This guy is on point. They used to teach the same in baseball with infielding and baserunning and it was wrong there too. Turning the hips as quick as possible enables you to speed up quicker.
Thanks! That's cool. Do you know if the "conventional wisdom" in baseball has changed nowadays, or still the same? Did you see the baseball video with this same message that I linked in the description? I like the "turning the hips as quick as possible" explanation, because that's basically exactly what it is. With the big first step you are not doing that to your hips. Thanks for that thought, it's always good to have several ways to describe these things! :)
Nice! Yeah, I have yet to see a good defender do what some of the coaches out there say you should do (start with a big step with the leg furthest away from the ball), but I'm always open to see proof of things being otherwise. But so far, no real game footage of a player doing that, and lots of game footage of players doing what I describe here! :)
I think you should mention the direction the feet are pointing. Like if you are slightly pointing outside your body its slower but if your feet are pointing slightly inside it give you the track running start to take off. And i mean slightly pointing inside. If your feet are normally straight lets call that 90° but if you turn them in to about 80° then its better for push off and chasing the ball. But great video!!!
Interesting! I had someone else (in a Facebook group) also mention that the direction the feet are pointing is important, but he actually said your feet should point outwards, toes of one foot towards the net and toes of the other foot towards the sideline, which i think means both feet at 135 degrees the way you described it. I can see potential advantage with both. If one does like you say, then the outside foot that pushes first is in a slightly better position to push away. The inside foot has a few more degrees it has to twist before the inside foot step, but my guess is that twist won't be slowed down by those degrees, it's lightning fast anyways. So potentially one is quicker at taking off with feet pointed inwards as you say, I have heard others propose this too. Personally I haven't tried this too much so what I'll end up doing is play around with it a little and see what happens, maybe in the future attempt to measure it somehow.. The potential advantage I could see with having feet outwards is that it might be a better starting position for other defensive moves than taking off sprinting for a cut or lineshot. Especially if you just need to fall down to one knee right next to you I'm thinking might be quicker, and possibly that low spike defenses that require bending of knees would be quicker if you start with toes outward.. Not sure! If we consider all of these things then we are trying to understand the answer to the question "what is the best defensive stance" rather than "what stance will provide the quickest takeoff in either direction" which was the topic I guess for my video and your comment. Two related topics but not entirely the same. I'd even be open to the idea that IF your stance is better for running up shots but a "toes out" stance would be better for other types of defense, that a defender might do it differently from game to game, based on the opponents tendencies and preferred attacking style..? :) So in the end, for this particular detail I can't say I have any definitive belief at least yet.. But I am super curious to hear even more arguments and thoughts, and I'm going to run some experiments with different foot angles.. You could very well be right! :)
Thanks for this video and all the work behind it !!! Much appreciated. So i just re watched my games from last week, and all 4 of us do what you describe here (which gives 4 more data points to your theory ^^).
Thanks! And amazing hahah, I love when people actually have the determination to go and check! Had anyone of you ever trained this specific detail with a coach or have you just done what came naturally for you? Damn, I realized now I need to reply to that email of yours, been so busy in the last weeks trying to put this video together before summer is completely over so been forgetting some other things..! :)
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast I know for certain 2 are "just" ' show up and play' players who never got trained (for sand at least). Also, no offense to them, as one could argue they are better than me. The 3rd one did go through practices and may be got either advice. On my end , i always did that footwork naturally. Though i watch better at beach and last year they had a video advocating for the "non natural" foot work. I tried to work on it a few times. I even asked my wife (she doesn't play) to come throw balls. But the natural way just came back.. I hadn't broken it down like you. I had more or less accepted that it was the best way, at least for me. So thank you for confirming ^^
@@fredDeclerck Interesting, thanks! :) I agree, the natural stuff always comes back.. and even if you look at coaches who advocate for the other way, when they do it themselves they actually do it the natural way.. (at least the ones I have seen!) The guy in the baseball video said one slightly funny thing: "You know the saying do as I say not as I do.. Well, here it's more like do as I do and not as I say..." and I think that is relevant to some coaching out there. In the beach volleyball coaches group on Facebook there are other coaches too that teach it this way and are equally surprised anyone teaches it in another way. Hope you can continue doing what you are doing now with bigger confidence! One less thing that needs to be worked on! :)
I agree, pushing off with the leg closest to the target is stupid. Now what are your views on split step in the sand? Some defenders use it effectively in my opinion.
