over the last year there's been a word going around to describe the way that pickle ball has changed it's referred to as the new pickle ball or the modern pickle ball top three Senior Pro Dane Gingrich who's widely known as one of the best coaches in all of pickleball recently wrote in a Facebook post there's a decision to be made in 2025 and Beyond remain emotionally attached to the past or Embrace accept and adapt to the Future like it or not your soft game will not be the foundation of Championship pickle ball it'll be a
piece of the puzzle but no longer the fun fundamental principle of how to construct winning points so that Maks the question has pickle ball really become faster and will it continue to become faster as time goes on and if so what can I do so that I'm not left behind in 2025 well obviously if it has become faster the first thing that we would want to look into to see if it indeed has is the average length of a pickle ball rally in 2023 in comparison to 2024 surprisingly SL not so surprisingly there's no statistics
written on how long the average rally was in 2023 at the pro level compared to 2024 so naturally I did my own research and I took a large sample of Pro play in 2023 and I compared it to another large sample of Pro play in 2024 and I calculated the average rallies per game I can honestly say that you're going to be blown away by the numbers do you think that the average rally has gone up gone down or stayed exactly the same between 2023 and 2024 I'd be willing to bet that you're wrong it's
actually almost exactly the same so the the average shots per rally in a professional pickleball match in 2023 came out to be about 10 shots per rally on the other hand in 2024 the average came out to be about nine hits per rally now I'm not saying that my stats are 100% accurate they're certainly not I'm not a statistician but that said I did take a large sample so this should give us a pretty good idea so if pickle Ball's gotten so much faster then why don't the stats back this up and will we see
a bigger change in 2025 or are there other factors at play here let's open the Playbook [Music] by the way this video is brought to you guys by the dink Master it's the best training wall because it tilts you guys can get $15 off with the link at the top of the description of this video be sure to check it out so all of what we've talked about begs the question what has changed from the year of 2023 to the year of 2024 and then what's going to change in the year of 2025 obviously from
the year of 2023 to 2024 we saw a different Ball come into the mix in Pro pickle ball we saw different paddles come into the mix and also different players as well as players that have advanced their game starting with the ball the ball went from the dura fast 40 which is arguably the fastest ball in all of pickle ball and it changed in 2024 to the vpro flight Vulcan ball which is noticeably slower than the dura fast 40 so since it's noticeably slower this would have to contribute to the argument that the new pickle
ball which is faster is being altered by a slower ball and so that's why the average rally would be around the same right but we still have to talk about new paddle technology that has changed from 2023 to 2024 and obviously we need to talk about the well-known inconsistent bounce of the Vulcan ball first of all almost every single Pro coach and influencer has commented on how and sorry to put it bluntly how bad the Vulcan Pro flight ball is it's known to act really inconsistently and skid every couple of points and I know that
some of you are going to comment down below and say well hey they came out with another ball Midway through 2024 it's much better Li da dah but I would argue that after putting countless hours out on the court with both balls they have the same exact flaws and I'm pretty sure that Colin John's would agree with me ball is trash [Laughter] trash that's actually funnier the more that you watch that the funnier it gets that got me I I'm with him though the ball is pretty trash ball is trash trash every so if the
ball has an inconsistent bounce which it obviously does that would lead to Shorter rallies so then it wouldn't matter much that the ball was slower in comparison to the dura fast 40 so if it's not the ball contributing to the stats being the same then what is it let's talk about the paddles we went from approved I'm still laughing about that Colin John's clip that's funny stuff I literally can't even say the words because I keep laughing at Colin John's reaction which is totally valuable totally the word's not even valuable but he he deserves that
reaction okay the ball's literally that bad anyways we went from approved Generation 1 Rock carbon fiber paddles in 2023 to ban Generation 3 Rock carbon fiber paddles in 2024 as of about mid 2024 all gen 3 raw carbon fiber paddles by Yola were banned and for good reason too they sounded like an absolute Cannon every single time that someone would hit the ball and they had more body bags than the 1990 Eagles against the Redskins I wasn't even alive at the time but I looked this up on the internet and apparently they had a lot
of body bags during that game so there you go all of you Boomers know what I'm talking about still even after all these paddles have been banned there are still so many paddles out there that hit way harder than the paddles did in 2023 so if the paddles are hitting harder shouldn't that contribute to Shorter rallies well I guess not so then that brings us to the last possible solution players must be way better so now that we've ruled out paddles and balls here are my four tips that I think every player needs to master
