[00:00:00 - 00:00:38]
Brandon Joyner:
I think that timing and spacing on your attacking are two of the biggest downfalls in beginners or intermediates, trying to grow to the next level most of the time, especially if you've been playing the game for a long time. Time you figure out how to pass the ball well, you figure out how to set the ball well. But this timing and spacing is completely up to you. It takes a little bit of understanding and anticipation, and a lot of people don't like that, especially after they've already done a movement which for all of us would be the past.
[00:00:38 - 00:01:07]
Mark Burik:
Our company account is just firing with good information. I got yelled at by Chris Bond today who was like, dude, you need to stop giving away all of the best information because we told them in a reel, we said, like, if you're facing a shooter, you just have to delay your block and Peel so that your blocker can get digs instead of hanging your defender out to dry. And he's like, bro, stop giving away, like the high level, like advice that wins tournaments.
[00:01:07 - 00:01:13]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah, man, you'll be fine. We're definitely in an interesting situation.
[00:01:13 - 00:02:32]
Mark Burik:
The thing that we talk about with each other is better at beach should be responsible in a large way for the evolution of the sport. Yeah, right. For me, that's a big thing. Like how cool can volleyball get? And I think we're doing it in a decent way. You have kind of revolutionary players that do amazing things. I think of Adrian. When I think of somebody who's kind of revolutionary, I do think of Phil. He was great. But then you see Andy and Andy changed the way that every single not beach or any mole changed the way that every single blocker plays the game. And he changed the expectations of what a blocker is. It's no longer big and dumb and take up a lot of space. It's blockers playing this massive cat and mouse game. And then now we have the Swedish kids that, well, Australia tried it for a few decades. They just didn't do it super successfully a lot, with the exception of their Damien's gold medal in the Commonwealth Games. Like that big flow, huge sets to pins, just like banging, but getting lockers moving. They tried to do it for a while and then these two Swedish kids now are just annihilating people with jump.
[00:02:32 - 00:02:35]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah, I think there's an account on Instagram called VB.
[00:02:35 - 00:02:39]
Mark Burik:
Yeah, I like that one. They put up too often, but I like it. Yeah.
[00:02:39 - 00:02:59]
Brandon Joyner:
They come out with some good stuff and they just did one on the Swedish team and it was talking about how effective they are on two and the percentage of jump sets and fooling the blocker and kills on jump sets and just their statistics alone on that. It was pretty cool to see.
[00:02:59 - 00:03:11]
Mark Burik:
One of them was a rock star in that situation and the other one was sighting out, like less than 300 or something like that. Right. And so maybe they should stop, right?
[00:03:11 - 00:03:37]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah. I remember when I looked at it for one of the people, I was like, okay, he's probably jump setting more than he's hitting. So that statistic alone might kind of be the downfall of that team. But yeah, they're definitely a fun team to watch. And it was cool to see one of the guys, I think when he was hitting jump sets his side out are hitting onto both. Yeah. It was like zero four or something like that, which obviously is interesting.
[00:03:37 - 00:05:07]
Mark Burik:
Guys, if anybody out there just wants to volunteer and help us run podcasts and you think that you'd like have a great way of just pulling up stats or you can sort of discover some way to help us. We are always looking for coaches, help graphic designers, people who just want to literally help us post on our stuff on Instagram. I know we've got a new direction coming up. And just to give you guys a heads up, we give a ton of teaching on Instagram. Like a ton. So if you guys aren't following better at beach volleyball on Instagram, we give all these little 1 minute teasers. And Tanya has been crushing it. But what we're realizing is that we are great for people who are extremely hungry for beach volleyball. If you love beach volleyball and getting better at it, specifically, like how to improve, then we've got to be your number one channel. But we're not really touching the people who are like just playing volleyball once or twice or they got this big adults League. Maybe they're not getting it quite as fans. So what we have to do is now on Instagram. We're going to start posting a few times a week, just those viral clips, those like ridiculously awesome plays things that are funny. That's not us, but we can repurpose that from other people and still have a little bit of entertainment on our channel combined with all of our massive amounts of teaching.
[00:05:07 - 00:05:11]
Brandon Joyner:
I love it. Love New Directions.
[00:05:11 - 00:06:45]
Mark Burik:
Great. I just went on Kim Hildress her Instagram and did a talk about nutrition. Oh, cool. Yeah, have a lot of fun. She talks a lot about emotional connection to food and how people have kind of problems with that. And I explained to her that to me. And yes, I'm rare. I'm different. I don't have a strong emotional connection. Like, it doesn't make me upset. I've never been too self conscious or anything about food. I guess the biggest emotional battle are like, little internal tear, maybe with drinking for me where I enjoy having a beer, I enjoy having a whiskey. But I do know that it's not what will get me to the next level. I enjoy having fun time. So that's probably the only little emotional hair that I get with food. But for me, food, it's fuel, it's performance. If you want me to eat the same thing every day, five times a day, I'll eat it if it means that I'm going to be doing well. So it's been easy for me to stay in shape with food and eat good things, and especially with my wife, who cooks great healthy food and will run refuses to get, buy or Cook unhealthy food. I'm a little bit spoiled in that Department. I don't have that same battle with food and body image that a lot of people do. But I know that it's real. I know that it exists. The conversation that we had was what she was expecting or looking. But if he hasn't checked out, it's on Kim Hildrey's Instagram. I don't know her exact Instagram, but K-I-M. Hildreth.
[00:06:45 - 00:06:56]
Brandon Joyner:
I think that she's good. She's one of the only people that's really, in my opinion, that I've seen focusing truly on the nutrition side of beach volleyball. They're just good people in the sport of beach volleyball.