Yes.. Hmm, I haven't thought too too much about splitstepping in defense, but as long as one is able to determine the timing of when the attacker will hit the ball, I can't see really any disadvantages with it and a potential "added explosiveness" benefit. I made a video a long time ago about splitstepping in serve receive, where I find it a bit troublesome especially on floatserves, because the splitstep sort of "puts a timing" on when your body will want to start moving in some direction, and that timing isn't necessarily the same timing as when you have the right information from the balls flight path for it to be smart to initiate the movement, because of the irregularities of a floatserve. But defense has much less of these "timing irregularities", the one I can think ofright away is when a shot touches the top of a block and gets deflected into a higher flight path, that might throw the timing off at times. When I looked for pro examples for this video I noticed Taylor Crabb does split step at least sometimes.. here's one example, and the text in the parenthesis is the note I wrote for myself in my document: ua-cam.com/video/tMJTHx4-5oY/v-deo.html (somewhat hard to see because of split step but otherwise good example) Another guess/hypothesis is that a split step will be more effective the harder the sand is (the closer it resembles a solid floor with good grip.) The splitstep/stretch shortening cycle makes your muscles contract more explosively, and if the ground can't "hold" that power (runny deep sand or for example a slippery floor, or extreme case on ice in snow volleyball!), then the added power from the splitstep might cause more harm than help, easiest described with the extreme example of walking on slippery ice where you have to be very gentle with the surface under you to build any momentum at all. Do you have any players in mind that use the splitstep efficiently?
I know may great setters who are able to set the ball without making any sound, but as much as I try I can’t without carrying. Can you make a video on how to set without making noise. Or do you have any tips on how to
Hey! Sorry for such a late answer, UA-cam doesn't seem to notify me of all comments for some reason.. (I think I have fixed this issue now..) Anyway, that is a great video-idea. I might look into doing a video on that theme in the future. The handsetting course that I will create will for sure cover this topic. For now, this video ( ua-cam.com/video/cy2PdCjN3AU/v-deo.html ) which is maybe my most liked handsetting video partly gives some info on this, hopefully it can help for now! :)
Hi I think u r right but the problem comes when u take positive step with the leg closer to the ball. That's why coaches learn first big step to eliminate that.
Ah yes! That makes sense, if you have a somewhat wide starting position and then take a positive step, your stance will now become just even wider and you will have even more trouble getting moving from this position.. Exception would be a very narrow starting position where I think a little bit of a positive step is fine/natural.. I have never coached a player with the tendency that you talk about though.. maybe I have been lucky? Not sure.. Regardless, I do think it's bad practice to teach something that is actually not true. If you need to do it as a coach to save time (because telling people to just take one big first step is definitely a shorter explanation than what I gave in this video), in my opinion you should at least let the players know that this is not 100% the truth but just a way to teach it that is roughly right. Because otherwise you will have players who will do it "right" naturally and based on this teaching of the coach try to change to something unnatural that makes them slow. But thanks for helping me understand how that coaching cue might have gotten created, I think I have heard this thought before sometime but forgotten it..! :)
@@joscharutert392 You mean if one tries to get moving without even twisting the leg closest to the ball? (Basically what "the coaches" teach if you follow their advice literally?)
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast I pictured what Karel said as: Some people are taking a false step with the court-facing leg first, instead of outside side, then inside, like you showed. Did I misunderstand? My answer was that that's still better than only pushing off and taking a big step, with no false step at all.
@@joscharutert392 Ahh! I interpreted karels comment as leg closer to the ball taking a step towards the ball rather than backwards towards the other leg (positive rather than negative), a bit like the examples with a narrow defensive position in the video. And hahah, now I am quiestioning myself if I am misunderstanding your comment too! Maybe we need to wait for confirmation! :)
Really? Emotional support, caring and healing? This is exactly what my last relationship lacked and I ended up like total wreck. Fortunately every experience even bad one brings a new perspective to life. So my question remain the same. What do you bring to the table.
