Brandon Joyner (00:01.038)
Hey guys, welcome to the Better Beach podcast. My name is Brandon. Mark is out of town this week. He is back in New York with his family, getting some much deserved rest. I was not on the podcast last week because I was doing the same thing. I was with my family in the Outer Banks, North Carolina, enjoying some sun, enjoying my little nephew, and some good family time as well. Today.
I'm going to give you guys a very quick podcast. This podcast is going to be about 20 minutes long. And all I'm going to do is I'm going to give you guys three ideas that you can use to go into a tournament to find success as quick as you can. Okay. So this is a perfect podcast. If you're heading to a league night, if you're heading to a tournament, if you're just heading to your friends to play and you want to have something to focus on.
This will be a good podcast for you to listen on your way to the tournament while you're warming up whatever you want to do But this will give you some ideas on some things that you can focus on right away to make sure that you show up right away Before we get going we do have some camps just quick little announcement if you guys have the urge to come work with us in person Our three-day camps we have a five-day camp coming out. That's gonna happen. I think in January
But our our camps page better beach.com forward slash camps. You can find that link in this video We have camps all over the country whether they're three days five days or if you want to come spend a week with us in the Dominican Republic all-inclusive resort Training all day playing all day tournaments fun little outings at night Please join us. So if you're interested in joining us for a camp
please check us out at betteratbeach.com forward slash camps. All right, since this is a quick episode, we're gonna get right into it. So a lot of times when we show up to tournaments and some things that we've picked up on is not having specific focuses of what you are going to do right away can lead to a delayed ability for you to find your highest performance in that day. So these three tips.
Brandon Joyner (02:26.348)
that I'm gonna give you today, I think are really important because it will allow you to focus on certain aspects of your game to allow you to show up and play at the highest level possible. Okay? The first one is find your feet. Okay? I know that might seem weird because we're playing volleyball and we don't play with our feet, but a lot of the times if we don't concentrate on our feet, whether it's finding good balance on our pass,
Brandon Joyner (03:23.798)
In beach volleyball, a lot of times if we start to get a little squirrely, if balls start kind of going in directions that we're not used to, a lot of it has to do with the fact that we're not stable. And so with our passing, whenever you're passing, you should feel like your feet are balanced. If you're jumping, if you're leaning a lot on one leg versus the other, then you're already off to an interesting start. So we have to make sure that we're finding good balance.
Okay. Whenever the ball is coming over to us and we're in the passing position, we have to realize that the ball is using the strength of our body to bounce off of our platform. And the more strength that we have at our base with our feet, that will allow us to kind of work and the ball will do the work for us. Okay. So with our passing, find your strength. I had one coach, name was coach Megan.
She told me about thinking about trying to get my body weight distribution to be as close to 50-50 as I can when I'm passing. And obviously that's like a really hard thing to do. But what that does is it allows you to find balance and strength with both legs instead of having a majority of your power on the other. Whenever I talk about this, if you don't end up getting 50-50 on both legs, it's not the end of the world.
but it will most likely get us closer to that balance than it would if we don't focus on it. So as long as we're, if we're 60, 40, 70, 30, even 80, 20, as far as like maybe I have 80 % of my weight on my right leg and 20 % on my left, that's okay. But obviously the bigger that discrepancy becomes, the more likely we are to be unstable. Okay, with setting.
Same exact idea. We wanna feel like we have our feet under us the entire time. If you're somebody that feels like you're always sprinting after balls and then ending in an unstable way where you're falling or you're kinda tripping over yourselves or you're having to really catch your balance after you make your set, then more than likely what's happening is you're leaving too late. You need to make sure that once you realize that you're not the passer, we have to release.
Brandon Joyner (05:49.74)
we have to start closing the gap to our passing or setter location. So whenever that passer passes, we have to make sure that we're encouraging our footwork to get forward so that we should never feel like we're sprinting. We're going over this a lot right now and our sixth, we have a six week training program here in Hermosa beach and the term ball watcher is something that I use often. And if you are watching your partner pass and you haven't moved,
and then you're trying to catch up to that pass, once again, we are already in a tricky spot. So, encourage yourselves to move forward so that you should always feel like your feet are underneath you. A little homework. I want you to pull up a YouTube video of any AVP, and one thing that you'll notice is that when these setters are setting, at no point, unless it's a bad pass, but at no point do the setters look extremely stressed.
