My coaching style often has the goal to help players have fundamentally better movement solutions (techniques) for the game, stuff that you learn once and then you play better forever. These solutions can be learned through broken down “movement exercises” that I have learned to guide through video chat, you just need a room where you can move around a bit during the call, sometimes being outdoor in a park or similar can be helpful. After we have laid the foundations during the call, we discuss the process of how to implement and automate them during games. While you go through this process, we usually text chat to answer your questions (can also be short videos) that may arise during the process so that you don’t get stuck and actually reach the end result. It is also possible to arrange a video call at a beach volleyball court with some planning to help you implement the technique(s), although this usually is not necessary. Most of my clients just end up sending video from their games once the new technique has been implemented, and then we evaluate what the next best step for their continued journey forward should be.

My experience says yes.

Now, there’s no hiding it, in person coaching obviously has some benefits over online coaching (the ability to both feed balls in specific ways and give direct feedback, the ability to show movements in real life vs camera, etc), but surprisingly enough the online methods for teaching volleyball movements I have found still actually seem to be on average maybe 80% as efficient time-wise as offline coaching (so there is only about a 20% loss of efficiency there.)

However, covering up (and more) for this inefficiency is the fact that this can be done anywhere in the world (with an internet connection), at a pace that fits you. This saves a lot of time and money compared to travelling to me, especially considering that the best method for long term learning is a continuous one, where one lesson is had, some days/weeks are given for implementation, then more lessons are given, etc. Short term beach volleyball training camps are somewhat costly in regards to traveling, arrangement, etc, while not quite optimal from a learning standpoint (because of the intensity of the camp), and moving to the same place where I am in order to do long term, continuous, in person coaching (which would literally be the best way to learn from me) can be very costly and difficult when it comes to logistics.

In summary, some very valuable parts of private 1-on-1 beach volleyball coaching (like for example analyzing video together) are just as efficient online as offline, and while other parts might be a bit less efficient over video link compared to in person, in almost all cases that inefficiency is still far smaller than the inefficiency of traveling and meeting in person would be.

I once found a Swedish saying which was something like: “If you are going in the wrong direction, you cannot fix that by going faster.”

There are some training efficiency benefits with your local offline coach compared to online coaching with me. The unfortunate thing that me and many of my clients have discovered is that 99% of beach volleyball coaching in the world really is of awful quality. Very often the movement explanations used do not match with the movements that professional players actually use when playing, and very often do coaches not understand the physical/mental process of learning new skills very well.

The thing is, if you learn the wrong things, are you even getting better, or could you in fact be getting worse?

I’ve had private clients from California (maybe the most beach volleyball coach dense place in the world?) say that my coaching was at a completely different level than anything they had experienced.

I admit online coaching with me is “moving a bit slower” than what offline coaching with me is, but the fact that we are moving in the right direction is still infinitely better than moving in the wrong direction.

You can always ask yourself, did your local coach make players like you jump several skills levels in a few months in a few private lessons before, or do they keep coaching and coaching but the players stay more or less the same?

Meanwhile my online clients are getting regular massive breakthroughs in their game, to the point that players in their surroundings can’t believe what they are seeing.

The choice is always yours and you should do what you deem to be best for you, but now I have at least given you my opinion, which is: “If you are going in the wrong direction, you cannot fix that by going faster.”

It is all relative to how much skills you gain for how much time and money.

If I in 1 hour of 1-on-1 coaching can teach you the skills that would take another coach 10 hours to teach, then my coaching would be 10x more cost effective than the coaching of the other coach. Even if the other coach would charge just 30% of my price, my coaching would still be 3x more cost effective.

However, what often happens is that the stuff I can teach you in a few hours of 1-on-1 coaching, the other coach cannot teach you in their lifetime, simply because they don’t understand it, or have the background to be able to teach it.

In this case, my coaching will actually be infinitely more cost effective than the other coaches. Because if reaching the end result is the goal, then paying for anything that doesn’t get you there, simply has 0% effectiveness functionally.

While video calls are a significant part of the whole coaching experience, they are very far from everything that we do. Inbetween calls we chat about your progress, I answer questions you have either with text or shorter videos where I explain better what I mean, etc. In other words, there is course correction happening inbetween calls, which very efficiently clarifies things and removes misunderstandings. The calls are the places to discuss bigger changes and get you started, but once you get started with the work, your experience will make you have new questions and clarifications, and this we often handle with ongoing text chatting. And the best thing is that at least for the time being, this is included without extra cost in my coaching.

I understand that it is much easier to commit to something that one better knows what it is.

The free intro option exists for this reason, but the waiting list unfortunately is long so that won’t help you today.

The two things I have for you today, is this video that talks a bit about how my online coaching works, and this onboarding questionnaire that is actually for people that have committed to coaching with me, but I realized that it also gives some insight into my coaching methods which might be of value for some.