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.....

Best Place To Get Nutritional Info...EVER?!

Let me know if this is what you would want to get in terms of health and nutrition advice.  You would want information that is objective, unbiased, backed by either clinical studies or other scientific evidence, that is easy to understand without having to get a degree in chemistry or biology.  Well I think I have just the place...

I don't think I have to tell you how I found this site, because how does anyone find anything on the internet now a days...completely at random without an actual attempt of finding said results.  Basically SELF Nutrition Data is a site that provides a comprehensive look into virtually every food out there and breaks down the information into graphical representations and further informs you as to how to can better equip your diet with suggestion pairings of other foods already listed in their database.

Here are a few screenshots below of one of my favorite foods, quinoa, and just about all the info you can get from just one visit.  You can also click here to see the whole page and interact with the data

 

Congrats to the US teams in the WSOBV

A round of applause is in order for Casey Patterson, Jake Gibb, April Ross, and Jen Kessy for winning the FIVB World Series of Beach Volleyball this weekend.  Way to represent!

Buzzfeed: 14 best things to eat after a workout

Benjamin Franklin once said that "by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail", so not having much of a plan or strategy regarding your diet leaves you without a safety net, and puts you at risk of wasting all the hard work you put into your workouts, practices, and games.

Luckily, Buzzfeed came along with a simple and concise list of mostly common foods that are easy to prepare and purchase, even on a budget, to keep you on track for success.

Click here for the full article

How EASY is the beach game? Part 1

"It must be so hard to play moving around, running and jumping in the sand".  I've heard lots of variations of this over the years, but it's hard to really appreciate just how tough the game is until you see a seasoned vet playing next to a court next of first timers who probably are taking their once a year trip to the beach.  

Mike Dodd tried to explain the difficulty of the beach game in this short promo video for the AVP but what he doesn't say is just how EASY it can become in time.

Ok sure stepping out on the sand for the first time, even if you are an experienced volleyball player is a lot like Bambi walking out onto ice for the first time.  The fact is, that pretty much everywhere you go you are walking on a flat surface, so when you step foot on the beach and the ground beneath you suddenly gives way, your body now has to use muscles it didn't have to before to stabilize itself.

Just about every beach player will go through a stage early in the "preseason" where they have to find their "beach legs".  It is during this time we wonder how we were ever capable of hitting the ball over the net or chase down a roll shot, but after more and more time spent in the sand, and as those stabilizing muscles get stronger the game starts to come naturally to us.

Even to a world class athlete, playing on the sand may seem like playing in a completely alien environment at first, but just like a hangover, it gets better over time.  You can't tell me that the best athletes in the world, with 40 inch verticals, 25+ reps of 225 lb bench press, and 4.4 sec 40 times, would be unable to adapt to these conditions.  Given about a month of pure sand conditioning, footwork, and agility drills you can have Derrick Rose looking like Sean Rosenthal, and Colin Kaepernick looking like more tan version of the "thin beast".

Beach volleyball is probably the easiest tough game there is.  The physical aspect isn't incredibly difficult to adjust to.  Ryan Doherty has show us that already.  But there is another world that most people don't see.  The stuff that goes on behind the scenes, the chatter that takes place between your ears is what really makes this game difficult.  I'll talk more about that in Part 2.

More Than Just A Game...

"Love drives you to do everything to maintain that connection.  If I didn't have love for the game, I would have never achieved anything." 

- Michael Jordan

World Series Of Beach Volleyball

Starting next week the FIVB is looking to begin what hopes to be an annual tradition in beach volleyball that squares off the world's best over 7 days of competition.  At first glance the Long Beach Grand Slam just looked like another tour stop for the FIVB to not only reach a broader audience but give the US players and fans a taste of the international game as well.  The World Series of Beach Volleyball is a 7 day event, which will be hosted in Long Beach, CA, that starts on Monday July 22nd with qualifying, and continues each day until the champions are crowned much like how the the World Series of Poker is set up.  The event will be televised on NBC Sports and NBC Sports Universal.

To this point there has never been a climax to any beach season.  Each tournament is regarded with relatively equal importance.  The only ones that draw greater favor from the players are usually the ones that simply pay more, but there is no great amount of sentimental value attached to any one tournament in particular which could be a culprit in the lack of the sport's mass appeal.  Football has the Superbowl, baseball has the World Series, and golf has 4 majors, and for each sport, prize money is a non-factor.  Each event is held with such esteem by both players and fans that winning them, takes you as an athlete to another level, you reach an exclusive club where champions can be heralded for their season long accomplishments.

Beach volleyball has never had that.  The Manhattan Open is the closest thing to that, where the winner for both the men and women are forever immortalized with the names on plaques on the pier nearby, but financial instability of late has put that tradition at risk.  The AVP which has been regarded as the preeminent American tour didn't even feature the Manhattan on their original schedule this year, giving favor instead to Santa Barbara and Huntington.  Now granted with beach volleyball being born in Southern California, and almost all of the professionals playing and training in that area, each athlete will usually have personal favorites based on their "hometown" beach.  For some it may be Hermosa, and others it may be Mission, but it's still strange that there isn't that "one" that everyone has their eyes set on.

Perhaps this will be a big turning point for the game.  There have been long standing tournaments like the Motherlode that have been around for about as long as the sport has existed but there was never a crown jewel.  I don't think that players will instantly call the WSOBV a classic (despite the large prize money purse), because there needs to be a certain amount of nostalgia and reverence built up in an event first.  Plus this tournament is taking place mid-season.  Just imagine if the Superbowl took place in December and then they resumed the final 8 games of the season.  Championships, trophies, banners, and rings, they are the most coveted symbols by both fans and athletes, but a grand unifying tournament that essentially comes with bragging rights may be just what this sport needs to give the fans something and someone to root for.


Side notes:  If you can't watch it on TV you can get updates online by following @WSOBV on Twitter.