[00:06:56 - 00:08:24]
Mark Burik:
And Kibbie just sent me a few real estate options in Florida. Right. He's also a real estate guy. It's fun to see how many volleyball people are so into real estate. I think the entrepreneurial mindset comes with people who are just addicted to going to the beach all day. They're like, what job could I get that allows me to be on the beach like six or 7 hours a day? And so we get a lot of teachers and we get a lot of real estate people. Right. Or unemployed or unemployed part time coaches who yeah. There you go. All right. So today we are going to talk all about hitting, timing, how to time your hit, why you're early, why you're late, and what cues you can use to get yourself on time. And I think we're going to dive deep into that. And I know that there are a lot of little tiny keys that people often mistake. They make a lot of mistakes when people give this advice, because people think that timing is this sort of stand alone, like it's going to take me 28 seconds from my first step until my contact every time. So when they start their approach, they just can't stop themselves. And that's a huge problem. So how to time, when to adjust it and everything about timing and attacking. That's what we're going to talk about today.
[00:08:24 - 00:12:23]
Brandon Joyner:
If you're here, this is probably one of the most important conversations that you can listen to, because I think that timing and spacing on your attacking are two of the biggest downfalls in beginners or intermediates trying to grow to the next level. Most of the time, especially if you've been playing the game for a long time, you figure out how to pass the ball well, you figure out how to set the ball well. But this timing and spacing is completely up to you. It takes a little bit of understanding and anticipation and a lot of people don't like that, especially after they've already done a movement which for all of us would be the past. So the first thing that I'll say is I think spacing. So I'm going to talk about spacing first. I'll let you kind of talk about timing a little bit. But one of the things that I really enjoyed that you've talked about in the past that I've taken now and we coach it at all of our camps is the way that you find how far off the net you should be approaching is by going up to the net, making yourself an arms distance length back, and doing a performing a full volleyball swing so that you do not hit the net. A lot of us get set way too tight. That's a completely different conversation. But if you can find that starting position and then you can turn away from the net and you can do your four step approach backwards into the court, then that will allow you to find where you should be starting. I think that this starting position is on average, I would say is about three to 4ft further than the normal person approaches from the net. Oh, man. To me, growth understood. I think people yes, but what that's going to do? Is it's going to show you that one, there's a different starting position for a lot of different heights. Right. Like if I'm 65 and one of my friends is 510, then we're going to have different starting positions within the court. So finding that position away from the net is really important because it's going to allow you to know where you should specifically be starting. I call it middle school girl complex. And the only reason I can say that is because I coach middle school girls don't go around saying this girl, I loved them to death. But one of the things that you see in every single try out for a middle school girls team is if they have volleyball knowledge at that point is they pass the ball and then they run to the T of where the ten foot line meets the sideline. And then they throw their hand up in the air and they say right here. And that's where they start their approach every single time. And you see a lot of beginners or intermediates who have been taught that they need to bump away from the setter. They find that position. But then if you run so close to the net, you're already setting yourself up for failure. So I think that one thing that I've especially when I'm coaching beginners or intermediates or open level players, a lot of open level players have the same exact problem. I have this problem a lot of times if I feel like I'm messing up in practice on my attacking, most of the time it has to do with my spacing. But after you pass the ball, if you can act like a force field is in front of you, and you can shuffle behind that force field as much as you want, but the force field doesn't open until the setter touches the ball. And that kind of gets us into timing. But if you can keep that spacing after you pass the ball until you're looking for that timing step, then that's the first key that I would say is be okay with feeling like you're too far from the net rather than too close to the net. I don't know if you want to dive a little bit further into that, but I think that spacing is something we have to talk about before we think about timing.
[00:12:23 - 00:14:34]
Mark Burik:
Yeah, I absolutely love that. And just going back to how you explained how to find your approach distance. Everybody needs to do this. Everybody needs to go to the net, stand an arm's distance away, turn around in place, and take a full speed approach with a little broad jump. You have to do that in order to see what you're really working with. Don't do it at half speed. Don't kind of walk through that approach, take your game full speed approach, because as soon as you do that, you're blown away by saying, oh, man, that was my body that showed me how far I should be. And from there, you can play a little bit. You can play a little bit with maybe elongating it getting maybe a tighter set, a longer set, but you have to see where you should start. And then once you do get a flip flop and put it 3ft in front of wherever you finished up, and then for the rest of the practice, the rest of the match, the rest of the tournament says, this is the right distance for me and that force field that you're talking about. Now you got this physical object that you can say, oh, stay behind that. I'll stay behind that. I had to do that for myself on defense a few years ago because I would get that libero position, get super close to that, and just try to wear balls instead of staying back and giving myself some reaction speed. And I couldn't believe how many times I ended up in front of the flip flop that I put outside the court. I was like, this is a real problem for me. And I didn't need a coach to fix it after they found it on film. Right after we found it on film. Thank you, coach. I got that now I've got this. For the next 10,000 points in my life, I just have to train it into myself. So I put that marker on the side of the court. Boom. Now I'm ready to rock consistently, and I have my force field. I know when I'm doing it wrong. And we make all those sounds at the camps, and we said, well, where are you going? We start flipping out on buyers because they're charging the net. So, yes, 100%. I know we're talking about timing, but your distancing is off. It will be really difficult for you to embrace timing.
[00:14:34 - 00:14:55]
Brandon Joyner:
Sorry, Kenny is already asking a question. Are we talking about indoor or outdoor? This is going to be specifically for outdoor, but it can be transferred to both. If you are running too close to the net and indoor, then that it's almost a worse problem. When you're indoor, you're going to be able to broad jump a little bit more. So you can probably increase that spacing rather than decrease. But Mark, now keep going.
