Mark Burik (00:01.602)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Better at Beach podcast. My name is Mark Burick and I am here with Brandon Joyner and it's our birthday seven days from today. So early happy birthday, Brandon. I don't know if we'll do a birthday podcast, but.
Brandon Joyner (00:12.804)
Yeah
Hey, early happy birthday to you. It's always crazy. one, I, this is like, I absolutely love, and I think people think it's absolutely crazy that you and I share the same birthday. It's really cool. You know, yeah, it is, you know, we found out, what was it? 18 years ago. Been celebrating my birthday, been sharing it with you. I wouldn't have it any other way. It's been awesome. Yeah.
Mark Burik (00:30.742)
It's pretty wild. Destiny.
Mark Burik (00:38.868)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (00:44.462)
Hell yeah, brother. Well, today, if it is your birthday wish while you're listening here to get a better serve and to be more lethal from the service line, that's what we're going to be talking about today. And today's going to be a pretty quick hitter. So we're going to try to keep an order of 30 minutes. And we're going to talk about why serving is the most underutilized attack in beach volleyball. We're going to go over a few serve types. Then we're going to talk about how to choose the right serve for you and
Use some different serving tactics and then we'll talk about a couple of common mistakes. So, hope you're ready for a big discussion on serving serve talk, serve strategy and what most people really actually miss about serving. we're going to get really deep into that. And before we do want to remind you that our seven day.
All-inclusive beach volleyball training camp is happening November 29th in Punta Cana. About half of the spots are still remaining. So we recommend that you sign up, go to better beach.com forward slash camps, come to the Dominican Republic with us, hang out, dance, eat, drink, and play tons of volleyball with your favorite coaches and pro players. Aside from that, we have.
Santa Monica coming up August 8th. If you're listening, it might be a little bit too late to sign up, but we got a three day camp in Santa Monica and more on the way. August 22nd will be in Chicago. August 29th, we will be in Hermosa for a very specific men's double A and above camp. So if you're looking for an advanced level camp and you're a double A player or above, that one's going to be pretty intense and heavy competition and a lot more strategy.
and tactics, along with, course, like building a solid foundation of technique. So that's happening August 29th and then September 12th in Oklahoma City, September 19th. going back to Vegas, Seattle. We're coming for you September 26th, Youngsville, Louisiana, October 3rd, Long Island, New York, October 10th, October 17th. We will be in Orlando and Phil might stop by.
Mark Burik (03:02.092)
He said he might come by for a little bit and give a little secret theory session because we're going to head to Phil's spot later in the year. So he invited us over to come run an adults camp with him in Orlando. So we're going to do that at the end of the winter. And October 31st, we'll be in Fort Myers. That one's really filling up quick. And then Houston, Texas with our boys at the third coast volleyball. We're excited for.
that December 12th, but let's get into serving. Brandon, what's one thing that you learned in, let's call it high school, that you had to unlearn when you hit the next level, pro, division one, AVP, whatever.
Brandon Joyner (03:49.006)
Yeah, I think one of my big things was, and I think this is pretty common, is that I think so many of us just think about the serve as the way that the point starts. You know, and when that happens, a lot of us, we just think about getting the ball in play. We just put the ball over the net and we were kind of just talking about this, but like,
I think sometimes we just see that big square on the other side of the net and we're like, all right, as long as it gets in there, I'm good. And I think that that is a good place to start. I think we're gonna give you some ideas and some thoughts that you can also add to that if you're at the beginner level. yeah, as my career went on, I kind of realized that, okay, this is my opportunity to put the other team,
in an uncomfortable situation. And I really like to say it like that because I wasn't necessarily, I've never had the most powerful serve or anything like that. So I was, I just really wanted to put the other team in trouble, serving a specific spot, doing something like that, figuring out weaknesses.
Mark Burik (04:44.654)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (05:06.776)
Kind of like poking your sister, right? Like you just want to annoy her enough to the point where she goes stop. And then you're like, ha ha, got her.
