By [1] [3] April Chapple

It is spring time which usually marks the preparation for the outdoor sand volleyball season. With the change in the weather temperature and the sport’s growing popularity, you may be among the many indoor players that are preparing to play in beach volleyball games and outdoor tournaments this summer.

If you are new to the sand game, I wanted to prepare you for some of the differences you’ll face and I’ve explained what you may want to look out for while transitioning between these two distinct styles of the volleyball game. Some differences between the indoor and outdoor games of volleyball are very slight while others are more evident.

Volleyball Skills Players Need to Have

One big difference between an indoor player and a beach player is the ability to perform all of the fundamental volleyball skills required to play in the sand or on the court. Many indoor players, especially club and college indoor players (are coached to or choose to) specialize in possessing only a few skills in order to dominate in only one or two positions on the court.

For example, a middle blocker may practice and play only the middle blocking or “their” position, which calls for them to always hit out of the middle, always block from the middle, to only pass the short serves and play the front row exclusively which means in many situations they only play in the three front row rotations and then either before or after their turn to serve they are substituted out of the game for another player who specializes in serve receive, defense and playing only the back row positions.

I would compare this to being an assembly line worker who is only assigned and paid to put one piece of a part on a car door on a car. For hours that’s their only responsibility and it’s the only thing they are taught and paid to do all day long.

So, imagine that for an entire club season or college season many volleyball players specialize in playing one position, hitting only a few types of sets and playing only in several designated areas of the court. This doesn’t necessarily contribute to the development of an “all-around” player.

In contrast, since there are only two beach players per team in the doubles game and they both need to cover a regulation size court, each player has to possess the ability to perform all the volleyball skills well, in order to be successful at the sand game.

Both players are required to know how to serve a ball, serve receive consistently, set the ball with their hands or bump set at varying heights or even back set if the occasion calls for it, attack the ball from different places along the net, block different attackers that have all kinds of timing issues with their spike and transition off the net quickly to play defense.

There’s no getting around it, beach volleyball players have to be great all-around players, proficient at performing all the skills of the volleyball game.

This is the second part of a two-part series where I explain the differences in the skills needed to play beach volleyball versus those used by indoor volleyball players. I also talk about the role “specialization” plays in both styles of the game.

There are only two places where there’s room for specialization in beach volleyball and that’s on offense where a player can specialize in playing on a particular side. There are those who label themselves ‘left-side” players and those who like to play only on the right side. It’s typical for many players to form teams based on the side their teammate specializes playing on.

The other place to specialize is on defense where one partner chooses to be the team’s designated primary ‘blocker’ with a partner who agrees to be the defensive player all the time. A perfect example of this would be the American Olympic gold medalist men’s and women’s beach volleyball teams of Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers and Misty May Treanor and Kerri Walsh.

Of course all four players are versatile enough to play both sides, block in the front court and transition back to either side of the court to play defense. But these elite beach teams made a tactical decision that would increase their team’s chances of outsmarting their competition and would place each partner in a position on the court that allows them to perform the skills that they do best.

In defense on their respective teams, the taller players Kerri Walsh and Phil Dalhausser are front row blocking specialists. After they serve receive or while they are in transition their “job” is to be at or go to the net to put up a great wall and to do as much of the blocking on their team as possible, while Misty May Treanor and Todd Rogers are the back row specialists who have the responsibilities of playing behind their teammates, running down any ball or digging any hard spikes that get past their partner’s big block.

Typically, although this isn’t written in sand (forgive me, I couldn’t resist) and versatility is always important, the taller blocker is the left-side hitter and the backrow specialist plays on the right side.

So, in serve receive Kerri and Phil usually play on the left side while Misty and Todd are on the right side of the court.

As the levels of competition improve, players may switch sides in the middle of a game forcing their competition to change their strategy or in order to participate in a particular tournament players will compromise and agree to play on a different side in order to team up with a better player.

In the indoor volleyball game if a player is particularly weak in one skill, then they have five other players they can rely on to help them cover or mask their weaknesses in one way or another. That player can be taken out of the serve receive and re-positioned to stand on the baseline or behind a stronger passer.

Or in the front row instead of blocking the ball against an opposing hitter that may be much taller they can switch positions with a taller teammate and have the teammate block against that hitter instead. (Or the coach may have that shorter player cover the dinks and not block at all.)

On the beach, there’s no hiding weak skills, players are forced to learn how to do everything. Initially the learning curve may seem steep for an indoor player moving outdoors, but this transition quickly contributes to the creation of a faster, higher jumping, quicker reacting, all-around stronger, smarter indoor volleyball player.

April Chapple, is the “Five Quick Tips” columnist for the American Volleyball Coaches Association’s Coaching Volleyball magazine and the creator of the volleyball news hub Volleyball Voices.com, where you’ll find out where to get video instruction directly from Olympic gold medalists and pro players on how to [2] become a better volleyball player.

Article Source: [3] April Chapple

[4] Beach Volleyball Skills: How to Become a Better Indoor Volleyball Player