[00:14:55 - 00:20:02]
Mark Burik:
Yeah. Indoor approaches are generally longer than beach approaches, but that's only because beach players are moving sand along the way. Indoor has this ability to bounce each step. You get a little bit further with each step so that when you go from your left to your step close, that's actually a longer situation because you can bounce off of the hardwood. Instead of pushing sand out of the way, you don't have quite as much plyometric on the sand. So your indoor approach will for sure be longer. But that doesn't mean that our beach approach is shorter. And I know that sounds really confusing, but you don't want to say a beach approach is short and an indoor approach is long. Both of them are long, right? A little bit shorter. Yeah. Or indoors a little bit longer, right? Yes. Out of the mindset of small approaches for the sake of this conversation. Yeah. Okay. So now let's talk about our timing. We're going to take from our education, which was built on the backs of Olympic coaches for three decades, the Gold Medal Squared company that runs indoor camps and does a lot of coach education. They educated us in indoor and Marv Dunphy, Tom Melton, the McLaughlins, like these guys are just geniuses in volleyball coaching, and they teach slow to fast. So when you're starting your approach, you should start out extra slow. It should be controlled then each step. So that's your right step. Right step is just hanging out, kind of rolling forward. The right step, the first step of your approach is like when you're sitting at a stop sign and all you do is you let go of the break. You're just rolling forward. But there's zero acceleration. You could not go faster because you can't press on the accelerator yet. And letting go of that break allows you to start moving allows you to start building momentum. And you're also still kind of checking to see if there are cars are coming as you're rolling through. Right. That on the right step is just like you checking to see where that set is in the air. Is it left or is it right? Are there cars on my left or their cars on my right? And how much time do I have to go once you're on that right step now you're checking it out, you're saying, all right, that's how high it is. So I'm getting a sense of my timing and I'm getting a sense of the direction. My second step, my left step is when I can put that down and I can start accelerating and start turning the wheels with this is it pretty good. I like it right. And then the last two steps. So right, left, last two steps, that's when you can gun it because you know you got the clear runway, right. You know that there are no cars coming and you're already moving forward. So now you can hit the accelerator and go as fast as you want and that's the right, left, right, left, slow. Pick up the ball, see how high it is, see if it's left or right, and then you'll be able to get the queues of word chase it for your last three steps, and you should because you're under control, you should be able to see how fast you should go. There's all these timing queues that people try to get like, well, do I go at the peak of the set or do I go just after the peak of the set? You can't coach that way because you don't know how high somebody's set is and everybody prefers a different height set. So wouldn't make sense really to coach that way. Instead, find yourself controlling and then knowing that you only want to accelerate. You only want to get faster. If you feel yourself, try to accelerate and then you have to break or squat deep and hold, that's when you're going to be in trouble. Offensively, you're going to ruin your attack rhythm, you're going to ruin your power, and most likely you're probably going to end up under that ball. So the speed bills builds. Slow, faster, fastest, and each time, each step you're going along that way. Make sure when you start your approach, there is no situation that says you start your approach and you have to finish it on this timing link. Try practice taking two steps of your approach, then stopping for 3 seconds on your left foot, and then taking your last two steps. Do the same thing with that first step of your approach. Take your right step, hold for 3 seconds, then hold your second step for 2 seconds, then fire off. The only thing that we're never going to hold is those last two steps. But you have to be able to control, break or accelerate on every single step. But we don't want to break on our last three steps.
[00:20:02 - 00:25:16]
Brandon Joyner:
I like that. A good picture that you can think of as a coach is if your players are making splashes in the sand on these first two steps and that's something we want to avoid. I've noticed recently if I see somebody running through those first two steps, which means they're going from fast to slow, not slow to fast, I tell them I consciously want you to think about going heeltoe on your first two steps, which means that if you can imagine if somebody was running with their toes first in the sand or on the balls of their feet, then they're kicking sand forward when those feet are landing. But if you go here or toe, you can put a perfect footprint in the sand and now you're not kicking up any extra sand. So something that I commonly say is really go heel toe. I want us to get rid of that splash. And if you can do that, then it allows you to, like you were saying, read that set height, read the set direction. Allow yourselves on those first two steps to either go in and out. And then that way when you're ready for those last two steps, you can go super explosive. I commonly say that it should feel like you're jumping off a trampoline or a diving board. You don't see a whole lot of people going on into a trampoline squatting to jump and trying to hold it for a couple of seconds before they spring up. If you're doing that, then you have not found any of the joys of a trampoline. But with that approach, I think you're going to feel like you're going to be late. But that's an okay feeling to have. I almost think that after you go through that right step, which should be a walk, a left step, which should be a little bit quicker tempo walk, but still walk, you should almost have this feeling of like, oh, crap, am I going to get there? Because if you have that feeling, then that's going to make you go really aggressive with those last two steps, get up in the air quick and hit. So I think that will keep the tempo pretty good. Absolutely. And so now that you've kind of spoken about the tempo of the steps, I'll kind of talk about the timing step, I think is huge and when to put that down. I've heard a couple of different ideas on this, but I've always found that if you can put your timing step down on the setter's touch or contact point, then that is going to set you up for this slow to fast. And we really need to emphasize the idea that when you take this first timing step, just like you said, when you're letting off the gas and your car is coasting, you're almost holding your balance on that first step. So when you're rocking forward and you're going, it should feel like you're about if somebody came behind you and pushed you, you should fall right on your face because you're holding that first step as long as you possibly can until you see that set go up. And then you should have a light bulb moment that says, okay, I'm going here. And once you