Mark Burik (00:19.394)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Better at Beach podcast. My name is Mark Burrick and you are listening to Everything Beach Volleyball. Today we are going to talk about the top 10 workout mistakes that volleyball players should avoid. So I'm going to give you some of my tips and tricks along the way. If you don't know, I had a 15-ish year.
career as a professional beach volleyball player. graduated from George Mason university with a degree in exercise science with focuses in nutrition and psychology. And I am a certified strength and conditioning specialist, performance enhancement specialist with NASM and a certified personal trainer. So there's a lot of things that along with my volleyball skills and strategy, I come from a strength training background and there are still.
mistakes that I've made along the way and that I want to help you out with. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. And this is going to be another quick hitter. So this podcast should be over in 20 minutes. I hope that you get everything out of it and I hope you use it on your drive home, falling asleep to the annoying sound of my voice. But before we get started, I do want to let you guys know where we are headed. have training camps coming up.
January 24th, we are in Loveland, Ohio, and we still have four spots for our women's camp at my private court. That's where I'm filming right now. So you might be able to see out the back window. That's where the volleyball courts are. And we have an Airbnb here in St. Pete, Florida. So you can stay here at my Airbnb. can just find me on Instagram at Mark Burrick, and I'll send you the links. And if you've got volleyball friends, it's the perfect state. We've got a big giant.
swim spa that you can stay in, big jets and some nice hot water and our own private volleyball court. If you think you have a group of four, five, six or more, and you know that you guys would want to hire me or one of our coaches for your own camp, two, three, four days, just get in touch. Just because it's not on our schedule doesn't mean we can't do it. Okay. So send an email to support a better beach or hit me up on Instagram. Now.
Mark Burik (02:42.152)
Our Tacoma, Washington camp has been sold out for a few months. There are only three courts there, but I have the feeling that we are going to reload that camp and go right back because we have so far a 17 person waiting list and no one's dropping out. But on February 14th, we are going to Salt Lake City for a two day event. So February 14th and 15th, we'll be in Salt Lake City. And March 7th and 9th, we will be in Ozark, Missouri.
March 14th to 16th, we will be in New Orleans. March 21st, we're coming back to Long Island, New York. March 28th in Las Vegas. April 4th in Oklahoma City. May 30th back in Long Island again. And June 20th we'll be in Virginia Beach, followed by June 27th in Milwaukee. And we're always adding camps. So if you want us to run a camp in your hometown and you know that there are courts that you can reserve, that we can legally book, hit us up.
Let's see if we can run a camp and get it going. Um, and if you are a part of our complete beach volleyball training blueprint community at better at beach.com, if you become an annual member, you get access to all of our courses, all of our workout programs, live weekly meetings, as well as unlimited video analysis in our community where we can help you improve your game. And those annual members get a 15 % discount on any.
training camps. So if you think you're coming to one, two, three, or more, no brainer, you should sign up for the annual program, get all of our workout programs, our courses, and, get those huge discounts on camps. Now let's get to business. Shall we? I created a little checklist here that I am going to read through and the number one.
And it's not like the top, but the number one thing that we're going to talk about is skipping warmups and overlooking mobility. So mistakes that volleyball players made skipping warmups and overlooking mobility. does mobility flexibility do? So flexibility and mobility are a little bit different, or you can think of them differently for mobility. We're thinking how well we can move in different ranges of motion and be strong.
Mark Burik (05:00.14)
So if you're thinking that just stretching or static stretching is going to heal all of your flexibility woes and make you a strong super athlete, that's not necessarily true. You need to be strong in multiple ranges of motion. So you guys might be able to see if you're watching on video that I'm sitting at a desk, right? If my shoulders are forward and my head's forward, not really good for volleyball. We like to stand tall. We like to be upright and I need my
back to open up. need to pull my shoulders back so that I can have an effective hitting window and hitting space. Now, when you skip mobility, when you don't warm up properly, number one, you're probably overlooking some weaknesses that your body has. Okay. And by weaknesses, I mean places where you might not be as strong and your body will still learn or try
to get to the ball in some ways if you're not quite mobile, but having open hip flexors, having flexible, mobile, strong hamstrings, being able to open up in your thoracic and twist left to right, all of these things become of ultimate importance when we're pursuing volleyball, when we need to be explosive and my hip flexors need to actually fully extend.
