today I'm here with my sister Kennedy who's a 5. 0 player and in this lesson we're going to outline the three most important skills that got her to this level if you don't have these skills you'll probably become permanently trapped in 3. 0 to 4.
0 prison but the good news is we're going to make these super easy for you to understand so that you can start using them right when you get to the courts so the first tip has to do with Spin and it's that an advanced player knows how to use spin but kened you can elaborate more yeah so when you're a 4. 5 to 5. 0 player you want to make sure you know how and when to use Top Spin pretty much if you're at this level and you don't know how use Top Spin you're not going to be able to hit the ball hard enough to where it still drops in so for instance if I'm playing an advanced player and I'm going for a speed up without Top Spin what's going to happen is they're either going to Counterattack because I didn't hit the ball hard enough or it's just going to stay along because the ball's not dropping down so the main two functions of Top Spin are one it makes the ball drop faster like I just said but it also makes the ball jet off the bounce so if kened hitting a Top Spin dink you'll see that it kind of accelerates towards me a little bit so this is partially technical but you also have to know strategically when to use Top Spin to get the most out of it a lot of players either don't know how to get Top Spin at all which is a technical issue or they can't get enough Top Spin for it actually matters or they just aren't using it at the right time so today we're going to go through how to solve those problems so depending on what shot you're using your Top Spin is going to look a little bit different but one of the most important times that you definitely need Top Spin is on your serve cuz this lets you hit the ball harder without it going long so a Top Spin serve looks like this we got Kennedy doing the demo so you're not going for the craziest amount of spin just enough for you get the effect you notice the way that she gets that is by coming from under the ball and finishing above it so let's show you a slow motion example of that so the Top Spin comes from getting your arm below the ball but also from doing a little bit of a windshield wiper technique and with this technique you want to try to get the ball deep So that obviously the power gives the person less time to react but when you get it deep the top spin-off bounce is going to Jet into your opponent and it might mess them up so they actually might M hit the ball because you're adding that spin let's show one more slow motion example and honestly a gritty paddle like this one is really going to help you get Top Spin on your surf yeah having a paddle with more grit is definitely going to give you a little bit of an extra Edge but technique that you're seeing here is what's going to give you Top Spin so the grit's not going to help you if if you're not getting that slow motion technique that you just saw the next time that you need to understand how to use Top Spin is on a speed up so a Top Spin speed up most players like these better on their forehand side looks like this so one of the keys here is that she's using more wrist so she's not able to use as much of her arm on the shot which I'm going to explain later in the video so she's using her wrist as the main source of Top Spin so to show you a slow motion example of a Top Spin speed up exactly the next instance is on your drives where the technique is pretty much identical to your serve on a forehand so you see Top Spin Drve looks like this and when you're hitting a Top Spin drive one it's going to prevent the ball from going long but two it's going to suck the ball down so that you can actually maybe get your opponent to hit the ball from below the height of the net or at the height of the net so if Kennedy hits a good Top Spin drive at me and it's low there I'm literally hitting it at the height of the net and she can move forward so it's essential if you like to play aggressive in the back of the Court cuz if you're playing a better player and you're giving them higher drives they're either going to let it go long or they're going to take advantage of it by hitting it hard and just like on the serve having this paddle with extra grip is really helping me get this top spit on the shot but I still need to have the right form so here's a slow motion example of the Top Spin Drve technique the next time that you need to know how to use Top Spin is the roll ball which is arguably the spinni of the shots we just went through and that looks like this so here Kennedy is rolling up the back of the ball a lot of people like to do this on their backend which looks like this so she's flicking up the back of the ball and she uses that shot to prevent her