Mark Burik (00:01.326)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Better at Beach podcast. My name is Mark Burick and today we are talking everything arm swing mechanics and we're also going to go through a little bit of vertical jump training and technique. So this is another episode where I implore you if you are listening, if you're on a podcast and I know this is a podcast, but if you can follow along with the video.
on Spotify or on YouTube. If you don't have that opportunity right now, totally fine. I'm gonna explain everything so that you can understand it if you're just listening, but go back, watch the YouTube video, watch the Spotify video because we're going to screen share and I'm gonna show you some technical analysis and slow motion approaches. I'm gonna tell you this right now, at our camps, this is everybody's favorite session.
This is where we break our players approach sequences and arm sweep sequences down into slow motion videos. And then during one of our lunch breaks, we actually do little very quick analysis of them. So I'm going to show you my arm swing. What I modestly consider to be an elite arm swing built on years of throwing mechanics from baseball, from quarterback training in football and from extensive arm swing training through volleyball.
And we're gonna break through, break down every bit of mechanics that has been a mystery to you. So I hope you keep watching. It's going to be a screen share. We're gonna do video analysis and I'm going to talk through it all if you are listening on your podcast. So thank you guys very much for listening. We are gonna get into that. But before we do, I just wanna give a special thanks for some of the YouTube people who have given us supers.
and supported the channel. So Charlie Katrell 96, thank you for your donation and keeping us operating. Tulio Matty, I think you're from Barcelona buddy. So thank you so much for your donation. Daniel Nanik, John Castillo and Nick Parfait, really want to thank you guys for supporting our channel and giving us some supers and supporting us on YouTube. As far as camps go.
Mark Burik (02:23.372)
We've got our Punta Cana all-inclusive camp coming up November 29th. Seven days at an all-inclusive resort with all of the volleyball playing and coaching and training you can handle. It's an awesome trip. Can't wait to see you there. Our Virginia Beach camp went unbelievable. It was so awesome. Players had such a great time. In Santa Monica, we had a small, tight group, and that's where a lot of the videos are coming from. But we are going to Milwaukee June 27th.
Des Moines, Iowa, July 18th, Bend, Oregon, July 25th, Santa Rosa, California, August 1st, Chicago, August 22nd, Seattle, September 26th, and Youngsville, Louisiana, October 3rd with more dates to come. And if you are local to Hermosa or you're coming out, Brandon and I have just opened up our private training schedule so you can get us for a private lesson on the beach in Hermosa, Redondo, or Manhattan.
And that's it, I still have a few slots because last year's roster for our elite players, it's clearing up. So that means I've got a few spot to train you one on one. So if you wanna come to all of our camps and get an unlimited pass and then work with me for 12 individual sessions and have a year of access to all of our online programs and workout programs, it is available.
If you want to ask more questions about that, you can just DM me, Mark Burke on Instagram, or you can go to betteratbeach.com forward slash virtual training. And that's it. So let's get into arm swing mechanics, shall we? This is one of the things that, again, I told you at the beginning of the episode, I have a huge history. So there are some people and some coaches very specifically, and I want to talk to those coaches who,
Maybe you think that arm swing mechanics are natural. And I hear that a lot in coaching, you know, just kind of let it be natural skill acquisition is not. Natural. There is a way to allow your body to do what it's best designed to do, but I really hate to say that that's natural because everything we do has to be learned. You know, I've had the benefit of
Mark Burik (04:47.672)
tennis, is an overhead sport, learning how to serve in tennis overhand, baseball and pitcher training, quarterback training in high school, and then years of arm swing training in the NCAA and throughout my pro career. So this has been built over years and it's not an easy thing to do. But what I'm going to take you through right now is a screen share of
One of my arm swings and here's what we did at camp this week. Okay. this week we used a lot of tennis balls. Now for some of you, I don't want to call you coaches snooty, but if we're talking about, Game, game design and practice design. You want your games and your practices to be as game like as possible. So it's why in the past I've said like, Hey,
Pepper, sure, but move on from Pepper as quick as you can and see a ball flying over the net. Serve receive is a difficult skill to perfect and to learn. So the more you see a ball going over the net, the more, the faster you and your team are going to get better. Okay. There's also wall drills where you can spike a ball against wall repeatedly. Now that will help. will help you get touches. It will help you practice the positions.