And you're hitting window. This is a big thing. Your hitting window actually gets a lot smaller. The less mobile you are, especially talking about overhead, putting your arms up straight, reaching them behind your ears, opening up your back and then being able to twist. So if you're skipping mobility and warmups, number one, you know, you know that if you don't warm up, you're going to start.
behind. Somebody's going to be more warmed up than you, and they're going to start with their engines at full speed for the first point. And if you're saying that, or you have said to yourself, well, you know, I don't really get going until the second set or the second match. How many games are you going to lose committing to that style? You should absolutely hit your engines. Get them to full speed.
Mark Burik (07:16.268)
before you actually start training, before you get to your tournament. That way, you're going to have better lifts. So your sets in the gym are going to be stronger instead of having kind of a warmup set and then building yourself up. You should always have warmup sets to build up to the weight that you're using. And you should do a little bit of mobility so that you can get more depth and more strength in those different ranges of motion. Okay? So do not skip your warmups and...
If you need help on warmups, we've got a few warmup videos that are on YouTube, but also we have a 21 day mobility for volleyball program. That is my return from injury program. I was playing the Pottstown rumble. had broken my foot recently and I had 20 days to get the boot off from when the boot came off until I needed to compete in this grueling grass tournament. And I said, okay, I'm not going to be in prime shape, but I know that in 20 days I can get myself competition ready.
So I developed the 21 day mobility for volleyball program, but we can also call it the back to fitness program or the athletic foundations program. It does all of the same things. It gets your body ready to compete. So those links are below. It's part of the complete training, complete beach volleyball training blueprint. If you want to check it out, just look at better at beach and find the mobility for volleyball program, but we're going to link it around here as well. Okay. And that will serve as a tremendous warmup for you.
As well as a full 21 day workout program, because we start some weight training in that. Okay. Number two, we just touched it on it a little bit, but the second mistake that a lot of volleyball players make is neglecting rotational power. Okay. So if we're just pushing weight forward and back or over our head or up and down, remember that in order to pursue a volleyball, we need to turn.
and run in order to hit a volleyball with any velocity, we need to rotate through our chest and come through the ball. So our obliques need to be strong and snappy. Our transverse abdominis needs to be strong and snappy. So if you are not including rotational exercises, Russian twists are OK. Taking big medicine balls and twisting and launching them.
Mark Burik (09:35.432)
as far as you can, finding a brick wall and doing the exact same with that medicine ball. You can also do this with cables, rotating, finding strength and power in your rotation. But if you do not have any rotating exercises in your workout program, you are losing a key component to hitting power as well as your agility on court. So please start incorporating your rotational power exercises.
Number three mistake is ignoring or neglecting recovery time. This is hard in a long season. you know you're playing world tour AVP and you have, you might have 30 tournaments, 35 tournaments, a summer, spring, summer, fall recovery is difficult. You have to find ways to rebuild. But if you're feeling tired, consistently tired, consistently exhausted or weak in the gym.
You should take longer in between all of your workouts. Okay. You don't need need more than two workouts per week. They would have to be longer. They would have to be pretty all inclusive, full body. You can do more splits. So you can do two, three, or four. Once you're getting to five workouts, that's just silly. you don't need that unless you're a bodybuilder and you're super specific on gaining hypertrophy in certain areas, but two, three,
Or four workouts. And if you're doing four workouts, you're probably doing a lower body, upper body split, which means lower body Monday, some upper body, which should be a shorter workout because we're beach volleyball players on Tuesday, upper body again on Thursday, lower, and vice versa on Friday. Right. So lower upper, lower upper with some days in between that way each muscle group has the amount of time to recover. You could also do a leg day on Monday.
and upper body and maybe rotational day on Wednesday and then a full body day on Friday. That's a good three day split. If you're doing a two day split, that means that you're only going to work out let's say Monday and Thursday. And that's where most volleyball players should get to when it comes to season. So if you're playing a tournament every weekend, I would say you should not be in the gym more than twice a week, especially if you're training and practicing for those tournaments.
