Mark Burik (00:00:00):
We've always been waiting for beach to really take that like evolutionary jump. And I think Australia was, you know, you guys were the first to really try that with like moving blockers around, moving defenses around chucking balls out to the pin, like options off of serves. And now it seems like, I guess you guys were ahead of your time, but now everybody is attempting to run some sort of onto and spread offense with the exception of just a couple of
Damien Schumann (00:00:26):
Teams. Yeah, and I think, and I think it's interesting and like, you know, I'll reveal as many secrets as I can to you guys, but it's not rocket science. I mean, traditional beach volleyball, if you wanna pass straight in front, set up and down and come in and have, you know, it's a, usually an up and down set's pretty perfect set. So you've got all your shot options, you've got all your hit options, that's, that's great. But what happens if it doesn't work? What are you gonna do? Like you just, you know, do you just admit defeat there and then, you know, do you, okay, maybe I'll run through the middle, but again, there's time for the blocker to get on top of you and stuff like that. And don't get me wrong, there's so many players out there who are doing that. But that's the great thing about beach volleyball, the whole thing, the whole thing about beach volleyball is problem solving. Whether it's serving, whether it's passing, whether it's setting indoors a bit more. Like this is the system. If you don't fit in the system, go sit on the bench.
Mark Burik (00:01:12):
So welcome. I'm Mark. Hello Brando.
Brandon Joyner (00:01:15):
What's up? All of these, look at that. You
Mark Burik (00:01:18):
Know, I'm keeping fresh in here. Um, no wrinkles or anything like that,
Brandon Joyner (00:01:22):
So. Well it's amazing what happens when you get to stay out of the sun.
Mark Burik (00:01:25):
. Yes. You gotta workout in today. What'd you do?
Brandon Joyner (00:01:29):
I did, I did a lot of cardio stuff. Some hill sprints, some Iran for like three miles, which is actually getting easier. You know, the first time was brutally painful.
Mark Burik (00:01:40):
Three miles
Brandon Joyner (00:01:41):
I did just started and then I didn't stop until I got to three . I know.
Mark Burik (00:01:47):
Thought of that
Brandon Joyner (00:01:49):
. I know. Don't, I mean, if you're not willing to do it more than one day, don't even do it once. .
Damien Schumann (00:01:55):
It's not worth it to
Brandon Joyner (00:01:56):
Keep going. No way. No way. Hey
Mark Burik (00:01:58):
Buddy Dam, welcome man. This is, uh, this is Brandon. Brandon is Damien, and uh, I went to college together. We owned better at Beach together and, uh, coach and trained and everything.
Brandon Joyner (00:02:09):
So nice to meet you. I've heard good things and seen good things I should say.
Mark Burik (00:02:13):
First of all guys, since you were here early, this is Damien Schumann. He is Australia's top male defender right now. Sure. Schubert would've something to say about that, but so he can't say anything about it. .
Brandon Joyner (00:02:27):
Yeah, he's not invited.
Mark Burik (00:02:29):
So in the chat guys, I'm posting demo's, Instagram, if you're signed into Facebook or Instagram, go ahead and click on that, make sure that you follow him in the chat. Can you write your handle as well, right under that guys, in case you are not following me and my antics, I'm gonna write that right there, Brandon, because he is gonna do some giveaways this upcoming month. So you want to be paying attention to his profile and of course where most of our teaching goes down and our announcements and everything like that. Poly cam promosa. So if you're not following us on any of those, please go ahead and click on those links. We're gonna get started in a little bit, so there's no rush here, but go ahead and click on those, sign into them. And do you have a YouTube channel yet? Come on man. You gotta start building some content.
Damien Schumann (00:03:20):
I know, I know. I've gotta get better at that stuff, but that's all right. That's why I'm here.
Mark Burik (00:03:24):
Yeah, we're starting the process.
Damien Schumann (00:03:26):
Uh, well I do that one. I could just join in here
Mark Burik (00:03:29):
. That's uh, that's actually a really good point and guys in the chat there, I just posted our YouTube channel, if you're not subscribed to us on YouTube, we have just bumped it up to publishing three videos a week. We've been doing one a week for over a year and uh, we are trying to triple our content and three lessons that we give you. So please, please, please, it helps us. It supports all of us in big ways, um, especially as professional players when we do have followers and we have like likers and subscribers because it shows bigger companies who have money that this is a cool sport and we have loyal, awesome fans. So the more likes, comments and shares that you give, any players that you like, you are supporting their career because it, it leaves them, uh, it gives them a better ability to find sponsors and to find more opportunities and keep playing before we love. Okay. Uh, just in the chat, Damien, you are from Adelaide or you're from Sydney? We met in Sydney.
Damien Schumann (00:04:29):
We met in Sydney, but my wife's from Sydney, so I'm from Melbourne actually. So, um, that's from originally from. But then, uh, yeah, moved out Adelaide at the end of the last Olympic cycle. So we started 2007, eight, moved out to Adela to join the, uh, national team here full-time.
Mark Burik (00:04:43):
Uh, Brandon, where are you from?
Brandon Joyner (00:04:45):
I'm from, I currently reside in, uh, Hermosa Beach, California. I'm from Chester, Virginia, a little small town castle and uh, yeah, in Virginia.
Mark Burik (00:04:56):
Nice. Loved it. I'm from Queens, New York and I'm currently also, uh, in Hermosa Beach. Redondo Beach in California. So guys, using the chat, I want to hear where you are from. Go ahead and just give me, um, where you are from in that chat. Auto, this is always like my favorite part. I love seeing how many people from all around the world we get.
Brandon Joyner (00:05:16):
If you haven't already done it, guys, make sure at the bottom, like at the bottom of the chat little section, it says two and then make sure you change it so that it says all panelists and attendees. That way everybody can see what
Mark Burik (00:05:28):
You're writing. Heyo, we got a guy from Australia. All right, Melbourne, but not Australia, Florida. Okay. Long Beach. Uh, yeah, Martin and Christina are back. Hey guys.
Damien Schumann (00:05:38):
Lucy French from Melbourne. Well done
Mark Burik (00:05:41):
Baltimore.
Damien Schumann (00:05:43):
I didn't know what you're doing there, but I'm enjoying it now. Well done.
Mark Burik (00:05:46):
Mobile, Alabama, Orlando, Florida. Um, and uh, good people are going to start rolling in. So guys take a look. Snohomish Washington uk currently in Brisbane, Australia. So demo, you know everybody who's in Australia, right? It's like small place.
Damien Schumann (00:06:07):
It's funny, it's so funny when, um, and I mean it's funny when uh, someone goes, you know, I talk to someone and they're from California, I'm like, oh, do you know Mark? And look at me like, not fair enough. People do that to me as well. So when you
Mark Burik (00:06:20):
. Yeah. Um, and if it's beach volleyball, it's usually like, yes, I do
Damien Schumann (00:06:25):
Beach volleyball. I've got a pretty good handle on just about everybody in the country, I reckon over the last sort of 15 years or so. So yeah, almost got, almost got a handle on everyone. So I, I need, I need their second names I think to really get a handle on people dropping him from Australia, but I've got a good idea about who everyone is already.
Mark Burik (00:06:41):
Yeah, I mean I feel like, what has it almost been 10 years since I've been there now? Maybe eight years, something like that. That's crazy.
Damien Schumann (00:06:48):
Yeah, probably eight, maybe. I, yeah, I know. It seems like yesterday, eh,
Mark Burik (00:06:51):
God, it still seems like yesterday. Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (00:06:54):
Did you guys just play in the tour over there and did you guys get to hang out and train as well or was it mostly just competition?
Mark Burik (00:07:01):
Uh, we hung out quite a bit. I feel like in the Australian tour, at least when I was there, everybody hangs out except honestly for guys, like, you weren't there yet. You weren't a part of the federation yet, so you didn't show up in uniform and, and wearing sneakers. But like the federation guys were hardcore, they came, they won, they left and, and that was it. And then like, kind of once they were able to loosen up, they would have some, but Dema wasn't yet a part of the National Federation when I got, is that right? Um, coming,
Damien Schumann (00:07:30):
Yeah. Yeah. So it's um, I mean those guys, the beauty of the like, you know, cause I wasn't fully funded or anything back then, like, uh, we can hang out and be a bit more social cause we don't have to rush off the world tour events all the time. So it's, um, so it's easy to hang out and be a bit cool, but, uh, but yeah, no, I didn't didn't have the uniform or anything like that yet, so I was still, uh, still hanging out and being able to sort of rock up when I want all that sort of stuff, which is great. But, um, I don't get me wrong, I'm definitely enjoying, um, you know, all the benefits of being an Adelaide and being a full-time athlete and, uh, taking what I learned sort of growing up from my, my coach in, uh, Melbourne Hay and Alison and sort of bringing all his genius over and uh, then yeah, learning so much from everything in Adelaide, um, you know, and the way, the way they do things in Adelaide. So it's been a really good sort of, uh, ation of, um, yeah, the two sort of, uh, styles I suppose, which I'm sure we'll get into.
Mark Burik (00:08:24):
Yeah. Um, so Hayden Ellis, uh, like super popular coach. I mean I, I I still never stopped hearing about him and how many people he's coached and helped. So was he your first coach and, and tell us a little bit about your first coach and how you got into the sport. Uh,
Damien Schumann (00:08:38):
He wasn't my first coach. A guy called George Moez was my first coach. He was one of the very first players who played for Australia in the indoor scene. I think he's about 80 now or something like that. He was traveling the world, uh, playing for Australia in the seventies. So he was sort of one of the real pioneers and you know, he, he, he'd ramble off off all the old American guys' names and stuff like that. And he was, uh, he, he owned a beach volleyball center and that's sort of, uh, I started playing at my school, uh, playing in indoor at Masal College. And then, um, just started, fell in love with beach, started training with George and then, um, were you, I was about 16, 17 when I switched to beach. Okay. Still played a little bit of indoor, but yeah, it was mainly beach from then on out and um, had a few setbacks along the way and, and you know, always got, got told pretty early on that I was never gonna be able to make it internationally cuz of my height and just wasn't good enough.
(00:09:27):
Didn't have it takes and, and and you know, and looking back on those conversations I had with different various people, lots of people told it was, um, yeah, there was, they were great conversations cuz they really push me on to, uh, set some early goals up, um, about, around just going and, and I, it sounds simplistic, but just trying, I I I've decided that I was just gonna put everything I have into it and see where I got to. And so I think, um, as opposed to having, you know, it's good to have goals, but if I had really lofty goals and I failed early on, then I'd be like, maybe it'll be a bit too overwhelming. And that happens to so many people. There are so many people out there who, you know, they're like, I'm gonna win an Olympic gold medal and then they play one event on the world tour and then they never play ever again because it's just seems too overall.
(00:10:11):
But that original goal I had of just putting everything I had into it, no matter what happens, having that initial goal before you start piling on all the other goals, I think is so important as a sort of a foundational goal to have. And that has stood me, you know, it really helped me be able to deal with a lot of disappointments and losses along the way because I, I'm, I'm a true believer in, you've really gotta push through some, uh, I swear on this thing, you gotta push through some shit if you're gonna eventually, uh, get on the world tour and play for your country. And, uh, you know, you know, America's America's obviously there's so many good players there, so you gotta get used to losing if you wanna make it. So
Mark Burik (00:10:47):
Like what was, what do you think was the turning point for you when people were telling you maybe like you were too small or you kind of didn't have the ability to get better? Was there a turning point where you said like, no, actually I think I can really do this?
Damien Schumann (00:11:00):
Yeah, there, well there was a couple, there was, there were, the world tour came to Australia in 2007 or eight, um, when it was used to be grand slams and opens. And so all my life, you know, in Australia there's lots of tall, awesome athletes running around and, um, all my life had been told you gotta be a certain height to be able to make it sort of thing. And then watching all those world tour players, some who were smaller than me just, you know, carve up on the world tour, I was like, righto, that shows that, you know, people can do it. But then the main factor that, uh, made me believe that I could do it was definitely, uh, Hayden Alice, who was, um, after my initial coach, George started training with Hayden and uh, he, he was my coach for, you know, seven or eight years and we continued to talk to this day sort of thing even though, uh, Andrew's shot and all the awesome guys in Adelaide now are my coaches.
(00:11:44):
But, um, no, Adelaide Hayden was definitely the one who instilled a lot of, a lot of belief in me, but not only belief he gave, he, he was a, he's a great problem solver, Hayden, and, um, he was like, all right, well if you're this size, you need to put the ball here and here at a certain speed to be block or be the defender. So let's technically do some different things that perhaps, you know, people with indoor arm swings might not do. And yeah, so, so, so it was a combination of seeing smaller players do it, but then I was also very lucky to have Hayden as an early coach to technically give me tools to be able to side out against taller players on and and compete on the world tour.
Mark Burik (00:12:19):
If you didn't have him as a coach kind of steering your direction or, or showing you or pushing you, I'm, I'm not sure what he did most of, do you think you would've gotten where you are as quickly as you did? What? Like what was the difference that he made really? I think,
Damien Schumann (00:12:34):
Uh, well there's a few, there's a few things did it a little bit differently. He's a great mentor coach, so, you know, setting himself up and, and I think there's a few out there, but he's really good at that stuff. Um, instilling self-belief and making sure, you know, you're always in the right frame of mind going into competition. But the real genius of Hayden is sort of analysis and uh, the way he teaches spiking in an arm swinging stuff. And there's heaps of players in the world who are doing it, whether they know it or not. And I'm not the best at what he tries to teach as well. There's people out there who can do it better and, but uh, yeah, it's, that's truly sort of what I believe as well as a few other strategic defensive things he definitely taught us. But, um, for me, for, for my mind it was um, definitely sort of the arm swing stuff that, and principles around the arm swinging stuff that allowed me to sort of step up and make big, big leaps.
Brandon Joyner (00:13:19):
You talked about already, I know you like obviously speak very highly of your, your coach that you used to have. And then you also talked about getting the support from the federation and obviously that came with a different group of coaches. Did you see a lot of different techniques that those coaches brought that allowed you or was it just the full on commitment that allowed you to kind of grow?
