Mark Burik (00:01.336)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Better at Beach volleyball podcast. We are considering calling it the Better at Beach volleyball coaching podcast. However, we need to know if when you're listening, you are listening as a coach or a player. We know that visuals help out a lot of players and we know that coaches have an obligation and a responsibility to their players. So we're hoping.
that some of you coaches can reach out to us either by DM or just email support it better at beach and say, Hey, I listened to your podcast and I'm a coach. That's really all we need to know. And we would love to hear from you. But today we are talking about the five unforgivable attacking mistakes that people make, how to fix them, and then drills that will also help you fix them.
Quick announcements on camps. have Punta Cana all inclusive for seven days, November 29th to December 5th. If you want to come to an all inclusive resort in the Dominican Republic with us and learn volleyball and play volleyball and make new friends and hang out with some pros, go ahead to better beach.com forward slash camps and sign up. You could also book your own private camp anywhere in the world that is on that camps page. August 8th. Nope. Sorry.
August 22nd will be in Chicago, Illinois. August 29th men's double a player. So advanced level men's come on out to Hermosa beach and hang out with me. We'll beat you up. September 12th, Oklahoma city, September 19th, Las Vegas, Nevada, September 26, Seattle, Youngsville, Louisiana, October 3rd, Long Island, New York, October 10th, Orlando, Florida, October 17th.
Fort Myers, Florida, October 31st and Houston, Texas at Third Coast Volleyball, December 12th. Head to betterbeach.com forward slash camps and sign up before we get into the meat and potatoes. Brandon, happy birthday.
Brandon Joyner (02:02.699)
Hey Mark, happy birthday! How about that? How about that? It's always great that I never forget when you're born.
Mark Burik (02:04.366)
my goodness, thank you so much.
Right? Yeah, it's easy. It's easy. Yeah, so guys, we're filming on our birthday and both of our kind of wishes was just to go out and hang out and play some four on four volleyball with our friends. So filming a podcast, doing a little bit of coaching, and then we get to play volleyball with some of our favorite people out in Hermosa. So gonna be a good day.
Brandon Joyner (02:13.919)
nice yeah
Brandon Joyner (02:31.177)
Yeah, yep. And I think, I don't know, I'm always, I think the birthday time is always a good time to reflect and kind of see where you're at and what you've done and everything like that. And just want to say thanks. We've been best friends for a lot of years now. And I think, yeah.
Mark Burik (02:53.57)
Yep. A lot. Now.
Brandon Joyner (02:56.981)
I've been out in California now with you for it'll be seven years in October, which is crazy to think about. But I absolutely love my life. I get to hang out on the beach with amazing people. I get to travel the world. I get to hang out with my best friend. so yeah, thanks for making this a thing with me and I wouldn't change anything. Yeah, it's been awesome.
Mark Burik (03:21.824)
Not a bad way to live. Thanks for helping and building the empire with me. I said when I brought you on like, yeah, it's gonna be cool when this thing is big, but like, what's the point of standing on top of a hill alone? If you got no one to share the view with. Like, kind of sucks.
Brandon Joyner (03:39.671)
Yeah, yeah, I appreciate that mindset that you've always had that like, I remember when we first got out of college, you were always emailing like texting our friends being like, we should go in on a house together like, buy these homes and it makes life special. So you're doing a hell of a job, bud. I love you. And it's been a fun ride. I'm excited to see where the next couple years go.
Mark Burik (03:58.86)
Yeah. Thanks, Ben.
Mark Burik (04:07.074)
Right back at you. Yeah, well, we'll check back in when you're 40 and then again when I'm 50.
Brandon Joyner (04:11.658)
That's another good thing. It's great to have a best friend that's a couple years older than you. You keep me young.
Mark Burik (04:17.422)
Does that hurt?
Brandon Joyner (04:23.586)
Yeah, big birthday for you and you get to celebrate by something I'm excited for is I get to be in the box with you in Manhattan in two days. I know. Yeah, I'm very excited for that. It'll be cool to see you back out on the sand. I think you're crushing it. You're in shape and
Mark Burik (04:26.252)
Yeah, yeah, big moral.
Mark Burik (04:36.536)
Playing the qualifier. We're back in there. Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (04:49.597)
I'm excited that I'll get to be a part of the team still.