I actually think the reason why most people have a negative step is because they are slightly off balance when the inside foot pivots and the slight negative step helps them rebalance. This is where I think slightly inward knees helps. Not only does it put you in a more powerful stance to push off that outside foot, it also provides better balance and stability over that inside foot, so it simply can pivot in place and not have a significant negative step. That being said, you can sometimes have a slight negative step with the inside foot when you push very fast and hard with the outside foot, but this typically happens on a hard surface (baseball field, tennis court, etc). It should not happen in the sand. Djokovic is the best at returning serves in tennis and watch this slow mo video of his setup and subsequent lateral movement. Knees are always slightly inward. Would not suggest such a wide stance however on sand. ua-cam.com/video/4wXKFZJ0WAM/v-deo.html Stein Metzger also has a video where he talks about this. ua-cam.com/video/8P7ABhnLgqs/v-deo.html
I saw this just now! Not sure why, but I have realized I do not get notifications on all comments that I get, so I miss some of them until I one day (like today) decide to go search specifically for missed comments! So sorry for that. So yes, inward knees very well might be a good idea. The people I have seen suggest inward knees earlier, have had more extremely "inward" knees than the two videos you attached.. Which has made me realize that I believe if you have "extremely inward" knees then the other move that Stein talks about (the drop move on hard driven balls) might get slower/more difficult to do, which might be an overall less optimized technique. But a slightly inward knee sort of just to feel a bit more "connected" to the ground could be a great thing, at least as long as it still allows the player to be "relaxed" so that a quick reaction speed can be attained. I have to experiment more with this one day, still lots of corners of this game that I have too little experience from to really have a strong opinion! Have you been playing with slightly inward knees and felt that it helps you? Thanks for the comment, always good to have one extra round of thinking around these things! Sorry for the delay in the reply, I have slowly started to reach the amount of comments on the channel that I am not able to keep up 100% with my answers, but I will continue to try - answering to these genuine discussions usually is super valuable.
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast All good totally understand? Yes slightly inwards knees has helped tremendously in pushing off laterally. Even if you try this at home right now in your living room, you can feel how much more power you can attain with the knees slightly in. Must have to do with biomechanic alignment of the ankle, knee and hip in relation to the center of mass. There's a reason why baseball players stealing bases and tennis players do it as well.
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast would love to pick your brain a bit more about the "relaxed" defender position you mentioned in your comment. I've been trying to think about that lately, and whether it's better to be engaged and low but relaxed to the fire the fast twitch muscles quickly. Or is it better to be low and muscles activated so you can fire them right away?
Hahah, hopefully so! 😅 Thanks! I'm looking forward to seeing if anyone will actually be able to provide any good counterarguments with video examples to this one.. Sometimes the jolt step isn't so explosive and I guess the foot closest to the ball can also twist in the sand a certain amount so it can really look like a "big first step" but it still isn't really.. We will see, I'm open for letting the Internet provide more counterarguments than I was able to come up with myself! 🤓
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast 'big first step' is just wrong, because you want to let gravity do its work and create a nice angle to powerfully push off. 'Starting with big step' does neither.
@@joscharutert392 True! I guess if you use the leg further off from the ball to make your body do a "rocking movement" and twist the leg that is closest to the ball at the same time, then it sort of looks like a "big first step", but still isn't truly.. Does that make sense?
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast Yeah, it's not 'reaching out to make a step', but putting your foot down in a way that creates the correct (horizontal) angle in your lower leg. Like in a sprint start in the 100 meter s.
@@joscharutert392 Yess. In a sense it's about transferring yourself from the "neutral" defensive position into a sprinting position as fast as possible. Actually, some people think you should have your knees inwards in the defensive position, because then in some sense one of the legs is already better twisted into what is supposed to happen afterwards.. However, the other leg is at the same time twisted the wrong direction.. I am not sure what I think about this theory yet... But my guess is that my thinking would ultimately go that the benefits with that would be smaller than the disadvantages, because you make it more difficult for yourself to for example "fall onto one knee" to the side and play defense on a ball that is relatively close to you. But I haven't thought through every scenario regarding this and I have barely ever tried it myself.
Hahah not sure if we ever talked about this or not, but not surprised if this is one of the things you think coaches teach wrong! :) We gotta get that podcast episode re-recorded soon, now enough time has passed so we will almost be able to have a fresh start where we don't remember what we talked about anymore!