Damien Schumann (00:13:39):
So, definitely a good question. Definitely the, I mean, Andrew shot my coach in Adelaide, he's a two-time Olympian and you know, got a third world champ, so don't get me wrong, he's a great coach in many different areas as well. And the technically he is a great coach as well and you know, we constantly have discussions around it, which is really good. And he's, he's very open to hearing what I like to say and uh, you know, he's helped me with various aspects of certain shots as well for sure. And Hayden definitely give, gave me that base. And then the structures that sort of Josh Slack and Andrew shot back in the day with their jumpsuit, they were sort of the first ones on the world tour were ever to jump set or really sort of have a different offense. And that was well back in the day and it's pretty well documented, um, what they managed to do with it.
(00:14:19):
And so, you know, again, we've adapted that and of course things evolve and uh, shoddy has managed to give us a structure that allowed me to take sort of things that I've wanted with the arm swing and then put it into a game, you know, put it into an offensive structure when I was playing with Chris in a couple of videos. We'll watch, uh, soonish or eventually, yeah, so shoddy gave us the structure that again allowed us to score more points. Cuz at the end of the day it's all about, you might, you might be able to, you know, bounce a ball, you know, on the one meter line on a beach court and send it through the roof, but if someone just you, you know, can score three more points, then you, you've only gotta win 2119 so you can do all this fancy stuff, but at the end of the day, just a, it's a, it's a numbers game, so I mean you've gotta figure out what system you wanna run, you've gotta get all your techniques right around that and then you just gotta score more points than the other guys. So it doesn't matter how you do it. And that's the beautiful thing about beach volleyball and I think the evolution of beach volleyball now is, I'm even seeing some Americans out there hitting some two balls and uh, these few jumps on the high highlight,
Mark Burik (00:15:17):
It's converting. Yeah, it's definitely like converting now, like it's range if you don't have a jump set, you know, it's strange if you're not thinking about on two for easy balls. It's like, I remember like when that sort of converted, well I don't remember, but like when the, you know, when Russia was just kind of taken over indoor cuz they were just super tall chucking up highballs and just bombing against people and then the Brazilians came and they're just like, well, we're not that tall, we can run fast as hell. So then they just started going like single blocks with speed and now like indoors evolved to the next step. And we've always been waiting for beach to really take that like evolutionary jump. And I think Australia was, you know, you guys were the first to really try that with like moving blockers around, moving defenses around chucking balls out to the pin like options off of serves. And now it seems like, I guess you guys were ahead of your time, but now everybody is attempting to run some sort of onto and spread offense with the exception of just a couple of
Damien Schumann (00:16:16):
Teams. Yeah, and I think, and I think it's interesting and like, you know, I'll reveal as many secrets as I can to you guys, but I, it's not rocket science. I mean, traditional beach volleyball, if you wanna pass straight in front, set up and down and come in and have, you know, it's a, usually an up and down set's pretty perfect set. So you've got all your shot options, you've got all your hit options, that's, that's great, but what happens if it doesn't work, what are you gonna do? Like you just, you know, do you just admit defeat there and then, you know, do you, okay, maybe I'll run through the middle, but again, there's time for the blocker to get on top of you and stuff like that. And don't get me wrong, there's so many players out there who are doing that. But that's the great thing about beach volleyball, the whole thing, the whole thing about beach volleyball is problem solving, whether it's serving, whether it's passing, whether it's setting indoors a bit more. Like this is the system, if you don't fit in the system, go sit on the bench beach
Mark Burik (00:17:01):
Such a, that's gonna be the loop, that's gonna be the hook at the beginning when we edit this all . Yeah, yeah.
Damien Schumann (00:17:07):
The great thing about beach volleyball is it can be so creative. It's quite funny. Beach volleyball is so creative and there's so much license, but as soon as somebody comes in and does something different, whether that's Hayden, whether that's the ais s whether that's anybody doing anything different, everybody's like, whoa, what are you doing? There's no rotations, there's no rules like think outside the box bro. So it's, um, and then of course it becomes the norm and you've got, you know, you know, lap and, and Karen Buller and Rossi running around and you've got, uh, you know, you could, you got McMan brothers always chuck up a couple highlights of doing some fancy, fancy things with their Australian coach . So I mean, look, it's um, that's why we love beach volleyball. Yeah. And it's
Brandon Joyner (00:17:48):
Just, just fun. It's fun to experiment and see what you can, what you can do and what you can accomplish. I think a lot of people stick into that mold of what traditional beach volleyball should look like and because of it, they don't really figure out what type of player they could have been, you know, so Yeah,
Mark Burik (00:18:05):
I love that. Yeah, that Brandon, you, you harped on that again and that Damien, like you were telling us that you had a coach that was able to take you, your body, your skillset and say, we need to build an offense for you. It's so great when you have a coach or somebody that, that can lead you that way because otherwise you take a look at everybody else and how they're doing it and you're like, all right, I guess I gotta figure out how to do it like that when everybody has a different body type. Like you might be short, but you might have long ass arms, so you might be like six foot, but that makes you six five because you have, you know, super long arms. So you, you might be looking at short players when you should be looking at six five guys, you might not be able to jump like Casey Patterson, long arms can't jump, but there's all these different models and you gotta, I think an experienced coach takes a look at who you are, what you're doing and says if they're a great coach, I think, you know, how do we make you the best version of you?
Brandon Joyner (00:18:58):
Yeah. And it takes a lot of trust too as a player, gotta trust the coaches and sometimes, I mean, I feel like most of the time it works out in your favor, but sometimes you get unlucky .
Damien Schumann (00:19:10):
Um, and I think that's a real strength of both my coaches Hayden and uh, Andrew shot as well. So it's like you, you have these general principles like that you might tell all your players to put your elbow gear to start whatever it might be, but some of your players might not be able to access the high line without the block touching it if it's a big block sort of thing. And then the really good coaches start talking about, all right, so what's your left arm doing? Is your left arm holding you high? Should you clear it all away? And yeah, so that's why it's um, so important to have a coach that, or be around people or, you know, be around people that are really smart in terms of having these general principles, uh, which we'll talk about. Um, but then tailoring it to each individual in specific examples. And you know, you go and you gotta be really honest with yourself. You gotta be really honest. Did did I lose this game because I just, I mucked it up or did I lose this game because I don't have these certain shots? Why don't I have these sh certain shots or certain hits in these scenarios? Let's technically go to work on it. That's great.
Mark Burik (00:20:06):
Yeah, that's huge. Like, you know, a lot of people, they, they think about the last shot that they hit. Yeah. You know, some, sometimes people think like they hit a cut shot into the net and then they spend the next week working on cut shot and it's like, well wait a second. Like you, you got, you know, 15 high lines touched during that game and you miss the one on Matchpoint. And then yeah, some people are just going for bangs. I know a bunch of 5, 8, 5, 9, 5, 10 guys who, they'll see somebody on the world tour the AVP bang and they're like, yeah, well I have to bang, I have to bang to win. And they're just not looking in the right areas. Like, no, you shouldn't be better at banging, you should be better at shooting.
Damien Schumann (00:20:42):
Yes, yes. Don't get me wrong, I've been guilty of trying to bang my way outta situation , I think we all have
Mark Burik (00:20:48):
. Cool. So for those of you guys who are just joining us, you've had time. You, if you show up 20 minutes late, well this is Damien Schumann from Australia, we met a long time ago and got along well. I thought he was like 40 years old when he was like 23, but and he has since gone onto the world tour and just, uh, Damien, introduce yourself, tell us your highest finish and that's it. And then guys, after this, since you've been here now for about, uh, 15, 20 minutes, go ahead in the q and a box and any questions, even if it's like how do you translate Australian to English? If you have that question, throw it in to the q and a and we are gonna come back to it at the end and we're gonna answer those Q and a. So if anything that Damien just said like made you curious or brought up a question, you could either write it on a pen or throw it into the q and a. We're gonna get to it in a little bit, but Damien introduce yourself and then we are going to take your match because we had troubles downloading, so I apologize guys, but we're gonna have your match in the beach volleyball World championships versus Nick Luce and Phil do Hauser. So as soon as you're done introducing yourself, we'll start on the video
Damien Schumann (00:21:57):
Analysis. So as you know, as you can see there, my name's Damon Schumann, I'm from Australia. I'm 32 years old. I've been playing since, been playing for about 16 years now. I can't believe that saying that out loud. That's crazy. Uh, and yes, being in Australia at the moment, that means that everybody's sort of, uh, most people are on quarantine, so the internet is absolutely exploding. So it wasn't taking us so long to try and get this, uh, the game we promised you guys we were gonna watch. I think it's about 86%, uh, uploaded to Mark, so we might get a set or two, we'll see how we go. But because the Internet's exploding in Australia where I live, yeah, we'll definitely watch another game. But yeah, I've, it was always a dream of mine. As soon as I started playing beach volleyball, I jumped on YouTube and watched as much as I can, much as I could to the world tour players and I fell in love with the sport.
(00:22:38):
So kept climbing my way up through the national tour ranks and then started playing on the Asian tour and then eventually starting on the world tour as well. My best finishes on the world tour have probably been the ninth at world champs. Um, and we'll watch that game against, um, Nick and Phil and with Cole Duran in 2019, I think 2018, um, we made the semifinals at a three star, so that was pretty cool. We lost those, so we came forth, but that was a good finish as well. And then separate to that and winning the Commonwealth Games Gold medal, Commonwealth Games gold medal with Chris, uh, in 2018 was again, like, it's, it's hard to say, it's like a massive finish because obviously most teams in the world aren't there, but the teams that were there was pretty epic. So that's probably one of the results I'm really proud of as well. Well,
Mark Burik (00:23:23):
Didn't you just get the medal a couple weeks ago?
Damien Schumann (00:23:25):
Uh, yeah, so that was at a two start, meaning Oh yeah,
Mark Burik (00:23:29):
Sometimes you forget all your medals. Yeah, I get it.
Damien Schumann (00:23:31):
No worries. I like
Mark Burik (00:23:32):
.
Damien Schumann (00:23:33):
It's funny with the Star system. So I mean, it's so funny with the Star system actually, to be honest. So it's like a two-star gold medal. Um, we played team, we, we had to play Arian in Groo from Italy in the round of 16 at a two star. And so if you dunno who Alex ran, Gary is, he's an Olympian who used to play with Adrian, Karen Buller, and they won medals on the world tour. So, I mean, it's funny, you know, we had to play them in the round of 16 at a two star, so we managed to beat them and so they got a ninth for the two star. So I mean, the world tour is so, so much stronger than what it was when I started. And the depth of teams, this star system, the depth of teams that are out there, crazy. And again, there was so many at that two-star we in the final we beat, um, Zandy Huber from um, Austria, who's also a 2000 and, um, 2016 Rio Olympian as well. So there was Olympians all over the shop at a two-star, which is insanity when you think about it. But
Mark Burik (00:24:23):
Last week we had flu inch Schnitzer on and we analyzed his match against Sandy.
Damien Schumann (00:24:28):
Oh, there you go. That was a great match as
Mark Burik (00:24:30):
Well. All right, so then let's get into it guys. Like I said, uh, the q and a, that's where you're gonna post all of your questions. If you guys wanna like, do little chats with each other in the chat, that's fine, but q and a is what we're gonna pay attention to at the end. So if you have any questions that pop up, go ahead and enter them in there. That being said, let's get into some offense with Damian Schumann. Okay, this is World Championships fiv V b and this is Vienna, this is two years ago. Am I right?
Damien Schumann (00:25:01):
Yep.
Mark Burik (00:25:02):
All right, nice. So we wanna look at your offense, uh, that's what we were talking about. So every time we can get you receiving, that's what we're gonna be looking at. So here we go. Um, talk to me first, what was your strategy going into a Nick and Phil match?
Damien Schumann (00:25:18):
Well, I mean it's, uh, you know, all all you Americans aren't too, you know, you're all familiar with who Nick and Phil are, so I don't need to talk too much about, uh, their prowess and stuff. But I mean, uh, look, Nick, Nick's someone who I watched when I was, you know, 17, 18, 19, 20, and, um, as a smaller player. So of course I tried to look at what he was doing. Um, and so, and of course Phil is, you know, he's, he is, um, you know, without a doubt being the best blocker on the world tour for, you know, however, however long he's been playing basically on the world tour. So he is, um, so we knew we, we really had to surf tough, so we were really trying to, um, put their passing off with a little, with some really, really tough float serving. Um, again, um, very
Mark Burik (00:25:59):
Tough. What are you, um, what, what is your version of tough? Are you going flat and fast? Are you going high deep, like spots jump floats, standing floats? What do you mean by tough?
Damien Schumann (00:26:10):
Uh, so at this, at this stage, um, for us, tougher, and again, it changes and it's sort of evolved a little bit, um, since then. But at this stage it was like getting the ball across the net as as low as, as low as it possibly can over the net. So as flat as I possibly can, um, and as hard as I possibly can, getting it to the back meter. Um, just max jumping from the baseline, hitting it as hard as I can, low over the net. And, um, and, and we got some, we got some passes off the net from them, um, in this game, which was, uh, which was really good. So it, it was, uh, so, so it did work, but I think, I think again, we did probably did it too much. I probably having, you know, having my time again, those really work.
(00:26:52):
But again, every fifth serve just, you know, taking some pace off it or, you know, trying a high deep one or a short serve or something like that probably would've been really beneficial. But when you're in the heat of the moment, you get a couple of results off a certain type of serve, um, you can become addicted to that. So, um, I definitely became addicted to a few of the passes and then of course they get a bit of a rhythm. So it doesn't matter what sort of serve you do, even if it's really good, if you do that same serve all the time, a team can become, can feel the rhythm of that pretty easily. Uh,
Mark Burik (00:27:20):
If you could give me one key, so like you're saying that you were going for flat, fast float serves, I'll pigeon you to two keys that you're thinking, like how do I make this flatter faster? Like how did you level up your floater game at some point?
