Mark Burik (00:01.422)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Better at Beach podcast. My name is Mark Burick and we are taking one of our lessons from our coach academy, which is in the complete beach volleyball training blueprint. Now, if you don't know, we have two meetings every week and we do them live and we have live Q and A's and we also bring in guests weekly. One of our meetings is dedicated to coaches, leadership development.
practice design, drill design, and how to work with different athletes and fix their techniques. The other meeting that we have in the Blueprint every week is for players, where we go over video analysis. We study their game footage. We study their practice footage. And we really get deep into workouts as well. So people are posting their.
People are posting their videos and clips from their workouts, and then we can help them fix their technique. So that's what this video is. We're just taking a little break during the meeting so that I can give a lesson. And that's why it's turned into a podcast. But if you remember, and for the members here right now during recording, you guys know that you can have this Q and a with me afterwards. So I want to share something, that I got to go through in a leadership and business development.
conference. So, drop two grand for two days of education. And to me, it was absolutely, absolutely worth it. One, if you're a coach and you are not regularly hunting out other coaches, trying to be present at other practices, going to practices from other sports.
And seeing what they're saying, how they're developed. One thing that, it comes from my coaching. When I go and I see little league practices, cause there's a little league field right down the block that I take my daughter for a work every day. or I take her for a walk every day and I see some little league practices and I see some great little league practices. And if you're in our coaches program, you know that one of the things that we harp on is no lines. How.
Mark Burik (02:23.138)
Do we maximize repetitions and attempts for our players? There's not always the opportunity to completely eliminate lines, but if your mind, your eyes are constantly working to say, how can I convert this drill or this practice so that everyone gets more reps more frequently? If somebody is spending 90 seconds
two minutes without touching a volleyball, that's a huge issue. It's a huge issue. Your players are not getting the repetitions. If you, as the coach, are the one who is getting more reps than any individual player, that's a problem. If you're the one who's spiking, if you're the one who's controlling all of the sets, if you're the one who is serving every ball, hunt down ways to get out.
of that position. And if you have low skill, fine, give them a rep. If they fail at the rep or if it's unplayable, then you figure out a way to pop a ball in so that they then can play full. So for example, if we're doing like King of the Court and you have either 60 year old ladies or six year old kids, we don't serve for them.
We give them a free chance to serve. say, you're not going to be penalized. We just need you to try to serve overhand. Okay. Develop this motor pattern and overcome the fear of missing the serve. After that, if you know that you have a court or a specific player even that is consistently missing, you can be their backup. And that's why as a coach, you always carry one or two balls with you. If you're a coach, I would say in general,
You should always have balls being carried on your person so that if one ball gets whacked a hundred yards, Hey, how do I maximize reps per minute? My player doesn't have to go and chase that. And now they're going to lose maybe 10 to 20 seconds chasing the wild ball instead. Hey, I've got a ball in my hand. will make sure that I always have two and then we can keep going. Okay. That's a good way to maximize reps. And since you have that, and since you've positioned yourself properly,
Mark Burik (04:47.67)
In other words, if servers are missing and they're not getting balls in consistently. Well, at that point, luckily you've positioned yourself right where the servers are right where they're most likely to miss. And then you can enter the ball right afterwards so that the people in serve receive don't have to wait for five miss serves before playing a point. Okay. So that is a quick and easy way to maximize your reps for those practices. Okay.
Get rid of lines, maximize repetitions. Now, if we go back to literally baseball, we're to take a journey into baseball for a little bit. Most people think that baseball, I won't say most people, there are those people who consider baseball to be a boring sport because you have 10 players competing at once, one ball, and the amount of actual action that you might have with that ball or interaction with that ball.
Some positions get one or two interactions in a two or three hour game. Should we practice like we play? Are you going to test your player's ability to pay attention and stay focused? Or are you going to get them very good by getting them hundreds, if not thousands of reps, ground balls, fly balls, pursuit balls, and swings?
So one of the best little league practices I've seen, and I had to walk over to the coach dad who was there. And I said, Hey, I've seen a lot of coaching in my life. I've been a lot of gyms. I've been with a lot of sports teams and I want to let you know, you are running a great practice. Everybody's moving. You have all of your parents involved. There's a parent at every station doing whatever they can to cut out lines and cut out waiting time. So he had three of his dads.