have that feeling, then you can kind of move on to your last step, and then finally your last two steps, or vice versa if you're a lefty. But finding that timing step on the setter's touch is really important, and I think that's a lot harder for people to do then it's way easier said than done. And I think a lot of it just has to do with anticipation. If I have a crowd of people around a court and I say, say, now when I'm going to catch this ball and I toss it in the air and then I go to catch it, almost every single person can say now when I'm catching the ball, but for some reason, after you pass and then you're doing your shuffle, and then you're trying to find that timing step. For some reason, there's a miscommunication in that with your mind and your body. And for me personally, I think it has a lot to do with stopping. If you find yourself completely stopped trying to find that timing step, then it's very difficult for you. But something that I try to do is after I pass, I shuffle, but it's not completely so that I'm finding my spacing away from my setter. It's more that I can get into rhythm with the play. It's almost like I'm dancing. I'm a big dancer these days. Yeah, but you got it. If you dance with that ball as it's going down, and then you can anticipate that first timing step, then that's going to set yourself up. I always bring up the experiments I did in science class. For some reason I remember this, but somebody would be holding a ruler and you had to be below the ruler and they had to drop it, and you had to catch it as quick as you can. I've always thought that I'm Super athletic. When I did this experiment, I was like, I'm catching it within an inch. Like there's no doubt in my mind. And all of a sudden the ruler gets dropped and you're not catching until six, seven inches, and it kind of surprises you. So it's the same thing. If you're just going and putting that right foot down and then you're trying to pick it back up and put it back down on the setters contact, you're going to be either too late or too early just because your reaction time isn't as quick as you think it is. Yeah, but if you can find that rhythm after the play and kind of keep moving, shuffling into that timing step on the seller's contact, then it should be a little bit more flowy.
[00:25:16 - 00:25:22]
Mark Burik:
I mean, I used to don’t mock me. I used to do a little double Dutch back in my day.
[00:25:22 - 00:25:26]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah. It doesn't surprise me.
[00:25:26 - 00:28:44]
Mark Burik:
The key to getting in there, just like you said, is not sitting still and then jumping in. When you're on the side, you start feeling the rhythm of the ropes and you say, okay, when do I go in? When do I go in? When do I go in? Now, boom. So that you hit that rhythm, but you're already kind of in motion. And that is how we would like to be able to teach approaches so that we can stay in that motion. We don't want to really get completely stopped. It's not terrible if you do, but to get completely stopped, and then you waste a little bit of that rhythm. You don't have to do that. You can develop that rhythm from the beginning of the play from after the pass or after the dig, but you can do it in a very slow and relaxed way. And too many people pass or dig, and then they think, now I have to hit no. Now you have to start developing rhythm. Then once we start developing rhythm, then you time so that you can get within a similar window. Not the same window. No hits going to be exactly the same timing. No sets going to be exactly the same timing. But we do in order to be efficient, we want to be within a similar timing window. And so when we talk about timing step, we have to go back again, and we'll be repetitive with this. But it's not you just go at this time, you're going and observing and changing what needs to be changed with every single step. So those feet need to be in control, grabbing the sand and understanding that each step has a purpose. It's not one approach. It's not necessarily four steps, but it's right left. And I'm going to count the right left as, like that third step. You got those three chances of when you can slow down or speed up. And everybody really needs to understand that. Maybe I'm talking from a place of pain because I had a coach who told me for months, you have a one speed approach, you have a one speed approach, you have a one speed approach. And I just wasn't smart enough to get it. I just didn't understand what she was saying in any way. I was like, okay, that's great. I am one speed. I'm 100%. I think that was the response that I gave her. Sounds like a great thing. And I was like, yeah, hard all the time, but she couldn't put it in that way. And then it took me probably maybe three more years to actually understand that. And that was when I worked with the Scottish coach. Now I didn't blink it on his name Thomas. Thomas, yeah. And he got me to understand that I could just hang out for as long as I wanted on my left foot. And then when it was time to go accelerate to the Max, and I was three years out of College, and I just started hitting the best balls of my life. I mean, on Loading under full control. I never had a problem with timing a setter after that. I see the set I hang out on the edge of my left foot as it's kind of halfway, maybe a third of the way to me. Now, I know when it's time to go right. But that is really a big difference maker that can go for everybody's game.
[00:28:44 - 00:29:14]
Brandon Joyner:
Yes. And I love talking about Thomas because I was at the same practices as you. And for somebody that has never played volleyball, his ability to see players differently and give them advice and work through the problem individually, that I gained a lot of respect for coaching after working with him. And he pretty much made me from a non starter show starter within two weeks, just from little ideas that he introduced to me that I had never heard above before. It's pretty cool,
[00:29:14 - 00:30:34]
Mark Burik:
the advantage of working with different coaches. Yes. Hear things in a different way. Like I said, I had probably been through maybe three or four different coaches at that time when I had finally discovered what this person three years ago was saying. And one of my actual good friends who works with Tony Robbins, he's like one of the guys who's in his inner circle. I said, I'm so upset. You told me to make these YouTube videos the first year that I was coaching in Hermosa. And we even filmed two of them, and I was awkward and I had no idea what we were doing. And now what, four or five years later when you came around, that's when we started really knocking them out. And he's like, Mark, you didn't ignore me. We just planted those seeds and they needed their time to grow and develop. And that's what I think coaches can also continue to bring to their players. It's just that you can say the same thing just like a great book. You can say or read the same thing at different points in your life, at different points in your career, and it will hit you in an entirely different way. And it'll teach you what you need to be taught at that moment. And that's why we have multiple coaches. That's why we have great books, and that's why you can keep watching the same better beach volleyball videos on YouTube right now. That makes a little bit more sense.