@@vbsand5882 Had to go find a video to see what you mean, I'll put it here just in case someone in the future is curious: ua-cam.com/video/5smY-Yn7q5k/v-deo.html But yes, that's the same movement pattern! From a split-step in this particular case! :)
Thanks for the feedback! :) Depends on my target audience really. The "useless talking about nothing" is usually what makes all the difference for about 5% of players that are really committed to the sport and desperate for answers that will give them long term understanding and success. Without these small details and nuances the lessons often end up misinterprated and misunderstood which happens all the time in the beach volleyball world and makes people plateau in their careers because their understanding of how to do certain parts of the sport is incomplete/false. It is this effect that the about 5% of players, including me, desperately want to avoid, because it sucks training year after year without getting any better. In that perspective listening to a few minutes more explanation becomes a no-brainer if the alternative is being stuck and frustrated for years. :) That being said, there are plenty of shorter, quicker videos out there from other channels that go more straight to the point so feel free to go and watch those instead! :) (No guarantee from my side that those videos won't oversimplify their guidance though, to the point that you end up believing false ideas that will make you get stuck in your progress as a player. This very video here is a great example of this effect, I'd say 99% of beach coaches teach these steps in a different way than how good players actually do them, which ends up in a huge part of the beach volleyball community having some misunderstanding regarding the topic and playing worse than they should thanks to it.) Meanwhile, I will keep doing what I am doing for the people who like it, because I believe in it and this 5% of players that like what I do actually exist! All of that being said, I do understand the value of keeping content short also, we are all busy. I won't make my content shorter by removing important details though, I try to rather come up with smart ways to explain things just as well with less words, in a more compact way, etc. Ideas on how I could do that better is something I'd be delighted to receive! :) Have a good one!
This guy is on point. They used to teach the same in baseball with infielding and baserunning and it was wrong there too. Turning the hips as quick as possible enables you to speed up quicker.
Thanks! That's cool. Do you know if the "conventional wisdom" in baseball has changed nowadays, or still the same? Did you see the baseball video with this same message that I linked in the description?
I like the "turning the hips as quick as possible" explanation, because that's basically exactly what it is. With the big first step you are not doing that to your hips. Thanks for that thought, it's always good to have several ways to describe these things! :)
I’ve seen this as the approach some of the best defenders take! Thank you!
Nice! Yeah, I have yet to see a good defender do what some of the coaches out there say you should do (start with a big step with the leg furthest away from the ball), but I'm always open to see proof of things being otherwise. But so far, no real game footage of a player doing that, and lots of game footage of players doing what I describe here! :)
I think you should mention the direction the feet are pointing. Like if you are slightly pointing outside your body its slower but if your feet are pointing slightly inside it give you the track running start to take off. And i mean slightly pointing inside. If your feet are normally straight lets call that 90° but if you turn them in to about 80° then its better for push off and chasing the ball. But great video!!!
Interesting! I had someone else (in a Facebook group) also mention that the direction the feet are pointing is important, but he actually said your feet should point outwards, toes of one foot towards the net and toes of the other foot towards the sideline, which i think means both feet at 135 degrees the way you described it.
I can see potential advantage with both. If one does like you say, then the outside foot that pushes first is in a slightly better position to push away. The inside foot has a few more degrees it has to twist before the inside foot step, but my guess is that twist won't be slowed down by those degrees, it's lightning fast anyways. So potentially one is quicker at taking off with feet pointed inwards as you say, I have heard others propose this too. Personally I haven't tried this too much so what I'll end up doing is play around with it a little and see what happens, maybe in the future attempt to measure it somehow..
The potential advantage I could see with having feet outwards is that it might be a better starting position for other defensive moves than taking off sprinting for a cut or lineshot. Especially if you just need to fall down to one knee right next to you I'm thinking might be quicker, and possibly that low spike defenses that require bending of knees would be quicker if you start with toes outward.. Not sure! If we consider all of these things then we are trying to understand the answer to the question "what is the best defensive stance" rather than "what stance will provide the quickest takeoff in either direction" which was the topic I guess for my video and your comment. Two related topics but not entirely the same. I'd even be open to the idea that IF your stance is better for running up shots but a "toes out" stance would be better for other types of defense, that a defender might do it differently from game to game, based on the opponents tendencies and preferred attacking style..? :)
So in the end, for this particular detail I can't say I have any definitive belief at least yet.. But I am super curious to hear even more arguments and thoughts, and I'm going to run some experiments with different foot angles.. You could very well be right! :)
No would in an if-clause! (Minute 10)
Other than that, no objection! Great content!
Hahah I know I make grammattical errors here and there, but this one I was unaware of! Gotta double check that one..! Thanks! :)
Thanks for this video and all the work behind it !!! Much appreciated.