hitting or throwing fly balls and ground balls to their tits instead of positioning nine people around the court with one coach and a stick, knocking to one person who then throws to the second person while the other seven don't do anything. There's a time for the game situations. Of course, you have to know where to position when you have without the ball, and you can get to that. But spend more time making your athletes more athletic by involving
Mark Burik (07:15.158)
Assistant coaches if you don't have assistant coaches Find volunteers people who love your sport if you can't find those around Ask for the parents to help Hey guys, we can get our kids a lot more reps and get them better faster If I can have one of you guys throw in some balls here or catch some balls or even shag around the practice My brother started doing that for his club after my recommendation and now he's kind of like a full-time
a volleyball coach. keeps telling me different stories from when he's coaching because he was getting a little tired of seeing these lines, seeing nobody touch a ball, and then they wait for three or four minutes. He's like, something's wrong. I know it's not a great practice, Mark, but I don't know where to find it. And so when I went to Hawaii and visited, I just sat and chilled at the practice. yeah, there were five, six parents waiting.
watching sitting on their phones in the bleachers and I said if every one of these people got involved Every player would get 10x the reps in their practice So that's what we want to hunt down as coaches your brain should be churning on How does each individual get more reps and I know that I've done this in previous meetings or and or podcasts but one of the ways to track this
is at your practice and at the practices of other coaches, because you should be studying from other coaches, is to track one kid for five minutes. Tell me the amount of time that player touches the ball. That's it. And if it turns into one, two or three times and you've got an hour or two hour practice, so let's see, five, 12.
Yeah, you're looking at somewhere between what 12 and 30 reps per hour. Is that enough for you? Maybe for the world's best and the people who are going to Excel and kick your players, but that is not enough. All right. So make sure that you're finding ways where players can get consistent reps, get more balls, redesign your drills, cut the court in half or into stations.
Mark Burik (09:37.358)
I have one digging and hitting station, have one setting station. Stations are a great way to maximize reps and, and do that. know that, I had a coach in high school who consistently went to state championships and always won his division, in New York city. As soon as the players got to practice, they knew their first 25 minutes of drills and it was just triangle. One person at the net hitting.
One or two players passing and the third one who is setting in that triangle. And they would all rotate through that and they would all go through different skills and repositioning. And so for the first 20 minutes, every kid is getting a rep every five, four or five seconds. That's pretty good. That's a high level practice. So, it's neither here nor there about today's lesson, because I want to share about you this development conference. I just wanted to.
share with you that it's important to grow. It's important to go and find other practices, see the teams that you respect, see the coaches that you respect, and ask if you can just sit in and watch a practice. And not many people would say absolutely not to that. Obviously, if they're in your division and they're beating you, or they're one of your competitors, that might be a different story. They might be a little mm-mm. But.
If you can find people who are outside your division or just open to making better coaches and making better teams in the area, then we can put our heads together. Okay. So at this conference, one of the things that we had to do beforehand was a disc assessment. D-I-S-C. It's a personality assessment where they give you a bunch of questions and they ask how you would handle that, how you think of it. Do you?
enjoy working in groups, would you rather work alone? Would you rather be involved in the completion of a project so that you can feel a group win and importance? Or is it more important to you that it gets done fast and efficiently? So what I learned about myself and a lot of entrepreneurs and CEOs actually fit in this is that I fall on the D side.
Mark Burik (12:02.694)
and that would be direct. What I care about and it vibes with the way that I would run practices and encourage you to is efficiency. I want to see things get done and I want to see things get done fast. Part of my personality profile is that I honestly don't care if I get recognition for it or not. I would love to take a backseat.
and watch people excel in the goals that we've set for our company. And same thing for a practice. there was a time when I really attempted to take a huge backseat during our camps. And I said, I hired enough coaches. know that I hired capable coaches, so let's let them rock in it. But with those coaches, a lot of the ones who come to our camps, sometimes they're only interacting with me four or five, six times a year. And we have to have a system.
That is number one, repeatable. Number two gets results and number three helps people be happy and build communities. So I, I wanted to, and I enjoyed stepping back in to that role, but it wasn't because I wanted to be in charge. I really don't care about that. And if you see the direction that our company attempts to go on a regular basis, it tries to eliminate my face and my name from being a part of it.
That way, if I go, if I leave, if you're an entrepreneur, you know, like if you want to sell the company, you need to do this, but can Better at Beach as a program survive without me individually? It has to. If we're going to reach our goals of helping all of our coaches and helping all of our players just excel and finding easier and better training programs.
and a way to learn online, a way to access high level coaches wherever you are, well then it can't only be me because if I get the flu or if I go to Spain and Portugal for a month and a half, players and coaches still need to be able to excel through our company. So for me, it is not important that it's my face on it. Now, if we convert over to somebody who has the, so D-I-S-C, if we has somebody who has the influence or the eye,
Mark Burik (14:26.679)
This is a person who really is enthusiastic, they're optimistic, they're high-spirited, and they want to have that relationship with other people, and they want to feel like their words are important and that they're adhered to. And that's a part of that relationship. And each one of these personalities comes with a set of faults or hard edges that you should learn to
shave down or smooth out, and they come with relationships to the other ones. The other one, one of the personality segments, is a S, or a support person. These are the buddy-buddy people, the team developers. And this is something that I learned about myself early, but through this training, it helped me re-realize it. And it helped me.
