[00:00:00 - 00:00:26]
Mark Burik:
So when I look at this jump program by Project Pure Athlete, which focuses a lot on jump technique, there's a lot that I know biomechanically about jump technique that I like to teach and bring to players. But I know that if I spend $100 on this course, I get that knowledge for the rest of my life. The rest of my life. What's up, Brandon?
[00:00:26 - 00:00:29]
Brandon Joyner:
Marky. Mark, how are we doing? Yeah.
[00:00:29 - 00:00:31]
Mark Burik:
Hey, it's almost Christmas.
[00:00:31 - 00:00:33]
Brandon Joyner:
It's almost Christmas.
[00:00:33 - 00:01:38]
Mark Burik:
We are filming this in the bitter end of 2021. The bitter end. Yeah, I'm excited. I'm in New York. We just ran our second day of clinicing and not as big a showing as the first one. We had, like, everybody at the first one was like, you got to do this again. You got to do this again. So come on. And then we had nine sign ups to the first session and four sign ups for the second one because we only did it two days in advance. But we had a great crew. We had eight people this morning who we worked a lot on attacking and looking and it was a really good session. I love when you get to work with small groups and then you have the extra hours to really dig into problems and see those improvements happen. It was a really nice session. So shout out to my guys from New York and Endless Summer Volleyball in Oceanside for hosting us.
[00:01:38 - 00:01:48]
Brandon Joyner:
That's awesome. I'm glad you guys were able to get out there for those two days, right? Well, this was the second day. First day was two sessions and then today was just one session.
[00:01:48 - 00:03:05]
Mark Burik:
Yes. So today we had one session, one three hour session. And then on last Saturday, the new format of our clinics for anybody who is interested in our clinics, basically we have three sessions in one day, a Saturday, and we do a ball control and passing clinic. We do a defensive strategy technique and tactics, and then we do a lot of approach and arm swing work and we include some vision into that. So that's what we did last Saturday and it was packed and I was like, we might be able to do this again if you guys are interested. So can you all throw up your hands? And everybody threw up their hand. And so two days later we built out the clinic, sent it out, and we only ended up with eleven or twelve people across two sessions. So I was like, you know what, guys? We're just going to pull this into one session and yeah, we have a great little morning run. So pretty stoked and it's always awesome just to work with people who just want to get better, who are actually, like, putting in the work, who want to learn and are kicking butt. So good.
[00:03:05 - 00:03:57]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah, I like that. Especially even a small group like that. It's great because then you get into all the individualized coaching, like you give them the main theme and then you can start giving each person their own little nugget. And whenever you can walk away from those, that's like a pretty big thing because a lot of times we don't think about it, but it's like one little piece of advice can win you hundreds, if not thousands of more points like within a single season. So that little idea of just being able to see the blocker, see the defender, whatever it is, even if it was something simpler with just being on time with your attack or something like that, that one little fix can win you so many more points, which I think a lot of times we forget about that.
[00:03:57 - 00:05:53]
Mark Burik:
Yeah, right. Because I'm a fan of a couple of Instagram accounts right now that are doing good things with jump programs like Project Pure Athlete. I want to check out San Pedro's platform and Dustin Wattens his courses. But I'm like, you know what? These guys have worked decades to be able to master. They found their own path. They have seen things that you and I haven't seen. They ended up at the same level, but they've ended up at levels beyond us. But along that way, because they've had different teachers, different coaches, they get to see different things. They get to hear different things. And so when I look at this jump program by Project Pure Athlete, which focuses a lot on jump technique, there's a lot that I know biomechanically about jump technique that I like to teach and bring to players. But I know that if I spend $100 on this course, I get that knowledge for the rest of my life. The rest of my life. And if you measure just times per use when you're thinking about a small course like that, why wouldn't you? If it's up your alley, if it's something that you want to learn and you know is going to benefit you and the people around you in the long run, $100 is absolutely nothing compared to the amount of times you're going to use that knowledge instead of just kind of continuing and putting your own information on repeat. I used to meet these coaches when I was like a cocky young coach, like 24, 25. Who would they like? I've been coaching for 30 years. I know this. How do you come in and say all this is different? Just because you've been doing something for 30 years does not mean you've been doing it at a high level for 30 years. Right? It means that you've been doing it and known as taking your place.
[00:05:53 - 00:07:11]
Brandon Joyner:
And most of the time, if you're doing the same thing for 30 years, you've fallen behind. The times when we're thinking about beach volleyball, the game has changed so much in the last five years. But we still have coaches that are coaching the same the way that they were taught how to coach, the way that they were taught how to play. And like, a lot of times I'll even have people ask me, like, you're, obviously you coach, you're a good coach. Do you still get coached by other people? And my answer is always 100%. Like, I am always looking to find a good coach to take me in. I want someone to still coach me because that's the time where I might have someone say something to me that I haven't heard it said that way before, or I might hear an idea that I haven't really thought about too much. So it's always kind of funny. Like if I'm coaching someone in Hermosa and they're like, hey, I think I'm going to go to a session with this person next week, and they think that I'm going to be a little offended. And I'm like, no, hey, go get coached by as many people as you possibly can. As long as you're learning. That's the best part, because that's what we're doing, too. So it's hard to kind of say, hey, only come to us.
[00:07:11 - 00:10:53]
Mark Burik:
There's like a couple of things in there I don't think that you should bounce around to coaches. Like each practice, I think you have to see a coaches plan out consistency. Yes. Stick with them and know where you're headed. Follow the plan for long enough to actually grab onto something and then see if that plan goes. Because some coaches can provide things in one session, but there's so much value in hanging around that because you only get to say so much in 2 hours. And a good coach knows I'm not going to put my entire library of knowledge into you in these 2 hours. I'm going to give you the one thing that you need the most right now. But that's nowhere near, like what they have to offer. And that might become a bigger part of that grand scheme. In order to do this, OK, now we're going to have to build up. We're going to have to break everything down and rebuild it. We talk about like, Tiger Woods, who still has a coach, right. Was the world's greatest golfer, Tom Brady, who still has his own body mechanics. It apparently that Tomb ready. Doesn't actually need a coach. Right. Shout out to the Pats fans out there. But like all of the best players still have coaches still have body workers still have nutritionist. It's not that they don't know how. It's just that putting that in the hands of somebody else to sort of drive the boat is just a better way to do it. I'm reading a book right now called The One Thing. It's a really good business book, and it talks about how multitasking is not a skill that should be promoted or asked for or searched for. It's the ability to focus and narrow things down to say, what's the most important thing I can do this week? If you had to lock it down to one Thing? And do you have the ability to stay in there for the 40 hours that week and perfect that instead of seeing all of the different problems and flashing signs and new ideas and people are coming into you and then you're like, we're sitting here doing work on the website, and then all of a sudden you get a notification on Instagram, and then somebody is interested in one of our courses or wants to come to a camp, but they have a problem with booking. Well, now I spend like, 10 seconds disengaging from this one task to take care of that task, and then I forget where I leave off. And then finally to get back into that rhythm, that's going to take me just another bout of time. It's like when you're lifting or you're playing pool play, right on a Saturday, you need to warm up again for your second pool play match to get yourself engaged. And your brain works that way, too. And so being able to focus on one thing for a long time is a big skill that this book is talking about. I'm really enjoying it so far because I know that my brain goes from idea to idea to idea to idea, and I need to lock it in, and I think our players should be able to do that as well. Can you focus on passing for one month?