Damien Schumann (00:27:35):
Uh, so this was, uh, we did a lot of work in Adelaide when I arrived in Adelaide. So we looked at all my serving stats and just realized I wasn't, um, serving that efficiently or effectively, like everybody was passing my service pretty easily. So we did a lot of work on that with, um, shotti my coach and stuff like that. And so two big things, two big things, were literally aiming that high over the net. So looking at the tape, like looking at the tape and trying to just get it two centimeters above the tape. And to do that you have to hit it pretty hard, otherwise it's gonna go into the net. So having that reference there, something to aim at, um, was, uh, really, really important. Um, so that's, that's one. And number two was number two was, uh, forward momentum through the ball as well. So in the past when I was float serving, I was really concentrating on trying to, you know, hard hand hit it in the middle, hit it in the middle, and that's definitely important. But, um, I'd sort of half jump, um, or you know, the jump wasn't really a focus, but actually getting my body weight through the ball, getting my body weight through the ball, aiming flow over the net really gave me some, um, yeah, some, some, you know, a lot of flow on the ball.
Mark Burik (00:28:42):
Okay, nice. So flat, fast, low aiming point, instead of like looking at somebody's chest across the core, you're thinking like, I'm aiming for a spot above the net to make it cross under a certain window. Cause I know like Brandon when he's coaching, so for us, like Vo cam Formosa in Mimosa Beach, um, we run training camps here for those people who don't know, but uh, he does this drill where we put a string from the, from the antennas and it's like 12 inches above the top of the tape and you have to serve under that string, but over the wire, uh, but over the net of course. And that's how we, we practice that version of that surface. You ever use tools like that?
Damien Schumann (00:29:21):
Yeah, absolutely. We've got, we've got one of those in Adelaide and uh, definitely use that to, to hone in on serving low under the net, um, but also doing drills where you gotta hit the tape as well. You are literally aiming to hit the tape. Like you can't leave until you hit the tape and it goes in and that there, there's, I mean, you don't, you don't sort of aim to do that in the game aiming just above it, but just, just to get in that mindset of like, I've actually gotta hit it hard, even if it goes out the back. Um, just getting used to, because it's, cuz it's quite a mental shift cuz your whole, your whole life you learn your whole life you learn, you know, you start and you learn to get the ball in like it's, you know, rule number one.
(00:29:55):
But when you're playing, when you find yourself, when you find yourself playing a nick and a Phil at a center chord at world champs, um, if you are gonna give him easy serves, you, you, they're gonna get a perfect setup every time. And I mean, you don't want Nick, I mean Phil's one of the best hand setters in the world as well. You don't want, you don't want an easy pass and Phil to just stroll in and set him perfectly every time, even though that's what happened a lot of time as well. Don't worry. But, um, any, any of the, any of these, any of these all, you know, world class teams on the world tour, um, if they're gonna pass, you know, if they're gonna three pass every single ball, you, you're gonna struggle to make defensive points.
Mark Burik (00:30:31):
So, um, when you say three pass, what does that mean for, uh, for somebody who's just started playing last year?
Damien Schumann (00:30:39):
Uh, a three passes and as a fancy indoor term, um, where, uh, the set has three options, but in beach, um, in beach it's very team dependent. So what a three passes for what a three passes for, um, for one team might be a bad pass for another team. So a three pass for us is if we can pass it up and the, and the set has the option to hit it onto, that's what we consider a three pass sort of just, you know, in the middle of the court, just past middle. Um, and
Mark Burik (00:31:09):
So when they have the option to, to set or hit, like it's not a three if they have to hit
Damien Schumann (00:31:16):
No. Okay. No, no, no.
Mark Burik (00:31:17):
Okay. So they have the option.
Damien Schumann (00:31:18):
Okay, so that's just, yeah. Um, this
Mark Burik (00:31:21):
Is a second up right here. Look at this
(00:31:24):
, that's up. Oh, so that was, so that was your strategy. So we just got into your strategy going against Nick and Phil Flat fast serves and then offensively what were you, what was your, did you have a specific shot that you knew you should go for that you knew you had to establish? Oh, and I do wanna top one moment for those of you who, who aren't playing against guys who side out at like 70%, 60 and 70%, you might wanna measure back your certs. So if somebody is getting a kill more often than you get a dig or more often that than you get a touch, yeah, of course, like that's when you serve tough. But if you're getting digs and they're, you're getting touches, go lower risk on the serve because like you have to measure out statistics and, and very often I think when you're first coming and, and starting to play when you serve that team is just as likely to hit an error as they are to get a kill. And then like then they have a bunch of in balls at this level, you know, where, where Damien's talking about, it's like, all right, you have the best offensive player in the world. On the other side we have to serve a little bit tougher and we're okay with missing a couple because we have to get them out of system more than the others. But,
Damien Schumann (00:32:39):
And it is, and it is an absolute balancing act as well at any level, including high level in the world tour us. So sometimes serving really tough, um, actually puts the other team in rhythm cuz they don't have time to think about it. And so it's very much horses for courses. So, um, you could serve really tough team horses for courses. I won't try and use too many Australian terms.
Brandon Joyner (00:33:01):
Mark Burik (00:33:01):
What for courses
Damien Schumann (00:33:04):
As in that means is basically it just depends on who you're playing. So if some teams you could come out and jump, serve as hard as you can and be jumper at like 90 kilometers an hour and you look like a hero and you feel good about yourself and it makes a loud noise and everyone's like on the sideline going, oh my god, like how good this guy's jumper. But if the other team loves receiving jump serves and he's just absolutely nailing the passes, then what are you doing? Like, it'd be, it'd be better for some, it'd be honestly better. And this is on the wheelchair as well, it'd be better sometimes to underarm the ball over with the free ball than it would be to jumper to give that team that forward momentum that they really crave. So again, um, no matter what level you're playing, you've gotta constantly be aware of what your serves doing. Like okay, I'm just getting to serve in, but can I get it to this half of the court to challenge this player and the higher and I go, the more and more discussions you have with yourself, basically I,
Mark Burik (00:33:56):
I like that mindset of like, even if I'm serving well, like I feel like I'm jumping and ripping and hammering and I haven't gotten them out of system in like half of a set, why am I still wasting all of this energy to give them more free passes, right?
Brandon Joyner (00:34:12):
Yeah. You gotta you gotta bring out the, the coaches float that gets everybody
Damien Schumann (00:34:18):
Ridiculous. How good, good are your under arm float says when you're coaching and not caring everything
Mark Burik (00:34:23):
So good, right,
Brandon Joyner (00:34:24):
? Yeah, the thing they move more than anything else.
Mark Burik (00:34:27):
So, um, Damon, I have a question about this play because the, the, they've been serving Chris all match and he's gotten, so like the analyst in me, he says he's gotten three hits, maybe four now from the antenna and he, he passed you for, you know, for a lot of people he passed you really wide to the other half of the court. Is this something that you guys are doing intentionally because this looks to me like an intentional path?
Damien Schumann (00:34:55):
Well it's, um, and see this any, any, any system has had frozen. So when we're trying to pass up on two, um, if you miss, if you miss where you wanna pass it up for two it can look bad. Like so, so that probably is a little bit too wide then where we'd like to pass it. But so if you were passing it straight in front and you miss it by a meter and a half, no one cares. Like who cares? Just set it straight up with me, no worries. If you're passing it up for two, which is already three meters away from you, maybe three and half meters away from you and then you miss the pass by only a meter and a half, the pass is now four and a half meters or five meters away from you, which is where, uh, looks like I was. Um, but so that, but but that's also why as a country we work a lot on hand setting.
Mark Burik (00:35:45):
Okay. Um, so but so this is, so you're saying that he was, he was not trying to pass middle that he's here, he's trying to pass you on to, to hit.
Damien Schumann (00:35:55):
Yeah, we pretty much always try. Yeah.
Mark Burik (00:35:57):
Where is your aiming point? So you're a right side, so Damien, if he's, so for me it's really hard as a right side to hit a ball on two and I'm thinking where do you guys aim to make that available for your first pass?
Damien Schumann (00:36:13):
Yeah, so pretty much from the middle of the court, um, from the middle of the court and a meter and a half over, anywhere from there, um, is sort of the ideal spot. But when you're hitting two balls, again, it's very player dependent. So if I have enough, so, so well for most of us, if you have, if there's enough sit on the ball, if there's enough height, um, you can get your feet to the ball. So if you're gonna pass a little bit inaccurately or you can't help this as well, if the pass is a little bit inaccurate, if it still has a nice amount of height and he is somewhere close to the net, um, we can hit it on too basically. So,
Mark Burik (00:36:47):
So enough height makes more options available is what you're saying And that's kind of counter to, I know how a lot of people will coach where they say take a lot off of the ball, like keep it low, keep it at the antenna. What would you say to that style or to those coaches? Because I, I fight that a lot when I'm coaching as people trying to pass like underneath the top of the antenna when like low to me means all right, like under six balls above the top of the antenna, that's fine. But I think a lot of people interpret low as like underneath the top of the antenna completely and then I see setters just diving and scrambling and doing whatever. So go ahead with like how you would teach height for first passes.
Damien Schumann (00:37:31):
Um, again, it comes down to what system you're running, but once you, it depends what you want to do basically, but again, I think you need to be lifting that ball up. So if you make a mistake on the pass, the set can give, still give you the b whether you're passing in in front or whether you're trying to pass it up on two, you need to give that ball enough height so that a set can keep the rhythm of the pass if you are shooting the pass in and then you try and lift the pass height, the rhythm of the offensive attacker is a little bit out there. Um, and so I mean Kerry Walsh and Brook sweat are probably the best in the world at bump setting rhythm. So the way Kerry bump sets Brook, so Brook will shoot a pass in and Kerry will bump set the pass off the same rhythm of that shot pass in.
(00:38:16):
Whereas, and so if you're not like a 25 time Olympic gold medalist like Carrie Walsh and you're not quite able to read the rhythm of that, then it's sort of better to work around the parameters of always trying to have a lifted pass. So the set has heaps of time to come in and use their hands or come in and bump set it, um, and keep that, you know, keep that rhythm of the pass and set offense. Um, so yeah, it's, uh, yeah I definitely would like a little bit more pride on my passes when I try and teach people. So just, it just in case, it, I mean look, if you nail the pass and you pass it really low, that's great, but if you make a little slight mistake on that pass and you've already trying to pass it low and shoot it in, then you're putting yourself in a bit of trouble.
Mark Burik (00:38:59):
Okay. Um, I saw you guys, that's a sec. I saw you guys did you just switch positions? Uh, two side outs ago. So now we got Chris on the, on the right and you on the left.
Damien Schumann (00:39:10):
Yeah. So I'm sort of glad you're skipping through a lot of this first set cuz it wasn't great
Mark Burik (00:39:14):
Damien Schumann (00:39:16):
The, uh, we, uh, yeah, we, um, Nick, Nick and Phil were all over us in this first set. Yeah, Nick and Phil were all over us in this first set, so we were just trying to do anything just to just tuck up a little bit of the momentum. So switch sides for a while, just so, um, look, we, of course we never give up in sets as well, but sometimes switching sides is good so they get a different look at your offense. Um, for the second set, um, if we can catch up a few points, that's great. Um, and so yeah, we switched sides and I had to go on the left side, which was, which was fun. So I mean, and actually me and a couple of my old partners, um, me and Josh court, um, and me and uh, me and Cole did this as well who I recently just played with as well.
(00:39:58):
I think, um, switching sides switch, switching sides is an underutilized thing in beach volleyball. So most people in beach volleyball, they're like, I'm a right sider. Like that's it. Like I'll never, I'll never set foot, I'll never step over to the left side and I'll never do it. And if I get a dig on the left side, I'm gonna run behind because I'm a right sider. And it's, um, it, it's honestly, when you think about it, when you think about it, um, if you, again, you get rid of all those preconceived ideas, why not switch sides? Like why not show the defense something completely different? And of course some people feel more comfortable on a particular side, but if you really analyze why you feel comfortable on a particular side of the court, you realize, so if, if you're on the right side of the court, you're a right sider and you love hitting cross, well that's the same as a left side line, the same arm swing mechanics as a left side line across your body. So you still have weapons over there. You just gotta figure out which ones, and of course you wanna be really good everything. It's funny, we
Mark Burik (00:40:52):
Talked about that in our, in our last one where we said like how the block signals change if people go back and yes, one of the things that I like to do is I like if somebody's got that swing, exactly what you just said, if I'm blocking them, it's because they have a certain swing that I, I need to stop. And if they go back, it's going to, it's not gonna be the same swing, it's going to be the same body motion that they're very good at. So like you said, like cross court from the, from the right side is gonna be the same as cross body on the left side. And so I would stay in that kind of defensive formation to protect that. Okay. So you and me think a little bit similarly on that.
Damien Schumann (00:41:31):
Yeah, and, and it's the same as shots as well. Like some people can't cut, say, say someone's can't cut from the right side, but they can push a high line. Well that means if they go over on the left side that they're gonna be able to push a cut. Um, and they might struggle with that action high lining it off the left. These are just generalizations and you gotta know your players. But, um, I think, I think, uh, offensively people need to free up their minds a little bit in terms of like, uh, you know, again, if something's not working, you've got the freedom, you're not stuck in a rotation, you've got the freedom to change it up, why wouldn't you just to give the defense a different look at things. So I think the challenge
Mark Burik (00:42:04):
Is you go, but how many points, cause I I just wanna keep making this a, a class, um, cuz your brain is, you move quick. I'm sorry. No, it's great. It's great. I'm trying to keep up with you. Um, so I wanna make sure that everybody else is keeping up, but, uh, how many points would you lose or give up before you decided to switch? Like for those who are sitting there and they're getting pummeled and serve, receive, and they like lost 2, 3, 4 points, should they switch after one? Should they switch after two? Like, what would you give, what advice would you give to somebody who's only been playing for two or three years?