So i just re watched my games from last week, and all 4 of us do what you describe here (which gives 4 more data points to your theory ^^).
Thanks! And amazing hahah, I love when people actually have the determination to go and check! Had anyone of you ever trained this specific detail with a coach or have you just done what came naturally for you?
Damn, I realized now I need to reply to that email of yours, been so busy in the last weeks trying to put this video together before summer is completely over so been forgetting some other things..! :)
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast
I know for certain 2 are "just" ' show up and play' players who never got trained (for sand at least). Also, no offense to them, as one could argue they are better than me.
The 3rd one did go through practices and may be got either advice.
On my end , i always did that footwork naturally. Though i watch better at beach and last year they had a video advocating for the "non natural" foot work.
I tried to work on it a few times. I even asked my wife (she doesn't play) to come throw balls. But the natural way just came back..
I hadn't broken it down like you. I had more or less accepted that it was the best way, at least for me.
So thank you for confirming ^^
@@fredDeclerck Interesting, thanks! :) I agree, the natural stuff always comes back.. and even if you look at coaches who advocate for the other way, when they do it themselves they actually do it the natural way.. (at least the ones I have seen!)
The guy in the baseball video said one slightly funny thing: "You know the saying do as I say not as I do.. Well, here it's more like do as I do and not as I say..." and I think that is relevant to some coaching out there. In the beach volleyball coaches group on Facebook there are other coaches too that teach it this way and are equally surprised anyone teaches it in another way.
Hope you can continue doing what you are doing now with bigger confidence! One less thing that needs to be worked on! :)
I agree, pushing off with the leg closest to the target is stupid. Now what are your views on split step in the sand? Some defenders use it effectively in my opinion.
Yes.. Hmm, I haven't thought too too much about splitstepping in defense, but as long as one is able to determine the timing of when the attacker will hit the ball, I can't see really any disadvantages with it and a potential "added explosiveness" benefit. I made a video a long time ago about splitstepping in serve receive, where I find it a bit troublesome especially on floatserves, because the splitstep sort of "puts a timing" on when your body will want to start moving in some direction, and that timing isn't necessarily the same timing as when you have the right information from the balls flight path for it to be smart to initiate the movement, because of the irregularities of a floatserve. But defense has much less of these "timing irregularities", the one I can think ofright away is when a shot touches the top of a block and gets deflected into a higher flight path, that might throw the timing off at times.
When I looked for pro examples for this video I noticed Taylor Crabb does split step at least sometimes.. here's one example, and the text in the parenthesis is the note I wrote for myself in my document: ua-cam.com/video/tMJTHx4-5oY/v-deo.html (somewhat hard to see because of split step but otherwise good example)
Another guess/hypothesis is that a split step will be more effective the harder the sand is (the closer it resembles a solid floor with good grip.) The splitstep/stretch shortening cycle makes your muscles contract more explosively, and if the ground can't "hold" that power (runny deep sand or for example a slippery floor, or extreme case on ice in snow volleyball!), then the added power from the splitstep might cause more harm than help, easiest described with the extreme example of walking on slippery ice where you have to be very gentle with the surface under you to build any momentum at all.
Do you have any players in mind that use the splitstep efficiently?
too late to the party, but I feel like doing split step on the sand *deteriorates* speed on sand.
I know may great setters who are able to set the ball without making any sound, but as much as I try I can’t without carrying. Can you make a video on how to set without making noise. Or do you have any tips on how to
Hey! Sorry for such a late answer, UA-cam doesn't seem to notify me of all comments for some reason.. (I think I have fixed this issue now..)
Anyway, that is a great video-idea. I might look into doing a video on that theme in the future. The handsetting course that I will create will for sure cover this topic. For now, this video ( ua-cam.com/video/cy2PdCjN3AU/v-deo.html ) which is maybe my most liked handsetting video partly gives some info on this, hopefully it can help for now! :)
Hi I think u r right but the problem comes when u take positive step with the leg closer to the ball. That's why coaches learn first big step to eliminate that.
Ah yes! That makes sense, if you have a somewhat wide starting position and then take a positive step, your stance will now become just even wider and you will have even more trouble getting moving from this position.. Exception would be a very narrow starting position where I think a little bit of a positive step is fine/natural..