Mark Burik (04:52.586)
Yeah, Manhattan Beach is gonna be fun. I'm excited. And it's like, you know, I haven't, I stay in shape, work out, I play volleyball like twice a week with people who I enjoy playing with. Like that's the level of interest that I have now. Like I wanna play. I told the members online, I said, I have two requirements for if I'm going to go out and play volleyball. Do I enjoy your presence and can you set?
Brandon Joyner (05:19.702)
Hahaha
Mark Burik (05:21.196)
If you don't pass, I don't care. Like if you don't get kills, I don't care. But if you can't set like, nah, we're not going to have fun.
Brandon Joyner (05:22.881)
Peace.
Brandon Joyner (05:29.259)
Yeah, that's a pretty easy thing to follow if you're with the guys you're fine with.
Mark Burik (05:34.816)
Yeah. Yeah. We got a lot of great setters out here. but all right. So your attacking game sucks. Why not you? I was, was talking to the general person who's listening. You're attacking game sucks and why? Okay. The very first thing. we're going to give you, big mistakes that we see and how to fix them. And then we're going to give one drill that is just an easy to implement drill so that you can fix it.
And we just filmed this. We're filming more feature YouTube videos, going back to our roots of creating those like really nice high produced videos. And what we talked about yesterday was aiming, knowing where you're going to hit. And I think in the beginning of most careers, you're just chasing the ball and then trying to hit usually generic cross. And then you make up a line swing when you have to.
but there are really specific zones that we have to attack on the court. And no matter what you have to figure out a way, if there's a giant bubble around somebody that is like the length of their arms up over their heads and outside them, how do you hit outside their little sphere of defensive influence? The easy spots. So hitting that deep corner, I call it like generic or vanilla cross.
you're hitting through somebody's chest. So if you don't have 103 mile an hour fastball, that's not going to be really effective. And even if you can throw that 103 mile an hour fastball, throw it into space where they can't touch it. And we get so blinded with power that we aim for the biggest part of the court and defense is naturally set up in the biggest part of the court. So if you're hitting hard, that generic cross that's going to hit the back corner.
It's not a good swing because it's gonna hit somebody in the chest or the platform. All so we have to figure out what angles work and then also what trajectories, like what flight path the ball is taking because you can access the back corner if you hit it high enough and over the defender where they can't touch it. Now you're forcing them into a tomahawk or maybe they have to turn and run for the ball.
Mark Burik (07:54.572)
Right. But if you are going to use the cross, the hard cross and you can't light the ball up, right. You need to find that jumbo or you can aim middle or you can aim sharp sideline. So sharp sideline is if you guys can like visualize a court with me and you go to the sideline and you go a third of the way in from the service line. And then you draw a little like three foot wide rectangle to the net.
Right? That is a good zone for you to hit outside on the perimeter in front of the defender where they have to take at least a step to hit it. The problem with hitting that ball hard or the difficulty for most people is not everybody has the height to hit that down and sharp. So a lot for a lot of players that's reserved for
Brandon Joyner (08:33.697)
Thank
Mark Burik (08:52.824)
cut shots like sharp cut shots to access that part of the court. Or if you can't hit quite as steep or you're stuck in the middle of the court where now you need to have extreme downward angles, which means you need to have an extreme vertical, right? The next best place where you can hit the hardest is deep middle. And this is like a big shocker. If you've ever heard us say deep middle scores points, it's unbelievable.
how many points deep middle can score. So we want to really attack a lot of balls in the seam and then a lot of balls in that sharp diagonal corner along with of course my line perimeter. But even if you are attacking short, know, there's ways we can do that. You can poke in front of the blocker. You can poke short middle. You can use the baby cut, which maybe the baby cut lands on the line side.
but the ball is moving towards the diagonal defender. So they both kind of freeze and then they argue saying that's your ball, that's your ball. But if you're just hitting and you're not aiming, there is a big problem. And even when you start producing smoke, like you really, your arm swing mechanics and your jump get you to the point where you can hit balls down hard. You need to access perimeters and seams so that you're not hitting at.
Brandon Joyner (09:51.415)
Thank
Mark Burik (10:20.556)
Defenders it feels good when you hear that thud when you hit somebody in the chest And yeah, okay you overpowered them, but if you hit them in the chest ten times like even with the the most velocity like four or five of them are coming up and You know now you're now you're hitting percentages down and you're gonna start losing matches
Brandon Joyner (10:32.544)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (10:38.806)
Right.