[00:10:53 - 00:12:37]
Brandon Joyner:
Right? Yeah, that's where I was getting ready to go with it. That skill doesn't just happen on a daily basis. It's like something that we've been doing. And Her Moses, it's tough when you're running, like, group classes and stuff like that, but we have the first week of a month is a certain skill. The second week of the month is a certain skill, and it's like every single class during that week, the drills might be a little different, but the skill focus is always going to be the same. And it's hard. It's hard as a player to be like, oh, my gosh, here's my fourth practice of the week on passing. But the really cool thing about that is like, you're 100% going to see improvement. And then the same thing for coaches. I think it's very hard for a coach because it's no secret that every single player enjoys playing more than they like drilling to an extent. You know, there are some people out there that are like, no, I want to drill, drill, drill, drill. I don't care if we don't get to any gameplay, but for the most part, it's hard for inexperienced coaches. They're like, go into the practice, and even if they have a plan, they're like, you know what? Today we're going to work on ball control, we're going to work on passing. And then within 30 minutes, they're like, these guys are starting to lose focus, or these people let's go ahead and play King of the court. And then they're like, oh, people are working hard. People are diving, people are out of breath. I've had to take three water breaks, and it's like, oh, man. Like, now this is a good practice when at the end of the month, I don't know if you're necessarily seeing like, yes, they're definitely getting better because they're consistently playing, but I don't think that they're seeing the growth that they would if they chose a specific topic and focus on that for a week, two weeks, a month, if you have the time. Oh, yeah. But being able to slow down and kind of see that is definitely something that you should start thinking about 100%, man. And while we're talking about focus, let's bring in today's topic.
[00:12:37 - 00:14:01]
Mark Burik:
Yeah. Something that I think too many people ignore and can do better is just the simple standing float surf. I mean, the title of our thing today is lethal. You can be absolutely lethal with a good variation of standing float service. And most people, they don't use enough variation, I think, in their float serves. And putting the ball over and to a certain person becomes like where this person's serve knowledge or exploration of the skill ends. It just ends in, yeah, I can get it over sometimes harder, sometimes a little bit less or. Right. And it's really not good enough to hit the next level. And one of the biggest things that I see is players choose a person. They say, okay, we're serving that person. And that's as far as their strategy goes. Okay. But if they get a good pass, what's your next step? Is it like, oh, my God, our entire plants have been foiled and now you have no idea what to do.
[00:14:01 - 00:14:55]
Brandon Joyner:
Dang it. They're ready to play the sport too. Yeah. And I think it's a simple question. If you're back there serving, those people are thinking, oh, this is how I start the point. But I think that question needs to change in your mind a little bit to realizing that this is your first opportunity to win the point. Yes. You know, like a serve is a way for you to start earning points and it doesn't always have to be an ace. But if you can start thinking about putting that other team in trouble, then that's a good thing. I think a lot of times if people are only thinking about ace, that leads to a lot of errors. But if you think about putting that person in trouble or that other team with something that makes sense, then that's always going to start off the point a little bit better.
[00:14:55 - 00:18:48]
Mark Burik:
And we're going to get into a lot of that today. And I'm going to ask for your best flow serve tips. I'm going to give mine. And then I really would like to talk about strategy and what each style of serve does as well. So I'll start my first one and you could tell me if you like it, love it or hate it. Here's where I kind of picked this up. I started looking at Todd Rogers and every now and then he would make some type of interesting shape with his hands, like an almost OK sign where he would close it. Every now and then I was always wondering, was he fisting some of his serves and I started looking at my serves and where I was contacting it and how I was contacting it, and I started thinking about surface areas. And one of the answers that I came upon was the consistency of the different places in your hands when you strike a float serve is crucial. Now, if you hit the middle of your hand on a float serve, or if you hit the upper part, like the calluses just below your fingers, that's going to have a significantly different bounce or impact than, say, like your palm or the heel of your palm. And if you don't focus on those small parts of your hand. Right. And being able to contact the same surface each time, because each part of your hand is quite different, if you don't contact the right surface, you're going to have a very different serve each time. The ball is going to come off of you at a different speed when you're serving. And that means that now, like, let's go back to firearms, Brandon. Why not? We avoided it last time. Now you've got a gun where whenever you squeeze the trigger, the bows are all just coming out at different speeds, and it's going to be impossible to be accurate with this type of weapon. Right. So when we talk about serving, if you hit some here and some, like in a different part of your hand, you know that they're going to come out with different speeds. So if you don't focus on hitting a very specific part of your hand, you're going to have trouble being accurate over time. So the key that I like to give people, of course, is from Kyle Stevenson. Shout out, Kyle Stevens. Okay, hamburger, no French fries. Make sure you're using the palm. But I went even more specific on it. Of course, you can't have fingers on the ball just when you're float serving, do not let your fingers touch the ball, but keeping the base right above the heel of your palm, just that bottom part where it's going to be have a nice crispy bounce. I don't want people serving with their wrists or anything, but to just have that base of your palm where that becomes the area that I hit every time I know that the ball is going to come off at different speed. And I like that better than the middle of my hand, because I think since the ball has a sharper bounce off of that area, there's just this 1% that I look at that I say the defense isn't going to have quite the same read the time to read as they would on a softer piece of my hand, where the ball will come off a little bit slower so that they're going to have a little bit more time. Right. I want the ball to get out of my hand quick and start gaining distance before they pick up on the trajectory of it. So one of my biggest, biggest keys is to really focus on just above the heel of your palm. That's where I want my float serves contacted, and that's how I start most of my service teachings. But where were you taught as far as your hand placement on the ball for flat? I like the specific point.