[00:30:34 - 00:31:08]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah, I think who Christina from Salt Lake? Ashley. Ashley Garza little girl. Yes. She's been to a couple of camps of ours now. And she said I was a little hesitant about coming again because I thought I would just hear a lot of the same information. But she said just because of the different coaches that were there and the fact that she had leveled up in her game, other information is what caught her eye the second time around and made the camp even more valuable. So that's kind of one of our own little tidbits that you can take away from that as well. So you're always growing, always learning different ways.
[00:31:08 - 00:32:17]
Mark Burik:
That's why we are in the lesson just for maybe a couple of announcements. Number one, if you guys ever want to come to a training camp, we have training camps now. We're going to be doing them year round. However, our April 3 10th training camp sold out weeks ago. We do have a waiting list. We've sold out. We have a waiting list. What we're seeing if we can do is we're seeing if we can hire more coaches to make sure that we keep our small coach to camper ratio and then if we can get those more commitments before we actually charge you and then have to refund or anything like that, if we can get enough commitments and we can bring another coach to fix that, then we're going to open up those spots. So if you're not on our waiting list, you should always sign up if you think that there is a chance because that's when we have the opportunity to contact you. But if you don't sign up for the waiting list, we can't even do these things. So if you want to check out what our camps are all about, go to betteratbeach. com/camps. And if there are spots open, then you can go ahead and book them. And if there are not, we will always put up a waiting list form so that we can get in touch with you.
[00:32:17 - 00:32:36]
Brandon Joyner:
And our ratio right now that we're working with is one to eight. So for every eight players we get one coach. Don't realize how important that is until you're there and you see how hands on our coaches are. But once we get eight people that say yes, I'm in, then that will allow us to book our coach and start moving down the list.
[00:32:36 - 00:35:05]
Mark Burik:
So definitely and if you guys haven't checked it out yet, I made some adjustments to our home page on betteratbeach.com. I know that right now we're showing the library of courses, but what we wanted to do is change the home page so that you can easily access anything that we are offering because we have classes and private lessons in Hermosa Beach and hopefully another town coming up soon that Brandon doesn't know about yet. But we're telling them after. We also have our clinics which you can bring us to your hometown or your facility. We're working currently on four different weekend clinics. Those are three sessions on a Saturday. So we would fly in on Friday night. Maybe we have the opportunity for private training, but then we run seven and a half hours of training on Saturday. This can be your backyard court, this can be a real facility, but we just need a minimum of twelve full day commitments and you can check those out or you could get on the list at betteratbeach.com/clinics. But more importantly, what you can find now is all of our courses. We've made it easy to find all of our courses and you can buy a standalone recorded course and go through it at your own rate. Or you can join our Beach Volleyball Mastery program, where we take you through the courses and we coach you twice a week. You have a private Facebook group. You get to post all of your videos of your drills, of your workouts. Currently, everybody is going through our 60 day Max vertical program, so everybody's posting workout videos in our group, and we're going in there and critiquing them and showing them what you need to do in order to fix your technique or move ahead to the next level. So if you want just a standalone recorded course, that's cool. That's available. Check out the home page. You'll be able to find it. If you want us to actively coach you and tell you about your game, and you can post videos on your technique, your strategy, your matches, your practices, this is where you're getting the absolute soup to do for beach volleyball. You're getting all of the courses, all the techniques, everything that we teach. Plus we're coaching you live through videos, and you can always post everything on the Facebook group. And that's when we go in with comments and we actually say, hey, work on this. But that's all available. So if you guys want to check out the new homepage [email protected] April camps are sold out clinics. You guys can always get in touch with us and that's it. Just make sure you guys are on our email list.
[00:35:05,456 --> 00:35:35]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah. And I actually had a couple of people here in Hermosa that are from San Francisco. We're getting ready to go to San Francisco at the end of the month. If you are wondering if we're already coming to a specific area near you, make sure you go onto our clinics tag at the top of our home page and it'll show you what we currently have booked out. So you can find the weekends that are already taken. Maybe we're already coming to an area near you. Or if you see a weekend that works for you, you can get in touch with us and we can start building that out for you.
[00:35:35 - 00:39:00]
Mark Burik:
Okay, back to hitting timing, and then we'll get into our Q and A. I just want to give people a few maybe just things that they can do in order to try to find their timing. One of my favorite trails, absolute favorite drills, is it's basically a box jump. So go next to a net. And I know this is kind of hard for people to do this, but if you can get a Plyo box that sits you at about 90 degrees, so your knees are bent at 90 degrees, and you can sit on that box or that garbage can or cooler, whatever you need. Have somebody toss a ball higher or lower in front of you when they toss that. See if you can be on the edge of that box. Pick up your feet again and stop the ground as quickly as you possibly can to jump and go and attack that ball. Most people will try to get on their feet. They hold on their feet, and then they slow, kind of squat into it. The key is to have your feet when you have that final impact of your feet on the ground for as short amount of time as possible so that you learn how to explode and when it's right to explode, because you have to be able to hit the ground with the shortest amount of time possible in order to do this drill properly. So I sit on the edge of the box, right? Brandon throws a ball up that I'm going to spike when I know that I can move at Max velocity. Then I stomp my feet on the ground and jump in one motion, and then I go and spike. That's going to tell you, like, okay, so the ball can be hanging in the air. Brandon could have released the ball. He could have set the ball, and that was not my cue to go. My cue to go is when I can explode onto the ball. So that's one of the drills that we really like is to be able to do that. You can also then convert this once you're done with that box, have somebody balanced on their left foot. I don't necessarily I'm not a huge fan of complete balance on the left foot, but I do like to have maybe 2% of your weight on your right foot. Your knee should be over your toe because you should already be in your acceleration pattern. So you should be leaning forward, getting a little bit of pressure so that your knee is going over your toe, and you've got that big forward lean, and then do the exact same drill. Coach toss, but fake toss. Try to get that player to move based on what you're doing, when they should be just finding the timing in the air. So we do this a lot where we hold the ball, we put a player on their left foot, and we say, okay, you're going to go only when you can go fast, ready? And then you fake a toss, and they immediately start going because your arms moved. Instead, they should be waiting to see the ball in the air. Then when they know it's their time to go, probably after the peak, just after the peak on the way down, that's when players can really accelerate, right? But the higher the set, the longer you're going to wait after the peak to go and attack that ball. So this drill becomes very important, understanding that the ball can be in the air and you're not yet in an acceleration pattern in any way that has to be included in your drill repertoire if you're working on your timing.