Brandon Joyner (10:43.413)
Yeah, yeah, I like that perimeter idea. Little story like I know when I when I first started playing a drill, a drill that I would do is I would either draw or I would set up another set of lines inside the court and the distance like if you can imagine another set of lines inside of the normal beach volleyball court and if it's like a foot and a half, two feet from the sideline.
Um, and I wanted every single one of my, my attacks to, to land in there. And I used to get like a little angry when I was playing because like, I would go up and I would be doing all this training and then I would play in tournaments and I would like, I would hit lines a lot. And the other side would be like, Oh, he's so lucky. He's so lucky. And I would get angry and I'd be like, no, it's not. It's I'm doing it on purpose. Yeah.
Mark Burik (11:30.894)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (11:39.598)
I'm aiming there.
Brandon Joyner (11:42.519)
Yeah, I think we just did a YouTube video that covered a little bit of this yesterday, but I think that idea of keeping the ball on a foot from the sideline Obviously, we have those those specific spots that you just mentioned. I love deep middle I think that that's that's great. It's underutilized way too much I think there's even like a saying like in a pickle go deep middle or something like that What is it?
Mark Burik (12:09.272)
When you're in a fiddle, shoot deep middle. When you're in a fiddle, shoot deep middle. Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (12:13.239)
When you're in the middle, yeah, there it is. So I was like, I know it's something like that. Yeah, but yeah, I think just having the idea of how do I get this ball to the sideline is, or the end line is huge because there's a reason that the defense goes back to that like serve received position when they're playing. And that's because
Mark Burik (12:17.004)
Maybe cards, I don't know.
Brandon Joyner (12:37.335)
Right now, especially at the intermediate beginner levels, that's where 95 % of the balls are landing. So if you can be that 5 % that's not hitting those zones, you're going to score a lot. Because people don't like moving. If they have to take a step and a dive, they're probably not getting the touch. And yeah, I think that mindset is perfect. think you nailed it there.
Mark Burik (12:44.515)
Mm.
Mark Burik (13:02.572)
Yeah. And there's, you know, there are some simple, simple drills that you can do here. And like, if you're on a public beach or something, and they have garbage cans, set up two or three garbage cans where the defense would normally be. And all you have to do is hit as hard as you can and not hit those garbage cans. Like you do that time and time again, and it'll work. If you don't have garbage cans, fine. Draw those lines. But remember that that perimeter, like that box,
Brandon Joyner (13:21.611)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (13:32.398)
that we talked about. Remember that the back corners of that perimeter, those are only for jumbos. So even if you hit a perimeter ball, but it would cross where the defender is standing, then it's not really there. That's why I like to walk a third of the way from the service line and then draw those perimeter boxes. And then we have this one little seam down the middle. And you can also design
Brandon Joyner (13:54.327)
Mm.
Mark Burik (14:00.01)
a king and queen of the court where you draw some lines or you put some maybe tennis balls or cones on the court like soft cones. And then you could say, all right, you get three points anytime you get a kill that is untouched in one of those zones. And we did that with the campers today, we're early this weekend when we were working on short shots. I said, we're playing king of the court, but we drew a line and I laid cones, third of the way back from the net. And I said, since we're working on short balls, okay.
Brandon Joyner (14:14.327)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (14:29.208)
We're going to play King and Queen of the court. Every point is worth one, unless you get an untouched kill in the front third of the court. And then, you know, we had one guy who finished it in four swings or four points because he pumped him deep, pumped him deep, and then chopped them short.
Brandon Joyner (14:48.065)
Beautiful. I like it.
Mark Burik (14:48.568)
So mistake number one, you're not aiming. Make sure you access perimeter, make sure you access deep middle. And we just gave you the drill Brandon unforgivable attacking mistake. two.
Brandon Joyner (14:57.459)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. And yeah, number two, this is something I harp on a lot, and it's poor approach spacing. So like, if you don't understand how far from the net you should be or how far from your setter you should be, then you're kind of just going into a blind. And so a really easy way to do this is, I love doing this at our camps, we just reverse engineer the approach.
and you can go to the net, do a full swing so that you don't touch the net. That'll allow you to find your distance from the net. Once you find that, turn into the court, do your normal approach off the net. We like a four step approach. That's what we teach. I think that that distance, regardless of what you're trying, if you do a three step, if you do a five step, whatever it is, that distance is still important.
