what's up y'all this is BK back with some more tips on how to improve your pickleball game so when I was first starting out playing pickleball coming from tennis I realized that a lot of players especially at the 3540 and four five levels tend to hit the ball really really hard right into your chest when you get into that kitchen line we call them bangers and I really had a hard time dealing with such players today I wanted to talk to you about two really important skills that I learned that helped me take my game
to the next level and deal with such players and really dominate the pickleball court let's do it so one of the most popular plays in pickleball is called the shake and bake this is where the serving team on their third shot will hit a powerful drive from the Baseline while their partner anticipating a pop-up will come into the net and finish the fifth shot with some power on their volley this is a really efficient play against people that cannot deal with powerful drives and bangers to counter the shake and bake we're gonna learn how to
officially block and properly counter the shake and bake using our Net game now the most important skill to learn here is called the block the block is a great shot to kill honor any powerful shot coming at you and reset a point let's go and learn how to hit the block using some mechanics and teach you really how to block those balls so the most important thing to learn for a block is you want to take the power away from the ball these balls are coming with such heat that your goal for a block is
to soften the shot up and try to put that ball either in the kitchen or downward so that it's unattackable the way you're going to do this is for the most part we're going to try and sit on our backhand side to block a ball and while we're blocking the ball we want to make sure that we have softer hands to really let go of that wrist a little and loosen that up so we take the power away from the ball and really come down with a slightly open face on your paddle this will allow
you to take the power off the ball and get you a nice little reset into the kitchen the second thing you want to make sure to do is to position yourself Square across so that you're waiting for that ball and not getting jammed up so put your hands out out in front where you have the freedom to move and then you're going to Simply open that face loosen your wrist and chop down on that ball all to Simply let that ball bounce off your paddle softly into the kitchen now this block shot is a great
way to counter the shake and bake on a shake and bake especially what you want to do with your block shot is to try and hit the ball cross court because that allows the ball time to come into the kitchen any down the line shot takes away the space on your cord and gives you more chance of popping up the ball so what you really want to do on this on those blocks for shake and bake is simply try and cross-court block the balls into the kitchen this is a great way to counter those bangers
out there that you see in your Rick games and really take away the shake and bake now the second skill that you want to learn to counter those bangers is to have fast hands now most people think that fast hands is something that you can't train I'm here to tell you different fast hands is all about anticipation and getting to the ball before it's there that is definitely something that you can train and definitely something that you can work on to really have fast hands the first thing you want to do is anticipate and be
ready for whatever shot is coming your way so have your paddle face out in front not drop down not on your side but out and front because this gives you the best position to now block and counter those really hard drives that are coming at you so what you want to do again have your hat paddle face outside in front of your body and this gives you minimal effort of moving your paddle to block or counter if you have your paddle down it takes you a lot longer to come up and that is what we
call Slow Hands whereas if you're right here you're right there on that quick fast hands that we see all the time from players like JW Johnson so what you want to do is make sure that you're out in front ready for the ball and anticipating it and as soon as you see that ball you're out there in front for those quick counters now similar to The Block what you want to do for fast hands is really loosen up most people that I see on the courts that struggle to get their paddle in time is they're
really tense and then they just jerk motion to whatever shot they're trying to block or counter what you want to do for fast hands is loosen that arm up so that you make minimal effort to get to your balls and really loosen your arms so you're able to block those balls and counter them precisely where you want them to go now again this is not something that's going gonna happen overnight so this is something that you need to work on so here are some drills that you can do to practice your fast hands so what
we're going to do now is we're going to take one step in front of the kitchen line so now we have a shorter distance where we can really work on those quick fast hands so we're just going to volley back and forth from in front of the kitchen line and really reduce our distance and focus on the ball and maintaining a loose wrist and really punching that ball in front of your body so outstretch arms and just punch the ball in front of your body always make sure that you're making contact well in front of
your body now this drill here I call the elevator drill pretend like there's three floors so one floor is going to be below the net the second floor is going to be right about net height and the third floor is going to be shoulder high so what you want to do when the ball is below the net on the ground floor you're gonna try and rip the ball back into the kitchen the reason you'd want to do that and block the ball instead of countering it is from down here you're going to pop up the
ball if you try to it too hard now the second floor this is where you have some freedom to either try some of your rolls and position your opponents and make them uncomfortable rather than trying just hitting it really hard try to get some rolls in at the second floor and now on the third floor is where we're going to hit our counter shots and try to hit some power shots from up here that are shoulder higher above so let's do this drill anything below the net we're gonna try and count block back in but
if that ball goes above the net that's your chance to attack lovely so as you can see right about net height I'm trying to roll the ball and make the uncomfortable tight but anything below the net I'm trying to reset back into the kitchen it's going to try and reset it beautiful let's do one more pure well above the net that gives me the freedom to punch that ball downward and that's going to be my attacking winner shot so reset below the net anything below the net you're just going to reach set and then roll
Slash counter beautiful above the net I hope these drills really helped you work on your fast hands so that you can go out there on your records and really dominate those bangers that are coming at you with those really fast drives they won't see you coming because you got the fastest hands in town now the blocks and fast hands are two great skills that will absolutely help you deal with the shake and bake and any bangers that you see on your local recreational courts however here's a bonus tip for you at the net that you
can use your fast hands and really take advantage and attack the game of pickleball so your bonus tip for today is the counter the counter again is very similar to the block and having fast hands but what you're going to do for this one is instead of Defending you're gonna go on the offensive to attack those balls that are coming at you so the difference between a block and a counter is that for a counter you're actually going to try and force the ball downwards and punch through so a block we had an open faced
and soft hands to get that ball into the kitchen but for a counter we're going to try and straighten out that face and really punch through the ball with a firmer wrist so you don't break that wrist while you're going for the counter so again when that ball is coming to you if you see that you have enough time to counter that ball get in front of it again arm in front of your body and really punch through that ball with a close face to get that ball downward into the feet of your opponent I
hope you learned something from these three tips the blocks fast hands and counters are the best way to dominate the game from the kitchen line and it's really going to help take your game to the next level once again thanks for watching and I've been BK you can follow me at BK underscore pickleball on Instagram and YouTube and thank you to Cliff pickleball go ahead and subscribe and also follow him on Instagram see you next time