Brandon Joyner (05:15.458)
Right. Yeah. Once you, if you can annoy that passer on the other side of the net and once you re once you get them to make that uncomfortable noise or you see some frustration, you got it.
Mark Burik (05:27.126)
Yeah. And then there are some signs of discomfort that most people don't look for because they'll serve and then they'll see the pass go up to a great place or they'll see it's not an ace and they go, dang. And it's like, hang on a second. Like, let's chill out. Let's let's see some signs of discomfort, even if the pass is perfect. Like a sign of discomfort. Did they take two knees? If you put both of their knees on the ground. Keep doing it.
They're they're they're in a super compromised position, right? Even one knee, if you can get them to commit to hold and stay down on one knee instead of like that quick lunge to stand up, that's a sign of discomfort. A tomahawk, that's an ultra sign of discomfort. You know, I say this to everything that I why you show against Tomahawks and serve receive. And I just say like if you had to put your life on the line and you had to tomahawk to yourself.
Brandon Joyner (06:15.738)
Thank you.
Mark Burik (06:25.358)
50 times in a row without screwing up or catching, or you had to, you know, you had the choice to pass to yourself 50 times in a row without stopping them without catching. Which one would you choose? Like I would say, you know, 99 of a hundred players would choose pass to myself if my life were on the line 50 times in a row. So that's what we're going to fight for in serve receive. It's not like a Tomahawk and serve receive will never happen. And at some point you have to do it.
Brandon Joyner (06:45.552)
you
Mark Burik (06:53.57)
But you have to go into it with the mentality as a passer of if they make me Tomahawk, they're putting me in a position that I wouldn't bet money on myself with. Yeah, so if I see a receiver Tomahawk, I'm like, yes, I'm going to figure out how to get you to Tomahawk all day. Let's go rainbow serves. Let's go like high deep fast serves and see what we can do. We play I play against Brian O'Neill out here a lot who just.
recently started dominating lots of open tournaments and he has this uncomp... he passes nails in every situation. He's super long short serves he takes care of. When I give him this slow, high, deep floater, something always happens to his pass that he's just that is his kryptonite. And I haven't told him in person, even though he's a buddy, you know, I want to have like one little edge on him. But that's like
Brandon Joyner (07:44.514)
You
Mark Burik (07:51.434)
Okay, it's not as automatic as all of the other things. And if you play somebody enough, most of us are in neighborhoods where like, I'm kind of playing against the same people all the time, right? Even when you get to the AVP level, it's you're playing the same dudes week in and week out. So you have so much of a statistical set if you pay attention to say what makes this person uncomfortable at all times. So that's a sign.
Tom Hawk, one knee staying down, two knees for sure a dive, right? I think another one is when they come in early on their spike, which means that you have to wait two touches later to say, did I make them uncomfortable with the serve? Right? So it has nothing to do with the result of the pass. It's like, from this position, I made them charge the net.
Let's see if it happens two or three times this match.
Brandon Joyner (08:53.784)
Yeah, yeah, I think about a specific instance when you and I were playing together, we played against Big Mike and Nate Yang and Wakaoka. Yeah, it took us a while. The set went to three. It was a great match, but eventually we picked up on the fact that Mike didn't really like that high deep float serve. And we figured it out soon enough where we were able to walk away from that win. Yeah, but.
Mark Burik (09:00.984)
Grisel, we found the ticket.
Mark Burik (09:18.85)
Like just in time.
Brandon Joyner (09:21.828)
But it was cool. I think I remember talking to you after that game and I was like, that was my favorite match I've ever played with you. We were putting our heads together for a long time and being like, okay, how can we get them to be uncomfortable? And once we found it, was like, both of us were like, my gosh, yes, we finally did it.
Mark Burik (09:30.196)
Hahaha.