You're just going to do your approach off of the net, right, left, right, left. If you're right handed, left, right, left, right. If you're left handed and that will allow you to find the minimal distance that you should be approaching from the net. If you like your set off more, it should be a little bit further than that. nobody should be going in front of that because if you're getting set any tighter than that starting position, then you're already in trouble. So
The reason that that spacing from the net is important is because you have to keep the ball in front of you. One of the things that we're kind of talking about today as well as vision and this spacing will help you tackle that. So you'll be able to see the other side of the court more. And the biggest part is that when we're attacking, we need to have momentum. So like, if you can imagine an airplane going down the runway and then taking off,
We airplanes need that starting run in order to get up in the air. And it's the same thing for, for approaching is a lot of the times what we see is people don't have the right spacing. So they're really close to the net and that ball is now dropping on top of them. And I like to say it in the way that if that happens, the ball is the one attacking you rather than you being the attacker. if the ball is attacking you.
Mark Burik (17:10.648)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (17:22.315)
your timing's gonna be off, it's hard to, even if you're great, it's hard to understand when that ball's coming down and you should make a contact. So if you're somebody who hits the ball all over the place on your hand, you're probably underneath the ball too early. And so that spacing from the net is huge. It'll allow you to have some momentum up into your swing. It'll allow you to hit on your way up and keep everything in front of you.
Mark Burik (17:39.66)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (17:50.379)
And then also talk about spacing from the center. I really, think we've simplified this very well where we have the rule of 10. And so if your attacking arm is close to your center, then you should be 10 feet or more away from your center. I like being pretty close to 10 feet. Play around with that. Some of you might like to be inside. If you're playing on like a really deep beach or if you're, if you're on a shallow beach, you might be able to get a little bit further away.
and then when you're if you're on the opposite side and like if I'm a right-handed right side player and my attacking arm is further from my setter then I want to be within 10 feet of my setter and the reason for that is that it just allows your setter to lead the ball on your attacking shoulder easier and If the ball is on our attacking shoulder, we can follow all those mechanics and everything like that We can have a really nice strong high contact
Mark Burik (18:30.541)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (18:50.275)
And that'll help you kind of get the ball over. I think spacing is huge. And I would argue that when we do our camps, when people understand the spacing, it is the easiest, one of the easiest ways for them to level up in their game. If you're a B level trying to get to A, if you're an A trying to get to double A, the spacing alone can get you there the fastest.
Mark Burik (18:53.965)
Yeah.
Mark Burik (19:07.969)
Yeah.
Mark Burik (19:17.706)
Yeah, yeah, once we show them that spacing and they know where to go the the responsibility they have so that they are actually creating a setting window that's big enough for their center to hit and then we explain to the center like why they did that space so that you can set inside or outside that setting window. Then it's just it's lights out without teaching attacking without with teaching only spacing and where set belongs. It's like, boom, we see these light bulbs go on and then you're automatically a better attacker because you're in a
better position so often. And I want to give that caveat to if you're in transition, because I saw one of our top campers this time this last weekend, he would send a ball to the back line, and then he would start his approach way further back. And he was like, Well, you know, I want to help my center as a your approach distance, your body measured it out. Like that is where you have to get
whether it's a short, whether you passed a short ball or whether you pass a ball to the back line, you don't hang out with your setter. You go to your approach distance from the net and then their job is to get you back to the net. I think there are a couple really easy drills that you can do to help this and one of them, there's not even a hit. So the first one is have somebody toss to you, pass and get to your point of hesitation.
If you're a left side, 10 feet from your center and your approach length from the net before the center touches. If you can pass and move and get to that spot before the center touches the ball. Good. That's the first baseline. How much are you going to do this? Like once you understand the concept, try to get that drill life and just figure it out. You don't want to spend a half hour doing this drill. This is like 10 minutes. Understand the concept. Okay. Same thing from the right side.
Brandon Joyner (21:13.291)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (21:15.502)
pass, let the setter catch the ball. But before that setter catches the ball, make sure you're within 10 feet of width of that setter and you're at your approach line. And then coaches throw all different depths. So throw a short ball, see if your hitter can get there. Throw a ball high and deep on the back line. See if they move up to their hitting position before the setter catches. And once they grab onto that your gold. If you're doing this alone, so you don't have a coach or you're not feeding and you're a player.
