New Playing Tip + Coach's Eye Review

In this video I first go over some of the new features of the new update on the Coach's Eye mobile app before going in depth on some of the different ways to taking a defensive approach to a cross court blocking strategy.  Much like previous videos, this covers multiple situations to allow you to cover as many shots as possible to gain that strategic edge.

Get Coach's Eye for Android here

Ger Coach's Eye for Apple here

Check out the latest podcast of The Net Live

Wish that ESPN featured volleyball, or that there was some version of ESPN for volleyball?  Yea, me too, but although there is no such multimedia broadcasting entity, the closest and best thing we have in my opinion is The Net Live.

It is a podcast dedicated exclusively to volleyball, featuring Kevin Barnett, DJ Roueche, and Reid Priddy.  You get all the latest updates, player and fan interaction, plus some good ol' fashioned banter.

Check out the most recent episode below

Tuesday - 8/12/13

Check their website (http://www.blogtalkradio.com/the-net-live) for their schedule but they usually have broadcasts on either Mondays or Tuesdays.

We'll be posting each podcast here as they become available

What's Beef?

The ongoing feud between the NVL and AVP

There is never a dull moment in beach volleyball now a days, and it's all for the wrong reasons.  No, the oo's and ah's are not being shouted from the grand stands, instead people are glaring, cheering, and heckling from behind keyboards.

In this new chapter of the NVL vs. AVP saga, the NVL went on a public "smear" campaign against the AVP to display the lack of transparency, cooperation, and selfish greed that points to a 'not that surprising' unhealthy future for the sport itself.  If you've been following the NVL on Facebook you've seen that they have been posting "updates" on recent communication attempts with the AVP, specifically Donald Sun and Al Lau, to come to a solution over scheduling conflicts as well as contractual obligations that prevent players from playing in any tournament of their choosing.

This is how they prefaced their posts...

Then followed the first update, with update #2 in the comments...

Finally updates 3 and 4 respectively...

As you can see from the comments there is strong support from the fans for this attempt, albeit a flimsy and half-hearted attempt, to repair the riff and scheduling conflicts that have amassed over the past few months.

With the first of two scheduling conflicts coming this very weekend it should be obvious that this is more of a publicity stunt to draw people's attention and favor toward Hermosa Beach this weekend (where the NVL is playing) and not Salt Lake City (where the AVP is playing).  But you have to give the NVL props for using the weapons they have at their disposal:  fan loyalty, a well-respected veteran of the sport (Al-B), and of course the silver bullet:  official backing from USAV.

But as far as I can tell neither side has given any ground in this tug-of-war match for supreme control over the US market.  The AVP has lots of money but the same old model of throwing lots of money at a hat hoping that a rabbit will pop out of it.  The NVL has a healthier grassroots model that puts extra emphasis on youth development, but they are lacking major star power, sponsors, and exposure.  

The end result is ultimately this...

Meanwhile, the fans are left without a winner.  Someone *cough* *cough* USAV *COUGH* needs to clean this up and fast.

Back From Vacation!

Sorry that there hasn't been much content lately, but I just got back from vacation and I'm excited to cover all the happenings from this past week and then some.

Please accept my apology in the form of this kitten thwarting off this dangerous predator

Of course there will be some very interesting topics to look forward to like...

• possible rule changes for the FIVB
• The NVL disclosing emails sent to the AVP
• The Net Live reaction to the WSOBV
• Hermosa vs. Salt Lake City this weekend

Stay tuned!

New Coach's Eye Update Coming Soon!

Before I started working on a new playing tip video I noticed a new notification in my Coach's Eye app that said "Big things are coming", and once I clicked through I was greeted with this promo video...

Needless to say, I'm pretty excited to test out some of these new features.

Beach volleyball is only 2nd to hockey

In the last post I made my argument for why beach volleyball is such a tough sport.  Deep sand, sweltering heat, a mental game that makes chess look like tic-tac-toe, advanced hand-eye coordination and reflexes, in combination with the teamwork, short burst and long-term endurance necessary, I easily put beach volleyball as a top 3 toughest sport, but of course my bias has it in the top 2.  But even that bias isn't strong enough to to allow me to put one sport in particular below it:  hockey.

Let's try to do an apples to apples comparison to see why I will always give the edge to game that is played on the other extreme of temperatures...

1.  Environment
If beach volleyball is on the far right of the playing environment spectrum then hockey is definitely on the far left.  These less than comfortable conditions put additional stress on the body to perform optimally.  Not only that, but basic movements are exacerbated even more so.  For the beach, more resistance is applied to inhibit movement, but ice does the same thing with less friction.  The ice makes it harder to start and stop, so this section is a tie.

2.  Hand-eye coordination
If baseball is at a 10 in this category, then I would place beach volleyball at a solid 6.  Not to be confused with the skill necessary to make certain plays, but purely the making contact on a spike, or being able to intercept the path of a serve or hit, requires advanced reflexes but we don't have to use another instrument to make contact.  We have the luxury to use the familiarity of our own body.  I'm not the biggest hockey fan but clearly there is great skill and coordination necessary to redirect a puck that is flying past multiple players for a goal, not to mention trying to stop it.  The slight edge here goes to hockey.

3.  Athleticism
How you define athleticism will surely be different that how I define it, but we hear it a lot in sports how a player is very raw but has great athletic ability, so what does that say about the athleticism necessary to even participate on the professional level?  Well there are a few factors that we would have to look at:  explosiveness, power, agility, speed, flexibility.  I believe these 5 perfectly encompass the purely physical aspect of playing professional sports.  Reflexes and coordination isn't included because that requires more processing by the brain.

