Mark Burik (00:02.872)
Hey everybody and welcome to the Better at Beach podcast. My name is Mark Burke and today we are talking stats. I want to give you guys the opportunity to take some easy stats to understand where your game is at, set some baselines and then be able to improve those. And I'm going to give you the easiest ways to do that. There are some really important statistics that we can control.
we can count easily. And these are some of the things that I go through with my one-on-one players, the guys that sign up for 10 private sessions with me. We do a lot of video analysis together. And then we take their before stats and then their after stats. And we take those stats throughout the program. So if you guys are interested in working with me one-on-one,
where I will guide you through this next season. You're gonna get all of our courses. You're gonna get all of our workout programs and I'm gonna customize them for you along with doing all of your video review together so that we can get a hold of your game where it is now and then see the best places for you to.
improve for you to get better statistics, get more wins. And we've got one guy who has been meeting with me almost every week. His name is Will and he went from bottom of the barrel, B player losing most matches and struggling to find players. And I got to sit in a meeting with him recently where he was just lit up because he's won the last 15 sets in a row.
with mixed players, B, A, open players, and he's really finding his stride. And a lot of that has to do with the film work and the drills that we're giving him to do at home, as well as the goals for him during his practice matches, where I'm setting some restrictions and some ways that he has to learn how to win those matches. And if you want to do that, you can click on any of the links below, but it is betteratbeach.com forward slash film session and
Mark Burik (02:13.742)
That's where you can sign up and we can work together one-on-one. If you want to join our coaching group, you can also do that too. Just head to betterpeach.com forward slash coaching. That is again, where you'll get all the courses. You'll get our community where you can post your, your videos and we'll go in there and upgrade your strategy and your technique and you get access to all of our workout programs. And if you sign up for the year, you get all of our camps at a 15 % discount. So.
Let's get into it. The first thing that I want to do before we talk about our most important stats is talk about our upcoming camps. So.
If you go to betteratbeach.com forward slash camps, you'll see all of these, but, our Santa Monica camp went well. We're going to throw another one for women. It's going to be a women's camp on April 4th and 6th. That's not up yet, but March 7th will be in Ozark, Missouri, March 14th in New Orleans, March 21st. I'm going home to Long Island, New York, March 28th in Las Vegas. That's going to be a big camp. It's going to be a lot of fun.
April 4th in Oklahoma City at Boombox Beach. April 11th will be in Scottsdale, Arizona. May 2nd and 3rd and 4th, we're going to be in Austin, Texas at ATX Beach. And I'm really excited about that because we're going to run a two day camp. So two eight hour days on Friday and Saturday. And then on Sunday, whether you take the camp or not, we are going to have a King and Queen of the Court style.
tournament at ATX Beach. So we're going to host a tournament on that Sunday. So if you are in Texas or thinking about going to town, we've got two days of camps, two eight hour days followed by a big tournament on Sunday at ATX Beach. And you can sign up at betterbeach.com forward slash camps. then Long Island again, May 30th and San Diego May 30th. Our Tacoma, Washington on June 6th is sold out.
Mark Burik (04:22.486)
And then we'll be in Virginia Beach on June 20th and June 27th in Milwaukee. If you guys want us to come to your town, run any camps. If you've got facilities or courts that you know are bookable and reservable, just email support at better beach.com and get us in touch with the person we need to talk to, to reserve those courts. All right. Let's talk stats and the easy way to track them. What are the most important stats?
Number one, serving and passing. Okay. So on passing, there are a couple of ways to do these scales, but the one that I'm going to show you today or teach you today is a three point passing scale. a three, pass ranked a three is going to be a perfect pass. I'll talk about what that is in a second. A pass ranked a two is a pretty good pass. It's okay. A one.
ranked pass is going to be something that the setter can just barely get their hands on. They're really out of system. You're not going to have the best chance at offense, but it's not an ace or an overpass and an ace or an overpass is a zero point pass. So what is a perfect pass in beach volleyball? The way that I lead my higher level players is a three point pass is where the hitter or the setter
should have the option, the ability to have a forward moving spike or handset or bumps it as their choice. Now, in general, that pass would land between where the two of you are standing. So if you take a look at the setter and the passer, wherever you pass from, if you pause both of those bodies right there, that pass should be in the front 10 feet of the court, high enough for somebody to take a four step approach, jump and hit.