Mark Burik (09:40.492)
Yeah. Yeah. Finding that like winning ticket, that winning strategy. so again, guys from the service line, like you have to experiment. You are the ultimate, scientist there and you are inserting different variables and figuring out saying what's the result of this variable. And again, that might be two or three touches later, some serves or serve strategies for somebody to shoot. And maybe you like that some
Brandon Joyner (09:45.232)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (10:10.274)
force them to hit and maybe you like that. It depends on your defense and your tactics, but the more you go ahead.
Brandon Joyner (10:12.986)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (10:20.566)
I was just going to ask you, I think that that's a really cool concept of trying to get somebody to shoot versus getting somebody to hit. What do those serves look like for you?
Mark Burik (10:36.014)
when I'm trying to get somebody to shoot. My ultimate starting serve for anybody is for whatever reason, usually like there's the, they put the shorter guy on the right side, a lot of teams. So it's a right-handed right side. So I think most of the players that know me and play against me regularly, they go, he's serving our right side short. This, and this happens in indoor too, right? Like let's crowd where the setter is.
see if we could get the middle to take it, see if we can make the opposite pass the ball or put it right on the head of the setter. But if I serve short on the right side, then I follow that up with a straight two. Like I give this short guy, maybe he's got a little man complex. I give them a wide open line. And a lot of times because they just try to bang on a wide open line, like I clear my blocker out and I say, no, no, no, you're running a really obvious two.
Brandon Joyner (11:23.088)
You
Mark Burik (11:34.126)
A lot of times they end up tape taping or hitting into the net because the short serve, they didn't get back to their full approach. So now they don't have as much momentum, which means they're not jumping as high. And then we made them extra thirsty after we took their legs out. Right. So a lot of times I'll get like a easy kind of tape or a medium kill. And if they shoot out of that, like if they go over cut or over cross, then that's really good information for me.
Brandon Joyner (11:50.489)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (12:03.372)
because now I know, okay, when he sees a definite cross block, he's a shooter, not a banger. And that's great information for me for the rest of the match, because now I know like, okay, I can show him this too, and he's not gonna bang that line. So now I can move around a little bit easier and maybe play some games in the back court. But yeah, that short serve to a right-handed right side where they don't quite get back.
Brandon Joyner (12:11.055)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (12:32.205)
followed up with a two block that gives me a lot of information and it might just put them in trouble right away.
Brandon Joyner (12:32.272)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (12:39.202)
Yeah, I like that. And what about hitting?
Mark Burik (12:42.403)
Hitting.
Brandon Joyner (12:43.096)
Yeah, trying to get somebody to hit.
Mark Burik (12:45.92)
If they do hit, great. Then I run a three. Cause.
Brandon Joyner (12:47.087)
Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (12:50.744)
Okay, so same very similar idea you just you're kind of taking away that that obvious option late.
Mark Burik (12:58.062)
Yeah, well, I just, I just need to know what that person does when they see something. So I tell people all the time, the two block is not meant for you to stop many players. It's meant to help you understand what that person does. So I will never, I won't want run a three until I have the answer to what somebody does with a two.
Right? So maybe it's personal pain, like Jake, Jake Gibb definitely got me on this a lot where I was like, this dude is leaving so much line and I was just juicing, banging the line, banging the line. And then late in the second set, all of sudden he runs his three with his hands clamp, clamp. So he showed me that same picture. He understood what I wanted to do when I saw that set up and then baited me into it. Right? So.
if that person bangs, then like, I don't need to worry about what I'm doing defensively. Now my blocker, it's your job to run a three. My problem that people get into is they expect, you know, their five, 10 blocker to run a magnificent lights out three block. And it's like, your team might not be equipped technically skillfully to do all of these plays. So sometimes somebody's offense just absolutely trumps your best.
defense and you know, then you're in a grind match and you hope to hit a certain wave. But the two for me is definitely a setup to understand what they do when they see a wide open line. Do they shoot? Do they hit? And then I get some answers for later in the match. Yeah. Okay. So now serve types.
Brandon Joyner (14:26.18)
Mm-hmm.
All right.
Brandon Joyner (14:42.734)
I like it.