[00:18:48 - 00:24:44]
Brandon Joyner:
I've never really talked too much about where on the hand you and I have used the hamburger no French fries quite a bit. I love that we're milking it at this point or whatever because it really gives a good idea. And it's Kyle. So it's like you just love saying anything, Kyle, but something. I saw a video. I can't remember who it was. I think it was just a high school coach at somewhere where he was talking to his girls and he was talking about a float serve and something that he had all of his kids do is clap and then clap without using your fingers. And I think that teaching allows a lot of people to kind of understand how this hand needs to feel when they're making contact with the ball. I think a lot of people go into a float serve where maybe they lack power or something like that. They'd never really get to this extended hand open position, like something that I've been teaching recently, and especially if you're lacking that kind of Ping that you're talking about before where the ball doesn't come off with speed or something like that, then more than likely, your hand is in a position where it's a little soft. And then once we do that, that's when it's kind of weird. You're paint brushing some balls, you're not able to hit the ball in the same spot of your hand every single time. So that's developing inconsistencies. But yeah, I think as long as you have that strict hand and now we're focusing on where we're going to contact, because if you're getting your fingers out of the way, you're not going to want to contact the ball up here because those fingers don't have any action. If you're here, then you're going to be okay with touching the ball with every single part of your hand. But yeah, I think if you can go back here and then now what you're talking about, about focusing on a specific point on the hand, I think that that's a really good conversation to have because to be honest, I've had the conversation before where I'm like, you know what, you just need to have a solid hand, and I can't really help you too much with your hand contact. That's something that you kind of have to figure out on your own. Like, I can tell you the mechanics, but the actual touching of the ball, that's going to be on you. But I think if we as coaches can provide a little bit more, like giving them that whole aim small miss small thing, if we give them that idea of being like, hey, try to hit here. Even if you happen to be a little inconsistent on this thing and you have that hand in the right form, then you're obviously going to find that serve a little bit easier. So I really like that. That's good. Thanks, man. Yeah, I like it. That's a thought. We're getting people out of using their fingers. And yes, you do see that people even who aren't trying to use their fingers like this just sort of gets in the way just because they lack of that focal point right at the very beginning of the surf. And that's the most important thing is going to be that aim, especially when we're talking about float surfs. Cool. I had a hand contact written down as well. Something else I have written down is a strong setup and a meaningful set up. Okay. And what I mean by that is like knowing what your other body positions need to be before you start. If we're talking about a standing float serve, then something I would like for people to do a little bit more is get there. If I'm right handed, then my left foot needs to be closer to the line than my right. I like to have my left foot pointing towards the net, and then my right foot will kind of be at a little maybe a 45 deg angle, if not a 90 deg angle, which allows me to kind of push off that back foot. Once you have that solid base of your feet, then it allows you to kind of rock back and forth to allow yourself to give a little momentum. I think one of the big struggles that we see is that when especially people if you're a person that questions your strength of being able to get the ball over the net, a lot of times what we see is that people are actually leaving the ground with that back foot and they're kind of rotating with their swing. And it makes sense when you think about it, like, when you see it, it's like, oh, you're trying really hard to get the ball over the net. But we don't realize that when you have your feet planted on the ground and you have that left foot forward and you have that right footage, your base and you're doing that rocker step, having that strength of your feet being on the ground is the power that you're looking for. When you're rotating through this hit, you're taking the power away from your legs. You're taking the power away from your actual arm swing because now you're just kind of evening it out. Yes. So you're actually making your job a little bit harder. Your obliques aren't stretching. Exactly. If your whole body twists at once, there's no stretch sequence in your body and you can't fire those rubber bands. Right? Yeah. So I would say a strong base and just trusting those feet. So I think we'll kind of work our way up. But, yeah, if we can keep those feet into a good starting position and then allow us to use that momentum while keeping our feet grounded, I think that will show up some consistency. And once again, that's mainly for people who I think are not trusting their strength. And if you have a lot of inconsistency on where you're serving, like if you're trying to serve a right sideline and you happen to always serve it to the left side of the court, more than likely you're doing that rotation, too. Yeah.
[00:24:44 - 00:27:58]
Mark Burik:
Some people can't get that ball over the net, and they don't believe that they can. And I haven't had anyone leave a serving session with me without getting a ball over the net from the service line. They always come into it saying, I can't do it. I just don't have the power. I just don't have the strength. And it always comes down to one of these two things, like are your feet positioned in a good way? Are you actually utilizing them so that you put your roots in the ground and then you can utilize some stretch? And what part of your hand are you hitting? Those things, combined with what's going to be our next key, will get everybody their first serve over the net. And all you have to do is just start somebody from half court and then move them back piece by piece. And once you fix those things, like that contact point, there are some people that won't use their open hand. They use their fist because you can just use the harder part of your hand. But now their whole hand is hard because they use their fist. Right. So the last thing that I think most people can work on and this comes in with the swing is this ability to open up their shoulders and get a little bit of stretch in the oblique. So if I'm sitting in a chair at home, you're sitting in a chair. If you can keep your knees forward but rotate so that your shoulder gets 90 degrees backwards, that's that Thoracic rotation that we're talking about. And what's happening there is you're stretching your obliques, and once you're stretching your obliques, they help you fire forward. A lot of what we tell, especially beginners, is to just wave the load to somebody behind them and then come forward. Right. It works great with kids, with adults. Just getting somebody to get their hand back is important. We have our video editor, Tanya, who struggles with some overhead throwing motions and things like that. She's got a little she's tight as far as mobility goes. And I thought you did something excellent with her because when we did this, hello getting her hand up a lot, she wasn't quite able to use that stretch sequence, so it froze her. And then you did one of the most amazing things in coaching I've ever seen that gave her the power. You said, you know what, you're just going to touch this point. So you had her start like the first person that I've seen where you had to start with her hitting arm down by her side, completely relaxed in Jello. And then you said toss, then load, then go. And that gave her this fast stretch and release momentum, I guess we'll say. And it finally gave her some power on her float serve. So she was still going to this key of waving hello to somebody behind her. Right. But the touch and go speed of it by having her hand down by her side. I'm not saying that this is a solution for everybody, but it's one of the most unique solutions I've ever seen. And like, kudos to you for finding that to have somebody relax enough so that they're not so stiff and that they can use the stretch sequences in their body. And so kind of the third thing that we can teach players to do is to open up, to wave that hand hello, to kind of twist it. When I wave hello, you give that little extra stretch in your muscles, a little extra forearm stretch that allows your elbow to rotate
[00:27:58 - 00:28:53]
Brandon Joyner:
before you keep going. I think one of the big things with her, with Tanya when I was working with her is that I think a lot of people, they get too stressed in this position. If you're in this position right now, at home, when you're watching, if your hand is forward, then this bicep tends to tighten up a little bit. But if you wave behind you now, this biceps loose. I think a lot of times when we're talking about get that arm back and ready and loaded. So we're getting rid of one possible movement before the serve happens. But if you don't have the ability to find that relaxation point, to allow that fire to happen, then that's probably one of the struggles there. So I think that's kind of like what I picked up on LaTanya.