and between the passer and the setter. Okay, so that's gonna be a three point pass. Now a lot of people think that it's a perfect pass if they just get the ball forward and into the front part of the court where the setter can set. I like to gauge it on does the setter have time to walk under that ball calmly or jump and spike or handset. Now if you're passing so low,
Mark Burik (06:48.332)
that they only have the option to bump set that is a style of offense that you can do. It just doesn't end up getting you very far into qualifiers AVP. if you don't learn to pass at a height that allows for options, it's gonna be really uncomfortable for you when you need it. So a three point pass is between the passer and the setter, front 10 feet of the court.
and the setter has the option to jump and hit, set, handset or bump set. Now, how do we track that? All you guys gotta do is take film. If you just record every time you play your practice matches and record from the back middle of the court, that's important. We don't like the other angles, we don't get a good view of it. It's difficult to see things. So.
The most ideal spot is as high as possible from the back middle of the court. Now you can put that camera or phone 10, 15, 20 feet off the court, but that's where we have our online members take their video from when we're studying the match analysis. And all you need after you have that film is a little spreadsheet. And then every time you and your partner, so you put you under one column.
your partner under the other column. Okay. Every time you get a serve receive, all you do is you pause it and say, okay, yeah, that was hittable and handsettable and bumpsettable and they were comfortable. So then you write a three and then the next row you go to the next pass and you rate that pass was it a three, two, one or zero. And then the next column and then the next column, sorry, row, not very good at Excel sheets, but
Once you have all of those passes for my one-on-one players, I have them make sure that they can get me a 100 pass rating. So out of 100 serve receives, and I don't like if these are in drill, it's okay if you get 100 serve receives and that's all you want to do for that practice and then rate it. But there's something to be said about putting yourself in a game environment where you haven't seen a serve receive in
Mark Burik (09:13.176)
two or three points and then you have to execute. So we take it all from practice matches and competition matches. And then you just divide the sum of that. So you add three plus two plus three plus one plus zero. And then you just divide that sum by the total attempts of passes and you have your passer rating. So a 2.5 passer would be a really high level passer.
If you're down in the ones, 1.9, 1.8 or low twos, you really should consider upgrading your passing. have a full course on that. If you go to better at beach.com forward slash pass in the next two weeks from the recording of this video, we're taking all of our online members through the full passing course, giving them drills and challenges every week to up their ball control and serve receive. And so that's what we're studying with our online group and.
that's what you want to rate for your serve receive because when you pass in front of you, when your setter has the time to get themselves there and be consistent, you're going to have a better side out flat out when the ball is in front of you and your setter is comfortable, your side out percentage will increase. So that is our passer rating. Okay. If we flip that and we go to a server rating.
You want to take all of your matches, all of your practice matches, and every time you serve, you figure out what people pass against you. Right? So if they are getting a perfect 3.0 as a serve receiving team, then you need to upgrade your serving. If you're putting them in trouble, if you're not allowing the option game, if you're not allowing the setter to walk under the ball comfortably or
They're passing to the back half of the court. You're doing really well from the service line. And again, you would take 100 of those, 100 attempts, hopefully is against varying teams and varying opponents and see if you're getting teams out of system. You really want to force them to pass to the back half of the court or pass tight or even give you some free balls. As a recommendation for serving.
Mark Burik (11:41.398)
I wouldn't go for aces. What I teach is that we go for great spots on the court that we know lead to good things. And an ace becomes a really nice bonus, but the whole serve aggressive, there is a time to just let it fly, but why not let it fly at a really good spot, right? Instead of just blindly swinging as hard as you can into one area. So we have our passer rating on a three point scale.
And then we have our server rating at a three point scale. Obviously when you're passing closer to three, so like 2.5 to three is what you're shooting for. And when you're serving, you want to try to keep the other teams below a two. And that means that you're doing a good job from the service line, serving space, finding what causes trouble. And then you figure out how to increase those statistics in the serve and pass game.
can be a huge difference maker in wins and losses. There's also another sets. So if we move on to sets, how do we really track our sets? If you're watching online here, and this is going to be on YouTube, so you can check it out as well. But if you can follow along with this video that I'm about to share, and I'll talk through it so you don't necessarily have to.
follow along, but let's talk about setting. Okay. When you're setting, all we're going to measure is your ratio of good passes or good sets to bad sets. And I'm going to go with a no excuses. You have to talk about every set. Every time you touch the ball. means if your pass is in system and it's easy to set.