opponents from coming in so she hits it right at their feet as they're moving forward and that makes the ball jump at them which can mess them up on their resets or their drops so let's show you a slow motion example of this on the forehand nice to show you a slow motion example on the back hand it looks just like this the last Top Spin shot we need to think about are our Top Spin dinks which look like this so you don't get quite as much Top Spin on a dink because you can't hit the ball as hard so you can't really get as much grip but hitting Top Spin dinks is a great way to be aggressive when you're at the kitchen so to show you slow mo example of a Top Spin dink she's coming up the back of the ball she's not nearly using as much wrist but she's still getting a little bit of Top Spin which makes the ball jump at me and guys if you want a better paddle that gets you more spin check out ours on our site Sweet Spot Pro and make sure to use code tips for $20 off your order so to learn this technique of using Top Spin it's a little different Stroke by stroke but where you should start is at the kitchen dropping the ball to yourself trying to see if you can hit a Top Spin dink so on a Top Spin dink I'm literally dropping the ball to myself and I'm getting my power from rising with my arm so I'm not using my wrist yet here so okay let's see you do it she's really just emphasizing that Top Spin motion and depending on where you are with learning Top Spin you might get more or less but what you want to do is rise up the back of the ball and see if it's spinning away from you so at this speed you can very visibly see if you're getting that Top Spin and you should be able to feel it once you can do it with a dinking technique I want you to challenge yourself and try to do it with a flick technique so these are the two ways that you can get Top Spin with the flick technique I'm going to toss it to my myself out of the air and use only my wrist to get Top Spin so let's see you do that Kennedy toss it out of the air exactly so when you're hitting a speed up or a roll B that you're generally using the flick technique where you're rising up the back of the ball they're both different but you're going for the same result with the flick technique you'll definitely get more Top Spin when it comes to your serves and drives you're using a combination of the rising technique and the flick technique so when I hit a serve I'm not flicking quite as hard as I do on a roll volley but I'm still getting a little bit of this action and a lot of the rising action so let's see one of those Kennedy you have anything to add there yeah you guys it's really important to be making contact out in front because it's a lot easier to get Top Spin when you're making contact out in front rather than when it's behind you so whenever you're hitting a ball you want to try to get it out in front if you can because it's it's a lot easier to get Top Spin from this section because you have more Mobility to rise if you're hitting it from behind you a lot of the time you're better off just slicing it and it's just going to be tough to be consistent with Top Spin from back there as for when you should use Top Spin pretty much on 90% of aggressive shots in pickle ball using Top Spin is just going to make it a little bit better so for me if I'm going for an aggressive dink I'm using Top Spin on a speed up I'm using Top Spin My drives always using Top Spin you have anything to add Kennedy yeah whenever I'm trying to be a little bit more aggressive I'm always going to try to use some Top Spin even if I don't use too much it's just going to help keep that ball down exactly it just gives an extra kick that that makes things a little bit more effective so if you're just getting the hang of it and you're not super comfortable with Topson you might not feel the benefit but no in the long run it's going to make your shots 10% more effective which is how you're going to be able to compete with other four five five players when you get to that higher level though all the players that you're playing against are also going to be able to hit hard and use Top Spin so our next tip is that to get to that level you need to be very good at responding to power so when I play Kennedy who's a high level player and I hit hard at her she's always able to spawn and do what's called counterattacking so she's either going to be able to Counterattack or just block the ball back depending on how hard I hit it at her but if you can't respond to shots like this what's going to happen is you're not going to be able to beat bangers so if you're at the 3.
0 to 4. 0 level you might have trouble playing with against players who hit really hard whether it be with speed UPS or with drives from the back of the court so bangers are essentially The Gatekeepers of the 4. 5 to 5.