Okay. But again, you're not always spiking a ball that's coming back to you from the front of your body. And if you're standing, a standing swing is very different than taking an approach, timing a ball up in the air and jumping and swinging. Short story from my history. I took, I had a U 15 boys team in Sweden.
We won the national championship that year. It was amazing, but I realized that I was hammering a lot of balls at these guys and for my own pro playing, I think I was gassing out my shoulder. So I started teaching myself how to swing lefty for the boys practices so that I could save some juice for my matches and my practices. And I got pretty good, pretty good standing and hitting top spin, crisp and accurate with my left hand. Guess what? Anytime.
Mark Burik (07:10.966)
I attempted to jump and swing lefty, it just totally fell apart. Okay, so that is a lesson for coaches in whole versus part training or why progressions are good for introducing something, but you need to move out of those progressions quickly and practice the entire part while focusing mentally and on your feedback on the small parts. Okay, so we don't.
in general like to do these two step approaches. We don't in general like to do a lot of throwing, but at this camp specifically again, just to introduce topics, we used tennis ball throwing. So I had about 50 tennis balls out there and I had us practice on the ground, touching each position and having the players study. And then what I do at every camp is I have them record some of our coaches or myself.
do an approach in slow motion with some arm swing mechanics. And so for this one, I'm going to share my screen now, but if you're listening, I'm also gonna talk to you guys through it. We are looking at me on the screen, taking a four step approach and using a full arm swing mechanics double arm lift.
I'm going to take it back just a second. Right now this was one of my best approaches and I'll tell you why. number one, I wasn't warm and number two, I wasn't quite focused on my legs. I was more focused on the arms, but if we're taking a four step approach, okay. Coaches, please take the time to have your players record themselves in slow motion.
Video is an absolute weapon. It's why our online programs are so successful and get players to the next level quickly because they're able to see themselves doing things when they record themselves. So if you're one of those coaches out there who has never put video at the end of your practice court, who has never had your players record themselves so that they know what they look like instead of trying to feel what they might look like, just incorporate video into your practices.
Mark Burik (09:30.712)
put it on a private Facebook group, put it on a private Google drive that everybody has access to. All of your players won't watch it, but the ones who are hungry and want to excel faster, you're giving them a weapon to be able to do it. Okay. And it's another teaching medium where some athletes and some people in general, they learn in very different ways. Some people can hear things and
they can understand it, interpret it into their body. Like my wife, for example, if you tell her to do anything with her body, she will immediately replicate it. If she sees it, she will immediately replicate it. If she reads it, then it's like it's a problem. But so she's a visual learner for me expressing myself. I've gotten better at expressing myself with words, but
My best expression and my truest thoughts come out the clearest when I'm writing. So we all have different ways that we can communicate and communicate is that give and take. So if you're just telling your players to do something, maybe they need to see it. Maybe they need to see themselves do it. Okay. And that's what we're talking about here. So we talked about a four step approach and on screen, I am about to throw a tennis ball. I'm throwing a tennis ball in my right hand.
So the four step approach is a small and slow right step, which you can see right here. Okay. It's a very relaxed step. It's more just leaning onto your step. Okay. And you can see the size of that step. Now that's about six inches from toe to heel, maybe 12 inches, but not bigger. Your first step needs to be small to keep you having distance from the net, which increases your hitting window later.
having the ball in front of you is absolutely key. Okay. Then on your second step, you start getting ready to accelerate. And you can see that the size of my second step has doubled, maybe tripled. Okay. Some people walk really slow on this left step. If you watch Hagen, if you watch Taylor Crab, it's really a slow approach. Even if you watch Evan Corey, I mean, he walks.
Mark Burik (11:50.362)
like completely walks on his first two steps of the approach. Here, I'm gaining a little bit of acceleration, maybe because I'm trying to show off for the players and get a little bit higher. But this second step is bigger than the first step. And you can see your hands and your body should look like you're about to race. And I want you to note these key positions. Okay. On your second step, see how my toe, my knee is starting to get over my left step?
over my left toes, right? This is like an acceleration, almost a sprint start. So if you're at home and you could imagine if you've ever watched football, what a wide receiver looks like, when they're at the line of scrimmage and they're about to start a sprint, or if you just needed to start a race and you were ready, it was a 50 yard sprint or a 50 meter sprint, and you needed to get ready to absolutely push off of your legs. This is what it would look like.