Cool. If you have to do a run through or you have to touch it with one hand or figure out how to create a hittable ball on a bad pass or a bad dig, then hold yourself to that standard because a setter's entire job in life is to create a hittable, sorry, a killable ball. So that means that even when the pass, and we talked about this at our men's camp in Santa Monica, even when you pass or dig to the back line, the person who just dug it,
Mark Burik (14:04.012)
should be expecting and calling for the setter to put the ball three feet from the net and usually in one of the outside zones. So either the farthest 10 feet to the outside or the farthest 10 feet to the right side. And that means that offensively they have to get outside the court, create a nice big triangle, ending up in eye formation when you pass to the back half of the court.
Terrible idea because then you're going to be blind. You're going to be looking backwards and trying to hit a ball from behind you and receive it instead of approaching it at a nice, let's call it 45 or 90 degree angle. Okay. But hitters should be outside. Regardless, we're talking about setting. So that's the setters entire job to create a killable ball.
Now, if we take a look at this video, this is me and Logan playing against Lila and Kyle. So Logan Weber and Lila Tucker and Kyle Friend, a little EVP practice match here. How do we determine good sets or bad sets? Okay. Again, if you have the video, that's key. And what you want to do is on set contact. So if you're looking at my video, Logan just passed the ball. I am in contact with the set.
Now, what you want to do is put your cursor close to the net where the person's hitting arm, so right next to their hitting arm, and then just draw an imaginary line that would end up about three feet from the net. So I'm gonna imagine here, if I'm looking at this video, Logan's hips are facing towards the middle of the court. I'm in contact with the set. So this ball...
belongs about where my cursor is. Okay. And it's going to be a good set if it's in that window within one or two feet of that window. And it's also, sorry about my cell phone going off, and it's also going to be something that is not forcing him into anything. So even if it is in that window, if it's too tight and he looks a little bit janky or he has to reach for the ball or he can't make a decision,
Mark Burik (16:20.11)
Like he's forced into one or two shots. I'll call that a bad set. If he has a clean approach, he's not leaning back. He's not leaning over his left shoulder or anything like that. Then it's a good set. Okay. So we'll take a few examples on this video. I'm in contact with the ball. The set belongs leading Logan's right arm. Okay. And let's see if it falls right there. Okay. Cool.
So that is a good set. Logan has all of his options. He was able to move forward. He's not leaning back. He's not leaning over his left shoulder. Okay. If we are in serve receive again. Okay. So there's my pass. Let's see if Logan. All right. We'll move on to the next one. Okay. So here we've got a back set, right? We're going to rate this set as good or bad. Right. One or the other. Now in contact with the ball.
Leela is in contact with the ball. Kyle's approach is looking like it's going out to the right side. So I'm going to follow his right hip, and I'm going to draw a line towards the net on the right side. And if Leela sets out here, where my cursor is, closer to the net along the right side, then it's going to be a good set. So let's see if he does it. We're going to call that a pretty good set. He led Kyle's right arm, but.
You know, it wasn't really tight enough for Kyle to have all of his options because he's about 10 feet off. So for Lilo, we're going to give that one a bad set. if we're just rating ourselves, just G or B, G or B, right?
Okay, we get a dig. Now we can see where my right hips are going. Logan's in contact with the ball. So if I lead my right hip towards the net, this set belongs on my right shoulder. So we're gonna see if it's good or bad. We're gonna make a determination.
Mark Burik (18:18.374)
Logan said a little bit inside compared to where I was going but I was able to go and do it so if we're gonna be tough on ourselves we're gonna rate that as a Bad set he didn't follow the line of approach and I was almost forced to hit that ball
Okay. One more time. So Lila's setting, right? This is Kyle's right column. So this ball belongs definitely on his right side. And since they're running it back, said he's a little bit blind, but do we create a hittable ball out of it? That's to his right arm might be a little bit too far. perhaps.