Mark Burik (14:51.692)
This is another thing to experiment with. Short story from coaching juniors. We ended up winning a regional championship with my 15 new team and we got all the rumors. Once we showed up to tournaments like, well, their team practices together all year long. That's why they're doing this. And like, I had met these girls two months ago, but I mandated that every single one of my girls had an aerial serves, which means a jump float or a jump spike.
And to be honest, their jump spike serves were pretty trash. They went in. Parents and juniors on the other side were freaking out because these girls were jump serving. What they didn't see was that we were hitting balls at half of the speed that their standing float serves were. It was just a different look. And so the other teams kept freaking out. We got the rumors that because we had jump serves, like it's obvious that we
Brandon Joyner (15:28.014)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (15:38.928)
Right.
Mark Burik (15:48.056)
trained together year round and we've had the same crew for three years like now we're in the same spot. I just have higher expectations of my athletes, right? Because once you teach somebody to jump surf, you increase their athleticism every single rep, you increase their coordination every single rep. And if you teach them a jump spike serve, you are also teaching them how to attack on every single serve.
So if you wanna be a better attacker, learn how to jump serve and just be ugly at it for a while until you get it. That'll make you a better server. It'll make you a better attacker. And you have no reason or no excuses where you're like, oh, well, I don't have anybody to practice with. Well, jump serve all day long. I did it from college. I did it from pro. mean, anytime there was a water break, it was, okay, yeah, you guys go get water. I'm gonna sit here I'm gonna jump serve for seven minutes while you chat. And.
became a jump server through that.
Brandon Joyner (16:46.468)
I like that. And I've been talking a lot this year about stress, you know, and I think that, you know, if you think about a passer watching a server, if a server is just standing at the end line, hitting a standing float serve, that is not an extremely stressful serve for me to watch because there's not a whole lot of movement. There's a, there's, I know their end point.
I'm just looking, I can just look at their contact and see where I need to go afterwards. For some reason, when the server starts to add movement to their serve, that little movement increases the stress onto the passer. And I don't know why, but it's, it's extremely hard for like, there's a reason that as the servers start to get better and they start jump floating, they start top spin jump serving, start doing all those things.
Mark Burik (17:15.32)
Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (17:44.378)
There's a reason that those points score more than others. We'll talk about momentum and speed and all that stuff in a second, but I think the movement alone causes some stress for the passer as well, just because they have to keep in, like now we're having their attention span have to be even longer than a standing float. So I think that kind of adds into it too.
Mark Burik (18:08.844)
Yeah, it's always interesting across the board. think total side topic, but kind of related. I think guys are terrified of float surfs. Because they've seen so many top spin serves because guys get this like as soon as you pick up a volleyball, all you want to do is spike and know, and spike as hard as you can. So all you see is like tons of down balls and top spins as a guy. And it becomes this natural easy thing.
Brandon Joyner (18:21.134)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (18:38.764)
And then a float serve is like terrifyingly annoying. For women, it always seems to be the opposite. It always seems to be like they just stick float serves your best float serves ever. They stick them. And then you add just a little bit of top spin. And it's like this different trajectory that they haven't seen. It's kind of like a baseball player who has hit only fastballs their entire life.
Brandon Joyner (18:45.903)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (19:06.102)
If you throw them 10 curve balls, they're not going to catch up in that little, like that one 10 second rep. If you throw them hundreds of curve balls, they're going to get really good at hitting curves. And then you throw in one random fast ball or like one fast ball pitcher and their minds are blowing up. So it's, it's always interesting to try to give the receiver something that they haven't seen in a long time. And I, so many coaches agree on this, but.
Brandon Joyner (19:10.18)
Thank
Mark Burik (19:36.558)
Short serves are serves that you just don't do because you don't wanna do them in practice because they're annoying to get moving and to be energetic enough to run forward, take a knee and backpedal. So you're just like, no, no, no, just bowl me some. Like let me get into a rhythm first. And so now your first 10 reps are those basic generic serves. And all you have to do to capitalize on that as a server is first point, short, like.
