HERMOSA BEACH, Calif. — Taylor Sander could hardly lift his head up last week. It had been more than three months since he stepped foot on a beach, either real or makeshift, such as the one on which he competed in Cape Town, South Africa, a center court plopped in the middle of a city square. Snowboarding in Utah, hopping in at the occasional BYU practice or open gym, playing with his kids — “altitude training,” Taylor Crabb joked — isn’t the easiest path to getting the sand legs back.
“Holy crap,” Sander said of his first practice back with Crabb. “Yeah, I’m feeling sore.”
His legs will soon recall what it’s like to move in the ever-shifting grains of Hermosa Beach. After all, he took, oh, 10 years off from competing in an amateur beach tournament before playing in his first professional season in 2022, setting historic marks for a rookie on the AVP Tour. There is no doubting his legs and cardio will return to the world class level at which they’ve competed on a volleyball court for virtually his entire adult life. What there is no replacement for is the off-season that he and Crabb agreed they needed before the upcoming 16-month gauntlet of AVP and Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour leading up to the Paris Olympic Games.
“I’m refreshed. I’m rejuvenated. I’m ready to go back to work,” Sander said. “I was going a little stir crazy being away from volleyball but we’re back. I’m excited.”
You can retrain your body to do just about anything, particularly a body that is as well-oiled for volleyball, no matter the surface, as Sander and Crabb are. But the refreshment? The rejuvenation? The excitement? That comes only from taking the proper approach to a season, knowing what you and your partner require to peak at the right times, playing at your best in the right tournaments. There was no shortage of criticism for Crabb and Sander — and Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk, and Theo Brunner and Trevor Crabb — when they skipped out on the season-opening event, an Elite 16 in Doha, Qatar. Each team weighed the pros and cons of beginning their seasons, which could stretch as far as December for the Beach Pro Tour Finals, and decided the cons of starting early far outweighed the pros.
“This is probably a later start than I’ve ever done. Usually I start the first week of January but that’s just how our lives have been,” Crabb said….
Click Here to Read the Full Original Article at Volleyballmag.com…