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?...

I had been struggling in beach volleyball lately. It's that weird transition from off-season to pre-season, even though we don't really have much of a real season to train for just yet. I was passing poorly, setting -- the skill I believe I do best -- inconsistent, siding out at the lowest clip in recent memory. It was frustrating. So I did what I always do when I'm struggling at something, be it writing, playing, lifting, eating, whatever: I looked through past journals to see what I was doing when I was playing better. 

What I found was that I was practicing differently than I had been. Three days a week, at least, my practice group would be limited to three people, and we'd repreprepreprep it out, for two hours. It's what I like to call a "meat and potatoes" practice: We're not doing anything fancy, just hammering out the basics, the fundamentals, over and over and over again.

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Women's...

The p1440 Developmental Program, while short-lived, was also one of the most formative training periods of my beach volleyball career. It’s sort of what I’d imagine competing on a men’s college team would be like. The levels between the players were relatively close, most of us being the upper AVP qualifier or lower main draw types. We talked a lot of trash in that brotherly kind of way where you outwardly loathed it but also undeniably enjoyed it.  We competed. We were all poor but still found an inordinate amount of money to spend at Brother's Burritos. 

It was awesome.

At the helm of the Dev Program, as we called it, was Marcio Sicoli. His name might ring a bell for a few of you. He coached Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May-Treanor to gold in London, then coached Walsh Jennings and April Ross to bronze in Rio. He served as Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb’s first coach. He’s been coaching Pepperdine, one of the most historically powerful NCAA...

In Huntington Beach one morning a few years ago, Jose Loiola was conducting a few ball control drills for the two young women who were, at the time -- and still -- two of the biggest names in women's beach volleyball: Sara Hughes and Kelly Claes.

I can’t remember the year exactly, so forgive me for not being able to detail their lengthy list of accolades as it stood at the time, but whether it was their junior or senior year of college doesn’t really matter. What I know for sure was that they had won upwards of 100 matches in a row; they were, at least, back-to-back National Champions, on their way to a third; they were making AVP finals. They were the most dominant team not just in college beach volleyball, but in the entire NCAA, right up there with the UConn women’s basketball team.

New to beach volleyball at the time, I didn’t try to hide the fact that I had all but taken out a notebook, sat next to their court, and wrote down every drill...

Most of my friends and beach volleyball partners are currently in Cancun, competing in an unprecedented back-to-back FIVB tournament series that will be critical in the race to the Tokyo Olympic Games. With all of them gone, it’s been tough to find full training groups. It would have been easy to take a few weeks off. Wait until things settle down.

Rest.

Rest is important, yes, but my international season begins again – it opened in Doha in February; Adam Roberts and I finished fifth – at the end of May, in Bulgaria. Now is not the time for rest. Now is the time for reps, reps, reps, getting better, improving. So I did not sit on my couch all week. Instead, I called Tim Brewster, one of my favorite training partners and a guy I took a fifth with in an FIVB in Tel Aviv, Israel, at the end of 2019.

For an hour, we went through some light reps, going over all the usual suspects: passing on both the right and the left, hitting line shots, hitting cut shots, swinging...

Whether someone is just learning how to play volleyball or has been playing for years, the most common question we get is "How high should I pass?'  In the sand volleyball world, this question can be answered many different ways, but the information below should give you all the answers you're looking for!  

If you're interested in this blog on beach volleyball serve receive and passing, you may want to take a look at our passing and serve receive course! We'd love to have you drop by one -- or more -- of 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]

At every level in beach volleyball -- from BB to co-ed to the ball at your local bar to the...

Are you trying to learn how to play volleyball?  Tired of having the same finishes in sand volleyball tournaments?  Trust me, we've been there too!  The following beach volleyball drills are perfect for people trying to answer these types of questions.  Whether you are trying to learn or trying to get better finishes these volleyball passing drills are perfect to help you gain the confidence to step out on the court!

If you're interested in this blog on beach volleyball serve receive and passing, you may want to take a look at our passing and serve receive course! We'd also love to have you drop by one -- or more -- of 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 ...