Mark Burik (12:00.044)
Then the two day split is really all you should do. So maybe Sunday, Wednesday, or Monday, Wednesday would be good, but then they need to be all inclusive, full body, legs and upper body to keep up with the demands. And of course, if you're going to the court, if you're warming up and you're practicing, you should be including mobility, your full warmup. You should be getting some types of sprints in those practices because it should be more game-like when we're in season.
Okay, so you're going to be a lot of gameplay in season and you should also be doing shoulder work pretty much all the time. Okay. And by shoulder work, don't mean like heavy weights. mean, band weights, external rotation, overhead mobility, and opening up your range of motion for your arm. Okay. If you want help with that, we have a fix your arm swing in 21 days.
It gives you all of the mechanics for jumping and swinging, but it also acts as a shoulder rehab program. All of the exercises are from physical therapy protocols that help you increase your range of motion and get strong in that range of motion for your arms, overhead swinging and overhead throwing athletes. Okay. Now the next one we're going to talk about after ignoring recovery time is improper technique. If.
You have never been coached. If you've just gone into the gym, if you haven't had anybody look at you and said, check out my form. And then you start trying to put on heavier and heavier weight and you neglect imbalances or you neglect poor technique at some point that's going to lead to injury. You should at some point just invest and remember when you invest in a personal trainer, a smart personal trainer, or somebody who can show you how to do it the right way, you're investing.
that once for the rest of your life. Because if you learn how to do technique, to perform exercises correctly, that's something that you are going to do two, three, four times a week for the rest of your life. So make the investment to have somebody teach you and guide you through proper technique like we do in the Complete Beach Volleyball Training Blueprint on Better at Beach. We have people post videos, our members post videos, and then we help them out with their technique from our exercise programs.
Mark Burik (14:20.706)
The next one is lack of sport-specific training. What is volleyball? Volleyball is explosive, right? So if you're not training to be explosive, if you're going slow down, slow up, as opposed to control down and fast up and some ballistic exercises, you're not training for volleyball.
Basically anything that you do with your legs, unless you're working on imbalances and mobility, anything with your legs should be a controlled motion down and then absolutely firing up. Sometimes if you're using a heavier weight, it doesn't feel fast, but the intent to make sure that your muscles pop, to make sure that they explode as fast as they possibly can, that intent counts as max intensity or max effort.
Okay, you can do this with heavyweight or you can do it with lightweight. If you have good enough technique, you can throw some lighter weight on your back. You can hold a weight or you can have a weight vest or you can hold dumbbells and see how high you can jump with those. And you can do that. You know, some people recommend zero to 30 % of your one rep max and being explosive. And you could also do this with any percentage, so long as you're attempting to move at max velocity.
We need to develop power in our legs, and that includes speed and max strength. So please start moving with the intent to move things as fast as possible. Also, biceps. What are they going to do for volleyball? Chest. What is it going to do for volleyball? Other than the need to pop yourself up and maybe develop a little bit of extra torque when you are hitting a ball.
You don't need to waste time on biceps and chest. Cool. It's there. I get it. Maybe your shirt's off and you want to show off. Also, there is some shoulder health and tricep balance there that we can use with our chest, but the risk reward for chest exercises for volleyball players just isn't there. Also, one of the top exercises you can use if you play defense at all is sled pushes. Having a horizontal body and then driving.
Mark Burik (16:43.372)
behind you. So pushing the ground behind you and pushing the weight in front of you, that is going to count in a big way. That is my number one biggest exercise recommendation for defenders or people who play defense. And if you're a blocker and you're learning how to peel, or even if you're an attacker, backpedaling with the sled as well to practice those quad pushes to get you fast distance, fast and big distance when you're leaving the net or getting into your approach after a short ball.
All right. Next is inconsistent training and skipping workouts entirely. I understand life. I do. I have a daughter. Hopefully there's more to come. I'm traveling constantly and running a business or three, it feels like sometimes, but you can't miss workouts.
And if you do, if you can't dedicate 45 minutes, 55 minutes to a full workout, get some set somehow. I'm telling you this right now. I have thrown my wife on my back and done Bulgarian squats on my couch. And I said, you know what? I didn't get my full workout today. Just didn't allow it. I just need to put some weight on my legs and get through a few reps. If you can get through one set of something heavy or something fast, no matter where you are.