0 range there's not really many bangers that are 45s or 5's but if you can't beat them you might get stuck in that earlier stage so there's a lot of bangers that are 4. 0 3. 5 these players they maybe aren't following the best strategy but they are still good so you need to really understand how to respond to power in order to get through that sort of zone so when it comes to responding to power there's only two things that you have to understand and the first is that you need to be able to react quickly so you need to be able to react quickly enough to get your paddle in position to hit a good shot with the right technique sneak the second thing is that when you get your paddle in position you need to have enough stability so that you don't M hit the ball so I'm sure you've been at the kitchen before when a player hits really hard at you and it feels like you almost just missed the ball on the side of the paddle you either miss it in the net or you pop it up to where they can close in and crush the next shot so there's two elements we're going to go through each one right now and they're both equally important but you have to understand them both in order to be able to beat these players consistently so Kennedy how do you prepare quickly for shots that are coming at you fast see want to make sure that with your ready position your paddle is out in front of you slightly above the net and slightly facing towards the left that way it's easy for you to defend with your backand if you need to or you can still get to your forehand with enough time exactly so the reason that she's out in front like that is because if she's down low with her paddle or out to the side it takes her a certain amount of time to get it in position so you're trying to put it in the spot that gets you as close as you can get to all the different types of volleys that you're going to have to hit so that's really about right here right above the height of the net and it's also really important to have a good ready position with your feet so you can explode side to side if you need to get the ball exactly so you don't want to be standing straight up you don't want to be sideways if you're at the kitchen and you're trying to handle power you need to have a nice wide base a little bit wider than shoulder width you want to be on your toes and you want to be ready to explode in any direction so if your opponent for instance hits a really hard shot down the middle you need to be in this position ready to explode towards that shot when you're standing straight up you're not in the best best possible position to do that so you're always waiting for the ball like this in terms of technique you don't want to make the mistake that Kennedy's going to do on purpose here which is she took a big back swing so Kennedy show them how to do a good back swing what does a good back swing look like when you're handling power exactly you want it to be very compact so that you don't have to spend too much time getting your paddle back so if I'm hitting a slow volley maybe I'm hitting a roll volley or like a like an overhead where I'm smashing it there I have enough time to fully take a big swing but on a speed up or a drive Kennedy doesn't have that amount of time so she wants to keep things as compact as she can she still wants to get a little bit of power she wants to keep things as compact as she possibly can so that she gets there fast enough to hit a good shot that hits the sweet spot of the paddle the next part though is the stability so so K show me what you wouldn't do when someone hits hard at you when you're hitting a volley so if you see there she used her Top Spin technique that she would use on a roll there there but the issue is that when someone hits hard at you you don't have enough stability to be going for a shot like that so when you're hitting a roll volley you probably have a really loose wrist that you're getting that snap with when you're hitting a volley like this where you're defending power you need to have a stiffer wrist because you might hit the ball off center and when you have a stiffer wrist it actually makes your sweet spot get a little bit bigger because you're squeezing it tighter the paddle is going to shake Less in your hand so it gives you a better ability to defend against power so that's how you get more stability partially by not taking a big back swing you also need to be holding the paddle a little bit tighter so this is one of the only times where you're holding the paddle tighter I'd say here you're holding at about a six out of 10 in terms of tension so don't squeeze it as hard as you can but when you're defending against Power depending on how hard your opponent hits at you you need to squeeze it a little tighter and guys having a stable paddle is really going to make this a lot easier rather than if you're using like a cheap Amazon paddle it might be a little bit trickier to have that stability so even if you have the right technique if your paddle is not very good it's going to feel tough you can also add some weight to your paddle if you're having trouble with stability on power having a heavier paddle is just going to make it shake less too so that's another good tip in terms of Defending power regardless of how good your Technique is though you're only going to get more comfortable with responding to power if you practice it so there's two main drills you need to do to get this to happen first is just the dink game where we're dinking half court and at any time someone can choose to speed up where you need to either Counterattack or hit it into the kitchen so this game is good because you're not really sure when your opponent's going to speed up so you need to get used to that surprising element so at the kitchen a lot of what makes responding to power hard is how surprising it can be so this is what we call deception which we're going to go over later but all we're doing here we H one dink back and forth and then somebody can choose to speed up so that one's out but what this is good for you really need to focus on your ready position so you can get into position quickly when we're both up we have to react faster so you really work on your fast twitch muscles you can also do this on your own on a wall or on the dink Master but this is probably the most realistic way to practice this so if you have a partner who's willing to do this drill I encourage you to go try it out if you have trouble handling drives from the back the best drill is to just get a partner who wants to work on their drives and you should stand up at the kitchen and they're just going to be hitting drives where you try to hit nice firm deep B so this is where you need to be focused on that stability so when Kennedy's back here the ball's actually traveling at me a lot faster than it would on a speed up so I need to be concerned with hitting my sweet spot and holding my paddle firm cuz if I don't this is where I'm going to miss those shots in the net there I kind of Hit the top my paddle wasn't holding it super tight it dies into the net what also might happen is I pop the ball up where she can move in and take the ball out of the air so I'm trying to keep the ball low here The Firm wrist so that she doesn't have as easy of a time moving forward so once you're at the 5.