Brandon Joyner (19:43.428)
Thank you.
Mark Burik (20:03.938)
we're going to find a serve and a flight path that this person sees more rarely than anything else. And then you're set. And I've got my, my helicopter serve from like my tennis days. It's got a ton of side spin and it creates so much trouble for so many people. It moves at half the speed of any other serve that I have, but it's a different spin. It's a different.
Brandon Joyner (20:24.08)
Thank
Mark Burik (20:31.372)
trajectory and that's also why sky balls work on people. If somebody receives a sky ball every single day, it's not going to be a problem for them. But if they see it one out of every 100 athletes, like, you know, they're not going to be able to catch up. And that's how Adrian like capitalized, right? Like not many people had this. And then all of a sudden everybody starts messing around with it at practice because Adrian's got it. So now they get a little bit more accustomed to it.
Brandon Joyner (20:51.386)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (21:01.36)
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I like I like the different styles that I mean, especially with you. It even though that side spin serve is theoretically easier. For some reason, it just it spins in such a different way that you have no idea what you're doing. It's like you have like a little brain meltdown, a little brain fart where you're like, oh, wait, what? How do I pass?
Mark Burik (21:28.878)
I'm gonna I'm gonna use that more than I ever have at this Manhattan tournament. I'm just gonna like really go for it.
Brandon Joyner (21:33.393)
yeah.
Brandon Joyner (21:37.934)
Yeah, Mark's playing a little shout out Manhattan AVP making a comeback.
Mark Burik (21:42.914)
We'll see if I make it in. Coming in with negative 44 points.
Brandon Joyner (21:44.577)
Yeah, true.
Right, right. So hopefully we see you back out there. That'd be fun. I have a, I have, so this is a little bit more toward, geared towards the, if you're truly trying to figure out your serve, and this is kind of two topics that land within our serving course that we have within our online courses.
Mark Burik (21:52.684)
Yeah, yeah. Bring it back with Kurt.
Brandon Joyner (22:17.376)
One thing that I think is really important for people to understand is deciding right away. Are you a power server or are you a location server? I think that. Yeah, I think that that's really big because those are two very different serves and you're okay with different types of errors associated with those serves. like personally for me, I think that people should.
Mark Burik (22:28.893)
I love where this is going.
Mark Burik (22:40.622)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (22:46.978)
try to start off with being location based and then slowly start adding power. Obviously as you start to get better, as you start to get more confident with your serving, you might reel out like Hagen. Hagen is, we've all seen him serve. He probably has the best serve on the AVP. He's one of those guys that I'm okay with him starting off with power.
Mark Burik (22:55.384)
Hmm.
Brandon Joyner (23:14.04)
because the sooner that he finds a serve with power, the better off our team is, right? Logan is a little bit more location. So like, would rather Logan be able to pinpoint a two by two box on the other side of the court and be able to say, hey, I'm gonna hit this three or four or five times in a row. And then we can start trying to dial in that box to maybe it's a one by one box.
But I think that that idea is really, really cool. And go ahead.
Mark Burik (23:49.75)
which is wild because that's an eight inch difference in height, right? Just height. Now, if we talk about actual touch, like Logan's probably touching 10 or 12 inches higher than Hagen. So you don't, doesn't, it's not if you're so big, it's not if you're tall, it's just finding which is yours.
And for me in college, I was just like, I'm going lights out. I, I'm blasting serves. it's what I wanted to do is what I was comfortable with. And, that's just what I did, but we, we strategically as a team, you also for indoor, you mix it up so that you have different people in different, with different serve techniques and you love to have a variety of servers.
Brandon Joyner (24:21.88)
You got an ace record to get.
Mark Burik (24:44.886)
You want to have like a few guys who can throw jabs and a few guys who can throw knockout punches. Like this is a good mix. so unless you have two absolute heaters on your team, it's a great idea to choose one person for spots and one person to say, you go rip. You know, I'm not going to miss a single serve this match. So like you can go ham.