in order order to stay ahead with the new pickle ball in 2025 one is offensive third shots two is attacking at midcourt three is offensive dinking and four is focused drilling starting with number one offensive third shots you'll hear it a lot from a ton of players but gone are the days of the third shot drop this isn't entirely true because there are still some great times to use a third shot drop but now most of the time you want to hit a third shot drive and the location of this drive is everything when it
comes to playing Modern pickle ball you have to hit your drives at the returner the majority of the time the reason that you want to hit your drives to the returner is because they're not in an optimal position to be offensive with the ball their Partners already established at the kitchen whereas they are moving forward towards the kitchen so you can easily hit this shot low on them they'll have a harder time making it up to the kitchen where they can be offensive number two attacking from midcourt this is another thing that you'll hear all
the time with the new pickle ball but gone are the days of resetting at midcourt now obviously you still want to reset at midcourt especially if the ball is landing near your feet anytime there's a low ball it's a great idea to reset the ball because when the ball is low you have to hit up and when you hit up your opponents can hit down and then the point's going to be over so if the ball is going to land near your feet reset that ball other than that in order to fit in with the
new pickle ball you have to start attacking from midcourt what I suggest is any ball that is above knee height you swing away on that ball and move forward and then attack that next shot we see Pros like Quang dang Christian Alshon and Gabe tardio attack in balls from midcourt and instantly turning defense into offense and the best part about it is that it usually results in a point being instantly over the reason this is such a good idea to start attacking these balls from midcourt that are knee high or above is because that added
forward momentum adds Pace to the ball which puts the ball on your opponents faster and gives them less time to react and it usually results in either a popup or just a simple block that you can then put away so start practicing attacking those midcourt balls but still make sure that you're making the good decision if the ball is low you need to reset when attacking at midcourt your main focus should be to keep your motion nice and concise you never want to go beyond your shoulder here you never want to bring your paddle behind
you on the load up or on the follow through everything needs to stay out in front so these are little short Strokes as you're moving forward through the ball that way you're ready for that ball to come back and attack and put away the next shot keep it concise and you'll do great now let's talk about number three aggressive dinking this is something that absolutely took over in 2024 we saw all kinds of Pros including the best of the best pro Ben John's starting to use two hands on his backand dink this is so that
he can apply Top Spin on the ball and be aggressive with his dinks to apply more pressure on his opponents he obviously doesn't hit with two hands every single time but whenever he gets an offensive opportunity he uses two hands to set up a popup the vast majority of pro players now use Top Spin dinks as an offensive way to take control of the point learn to hit an aggressive dink with Top Spin and you'll stay ahead of your competition I actually recently made a video on how to hit every single Dink and pickle ball
and you can check it out right here and that brings us to number four Focus drilling which is probably the most important key of all four in order to stay ahead in modern pickleball I give you a challenge in 2025 to make every single drilling session that you do have some aspect of offensive pickle ball you should never show up to the court without a specific plan and specific ideas on what it is that you want to work on there's this really cool training tool for your drilling sessions called the pickle ball drills app app
it has hundreds of drills along with different tips and tricks to help you improve and the best part about it is that each of these drills have been created by Pro pickleball players who use these drills all the time to improve their game gone are the days of showing up to the court and not knowing what drill to do it doesn't matter your level it has drills for every single pickleball level so whether you're a beginner pickle ball player this is the first pickle ball video you've ever seen or you're a Season Pro you can
comment the word drill Below in the comment section and I'll send you the link to join for free you can also join the app by clicking the top Link in the descript description of this video so there you have it we've gone over a lot of changes that have happened in pickle ball over the last year and this can be daunting for some and exciting for others I think that the most important thing to note is that if you clicked on this video it's because you want to improve your pickleball game that desire will lead
to action and something that I can promise is that as you apply these four steps that I talked about in this video you'll surpass your competition in 2025 so with all that said don't forget to subscribe if you want to see more videos from me and watch this video right here if you want to continue to get better at pickle ball see you on the next one [Music]