Damien Schumann (00:42:37):
Well, this is really, I was about to make this point, so thank you for slowing me down. I got to think about it a little bit more . Um, I, uh, when, when I started playing, it was always like, you lose four or five in a row and you know, once you lose four or five in a row, six in a row, it's, it's pretty tough to win a set against anybody, against anybody at any level really. When you've got a five or six point lead, um, the stats will show you're probably gonna lose that set. So of course it's, it's, it's an ego thing, like you wanna like, no, I wanna prove that I can get this hit on the right side or whatever. So over the years it's sort of evolved and so it got to the point, so at the moment if we lost sort of three in a row, four in a row, we'd sort of think about maybe making a switch.
(00:43:20):
Um, but with Cole, um, my last partner we sort of started talking about, and with Cordy as well, we were like, maybe we should even do it after one or two just completely take the initiative to make a switch before it's a disaster. And I think that's a interesting conversation for beach volleyballs to have because one, one or two points isn't a disaster, but four points losing four points or five points, even if you get one or two in the middle of that. If there's been seven side outs and you've only scored once or twice, that means you've lost five. So that is a little bit of a disaster. So this is a conversation you'd have to have with your partner and your coach and probably yourself in the mirror. And, um, just maybe, maybe it's something out there for people who need a few more strings to their bow. Um, maybe thinking about, um, changing sides as a preemptive measure as opposed to reactive.
Mark Burik (00:44:10):
Interesting.
Damien Schumann (00:44:11):
So yeah, like
Mark Burik (00:44:13):
If I like that idea defense playing against you, I'm like, all right, so he, he got these kills, he got these kills, and then all of a sudden you switch sides. I've got my mental stat book on you now I have to get a whole new stat book, um, so that I can't really build an entire strategy against you.
Damien Schumann (00:44:31):
Um, hundred percent. So, and, and, and I've caught myself. I I'm a defender, so you know, you, anyone who's played defense out there and blockers anyone who's played beach volleyball out there, you know, if you've never played a team before by about eight, all you know, maybe 15 or on the first set, maybe the technical time out, you start to get a bit of a feel on what somebody, you know, as a blocker, you're like, yeah, ok, I reckon I'm just about to down on this guy. Or as a defender, you're making these little adjustments like, ok, he can't hit this sharp or he likes to play this, you know, ok, someone switches sides as a defender. I'm like, oh my God. Like that's just completely, you know, what can he do from here sort of thing. And so I think the scary thing as a, you gotta, you know, the scary thing as an offense person is, even if it's working at a say an 80% strike rate, you're like, and you know, you're playing a good team. Um, do you have the, you know, do you have the balls basically, or the courage to maybe, maybe, you know, make that switch, um, to stay ahead of the curve basically. Um, and it's, look, and I, I'm not, I'm not saying I do it every game a lot, most games, and I stay put on the right side, don't get me wrong. But I think, um, you know, it's something that I'd probably like to do a little bit more of even, um, is making a preemptive switch.
Mark Burik (00:45:43):
Yeah. The, the, the real interesting experiment, like you guys, you look at like, guys like, uh, the Polish guys, UMAC and how many different spots sets, rhythms and sets they have, and they're totally efficient in all of them where you think, like some people like New England Patriots, like do one thing really well and like do the basics as well as you can. But yes. Um, I also like this idea of like, throw everything at them and make sure that you're a complete athlete. And I think it's going to take, uh, again, like self-reflection, like you said, looking in the mirror, because if you are absolutely crap at hitting a certain type of shot, then steer your games away from that. You know, like you can do all the other ones, but make sure you don't get put into that position that you ate. And if you are in that position, be smart once you're in that position and find your, find your favorite swing.
Damien Schumann (00:46:44):
Yep, for sure. Um, I reckon I, I made some little notes. I watched this game just this morning to, as we were getting ready, I think at 19 minutes, 50, if we can go to 19 minutes.
Mark Burik (00:46:56):
59. Nine nine or
Damien Schumann (00:46:59):
1919. Um, it's just towards the end of the set, but it was just about if we're gonna start talking about a bit of, um, arm swing stuff, um, a bit of offense. So yeah. Um, what do we got here? Now? We've gotta have a look to see what I wanted to talk about, but basically, um, and, and I get roofed later in the game and we can sort of see, we can talk about the differences in the arm swinging my internet's, uh, what's going on. Yep. Okay. I'm getting a frame by frame, but,
(00:47:29):
Uh, yeah. Okay. Did I, yeah. Okay. Got it. Um, my, my computer, my, my, uh, my, uh, footage is jumping around a little bit, but I, you guys are a third world country, basically. So, you know, internet, it's, it's a big, it's a big political thing actually. Um, oh really? People run for prime minister or president, if you wanna call it that. Um, people run going like, I'm gonna fix the internet . And, you know, they bring in these big things anyway. Who cares? Anyway, um, the, um, so, so basically what I wanted to talk about as well is, um, adjusting your, adjusting the timing of your hit based on the blockers you might play. And so sometimes you do it, can you vary it? Sometimes you do it deliberately, sometimes it just happens anyway, but, um, so basically it's like some players, and I'm, I'm not saying exactly what I'm doing here, but some players like to come in slow and hit fast, and then some players just storm in and then their hits really, really slow.
(00:48:30):
And basically what you're doing there, um, is mucking up what the block is seeing. Um, and so, and so for me as a smaller player, as we, we advertise, we would talk about how smaller players deal with somebody like a Phil and I, you know, again, he did get me later, but I've got a few, got a few hits down, got a few hits past him. But, um, so, so for me here, I wanted to come in, I wanted to, I wanted to approach spike approach, like pretty hard and fast, like not maxed out, but then I wanted to speed my arm up really fast so the block wouldn't quite be sealed. Um, and a little bit later as well, I will, and we'll get to it as well. Um, we'll get to it as well in, sometimes you want to come in extra fast and then hang a little bit and then hit, and so you're just mucking around at, uh, the timing of when the blocker like a big blocker like Phil is trying to clam down on you. And again, I'm not, I'm giving away too many of my secrets here, and it's, but, but it's, um, most people sort of know that intuitively or do it intuitively when they're playing big blockers. But, um, I think it's definitely, if you're struggling to get past somebody, change the timing of what you're doing, the arm swinging mechanics are still extremely important and they're number one. But on top of that, you can start thinking about angles of approach and the timing of the approach.
Brandon Joyner (00:49:46):
So did you, uh, so another way to say that, if I'm understanding it correctly, is you almost made your approach speed look like you were gonna shoot.
Damien Schumann (00:49:56):
Uh, yeah, that's one way I still wanted, I, I was coming in pretty hard and fast, but I just wanted to make my arm swing really fast, basically. Gotcha. On this particular, on this particular one. Um, and that was sort of a, a fast arm swing was, um, and again, I'm not, I'm not, it's not rocket surgery having a fast arm swing, but, um, just being aware of what's working against a rocket surgery.
Mark Burik (00:50:29):
Um, okay, so, so I think like most of our audience, probably they're , Jeff said it's not rocket surgery, y'all . I think a lot of the, our audience is probably like worried about, man, how do I hit at the best point in my hit? Like how do I just get it at the top of my swing? And so what I wanna kind of expose to our audience, and somebody told me this in college, I think our coach told us this in college, but like you trying to hit the ball at the top of your swing is level one of beach volleyball. Understands, there are going to be times when, just like you're talking about now, Damien, where there's a blocker who has your timing and they are all over you and you have to hit halfway on your way up. You have to hit with no load, but a quick arm.
(00:51:20):
You have to wait till they have sloppy hands and then wreck off of their hands to get a tool. And there's a lot of ways, if you're against a really solid blocker, again, most of our audience probably isn't facing a well disciplined six foot nine blocker, you know, but if you do run into that, there are ways other than, ah, man, I got blocked because I was hitting cross, so now I have to hit a high line, you know, or I got dug three times, so now I have to hit hard. Well, you, you can make little minor changes within that by hitting halfway up into your jump and aiming right at their head right before their block is built, before they're even strong and over the net, because you're gonna get to kill there or waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting and then still hitting because like once you wait they think shot, so they release their hands back or something like that. And that's when you knock it off of their hands. So there's so much detail and I think a lot of these people are thinking like, man, I'm just, I'm just trying to hit at the top of my swing and now you're telling me that you're waiting until after the top and then choosing to hit faster or slower or you're going before your top. Is there any way that you train that?
Damien Schumann (00:52:29):
So, so I'll start with you need to nail your technique down with repetitions and repetitions and repetitions and you've gotta be really conscious of what you're doing and have a good coach and have a good arm swing. So that is number one. So for me, for me, and again, you know, we get to watch Nick here as well, which is awesome, is one of the best small players, you know, one of the best small players in the world for the last decade for sure. You wanna, you want to have an have an arm swing where you can hit line, hit cross, and shoot both ways off the similar looking arm swing and you want to be able to hit you, you called it at the top of your jump, I call it on the way up. Um, so we, you know, we worked a lot with Hayden.
(00:53:08):
You want to hit on the way up because if you hit, if you wait till the top of your jump and then you start your arm swing cuz you feel like you're at the top of your jump, you're actually gonna be on the way down which lowers your swing. So for us, we talk about on the way up as you're climbing, then you hit, cause by the time your arm unravels, you will be at the top of your jump. So as a smaller player or any beach volleyballer, you are a hundred percent correct, 99.9% of the time. You want to bring out your best arm swing with the best timing at the top of your reach every time, regardless of what the defense is doing, regardless of what the defense is doing, that is your A one, number one what you wanna bring all the time.
(00:53:47):
Once that, once that is locked down, once your technique is rock solid, um, and you know, you gotta make that technique rock solid, that is the most important thing. Then once your technique is rock solid, you will start playing better and better players and then you'll have to start solving harder and harder problems to the extent of me trying to solve a problem against the best blocker and you know, the best blocker almost of all time in our sport. Um, and so don't get me wrong, I've spent many, many years not doing the things I just talked about to get past Phil . Um, it's uh, you know, don't, yeah, I've just, you know, been working with hay and been working with shotty about, you know, a fast arm swing, a thrown arm, um, looking up at the ball, lots of different principles that ensure that I hit the ball at the top of my reach, um, at the top of my jump basically. And so, yeah. And
Mark Burik (00:54:42):
Are there any drills that are, that our players could use, like that you could just explain, like you just tell somebody, go out, hit one ball on your way up, hit one ball at the top of your jump, hit one ball after the top of your jump and start feeling where exactly your top is. Or how would you, how would you get somebody to start learning that?
Damien Schumann (00:55:00):
Uh, well usually if you're hitting the tape, that means you're not at the top of your jump. So there's a good little reference point. Reference point or, or even more so it means your eyes are not on the ball. So something, I worked a lot with Hayden as well and um, again, one of the general principles that we sort of would always do is try and keep your eyes on the ball. So if your eyes are looking up at the ball and not on the other side of the net as you're swinging. So if I'm looking at the ball, looking at the ball, I'm not gonna hit with a low arm. If I'm looking at the court, I'm not gonna be able to reach up because it's the ball's outta my peripheral vision. So you always hit with where your eyes are looking. So for us looking at the ball would ensure that I would unravel my arm up at the ball and that would give me the best chance of hitting at the top of my reach, for example. How
Mark Burik (00:55:46):
Do you as a little guy who I imagine relies on a lot of vision, how do you measure that against your ability to see the other side of the court?
Damien Schumann (00:55:56):
Um, and so to see the other side of the court, it's more for me per, and this is a very personal thing, some people like taking a look. Um, I find personally taking a look, um, marked up the timing of what I'm trying to do because we're spreading the offense. If I was running straight up and down like we used to, I could take a little bit more of a look cause the ball's flying around. I wanna make sure my timing, my timing when I attack the ball is really, really good. And so how I get vision of the defender and the blocker is by good timing on my spike approach. So if I have good timing on my spike approach, I can see outta my peripheral vision glimpses of where the defense is. Okay. Um, and so
Mark Burik (00:56:36):
You look after your jump or on your jump, so like you're saying that as you're going up into the air, if you're in a good position and you're staring at the ball, then you should have a peripheral sense. Is that like on the ground or is that in the air?
Damien Schumann (00:56:50):
Uh, it's probably more in the air. Wow. Um, the reason, and so I, I sort of, so this is a really interesting chat as well, the looking before you, so traditional beach volleyball and again in an American game and beach volleyball used to be nine by nine. So you could look, have jumped, do half a jump and if you know where the defender is, you've got seven other meters to put the ball in. So I think as the blockers have gotta bit bigger, the court's got a little bit smaller. Um, if you can look and then still do your thing, that's awesome. Um, but for me I prefer cuz if when I used to look and then at some stage you have to look back up at the ball, the defense would then make their move on me. So really good defensive teams wait until you look and then they go and do something different anyway so then the look is null and void.
(00:57:36):
Um, and so if you are, if you look, uh, if you can look really, really late and then maybe that will hold the defense, good defenders, they'll still make their move after that. And good blockers, I mean, you think about blocking, you look at, you look at what they're doing and then they just go like that and they've completely changed what they're, what they're blocking. So, so for me having my peripheral vision, I rely a bit more on my peripheral vision and trust that a little bit more. And if I can't see anything, I make the best swing I possibly can. Okay. And more often than not the best swing I possibly can or the best shot I'm possibly gonna can, possibly can do, will either get the job done or put the other team under a huge amount of pressure. Of course if I go for a high line and they've run a X play, then yes, it's very easy for them. But yeah, so I think that's a very interesting discussion to have as a beach volleyball community in general as well.