Brandon Joyner (24:57.072)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (25:09.348)
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that that's really important. It kind of goes back to our conversation that we've had in the past where it's like, figure out a way for your team to be positive players. know, we talked about giving points away and somebody has to be the staple, the stronghold and be like, you know what, I'm going to make the other team pass a bunch of balls this match.
Mark Burik (25:12.276)
All right.
Brandon Joyner (25:35.446)
If you miss two or three serves but you return the favor and get an ace or two or get a couple out of system plays, then we're okay with that number as well.
Mark Burik (25:49.206)
If you guys are at home and you're wondering like, how do I stat my serving? How do I actually know if I'm improving or if I've had a good serving game? First thing that you should do is. Stat your serving. So take easiest way, take errors to ACEs. If you have more service errors, then you do ACEs for now.
being simple, consider that a fail, right? Like you should have more aces than errors, period. At some point, the whole like ace to error ratio being equal is kind of okay. But then that's then now we have to measure, okay, how many times are we putting the other team out of system on our serves that go in? And so that goes a little bit deeper, but.
If I were to give you like the flattest basic, most overall advice for everybody beginner through advanced, take a look at every time you serve measure, how many ACEs you got measure, how many errors you had. If you can stay on top with ACEs to errors, great. You're set right there. You can always dive into like passer rating and how much you put them in trouble and all of that. but, that's, that's a.
good, easy metric. Another one can be, and it's really weird, but you can measure the other team's side out ratio. And there have been instances of players, elite and otherwise, where one person never gets an ace, but their team gets more defensive points when they are serving.
Brandon Joyner (27:39.28)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (27:39.808)
whatever that that is, sometimes it's because maybe the blocker is more comfortable sitting at the net. Sometimes they are actually like more comfortable running to the net. You know, there's all these like little variables, but if you, if you can start studying when you get more defensive points, when somebody is serving, not just based on the serve, but based on what happens to the point, it's another important stat that you could take. But if you're, if you're doing like absolute simplify, you need to figure out.
how to get your aces over your errors. And if you get no aces, that means you should have zero errors, period.
Brandon Joyner (28:17.648)
And and as we're going into errors, I one thing I had this conversation last night with some one of the ladies that comes to our league and a rule that I like to stick by is Especially like and when we're starting out a lot of the errors that we see are Okay, I hit it in the net. I hit it long. I hit a sideline. I hit it. I hit it out on the sideline
I think a really good rule for a lot of people, if you're just starting out is it's okay, especially if you're just learning how to overhand serve or something like that, it's okay to have back to back errors. We just don't want them to look the same. So if you miss one ball into the net, maybe your mindset should shift to say, you know what, this next ball, if I'm going to error, we don't like to talk about like a whole pink elephant kind of thing.
Mark Burik (29:16.174)
Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (29:18.574)
But the idea can be,
if we are going to allow it for this chat. If I am going to miss this next serve, it's going to be long. And I think that kind of idea, if you miss the ball on the sideline, my next ball, if I'm going to error, I'm going to error in the middle of the court to where I might serve the opposite person that I'm trying to. I think that those errors, like that idea of errors can help you out a little bit.
Mark Burik (29:43.566)
Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (29:50.648)
I also have, I know it's a quick episode, so I'm going to throw in one of my top keys that I've kind of found has worked. And this kind of helped me when I was playing overseas in Slovakia, I had to work with a coach and what we would do is we would put a rubber band from the top of one antenna to the other. And that makes like a little rectangle above the net. That's pretty much the exact same size as the net. My goal and I've been working on
Mark Burik (30:12.482)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (30:19.244)
with Logan and Hagan a lot this year as well is that balls cannot travel above that above that box. So when you're serving try to think about imagine that that little rectangle above the net is full of glass. Your only goal is to break that glass and obviously we still have ideas of where we're trying to serve. We shouldn't just be thinking about getting the ball on the other side of the net but if you can really get that ball to cross that plane
Mark Burik (30:35.662)
Mm-mm.