Easy way to the width is harder to like make sure that you do it alone. But an easy way to get your spacing from the net is after you do that backwards approach that Brandon said where you approach away from the net, take your flip flop, take a bag or a water bottle, whatever you brought to the beach and put it right there next to the court. That way you have this visual cue of okay.
before the setter sets the ball, there's no way that I should be in front of this flip flop or this water bottle that I put outside the court. And that's an easy way for you to like remind yourself constantly that that's where you should be. And I actually did that defensively because I would crowd the net a lot too much. I was so used to playing libero and being like 13 feet from a monster hitter that I got comfortable there, even though it's not a great position to be.
Brandon Joyner (22:35.627)
you.
Mark Burik (22:39.852)
So I had to remind myself to keep depth so that I would get more platform digs instead of getting blasted in the chest and putting a flip-flop on the side of the court during all my practices just reminded me of that. And every time I finished a point and I looked after the other team got a kill and I looked at my marker, I was like, okay, I got to remind myself to get back. So it's a nice like self-coach without needing a coach.
Brandon Joyner (23:02.015)
Yeah. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, I think it's hard to conceptualize a little bit, but when we're talking about the time between your pass and the start of your approach, that might be the most important work that you have to do within a rally. And the more you're willing to work,
Get to that spot the more effective you're gonna be on offense The less you're willing to get to do that extra work and get to that spot the more trouble you're gonna be in so like we we had a Podcast go I think it was last week or two weeks ago where we talked about a lot of serving ideas and we were talking about short and deep and This is why short and deep serves are so effective is because a lot of times what happens is as passers We go and we pass the ball
Mark Burik (23:41.006)
you
Brandon Joyner (23:57.759)
And wherever we pass the ball, that's where we start our approach from. So if you can be somebody that goes against that grain and say, doesn't matter where I'm passing the ball, I'm going to work really hard to get to this flip flop, get to this starting position, start my approach at the right time and the right distance. And that's where you're going to, you're going to see success. Obviously the hardest part is that as matches go on, we get more tired. So.
You start convincing yourself a little bit like, I don't need to work as hard on this one. But if you can fight that idea and be like, no, after the between my past and my, start of my approach, that's going to be the hardest time that I work. I think, I think you can set yourself up for a lot of success. Yeah.
Mark Burik (24:28.002)
Hmm.
Mark Burik (24:40.92)
I like it. Unforgivable mistake number three, that really isn't talked about enough and that Myles Pertain talks about a lot is not recognizing or utilizing your hitting fan. And so the discussion of my hips need to be facing the setter, my hips need to face the ball, I need to use my hips. Or if you were trained in indoor and you get your left foot
way out in front of your right foot on your final two steps so that like your hips turn. There are places and times where that works and somewhere it doesn't. So if you're at home or you're listening and you're not driving, I want straight in front of you to recognize to be 12 o'clock. Then I want you to put one arm facing one o'clock and one arm facing 10 o'clock. This is your hitting fan.
Okay. So that's where your hardest balls can be hit just barely outside of your right shoulder and pretty decent amount across your body. That's where you can hit the hardest balls. So when you take off your hips, your toes should be lined up so that that hitting fan with your right arm at one o'clock and your left arm at 10 o'clock. So that faces the majority of the court.
so that you can access most of the court with heat when you need to. And that also makes shooting a lot easier because shooting is all just a wrist turn. Like there's really nothing that you need beyond pronating your wrist or supinating your wrist to access different parts of the court. But for heat and the ability to hit more places hard so that you can access it, you need to take off so that your toes and your hips are facing that. So some people who...
our left sides, they really wrap their hips around, they fully face their setter and that's okay. But if you do that from the antenna, it's okay. If you end up doing that from the middle of the court or, inside of zone two, so like 10 feet in from the antenna, now you're losing power access to the sharp left part. And a lot of your hitting fan is now starting to face out of bounds.