[00:28:53 - 00:30:04]
Mark Burik:
Yeah, it's a good find. Thanks. So third, everybody is just be able to turn that hand back. You can do it with your shoulders so that you rotate away from your hips. And you can also do it by a little Rhomboid activation, in other words, squeezing your shoulder blades back together, that helps you get another two to three inches of open space. But if you do this by locking and holding, and then you're never able to relax and find a whip motion, even if it's a small slow whip, people think that you're kind of like stiff on float serves, but there's still a sequence. It's still elbow to hand where the hand comes through after the elbow. And that is a stretch. And if you can relax just a little bit in that rotator cuff to allow the elbow to come through before the hand, you're going to get that nice pop on the float surf. And for sure you'll be able to get her over the net. And if you haven't been able to get your surf over the net as an overhand server, just come to one of our cancer clinics. We'll get you and we'll stick with it because it drives me insane if I can't get somebody to hit it over the net and I stick on that.
[00:30:04 - 00:31:12]
Brandon Joyner:
And I think a lot of the time we will continue going in a second. But I think a lot of times coaches and players are too focused on the result of a play when they're trying to learn something. If you walk into a practice and you're learning how to overhand serve and you think about every miss serve as a failure, you're going to drive yourself crazy. So it's this idea of finding there is a form, there's a form to everything, and there's a unique form to you too, as a player. But finding that form, it's not failures. It's like every single thing that you fail at is making you into a better player. Same thing as life. It's definitely a life lesson. But I think a lot of times we can be like, oh, you know what? I didn't make a serve ever, but my feet stayed on the ground. I had a good set up. I just missed the hand contact a little bit. So then the next time you focus on all those things that you did right, and now you had in the hand contact. So I think if we can have that kind of growth mindset, that would be really good too.
[00:31:12 - 00:33:28]
Mark Burik:
We had a couple of players in our online courses who took our fix your arm swing course in 21 days. And they started out just needing to try to pump and jump into their floaters and do that whole jump and twist that you're saying serving so inconsistent and with their video. Because for those of you who don't know with our online programs or online coaching, when you join our team, you get to post all of your videos. We give you the drills to do weekly. You can choose any course you want, but our group moves together with a different course at a different time. So right now they're finishing up the attacking course. This should be the last day of the attacking course, and most of the players aren't using courts. But we have two of these players who are just doing that jump, float, surf. And all it took was us just taking a look at film. They post on our private Facebook group. We slow it down frame by frame and we say, look at the sequence. That's not happening, right? Everything's coming through at the exact same time. So there's never a stretch in the body. And we have people who took our online classes, not even our in person classes or online classes, and they're coming back to the meetings and be like I got Aces this weekend. I was crushing people from the service line and it's so satisfying. Like Joe who's now leading the way there. And earlier when I was running every meeting, it was so nice to hear our online members come back from that and just be like, yeah, I'm literally winning more points because the drills I'm doing at home and the videos that we're watching together. So a little shout out to our online coaching group there. But you can do it. If you think you can't overhand serve, you can do it. Just keep trying. Don't just go under handserve because you think you're not strong enough. You need to develop the pathways that make it happen. And then when you need help after that, then we're here for you for some online video coaching and you can find that @betterbeach.com coaching. If you're ever interested in joining our personal online coaching group, then you are more than welcome and we can work on your arm swing no matter what level you're at
[00:33:28 - 00:34:09]
Brandon Joyner:
and especially if you're one of those people too, that's like another. I don't want to call it an excuse because it definitely is an excuse for some people. But my shoulder hurts. Yes. If your shoulder hurts that bad, you need to go see somebody. You need to get checked out to make sure you haven't torn anything. But more than likely, if your shoulder hurts from an overhand serve, it's probably because you're doing something wrong, adding in an extra movement or you're making your body move in a certain way that it does not want to. So if you're one of those people, if you have shoulder pain but you don't think you have anything torn, more than likely it's a technique issue. So we can fix you too.
[00:34:09 - 00:34:30]
Mark Burik:
Just takes a little bit of guidance and then hearing something in a different way and then sticking to it. And I think that's the great part about having coaches, having a group of players that you can train with is that accountability and knowing that hey, we're not going to get mad at you if you miss, but you got to get this.
[00:34:30 - 00:34:35]
Brandon Joyner:
Are we keeping the train rolling?
[00:34:35 - 00:34:36]
Mark Burik:
Yeah, I want to hear because I want to get into some strategy.
[00:34:36 - 00:36:59]
Brandon Joyner:
Okay, so one of my last two, I have two more written down. One of them is a concentrating on the lift of the ball and most people would call it a toss, but I think when we tell people to toss the ball for their serve we get a lot of wrist action and a lot of elbow bend which puts some top spin on that ball and it creates some consistency. So something that I like to think about is right when you get to that position where you're set up. So kind of going back to my first key that I was talking about having those strong legs present the ball. Present the ball out in front of you like you're showing it off to the world. And then when you are lifting, you don't have to bend your elbow or bend your arm or your wrist. It doesn't have to be a toss. Whenever we get into jump serving and stuff like that, that's when we're going to start tossing, because we're going to need that ball to develop some top spin before we go. But I think if you're thinking about a consistent, powerful float serve, the first thing and a lot of people will say it, the most important thing is the toss. There's a lot of important things, but whenever we're doing it, present that ball, get the ball a nice, easy lift up into your hitting window, and then that will allow you to go through and strike. And when that ball leaves your hands, if you think about if you're able to stand up at home, when you extend your arm, it will probably be about a couple of inches in front of that front foot. And if you lift that ball up perfectly, it should land right in front of that front toe, maybe a little bit. But we want to make sure that we're able to use that momentum going forward. Definitely. So concentrate on that toss. Don't throw it too high. Don't throw it too low. Chris Vaughan serve is still like one of the weirdest things for me to watch because it's a very consistent serve for him. But I can't imagine teaching that to somebody because it requires perfect timing. If you haven't seen Chris Von Surf, he literally it's super consistent for him, but we need to find that nice little happy medium where it's high enough to where you have time to react, but it's not super high to where you're waiting, and it's not low enough to where you're not getting it at the right contact point. Yeah.
[00:36:59 - 00:39:35]
Mark Burik:
And I'll add one thing to your toss that we see in Just Beginner and B players, the people who squat and use every leg muscle they have to toss a volleyball twelve inches heavy, dude. You don't need the bend and snap. You don't need a full squat to toss a ball for a standing float surf. Right. Just leave that soft bend in your legs and lift the ball with just your arms. You don't need all of that leg rhythm. So if you guys film yourself at home or at your next practice or game and you see yourself tossing your float serve with one hand for a standing float surf, and you have to bend all the way down and then you toss it in order to do that, you're doing too much simplify the process and just go with an arm lift ball is not that heavy. It's quite light. Actually. It's quite light. All right. Any more keys that you want to talk about or are you ready for? I want to talk a little bit about strategy. Yeah. So I always teach that there are essentially four different styles of float surf. Right. You got the heater, the one where you put little Ping on it and you're trying to get it cross the net as flat as possible and as fast as possible. This serve, naturally, is going to land deep in the court. It's going to land deep, but I'm not going to consider it a deep serve. And you guys will hear why in a little bit. But that flat fast serve is designed to have speed, and it's designed to make the other person panic. Now you can either throw it right at their neck and force them into a Tomahawk situation or make them have to get out of the way, or you can throw it down, like in the middle their seam or down their sideline, but there has to be Ping on it, and it has to be intentionally flat. When you put arc on that, then you're getting rid of the whole goal of the flat fast float surf. Right. Thank you. So putting Ping and we keep using this word Ping, like zip, whatever you want to say. It's got to be accelerated through that tape, pick a spot six inches right above the tape and fire it through so that it might take somebody's head off.