[00:39:00 - 00:40:58]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah, I think depending on your skill level, too, you can even make that slower as well. And instead of being a hit, trying to catch the ball at your optimal height. Sometimes if I'm working with someone and we're doing one of these drills, I would just say, I want you to act like you're getting a rebound in basketball. I want you to get off those last two steps. I want you to jump, and I want you to try to touch this ball as high as you possibly can. I think that kind of gives them the idea of waiting and then still exploding up and contacting that ball as high as they possibly can. Also, when I'm coaching this and I think if you're listening and you're a coach, tell your players that you do not want them hitting 100% when they're doing this type of drill, tell them to think about having a high contact first. Personally, for me, I don't even care if they're hitting. Sometimes I just want them to get a full extension on their right arm. If they're a right arm attacker, and if they do an open hand tip, even though it's a legal and beach volleyball, they're at least getting the idea that they need to be contacting this ball as high as they can. One of the big issues that we see when people try to hit right away is a lot of times when people get lessons on attacking it's because they want to hit harder. They want that ball to bounce more, which is something we have to completely get our heads out of. But if you can encourage your attackers to go for optimal height after the timing is perfect with those last two steps and that explosiveness, then you can start adding, okay, now let's go to a 30% swing, 40% swing, 50% swing. But if you jump into, okay, just try to hit whatever you want, hit as hard as you want. Then you're just encouraging the same bad arm swing idea. And the timing that we're working on with these two drills is to allow you to contact the ball at the highest point possible for you. And if you're just thinking about hitting hard, then you're defeating the purpose of your Arsenal.
[00:40:58 - 00:44:51]
Mark Burik:
Definitely. There was one more thing that came to my head as we were talking about it's during crazy rallies or great defense of place everybody. It's funny, because on Stadium court, you always hear the increase of volume with every dig, right? And that like, endorphins that come being on center court when everybody in the stands is just starting to scream a little bit louder. And it's like, how high pitched can the audience get? When that happens, that gets everybody more excited, especially the people on the court. You get so fired up and you're like, yes. And you start saying it faster. Even in your mind, you start saying it faster instead of every dig. Every pass is a complete reset button. Your emotion has to reset. Your heart rate should reset your breathing and the speed of your body, the speed of your steps. But most players let the excitement of that dig, and especially repeated digs makes them go faster and faster and faster and faster. So when you get a dig, the first thing you should do and this might sound crazy to me, is stand up. Don't dig and approach don't dig and want to hit dig and stand up, breathe, figure out how to control your timing on the next ball. But everybody just digs. Like, now I hit. No, it's dig. Stand up or chill, then start understanding timing. But you have to hit that reset button as soon as you get the dig, as soon as you get the pass so that you can separate your dig and the excitement of the play from your attack because you make a great dig. And then you're going to spoil it completely by just charging the net because you're so fired up. And you think that the next step after dig is smash, right? And it's just got to be wait. And we had Casey Patterson. If you guys take a look at her YouTube channel. Casey Patterson took us through a run through of his win in Manhattan Beach. And I showed him a picture of him getting I think he was down 1214 or 1114, and he got three digs or a bunch of digs on try. And John hidden. And I said, he got the final day. He's at 1514. He lays out and gets this one handed scoop down the high line. And I said, okay, Casey, I pause it. What's going through your mind right now? You just dug the ball. You're about to get your name on the Pier. It's going to take you one swing. What's going through your mind right now? And I think you and me at that point were like, what? We thought he was building suspense for the show. And he's like, no, actually, wait. I know the most important thing that you can do on a hit is wait, so that you can explode to the ball. And so he got the dig for match, Championship, AVP and pure point. And the next thing that entered his mind after a dig and a three point or four point come back was wait. And if that doesn't tell you how important it is to be patient on your approach and to be slow to go in, I don't know what does. If you guys want to check out that interview, you can search better at Beach Casey Patterson on YouTube. And hopefully it comes up.
[00:44:51 - 00:46:03]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah, I love that. Something that I've been doing at my practices, the small three week window that I'm back in is challenging myself to feel less tired. Every drill that I do because my endurance isn't where I need it to be right now. But it's preseason, so I should give myself a little wiggle room. But I did my sprints yesterday. Yeah, if I'm doing an attacking drill and after I've done ten attacks, I feel I'm breathing really heavy. My legs are tired. Then I tell myself before I do the drill again, say, okay, go through the same goals. But at the end of these ten attacks, you need to feel less tired than the round before. And it's crazy how much you'll slow down things, how much a deep breath between your path and your approach can slow your heart rate. But if you don't think about doing it on purpose, then it's really hard to remember. But if you can start thinking about all those things when you're at practice, then you'll be able to do it in a game as well, for sure.
