Nathan Michaels, the “knee whisperer” of the beach volleyball world

HERMOSA BEACH, CALIFORNIA — In the spring of 2021, Nathan Michaels was in need of an experiment.

A physical trainer who had worked full-time for Equinox until gyms were shut down during the pandemic, Michaels was taking clients of all shapes and sizes, ages and abilities, lifestyles and goals, in his newly decked out garage. It had every toy and gadget and machine a trainer could want or need and then some: squat rack, enough weight to keep a bodybuilder from budging the load, trap bar, technology measuring vertical, explosiveness, and speed of certain lifts, kettlebells ranging from baseball-sized to those that resembled watermelons.

What he lacked was data — real data on one of the most understudied sports and his newest passion: beach volleyball.

As it so happened, I was in need of a trainer.

For years, from 2017-2020, Tri Bourne had ribbed me for not working with a trainer. I approached weight lifting as a typical adult male might: days split by chest and back, legs, shoulders, triceps and biceps, and then whatever I happened to be in the mood for on Friday. Fine enough to stay in shape, but awful for the sport-specific training required of playing volleyball at the professional level to which I aspired. The results were what you might expect: A lack of improvement on the sand, and a constant, throbbing pain in my knees, shoulders, and lower back.

I needed something different.

“If there’s anyone I’m working with, be it general population or athlete, is there pain? Cool. You don’t have to live with it, it shouldn’t be a forever thing, it should be minor or never,” Michaels said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “Let’s get you to that place and then start from there.”

I wasn’t apprehensive about Michaels, but I didn’t believe him, either. My knees had been in various states of pain since I grew six inches during my freshman year at the University of Maryland. Given my genetics, the son of a mother who has had half a dozen knee surgeries, I figured those growing pains would be permanent; for 10 years, they were. I’d worked with USA Volleyball trainer Christian Hartford for a year, and it was legitimately life-changing, unlocking swaths of athletic potential I hadn’t yet experienced. I played the best volleyball of my career at that point — more explosive, more mobile, more consistent, less tired, less pain. But there was still pain, significant enough that the anti-inflammatories kept on coming, to the tune of four Ibuprofen per practice and sometimes up to 10 per day during the dog days of CBVAs.

In a manner of months, Michaels changed that.

A fitness savant, he scoured the internet for any studies he could sleuth up when it came to performance on sand, finding just one.

“Once I dig into something I dive down,” he said. “There’s hardly anything out there. Learned a couple things like muscles work harder but you have less output [on the sand], so that was cool, useful. A little bit more hip extension so we get a little deeper in the jump than we do on hard surfaces, that’s where ankle mobility is kicking in. Good for rehab settings, cool, useful. Long story short, I just realized there’s no love for the surface, how to be faster, more explosive, all that fun stuff. So I learned using my own body as a science experiment.”

A recreational player himself, Michaels was subject No. 1.

I was No. 2.

“It’s the only sport in the world where you have to move on sand, explosively. That’s what I’m trying to dig into is to get as many people as I can to come test,” he said. “There’s going to be something that happens to those of us who play in the sand two, three, four, five days a week because nobody else plays in sand. It’s huge.”

He paired his own experiences and feedback with mine while digging into studies on sports with similar movements, namely baseball and basketball. Throughout every tournament I played, he’d check in daily. Should there be anything amiss, he’d tweak it specifically to whatever body part may have had an ache. Within a day or two, the pain would be gone.

“I’m open to anything,” he said. “If you say this made your ankle feel better, cool, we’re going to do that. If you say this makes you feel good before a gameday and you always have high energy and feel explosive, I’m not going to fight you.”

He is now working with a number of other beach players. Jake Urrutia is in the gym, as is Cici Agraz. Chase Frishman swung by the other day. Alex Amylon’s vertical has leaped in eyebrow raising numbers in the two years he’s been working with Michaels. Unlike many trainers, Michaels doesn’t prescribe the same workouts simply because we’re all competing in the same sport. Upon testing each athlete, he’ll see our strengths and weaknesses, where we can improve and where we need only maintain, and our workouts will be specified as such. What I do looks nothing like what Amylon and Agraz might on any given day. There are commonalities, of course, certain ranges of motion that any beach player should have in order to stay healthy, but aside from that, it’s entirely individually-focused. It’s why he’ll have us send film of our block loads, our step-close loads, and custom-fit our squat and deadlift patterns to match those hinges.

“Once you can lift some decent loads, full range of motion, pain free, all that stuff, then you’ve maximized your ability to get a couple inches out of that, at that point you want to start moving with intent, moving light or medium weights fast,” Michaels said. “Getting to your joint specific stuff, find the angles where you watch yourself play, when I block I’m at this angle, when I approach I’m at this angle. Find those angles and then that’s where you should be getting those lifts in and can I move that weight at a fast speed.”

This upcoming pre-season, we’re looking to do a “combine day” of sorts, hauling in as many beach players as possible to test, gifting Michaels a plethora of invaluable information and the fans a fun look at certain athletes and their numbers: What makes Troy Field so explosive? Why is Evan Cory a freak of nature? How does Hailey Harward fly out of the sand as she does? What makes — and this blew Michaels’ mind a bit — my counter-movement jump nearly the exact same as my squat jump? That day will be Christmas come late for Michaels, and immeasurably beneficial for his programs moving forward.

“I’m basically just a meathead who loves beach volleyball,” he said. “It’s been a fun journey, and the more I learn the less I realize I know. But you can’t go wrong with strong.”