How to Hit a 3rd Shot Drop in Pickleball

by the end of this video you're going to know how to hit a third shot drop so buttery that floats like a butterfly in the afternoon sky right over the net it gives you time to get to the kitchen and neutralize the point in other words I'm going to teach you how to hit a third shot drop so for starters let me give you contact so we understand what even is the third shot of the rally you're gonna serve the ball that's the first shot they're gonna return it and that right there is the third

shot of the rally now you have a couple options when you hit your third shot option number one is you could hit a third shot drive so I'm gonna serve it it's my first he's going to return it that's his second and I'm gonna hit it hard that's my third one two and this is the third shot drive now that option's fine it's not wrong but it's not what this video is about this video is about the third shot drop many beginners only hit third shot drives again it's not wrong but you're not as dangerous

as you could be if you added the variety of the third shot drop you become very predictable when you only hit a third shot drive and in addition when you get to higher levels it just won't work if you're only hitting the drive so that's another reason to add the drop into your game and lastly having an effective third shot drop actually increases the threat of your drive because if sometimes you drop sometimes you drive your opponent will not know what you're about to do next and when they're on their toes you're uh not on

your toes and you're especially have an advantage okay so what is the third shot drop it's the third shot of the rally where you're hitting a drop shot that you're intending to Land close to the net which will allow you time this is all about time so when I hit that shot my intention is that I can move forward to the kitchen so that's what the third shot drop is so why is the third shot drop important well in pickleball the serving team is immediately at a disadvantage and the reason why is when we serve

the ball we have two people back at the Baseline and the opponents have one person back and one person up the moment they return the person runs in they now have two people up while we have two people back disadvantage so we want to even out the playing field or neutralize the point I'll use that language so we can do that by hitting a drop and coming forward so we can neutralize the point and get everybody back on an even playing field that's the reason that we use the third shot drop now we're going to

talk in the rest of this video how do you actually hit a third shot drop with some consistency so you float like a butterfly and sing like a bee okay there's two things to think about with hitting an effective third shot drop and the first one is position before we even talk technique let's talk about where you're standing one of the big mistakes is after you serve the ball you step into the court and if I step into the court right I have to let the ball bounce on the way back that's what the rule

says I cannot serve it in volley like in tennis so if I step in and they hit me any type of a deep return right so let's say I served it boom and I'm backing up a lot of times that leads to a pop-up it leads to me being on my back foot and rarely being on your back foot is a good thing in picklebot so how do you do it well when you serve it stay where you're at and allow yourself the ability to move in so all of your weight and momentum is moving

forward that doesn't just apply to the serve and actually applies to most of your shots in pickleball okay so here we go I'm gonna serve I'm gonna stay and then I'm gonna move in to hit my shot so that's one of the biggest mistakes that I see it's one of the biggest Corrections that you can make and if you do that you'll immediately start having a better third shot drop now many of you already know that so let's talk about number two and that's technique three things to think about with our technique and I actually

call it the three else quick Interruption to tell you that this video is sponsored by Selkirk from the way they run their business to the quality of their paddles these are my favorite paddles to use if you want to get a sell Kirk a paddle go to selkirk.com or go to selkirklabs.com find the paddle you like and I got you use my code inserted in at checkout and you will get a digital gift card towards a future purchase back to the video The Three L's of the third shot drop the first one is loose grip

second one is less swing and the third one is lift the ball when I first learned this a lot of people were telling me like loosen up your grip and I guess it kind of made sense but for a long time it didn't click in my brain I'm a Believer now it matters okay a lot of people hold this thing they're like trying to get a forearm workout right here right and they're hiding they're holding this thing so tight it's actually a little bit counter-intuitive the tighter your grip the less control you have on the

flip side the looser your grip the more control you have give it a shot and it makes sense like physics right if I hold this super tight and it comes off my thing it's gonna bounce off like really hard I think that's physics if not tell me in the comments below I'm just trying to use smart words okay but the other show is if I have a looser grip the power is going to be able to take the impact the tighter it is the less absorption the paddle can have it's just gonna Ricochet off yeah

the light the looser your grip the more it can absorb into the paddle that's like what soft hands would be now if I just explain that the really bad articulation I was actually thinking about it all night and I couldn't come up with anything so if you could help me put in the comments below and say like hey here's a better way to articulate that I'll give you a gold star and I'll use that in future so loose grip on your swing if I'm working on this I'm going to work on it one thing at