Mark Burik (00:58:29):
Mm-hmm. I like it. Yeah, I've been, um, I've been getting my players away from this and that, you know, like I've, I've been saying like, because I got into the same thing where I would look on the ground hard and kind of wait until they showed me something. And then like the best teams in the world, you know, when you're playing an A or a double A tournament, like a lower level tournament, those players will eventually tilt their hand, they'll show you, like, they'll get so nervous that you're looking at them that they'll just like, oh, he sees me, I have to move. Yeah. And as soon as they move then I can hit my spot. But like AVP fib B guys, guys like you just fast as hell, you're just gonna sit there and say, yeah, go ahead. Like I'm not moving. Let's see if you can beat my speed. You know? Yeah. Or then like once, you know, once I'm starting, starting to finally get into a rhythm, then you just move after I look and uh, and it gets harder. So it's good to know for everybody out there that like at the next level, the best defenders are studying the eyes of the offensive players and and most people don't realize that that's what's happening. That you have to know when somebody looks, um, and when they can't see you anymore.
Damien Schumann (00:59:45):
Yep. And, and look, if you are a smaller player that can take a big look and then put your attention back up to the ball and hit at your highest point with perfect timing, then all power to you. But I've, in my, me personally, when I start looking, I then hit with a slightly lower arm. My jump timing's a little bit off the ball might have moved a little bit. And so it takes away sort of the integrity of the hit or the shot I was gonna play. Um, and at, at a, at a, at a better level or at any level, if you don't bring the best shot or hit you've got, you, you, the defense will probably gobble it up whether you knew what they were doing or not. Yeah.
Mark Burik (01:00:26):
I think it's interesting cuz Todd Rogers, you know, did it for seven years straight and he was a hard looker, but now he's teaching his collegiate girls, cuz I listened to one of his podcasts, he's teaching his collegiate girls not to do the look that he did for seven years. Oh wow. Like the stretch their eyes out of the bottom because he said that this eye movement is gonna be way faster and you don't have to lose the ball and then lose the court, you know, so he is like stretch your peripheral by like dropping your eyes open.
Damien Schumann (01:00:54):
Fascinating. And the other thing, the other thing that I'll just add on a personal note, I'm extremely inflexible. Um, and so when I look I can't, um, yeah, I mean people think I'm fast and I can jump high, which I can, but I'm not flexible at all. So me actually looking and then having a look back up, it actually takes my whole upper body down to look like if I'm focused there, I have to actually look. So, so that's just me personally. I don't have a hugely flexible thoracic or, uh, back or anything like that. So it actually mucks up the mechanics of what I'm doing as well. So I'm, yeah, Todd Rogers is, you know, obviously one of the greatest players of all time, so yeah. Interesting. Very interesting.
Mark Burik (01:01:31):
Um, well I'm seeing the serve chart here. So it's you versus Nick and Phil. It's fairly obvious that you were avoiding Phil. Um, so were you going for middle but on Nick's side or were you just going after Nick?
Damien Schumann (01:01:44):
Yeah, so we were, um, we were, we were trying to serve a little bit of middle to try and a little bit of middle, slightly more towards Nick. And if Phil took a couple of balls, then we're okay with that. Um, because again, we were just in this game, in this particular game and not every game in this particular game we were just trying to serve one half of the court or middle as hard as we could with as much float as we could. Other games, it's more about, okay, I'm gonna nail this guy's sidelines so he stays out wide because we'd rather keep him out wide because through the middle we, he is really, really good. So
Mark Burik (01:02:18):
That's, so that's can can you just touch on that for a second? So like, first of all, you're choosing somebody but you're not serving them, you're serving space around them and you said serve somebody's sideline so that he has to hit from wide because he's good in the middle. What, what do you mean? I mean it's pretty self-explanatory, but let's just dive a little bit deeper into that.
Damien Schumann (01:02:37):
Yeah, definitely. I mean, um, serving, uh, serving accurately is very, very important. Um, because sometimes, so, you know, for a left side or for example, some people really like coming in straight off the left side, you're like okay, but if some people really like getting their angle and uh, facing the angle on approach off the left side while you can serve them a bit more in the middle and then they have more work to do. So if they have more work to do, maybe their timing will be off. Um, like a right sider, some right siders really like coming in straight. So, oh, you know, oh hang on some right siders really like coming in on an angle off the right side as well because they hit really well that way. So again, if you serve them in the middle, then they don't have a chance to get their angle or some people really like taking that massive sort of that luo, you know, that luo, even Luna to an extent after they pass, they take that massive, the right side, right side of step massively into the middle and then have that straight approach.
(01:03:35):
And so if they like doing that, maybe let's serve them a little bit wider and see if that, uh, mucks up where they want to be. So, you know, Luo, Danielle Lupo one of the, again, silver medalists from the last Olympics loves running through the middle. So sometimes you can get him a little bit wider, it's just in a spot that he's not as odd. He's still very effective, that wider . But um, but you know, he loves being in the middle and from the middle. Um, most players in the world really struggle to read, um, luo through the middle. So, you know, let's put him somewhere different.
Mark Burik (01:04:04):
So this is kind of what you're talking about here where Nick uh, passes, but then he bumps over with Phil because he likes his straight line set. So if we could just watch this here, pass moves it over left, but then he takes that shuffle step in after that pass to make it a little bit easier for Phil to set his right arm. And so that Nick has this straight on approach, which he loves.
Damien Schumann (01:04:26):
Absolutely. And again, Phil and, and Nick and Phil are so good at getting that ball on the right shoulder for that right sider and we'll talk about another little point I think at 26 min uh, 20, yeah, 26 minutes. If we could go to 20, back to 26 minutes as well, we can talk a little bit more.
Mark Burik (01:04:43):
I love your level of preparation here. Um, guys, we do have questions, we're gonna get some in a couple of minutes, but, um, use the q and a if any of these things have sparked some questions. The q and a, um, I,
Damien Schumann (01:04:55):
We
Mark Burik (01:04:56):
Still got a full audience, Dame people love you. Uh, they're loving this, uh, technical talk guys, this is awesome. Just a new view at, at at offense and some ideas that we haven't, we haven't had yet, which i, I knew you would bring so I'm pumped about it. Okay, so 26
Damien Schumann (01:05:18):
Flat. Yeah, so it's uh, hang on, lemme see what happened. Oh, okay. So this is a little bit different to what we were talking about, but I got a good dig here. I like, I just wanted to watch myself get dig basically. That's cool. We can show off the fans . And um, and so, um, what I just wanted to show here, um, when I'm hitting again some of the principles we were talking about, so this is really important for me as a smaller player when I'm attacking from off the net, um, or attacking in general. And this is something we worked on with Hayden a lot as well for years and years is my eyes. So, so when things are outta position, there's no point looking at the defense cuz they've probably peeled and it's like, I wanna come up with the best swing I can at the time.
(01:06:03):
And so we're a little bit outta position. The set's a little bit off the net, I've had to step sideways and as I'm attacking, oh yeah, there's the last frame, my eyes are completely up at the ball and I'm throwing my hand upwards at the ball knock forwards. So when I'm a little bit off the net, as a smaller player, you wanna be throwing your hands all your momentum up at the ball to give you as much speed and heat you can get off the hit, um, and get as much bang for your buck basically as a smaller player, um, when you are in a troubled situation. Um, and it looks like I've piped and I definitely have piped, but this is the other, this is the other big crucial point that I wanna make. Um, as a smaller player that I believe and that we've worked on, pi parking is okay as long as you do it after your hit.
(01:06:48):
So a lot of people, a lot of coaches will tell you early on in your early days, like you get all your power from hitching your head and all that sort of stuff. And so a lot of people get into this really, really bad sort of habit of they're starting their arm swing and then they pi early and their arm swing ha their elbow hasn't been able to come in front and so they pi early and then it becomes a, a bent arm drag okay. As opposed to a full throw arm extension and I'm still upright and then I park. And so even though it looked like I got a lot of my power from the pike there, I got a lot, I got, I I'm telling you, I got all my accuracy and speed from making sure I focused on throwing my hands upwards at the ball as upright as I could and then afterwards I collapsed. So the pike still, the pike is okay and it's, I don't think it's that important, but it's okay as long as you do it after you do a perfectly straight hit.
Brandon Joyner (01:07:45):
So Damien, with the, with throwing your hand up to the ball, are you focusing on anything on the finish to bring that ball back down or is that just happen? Is the ball bringing, getting brought back down automatically?
Damien Schumann (01:07:59):
Um, so if you throw your hand upwards towards the ball and it's not quite directly up, it's still a little bit obviously in front of you. Um, if you throw your arm up at the ball and your arm com and your arm, sorry, and your arm completely unravels, your natural hinge of your wrist will bring the ball down. And that's different to trying to force it down with like a bent arm and muzzling it down. So that's where people get it, like a lot of injured shoulders is when they muscle it with a bent arm. And that's why people say off the right side, like you have to face the line man, otherwise you're gonna injure your shoulder. And you're like, yeah, that's correct. If you've got bad technique, um, I can face angle and with a fully outstretched arm I can, I can hit away from my body.
(01:08:39):
And I mean look, there's, you know, some people yeah you, I'm making a generalization there. You might need a shoulder Rico for many different reasons, but I mean look at Ta Taylor Crabb who I probably don't need to introduce to anyone watching as well and we played him at this world champs as well. Um, and he's, you know, he's going great guns, he's a really small player off the left side. Um, and he faces the line off the left side and rips across all day and his shoulders looking fine to me. And um, and again that's because of his arm, his arm swing mechanics and you know, and his small players should have a look at his arm swing mechanics as well because he's getting enough heat and his accessing enough angles, um, with facing different directions as well. Um, and yeah, basically so, so so that unraveling, as long as you unravel and you throw in your arm sort of towards the ball, it will naturally come down with top spin.
Mark Burik (01:09:28):
That's, it's so cool cuz we keep the, the past few people that, that we've talked to, um, about arm swinging and I've been teaching this for the last few years has been like everything that I want, I want everybody to go up and hit as tall as they can. We had a a, me and Brandon had a coach in college who made us, like he said, go and and try to like physically bite the ball as you're hitting. Yeah. Even though it's above you. Like, do that so that you're not doing this so that your spine is straight and you're strong. Like a curled spine is a, is a weak one. Like when it's upright and strong, that's when your cores are strongest. That's why we practice planks And uh, we talked about with Stafford Slick, we talked about it a little bit with flow, but all of this like hiking that we're learning at this like early stage. So many so far, the, the world's like top players that I've spoken with are all like, try to get rid of your bike like , stay as tall as you can when you hit, um, because the strength comes from a rigid core, not from like how much power do you think you can honestly generate by doing this in the air . And,
Damien Schumann (01:10:43):
And even if you do generate power from that, you're lowering your swing, so who cares?
Mark Burik (01:10:48):
Um, cool. So demo, um, we, we do have kind of time limits on these. I I would love to have you on again cause I I I feel like we didn't even scratch the surface but I I would like to get into some of the Q and a's cuz we got 10 of them and we've still got a full audience so people are loving you just uh, to, to brush your ego there.
Damien Schumann (01:11:03):
Hey, we'll keep going until they get bored.
Mark Burik (01:11:05):
Yeah. , just, just a quick bit guys. Um, if you are here and you're still here and, and somehow we do bore you or we, we do lose you. Uh, we have, we have two things that we're, that we're offering uh, this webinar and one of them is our Rising Star membership. Okay? So the Rising Star membership has within it, it's an online course and it takes you similarly to what we're going through here. It takes you through exercises, things that you can do for your own game. Uh, there is a hitting course, there's a setting course, there's a serving course and there's a passing course. And included in that membership is a 60 day strength and conditioning program specifically for beach volleyball. So it's, it's legit, it's awesome. I just want you to trust me and you don't even have to trust me cuz there's a 30 day money back guarantee.
(01:11:57):
And so we have the membership which includes all of our online courses and we have just the solo solo strength and conditioning course. And so I get these emails timed and so the first 15 people, if you're in the US or Canada here, if you the first 15 people who sign up get a better at beach t-shirt, I will mail you a t-shirt tomorrow and you get a free private video lesson from me. Uh, that's the first 15 people that sign up for either the Better at Beach Rising Star membership, which I posted or today the 60 day strength and conditioning plan if you are in Australia. So if you want to demos guys, then we will give you two private lessons. How about that? We give you an hour worth of video private lessons. So I'm including those in the links right here. Just click 'em, get your browser open, then, then come back.
(01:12:50):
But the first 15 people purchase them starting now, which means as we're going into this q and a feed everybody else to it. And then you're gonna get a free video lesson and a t-shirt, um, and don't have the t-shirt right next to me, but it's a dope shirt, it's got this ball on it and it says Better at Beach First 15 who get it. That's who's going to get the extra t-shirt reward and and free private video lesson, which is like what we're going through here, a video analysis where you get to answer only your questions so that we can teach you. That's just an intro to that. And I do want to get right back to dam's q and a cuz you got 13 questions here buddy. I hope you can handle, let's we'll try to keep each un answer to under 45 seconds. Damian Schumann, what made you switch from indoor to beach volleyball
Damien Schumann (01:13:40):
As a smaller player being six foot, I knew that I had a chance to go further at an elite level, um, in beach volleyball, unless you are a, unless you're a liberal and indoor, um, six foot's not very tall. So, and I also love the tough physicality aspect of just grinding it out when it's sort of 42 degrees in Australia and just, you know, seven games in a day in your local tour. I, I love that aspect of it. And what position were you, oh, I was so like all set I wanted to hit then I heard about this game where you can do everything and I was
Brandon Joyner (01:14:11):
Like, what exactly . So you're, you're, you're really, really smart too. , I hear that about indoor
Mark Burik (01:14:18):
Sutters. Okay, so, uh, Sammy from Long Island, New York wants to know how do you begin to design an offense that is unique to your own game? What information do you need to gather about your own offense? I think that's a good way to frame it. What information do you need to gather?