And the big thing for that is that they're using small little tiny steps where their feet are always underneath them. And then they're using an encouraging movement to move forward. If we have this conversation, we say, but Brandon, my partner doesn't really know where they're passing. That's a passer problem. We need to encourage them to be good. But if we stay back and we wait too long,
then what happens is when a passer passes well, we actually punish them. So what we need to do as partners, especially in the setter mindset, is we need to encourage good passes by closing that gap. And then if our passer doesn't pass where they want, where we want them to, then that's when we become a really good partner and we just better the ball. Okay, moving on to attacking right away. Make sure that you are using the approach that works for you.
Okay, a lot of we talk a lot about our timing our spacing and all of these podcasts that we've done I know mark and I did a little video review where we kind of looked at Kyle friend and Tim Brewster But finding that rhythm before the game starts is extremely important one of the big issues that we always see especially in the intermediate level or people that are kind of playing and be a double-a style tournaments is
Brandon Joyner (08:11.116)
their approaches never look the same. Maybe they're early, maybe they're not starting in the correct spot. But when you do your approach, one thing that I love doing and seeing at our camps is that when you jump and land, you should look strong. Okay, so when you're doing your warmups, when you're starting to do your attack swings and getting some reps at the net,
Make sure when you land after your swing, you should be a gymnast that can stick the landing. If you want to hold your hands up and get a perfect score, that's okay too. But being able to stick the landing, that will show you that you are jumping and landing in a good spot. Okay, so that's number one, find your feet. Okay, number two.
is really focus on your passing structure. Okay, we talk about this a whole lot with the sport of beach volleyball, the pass and the set are always, are always the most important touches, okay? If you're a person that gets served a lot, then your pass is the most important touch. If your partner is the one that gets served a lot, your set is the most important touch.
And the way that we can focus on this is by really finding our shape. One thing that I want you guys, I want you to visualize real quick. And when we are in serve receive, waiting for the server to serve, a lot of us find ourselves in a position where we have our hands on our knees. That position is extremely comfortable. What it does, and I'm gonna show you guys kind of in the video that I'm currently making, so.
sorry for you if you're listening, but hopefully you can still imagine, is that when we put our hands on our knees, our hips drop away from us, and it allows us to keep a good distance between our hips and our platform. And so, since we're super comfortable in that position, that's the position we should try to finish in when we're making the pass and even after we've made the pass.
Brandon Joyner (10:27.958)
A lot of the times we become results driven. Okay, and what that means is that we only care about where the pass goes instead of what do we look like as passers. And so I want you to change that mindset a lot. And I want you to make it extremely personal between you and the server. And I want you to think that that's the first point of the game. The first point of the game is that when the server serves the ball, they're trying to get you out of that shape. Okay.
If you keep your shape, I promise you're gonna win more of those points. If you lose your shape, unfortunately, you're probably gonna start losing more of those points, especially as the game goes on and fatigue starts to set in. So this is something that you can do and really focus on at the beginning of the game. I promise you, if you put an extreme focus on this in the first half of your set to 21 before the technical timeout at
10, 11 or nine, 12, whatever it becomes, then you are gonna set yourself up for the entire day. Okay, so make sure you find your structure, find your shape, really focus on keeping that passing. Okay, and then the last one is develop good communication with your partner. Okay, one of the things that I've...
become a huge believer in is open communication. And that's not only on offense, that's not only on defense, okay? It's the entire game, okay? Asking your partner, what do they need from you to succeed? Telling your partner what you need from them to succeed, okay? Whether it's a higher set, if it goes out, goes in. One of my like bigger pet peeves when we coach a lot of these camps is that we have passers that pass a ball,
The setter sets them, it's not really in the perfect spot, but somehow the attacker still scores, and then they tell their partner, great set. Instead of just giving them the little feedback to make it a perfect set. Just because you scored on an attack doesn't mean you can't give feedback to your attacker or to your setter. Okay, so open that line of communication with your partner so that you can get as much information as you can.
