Yesterday I received an email in my inbox, and the title said that my answer had been upvoted in Quora.
”Hmm, interesting, I wonder what I’ve written in Quora?” was my thought as it was a while ago I had answered anything there, it was basically a marketing strategy for growing this project that I played around with a little bit in the beginning of this project.
Anyway, after reading the post, I realized I kinda liked it. I have definately evolved a lot as a coach in the last 1.5 years since I wrote it, but I still think I agree with everything I wrote back then and it even contained some ways of thinking that I had myself kind of forgotten! (It’s often cool to read your old notes and watch your old videos because it is unfortunately hard to remember all the thoughts you have had in your head at one point!)
Anyway, here’s the repost of the answer, hope it will help someone out there! :) Also, I’ll leave the comments section open, feel free to leave any thoughts/qustions there if you have them!
How can I improve at beach volleyball?
Alex Haapamäki, Beach VB "hacker" & creator of LearnBeachVolleyballFast.com
To really, properly answer that question, one would need to know a lot more about you and your current skills (and actually, also your goals with beach volleyball!) There are almost unlimited aspects of beach volleyball that can be bettered, and of course some of those aspects will give better return on investment than others, and this will be different for everyone and their situation.
In the big picture, I’d say these are most of the “metacategories” of what you can do to improve your game:
Technique
Strategy
Mental game
Physique
Communication
Learning accelerators (Often overlooked - simply learning how to learn. If we know for example HOW our bodies learns new technique in an efficient way BEFORE we actually attempt to learn new technique, it can become a major differentiator over time. Imagine you spent 5 hours learning this “learning how to learn”-skill in the beginning, and then you and someone else (who skipped these first 5 hours) spent 100 hours learning actual technique. What if you learned twice as much as the other person in these 100 hours - it now took you 105 hours to learn what will take 200 for the other, and the difference will only become bigger the further along you go.) Learning how to learn will by the way be the topic for my first course.
Then it’s all about starting to figure out what will give the biggest return on investment depending on what sort of motivation, timeframe and other factors are at play.
If I had only a minute to share with a complete beginner though, I’d give these 3 quick tips:
1. Learn to pass and don’t forget to move your legs. If you can’t pass with straight arms (you are forced to bend them), chances are you didn’t move/moved wrong with your legs.
2. Become really curious about everything beach volleyball (mainly technique and strategy in the beginning.) Get so curious that even when you make mistakes, you don’t mentally start blaming yourself/excusing yourself etc. The first few seconds after a mistake is your golden opportunity to learn something from your mistake and become a better player, but if you let your emotions go overboard every time a mistake happens you are pretty much throwing away your capability to learn from the most individualized beach volleyball school you will ever attend - analyzing your own mistakes and learning the exact lessons that you need to learn right now to take the next step in your beach volleyball career (literally learn to not do the mistake you just did!) (2019 add on: This video talks about this concept in more depth.)
3. Learn to communicate your curiosity to better players. Not to the point that you are stealing their time and are thinking they should start charging you for more answers, but for example when you play with someone better than you, let them for example decide the strategy you guys will use and ask a few key questions about the things you don’t grasp. People like when they see someone who actually wants to learn, and tend to want to support that curiosity/willingness to learn. Also remember to never see anything you learn as “absolutely true”, one thing that makes sense at one level of playing volleyball will make no/less sense later when you play at a higher level etc.
If I had a minute with an intermediate player, I believe their goals or visions are the main differentiator of how they should continue to improve the most. If they just want to get “somewhat good and competitive” I’d say go with the technique you have right now (as long as there are no huge pitfalls in it), and learn everything and anything you can about strategy, communication (including networking) and the mental side of the game.
If they had bigger goals, I’d say that perfecting technique will be a separating factor that will give you access to the higher levels of playing. You will need startegy and the mental game as well, but these will be easier to learn once you have good technique, so you should learn these too, but most of your focus should be on perfecting technique. And oh yeah, before you learn technique, learn how to learn technique, that will save you a lot of time.
Every time I coach people, I ask them about their goals so that we can together tailor coaching that makes sense for them. If they are serious and want to prepare properly for the conversation we are going to have, I tell them they should watch this video where I basically explain what I have explained in this answer - but in much more depth and nuance to have a better understanding of why “becoming better” isn’t a single “one size fits all” path, and how important it will be to customize the path for their own sake.
Hope that helps, or at least gives some new inspiring ideas! :) I love to explore beyond the “obvious path” in beach volleyball, which I have found can actually have a huge impact on ones beach volleyball career in terms of learning faster, becoming better and even enjoying the sport even more! If you like this type of nerdiness and would like to have more of it (possibly giving you some less obvious, often overlooked but very impactful insights!) there is a chance you’d like my Youtube-channel Learn Beach Volleyball Fast! See you there! :)