They haven't played together enough. They haven't worked out how far back their back set is. But we saw Kyle have to take this big step out to the ball and he doesn't have the ideal window. So we're also going to call that a bad set. Okay. One more time, just for example. Okay. On my set contact Logan's right hip, right toes are pointing here. So his body is telling me where to set.
So this set belongs right in here above the letters. I'll put my cursor there and determine if it's a good set.
Bad set and that led to a hit it looks hittable, right? It looks like logan can still jump and get it but Not a perfect set. So we're going is it perfect or not? And then you just get that percentage of okay what percentage out of a hundred sets what percentage are going perfect leading the hitters right arm if they're a righty or left arm if they're a lefty in coordination or view of where they're
Mark Burik (20:05.71)
is going and headed while the setter has contact with the ball. And if you get 100 of those sets and 50 of them are in the perfect spot and the other 50 are making people lean or break their approach or they're a little bit too far off or they're forced into it, well, then we upgrade our setting and you can do that at betterbeach.com forward slash set.
We have an entire setting course that's included in the complete training blueprint. We're actually going through that starting in April. So if you want to learn how to handset and how to really upgrade the level of your sets, that focus for our online training group is happening in April. We're doing all of passing in the beginning and the middle of March and then moving on to setting in the early spring. Okay. So I hope that's clear.
One more time, just for an example, right? Here's where my right hips are leading. Logan's in contact with the ball, so I draw an imaginary line. I put my cursor there, and this is about where the set belongs, leading my right hip. And this is a perfect set by Logan. Right? He led where my hips were going. It fell on my right arm. Perfect set by Logan. I've got all of my options.
Okay, so that's two stats, well, three stats we're taking. Server stats, passing stats, and good or bad for sets. Okay. And then finally, some of the most important statistics come from our side out percentage. So there is, I'm gonna close this here. Okay. There is a side out percentage and there's an attacking percentage. So a side out percentage is every time
you, your team serve receives, do you end up winning that point? Okay, that's going to be your side out percentage. And at the pro level, it's somewhere between seven and eight out of 10 that you should be winning when you're serve receiving. And that's why all pros choose to receive first, because statistically you should be at the advantage if you have the opportunity to control the first ball and win the first point.
Mark Burik (22:27.256)
pros should be winning at least 70 % of the balls that they receive. Attacking percentage is different. So attacking percentage is every time you send the ball over the net, that's deemed an attack. Even if you have to free ball it, you're still attacking them. Now, how do we determine that?
So I'm to use another Excel or Google Sheets type spreadsheet. All you're going to do is every attack. So you're attacking in one column, right? And then every time you attack, you write K for kill, C for continuation ball, something that they were able to dig in the center, could get their hands on, or E for error, which is you hitting out, you hitting into the net.
Or are you getting blocked? Okay, we're going to count getting blocked for a point as a hitting error. Now, every time you attack, you're writing K, C or E. K, C or E. Kill, continuation, ball or error. At the end of that, at the end of 100 of those, and again, same thing I go through with my one-on-one guys and the people who are in the complete training blueprint.
Those are the people who are taking these stats and we upgrade them over time through our courses, training and drills. But you take the total number of, sorry, you take all of your kills, you add them up and then you take all of your errors and you subtract those. So let's say you had 20 kills, 10 errors and 10 continuation balls. So that's 40 total attempts. We had 20 kills and we subtract.
the 10 errors. So now we're at 10, right? 20 minus 10 equals 10, but we had 40 attempts, 40 total attempts. So we divide 10 by the 40, which is total attempts. So kills minus errors divided by the total attempts. You would be hitting there at 25%. So your attack percentage would be 25%. If you're looking at pro level,
Mark Burik (24:49.774)
Who's winning the AVPs? If you're winning AVPs, you're usually hitting at least 45%. A lot of the championship, like winning, most winning attackers and the highest rated attackers per tournament, you'll see that they're 50, 55, and sometimes 60%, which is a monster side out ratio. Okay. So that is how you take your attacking percentage. It's kills.
minus errors divided by the total attempts. And you just keep a little spreadsheet as you're watching your videos, or you could just write it down on a piece of paper. Just keep going K C E K C E. And then you divide by the total attempts. And over time you figure out how to upgrade them. For me personally, I was very good in serve receive while I was playing, but I found out that most of my errors, a lot of errors.