Brandon Joyner (12:52.62)
That can deal with the past. A lot of times when Mark and I play, Mark, when he plays with some people, he really likes to pass the ball high. When he plays with me, I don't really like it when it's a really high pass because it messes with the timing of my set. Whether it's a depth perception thing or elements or whatever it is, I'm just more comfortable with the lower pass because it allows me to give a lot more accuracy on my set. And so within the first five points, I'll tell Mark, like, Hey, could you bring your pass down a little bit?
Even if we're scoring on every single point, I wanna make sure that I feel the most comfortable I can to set him so that he can score as much as possible. Okay? Same thing can happen with the set. Talk about the height difference. Talk about, you want it to land on your inside shoulder? Do you want it to cross your body? Some people like to hit with this ball kind of right above their head, whereas a lot, some people like that ball to be leading them into the court.
You need to figure out what kind of player you are and then be specific on how you communicate with your setter to let them find your perfect set. The first set of the game, whenever you get out to a tournament or a league or playing with people, that's the most important because it's something that you're going to build on as the day goes on or as the game goes on. So if we put an extreme focus on that at the beginning of the point, then that will allow us
kind of move in a good progression. right. Obviously we have to be kind of weary of how we're communicating. You don't want it to be an angry tone or anything like that. Like we're just giving suggestions to somebody we consider a buddy, right? If you're playing in a tournament with someone, hopefully you like them. If you don't, figure it out. But we want to make sure that we are communicating with somebody in a kind way.
You know, it's whenever we are, there's, I remember a couple guys that I played with in high school and even myself at times when I was playing with a freshmen center, who was a baller, but if he ever left me inside, I would kind of yell at him a little bit and be like, Hey, push it out. Or if it was low, I had this one guy that I played with phenomenal guy, phenomenal player as well. But when I would set them a quick, I would look at them after the play. And even if he scored, he would be
Brandon Joyner (15:16.408)
throwing his hand up like, I need that set higher. We don't need to be that guy, right? We can be nice. You can just say, hey, good set. If you can get a ball higher, that'd be perfect. So opening up that line of communication with your partner is gonna help you guys have that communication throughout the day. If we start off silent, it's really hard to start adding in communication. But if we start off with communication, we're gonna be able to talk a lot better, okay?
And then on the defensive side, it's even more important. I struggled with this my entire career up until about, I would say 2020, 2019, where when the other team scored points, I never took in information. I was just like, oh, I should have won that point. was like, it was very egotistical of me of being like, you know what, like that was just lucky. I'm going to get the next one.
but I never took in information. Okay, a couple years ago, especially when I started playing with Mark and I started playing with a guy named Alex Diaz, Tyler Penberthy, all of these, Kyle Friend, all of these guys, I started opening up a really good line of communication on defense where, hey, so when we would go into these games, we would try to answer specific questions before that halfway point, once again, the technical timeout.
And we would have conversations like, hey, what do they like to do when they get a perfect set? What's their go-to shot? Is it hard angle? Is it a high line? Is it it a line swing? Is it a cut shot? And so we figured out what they like to do in their optimal situation. Okay. Another one. Who are they looking at? Are they looking at all? Right? If we, there's a lot of things that you can do on defense, whether it's jukes, whether it's pulls from the blocker.
And sometimes you have to take some chances on this, but when we're going through this, we need to try to figure out, okay, are they looking at the defender? Are they looking at the blocker? Or are they just not looking at all and going with the swing? A lot of times if people don't look like they're looking at anybody, then most of the time they are just listening to their setter's call. And if you imagine,
Brandon Joyner (17:35.392)
If you guys are playing in a tournament and you figure out that information early on in a set, that game has become a lot easier for you because now on defense, you can just start listening to the other side of the court and we can start listening to those calls and start to get pretty good breaks as well. Okay, so there's a lot of ideas that you can do on defense where you're answering questions. Okay, what do they do when they get a bad set?
What do they do when they get a pass that's off the net and they have a set coming from deep in the court? Try to communicate with your partner as much as you can so that you can start to establish a game plan with your side of the net. At the lower level, sometimes this can be a little tough because a lot of times if offenses aren't developed enough, then we start to realize that like, okay, they're not looking at anything. They're just kind of hitting the ball and play.