Understand something that I knew a long time ago. I like efficiency. like hard work and That's it. So long as everybody's working hard and we're working towards a goal. I'm happy I don't need to be shouting and getting fired up and hugging everybody Every now and then I did and do and that was the only way that I could get onto a court when I was playing six on six was through personality and hyping people up but
The S personality is somebody who gathers those people and if they don't check in with everybody, if they don't feel like everybody's connected, if they don't feel like the coach or the other players are supporting them and feeling good about their relationship, they will not be there for you. They'll probably shut down. And I know that I've shut down.
several players and several employees because it's not on my list. It doesn't even come into my radar to naturally say, how are you? How's it going? Tell me about your life. That's a practice skill. And I've gotten a lot better at it at paying attention and hearing people. And actually when I do ask, I actually enjoy hearing about it, but it's not an automatic thing for me. it's not an automatic thing for me to,
Mark Burik (16:51.641)
check in with people and see how they're doing before we get into practice. So in our coach manual that members here, you guys should be able to access and in the one that we are getting printed and distributed, one of the things that we have to do for every class, Tomer, I know you're hearing this, for every class, every camp, every time you show up to a practice, call somebody by name, if not all of them.
greet them and ask them a question. Ask them a how you're doing. One of the cheat codes that I've given on this is if you don't know what questions to ask, just think of Ford, which is family, occupation, relationships, and dreams. I think that's how it goes. But you can ask about any of those things. like, hey, I know your sister had a wedding. How did it go? Occupation, hey, I know you had
problems at your job. Did it ever get sorted? Right. You checking in with players. Number one, it makes sure that all of the people who are on your team, the support personalities are covered or taken care of. Two, it increases your ability to develop a community. And if people are showing up only for volleyball, not because it helps them achieve other goals like
fitness, like friends, being social, being outside, and always feeling wanted and cared for. We all want that in some way. We just receive it in a lot of different ways. So making sure that when you do show up to your practice, yeah, you're greeting everybody, greeting every player soon as they walk in, and you're asking how they're doing. Number one, it'll help them with the support people. Number two, it will...
It will help you know how to coach them because on that day, if you know that they're going through some of the toughest times in their life, because they've told you, because you've asked and you've opened up that gateway, you can then make the decision whether it's time to push them, be tougher on them or not. If you guys are in relationships, you know this when your partner, your wife, your husband is having a bad day. That's not a
Mark Burik (19:16.879)
Time to open up critique on whatever you've been thinking about. First, you've got to help them heal. You've got to get them back to wherever they want to be back to in a mental space, and then save your helping criticizing spiel for another time. so make sure that your guys are checking in with your players and then, see, okay. See is more of a.
a conscientious person or analytical. Some people call it clarity. This is somebody who likes to absolutely check every box. They often bring the people who are entrepreneurs or in that direct like big dreamer type thing, type scenario. it helps them understand the steps that are involved in every big dream or big process. Like, Hey, you want to change the lineup? Okay.
Why is it going to work? Well, the C person should be able to, the clarity person should be able to show you the stats from every position, what the other team is doing, why it could work, why it won't work and really map those things out. So early in my coaching career, what I know that I needed, if I'm coaching a club long-term or if I'm coaching a team long-term, since I'm a D person and I'm, I'll read it from here. Direct.
firm, strong-willed, forceful, and results-oriented, I need somebody who can build that community and build the relationships within the team, keep people happy, whatever it is, tie bows, bring oranges, remember that it's somebody's birthday and set up a little cake and cookies party. Because if I don't have that whole part of the leadership team because I recruited improperly, there's a lot of players that we're going to lose.
And so knowing these personalities and knowing your best ways to interact with people, and I'm not asking you to change yourself. I'm asking you to be open to change now, because this is how you interact and how you've learned to interact. But I am asking you to acknowledge these things and just sand down.
Mark Burik (21:43.471)
some of those edges of yours. There's a lot of places that you can take this assessment for free. And then there are some where they give you really detailed reports for something between 20 and $40. And if you are a coach, if you're invested in learning and being a better leader or just a better person for the people in your life, and that includes your players and your coaching staff, do this.