[00:46:03 - 00:49:19]
Mark Burik:
I like that. So final announcements, and then we'll get into Q and A. The more we kind of grow and add on more things and work harder from our side, the more I realize that we're not clear about who we are. For those of you out there, we want to help you get better at beach volleyball. We want to help you coach better, play better. And we want to create events that are fun. And you can take vacations, trips, days and get the game in there. When we coach and when we run camps, we do want to get you better. That is our primary goal. How can we create an experience that allows everybody to get as good as possible? And then we kind of let the volleyball be inherently fun. So we run those camps. We have clinics for one day. We have a slew of free information on our blog. If you go to Bitterbeach Comblog. If you're not subscribed to our YouTube channel already and you're watching this, please just hit the subscribe button. It helps us a long way. And we also have online courses. Our online courses are recorded monster courses. There is so much information in each one that you could watch it again and again just month after month and continue to go through it. And they will help you. We have a passing, a setting, an arm swing specific and attacking and offensive design course. We have an ultimate defender course which teaches you blocking, peeling and defensive technique and strategy. We also have a serving course, standalone serving course, and practice plans. Those are all recorded courses. If you want us to help you actively your game, where you post your videos of your drills, then we can do that. And that's in our Beach Volleyball Mastery Program, where you meet with our team of coaches twice a week on video, and we can legitimately help you with your game. Most people ask, But I don't have a court, but I don't have a partner. You don't need these things. And we design all of our drills so that you can do them alone at home. There are so many drills and exercises that you can do at home and alone, and we show you how to modify them. And then when you do have a quarter, you do have a player, we show you how to do that. If you're not studying film and you're not watching yourself or you're not watching other players or you're watching it with an eye that doesn't really understand the game, it's very difficult to improve. But if you are watching the film, I guarantee 100% you will win more points. You will win more matches. If you're studying the game when you're not playing it some of the most valuable moments that I've ever had as a player were sitting on my coach's couch watching video, not having him lace 100 balls at me. So if you want to experience what that's like, go over to Better at beach. Comcoaching. The last thing that we do want to talk about is guys. We've got like swag. We've got stuff that you could buy T shirts and cool designs. So if you go over to Better Beach.com Shop and you just want to support us in a small way by getting a cool volleyball shirt or cool, better beach shirt, go to Betterapeach.com shop. And that's how you can show your support, show your love without getting fully involved in any course or any coaching program.
[00:49:19 - 00:49:43]
Brandon Joyner:
Yeah, it's one of my favorite things. Now that we've kind of been growing a decent amount is showing up to a tournament somewhere and seeing somebody wearing our logo. It's all the numbers that we see on YouTube and everything like that is great. But seeing somebody wear your shirt in public is very cool. And I appreciate that a lot.
[00:49:43 - 00:50:26]
Mark Burik:
So that's all we have for today. I hope you guys got a little bit we talked about attack timing for about half of it kind of went sideways on a few others. But we hope to see you guys every Monday and Wednesday. We are trying to do these live and every now and then if we can't meet up, then we will try to put a recorded version of one of our old lessons on. And we're trying to get this podcast up and running. So hopefully that happens this week where you can subscribe to our podcast, but not yet. If you're currently listening to this on the podcast, it means we were successful in the past. Yes,
[00:50:26 - 00:53:03]
Brandon Joyner:
I'll start right at the top. Looks like Gwen Noel Noel. Yo. Should the ball be on the top of your head or top of hitting shoulder? I personally think that you should think about getting it on top of your hitting shoulder if you start thinking about letting the ball land on your head, and that's when you're going to start creating a little bit of an interesting arm swing. So we didn't really talk about the spacing away from your setter too much in this lesson. But if you create a little bit more space for your attacking shoulder to allow your setter to miss on that shoulder, then your momentum can always still be going into the court. So if you're a left side player, you bump away from your setter after you've passed, you find the good timing step. Then your approach should take it to where if you reach your right hand up as high as you possibly can, then that ball should be directly over your shoulder. That will allow you to still go hard, cross cross court. And it also allows you to start manipulating with your hand if you want to go cut shot or high line. Okay. So I'm going to keep moving on working with relatively shorter players who want to hit down but continue to hit the ball lower than their highest reach. You can see they put a lot of spin on the ball and get the ball in. But since they don't reach at the highest point and snap the wrists of using the whole arm. Mark, we got to work on shorter questions, buddy. High school gross birds. What drills or exercises do you suggest to get them to reach the full extension? I think the drills that Mark was talking about with the box, and then we call it Flamingo approaching where you're kind of balancing most of your weight on that left foot and have your right foot and have a little bit of weight down. But finding that ability to have a very quick last two steps, get up in the air as high as you can, and then I think the very key part is telling your players that they are not allowed to hit hard. I've been playing this sport for a long time, and every single year that I play, I hit deeper and deeper into the court. And it's not necessarily because I'm jumping lower. I just know that those balls are a whole lot harder to dig once you get to a certain level. If you're trying to bounce balls, it turns from being a very fun event to a very disturbing memory. So just keep encouraging your players to miss deepen or hit deep into the court, back thirds, side thirds, stuff like that. Okay, I'm down to Raul Mayors. When you're hitting, timing is perfect. What is your body's position relative to the ball in the net?
[00:53:03,388 --> 00:53:36]
Mark Burik:
Your body's position relative to the ball in the net? Let's just say that your ball should be very slightly in front of your head. So if you can basically put your bicep on your cheek, that is about where you would want to contact that ball. That way the ball is slightly in front of you, not so that it's straight up or behind you. And as far as relationship to the net, that depends on how far your perfect set is off the net.