a time right so if Danny's right there I'm just going to keep my group my grip super loose okay super loose and in this video we're going to talk primarily about the forehand drop I think the backhand drop is kind of a beast of its own probably deserves its own video but right now my main focus is that I have a extremely loose grip on the paddle okay I mean I am touching this thing with little Force okay I want you next time when you go out and practice I want you to actually experiment with

holding the paddle really tight in your hands all right number one it's gonna kill your forearm over time but number two I want you to observe how much you actually Pop the ball up when you have now it's Dan is giving me an easy ball right even with a tight grip I could make thirds right now but when you have pressure on you and the ball's coming a little bit faster the tighter you are like people say they got tight that's like a literal thing in pickleball you get tight you literally get tight your muscles

get tight number one side note breathe but number two that will help you loosen up your grip how do you measure success was that a good third shot drop or not well there's really one principle which is if they're hitting up on the ball you've hit a pretty good third shot drop it doesn't have to bounce if it bounces and they're still hitting up on it that's a good thing if they're taking it out of the air and they're still hitting up on it that's also an okay thing so loose grip is the first one

now here's the second one less swing the one of the biggest mistakes on the third shot drop is people taking a really big swing and that's natural because if you've ever played tennis you do take a pretty big swing right to hit your shot if you hit a third shot drive and pickleball I actually hit it with also less swing but a lot of players who have an effective third shot Drive where the paddle actually comes out of their view so my focus here is that I'm not going to let the paddle get out of

my view I'm actually going to make contact in front of my body and the paddle's Never gonna go past my leg in fact most of the time when I hit it I have a loose grip I'm out of here in front right so notice I'm out here in front the paddle is actually in front of my foot loose grip thank you now there's again there's a few different ways to do this this is the way I found it useful and like anything in any sport like basketball for example Reggie Miller still made shots you might

have a different way to hit a third shot drop and it's going to work and if you do that's okay I'm just giving you some ideas to experiment with so play with this one side note is what do you do with your feet like should one foot be forward when you're hitting I said your right foot be forward when you're hitting or should your left foot be forward when you're hitting here's what I'm gonna say about that experiment for yourself I've actually tried both many times I haven't come to a conclusion that one is absolutely

better than the other I think at times if you have your right foot forward it almost encourages less swing right it's kind of weird to have your right foot forward and your paddle back I do think if you have your left foot forward it actually does encourage a little bit more to have your paddle go back but of course you can train yourself to have a short swing with that with that being said in pickleball less swing is actually a principle it's not just a method to be using on your third shot drop and when

I say principle what I mean is it's something that is applicable to so many different parts of the game your volleys less swing if you're a drop less swing you're dinks less Swing Your Flicks less swing if you start to approach pickleball with a less swing mentality you're gonna hit so many of your shots better in to space give your opponents less time all those things that will help make you better here's the third L lift the ball again this is a principle to use all throughout pickleball lifting is one of the most important things

you can do in pickleball what often happens on third shot drops especially with beginners is they take a swing that's side to side this also happens in dinking at the kitchen but if you take a side to side swing what you're actually doing is creating a lower trajectory typically right if I'm here the trajectory of the ball is going to be smaller than if I'm lifting part of the reason I want to lift is because one thing I never want to do is hit the ball into the net and I know this sounds obvious but

on your third shot drop one of the most important things you can do is learn how to miss the ball High the most important part is the Apex so the apex of the ball you want to have in your side of the kitchen Apex being like the top of its flight the top of the flight yes so if it's in your kitchen the ball will be on its downward path coming across the net more than likely Landing in the opposite kitchen or your opponent's kitchen if the Apex is too close to the net for example

it's it's still Rising so Rising as it's coming up yeah this is a ball that's more likely for me to be able to smash so like let's just show that quick so the ball is still Rising as it's crossing the plane of the net yeah that's probably bad news for us yes okay we should stay back so it's like yeah still Rising yeah oh God that was pretty good that was a little unnecessary so but it's also the same if the Apex is actually too far away so the ball will then already hit its top

of the peak and if not enough momentums on the ball it will come in okay so like if I if I'm maybe going for a little too much yeah potentially and the Apex happens outside the kitchen there you go the other thing you might ask is how high do you want the Apex well if you're hitting a very safe drop maybe like eight to ten feet but it's gonna bounce a little bit higher right the higher the ball goes the higher it bounces you can see right here it just bounced above the net yeah I