One of our players at camp, she was pulling with her legs. So she stayed very upright and she left her left foot in front of her body during the step. And that really affected her ability to get her feet to ball. Okay. One of the problems I won't go into her unique problem too much, but she had very low ankle mobility, which actually prevented a lot of this position. So her ankle mobility,
could be one of the limiting factors that's not allowing her to push off and accelerate and get feet to ball. But that's why our mobility program exists, opening up your hips, opening up your ankles, and being able to get into a range of motion that allows athletic things to happen. So moving through this on your left step, your hands should have been in front of your body. And you could see this big ankle angle that I have.
Now this is where after your left step, as you're pushing off of your left step, your hands are throwing back. And so here are some really key positions. The key positions that we touch so far are a very small right step, getting onto your left step in a sprinter's position with your hands in front. Okay. And now this is the next key position that we're looking for. It's a big, hard push off of your left step. If you're a righty.
Mark Burik (14:17.248)
And in between your left and your right left, you can see that my body is in the air. Okay. So no feet are touching the ground just yet. And this sequence between your left and your step close or your left and your right left. Lefties. I know you got to think in opposite here, but that's where your hands should reach their maximum height behind you. Okay.
Not everybody has as big of a double arm lift as I do right here. Okay. Some people have it a little bit smaller, but whatever your double arm lift, it should be at maximum height just as your right heel is touching the ground. So please don't make this mistake for all you dancers, gymnast, maybe soccer players out there or anyone else who just has this technique. do not let your toes.
stab into the ground first. That's a big mistake that some people make. So this is where I have all of our campers pause the video after they've recorded me because they need to look for the same position that I have here. Okay. Do you have maximal double arm, your maximum height of your double arm lift behind you when you're in between your left and your step close? Okay. So you can see my heel is striking the ground.
Okay. That allows continuous momentum and a good breaking action, which is really good for eccentric loading and the amortization phase, but that's biomechanical stuff that you don't really need to know. Now, one of the things that I did here. Okay. And this is important. Okay. You can see this two footed stack. It's not my best two footed stack. There's a, for indoor players, this would look a little bit different. You would have.
Double internal rotation of your hips. What that means is your right knee would kind of point in and your left hip or your left foot would wrap. And so for an elite high maximal volleyball jump, this left foot would turn towards the camera right now. So you would almost wrap your hip. Okay. But you're not turning your hips. You're just internally rotating them.
Mark Burik (16:41.964)
And that's what should happen. That is for indoor, maybe grass specifically. Okay. We don't have the ability to get that much stopping power in the sand. Okay. Cause it'll just push away. So in general, your feet on takeoff should be facing in the same direction. In other words, like imagine that they're both on skis. Right. And you don't want those skis to cross. Okay.
That's what it should look like, but there's something else about this phase right here. Okay. This is a little bit higher than my maximum jump would be. So I want you to notice the hip level. Okay. Wherever you would maximally jump from. So if you, just stood up tall and then without an approach, you threw your arms back, you bent down to jump as high as you possibly could. What hip level do you get to?
How low are your hips? That's how low your hips should stay. Starting at the edge or the end of your left step. So if you see this here on the video, okay, this is where like one of my inefficiencies came out. Usually it's better, but my left hip is high and you can see it. If we drew a line across the video, okay, you can see that it's high, but
As we go through it, then it sinks low. So now my hips are, you know, maybe four inches below where I pushed off of. And the problem with that is it takes extra time to load. And if we're producing power, we want minimal time on the ground. So if you hit the ground with an extended leg or high hips, let me rephrase, not an extended hip.
If you hit the ground with high hips and then your hips sink, you're going to lose the time aspect of power because it's going to take you longer to load. This falls back into, some strength issues, but also technique issues. Okay. We should be able to pop off the ground from this deeper hip position. So if you're watching your own videos in slow motion, and please go out.