Brandon Joyner (30:48.26)
you're already putting the passers in a very stressful situation. And then those errors kind of start to eliminate themselves a little bit. And it stops making you think as much because for some reason, thinking about putting the ball onto the other side of the net, that broad spectrum is sometimes hard to accomplish. But if you have something smaller of like, you know what, I'm not worried if this ball lands in, I'm just worrying about breaking this plane.
That can help you guys out a lot. So just my little key of the day.
Mark Burik (31:20.43)
Yeah.
Shatter the glass. That gets people's serves just rifling, you know, taking that little rectangle saying there's a glass plate. This one you have to shatter. And then when you teach the dead ball, which is another type of float serve that just it ends up instead of like pinging flat and putting deep pressure, it ends up just falling 10 to feet, 10 to 15 feet shorter, which means that you see exact same trajectory.
Brandon Joyner (31:24.632)
Yeah, breaking glass.
Brandon Joyner (31:49.68)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (31:52.994)
but a slower arm speed or different contact point on your hand. And so it like kind of makes the passer stutter and usually ends up in an overpass. Like for that one, you say touch the glass, but make sure it doesn't break. Those two things, if you can shatter the glass that Brandon was talking about with the wire under it, like that's your float serve and figure out how you can still break the glass while keeping the ball in and use those experiments that that
Brandon Joyner (32:07.344)
Mm. Yeah, I like that.
Mark Burik (32:21.55)
that Brandon gave you, I think those are better suited for practice. So like, when you're practicing, if you miss short, okay, go ahead and miss really long. If you miss long, go ahead miss really short. Like find that happy medium and as soon as you find that spot that worked, then when you're serving in a match, then just chase that feeling.
Brandon Joyner (32:26.64)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (32:46.006)
the same feeling that you had that you discovered at practice, but not a lot of people practice serves enough, which is crazy because it's like.
Brandon Joyner (32:53.008)
I'm a habit of it too. When we get to our camps, it's so hard for me to like spend 30 minutes on serving, but it is important. It's and it's always asked about it's I need to get better at that myself.
Mark Burik (33:06.86)
Yeah. and then, and then for the dead ball, like touch the glass without breaking it. And it would be really cool if I could get Janelle to give us some stunt class. have a, when they throw them through windows, it's called sugar glass. It's actually made from like a sugar type material. And so when you see a lot of people get thrown through windows and it shatters in movies, it's called sugar glass. It's a specific that's meant to break, but not be sharp. And.
Brandon Joyner (33:13.69)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (33:36.005)
Okay.
Mark Burik (33:37.026)
wonder if we can get some sugar glass for some price. Of course, it's like, you know, 300 bucks a pop, but.
Brandon Joyner (33:39.184)
Yeah, we might have to. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it might cause some littering, but we'll figure it out. I think with the only other thing that I would really focus on with serving, we talk about this a lot. think obviously the toss and the hand contact are huge. Make sure that you're tossing the ball in a meaningful way.
Mark Burik (33:47.15)
Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (34:08.354)
It should always end up on your attacking shoulder and then get your fingers out of the way. You know, I think that's one of the big things we always say, one of my favorite teaching, I saw this a real a couple of years ago where like people clap and then they pull their fingers back and they clap again. Whenever you're making that contact, you should not be hitting your fingers. You should be hitting the meat of your hand.
Sometimes people like to hit this little heel. think that that gives people a nice pop, but finding a consistent contact is big too.
Mark Burik (34:43.822)
Yeah, I don't know if I actually saw it, but I think like sometimes Todd Rogers served with like giving the OK symbol. I'm not sure if he actually did that, but sometimes I do it and it just hides the middle of my hand and I would never hit these three fingers. So it always makes sure that I have like this solid heel and the people that say like don't serve with your fist. I've also said that as a coach. But I don't know it like.
Brandon Joyner (34:53.626)
Hmm.