[00:39:35 - 00:41:15]
Brandon Joyner:
Right. Just to kind of clarify that a little bit, I had a coach in Slakia that we couldn't talk, but he had me going. I was the only pro on the team that was international. So I had to go in for an extra practice to meet my contract. And one of the most consistent things that he had me do, which I've definitely carried over to the beach, is he would put up a rubber band, like from the top of the antenna on one side to the top of the antenna on the other side. And I wasn't allowed to leave practice until I hit my serve through that band, like between the net and that band and then landing in the back 3ft of the court. And I had to do it like ten times or something like that. But I think especially if you can create that visual, something that I'll say to a lot of beginners or intermediates who are having trouble with this is if you can draw that line at the top of the antenna to the other antenna and create pretty much another box above the net, act like it's filled with glass. And it's your job to break that glass. Oh, I like that. I think if we can break that glass, then you're going to be surprised on the amount of serves that you're able to miss deep. If you do miss a serve deep, it's probably because you hit it above that glass. But if you're able to hit that zone and if it's hard and it's flat and float serve, then it's going to be like probably the best serve that you have the ability to do. It's going to help you with strength, and it's going to make that pass or have to react quickly. So I think that visual helps a lot with a lot of players I've worked with.
[00:41:15 - 00:44:32]
Mark Burik:
I love that. To break that pane of glass, I'm going to steal that. That's good. Steal what? Okay, so that flat, fast float surf designed to beat somebody, make them panic and make them rush. Right? It's to create float on the ball. The float will naturally happen, but you have to put some zing on it in order to put that pressure. Now, my number two serve, once you've done that enough times, and this is where if you guys are baseball fans, you're going to understand this analogy. But to have the exact same trajectory. So create that exact line. But you do hit the ball softer so that after you've gotten them so used to that speed and they're expecting it to come fast at them, this ball just loses its speed. And then right after the net kind of drops down. And this was a really hard concept for me to get because Fred Chow at George Mason, he tried to get me to understand this, and I was like, how is the ball just going to stop? He's like, it just kind of hits a curtain and it just falls down. And I was like, that doesn't make any sense to me. But eventually I was able to really understand it and to just slow down the arm a little bit or hit a smaller piece of the ball. So instead of following through too much, you just kind of touch the edge of it, right? That ball will still go on that line, but just enough after the net. And this takes so much practice, you have to practice to serve that it just looks like it's coming at your head, and then it dives, and then you see passers literally diving forward to make a pass. Right? And if you can get a serve, receiver diving, you've definitely won the first battle because you'd rather be on a knee. You want to pass with your hands above your hips. We know that from all of our service, you've talked. But having that and I call it the dead ball, where it just drives and then just kind of fades to the ground and somebody kind of has to jerk forward and die for that ball. It is such an effective serve, but you just can't use that serve over and over again. It works like a change up in baseball where you get somebody on their heels and then all of a sudden you show the same arm, swing the same line, but it is just moving slower and it's hard for the eyes to really pick up on that and detect it. And that odd enough, is sometimes I will change the surface of my hand contact. And I'll keep my arm speed the same in order to do this. So I'll strike that one maybe in the middle of my palm, and that will get me to the point where, okay, I can keep the same arm speed, so I'm not giving anything away. And then I'll have that dead ball come in, and that works much like a circle change up in baseball, where instead of grabbing the seams with your two fingers, you would put the ball in the middle of your palm. So you actually can't really grip it with your fingers and you can have the same exact arm speed, but the ball will just come out ten, 15 mph slower. So that dead ball becomes absolutely devastating when served, receivers have to dive forward and when they don't expect it.
[00:44:32 - 00:46:50]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah. And I think we're even starting to see this a lot with, like, I know Andy Binesh has kind of developed this with a Top Spin concert where he'll go through a couple he'll rip down the line, down the seam, he'll get a couple of surge that way, and then he'll look the exact same. Except now he'll open that hand up and go through that dead ball and it's really hard to pick up on. I call it the oh, crap serve. Most of the time, as I'm a pastor, I'm like, oh, crap, I got to go get it to most of the time. I don't take crap, but I've already talked about guns today. I know where you're coming from, but I wonder if it has to do with like, you know, I'm trying to think of some way we could do it without people seeing. And I think a lot of it, if you're going through that hard serve, the one that's catching people high on the neck, I'm trying not to use a visual, but this water bottle, a lot of times when we make our contact, it's here. But with that hard serve, you're almost going to make it feel like you're hitting this side of the ball. I got you, you're following through a little more. So it's like when that ball absorbs, like it's your job, you're not going to swing all the way through, but you're going to try to touch this side of the ball. And I think with that dead ball that you're talking about, you're maybe only going halfway or maybe even a quarter or something like that. So I think it's all about the finish. And this is something that I had written kind of down in my keys, and I've already seen somebody ask, how do you get a little bit more zip on the ball? And I think that contact is huge. I think if you can think about contacting the other side of the ball and almost surprising that volleyball and really whipping it, then that's a way to get a little bit more zing on that ball. If we're talking about that serve that we talked about before with the high fast flat float, sir. But if you're going for that dead ball, then obviously you're not going to surprise that ball as much. You're not going to go through that full contact that you were looking for before and instead you're still surprising. But then you're kind of laying off it at the end.