Mark Burik (19:09.602)
Grab a tennis ball, try to throw it over the net, right? Try to take an approach and throw it over the net because you can just follow along with this video and see if you're at the same place. If you guys want to use this as a weapon, save this video, record yourself doing an approach and throwing a tennis ball as flat as you can and as hard as you can over the net. Okay. And then just freeze your video in the same places that I'm freezing my video. You can put two tabs up on the same one, and this will be an absolute weapon for you.
Okay. So once we're there, all right, again, I want to encourage you guys to from your left step to your right left. Okay. This hip wave that you see I'm up high and then I sink. I've lost time. So it won't be the highest jump that I'm capable of. Okay. You want your hips to get low on your left step and then drive far.
and forward, not up, not this double jump and sorry, April Ross, but you're the visual of your approach tricked a lot of coaches over the last few years because she has this kind of big knee pump. But if you do watch it in slow motion, when she hits the ground, when her right and left hit the ground, she is already in this position. So while it looks like she's got this jump,
into her approach and like she's stomping in a puddle. Okay. She's following good mechanics because by the time her feet hit, she is already bent and loaded. So she's just being really fast on the ground. Okay. But if you do that where you come high off of your left step and then you touch the ground, then your legs load and your hips drop during that ground contact, that's going to be a.
It's not a problem. You're just not getting as high as you possibly could. And if you don't, if you take off from a high hip angle, you're not utilizing your glutes. You're just toe jumping. Like you can't jump very high when you're just jump roping, right? You need to activate your glutes. So a lot of players don't sit low enough on this takeoff. Okay. And I want you to notice that, position there. Now the next phase. we talked about the small right step.
Mark Burik (21:34.924)
the bigger left step, getting yourself into a sprinter position and then your hips should drop at some point in your left step and stay level up until your step close and your takeoff. So we continue the video and my arms come through the pendulum with two feet on the ground. And here's the next important part. So many people think that your double arm lift
brings two arms up. We see it all the time where players try to double arm lift and they continue with two arms up. But if you watch elite hitters, their right hand does not pass their shoulder girdle. Okay. So watch as my left hand continues up and reaches and finishes the lift, but on the ground,
My right arm is starting to retract. It's starting to pull back. Okay. And so my hand is right about shoulder level there, but now my left arm continues and my right arm pulls back and stays even with my shoulder girdle. Some people will go under here. Okay. I've got full hip extension. My feet are leaving the ground at the same time. Important to recognize that your feet should leave the ground at the same time.
Okay. And left arm continues right arm pulls back. Now look at my hip. Here's an important position. Okay. My hips get forward. My hips are forward because they took off forward. So that's your lock. We are not like baseball players. have similarities to them. Okay. We are not like, batters or pitchers. We don't have the ground to develop velocity from.
So we don't start with our hips sideways. Okay. That's a mistake. A lot of people make turning and opening their entire hip to the side. Okay. That comes from indoor, indoor players. You're going to have to recalibrate for the beach and change the way you take off and the way you plant your feet. Now, if you see, I've got full hip extension. Okay. And my chest is open. there's a 90 degree separation.
Mark Burik (23:58.798)
from my chest and my shoulder girdle compared to my hips. So your hips are locked on to wherever you want to have access to the most power to. I say that it's confusing, but you have a power window and your power window essentially is if you put your arms at about 30 degrees in front of your body wherever you're facing, those are the places where you have the most power to.
You want to aim that hitting fan at the biggest part of the court. So you have power access to most of the court. Okay. If my hips right now we're facing the camera, my power window would be facing out of bounds or into the sharp angle. And then I would have limited power back to the line. Okay. So your hips and your toes should face off, should be
creating a cone that has a lot of the court on the other side. So that's why when some people ask like, hey, should I be designing my approach so that I aim at the back corner? Should I be aiming to the middle? Should I be aiming diagonal? All right, that's a good question, but it limits you because if you face the back corner when you hit out of the middle, you don't have power access to the sharp.
left side of the court. If you face the back corner on takeoff with your hips and your toes when you're outside as a left side, right? You're on the left side of the court and you're outside by the antenna and your hips and your toes face the back corner. Yeah. Your hitting fan is taking this huge part of the court. So you have power access to everywhere. This video is showing me on the left side. If I were on the right side, this gets really bad.