Do this assessment, D-I-S-C. There's no affiliate thing or anything here, but it will show you a little bit of what category you fall into, and then you'll probably start thinking of the people on your team, both on your staff and your players, and how and who they are. It will help you assign responsibilities, knowing if it's very much within their comfort zone.
or very much outside of their comfort zone. There are different types of captains, different types of leaders, but the way that you present and the assignments that you give to people should be in accordance with their best strengths. If you guys have flipped to or watched the sessions, which is a five-part self-development course that we have in the library, if you notice that then we talk about
putting yourself in and putting your players and putting the people in your life into positions of power. But we need to be careful with that because it's not a position of power that you imagine. It's a position of their power. Where can they be strong? Where do they feel confident? In what situations, what roles, what responsibilities, what tasks can you give them both?
socially and within practice and outside of practice that you know this vibes with their personality. It's something that they would enjoy doing and they feel really good when they get into these positions because it's their favorite type of position to be in. Okay, so this has helped me. Number one, after traveling with my with my wife to St. Pete and
Mark Burik (24:07.449)
Portugal, it helped me realize that we definitely, know that we handle things definitely differently, but she is a total S person. She wants to make sure that everybody feels good about every decision, that everybody's happy to the ninth degree. Whereas I, I just want to eat like, Hey, you want to go to dinner? Let's just walk into a restaurant and get dinner. So my goal is to eat her goal.
is to make everybody feel like they've had the best meal possible.
When she's making her decisions, she's checking in with everybody constantly. And that's when I was like, my God, I feel this like, let's just go. Why aren't we doing this? And then I had to realize, she's doing it because she wants to make everyone in our family super happy. I'm doing this because I want dinner. while the event is the same, the things that we were looking at it within there are completely different. And so.
right after that trip where I was feeling frustrated about some parts of it, but overall really happy. I got to go to this development conference and learn and relearn. this is who my wife is. She wants to build families. She wants to build friends. She wants to look out for everyone. And this is who I am. I just want to get stuff done quickly without thinking about.
So it helped me be a lot more patient and a lot more saying like, hmm, in the future, what can I assign to myself and say, you're not allowed to think about this and what situations do I want to put her in charge? And it also helped me with the assignments that I'm going to be giving to some of our coaching staff and some of our employees here. And I know that's going to make me better in the future. And for sure, learning to...
Mark Burik (26:06.677)
Look at people categorically and try to say, hmm, who is that type of person? Where do they feel best? Where do they feel most comfortable? Can I help them where they are and put them in positions of power? Not how I see them, but in positions that make them feel powerful. And those are two very, very different things. Okay, so coaches, go out there, take a personality assessment.
Study yourself, learn how to be better. Go to some other practices. That's from the previous lesson here. And if you're fully invested into your team and into making them better people and you're working with a team on a regular basis, create an opportunity where you can all go through this. There are coaches and there are doctors and there are people who are trained in the disk assessments that can help you. But the very least, opening up a conversation to help everybody realize
the different personalities, needs, desires, and positions of strengths on your team and on your staff. So if you can learn from something that I just recently, and I'm still working on, that's it. Got this conference. When did a disc profile? There were a lot of other things in that conference, but this was the one that affected me the most because they'll want to be as good as I can for the people around me, including my family, the players on my court and the people.
You're at Better At Beach. So I hope that makes sense. I hope it motivates you to go out and study yourself, to go out and study other practices. I want you to make sure that you are saying hello. If you're not used to saying hello, how are you like me? Make that a process in your camps. And that's what we do here at Better At Beach. We make sure that everybody greets every coach, greets every player. And as soon as you walk up to one of our camps,
We have a line of people waiting for you, extending a hand for a handshake, introducing themselves and getting their first repetition at your first name. It's a process that's important to us because of our belief that beach volleyball can create communities that make people supported, give you a healthy sport that you can do for a long time, have a social network and just overall enjoy.
Mark Burik (28:34.445)
life better. And that's what we are looking for. And that's what we really try to do here at better at beach. And for the coaches out there, go ahead, take a personality assessment. and then if you can open it up to some of your players. Okay. If you're in this meeting, we're going to open up the Q and a for our coach Academy members. If not, you guys can head on over to better beach.com forward slash team. And you can see what our coaching Academy is about our,
for our players and our coaches. It is all the same program. You get access to two video meetings like this per week where we do live Q and A. We do a lot of video analysis and we have new guests every week from the coaching world, from the psychology world, the nutrition world, physical fitness and beach volleyball. And you also get all of our workout programs, all of our skill training courses and our coaching development courses. So would love to have you there and
If you ever want to work with me personally, one on one, we have our elite program where we will meet every week for 12 weeks that comes with lifetime access to our training blueprint, which we add new courses to, I'd say every month. And you also get free access to every camp for 365 days, one year.
So if you want to work with me one on one, I just want you to DM me at Mark Barak on Instagram and we can get started with that. But that's all from me for this episode. And for our coach members, we are going to open it up to Q &A right now. For those of you listening to a future podcast or YouTube episode, goodbye. Thanks for listening and we'll see you on the sand.
