Fundamentals of Sand Volleyball
Part 2: Attacking & Blocking

By Shaun Catlin, Club Director, Triple Crown Volleyball

In the last part of fundamentals of sand volleyball we covered what we need from our coaches as well as basics of passing and a few passing drills.  We also briefly defined our "keys" such as target, pin, and open so that all of our athletes could understand quickly what is meant when those words are expressed during a correction session.

In part 2 we’ll cover hitting and blocking.  In beach, just like indoor, it is crucial to reach high during contact using the same rhythm, arm speed, and approach each time.  This will allow you sell the shot, not against the blocker who is normally committed to block a particular section of the court (we will cover that later), but the defender, who is looking at past play and body expression, or what Karch Kiraly calls a “henke” or a slight adjustment.  You can ask Karch himself why he calls it a henke, it's a pretty good story.

Clone your approach

If the approach is identical every single time but the only adjustment is at the point of contact then we've sold 80% of all our shots.  Here's a great way to determine your PoH or Point of Hesitation.  Place your back against the net and take a normal approach away from the net, now turn around.  This distance is custom tailored for you, think of it as your comfort hitting distance you take from your stride to contact the ball.  On the beach the most ideal hitting movement is a three step approach and with a loaded jump allowing you to jump up and into the air vs. jumping towards the net (broad jumping).  By jumping vertically we are compensating for wind and outdoor conditions vs. a timed contact point by broad jumping.

Reach for the stars and T-Rex

When we ask our athletes to reach high we want them to feel a pull with their contact arm and the pull should extend down towards the ribs.  The opposite hand should be near the cheek and tightly compressed into the body.  As DanaLee Corso would state "kinda like T-Rex arms" which must be the best way to describe what T-Rex looks like when he's holding up his arms during a robbery.  Again hitting hand reaching high while the non-hitting hand T-Rex'ing it. 

Face to 12

When we reach for the stars and T-Rex, some of my players let me know that they can't make a cut shot or roll shot when reaching so high.  The reason they feel this way is that they are contacting the ball incorrectly.  Picture a wall clock, I know hard to even imagine since we all have smart phones to look at to tell us the time, but think of a big wall clock about the size of an outdoor ball.  When contacting the ball we want to contact the face and wrap your hand around until we touch 12 o'clock.  Key word here is wrap, not roll, as a wrap allows us to make full contact around the ball not launch the ball off our hands.  Reaching for the stars (reaching) provides us that opportunity to make that high roll shot, with an aggressive approach the only difference is the angle in which our arms make contact.

Don't hit the heart

Our indoor cousins hate shots because they are so easily defendable, but remember we aren't here to power a ball through a block as it isn't as effective as placing the ball in the most difficult place where the defender cannot get the ball.  A 40 MPH spike on an open net is awesome if we are able to accurately place the ball outside of the heart.  The chance of our defenders making an error when a ball is hit directly at them is very low.

So I'd rather have a 5 MPH shot to an open court with a 80% or better average for scoring points than a 40 MPH spike inside the heart with a 20% chance of scoring.  It could take me 4 times as many opportunities to get one point not including the 12 extra approaches, and the three times we have to make a first ball contact for those extra chances.

Hitting:

Basic Key Words: Target, Reach, 12

Advanced Key Words:  Loaded, Face, Heart

The diagram of the drill to the right shows a simple setting drill by expanding on the Triangle passing drill.

Hitting

The ball is initiated across the net to the passer.  The setter performs movements to set ball successfully. The passer then becomes a hitter and contacts the ball.    Remember that we are focusing on hitting in this drill.  To increase difficulty the ball may be presented from across the net to the passer as a hard driven down ball or as a serve.  This may be either a timed drill or a goal based drill.  This drill must focus on the hitter and the keys of “target”, “reach”, “12” but advanced players may focus on “loaded”, “face”, and “heart”.  For example, each basic key word achieved gets 3 points while good effort gets 1 point.  All other efforts get zero points.  First to 60.

For more junior volleyball education visit www.jvaonline.org