I have never coached a player with the tendency that you talk about though.. maybe I have been lucky? Not sure.. Regardless, I do think it's bad practice to teach something that is actually not true. If you need to do it as a coach to save time (because telling people to just take one big first step is definitely a shorter explanation than what I gave in this video), in my opinion you should at least let the players know that this is not 100% the truth but just a way to teach it that is roughly right. Because otherwise you will have players who will do it "right" naturally and based on this teaching of the coach try to change to something unnatural that makes them slow.
But thanks for helping me understand how that coaching cue might have gotten created, I think I have heard this thought before sometime but forgotten it..! :)
Yeah, but no false step at all is the worst method of all.
@@joscharutert392 You mean if one tries to get moving without even twisting the leg closest to the ball? (Basically what "the coaches" teach if you follow their advice literally?)
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast I pictured what Karel said as: Some people are taking a false step with the court-facing leg first, instead of outside side, then inside, like you showed. Did I misunderstand? My answer was that that's still better than only pushing off and taking a big step, with no false step at all.
@@joscharutert392 Ahh! I interpreted karels comment as leg closer to the ball taking a step towards the ball rather than backwards towards the other leg (positive rather than negative), a bit like the examples with a narrow defensive position in the video. And hahah, now I am quiestioning myself if I am misunderstanding your comment too! Maybe we need to wait for confirmation! :)
Really? Emotional support, caring and healing? This is exactly what my last relationship lacked and I ended up like total wreck. Fortunately every experience even bad one brings a new perspective to life. So my question remain the same. What do you bring to the table.
I'm not sure you commented on the right video here..! 🤔🧐
I actually think the reason why most people have a negative step is because they are slightly off balance when the inside foot pivots and the slight negative step helps them rebalance. This is where I think slightly inward knees helps. Not only does it put you in a more powerful stance to push off that outside foot, it also provides better balance and stability over that inside foot, so it simply can pivot in place and not have a significant negative step.
That being said, you can sometimes have a slight negative step with the inside foot when you push very fast and hard with the outside foot, but this typically happens on a hard surface (baseball field, tennis court, etc). It should not happen in the sand.
Djokovic is the best at returning serves in tennis and watch this slow mo video of his setup and subsequent lateral movement. Knees are always slightly inward. Would not suggest such a wide stance however on sand.
ua-cam.com/video/4wXKFZJ0WAM/v-deo.html
Stein Metzger also has a video where he talks about this.
ua-cam.com/video/8P7ABhnLgqs/v-deo.html
I thought you wanted to have a discussion about this?
Ok guess not
I saw this just now! Not sure why, but I have realized I do not get notifications on all comments that I get, so I miss some of them until I one day (like today) decide to go search specifically for missed comments! So sorry for that.
So yes, inward knees very well might be a good idea. The people I have seen suggest inward knees earlier, have had more extremely "inward" knees than the two videos you attached.. Which has made me realize that I believe if you have "extremely inward" knees then the other move that Stein talks about (the drop move on hard driven balls) might get slower/more difficult to do, which might be an overall less optimized technique. But a slightly inward knee sort of just to feel a bit more "connected" to the ground could be a great thing, at least as long as it still allows the player to be "relaxed" so that a quick reaction speed can be attained. I have to experiment more with this one day, still lots of corners of this game that I have too little experience from to really have a strong opinion!
Have you been playing with slightly inward knees and felt that it helps you?
Thanks for the comment, always good to have one extra round of thinking around these things! Sorry for the delay in the reply, I have slowly started to reach the amount of comments on the channel that I am not able to keep up 100% with my answers, but I will continue to try - answering to these genuine discussions usually is super valuable.
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast All good totally understand? Yes slightly inwards knees has helped tremendously in pushing off laterally. Even if you try this at home right now in your living room, you can feel how much more power you can attain with the knees slightly in. Must have to do with biomechanic alignment of the ankle, knee and hip in relation to the center of mass. There's a reason why baseball players stealing bases and tennis players do it as well.
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast would love to pick your brain a bit more about the "relaxed" defender position you mentioned in your comment. I've been trying to think about that lately, and whether it's better to be engaged and low but relaxed to the fire the fast twitch muscles quickly. Or is it better to be low and muscles activated so you can fire them right away?
What the PROs do: 3:20
Slowly but surely the truth is arising. Haha! Really well explained.