Mark Burik (27:08.236)
Right? So in the middle, teach people to flatten out their hips, which means if you're left side and you face middle, we want your hips to be facing almost directly middle, maybe up to the back right corner. If you're a right side, this turns into a nightmare and people are cutting their power and their ability to get to the ball. Cause if you take a ton of FIVB and AVP players,
and you see where their toes are facing on takeoff from right side, you'll actually see that their hips and their toes are facing the back middle of the court. And if you were trained as a left side, if you were trained as a middle or somebody just told you, you always have to get your hips closed so that you can rotate. That's a misunderstanding of biomechanics. But if you do that on the right side, now you have a set that's falling over your shoulder.
So the sets attacking you, like Brandon said, you're not attacking it. And your hitting fan is completely out of bounds. So all of the hardest hits your body could produce would be facing out of bounds directly to the court. So now you're only shooting, right? There's no way that you can generate hard heat. if your hips are facing outside the court on the right side. So your toes and your hips really need to face.
maybe the back quarter, but I prefer the back middle so that you can use that one o'clock to 10 o'clock and that's taking on the swath of the court. And then it would be pretty much the exact same because if you're hitting in the middle as a right side, fine, you just still need to operate with that hitting fan. And if you get caught in situations where your hitting fan is facing, you know, somewhere outside the court, it's not the end of the world.
But if it continues to happen, you won't have the ability to hit the ball hard and access the majority of the court.
Brandon Joyner (29:07.671)
Yeah, I think that idea of the hitting fan is great. When I was in college, we called it a, I think it was a hitting corridor or like a hitting hallway, which allowed me to kind of visualize it pretty well. And something that I've been saying, like, I think you and I, when we first started coaching a lot, especially when we were creating all of our courses and everything like that, we would say like left side, you're a hitting corridor, hitting fan should be at that like
strong cross court angle. And while I do think that that's great, I think the error that we see with that a lot is people getting too far outside. And now that hitting fan is going out through the sideline. So like, think an easy way to think about this, if you're confused about the corridor or the fan or whatever, is like, imagine you're walking down a hallway and after you hit, if you continue your momentum after you land,
that momentum should take you out through the end line. I've loosened up on that a lot. You know, I think some people do a really good job of staying like that rule. We talked about the rule of 10 and being 10 feet away from your center. Some of you, even as a right-handed left side player, you might feel more comfortable around like eight to six feet. If that's what allows your momentum to go forward. And then I think a little bonus bonus.
Mark Burik (30:13.934)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (30:35.169)
tip for today, even though we're not talking about setting, is if you're a setter and you want to be extremely effective and be one of those people that Mark invites out to play with them and because you're a good setter, understanding those corridors or that fan is huge because if you can create that fan for them, then that's what makes a really good setter in my opinion. It's like we're not just setting spots on the court, we're setting a ball that allows
Mark Burik (30:59.992)
Mm.
Brandon Joyner (31:05.009)
that attackers hitting fan to go through the end line and if you can do that you're helping your partner be more effective as well. And that takes a little bit of peripheral vision so like after they pass you should be able to see them before you set and then you're setting the ball that helps them.
Mark Burik (31:14.006)
Yeah.
Mark Burik (31:24.706)
Yeah. And the last part of this is that some people have different hitting fans. So one of the guys that I'm working with online one on one, we notice that from the left side, he was hitting some of his hardest balls wrist away. So outside the right side of his body. Okay. And I was like, Hey, your body might be shaped and your mechanics might just be shaped. So that wrist away is what your body favors.
So we actually changed the angle of approach that he takes in so that he is now going outside in. So breaking our base rules from the right side so that he hits his hard balls straight on. And then he also can access his wrist away with a lot of heat because he favors wrist away. That's where he's comfortable. That's where he generates heat. Some people really favor cross body. So then you could play with those approach angles.
Brandon Joyner (31:59.329)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (32:17.559)
Yeah, and I'm gonna move on and go into number so I'm gonna I'm actually gonna jump one because I think our Mistake number four is kind of like the cherry on top. So I'm gonna go with I'm gonna skip to five and then we'll talk about vision a little bit but for five is if you have a weak contact and
The biggest reason, what I mean by weak contact is if you're consistently hitting the ball on your forearm, you're getting a lot of fingers, you've completely missed the ball, I think a lot of it has to do with our arm swing. And so one of the things that happens with people who have bad contacts is this elbow comes forward way too early and then they try to swing at the ball and then that's when...