were coming in transition. So when I had a bad set, I was making bad decisions. I would get blocked. I would hit into the net or hit out of bounds. So in order to increase my attacking percentage, I said, all right, I have to figure out how to decrease my errors. That's going to be my first challenge. And it happened in transition. And so all I started doing in transition, whenever I had a bad set, was saying, I'm either going to hit high, flat, deep middle.
right, without going for an absolute haymaker. Or if I see that the blocker is there in the line, I'm just going to hit a high line. Or if I hear from my setter that the blocker is in the line, I'm going to go for a high line. That way I'm not going through anything crazy or radical when I'm in a bad situation and I'm creating a trouble ball for them. Deep middle is a trouble ball. They still have to work their way out of it. And then they're in a transition situation. High line, they still have to scatter.
do all of their footwork, get a nice dig, and then return with a kill. But when I made that change in my transition attack to say, I'm only hitting two very safe balls, I had a 10 % increase in my attack percentage, which is a nutso increase. That's a monster increase. And that led to a lot more wins, a lot more consistency. So your job will be over time.
Mark Burik (27:11.968)
If you're watching your own video, figure out what you're making the most errors on and figure out how to decrease the bad decision making. How do you just make that ball live at the B, A, double A level? It's a lot of errors. A lot of people actually hit negative, so they'll have more hitting errors than they will kills. So, you know, if we had 20 errors and 10 kills and 40 attempts, you'd be at negative 10 divided by 40.
And so you'd be hitting negative 25%. If you're hitting negative, that means that when you touch the ball, you're actually a liability. You're more likely to lose points for your team than win points. And we've got to get that hitting pressure up. And it's a really easy way to keep stats. So serving, we got the three point scale. Passing, we got the three point scale. Setting, just determine with your video.
good set or bad set and we can increase that over time. And then attacking percentage is probably the most telling numbers for the teams that win the most is the attack percentage. But sometimes attack percentage falls off or is poor because we have a bad pass and set. Maybe your attacking is fine, but you're not getting yourself into a good hitting position because you're putting too much pressure on your setter. or
The set isn't going exactly where it's supposed to, and it should be leading the hitting arm to the net. Okay. So really easy stats to take if you're a parent or you're listening or you, you know, watch other people's matches and you're getting, trying to help them out, take stats. If you're a coach, this is an easy project for you to give to your players. You can even spend a little half hour meeting on zoom the way we do with our.
Online players and get everybody to start tracking their percentages Okay, and then again We go and we fix it. Okay, if you want to fix it with us Complete training blueprint online if you want to fix it with us in person I gave you the camps better beach comm forward slash camps. We're going in cities all over the country and internationally this year and That's it
Mark Burik (29:34.476)
I do want to make a special announcement for the people in Hermosa and the South Bay, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach and Santa Monica. We'll be running weekend classes in Santa Monica and Redondo Beach coming up. And we have a really cool King and Queen of the Court League happening on Monday nights. So if you want to have a play session every Monday evening, where you're going to play with people at your level, it's individual. You don't need a teammate to sign up.
because you play with a different person, whoever you line up with in your group. And then the winners will move up a court and the lowest scores will move down a court so that everybody funnels into playing with your own level. So whether you're playing pro right now or you're a true beginner, there will be a spot for you on Monday nights. Just head to betteratbeach.com forward slash hermosa.
and you'll be able to sign up for that. It's a sign up through the city, but you'll see it on our website. And we also have Tuesday and Thursday morning, six week session coming up. So if you want to get out early in the morning on Tuesdays and Thursdays, we have a six week session coming up that starts March 18th and registration is open now on betteratbeach.com forward slash Hermoso. Okay. That's all for me. Thank you guys for listening. I hope you liked that. I hope you video.
as much as you can if you're trying to improve and then you learn how to keep track of your own stats. Cool? Cool. Thanks guys. From me, from Brandon, from Tomer, from Maureen, from Cheryl and Kevin and all of our coaches who come to our camps and teach our classes. Thank you so much for listening and supporting us. If you can give us a like and a subscribe and a share, that would be awesome. And that's it for me.
See you on the sand.