Throw your wife or your kid on your back. Do some lunges, right? Jump on some stairs. Find a way to get something in, but don't skip workouts entirely. Even if you're hurt, find a way to get something in body weight, squats, mobility, unilateral exercises, training one side of the body that's not hurt, but don't skip workouts. And then if you do get right back on the horse and pick up where you left off.
It takes you about two weeks to completely de-train. If you train once every two weeks, you're not going to actually increase in your physical abilities, but you're not going to lose it that quick. Okay. If you train once a week, you can stay nearly stable. Of course, your conditioning is going to fall apart, but you want to be a minimum, find a way to get two solid body weight, full body workouts per week. Okay. Next one.
Mark Burik (19:04.898)
Focusing solely on strength, but not on speed. We talked about that with sports specific training. If you can push heavyweight, but you're not, you don't have the intent to move it fast. You're missing out on vertical and explosiveness. Since I've already talked about that, I'm not going to spend too much more time on.
Next one is poor nutrition and hydration. If you feel gassed or tired going into the workout and you know you haven't eaten, eat something. Put some carbohydrates into your body before your workout so that you can get the most out of that workout. Make sure you are hydrating throughout the day. One of the leading causes of injuries is poor hydration. If your muscles are dried out, they're going to rip easily. If they're hydrated and lubricated,
then you're going to have healthier muscles. But people screw this up. They don't eat properly. They say like, I'm not cutting up. I'm not shredding. Well, what are you eating? You can work out all day long, but you can still have a big puffy body if you're eating the wrong things. OK, you want protein after workouts, protein all the time. But before workouts, before enduring tournaments, you want to be carbohydrate high so that you have those energy stores for yourself.
Okay. The next one is the wrong workouts at the wrong time. If you're doing high volume lifting, lots of reps, lots of sets, too close to the season, too close to your actual tournament or competition, you're going to be fried. We want to do things like four sets of two towards our closer to our tournament. You can even do those types of sets and workouts right before your tournament.
like the day before or the morning of. If you do three or four sets of one at a max effort with max speed, that actually won't make you sore. It won't make you tired. It turns your motor neurons on because part of being fast and strong is motor neuron recruitment, teaching your brain to recruit as many neurons to turn on as many muscle fibers as possible. So when you train like that, super heavy.
Mark Burik (21:20.46)
without going high in your number of reps and sets, then you're training yourself if you use the intent of speed or max strength, then you're training yourself to recruit those motor neurons and muscle fibers so that when you do need them to fire, they are ready, they're available, they are hooked in to your body and ready to fire. But you need to connect them first. So lower reps, lower sets.
as we move closer to season and as we move closer to our tournament. number 10, top 10 workout mistakes volleyball players make is not signing up for the Complete Beach Volleyball Training Blueprint. We have all of these available for you. So we have the 21-day mobility program, which is a get back to fitness program. We have full kettlebell programs, which the introductory 21-day program, you don't even need a kettlebell. We have a full 60-day
training program for volleyball players that is all inclusive and you can stretch that out over the course of an entire year or just keep putting it on repeat and beating your numbers piece by piece. And we have the Fix Your Arms Swing in 21 Days, which is an entire shoulder rehab program. So if you haven't checked that out or you haven't signed up for it, we have links below and we will help you the entire way through. You can get the standalone course if you want to, but
I recommend signing up for the membership, doing the annual membership, getting the 15 % discount on any camps. And then you get to post, ask questions in the community at any time so that we can help you with your technique. Plus it comes with all of our other skill and strategy courses. All right, that is it. I have a member meeting that I have to get to. So I really appreciate you guys listening. If you liked this episode, let me know in the comments.
Please subscribe to the podcast, maybe give it a rating somewhere. If you want to come to a camp, check out betteratbeach.com forward slash camps. If you want to check out our workout programs, just go to betteratbeach.com forward slash workout. And if you want us to run a camp near you and you know where there are courts that we can reserve, hook it up. Find me on Instagram at Mark Burick and let's start getting it set up. Thank you guys so much.
Mark Burik (23:45.154)
We will see you later and we will see you on the sand.