[00:46:50 - 00:51:40]
Mark Burik:
We talked a lot about that today. When people are hitting their high lines, they're moving their arms too slow into the high lines. And I said, you move your arm just as fast. Like if I'm going to punch my hand, if I continue to go through it, it's going to make that hard sound, but I can move it just as fast. But just stop it on contact and it's not going to make my hand go anywhere. It's not going to do that damage. So that speed until you contact the face and then you got to stop that hand right there. And that's a good way to use that dead ball and to hit shots in general. Now let's talk about kind of really going into this just match of how do I beat a passer, sorry, how do I beat a bad setter or how do I beat somebody who I really know loves to charge and hit if they can get under the ball frequently? There's a couple of ways now, you can beat a setter by serving the other player. But if you keep serving the player at an even distance, so say we use that flat float and they don't have to move the setter only has to set a ball that's moving maybe 10ft. Right. Because they've passed this person's pass from three quarters depth, they pass it up to 6ft. You're really only talking about seven or 8ft. That the setter has to focus. Now if I want to make a setter nervous, if I know that they suck that they get nervous that their hands fall apart, they think too much, they double a lot. I'm going to pop a high deep serve. And this is what we talked about when we said that the flat serve lands deep, but I don't consider it a deep serve. The high deep serve is if everybody at home puts their arms out so that their body makes a tea. When you're in serve receive, what you want this high deep serve to do is land up and over that fence but still in the court. Right. What that's going to do? Is it's going to attempt somebody to try to Tomahawk, in which case you've won the first battle, somebody Tomahawks and serve receive server, you have won the first battle. Congratulations. Or if they're a better passer, they're going to move back. They're going to put their feet probably on that back line just to be able to contact the ball with their platform. And now I've doubled the distance of the path and now, even if there's a little bit of a breeze, this setter just starts to freak out. Right, because the ball is moving so far, and now the passer has to send a long like a 20 foot pass to get it into the right zone, or they can leave it at half court and make it easier for the setter, in which case, well, now you're attacking a ball where the sets coming from half court. So I know statistically I'm already at an advantage. Or if they do get the ball all the way forward, then they're passing that long ball and the setter gets really nervous. And now most people charge, the more time you give a hitter, the earlier they tend to get, which is kind of crazy. So once you send them deep, the time between their pass and their hit is going to be a lot longer than it normally is, and they're going to have a tendency to get early, they're going to lose their vision, they're going to lose power. Right. So if you know that somebody's getting early, you just pop. And it seems silly to use the serve because you're putting a rainbow soft serve high, deep in the court. You're hitting it up to get it over that player's head and force them to move back or Tomahawk. And once you do that, you're already at an advantage and you're not going for an ace. You're going to cause a bad set and a troublesome attack. So now we're thinking three and four touches in advance instead of like what we said at the beginning. Yeah, I'm going to get a serve. Oh, crap, he passed it really well. Now my plan is in pieces and I don't have the next phase of my strategy, but this is the next phase. Serve that ball high, slow, deep, force the player to move back, force a longer pass. You'll get a nervous, shaky setter and the hitters will have a big tendency to come in early because they'll just be charging because you've elongated that time between pass and hit contact, and it does not matter what level you are playing at. I've seen people stress out after an easy path that made them pass deep where they're a beginner. I've also seen Ricardo make some of the best players on the ABP look like fools because he serves this high, super easy ball deep into the court, and then that's when he starts getting a lot of his blocks or his defender starts getting really easy. Digs.
[00:51:40 - 00:53:05]
Brandon Joyner:
Yes. And I think as long as we can take that passer out of their comfort zone of where they like to pass in order to get themselves to their starting position for their approach. A lot of people don't realize where that is. They don't know where they should be starting their approach every single time. So if you put them in a position that they're not used to passing, then they're not going to be able to find that starting position in any way. Like we were talking about where it's a charge, you're going to start seeing people pass from the deep spot on the court, and then they're just going to have either this trot up to the net where they never get stopped, they never speed up and never slowed down, or they're literally just going to run as fast as they can and they're going to hope that their setter makes them a perfect set. But because their vision is not the same as it would be on a normal pass, they're kind of messing everything up. Yeah, yeah, I like that. And I think the more you can be okay because the pastor isn't going to be the one that looks like they're in trouble when the play is starting. If you can kind of get that out of your head because when you serve that ball up, it's almost going to feel like you underhand served it. And when that passer is looking at it, they're almost going to look like they're passing and underhand float serve. But all the trouble starts happening after that pass happens because now we're thinking about the set and the hitter as well.
[00:53:05 - 00:54:37]
Mark Burik:
And one advantage that I also just thought of is when you hit a slow softball at certain players, mentally, they relax because they think they're no longer under pressure. So their technique slides, their platform kind of relaxes. They get a little bit jelly in the arms. They might leave their hands early, they might exhale, but they're not in that tense. I need to be here at all times mindset. So when you give that slow ball to a passer, even if it does end up right in their lap because you missed it short, a player just randomly falls asleep and they get the sloppy pass, and then they get an even sloppier approach, and then you've won on that side, too, because you've changed their mentality from being engaged to them thinking they're in complete control and therefore relaxing. There are people who think they're in complete control and they know how to step on the gas pedal. Right. And they keep that tension. But there are the types of players who when you make them think they're in control with easy, slow balls, everything about their technique and their footwork and their spacing changes because they relax. And that's a good way to sort of nail them with a couple of balls until, of course, they get pissed off enough and then they refocus. But you can get them one out of every four or five balls. Just catch them not sleeping, but you can roll them to sleep. The old Robotop.
[00:54:37 - 00:55:04]
Brandon Joyner:
I think every volleyball player can say that it's happened to them. Their partners under stress for the entire game. Your partner is getting served the whole time and all of a sudden it's 2017, and then they serve you a ball and you're like, oh, crap, now I'm not setting anymore. Now I have to pass and hit and kind of just catch them off guard. I think that's a good point, too.
[00:55:04 - 00:59:27]
Mark Burik:
I think the last one I want to talk about is short surfs. So we did talk about that dead ball by now, the fourth type of float surf. We got the flat and fast. We've got the high deep going all over that back fencing in. We've got the dead ball, which comes in hot or looks like it's coming in hot and then drops and then a little bit steeper short serve. Now sometimes this works because if you hit it a little bit up, somebody's a little bit slower to it because they don't know if it's going for that high deep surf or if it's going to go short. So their initial body movement is kind of standing up and rising, which is going to instantaneously make them slower. They might be slower to that. And you can probably get this ball to fall steeper or closer to the net when this happens because the angles work out better for you. So now you can jam the [email protected]. And this is for sure one of those plays that I'm expect. I'm not expecting to get an A son, but I am expecting to disrupt the hitter rhythm. People are incredibly bad at passing short closers. It's shocking how if you can put a ball inside of 10ft over and over and over again, you will win that battle on a very regular basis. And it's maddening for the team that's receiving the password can't balance himself. They can't get back behind half court. Most of them will just pass, take one step back and sit there, in which case if you don't get behind half court after I serve you a short float surf, I've taken out half of your approach. Now I'm puppet master. You're my puppet because I'm literally controlling the length of your approach by serving that short ball. And then when you're under it or you don't get that full length approach, you have to look up at the ball instead of forward at the court so the ball is not in front of you with the players in the background. So I've cut your vision, I've cut your approach height, I've got your approach distance, which means you have a smaller setting window, which means that your setter has to be more perfect. And normally people don't know to just pass kind of the short ball to pass kind of straight up. There's two different schools of thought on that. One of them is if you're in very much control, you can treat it like a FREEBALL. Most pro players at this point are fast enough and practice that short serve enough to be able to send it over onto right when this happens at the AAA or even the open regional level, when somebody attacks on two on a short serve. People just ditch their short float serve for the rest of the match. They get one on to kill and then all of a sudden boom, well, I guess that'll never work. They got an answer for it. They had one answer once, right? And so to say that I'm never going to short float serve again after one successful rep by the other team, that is not the way to go. Put that pressure on them and explore that short serve. And you're most likely going to get either a block on a hard swing because they're trapped in their lower or a tape on a hard swing, or you're going to get an easy shot. You can pretty much count on people shooting when they don't have that approach. And that's a great time to run a bait and switch once you're in that situation. So that short, steep serve will pay dividends. And John Mayer, great player, fantastic coach. When he was asked what's the number one skill, the number one most underrated skill for volleyball players, he actually said the short surf. And I have to say that I agree because I know that it's helped me relax through some matches that otherwise would have been much harder work just by popping in that really short surf and people need to practice it instead of that high generic three quarter depth.