Damien Schumann (01:14:39):
Uh, well, well you gotta, you gotta get out there and try a lot of things. You gotta try hitting line, you gotta try hitting cross. You gotta see if you are really good at making cut shots off which side and then basically figure out, you know, you figure out maybe your two or three best weapons. And so when you are starting out, um, if you can hit cross and high line from one particular side, that's not a bad place to start. And then of course you need to do a lot more things. But if you are like, gee, I'm really small and I can't really hit hard and I'm struggling but I like this shooting game, then you need to go off, run through the middle and make sure you can shoot every spot on the court from every spot on the court. So it's about figuring out what your strengths are and then going to town on making your strengths the best you possibly can. You still wanna work on your weaknesses, but a lot of people waste too much time trying to fix things that they're never gonna be able to fix. And if you've got a weapon, make sure nobody can beat your weapon basically. And so you gotta switch your mind a little bit. Um, and so figure out what your strengths are and then get insanely good at them and make sure you can just patch up some holes along the way with some other weaknesses
Mark Burik (01:15:47):
From a, uh, from a study standpoint guys, I would say, you know, go out three days in a row, uh, hit 20 hard crosses, hit 20 high lines, hit 20 cut shots from both sides, um, and see which ones you were able to aim the best. You know, set up some cones and figure out if you were able to hit like a two meter by two meter target, a six foot by six foot target with your hard swings, cross your hard swings line, your cuff shots and your high lines. And that might tell you right there like what you're already good at. Um, if you just did that three days in a row and you just wrote down like, ah, okay, I was seven for 20 on hard crosses but on hard lines I was like 15 for 20. Um, so that might be an easy measuring tool that you guys can use. Cool. Good question. Thanks Sammy. Anonymous, attendee anonymous. Next time introduce yourself. Um, anonymous is an indoor player but always found it harder transitioning into beach as I'm used to the faster pace sets in an indoor environment while having more control in the court. What advice do you give to someone who wants to get into beach,
Damien Schumann (01:16:56):
Uh, that's transitioning from indoor? Um, first of all don't be, don't be too like you can, again, there's nothing stopping you from running shoots. There's nothing stopping you from running a lot of your indoor offensive options. Um, the only difference when you are running, if you do wanna run indoor sets and you like running meter balls and stuff like that, is you've just gotta give everything a little bit more height because you are moving in the sand and you can't get to those positions quite as fast as you can on indoor.
Mark Burik (01:17:27):
So you mean on the server c pass a little bit higher so that you have time to set up with yourself then?
Damien Schumann (01:17:32):
Yeah. Yeah. And if you wanna run a shoot to the stick, just make sure the shoot's a little bit higher so you have the high line option on. So a lot of the time in indoor, the offensive players are so fast that you're chopping the ball off down to the court, um, because obviously shooting an indoor is stupid, you just don't do it. And so, but on beach, even if you're not a good shooter, if you can make that set just a little bit higher, you'll be able to access more angles on your hip and even come up with a knuckle player or a couple of shots if you need to get outta jail. But just so you can run an indoor offense, you've just gotta make sure the ball's hovering and sitting. Um, and apart from that, you probably just want to really work on making sure when you spike coming from indoor to beach that you're crossing the ball as high above the net as you possibly can.
(01:18:18):
So a lot of people who come out from indoor that just try and jam it like they normally do, but taking a little bit of pace off the ball and trying to get the ball to cross as high above the net as you can, you'll find you'll get defense in a weird position, you'll get a few more block tools. So indoor players often want to come out and just hit the ball this high above the net on beach and that's when beach blockers and you know, you can take away a lot of angles. So that'd be my advice.
Mark Burik (01:18:43):
I love it. I love it. Um, my advice, uh, if you're comfortable or or you're not comfortable on the beach yet, is to just play as much as you possibly can.
Damien Schumann (01:18:55):
Yeah. Do that
Mark Burik (01:18:57):
. Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (01:18:58):
And, uh, uncomfortable. And also accept the challenge that you're learning a new sport. You know, it's, it's okay for you to bring in your past experiences of playing indoor, but you also have to realize that you're playing some a different sport. So the challenges that you went to went through to become the best indoor player that you currently are, you're going to have that same trajectory of learning on beach. It's just, you kind of have all the knowledge that you need to possess already. You just gotta figure out how to use it in a different environment.
Damien Schumann (01:19:29):
There are aspects, uh, that obviously there's transfers that come over, but they are two completely different sports. And I know politically I'm not supposed to say that in Australia cuz we, you know, 2, 2, 1 sport, two disciplines, but they're two sports and that's okay. And not one sport is better than the other. Personally, you're gonna have your own opinions about that. But both sports have such amazing aspects to them and they're both incredible, you know, for different reasons. But the, the, the setting you need to do the passing, you need to do the serving, you need to do the hitting, you need to do the offensive stuff you need to do is different from indoor, which is great.
Mark Burik (01:20:06):
And uh, and one other thing, just touch on that big long question, is the, the things that you do in indoor to be efficient, you need to do them the same way but better because you are the only hitter. So like all of the ways that like you have to work and shuffle to get outside when you have your coach in high school screaming, get outside, get outside, get outside. Like now you have no choice but to do that. So you have to do that twice as good because you're the only option that there is. So people kind of thought that like beach was a little bit lazier, you moved less and that's completely incorrect. Like you move a lot more. Um, although I'm sure somebody could argue me with, uh, like movement statistics and trackers and stuff. , um, at least for defenders anyway. Okay. Um, Lucy, Damien, as the usual shorter player in your pairing, do you find that you get served more often and if so, how do you mentally deal with it and what is your usual game plan?
Damien Schumann (01:21:15):
Um, yeah, I, uh, I I do often find I get served a little bit more sometimes. And again, this is probably interesting and it's a bit of more of a world tour thing. Sometimes people like to go after the blockers on the world tour. Um, and so again, it's a numbers game. So smaller players, while they might not look, they might not look like, uh, they're crushing the balls and knocking, you know, six packing defenders in the head and you know, bouncing balls over stadiums. Um, if you, if sometimes if you, it's just a numbers game, like they might just be chipping around and might get a couple of weak little tools and just might hit away, oh, that was a lucky shot, but they've side out seven times in a row if the taller guy on the court just comes up and crushes, you know, just bounces two meter line angles and just oblating balls, but he's, and so out of seven side outs, but he hit one out, then none the numbers would say maybe that taller guy is the better guy to go after.
(01:22:09):
Having said that, I, as a small player, I, people often serve me because they feel more comfortable perhaps trying to dig my shots and hits than my taller partner. But, um, yeah, on the world tour it's, it's quite interesting sometimes who teams serve. Um, and so mentally to get ready for that, i, i I just get ready and just go, okay, everything's come and every beach volleyball should do this anyway. You're like, all right, everything's coming to me, I'm gonna just do the best job I possibly can give this everything I've got. And then, you know, what happens happens, that's all you can do. So you've gotta psych yourself up to know that the onslaught is coming and just steal yourself and be ready, know that it's coming and then if it doesn't come, then you've got of other jobs you need to do anyway.
Mark Burik (01:22:53):
I like that. I like the statement that you said about the guy who bangs on three meters, you know, once or twice and then nobody serves him again and then just like slowly bleeding from this little guy who's hitting cut shots and high lines on you. Um, just cuz one shot was more intimidating, but like he hit, you know, two into the net, one into the net out of seven where the shorter guy didn't make a single error. Um, good thing to pay attention to. I think for a lot of players.
Damien Schumann (01:23:21):
And of course there's tall people who don't make errors, the blockers, a lot of blockers don't make any errors either, so it's so it's tough, but you gotta figure it out.
Mark Burik (01:23:29):
And then you have Phil and Andrews mole and what do you do ? Um, okay, so Mark, can you give a little more insight into RA's stretch your peripheral vision that he's teaching his team now? So I heard him on the, um, coach Your Brains Out podcast, uh, which if you guys are beach volleyball junkies and you have not listened to Billy Allen's, uh, coach Your Brains Out podcast, uh, Billy Allen, Niels Nielsen, Andrew Fuller, and John Mayer. Great, great great podcast. Um, but Todd talks about instead of a full head tilt like this when you're working on vision, just looking like, so now I'm looking up, now I'm looking down, now I'm looking up, now I'm looking down. He says that your eyes can move faster than your head could and then you'll never like need this massive, like the brim of my hat won't hide the ball from me if I'm just using my eyes.
(01:24:21):
Just try to roll your eyes down and, and keep them, keep your mental attentions on the other side of the court even as you are approaching to the ball. That's how I've been going recently without like a hardcore staring look. I'm trying to like see you out of the corner of my eye instead of like looking straight at you because, uh, like you were saying Damon, Damon, I feel like it slows me down sometimes when I give that hard book. Uh, Mateo says I'm a sponge. Good stuff. Great question. Mateo Ryan Coleman, uh, sorry I shouldn't say last names, but Ryan, during your approach after reading the set, how many shots do you have in mind? At what moment in the approach do you commit to that shot? I like that question. Yeah,
Damien Schumann (01:25:04):
That's really interesting. It was, it was funny if we, I was gonna give the exam. So the game we were watching before against Nick and Phil, that it got much better in the second set. So we won the second set, 2119 and then we lost in the third set, 16, 14 just for all those playing at home. And I'm glad we didn't watch it cuz it's a horrific memory losing 1614, but world champs. But anyway, um, what happened was, uh, and what I was gonna say was like I had a preconceived idea in my mind when we were matchpoint down. So Nick and Phil had started blocking me cross and cuz my cross hit was working and I was beating Phil on it and I I got a line tool as well. So I was, I was feeling pretty good, but I knew that I knew that they were going to block me cross. Um, at this stage of the game, we, they were 16, 15 up in the 13.
Mark Burik (01:25:51):
How did you know that?
Damien Schumann (01:25:52):
Uh, I, sorry, I didn't know that. I had a feeling based on the last, uh, five or 10 minutes that they knew that my cross court hit was my best hit at the moment and that they were, were going to, I just, I just had a feeling that they'd been running cross plays on me and I had a feeling they were gonna do it. And so ok,
Mark Burik (01:26:08):
So just to, just to slow that down. So you'd been really successful Yeah. At one swing and then you said at some point here they're gonna change it to stop that bleeding. So you, you were like presently thinking what you were doing and then what they might
Damien Schumann (01:26:22):
Be thinking. Yeah, and so sorry before that as well, I can't remember whether it was 13 all or something like that on the third set, Phil got me on a cross block doing that swing that had been working almost the whole match for me. So I was doing a fast angle swing and it pretty much worked for me, the whole match, all the second set and worked for me in the third set a little bit as well, getting tools and getting the ball down. We saw one of those I think earlier. Um, and then Bill got me I think at 13 all or whenever it might have been, I think it was 13 all and he got me and so I knew he, I just knew that they were gonna do that same play again or I had a feeling. Um, and so I had a preconceived idea in my mind that I was gonna play a cut shot to.
(01:27:00):
So Nick was running down the line and I was gonna play a cut shot and as I was going I heard Nick yell out switch. So he, I think he, I think he figured out that I was gonna play the cut shot and he yelled switch, which meant Phil jumped back to the line and I cut it and Nick dug me. Um, and then we had a big rally or whatever to finish it off. But um, and so what I'm saying is, is I shouldn't have had a preconceived idea in my head. I should have come up with perfect timing and as I'm playing as sort of I decide what I'm gonna play almost as I'm taking off because my arm swing prepares probably a little bit differently for a shot and a hit only milliseconds, but there is a little bit of time where I have to prepare and so as I'm taking off I'm like alright, that's the shot I'm gonna play. And so then I play it to the best of my ability, um, come what may basically unless something drastic happens and at the last second I see something. But usually it's as I'm taking off from the ground, I'm pretty committed to what I'm gonna do. Woo. So yeah, uh, 13 all here. Oh hey. Yep. Hang on.
Mark Burik (01:28:02):
You just beast it Phil do Haer.
Damien Schumann (01:28:06):
.
Mark Burik (01:28:07):
Good night
Damien Schumann (01:28:10):
Phil. Challenge that as well. So we got to see it on Slowmo replay, which was awesome.
Mark Burik (01:28:14):
Damien Schumann (01:28:17):
What?
Mark Burik (01:28:17):
No, I dunno. Yeah, here we go. That's a good play. Nice we to beast him.
Damien Schumann (01:28:26):
Yeah,
Mark Burik (01:28:27):
So, okay, so you know, part of what I've been trying to simplify with my players has been don't go up with a blank mind of like being in a moment like you're saying like for me I want everybody right now, like some of like the a AA players have three shots in mic, have your favorite shot if that's closed, know what you're going to do for your second shot and then if you're in trouble have like your C shot. Because I think that a lot of people know all of the swings in beach volleyball that are available. They have like just a weight cut cross court, cutie high, jumbo high line hard cross hard line, you know, poke back and when you try to go through nine different decisions in the moment from the ground to you contact the ball, like I feel like a lot of people freeze and then that that hurts your accuracy. So yes, I've been training my players like have your a then your FA is closed and then your C
Damien Schumann (01:29:24):
Swing. So, so I couldn't agree more like sometimes that initial, so, so a lot of players, um, again this, a lot of players will go say from the left side they're going, they come in and I'm like, I'm gonna hit cross court as hard as I can. That's why, that's what I'm setting up for. If I do that and get in a good spot to hit cross as hard as I can at the last minute, I'll be able to turn it line, I'll be able to push a cut shot and I'll be able to play a high line. Maybe I won't be able to play a rainbow from that setup, but that's okay. That's maybe in the back pocket and so I, yeah, I definitely agree if you come, some people of the right side are like, okay, if I come in and I can hit line, that means I can also push line and do a cut shot and that might be the setup I wanna run run based on the wind or based on a certain person the way they block. Or I'm gonna come into hit cross as hard as I can and then if I see something at the last minute, I'll be able to push line and that's it. I, you know, everybody's different. Um, I don't, I, what do I do? I'd probably do that. I'll probably come in with probably three or four shots in my mind and cancel three
Mark Burik (01:30:27):
Or four. Ok,
Damien Schumann (01:30:28):
Yeah.
Mark Burik (01:30:30):
Yeah. It's something that I'm trying to change in my game. I know because I don't want to go through that cycle of like how many different things are open right now. But uh, I've also been working a lot on patience and everything, so yeah.
Damien Schumann (01:30:40):
Yeah.