And it gets really bad for a lot of hitters who are trained as indoor middles and indoor left sides because they wrap that left hip. So if you take like your left hand and you put it on the outside of your hip, if that faces the court when you're on a right side, and so then your whole body, your hips, your toes face off the as a right side, you're going to have no power access to the court.
Mark Burik (26:25.208)
So you're limiting any bit of power you can generate. Okay. So again, I want to encourage that your toes and your hips on takeoff should face as much of the court as possible. Okay. So we're back to the arm swing mechanics and you see that there's a 90 degree separation. My chest is wide open facing the camera, but my hips are facing forward to my power window. Okay.
My hand has my right arm, my hitting hand has dropped back even with or below my shoulder girdle and my hand is far away from my head. Okay. Some people keep their hands really close to their head at this point, or some people never get their arm as far back as they could. Okay. So this is where some standing and throwing to feel these positions can be helpful. All right. And my left arm is extended.
And you can see this convex shape, which means my hip flexors, some quads, my transverse abdominis, my obliques and my abs are ready to rotate and fire. Okay. Some people here end up with their arm straight up or back and become a victim of this high elbow type coaching. When we hit.
And that high elbow retreat, while it's a good reminder to keep your elbow high, when you hit, you're limiting your power again. Okay. And you would have a lot, a lat or a tricep dominant swing without rotation from your core. Now, as I go through my swing, my left arm starts pulling a microsecond before my right arm. Okay. And this acts like kind of, if you notice there's a basically a flat line.
from the end of my left hand all the way to my elbow behind me. Okay. And here's the important part. My chest starts rotating. My hand pulls my chest. Okay. And we can see a whole lot of the stretch. You can even see the wrinkles in the shirt being stretched. Okay. And then this position is key. Look at the stretch from the chest with my head forward and my elbow back. Okay.
Mark Burik (28:46.966)
And then my chest finishes the move. My chest and head are through the zone before my arm.
And when your hand is back behind your head, your, your forearm should be laying horizontal and your bicep and your upper arm should be as high as they can while still behind your ear. This is now starting to create a latch stretch and a tricep stretch. And that will unload elasticity on the ball. And you can see that my forearm is laid horizontal. Okay. At this point. And then.
I throw down and I finish that whip and it, want you to, if you can watch this video, please do. But I want you to notice that it looks on my release very similar to if you have one of those old school catapults, like from medieval times and you see it get released and then the big rock or whatever they're throwing kind of swings around. Watch the tennis ball and my arm. They act.
like this, so I'll let it play. Okay, watch closely. Okay, you see that rotation and the looseness there? Now, if you're too tight or if you're squeezing this and you're flexing your muscles because you try to hit hard, you won't get that velocity because you don't have the stretch and the elasticity. So I'll show it one more time. Okay, just coming back here from slow motion. We pull up and then.
Okay. And you could see how loose my arm was one more time. Okay. And see how it actually gets faster in the contact or release zone. gets faster there because it's uncoiled the stretch, the velocity has uncoiled. Okay. But it won't really get faster if your arms are stiff there. Okay. So if we freeze right here, just a second behind it.
Mark Burik (30:52.61)
This is a good contact point. It's in front of your body. The stretch has released and now your arms moving super fast. So the contact is in front of your head and your body after the uncoil. And then we throw that release. Okay. So that's a good look, a decent look at elite level arm swing mechanics. Okay.
I am just going to show you for the coaches. you, again, let's just do a very fast review of the quick touch points that we want to have and I'll talk through it at each phase. And this is what you guys should be looking for at home. Okay. Small right step.
Bigger left step, starting with your hands in front of your body on the left step. Biggest to step close. So that distance, the next step, we're really launching forward and your hips should be sinking at this point on your left step. Big push off for far distance and you throw your hands back as you're releasing or pushing off of your left foot.
In between your left and your right left step, your heel, your toes should be up so that your heel of the right foot hits the ground first and your arms have reached their maximum at this point, not later than this point. Cause if your feet hit the ground and then your arms throw back, you're wasting time on the ground. So you've lost power. Okay. Then we come through my feet, hit the ground with a low.
hip level arms come through the pendulum with your feet on the ground, throwing all of that force into the ground, double arm lift. Okay. Both toes facing your power window or the majority of the court. Okay. Hips and toes facing the biggest part of the court. can then your left arm continues above and reaches for the sky and on takeoff while your feet are still on the ground.