Hahah, hopefully so! 😅 Thanks! I'm looking forward to seeing if anyone will actually be able to provide any good counterarguments with video examples to this one.. Sometimes the jolt step isn't so explosive and I guess the foot closest to the ball can also twist in the sand a certain amount so it can really look like a "big first step" but it still isn't really.. We will see, I'm open for letting the Internet provide more counterarguments than I was able to come up with myself! 🤓
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast 'big first step' is just wrong, because you want to let gravity do its work and create a nice angle to powerfully push off. 'Starting with big step' does neither.
@@joscharutert392 True! I guess if you use the leg further off from the ball to make your body do a "rocking movement" and twist the leg that is closest to the ball at the same time, then it sort of looks like a "big first step", but still isn't truly.. Does that make sense?
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast Yeah, it's not 'reaching out to make a step', but putting your foot down in a way that creates the correct (horizontal) angle in your lower leg. Like in a sprint start in the 100 meter s.
@@joscharutert392 Yess. In a sense it's about transferring yourself from the "neutral" defensive position into a sprinting position as fast as possible. Actually, some people think you should have your knees inwards in the defensive position, because then in some sense one of the legs is already better twisted into what is supposed to happen afterwards.. However, the other leg is at the same time twisted the wrong direction.. I am not sure what I think about this theory yet... But my guess is that my thinking would ultimately go that the benefits with that would be smaller than the disadvantages, because you make it more difficult for yourself to for example "fall onto one knee" to the side and play defense on a ball that is relatively close to you. But I haven't thought through every scenario regarding this and I have barely ever tried it myself.
Haha I told u or did I? I call it point and run
Hahah not sure if we ever talked about this or not, but not surprised if this is one of the things you think coaches teach wrong! :) We gotta get that podcast episode re-recorded soon, now enough time has passed so we will almost be able to have a fresh start where we don't remember what we talked about anymore!
Watch pro baseball players set up to either steal a base or dive back to the bag. Same concept . Too narrow or too wide and they are hosed .
Yess, seems like this is a concept used in many sports! "Legs wider than hips, but not too wide." :)
Nadal getting ready to return serve is another .
@@vbsand5882 Had to go find a video to see what you mean, I'll put it here just in case someone in the future is curious: ua-cam.com/video/5smY-Yn7q5k/v-deo.html
But yes, that's the same movement pattern! From a split-step in this particular case! :)
Base stealing ua-cam.com/video/HB1SUBrf-yE/v-deo.html
Show
Show what? :)
@@LearnBeachVolleyballFast Good
my Friend. Brasil.
Estou aprendendo muito com seus ensinamentos sobre os fundamentos do voleibol.
Parabéns.
@@amyoshiko Incrível, fico tão feliz em ouvir isso! Obrigado, e há muito mais vindo no futuro! :)
You needa simplify your vids and get to the point much quicker because all your vids are all drawn out with 80% useless talking about nothing
Thanks for the feedback! :)
Depends on my target audience really. The "useless talking about nothing" is usually what makes all the difference for about 5% of players that are really committed to the sport and desperate for answers that will give them long term understanding and success. Without these small details and nuances the lessons often end up misinterprated and misunderstood which happens all the time in the beach volleyball world and makes people plateau in their careers because their understanding of how to do certain parts of the sport is incomplete/false. It is this effect that the about 5% of players, including me, desperately want to avoid, because it sucks training year after year without getting any better. In that perspective listening to a few minutes more explanation becomes a no-brainer if the alternative is being stuck and frustrated for years. :)
That being said, there are plenty of shorter, quicker videos out there from other channels that go more straight to the point so feel free to go and watch those instead! :)
(No guarantee from my side that those videos won't oversimplify their guidance though, to the point that you end up believing false ideas that will make you get stuck in your progress as a player. This very video here is a great example of this effect, I'd say 99% of beach coaches teach these steps in a different way than how good players actually do them, which ends up in a huge part of the beach volleyball community having some misunderstanding regarding the topic and playing worse than they should thanks to it.)
Meanwhile, I will keep doing what I am doing for the people who like it, because I believe in it and this 5% of players that like what I do actually exist!
All of that being said, I do understand the value of keeping content short also, we are all busy. I won't make my content shorter by removing important details though, I try to rather come up with smart ways to explain things just as well with less words, in a more compact way, etc. Ideas on how I could do that better is something I'd be delighted to receive! :)
Have a good one!