacks. We were still able to function, mind you, in the same sense that we can all function on six or seven hours of sleep. Eight hours is just inarguably better, just as...

20 Practice Plans: The Ultimate Beach Volleyball Training Companion!

This is our latest and greatest product in the Better at Beach, beach volleyball training series!

Have you ever planned to do drills with your friends or team, then show up to the beach and wonder what you should be working on? This practice plan will give you a minute-by-minute printable guide and video examples of each drill. We take the guesswork out of it for you!! All you have to do is show up and focus on improving your game!

The program was created by current professional beach volleyball players Brandon Joyner and Mark Burik, who have years of combined coaching and playing experience on the AVP and FIVB and NORCECA world tours.

There are five areas of concentration: Passing, Setting, Attacking, Defense, and Gameplay. The drills progress from basic to advanced, and is great for coaches and players of ALL LEVELS!

We know you will absolutely LOVE this comprehensive training guide to help you get...

Beach volleyball partners can argue a lot, but I'd like to save you a fight and teach you how to set and where the best players in the world prefer to get set. This video does look at some great players with big verticals and quick arms which means they can hit sets hard and down from far away. 

Most volleyball players try to overcome their lack of accuracy in their spikes by hitting hard. If you're a shorter player or you don't have a massive vertical jump, it can be frustrating to hit balls that aren't on top of the net because you never get the feeling of hitting down. 

In the video below, we show you examples where there is a big physical blocker at the net, which means tight sets will be gobbled up....

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...

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?

...

“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...

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...