[00:59:27 - 01:01:09]
Brandon Joyner:
And I think being able to confidently hit that short serve not only will set you up for points when you're hitting that short serve, but then as you're developing that deepserve, too. Now, this is when that cat and mouse game comes into effect. And to be honest, if you do not understand what the cat and mouse game is in beach volleyball or volleyball in general, you're missing out on a lot of fun because that honestly probably is the only thing that is keeping me in this game. I love the challenge of being in a position where you're not supposed to be in control of the match, and then just because of your thoughts and intuition and what you're making the other side of the court, do you somehow become the person that's on offense? I think a lot of it had to do with when I was a sitter in College. I didn't find the glory that all these hitters had with getting a big kill during a point. But for me, it was misdirection. If I got the middle to go with the outside and then I set back or if I had no block, that was like the biggest compliment to me ever. And it's the same thing when you're talking about beach volleyball and serving is if you can make this person develop that frustration inside of them about not being able to get that short serve and then right when they think they've cheated early enough to get that short serve, and now you pop them with a high deep, now they're frustrated on a whole different level, and they don't even know what their name is anymore. And I think if you can kind of start figuring that out and start playing around with that and just realizing that it's not always about winning the point. It's about making that person shiver when they're back in services. And we can do it with float surface.
[01:01:09 - 01:01:20]
Mark Burik:
It's not only jump service, but yeah, we haven't gotten into jump, float, jump spike, all these variations of service. And we haven't even talked about angles like line to line. What's better, serving line to line or serving angles? We're not going to tell you guys today because we want you to come back for another episode,
[01:01:20 - 01:01:05]
Brandon Joyner:
tune in next week.
[01:01:05 - 01:01:27]
Mark Burik:
But we will give you the real stats on which serves are more effective, line to line, middle to line, cross serves. We'll go over that and definitely in a different episode. But for today, we are beyond at a time, my man.
[01:01:27 - 01:01:57]
Brandon Joyner:
I like it. That was a good one. Yeah, it was fun. And that's upstairs. Yeah, a lot of stuff. And you guys can see at the bottom of our screen. Go ahead. So, Mark, for you, I think a lot of people who are pros or anything, do you still use a standing foot serve from time to time when you're playing?
[01:01:57 - 01:02:07]
Mark Burik:
Oh, most definitely.
[01:02:07 - 01:02:29]
Brandon Joyner:
Yes, I know I do. I think accuracy can be just as dangerous as power. And so I think if you're an open level player or pro level player listening to this and you don't feel comfortable with your standing closer, you need to think about that, too. It's not just for beginners or low intermediates.
[01:02:29 - 01:05:50]
Mark Burik:
And if you guys want to dive any deeper into this. So if you want our team of coaches to be able to look at your serve technique, look at your serve strategy, and you want to take a full course designed to help you in getting a float serve, getting a jump, float serve, getting a jump spike, serve. We have all the drills that you can do at home or on your court, and we show you how to modify them in our course. It's called Power, accuracy and Aces, the Serving Masterclass. If you go to betteratbeach.com coaching, we have that course ready and waiting for you, and you're going to upload all of your arms, swing technique, all of your footwork. And we're going to give you the exercises so that you can create better serves. And then what's really cool about it is we can use your match or practice film, or we can use the World Tour film, which we do a lot. We use a lot of World Tour and AVP film, and we do film study in our coaching group. And that's where we really dive into the technique and tactics of it. And we see where your game is in relation to where the pros is and really seeing those matches side by side on one screen can absolutely pay dividends in your game if you want to hit the next level. If you're just looking for something, let's say that you're out there, you're a coach and you're looking for better feedback to give to your players. This is a great course for you and you have full access to us which means that we meet on Zoom and we can give you tools to use with your players. I know we have several coaches who aren't even using it for them. They're using it so they can be better coaches and I think that's a great way to utilize our programs and of course if you want to come and do it in person April 3 we are in Florida. Me and Brandon are leaving in four days to run two weeks of camp in St. Pete Beach, Florida and we will be back there April 3 to April 10 and we just got five spots booked today. Randomly. Just boom, five bookings. So I think we're down to now 15 or 14 spots. Yeah. So if you guys are interested, I got 14 spots left for April and you can find those at better at beach. Comcamps and we will see you in Florida April 3. I like it. Do we want to answer a couple of questions or we'd love to. We'll wrap up this episode and then we will hang out with our Q and a live attendees. Guys, thank you very much. I hope you guys got a lot out of this. If you're watching this episode anywhere, Please go ahead and subscribe to this channel or this podcast. Please like it and just share it. Share it with some friends, share it with your team, share it with your partner. If you think you got a lot out of it, Whoever you're sending it to will be thankful. Don't send it to anybody you play against. We know how valuable this information is but we very much appreciate those things or even if you're not one of our full coaching members or you've never come to a camp, a great way to support us and the people who work for us is to just share like subscribe that goes a long way to helping us to Helping us grow and continue offering free training like this so please go ahead and like share Subscribe. All right, let's do some Q and A. Brother,
[01:05:50 - 01:06:03]
Brandon Joyner:
I went to the bottom today, and I'm going to work my way up. Cool. Do you guys have a list of local tournaments? Avp America.com? I would say that's your best chance, Mark. That will give you a whole list of all the tournaments going on
[01:06:03 - 01:06:09]
Mark Burik:
is AVP America with CBVA. I believe CBVA tournaments are on there now. Okay.
[01:06:15 - 01:06:16]
Brandon Joyner:
I'm not sure.
[01:06:16 - 01:06:17]
Mark Burik:
Yeah. So check out AVP America.com and Cbvacle. You're in California and you're looking for local CBVA tournaments. Yeah.
[01:06:30 - 01:07:11]
Brandon Joyner:
This isn't a question, but Kyle Garahana something that you wrote at some point and this is kind of when we first started talking about flood serving. You wrote get weird is the key and I think you need to find some consistency. I don't like the word weird when we're talking about serving because I think it should be somewhat structured. So I think if you're trying a bunch of different stuff and trying to get the same result, you're going to run into some issues there. So I'll try to find something a little consistent. Kyle, I'm not sure what you're saying there, but just want to point that out just in case.