Brandon Joyner (35:00.718)
Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (35:11.918)
Yeah. I think it's. Right. I think it's a cool thing about the sport is like experiment. What do you we see some people that just use a fist and that really makes a ball knuckle. Yeah. Experiment with whichever contact you like the most, but no fingers. Fingers aren't allowed. Yeah, not at all.
Mark Burik (35:14.454)
Why not?
Mark Burik (35:23.917)
Yeah.
Mark Burik (35:28.17)
starting to be like, I don't really have a problem with the, with the fist.
Mark Burik (35:37.742)
I don't know. We might, we might rewrite all the books. Okay. guys, if you are interested in upgrading and going through an entire serve protocol, fixing your serves and actually studying the technique, doing some at home drills for learning float serves, including like adjusting your arm swing so that you have power, figuring out your toss, figure out footwork for different types of serves.
Brandon Joyner (35:37.806)
Yeah, makes sense. Yeah, who knows? Yeah.
Mark Burik (36:05.822)
as well as the footwork and rhythm for jump float serves, jump spike serves and sky balls. And you get to have us watch it to make sure that you're doing the technique correctly. We have a full serving masterclass. So if you take a look right now at our homepage, you could also look at the header that says virtual training and you can get just that serving course or you can get the entire bundle.
where you get every single strategy and technique course that we have and then fully recommend you upgrade to the Inner Circle so that you can ask us questions anytime. So if you're a part of our Inner Circle membership, you can text us, you can DM us, you can post your videos whenever you want and then we give you weekly challenges and we follow our course structure throughout the year.
And it's essentially the same training schedule that an AVP team or an FIVB team would be on where we're very ball control based in the winter. We really get into offense in the early summer, and then we start really building defensive systems in the mid summer and end of summer. So if you want to check that out and you are in need of a coach to help you get better.
Just go ahead and check that out. That's what we do every day. If you are a coach and you're listening and you want some help designing practices, helping your junior coaches and assistant coaches and new hires become better so that you don't become overwhelmed by everything that happens when you have a volleyball club or a team.
We will insert that link below, but you're go to better at beach.com. And I think it's forward slash team is the URL and we'll help you. We'll essentially be like your business consultant for that as well as your coaching consultant. So when you start a company, know, we all just got in this because we liked volleyball and we like coaching. And then all of a sudden you find everybody.
Mark Burik (38:22.306)
really likes what you've got. And so you want to grow and you want to create something bigger, but you're not really prepared to. So that's what we do with the club consulting program. We help you make sure that you've got a playbook of your own to design practices, to make sure that signups are easy and pain free. If you need marketing, we've got all of the experience in that. So if you want to check that out, so far we have three clubs signed and we would love.
Brandon Joyner (38:30.576)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (38:34.307)
and
Brandon Joyner (38:46.744)
And Mark, I hate to cut you off. I hate to cut you off, but speaking...
Mark Burik (38:51.982)
to have you on the team and become a part of the Better at Beach world.
Brandon Joyner (38:56.11)
Yeah. And speaking of all of that, I actually have to run because I'm working with Milwaukee Sting right now and I have to hop on a call with their juniors to talk about all this same stuff. So I have to run. I love you guys. Thank you all for joining. We'll see you next week and hey, happy early birthday. This time next week, you're gonna be a little bit older. And me too, but I'm always a little bit younger than you, which is great. Yeah. All right.
Mark Burik (39:14.722)
Hey, happy early birthday,
Mark Burik (39:19.736)
I am gonna be a little bit older. I'm gonna get a lot older. I'm gonna be a lot older than you. Later. All right, and that is it for me and Brandon. So if you wanna check out the Serving Masterclass or our Fixer Arm Swing in 21 Days, you can go ahead to the website and do that. And if you have any questions or comments, go ahead and comment wherever you want or shoot us a DM. We're happy to talk to you and just talk shop.
Brandon Joyner (39:26.254)
I'll see you guys. Love ya. Bye.
Mark Burik (39:49.826)
That's it from me, from Brandon, from the entire gang at Bitter at Beach. We'll see you on the sand.