They're just getting a lot of contact. If you're early, this happens as well. We, this morning at our morning training in Hermosa, we went through a lot of arm swing mechanics and everything like that. And we just had people standing on the ground and really going through this drawback motion, trusting the time that it takes. I think for some reason we convince ourselves that it doesn't, we don't have enough time to go through that motion.
But we do, especially if you're a fingertip hitter because you're hitting early. And that means that if we went through that full drawback and then found that high contact, you'll be able to go. I think a really good way to think about this is a lot of the times we talked about this with serving as well. The third contact is not meant for you to just get the ball over the net on the other side of the court. The goal of attacking
should be speed up the play. And if you can think about, I love using this idea of glass. If you can think about above the net, there's a wall of glass and no matter what you're doing, an attack, a shot, a pokey, whatever, you have to break the glass. And if you're going in and you're doing these really early elbow pushes and you're kind of just pushing the ball, that'll probably bounce off the glass. You're not getting in trouble at all.
Brandon Joyner (34:33.655)
Okay, so go through, find that full motion, and then go through that swing.
Mark Burik (34:41.134)
Should we come up with a product for that glass? Just like a little foam noodles that you can lay on top of a net. And so that like people have to hit that for their serves.
Brandon Joyner (34:46.23)
Yeah
Brandon Joyner (34:50.423)
I mean, I've been saying it so much recently, it's about time. And I think a really easy drill to do with this is start on the ground. Really focus on what is your arm swing feel like, find that drawback. I say it a lot, imagine you have an annoying friend, annoying sibling, whatever it is, and they're standing behind you. When you go, you should...
Mark Burik (34:55.458)
Yeah. Okay.
Mark Burik (35:18.328)
break their nose.
Brandon Joyner (35:19.553)
breaking their nose with that back elbow or hitting them in the chest or something like that. I always talk about what's the monkey in Lion King, Rafiki. I like that one move where he's like, bah, bah. That's what it should feel like is we're Rafiking it and then we're going through that full arm swing. Yeah, and just wrapping around the ball.
Mark Burik (35:27.406)
Graffiti. yeah.
Yeah.
Mark Burik (35:41.166)
Did you see Lion King 2 by the way? Yeah, not bad.
Brandon Joyner (35:43.703)
I did. so that was good. Or Mufasa you're talking about. Yeah, yeah. No, we don't have time for that. Mufasa's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Mark Burik (35:48.47)
Yeah, yeah, Mufasa. yeah, I didn't see Lion King 2, but I saw Mufasa, which I think is like, Mufasa was all right. All right. On our movie fans podcast, we'll do that. Now, okay, so the last mistake is just not having vision. Okay, spacing counts for vision. And then just having your focus in two different places. Like I know it's a lot to just track the ball and get your feet to the ball, but.
One way is to just spread your peripherals so that you always know what's going on on the other side of the quarter, at least where they are. The better you get at this, the more you're going to be taking a hard look when your hands go back. So if we're taking our approach on the last two steps, when your hands go back, your eyes or a single eyeball should shoot forward. Okay. Yeah. Shoot your eyeballs at people.
Brandon Joyner (36:41.525)
Only visual. Just one.
Mark Burik (36:46.146)
But if you don't, if you can't recognize after the every attack, this is why I chose to hit that spot. Right. Because this person was here and this person was here. That has, there has to be a reason why you chose a spot. Okay. Baseline is hit that perimeter. If you can't look at all, just find perimeters all day.
Brandon Joyner (37:03.511)
Mm-hmm.
Mark Burik (37:12.738)
The next level to that is seeing exactly where they are. And one very easy drill that you could do at home with nobody is toss a high ball. I'm talking like above the top of a backboard, like that high. After you look at the flight of the ball. So don't look at the wall while you're doing this, but after you toss, you're going to look to the ball until it gets to its peak. Then you're going to look at the wall.
and then back to the ball again and then just hit the ball. Like that alone will help and you can also do that with a partner. You can add some like signifiers where your partner, once your toss reaches its peak, they can show you an open hand or a closed hand that won't really change what you do, but all you have to do is say open or closed and then hit the ball just until you can get your eyes ball court ball.
Like that is very important. And a lot of the mistakes that we see at camps is people toss while looking and waiting for it and then try to find the ball. You have to toss, find the ball first, then get to the ball, then see the court, then hit the ball, then look at the ball and hit the ball. Okay. So it's a very easy drill. Toss high balls to yourself, follow the ball to its peak, look forward, then look to the ball again and hit it.