Mark Burik (01:30:41):
Cool. Good answer. Eric says, mark, this is the first time I feel like I'm getting permission to not look to maintain the integrity of my best possible swing,
Damien Schumann (01:30:50):
Um, commission grant.
Mark Burik (01:30:52):
Especially if uh, I sense that there's no open nut any comments. So he's telling me because like the guy I've been working with for a year, we've been now like now we're up to him working at his vision that I'm saying no matter what, look at the court. So you're saying that open up your peripherals to feel that and I think Eric, that there's like a happy balance and that Damo is not saying that he's not seeing the court cuz if you did notice he did have his peripherals while he was in the air, right? He is looking at the ball but his making sure that his vision can still see the air. Tell me if I'm wrong there, DEMA.
Damien Schumann (01:31:26):
Yeah, a hundred percent. And again, it comes down to you as an individual but also who you are playing. So if you are playing a team that makes late defensive moves, what's the point of looking? Cuz you're never gonna be able to see what they're doing. So you are, so if you are like, man, I'm looking but I can't get any read on where the defender is, I can't, I dunno where he is going and I dunno where the blocker is. It's like, well you know what, I'm gonna play the best it, it's probably gonna be a higher percentage option for you to just play the best hits and shots you can with perfect technique to get points. But if you are playing a team that's just like you are doing your best things but they're standing there and digging them easily, then you know what I probably need to take in a little bit more information.
(01:32:09):
However you do that through your peripheral or through actually having a look or doing little Todd Rogers thing that we've learned about today as well. So again, it's horses for courses, but you need to rep your technique that your technique is flawless. Technique is number one, I believe. I believe technique is number one. And if looking takes away from your technique, then I'd probably maybe not look as much. So I'd always have good technique. I mean if you look and your technique's crap that makes your technique crap, then yeah, I mean most teams, whether you know where they are or not, if you had play a shot with bad technique, that means it's slow, it's on the way down. It's not quite in that last meter box of the court. A lot of people are gonna be able to dig you on that. So if you can look, if there's no wind, I think wind's another thing. If there's no wind then it's easy to look because you know where the set's gonna be. If it's blowing a gal like it often is down at Hermosa in the afternoons, then I'd keep my eyes on the ball and just try and do the best swing I can every, again, everyone's different. So yeah, it's not, um, it's not hard and fast. So yeah, keep working on looking for sure and it can help you win. Definitely.
Mark Burik (01:33:10):
Adrian asks, what advice do you have on hitting really high balls or sets that come from the back of the court out of system versus versus ideal? I mean, I think we just kind of touched on that, where a ball's moving hardcore, you know, it, it's windy or it's a bad set that's coming from behind you, like ditch, ditch the look in that moment, somebody who I think is actually amazing to watch is Kelly Clays because somehow she still always gets a look like even when the ball's coming from the back line, she'll look then she'll take three steps, which is kind of rare that she looks before like the rest of her approach. But my swing selection becomes pretty generic. Once I have a set from the back line, it's mainly, I'm not gonna give it away, but I, I have two swings and there's, there's an A and a b and it's situational, but I'm not going for like a bunch of different ideas. I know that when the set's coming from the back line, this is what I'm going for. It's either this or if I see or hear this, it's this. Uh, do you, what do you do if, uh, if you have a crap set that goes off the court,
Damien Schumann (01:34:10):
If the set's coming from the baseline or something like that and um, it's coming really high or whatever it might be. I, my everything goes out of my head and then I just do the best hit I possibly can off that set. And that probably is only one option. Um, and or it might be, you know, two options because the, and look, the set might go on top of the net and then I'll just go and hit it as hard as I can. But because the ball's coming from over your shoulder, often in that situation you not gonna have any vision. So then you just do the best hit you can. And if the other team's guessed it, they've guessed it. And often that that often when you, if your partner's yelling something out, that's when you listen
Brandon Joyner (01:34:46):
. I think it's also important to make sure that you're, especially with a ball coming from the back line, you're really trying to contact that ball as high as you possibly can. Still, I think a big error that we see a lot when that happens, if you hit it into the net, it's probably because you tried to wait a little too long and you didn't focus on getting that ball high.
Damien Schumann (01:35:08):
Yeah, absolutely. And I think as well, it's, um, and, and it's hard because your ego doesn't wanna do it, but you're probably gonna get dug if the set's gonna be that bad. And so if you're gonna get Doug make sure they are diving for the dig or they've had to cop really hard, you know, they've had to cop it really hard. Like it's sometimes like just admit that you might not be able to get this ball down if you're three meters off the net, still try hit it as accurately and as hard as you can, but if you're gonna get Doug, make sure it's, you know, a hard dig that's way better than just hitting it into the net or hitting it out the back going for some ridiculous hit.
Mark Burik (01:35:42):
I'm just, I'm just looking at this play over and over cuz um, I'm seeing that like Nick is doing what you were doing earlier where he said hit on your way up and just chop it quick. Yes.
Damien Schumann (01:35:52):
And I, I have noted that down that we should also look at this swing. Well done Mark
Mark Burik (01:35:57):
. That's funny. Um, yeah cuz he goes up quick, there's no load and this is not the top of Nick's jump, but he beats it fast and low instead of like loading. So this looks, if you watch this in regular speed, it would look like he loaded for a power cross. But this is a quick chop under the block and I think it's just a good look at what, what you were talking about with changing timing. So I'll show it in regular while they're showing it slow motion
Damien Schumann (01:36:26):
And he pipes to get the power, not to get the power, but as on, on the point of impact, his body is upright and then afterwards yeah, he crunches but don't crunch beforehand and that's what gives him that speed. That gives you speed.
Mark Burik (01:36:38):
And that's like, that's barely a crunch, right? Like I, to me, this, this isn't like the same thing that we call pi that people do because he's, I mean he's still pretty upright here. Absolutely, yeah. His head comes down, but that's not like that v-shape that I see sometimes promoted.
Damien Schumann (01:36:58):
But he's, he head also comes down after the ball's like a millisecond after the ball's left. His hands, if you look, his eyes are looking right up the ball and his arm's completely straight on impact.
Mark Burik (01:37:09):
Mm.
Damien Schumann (01:37:10):
Oof. And the last thing, sorry, I'll say about parking is a lot of bad hat. Not, not a lot of bad habits. Everything's about problem solving. So in indoor, if you have a triple block block in front of you, there's not a cut shot, you know, maybe you could tip or whatever, but it's like, yeah, you are gonna recruit everything in your being to hit it as hard as you possibly can and you don't care what height above the net or whatever, you're just gonna hit it as hard as you can. And so that's great because there's a triple block in front of you and you're on hardwood se hardwood surface, so you're jumping higher. So maybe parking and indoors completely acceptable because you are the ti there's, there's other hitters you probably haven't had to pass and run around in sand to get in the right spot. So you've got pretty much perfect timing and there's, there's a huge wall in front of you. So yeah, probably burying a pi and maybe, you know, trying to scut it through the hands or getting more power from a pike and indoor is perfectly acceptable. But that
Mark Burik (01:38:04):
Might not, I would still disagree with you there. Cause the more I would, the more that I see like the giant world tour players, there are instances of people who are like bending over and it's usually the right sides who have an inside set. You know, those are the ones that like finish in that vent position. But if you see some of these detonations by middles and outside hitters who are just going like up cross body and just, and like this just stays. I don't, there's still some people that pi, like I said, and if it works for your body, it works. But if, if it's causing you, like you said, to go down and tape and get locked. Yeah, get rid of it and, and be your tallest self when you're hitting since Damian running off different offensive schemes. So Lucas says Lucas from Utah says Damian was talking about running different offensive schemes. How do you verbalize or signal to your partner during a play to run tempo sets as a way to move the defense? So do you guys have like a preset before you receive a serve?
Damien Schumann (01:39:02):
We've experimented, me and Cole experimented and I with an older partner sort of eight years ago, we experimented a little bit with making calls before, um, the serve, but I found that that didn't really work because what happens when you pass it bad, you're like, Ooh, should I stick to the play or should I change the play? And so the way we do it now is we call off the pass. So as soon as we pass, we know where we wanna pa we pass it and then just like everybody else, we call middle or outside or shoot or tempo or behind or whatever it might be just like the rest of the world, we just, you know, that's just how we do it sort of thing. So I, we've, we've mucked around with preset plays, sort of like an indoor system and found that, um, they just about never work.
(01:39:42):
And then it's almost, and almost subconsciously we, we call something and then if we have to call something else, we're like, it's like a failure almost. Like you're having, you're like, your ego doesn't want to go away from that play that you called at the start, which is maybe just a personal thing of mine, but we just found that there's too much, it takes too much time to go, oh, should we keep the play we called before or should we change it? So it was much, it was more natural for us to just, um, off the pass, make the call.
Mark Burik (01:40:10):
I think Brandon, me and Brandon have been saying like, don't get stuck in your idea. Like stay in that moment, especially we've been talking about it in our defensive course, we talk about it a lot, our blocking course. We've talked about it a lot. It's just because you said that you were blocking line, if you see what that person is doing, go get the ball and finish the play. Like, um, if you said that you were supposed to defend in the diagonal and, but you see that there's no way that this dude can hit diagonal because of his body shape or whatever, get out of there and get out of your call. You know, it's, I think people get so locked into their defensive call.
Damien Schumann (01:40:46):
Yep. And that's where that, and that's the artistic side of beach volleyball and that's the creative side of beach volleyball because sometimes as a blocker you'll be doing that and then they just keep beating you where you were supposed to be taken and you go to your partner, you're like, yeah, but I thought they were gonna hit there. And so it's a conversation you have to have with your partner and go, yeah, look, I think I can read this guy, gimme your license for a few points just to bail and do whatever I want. And then I like that
Mark Burik (01:41:08):
Idea. You
Damien Schumann (01:41:09):
Defend, you defenders like, mate, you've got no idea. Just bloody stick to what you're pulling and you know, steady. So, uh, yeah, you just gotta talk about it.
Mark Burik (01:41:17):
Yeah, me and Brandon have been there before where we've like had play calls and Brandon's got a really good ability to read and see what people are doing and he's got active hands in the air, so he is just like, let me ball up and let me read you do what you wanna do behind there. So now like we're both reading and if we both read and do our job, then we're both going to be where that person hits instead of having one person where they're gonna hit because we ran that zone play. But you're right, the problem is if somebody's a crappy reader, or they go for stuff and they don't have the ability to block it or dig it. Okay, cool. Like that uh, best passing platform you are currently using to pass more sufficient. So how do you hold your hands? I guess we wanna
Damien Schumann (01:41:58):
Say Andrew shot, the, my Adelaide coach was the one who really, you know, really helped my passing. So Hayden was brilliant with my offense and he is brilliant with everything and shoddy knows what he's doing as well. But we did a lot of work with Shoddy and Adelaide and again, this is, this is horses for courses I'm gonna keep using this saying now. So everybody's a little bit different.
Mark Burik (01:42:15):
I still don't, I'm just use it 20 times tonight and I'm still getting
Damien Schumann (01:42:19):
again. So like for some people, what will work for some people will not work for other people. And so passing's a fascinating, uh, thing to talk about as well, because every beginner level coach or you know, everybody, everybody can coach passing because the skill is, well, they think they can coach passing because it's a slow skill. It's very easy for everybody with their eyesight to see what happened before the pass. Where did the ball go and what are you doing after the pass? I think it's a much harder skill to teach. Spiking is a much harder skill to teach because 30 things happened within the space of a millisecond. And if you don't have the ability as a coach or a player to see the nuances of what your left arm's doing, where your right arm is, what your wrist is doing, what your fingers are doing, what your thumb's doing, what your head's doing.
(01:43:04):
If you don't have the ability, maybe you need to some video and you can slow it down. Um, if you don't have the ability to see those things, it's hard to coach. Whereas passing is, um, everybody can sort of, everybody knows to have straight arms. Everybody knows to sort of, to hold your hands like that or, you know, something like that. Um, and you know, everybody knows the general shape and to stay low, but the trigger I think personally with passing is to do a lot of repetitions of it and figure out which trigger works for you to get the ball where you want to go. So for me, what we worked out with Andrew Shot was joining my platform late, so at the last minute, which is counterintuitive to how I coach and is counterintuitive to a lot of people. But what that did for me joining my platform, platform at the last second was it allowed my arms to be loose and then I could follow through to where I wanna pass it up for my partner to hit on too.
(01:43:59):
Mm-hmm. Um, and so that is very, it was very different. I hadn't ever tried it because, you know, I coach and everybody says, join your up platform early, elbow straight, hold it, hold it, hold it, fire through to your target, hold it, which is great. That's, you know, a great way to pass, don't get me wrong. And most people in the world do it. Um, but for me, that actually allowed my body to move in the right way to get my body relaxed in the position where the ball softly comes off my arms. So for other, so again, maybe it's got to do with my flexibility, for example. So for me it's quite hard to bend my knees and squat down in a low position. I'm quite immobile in that position. And so I've done that, but then I can't make any adjustments and I pass all over the shop.
(01:44:39):
So for other people, getting low is great because that means the ball will go up off their arms as opposed to if they're standing up for all the ball go down. So, I'm sorry, that's not a very helpful answer, but all my, my suggestion would be to experiment with a variety of things and then find out a couple of principles that work for you. And, and I say principles because a lot of people get really, like, your left foot has to point this way, your elbows have to be at this angle, your hips have to be at this angle. And it's like, yeah, that's all great, but if the serve goes somewhere different, I have to stand up and twist and go and get it. Like you are dictated, your passing is dictated by what the server does. That's as simple as that. And so that's why I think passing should be taught in principles. And so the principle of staying low, have the principle of staying low. Don't worry about how you stay low because the ball might go short, it might go deep, but stay low the whole time. And so for me, the principle of joining my arms late wherever I might be on the court to do that has worked for me and serve, receive.
