How to Play Beach Volleyball » Volleyball Training

Training for Beach Volleyball-Exercises to Increase Vertical Jump

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 22:59:48 +0000

When you decide to become a better beach volleyball player you will start to train with specific exercises to increase your vertical jump. Being able to jump higher in volleyball is more important than any other type of training once you have the basics down.

Yes it is important to be able to pass the ball and set the ball well. The outdoor setting rules of beach volleyball are much different than the indoor volleyball rules for setting. So if you haven’t perfected exactly how to set a beach volleyball, then that should be your priority right now.

Either way you have time to practice all the ball handling skills you need as well as fit in plenty of time for jump training. Jumping does not require a lot of training, in fact with just 30 minutes a day you can fit in great workouts that increase you vertical for volleyball.

So let’s take a look at some free vertical jump training exercises that you can do at home or on the beach. I would suggest that you buy yourself a weighted ball and a kettlebell. There are a lot of kettlebell exercises to increase your vertical jump that can be done anywhere.

First things first you have to have strong enough legs to withstand a jump training program. If you can’t squat your weight 10 times, you would be best building up a little more leg strength before diving into an intense plyometric training workout routine.

Once you can squat your weight 10 times, you will be ready to start some true exercises to increase vertical jump. Now we aren’t talking about doing jump rope exercises for 20 minutes straight. Do you understand why that would be a bad thing? If not let me explain. Jump rope is training your muscles to have endurance, in other words it teaches you to jump a few inches off the ground for very long periods of time. It’s the equivalent of a sprinter running a marathon to prepare for his 100 meter race. It won’t help and it will most likely have an adverse effect and slow him down.

So you need to focus on doing exercise that require a lot of explosion and you need to go all out on every rep. Since we aren’t focusing on endurance you will only be doing about 8 reps for each exercise.

Box jumps are a great way to start a plyo workout. Get a plyo box that is high and challenging to jump onto. The height should be something that is a bit scary and that you can only do 8 times because it is so difficult. This will teach your fast twitch muscle fibers to use all that they have when you jump.

Click Here to see a jump training workout that includes specific workouts, rest times, nutrition, plyometric training and everything you need to increase your vertical leap as quickly as possible.

Beach Volleyball Training-Defense

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 17:01:35 +0000

Volleyball training has to involve just as much defense as offense. Yes spiking the ball is a lot of fun and you need to learn how to spike a volleyball but that’s not all that wins games. We talked about how you need to learn to jump higher to be a big block at the volleyball net but what about the person that digs balls off of the volleyball net? Now, we will take a look at how important it is to do some beach volleyball drills for digging balls. One good thing about outdoor volleyballs is that they aren’t hard like the indoor volleyballs. If you read the post titled buy Wilson beach volleyballs only you will know that the Wilson beach volleyballs are much softer and less inflated than an indoor ball.

Lets take a look at some of the best defensive players in the AVP. The person leading the AVP with the most digs in 2009 on the mens side is Casey Jennings, the former BYU player that played sand volleyball in Utah before going pro. Now the woman with the most digs in the AVP is Brooke Hanson. Digging is a very important part to the game and adds a lot of excitement to the game of beach volleyball.

Top 10 Digs in the AVP
Casey Jennings
Ryan Mariano
Sean Rosenthal
Todd Rogers
Everett Matthews
Matt Olson
John Mayer
John Hyden
Nick Lucena
Aaron Wachtfogel

Top 10 digs in the AVP on the womens side
Brooke Hanson
Jenny Pavley
Barbra Fontana
Brittany Hochevar
Claire D’Amore
Whitney Pavlik
Chrissie Zartman (Shortest player in the AVP at 5’3″)
Tracy Lindquist
Tatiana Minello
Suzanne Stonebarger

It’s no wonder that the teams with the highest number of digs are consistently ranked at the top of the AVP. Everyone wants a big block at the volleyball net but having a great defensive player behind the block is priceless.

Volleyball Training-How to Jump Higher

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:56:21 +0000

There are many different areas to focus on with volleyball training and we will take each one step by step. Today we will teach you how to jump higher for volleyball. Jump training is done with plyometric exercises. Plyometrics are workouts that are designed to develop more fast twitch muscles in your legs so that you can explode with more power. Power is a combination of speed and strength so if plyometrics works on the speed you will need to do weight training for the strength portion of the equation.

Keep in mind that jumping high is all about explosion so you shouldn’t to jumping programs that focus on high reps because that will only train your muscle endurance and explosive power. Following a well designed jump program will produce great results in a relatively short amount of time. The most popular program for beach volleyball and indoor volleyball players is the Jump Manual.

Plyometric drills will include many jumping exercises that will help increase vertical jump such as jumping on plyometric boxes and doing rim touches. Jump lunges and squats are another great way to start jumping higher. Your vertical leap in sand will suffer a lot if you don’t learn proper jumping form. You need to learn that the approach is very different in sand and requires you to stomp a lot harder with your last 2 steps before take-off. You will notice that if you don’t stomp hard, you will sink instead of going up. This why beach volleyball jump training is a very important part of the game. You can expect to hit the tape everytime until you learn proper form and develop good sand legs.

Learning how to jump higher alone isn’t going to make you a great volleyball player. You have to learn how to play volleyball by knowing the basic beach volleyball rules and doing volleyball drills to help your passing, setting and hitting.

If you play on an indoor volleyball court you will want to do most of your training on the hard court. But if you play beach volleyball you will want to train on a sand volleyball court so that you can get accustomed to moving in sand. The beach volleyball court dimensions are different than those for indoor. The official AVP volleyball court dimension is 8m x 16m. The is one meter less on the width and 2 meters less on the length than an indoor court.