[00:53:36 - 00:56:25]
Brandon Joyner:
I think what I'm kind of reading from that question is what we teach is if you're a left side player and you're right handed and your shoulders should be facing hard cross that cross court angle. So if that's what you're talking about, as far as relative to the net, I would change that relative to the net to relative to the deep cross corner corner of the court and then as a left side. As a left side right handed player. If you are a left handed player, then that goes a little bit more seams. If you're a right handed player and you're on the right side of the court, same idea. Your shoulders should be facing a little bit more seam of the court, middle of the back sideline. That will allow you to have all the swings that you want available. I've always played the right side recently. Trying to plan left is causing me trouble. How does my approach change from the right side to the left side? The easy Answer The quick answer is I'm assuming, Adam, that you're a right handed player because most of us are. If you are on the right side of the court, then you are proud. In order for your set to be easiest for you to hit, you should be bumping in the court to allow your head and shoulder to get closer to your setter. One way that I describe it a lot is imagine if the court had wood panels and like a hardwood floor. And wherever that setter is, you need to be on the panels next to them. If you're a right handed player and you move to the left side now, you have to bump away from your setter once again, allowing the energy of your approach to be going towards that hard cross corner of the sideline or the boundary lines. So you should be going straight at that corner and then obviously telling your seller what set you need in order to make that happen as much as you can. But then once you tell your seller what set you want, it's still your job to fix your approach and go with that timing right step, last step, and allowing those last two steps to be going towards that corner again. That's something that we didn't talk about in this whole thing. One of the easiest ways for you to fix your timing is call for a set, tell your set or what you want. I've been working with the men and Hermosa now for what feels like two years, and it's still hard for me sometimes to get them to call for a set every single time. And if you're not calling for a set, you can't ask the question, Why is it hard for me to hit my setter set? Because you're not talking to them. So if you want an easy fix, first thing, talk to your setter. Second thing, think about spacing, allowing your hitting shoulder to be easier, easily accessible for your setter.
[00:56:25 - 00:57:38]
Mark Burik:
One person said, do you recommend to come to a hold after the pass before starting. The approach doesn't necessarily have to be a hold, but there has to be a slow down in rhythm. So after you pass and you do your shuffle, Brandon uses panels. I say that you can get 10ft of width from your setter on the left side and be inside 10ft from your setter. Make sure that you're no more than 10ft away from your setter as a right side. Now, do you have to hold? You don't have to freeze, but you should feel a delay, a slowdown, a relaxing, exhaling breath. But there shouldn't be too many times where you're sprinting unless you are running an offense that is designed that way, in which case you need an immaculate setter who can throw your rhythm. Feel how fast you're moving at all times and always find your window. But for now, we'll stay basic. And if you guys ever want to get into some little more advanced offenses, we'll talk about that on another episode, and we can talk about that way more in depth. If you're in the Beach Volleyball Mastery program betterbeach. Comcoaching.
[00:57:38 - 00:59:07]
Brandon Joyner:
I think that might have been our last question. Yeah, I think just one last thing before we wrap up is if you're able to find this timing step and putting yourself in charge of the direction of your approach, then you are taking the pressure off of your setter. If you feel like it's the setter's job to find your window, then I can almost guarantee that you're too early and you're not thinking about your timing steps at all. But if you can find that slow timing stuff that Mark was just talking about that kind of hold and momentum moving forward and then going into that second step and then right left, and you're putting all the stress on you. And I know when I was playing, I didn't really know what a bad setter was because the first two people I played with were two of the best setters that I've still played with to this day, and I just got really lucky to play with them. But then when I started playing with people that were a little bit more inconsistent but were still athletes and really fun to play with, I realized that I had to take some of that pressure off of my setter and find my correct timing, allowing them to just put up a nice hit of a ball instead of relying on that setter to be perfect. That's a really tough position to be in as a setter, especially if your attacker starts messing, like having a hard time scoring, because then both of you are saying, oh my God, I'm bad right now. And that's a terrible thing for both players to be saying, yeah.
[00:59:07 - 01:01:10]
Mark Burik:
We got one last question from Paul Lennon, who said, should vertical be an issue for Spiking, or is it all timing relating? You have to time, it based on your vertical. Somebody who can jump a lot higher might have to leave a little bit sooner because they're going to jump higher and they're going to hang in the air longer. So that's why timing is unique to everybody. If you want to work on your vertical, then you just need to go to the home page and download the 60 Day Max Vertical program and that will help you jump higher. But your vertical shouldn't change your set height. Your vertical leap shouldn't change anything about your look sequence or anything. If all of a sudden you pop eight inches onto your vertical, then you're going to have to leave at a slightly different time. Very slightly. But you have to get used to that according to your own body. So if you want work on your vertical jump currently, our mastery program is going through two months of that with us. We are doing the program. This is our preseason program for the AVP and most people see an average of four to five inches of increase on their vertical jump. So you guys can check that out at the home page and click there to learn more about it. But no, your vertical shouldn't change anything about your approach. It will just kind of flow with that because if you jump higher, then you need some leads slightly earlier. If you jump lower, you might be a little bit earlier in your approach or later. All right, I like it. Love it and volleyball. But yeah, me and Brandon are doing our workout today and we're taking it straight from the 60 Day Max Vertical Program. So get ready for lots of squatting, baby. I'm ready. I don't know if my legs are, but I am mentally. We got squats RDLs and lunges and shuffles for speed and agility and Conditioning. I like it. I'll be ready. All right, bye. I'll see you in a little bit. Bye, guys. Next time. Thanks for joining. Bye