0 level every player knows how to respond to power well so in order to win by being aggressive you need to be able to use deception so our next tip is that to get to that high level you need to understand how to use deception and when to use deception so when I'm saying deception what I mean is in this example Kennedy's going to be aggressive with a speed up and she took a huge back swing so when she takes that back swing swing she's essentially telling me that she's about to speed the ball up on the flip side if she's aggressive without taking a huge back swing I don't know until the last second that she's about to be aggressive and hit harder so she can really surprise me and take me off guard so one of the ways that you're deceptive is by disguising your back swing so in a speed up and on other shots that is a great way to do it the other way that you're deceptive though is by being aggressive when your opponents don't expect you to so if we're in a neutral situation generally the rule of thumb is that you're supposed to be aggressive off of a high ball so if she hits me a high ball you know I'm going to probably attack that but if I'm hitting a shot that isn't necessarily super obvious there's a few other ways that I can be deceptive in order to attack one way to do this is by going for aggressive shots when you're not necessarily expected to and there's a few key times where this makes sense one is when you're dinking you can go for a speed up off a roll volet even when it's not that high and the reason you can do that is because you're very close to your opponent when you're hitting a roll volley so you don't necessarily have to be super high above the net to get an effective shot there should you go for that every time no but every once in a while if you deviate from the normal strategy and go for a speed up off a roll volley like that it can be very surprising and very effective another example of this is with the shake and bake from the back of the court so it's not necessarily from the kitchen but by deviating from the normal drop and come in strategy and hitting a drive where you close in you can really surprise your opponents because they're not expecting you to do that and guys if you have any other cool ways that you like to be deceptive like that make sure to comment them down below I'm curious if you have any cool ideas so you can be deceptive situationally but your Technique is definitely going to be what takes people off guard so if I'm being aggressive from the kitchen for instance I want to pretend like I'm about to dink until I go for my speed up so it's not just your wrist you're focused on in your back swing it's also your body language so a lot of the time I see lower level players start turning their shoulders more when they're about to hit hard you want it to look like you're about to dink until the last second so you see I missed that shot but I didn't do anything that I would do differently from dinking so your opponents are going to get used to what they're seeing on your dinks so if you do something different you're going to send an alert signal to their brain so what you want to do is keep it the same until the last second so everything in my technique is like a dink until I go for that acceleration another thing to think about with body language is if you're going crosscourt and then accelerating down the line which is a very very common way to do it you want to pretend like you're about to Dent cross cord again so even with where I'm looking if I'm going to accelerate down the line I want it to look like I'm going to go crosscourt until the very last second so with my footwork how I do it on a dink so when I dink crosscourt I sort of lean my body through it I want to keep that mechanism as I'm accelerating in front of me so I'll show you a bad example so I'm doing my fo crosscourt I'm doing my footwork Cross Court and then I sort of pause to go for that down line speed up so a good example would look like this I'm using my footwork to dink Cross Court doing the same thing every single time then when I get one where I want to speed up I keep that same footwork and the only thing I change is my wrist flick which I take down line at the person in front of me when you're doing this the person in front of you might not necessarily be ready they might expect you to do that again so if you really hold that to the last second you might catch them super offu guard and stun them to where they don't even react at all and guys if you want a ton of cool Resources with coaching tips where quarts are bunch of that cool stuff make sure to go check out playp pickleball. com otherwise in this next video I go with my other sister Kimmy and I teach her how to get to the 4.