Mark Burik (01:45:38):
That's awesome. It's, um, it's another example of, yeah, like me and Brendan definitely, definitely don't, don't teach that. Um, we find that for most players it works, but at the same time, we've both been on the same court and we have said completely opposite things to two different players. Yep. Where like we're telling somebody like, you gotta speed up your approach and then the person right behind them in line we're saying, slow down your approach. You know, because some, everybody has to find like their middle zone of what works best for them or like a mental or verbal trigger to, to deliver the most results. So I I do like that You said that, Brandon, what'd you think?
Brandon Joyner (01:46:20):
Um, yeah, I I, and going back to what you just said about, uh, kind of figuring out what fits your body. A lot of the times when I'm teaching passing, I like to focus on what you should look like at the end of that pass. You know, obviously we give keys to help them get into that position a little bit easier. But, um, for instance, like the, I think every I've, the way that I teach form a lot is by telling people to get into an athletic stance, put their hands on their knees, drop their hands from your knees, and that's kind of the body shape that you should have while you're passing. Um, and that's kind of the shape that you wanna start in. Um, but kind of, uh, a little similar. I, my hip mobility is terrible. Um, and one of my weaknesses when I was looking at my film from last year was that if anybody ever served me short, then I was coming in.
(01:47:20):
I was, I had a lot of problems. It was almost, it dropped me a level in skill probably. Um, and I realized that I wasn't able to move out of that really low position that I normally would teach. Um, but I had to listen to my body and I had to figure out, okay, before the serve happens, get up a little bit. Allow yourself to be in what your athletic stance is. And then once you're from there, you can move to make sure that you have your perfect platform set up, uh, whether it's early or late, depending on the kind of passer you are or what you're working on. But for me, that was a pretty big key and it kind of taught me something about coaching as well, is that, you know, these keys that we give a lot, they are, for the majority of volleyball players, especially for people who are beginning to learn, um, it's a really easy task for them to think about these three keys that we're giving them. Um, but as, as people become more experienced, they have to figure out how they can become the best passer. Hmm. You know? And um, so maybe if you start off it's 90% technical and 10% touch, and then as you become a better player, maybe that that technical number goes a little bit lower because you understand what your touch is. Um, so I think that's kind of,
Mark Burik (01:48:46):
I like thinking about that. Like that. Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (01:48:47):
Yeah, yeah.
Mark Burik (01:48:49):
So more technical in the beginning. Listen to your coaches until you get that base and then, and then go like, uh, on your little branch there. Yeah.
Damien Schumann (01:48:58):
Then once you stuff that up, go back to the basics.
Brandon Joyner (01:49:00):
. Yep, exactly. , always remember where you gotta start. .
Mark Burik (01:49:05):
Cool. Cool. Um, guys, we do have a, a couple more questions, but, um, you know, always leave them wanting more. This has been an awesome two hours. Wow. The longest two hours we have ever run dmo. And this is the most people we've ever had at the end of a, at the end of a lesson. So, um, thank you. Thank you guys so much. Guys in the chat please just like, thank dmo, make sure that you are following him. Uh, Damon could you, could you post your handle into that chat again? Yep. Um,
Damien Schumann (01:49:39):
It's my name, underscore Damon underscore Schumann. But yeah, if anyone has any more questions or anything like that, hit me up on Instagram or whatever. I, I love talking about volleyball, so it's, um, it's all good.
Mark Burik (01:49:50):
, that's awesome of you. Um, really, really, really appreciate you coming guys. Uh, like we said, our offer is still here, so, um, for the serving, passing setting, uh, serving, passing, setting and spiking course plus the 60 day strength and conditioning, that's only 35 bucks a month. Super easy, um, 30 day money back guarantee. And the first 15 people here that might've already passed since we got so many people. But the first 15 people who sign up tonight, you guys get a t-shirt from me in the mail and you also get a free private video lesson from me. And, uh, that also includes a 60 day strength and conditioning program. If you are not signed up with us, I'm better at beach. Please go ahead. If you are not following Brandon, me, Bali, cam Promosa or Damien on Instagram, go ahead and do it. As you can tell, Damos a great guy and he's funny as hell, even though we, we curved his humor around , we made you teach , um, demo, like what's next for you in the, in the next month or two months, or is it just as uncertain as everybody else?
Damien Schumann (01:50:59):
Yeah, well, yeah, it's, it's uh, like everybody else who knows mate. So, um, yeah, just trying to, uh, trying, I love peppering, so I'm, I'm all good so I can, I'll pepper today or something with, uh, my wife. And we've got Nicki LEDs and other beach volleyball. She's, uh, been our roommate at the moment as well. And, um, she's, uh, so yeah, we'll just pep pepper all day and just get out, do some body weight circuits and yeah, wish everyone the best and, uh, yeah, I mean, good luck with it. It's lots outta your control, but we'll be back playing beach volleyball again in no time. So hang in there
Mark Burik (01:51:29):
Everyone. Absolutely. And guys, like if you're ever shy about going to another city, another place, me and Damien met, became lifelong friends. I've had his back in a few situations and he's supported me in a few tough times. And it, it's just a matter of went out to a country, hit some people up on Facebook, showed up to the court every day, that was it. You know, we became lifelong friends and now we get to sit here and, and talk shop and, and support each other. So if you are ever going to Australia and you are going to Sydney, which is a great place, man Leach, which is awesome for volleyball, or you're going to Adelaide or Melbourne, like Damien has all of the contacts with all of the local players. So if you're here and you wanna like hit 'em up when you go to Australia and say, where can I get lessons? How do I get lessons and, and demo, I don't know if you're coaching anymore, but even if you are like, you guys can go to Australia, learn from him. And I spent six months of my life there and it was six of the best months of my life. Um, and a lot of that had to do with the people I met like Damien. So, um, go ahead and find him. Make sure you got him in touch and now you got your hook in Australia.
Damien Schumann (01:52:28):
That's so easy. Awesome. Thanks a Carlos. Thanks for having me. Pete job. Yeah, thanks so much
Mark Burik (01:52:33):
Man. Thanks, demo. Awesome. Brandon, what'd you think about that? That was,
Brandon Joyner (01:52:45):
That was pretty awesome. Um, I'm not sure if I'm being shared anymore. I haven't popped up
Mark Burik (01:52:51):
In a while. I can hear you. Everybody's, uh, basically listening
Brandon Joyner (01:52:55):
, but yeah, I, uh, I mean the knowledge and the way that he breaks the game down is, is special. You see that at the top level. It's, it's just amazing to hear somebody at that top level and, and how much you can break down something that seems so simple. Um, so it's, it's always amazing. I'd I'd love to have 'em on again. Just, uh, I mean, we just talked about a lot of attacking today, but we got into serving, we got into tactics, we got into everything. And uh, obviously his knowledge for the game is very high. It's no surprise that he is having the success that he does.
Mark Burik (01:53:35):
And it's, it's so cool that he comes from a really, really different school of thought. Like Australia has been known for a long time, um, to have people who were trying to change and revolutionize the game. And like, like you said, they were the first jump setters, the first like spread offense years ago, and then it only became popular like 16 years after they started doing it. Um, and now almost everybody's doing it and they're still trying new offenses. So it's fun when all of us together, like combining this knowledge and sharing it, we're definitely going to see more evolutions of the game. It's gonna be like when people stopped slapping the top of a basketball and they started doing this mm-hmm. , so then you can have more athletic moves when like the dunk went from illegal to , the only way to to, to put a
Brandon Joyner (01:54:23):
Layoffs celebrated
Mark Burik (01:54:24):
. Yeah. Um, so I'm, I'm excited and I, and I think that webinars like these and, and exchanging information and everybody learning the base that we're teaching them, I think it's going to create the next evolution of beach volleyball and I think we're all gonna be a part of it together, which yeah, to me is, is special and, and makes me look
Brandon Joyner (01:54:44):
Forward. Yeah. And, uh, something else, I mean, and this was right at the very beginning of the webinar, which I didn't realize that this much time had passed, but, um, he talked about goal setting, you know, and that's something that, especially recently trying to create goals for what is currently going on, that's something that I've been doing and kind of restructuring because you kind of have to, in this time and in actually in our, in the Rising Star membership, we're, we are gonna have that, uh, goal tracking sheet. And one of the things that I really like that he said was, um, making sure that your goals are attainable. You know, something that, like if you're, if your first goal that you create is I'm gonna, I'm gonna win a gold medal in the Olympics, then you go play your first world tour event and you don't, you don't qualify.
(01:55:39):
And a lot of people give up, you know, and I think that that's something, especially with his background of coming kind of almost seeming like an underdog story of being somebody that was told he was too small. And then being able to fight through that and then having the brains and the people behind him to kind of push him and help him realize that, you know, this goal that he had created in his mind wasn't as crazy as people had responded to it as, you know. And so I think that that's, that's something that to really take away as well, is that if you, if you want something, create a goal that you can chase that's realistic. Maybe it's crazy for other people, but it's something that you can look at yourself and be like, I can do this. So lofty but not too lofty. And,
Mark Burik (01:56:25):
And I think another example of somebody who didn't say, like, didn't have the ego set of, I'm gonna do it on my own, right? He mentioned so many coaches along the way and we know that there are so many players that even they, they might get to an open level and then never, you know, never break playoffs, never win an open tournament. And you ask them like, all right, well who's, who's driving the ship? Who's giving you new ideas? Who's, who's your third eye that mm-hmm you can bounce off of and think about one separate idea. And as, as a coaching company, like yeah, of of course we're promoting this, right? Because
(01:57:01):
You have to find somebody that's gonna look at something differently. And if this guy that the guy who's at the top of the Australian Federation and can win a Commonwealth Gold and if Nick and Phil on the other side all have full-time coaches and you know, you're trying to just get from, from b2c, but you're not willing to hire a coach or you're not willing to like come to the webinars guys, it's available. It's available. Yeah. And our site better at Beach, we are fighting hard to make it easier than it has ever been to have good quality information. And if you guys did like this head to [email protected], the courses that are legit, they've spent, we've spent a year and a half just on what we have built and the courses never stopped growing. So some people think about a course as this one package, but every course that we have gets added to every single week where we keep practicing, we keep learning and we keep having guests like this and we're gonna chop up everything that he said about offense.
(01:58:02):
And in a month, all of that's gonna be ready to get added to the attacking course. So the attacking course that you purchased today and get your free lesson with and your free t-shirt, that attacking course that you get today is going to be twice the size in three months with a lot more awesome information. Um, so if you guys, if you guys haven't invested in a coach or a third eye at any point in your life, please it is life changing. Go for it. It doesn't have to be us, but get a coach, just get somebody to feed you. You another
Brandon Joyner (01:58:33):
Idea. It's, it's what true commitment is, it's what everybody has. You know, you look at the top, top players in the n NBA even or nfl, not only do they have coaches, right, that are hall of fame bound Yeah. But they also have nutritionists, they also have strength trainers. They have, they have all these people. So if you're somebody that's trying to convince yourself that you're ready to take this leap and become a better player and something that you wanna strive for, the first question you have to ask yourself is, are you willing to bring some people with you on this journey? Because those people you bring with you, those are the people that are gonna help you get there faster.
Mark Burik (01:59:13):
Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (01:59:14):
Or if at all
Mark Burik (01:59:15):
can agree more. Um, and then, you know, if, if you wanna be a part of a team and with other people as well, uh, our winner circle and are dedicated to victory membership, that's when we have monthly meetings where we have literally meetings, goal setting sessions for everybody who's in that small group. And you get to meet with us once a month. So that membership is, is gonna be growing very shortly. But if you enjoyed like this webinar, um, imagine you all getting to talk with us instead of going through the chat situation. Um, pretty, I'm, I'm so excited for the opportunities that we're creating cuz I so desperately wanted them my entire career and like I still want them. Like I, and these are cheat sessions for me, right? Like Right. I'm listening to demo, like saying new ideas, new coaching ideas.
Brandon Joyner (02:00:05):
Exactly. Yeah, I'm right there with you.
Mark Burik (02:00:08):
So
Brandon Joyner (02:00:09):
I'm like, oh, you mean if I go up and hit the ball? Hi like, hey can you, can you repeat that real quick so I can write it down?
Mark Burik (02:00:19):
Cool. Um, guys, if you, if just in case for whatever reason you guys are not ready to take that step, um, you're not ready to see the next phase in your game and understand what our courses can do for you, I'm just going to write this in the chat. Uh, if you just feel like you want to support us, uh, subscribes go a long way, but we have also opened a Teespring account that shows some of our apparel. The apparel is gonna be growing there, but uh, through this purchase we, we also get a cut and it helps support us at a time when we have no other options and we are coaching for free right now. Um, so, uh, get the courses if you're dedicated and you wanna see a change in your game and you wanna improve and if you wanna just support us, um, when you go to our YouTube channel, click on any of those links.
(02:01:06):
When we advertise something on Amazon, the links below the description, that's when, um, we also get affiliate commission from those. It's tiny, it's like two to four to 6%, but every little bit helps and it keeps us able and willing to provide situations and opportunities like this. So guys, uh, thank you, thank you, thank you so much for coming. Appreciate you. If you want some free some swag, go to Teespring. If you want some swag and volleyball lessons, which is just a $10 difference, then sign up for our Rising Star membership. And if you are looking to stay fit during a time when you have no, nothing else to do but get strong and get in the weight room, go for the 60 day strength training course. And as always, please let us know what you want more of. If you want to hear from any specific guests, if you wanna hear from specific topics, if you need other learning tools, um, if you have any other questions, send them to us on Instagram. We might be a little bit slower on Instagram, but if you go through the volley chat forums, that will be honestly faster to get you a response. That's it. Brandon, you good?
Brandon Joyner (02:02:14):
Yeah, that was great Damien, thanks so much. Again, if you're still here, I think you just wrote your Instagram handle so you might be still peeking in, uh,
Mark Burik (02:02:23):
Working.
Brandon Joyner (02:02:23):
Absolutely loved having you on. It was amazing.
Mark Burik (02:02:26):
And guys, thank you for coming. Thanks for letting us be a part of your journey. Peace out.