Brandon Joyner (38:28.363)
Thank
Brandon Joyner (38:38.933)
Yeah, and I would try to minimize how big that, like if you feel like you're nodding, that's too much. So it should imagine like your head probably shouldn't move much. You're just peeking down and then peeking back up. And I always say this too, I think, I imagine attacking as like baking a cake. There are certain ingredients that you have to have, right?
Mark Burik (38:44.662)
Mm-hmm.
Brandon Joyner (39:05.003)
You have to have the approach, have to have the timing, you have to have the spacing, you have to have all the set call, all that stuff. The vision is like the cherry on top. It's the extra stuff that you're putting on top of the cake that makes it a little bit better, but if you didn't have it, you're still okay. And easy, if you have people that just get out to the court and you just play,
Mark Burik (39:18.094)
Hmm.
Brandon Joyner (39:33.387)
We've talked about this before on the podcast, but tell your partner that you don't want any set calls. Tell them that you just want to go up. You want to use your vision and you want to try to score. It's one of the biggest, best learning experience I've ever had in my life. happened in a pro tournament and I thought my partner was crazy. Drew Malin talked to him a couple of days ago. He's doing great. but yeah, he going into it, he took a chance. He was like, I'm not calling any more calls for you for the rest of the tournament.
Mark Burik (39:38.605)
Yes.
Brandon Joyner (40:01.531)
And it allowed me to start looking at the court. It allowed me to trust myself. And that's when I really started like kind of climbing the ladder. But it took me being extremely uncomfortable for a little bit.
Mark Burik (40:12.974)
In the last like six or seven weeks of playing with Kurt, I can't think of a single instance that I've told him Highliner cut. I'm just like, I'm setting, I'm getting ready to cover. And then I'm just like, do what you do. I know that he can see the court. I know that he can feel the blocker. He's at that level. He doesn't need me to help. And he shouldn't.
Brandon Joyner (40:20.053)
Yeah, it's very unnecessary.
Brandon Joyner (40:32.898)
Mm-hmm. I played with a lot of people where I lied to them. Like, I want them to be aggressive and they have a blocker up the net and I'm like, nobody! And it's a civil swing. I'm like, hey, go for it. Yeah.
Mark Burik (40:40.366)
I've done that. I've done that. Tricking them into being aggressive. Okay. guys. At the end of this episode, we've got a couple pieces of homework for you. One, please email support it better at beach or just DM us and say, Hey, I'm a coach and I listened to your podcast. That would help us out a lot. Number two, if you've got a friend who is struggling with attacking or you think they could attack better, just share this with them. Okay.
shared in your group, help us out, help us spread the word so that like the level of volleyball everywhere just goes up and people can have an easier time because these tips will help make the game easier, help get you more friends, more partners, but also give you more comfort with the game. Okay. And if you want to join us for a training camp, you are more than welcome. Head to better beach.com forward slash camps. If you're listening as a coach and you want help,
running your club, organizing your team, developing your systems. Brandon is heading up our beach volleyball club consulting program. He's also working with indoor clubs because not much changes from the business organizational practice planning standpoint. So we're working with indoor clubs and beach volleyball clubs and teams who are new to coaching and new to growth and really want to set their business, their club, their team on the right path.
So you can find that at better at beach.com as well. And if you're on YouTube or if you're not, we're trying to get to a hundred thousand. We want that plaque. So please go and subscribe on YouTube and subscribe to us on your favorite podcast channels or all of them, even if you don't.
Brandon Joyner (42:13.877)
Yeah, subscribe.
Brandon Joyner (42:20.631)
I want a YouTube plaque picture with you. We need it.
Mark Burik (42:24.652)
Yes, we're doing it. It'll happen no matter what. I just want it to happen like before September 30th. All right, that is it. Thank you guys so much for listening. Wish us a happy birthday. Wish us all luck for all of the teams that Brandon's coaching at Manhattan Beach Open and for me and Kurt playing our first tournament in a long time. It should be a good time.
Brandon Joyner (42:29.717)
Right. Yeah.
Brandon Joyner (42:52.949)
Let's do it, Yeah.
Mark Burik (42:54.286)
Yeah, baby. See you guys later. We'll see you on the sand.