So explosiveness, is generally defined as power exerted over a short period of time.  The most explosive movements for hockey (by my best estimation) is the slap shot.  For beach volleyball you can make the case for either the jumping aspect or the arm swing, but considering that you are facing more resistance jumping through sand opposed to a stick moving through air, volleyball gets the point in this sub-category.

Power in the traditional sense of slow twitch movements, could go either way.  I'm not going to pretend to know what type of training goes into hockey but based on the type of movements made, and the types of builds that you commonly see in hockey I would have to say that the amount of power that either athlete can generate is comparable.

I'll just do agility and speed together because, clearly both are at the high end of the spectrum in terms of agility by having to quickly change direction.  Although hockey does have more room to navigate you won't really get up to a top speed and sustain it long enough for it to be a factor.  The sprinting involved in both sports in more of a product of explosiveness.  This one is a wash as well.

Finally there is flexibility.  For beach volleyball there is the contortion of the back, arm and shoulder during a swing, and for hockey a slap shot has to take place on multiple planes, with great emphasis on the twisting of the core.  Other than that, you do have to get down low a lot on the beach to pass and dig, so if anything there is a slight edge to volleyball in this one too, and over all the athleticism category goes to beach volleyball.

4.  Teamwork
I don't think you can necessarily say that because hockey has more players on the ice at once that a greater amount of teamwork is necessary.  Baseball has more but at any given time, only 2 or 3 player are really involved in the play.  So you can't quantify it in black and white like that.  So I guess what this comes down to is the number of changing variables that each play has to account for and communicate the changes the need to or not be made.  Not only in hockey do you have to take account for being onside, floor spacing, and passing, but there are also line changes going on constantly in hockey.  There is a lot of communication necessary to make adjustments in volleyball but a lot of the time that takes place in between points, and for the most part a simple "mine" call and "high line" or "1 up" call is sufficient to get the job done.  The edge here goes to hockey.

5.  Physicality
This is where the favor swings in big favor to hockey.  For volleyball players our biggest fears is that our body will break down on us, but in hockey you may have to worry about your opponent breaking your body...literally.  When I heard about the injuries that the players played with during the Stanley Cup Final, I was in awe.  The worst of the injuries was Patrice Bergeron who played with a broken rib, torn cartilage in his ribs, a separated shoulder, and later revealed that he had a punctured lung.  But in addition to that Bryan Bickell had a grade 2 knee sprain, Jonathon Toews likely had a concussion, and Marian Hossa clearly was laboring with a bad back.  Getting slammed into the boards, back checked, and slashed by a blunt object surely doesn't make the game any easier.  Point and and mad props to hockey.

As volleyball players, we get to play at the beach, and don't have to worry about getting our bell rung.  For this main reason, no matter what the score is, hockey will forever get my respect.

How HARD is the beach game? Part 2

In Part 1, I more or less was writing a response to Mike Dodd's AVP promo video that talks about how tough the beach game is.  And certainly from a physical point of view it is very demanding but it is not unparalleled.  To me, a sport is a mental battle that is confronted and fought with your body.  Being in great physical condition only improves your ability to express the decisions your mind makes and translate them to the tangible world so that you skills may be quantitatively compared to others.

As it is true with almost any professional sport, once you reach that level you will find that just about everyone is as good as you are (sans a few exceptions to the rule).  So the way that you as an athlete have to differentiate yourself from the pack is in your preparation, conditioning, and knowledge of the game.  I will go more in depth into the game, that most know little about, and explain just what happens on a play to play basis and why this game is so hard to play.

From the time the ball is served this is the type of thought logic that goes through a defender's mind...

1.  Identify who the serve is going to
2.  Begin to move to base position based on what the block call is
3.  Identify where the ball is passed and adjust your positioning accordingly
4.  Read the setter if they may go over on 2, or if they are in position to make a good/bad set
5.  Read the hitter's approach (angle and speed)
6.  Adjust your positioning based on where your blocker is setting up
7.  Adjust your positioning (again) based on where the set is
8.  Wait
9.  Read the hitter's body and arm swing...but still wait
10.  As the ball is being contacted prepare to make a play, being as low as possible and have your body angled that allows you to cover a roll shot but still balance to dig a hard driven ball.

All of this takes place within the span of about 3-4 seconds.

On offense, you have to try your hardest to just let the game come to you and not over think it too much.  For the first 3.5 seconds of a play it is like driving through a pitch black tunnel, and it isn't until you get at the very end that you will know if you have to turn left or right or even come to stop.  If you don't like having the pressure of being rushed on you then this sport is not for you, because you have to make tons of split second decisions one after another.

If that doesn't make the game tough enough, there is a tremendous amount of mental acuity necessary to simply put a pre-game strategy in place, and be able to adjust it as you go along based on each play, and the dozen or so things that take place during the play, while accounting for variables that can change at any moment, like wind speed and direction.  So on one hand you need to have a short memory so that you focus solely on the point at hand but at the same time you need to keep track of virtually everything that transpires so that you can not only know if you need to make changes to your strategy, but also identify if your opponent has or will change their strategy.  Oh and by the way, you are your own coach.  So while play is going on you have only you and the person next to you to make adjustments.

And to top it all off, there are no substitutions you can make for yourself or your partner if you aren't playing well.  You just have to fight through it.  You need to have at least a 30 inch vertical, be able to change direction on a dime, sprint, dive, and jump without your lungs exploding while the hot sun burns the bottom of your feet, and bakes the sweat out of your skin.  So how hard is the beach game?  Pretty difficult but there is one sport that I will always believe that is 1 up from beach volleyball.....