[01:07:11 - 01:07:18]
Mark Burik:
You've been watching too many of my games. Nine different serves to get busted out. Right.
[01:07:18 - 01:08:09]
Brandon Joyner:
Do you have pointers for adding some to my float? I feel like I can hit a spot or serve the ball hard. Never both. We kind of already talked about that. I think we kind of went back through, but I think that that contact point one having that really strong structure of your hand, allowing yourself to find that point. And then if you can think about getting that ball through that breaking the glass zone pretty quick, I think that's how you can find some hump. I think a lot of times we're too worried that we're going to hit the ball long when as long as you cross the net at a right height, it's going to be pretty tough for you. So I would say concentrate on your contact point and trajectory. I think that might be an easy fix there. Yeah.
[01:08:09 - 01:08:57]
Mark Burik:
And practice spots with heat. So if you're hitting hard, don't just say I'm going for a hard serve. Right. You have to go for a hard serve with aim. So many people just choose a jump serve because they want to jump serve or because they want to bring power. And as soon as they decide to go for a jump spike serve, they forget to aim for any spots. Like it doesn't make any sense. You need to aim no matter how much heat you are trying to bring. So don't choose one or the other. Make sure that you're locking in both. And when you go for heat, you don't just blindly go for heat. You still aim small. Miss small like that.
[01:08:57 - 01:09:00]
Brandon Joyner:
Not a whole lot of questions.
[01:09:00 - 01:09:00]
Mark Burik:
Yeah. Well, I do want to say a very special like high to Adele boost Mente. Thanks for watching. Says he's a huge fan of the channel. Really appreciate that. Appreciate the positivity and the support. Mark Zen. I think he has been here through every episode.
[01:09:15 - 01:09:17]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah, I like his name.
[01:09:17 - 01:10:04]
Mark Burik:
Really cool to see repeat guys hanging out with us. So thank you very much guys for coming again and being here live. Eduardo is going to see us in Florida. Can't wait to hang brother. And Zach Lucio is pumped. He's pumped to learn and get better today. Zach really appreciate that. Like I said, it's not fun if you guys aren't here and hanging out and engaging. So thank you and thank you for the comments. Comments Believe it or not, it's a free way to help. That engagement helps us, helps our channel grow. And if you share it, that's an even better way. Please share any of our episodes that you see.
[01:10:04 - 01:12:01]
Brandon Joyner:
All right, I got one little last shout out from my boy Jeff from VB. I'm only 2 hours away from you. I'm up in Richmond but any tips for cross court floats? Seems only a few indoor train Ballers have this skill, typically from a line to line or across the seam. I think if you're having trouble hitting this cross court ball, I'm wondering if it has to do with depth or if you're not making it all the way to the sideline. I think one thing that a lot of us do is we try to be too tricky and we try to make that server for some reason think that we're not serving them rather than thinking about the location. I think if you plan on serving cross court and you're starting in that zone, one position or like the back right spot on the court where a lot of people start because that's like the serving position when you're a little kid. Yeah, they all start to seem yeah before if you don't know you can serve from anywhere behind the inline, Jeff, I know that you know that. But whenever we're thinking about a cross court serve instead of running straight down the line, I think we can go a little bit almost like you're facing seam or even facing that cross court player. If you're facing that person, sometimes it's okay for that person to know that you're serving them because then you're not really trying to trick them into thinking you're not serving them, you're trying to beat them in a way where you're putting the ball into a tough spot. So I think if we can get rid of this like no look kind of pass to the cross court, which I think that's what a lot of indoor players do if they're starting out on the beach. I think we can just face the middle of the court or even face that right side player and then as you go up think about challenging them on their sideline, challenging them short and deep. Just like we talked about in the session.
[01:12:01 - 01:13:13]
Mark Burik:
That's where I was going to go with that is when people decide to serve diagonal, they hit the player again right in the chest. If you make like a funnel shape towards that player where the triangle starts at you and it opens up to that player he had to serve outside of that little triangle, the zone of influence to make them make big moves. One of the best cross court serves is the one that crosses the middle in front of one player's eyes, where he is almost tempted to take it, but it lands in the other person's cross. So when it crosses the middle line between those two players, instead of crossing it early in front of half core, then you can really get them bickering at each other and arguing, but you want it to cross the face so that both players are tempted. If you're using that diagonal seam serve, serving diagonal isn't just serving diagonally at someone's chest. That's literally the easiest serve possible because all they have to do is block the ball straight back to where it came from, and it's going to be in the perfect passing zone. You want them to have to fight a little bit harder and make bigger angles in order to do that. Right.
[01:13:13 - 01:14:17]
Brandon Joyner:
And I also think it's just important to realize the dimensions of what you're dealing with. Now, if you're serving a line to line serve, that's going to be the quickest and the shortest distance possible for you to serve. If you're serving that same ball to the cross court, then it's going to die shorter than you would want it to. So the longest distance that you'll have is from the right corner all the way to the cross court corner. And if you're trying to hit that ball, just realize that it's probably about three to 4ft longer. Actually, we just need to do that math, but it's longer than it would be if you're serving straight sidelines. So if you're going a short serve, it's got to be a little bit harder than if you're going straight down the line. If you're going to deep serve, then it's going to feel like you're hitting that ball pretty hard. Thanks for watching. Hey, somebody from Dutchieland. I love it. When are we doing a video about attacking or offense? I can see if I can look behind the scenes here. We're getting spoilers.
[01:14:17 - 01:14:21]
Mark Burik:
Yeah, well, we'll get some spoilers on the 27th. We're going to talk about block defense. And on actually January 29, I think we're going to do how to plan and build your practices, and the next time I see that we have actual hitting is going to be the middle of January. So, Michael from the Netherlands, I think we're going to get into some attacking conversations in the middle of January, but if you want to dive into it right now and you want to start our offensive attacking courses, we have them already waiting for you better at beach. Comcoaching and you can meet with us video Zoom meeting not just a chat here, but actually meet with us and really talk about and learn that. Plus, everybody who's in our coaching program has full access to every video private lesson we've ever done. Everything we've ever filmed all in one library. It would be shocking to know that what's on YouTube is less than half of the content that we have built. So we have a ton of these lessons just ready and waiting for you at better at beach. Comcoaching. I like it. All right, man. All right. I got to make some cookies. Well, send some my way, Mama boo. She's been slaving away and she's got brownies. She's got date nut bars. She's got cookies. If any of you guys want to send cookies our way, you can send them right to the postcard in St. Pete beach and we will eat them up. Oh, man. Hey, Merry Christmas. If I don't talk to you, you too, man, and I'll see you down in Florida. Merry Christmas or happy holidays to everybody else out there. Happy holidays. Merry Christmas to all of you. Steve Gerard. Thanks for saying Hi, man. And that's it. That's our show for today. Love you guys. All right, bye.