think that as you get to more advanced levels you can't let that happen so you got to have a lower Apex probably right around your eyesight right around your head height so if I hit a drop that is so high that it's gonna well Daniel saying a drop it is so high it's gonna bounce in the kitchen which is good but if it's gonna bounce above the net yes that is not necessarily the best drop in the world because then he can still hit down on it and the thing we don't want our opponent doing

is hitting down on the ball we want everything being lifted by our opponent so again a tennis swing if you're a tennis player you have to work your way out of hitting everything right as a swing on your third shot drop because the goal for this specific shot is to hit it with enough Loft that it goes over the net that it either bounces or you force your opponent to hit up on the ball so to do that we want to hit with lift with Loft another reason that hitting it with a little more trajectory

higher directory is good is because the longer the ball is in the air the more time you have to get up to the kitchen right if you're hitting a quick drive or pretending to hit a quick drop you're not allowing yourself as much time to get there and then what's going to happen is you're going to have to hit another ball in the mid Court area so loose grip less swing and lift here's the last thing you're going to notice my paddle tip is down towards the ground when I learned this this completely changed my

game in so many different ways how I speed the ball up how I hit resets and how I hit my third shot drop before I hit the ball right notice I'm not here and this isn't this is not the only way to do it this is how I found it to be helpful I want you to try it out okay my paddle's not here okay it's literally here my elbow's pretty close to my body I'm lifting lifting lifting so paddle tip down towards the ground okay paddle out in front of my body and I'm going

to hit with a lifting Motion versus a side to side swing so you can think about it like this imagine you have a cornhole bag in fact Danny is like a legendary cornhole player but that's for another time so I'm not gonna take a huge swing back I'm just going to start here it's the motion that we're talking about your wrist on your third you're using your shoulder as more of a hinge here right my wrist is staying my grip is loose my wrist is pretty steady so I'm here it's on here so I'm here

oh here miss high all right I want to hit every ball over the net and if I miss I want that to happen to give myself a chance go ahead into the net I'm gonna give you one more thing it's Advanced so for those who have already learned about third shot drops this is something I'm currently working on to add so I have a more dangerous more threatening third shot but real quick in summary loose grip less swing lift the ball those three things also apply to what I'm about to teach you which is a

Top Spin drop now I didn't learn this myself I had a couple people tell me this I've worked with the coach of Jim crimble who's actually the first guy who ever mentioned this technique that I'm about to show you so shout out to him I'll link his Instagram account down in the bio check him out and if you go watch a lot of the pros play You're Gonna notice a lot of the pros go paddle tip down and they do this little windshield wiper motion right so it's not a big swing so some will take

a big swing but they get their paddle tip down and they make this motion like this in fact wherever you're at right now just take your hand right put your hand out in front and I want you to almost like almost like you're waving to the queen right hello all right so it's a windshield wiper why would you even want to do this topspin drop with this windshield wiper well it puts more pressure on your opponent a lofty third which is a great place to start which is exactly where I started and still often hit

depending on the ball I'm receiving for my opponent is okay it's not a very offensive third and you don't always need offense but it's nice to have in your tool bag so when I add Top Spin it changes the ball that Danny is able to hit alright so if I hit a flat drop right all right it's soft Danny kind of has time and space to do what he wants but if I had a little bit of topspin to this thing let's say I put it in a good location Danny's not going to be able

to add a lot of topspin back to me because he has to basically change the spin on the ball a video on that later don't panic but I can get more aggressive and I can come to the kitchen for a little bit of offense right and that's actually what happens a lot now Danny over exaggerated it slightly but when you add Top Spin A lot of times all you could do is be in a defensive boom position right so I still have my loose grip I have my less swing I have my lift the ball

but now I'm going to take this ball and I'm going to look to generate some Top Spin out in front and now the ball has some dip on it right and this is going to be a harder ball for your opponent to handle okay the full work on this is very important you might actually hit it more like a tennis stroke depending on where you're getting the ball right but you don't want to be caught flat-footed gosh these are butter wow so that's what the third shot drop is why it's important and how to hit

it now if you want to see a video on how to train it and I think most people are actually training it incorrectly now it's not way off but I think I have actually a somewhat better way it's more realistic to train the third shot drop but if you want to see that click this video really quick let's cut to that camera over there Danny come here does this look silly right now let's just go let's go zoom in on Danny are you putting both cameras at each other yeah hello hello