But even if that is the answer, then that allows you guys to understand, okay, most of the time they swing where the ball is left. Is the ball inside? A lot of times people will go cross. Is the ball outside? A lot of times people will go line. When they get set tight, do they poke short? When they get set off the net, do they just swing deep? But establishing those conversations and figuring out that information is important. Okay. So.
Those are your three tips. I know this is a short one, but I think if you guys go into your practices or go into your tournaments, go into your leagues, and you think about those three things, it will allow you to focus on specific areas of your game, right? And whenever we start a game, we have to keep our thoughts small and then we can build from there. So if you go in and you're like, I just want to win, that's a very broad statement.
That's a very broad spectrum where we don't know if we're going to win based on ball control, speed, power, whatever. But if you can focus on your feet, be strong and stable on your pass set and attack. If you can focus on your shape, making sure that you're taking it personal between you and the server, or you're really focusing on your form of your set, that's going to help your offense tremendously. And then finally,
Brandon Joyner (20:00.866)
having really, really good communication with your partner. That's the last key of really trying to kind of optimize your game, right? Once we have our control, once we have our ability and our ideas on how we're gonna win on our side, then we can start to project our thoughts on what the other team is doing. And we can try to put ourselves into a position where we're making more, where we're able to affect the game by learning from the other team, okay?
And if you're not doing that, then you're just hoping that the other team makes errors. Okay. Last little bonus clip. So we have our three ideas. This is our last one. Try your best to start games by being a positive player. Okay. And what I mean by that is not only in the partner realm, we've talked about being nice. We've talked about being kind. You got to find a little hunger because we want to win, but being a positive player.
If you are able to map out your stats, and you can do this in your head, if you score a point, that's a plus one. If you keep the ball in play, that's a wash. That's like a zero. If you make an error, that's a minus one. And so as you're going through the game, start to use that information to allow yourself to become a positive player. So if you start off the game,
and you score four points in a row, you're at plus four. So you have a little bit of room to work with. So if you get a set and you want to take a chance and go for a ball, that's okay because even if you mess up, you're still at a plus three, right? But at the end of the game, we want to make sure that we are always in the positive. So if you're at minus one and you get an interesting set, that's not the time to take a chance. Going down to a minus two versus getting back to that wash zero area.
That's a really tricky situation. So be okay with keeping the ball in play to start matches so that you can eventually by the end of the match become a positive player. think if you focus on all four of those things should allow you to at least get some ideas on where you are starting and what your goal is within that first technical timeout. And if you do that for every one of your games, I promise you're going to find yourselves in it. And then
Brandon Joyner (22:24.93)
just about showing up, finishing games, trusting your swing, going out there and winning. So I know this was a short episode, but we wanted to give you guys kind of a quick episode, quick podcast that allows you guys to listen to it on the way to a practice. Mark will be back next week where we will continue talking about as many cool things as we can, beach volleyball. If you guys have any suggestions for us on topics that we can cover.
please leave us, leave them in the comments for us. We love getting feedback from you guys. The reason we make these videos isn't because we wanna talk about them, obviously we do, but the main reason that we do these videos is to help you guys get better at beach. And so if you guys have some issues that you're working through and you want us to comment on it, please leave a message below. We'd appreciate it. All right, so that's all we have time for. I hope if you're listening to these podcasts and you're a regular,
Please come see us at a camp. We want to work with you. I promise you, you will see extreme improvements within three, five, seven days, whichever one you do. You'll also have a blast. Our communities at these camps are fantastic. It's a super welcoming, inviting, like learning experience and everybody's okay with kind of messing up and just getting better along the way. Also we have our new Shopify, which is going great. We have some apparel. So if you guys want to support our channel, support Better at Beach.
and rock some swag we'd love to see one of the one of my favorite things is walking up to a tournament and Seeing people wearing our gear. So if you guys want to check to check out our website better at beach comm for shop and You can get some swag from us as well All right. We'll see you guys next time focus on those three tips Let us know how it worked in the comments and we will see you guys next time
We'll see you on the sand. Bye bye.
