Did you finish reading "How to Pass a Volleyball - Advanced Footwork and Drills" and crave more information?
We covered positioning on the court, passing, and footwork in the last few blogs on How to Pass a Volleyball. Here, we'll go over some special situations to help develop a deeper understanding of the game.
Passing height is a controversial topic in the beach volleyball world. Should I pass low? Should I pass high? How high is high? How low is low? What if I have a bad setter?
These are all important questions that will be answered right here.
What's we will cover:
First, it’s important for the pass to have...
We're going to cover some advanced footwork and techniques you can use to level up your game and start winning some beach volleyball tournaments. This will be building on the foundation of the basic footwork we went over in the blog “How to Pass a Volleyball - Basic Footwork”.
What will be covered:
Sometimes, serves come at our chest, neck and heads -- quick!
There is no time to get behind the ball and rock forward. You are not allowed to use your fingers to set the first ball unless it's flawless (so don’t try it) and we’ve already said that tomahawks in serve receive are a big no-no, so what do you have left?
The drop-step is a crucial piece of footwork you have to learn if you want to start winning your indoor and beach volleyball...
Did you read "How to Master Passing a Volleyball in Beach Volleyball" and still missing the basic footwork skills?
This is where we cover the 5 Basics steps to begin and move into more advanced situations that will have you moving like a pro in no time.
Athletic Position and The Five Basics of Volleyball Footwork
There is one posture that is common to almost all sports, and it’s called the athletic position. Regardless of the surface you compete on (sand, grass, hardwood, concrete), the athletic position is essentially a mandatory posture. Could be defense in basketball, preparing to field in baseball, or getting into serve receive in beach volleyball.
I tell my players I coach to “Learn to live in a quarter squat! We are beach volleyball athletes...
Why can I not get the volleyball to my partner every time? Do you constantly find yourself chasing down balls because your pass went clear into outer space? No need to fret. We have you covered.
Whether you are looking to perfect your passing or starting your volleyball adventures, mastering the volleyball pass is crucial if you want to get better at playing beach volleyball. We will be covering a few basics to get you started to becoming the best beach volleyball player you can be and passing like April Ross and Phil Dalhausser.
While there are a few differences between passing for indoor volleyball and beach volleyball, we encourage everyone to use this information and add it to your arsenal.
If you're interested in this blog on passing in beach volleyball, you may want to take a look at our Passing and Serve Receive Course in our Complete Player Program to really dive...
If you are still struggling with passing in volleyball, we have an easy fix for you, and all it has to do with is the shape of your body!
Get into a good, athletic posture with your hands on your knees. Now just let your hands drop off your knees, hanging in front of you. Keep your shoulders rounded forward, almost hunching your back. Now tuck your bottom rib under a little more by flexing your abs, like you are doing a crunch or rounding out your back even more. This is the shape that you should try to maintain throughout your whole pass, and you need to fight to keep this shape throughout the process of the pass! Passing in volleyball is not easy, but working extra hard to maintain this shape when you are not touching the ball will make your actual touch on the ball a little bit easier.
Want to see what this passing...
First things first, what do our hands look like when passing? With all your fingers on one hand touching and palms flat, put one set of fingers (except the thumbs) on top of the other, perpendicular to each other. Now, make your thumbs “kiss” (two thumbs touching and parallel to each other). We absolutely do not want to intertwine our fingers because if a really hard serve hits your hands wrong, it could lead to some broken fingers.
Next, make sure your arms are completely straight with no bend in your elbows - think about hyperextending your elbows, and hunching your shoulder blades forward to try to press your elbows together. And there is your perfect platform!
One of the biggest mistakes people make when passing in volleyball is breaking their hands/platform apart too quickly. This leads to a fast touch on the ball. We want a long, slow touch. Make it feel like...
To watch Evandro Goncalves serve is to witness the obvious power of a jump serve. The Brazilian has been named the best server in the world for five straight years for a reason: He simply overpowers opponents with a massive grenade launcher of a jump serve.
Yet most of us are not Evandro Goncalves. Most of us are human, carrying standard human shoulders that are not weapons of war. Most of us have to resort to more subtle serves – yet if we do them right, they’re just as dangerous.
John Mayer, currently the head beach volleyball coach at Loyola Marymount, has called the short serve the most under-used skill in beach volleyball. Why? It’s a low risk, high reward serve that can produce points in abundance while also tiring your opponents out, forcing them to sprint to the net, pass, retreat to their point of hesitation, then attack. Do this throughout an entire match, and what you’ll get is an exhausted opponent whose offensive rhythm has been thoroughly thrown...
One of the most helpful videos on YouTube when it comes to how to pass a volleyball actually has nothing to do with volleyball at all. It has nothing to do with passing, or footwork, or what to do with your platform, or any of the other minutiae of passing.
It's surfing.
It is an absolutely wonderful, laugh-till-you-cry scene from Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Paul Rudd is teaching Jason Segel how to surf. It's absolutely hysterical.
“Don’t try to do anything," Rudd says at the beginning of the lesson. "The less you do, the more you do.”
When Segel practices popping up, Rudd waves him off.
"Do less. Get down. Try it again."
So he does.
"Nope. Do less."
One more time.
"You’re doing too much. Do less. Remember, don’t do anything. Nothing."
And then, exasperated, Segel does nothing at all. He simply lays on the board.
"Well, you gotta do more than that. Just do it, feel, it pop up."
And that, my friends, is...
If you're interested in this drill on setting and digging, you may also be interested in our 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]
All of us beach volleyball players are looking for that one big thing -- the one lift to get us stronger, the one way to make money so we can continue pursuing this life on the beach, the one thing that'll get us hitting harder, jumping higher, running faster. Sadly, we do not have the answer for some of those things -- you can, however, take our 60-day strength and conditioning program to get you bouncing balls and swat-blocking and running around like Taylor Crabb.
Want to show your...
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?...
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