Mark Burik (33:00.76)
Your right arm should be pulling back and loading equal width or below your shoulder girdle. Your back hand gets far away from your body. You have 90 degree separation from your hips to your torso. Okay, so your hips are facing forward, but your torso starts rotating sideways. Okay. Your left arm pulls your body.
Your chest rotates through and your chest pushes through the zone before your elbow and hand come through. Then at the top of your swing, your chest is stretched and when your hips have straightened, okay, everything is starting to uncoil here. When your hips have straightened, then you should find a point where your forearm is laid horizontal behind your head.
and your entire arm is behind your ear. Okay. And then we see that horizontal throw and then everything uncoils and you can see the speed that just happened on that release from the elastic move.
Okay. So that's a look at, at elite arm swing mechanics. in another episode, I'm going to do some breakdowns of what happens to some players. Like we do at camp. We've run out of time for today, but I hope this helps. If you want to fix your arm swing, we are going through jump and arm swing mechanics for the next four weeks with our online players.
So if you want to take all of these slow motion videos, have me analyze them and show you where the breakdowns are happening and get a 21 day protocol for fixing your jump mechanics and your arm swing mechanics where you have to do drills every day. Yes, you have to do the drills in order to get better, but you'll also have me for the feedback. You can head to betteratbeach.com forward slash virtual training. If you sign up for any of our memberships.
Mark Burik (35:13.932)
Well, the pro membership is where I can help coach you. And I actually don't believe the, yeah, that's right. The arm swing is not in the basic version. So you have to sign up for the pro version where we can coach you, go through your video at our weekly meetings and through your video submissions. if jump and arm swing mechanics are something that you want to finally fix and get better and be able to generate more heat, this is where we can do it.
Okay, we have it available for you right now. Just sign up for the pro membership and we will help see you through it. Okay. I think that is it from me. So I hope you guys liked this episode. If it was meaningful to you, if you got jump mechanics out of it, if you got arm swing mechanics out of it, double lift, double arm lift mechanics out of it, all you have to do, if you...
Do nothing else from here. If you don't sign up for any of our memberships or come to our camps, that's fine. But put this video on one tab, slow motion record your video from the side of you taking an approach and either throwing a tennis ball or spiking a volleyball and just freeze frame it to see if you get to the exact same points that I'm getting here in my video. I've got a special announcement for our coaches.
Okay, we are always adding coaches, great people, community people, and excellent coaches to our staff in Hermosa, soon Florida, and our camps. So if you like to travel on weekends, see new cities, meet groups of volleyball players around the world, we're always looking to build up coaches, and several of our coaches now come from our camps. They came as campers, and they came as online members, and...
really upgraded their knowledge, their skill level, and their coaching ability. So we hired them for camps. And one of the best ways to get started, we're gonna run a very special discount for you coaches. If you sign up for our pro membership, our yearly pro membership, we will certify you as a Better at Beach coach. We'll teach you everything you can learn about volleyball for the whole year. And we've got a 10 % discount. So you're gonna use the discount code, coach.
Mark Burik (37:35.566)
2025 when signing up for the pro yearly membership on betteratbeach.com. And I'd love to work with you. I'd like to help you help other people. And at some point, maybe you even become a better at beach coach, we can certify you and then bring you around the world to coach a bunch of cool events. So coaches just put in the discount code coach 2025 at checkout.
when you're signing up for the yearly version of our pro membership and let's upgrade your coaching skills and your ability to teach this game and know it inside and out at a very high level. That is it from me, Mark Burrick and all of our gang at Better at Beach. Thank you guys for listening and for watching. And if you want to support us, if you don't have a membership online or you're not coming to camp, but you wanna find a way to support us, just throw us a super like.
on YouTube and subscriptions. If you subscribe to our podcast and subscribe to our channel, that's awesome. It's a free way to help. But yeah, Every Dollar In does help us create more content and better content for you. So I hope you enjoyed this episode and I hope you subscribe or throw us a super like on YouTube. That's all. See you on the sand.
