Top 10 most common intermediate pickleball mistakes and how to fix them!

hey guys Barrett here welcome back to the video today we're talking about the top 10 most common intermediate player mistakes in pickleball now I've made every mistake on this list so you know I know how it feels I know how it is I think it's important that when you're making these mistakes try to remember the video remember the things that you've learned in the past apply those things on the court and you'll be much much better mistakes aren't that bad right it's when you make them over and over again that it becomes bad so these

are in no particular order let's get started with the first one alright let's start out with the good one a very common intermediate player mistake to make is hitting your drop shots way too low okay oftentimes what you'll see is people will not necessarily get the ball up very high and they'll hit it really low and it's sort of it's not even a drive it's kind of a halfway between a drop and a drive the problem is that as you advance in pickleball people are gonna be able to do stuff with those kinds of shots

so on the fourth shot they're gonna be able to whip that thing over or do like a roll like a roll shot like that or what have you so it's very important to when that ball is coming over make sure that you're getting low you swing through the ball and get a little bit of loft on that thing if you want to take it to the next level try to put a little bit of backspin try to slice the ball just a little bit and that'll help to make it bounce even lower so as you

advance and pickleball super important to get more loft on those drops try that try to hit it in that kitchen and eventually going to get used to it and it's gonna pay off in the long run alright number two dinking - hi this is a big one now what I mean by that is not sending the ball up too high it's when the ball bounces it bounces up high as you advance in pickleball what people will do is when the ball bounce is really high they tend to drive or sort of flick the ball over

that's why it's a very very important that when you're dinking you're not just hitting the ball up high and then letting it bounce high it's actually called dead dinking like that from Jordan Briones at primetime pickleball link down below y'all haven't checked out primetime definitely need to do so but that's kind of what he was talking about his dead thinking the ball is just kind of dead it's got another spin on it and then they're able to just kind of flick the ball over so let me just kind of show you what that looks like

here so if she hits the ball up high and the ball bounces high in the kitchen like this I can just flick it over like that because the ball is high enough to where I could because the angle is good enough to get to get it over right so like this I can just flick it over like that so instead if I were to be that person and go and going like this instead I'm gonna try to push that paddle forward like that so that it doesn't bounce up very high see that see how I'm

pushing the ball forward that's how you do that now this leads perfectly into my third mistake here number three is lack of spin so as a beginner you were probably told many times and it's probably a good thing that spin is a bit overrated I mean as a beginner yeah you can't just want to learn how to get the ball over the net but hey you're trying to get better right we need to put more spin on the ball now you've got topspin and you've got backspin the easier one to start with and the one

that's most natural it's going to be the backspin it's gonna be the slices so try the slices first all right so let me just cut straight across like that okay that's gonna help you get backspin on the ball it'll help that ball to bounce lower as I said in the last mistake the ball tends to you're doing the dead dinking stuff it'll balance kind of high but if you've got the spin on there it won't bounce as high now forehand topspin is a much much much more difficult to do on a hinge hinge the forehand

and then come straight up hinge the forehand come straight up don't worry if I don't have a tremendous amount of spin on them what you're trying to avoid is this but the ball just kind of comes up and then bounces high okay like I said the forehand stuff is way more difficult than the backhand stuff all right number for lack of pattern recognition this is huge and this is more of a strategic or a sort of tactical kind of thing this really pops up in tournaments but when you're playing with someone it's very important to

recognize patterns that are happening on the court okay so as an example if you're playing with someone that has a tremendous amount of backspin right and you're noticing that they're hitting their backspin shots over and over and over again and they're messing you up that's a pattern that you need to recognize early on it's that then you should be able to avoid their backhands so just as an example if I cross court dink over here all right so this has an example here if I'm just constantly hitting my backs my slice backhand that I love

like that as you notice it's a pretty brutal shot right so the last thing you want to do is if someone's really good at that stuff you don't want to keep feeding them that kind of that kind of shot it also counts for strategic errors right so if all this if your opponents have been stacking the whole game and then all of a sudden they're not stacking anymore that's something that you have to recognize right then and there hey there on stacking the pattern has changed we need to respond accordingly all right number five lack

of serve change up this is a really big one the thing about doing the same serve over and over and over again is that yeah you're consistent with it and that's great however your kind of training your opponent how to hit your serve and that can be a problem because as they get better hitting your serve they can make better returns the better returns they make the harder your third is going to be so don't be afraid to change up your serve every now and then so for example if you just have a regular old

serve and you just hit it over just regularly try doing a lob serve you'll be shocked at how easily it messes them up so instead do a lob serve like that also change up your positioning on the court so try serving from the centerline and also try serving from the sideline over here the sideline over here is going to give you a much different angle then as if you were serving on the centerline those kinds of change ups are great be really surprised how easy it is just to get a nice little point right when

you're charting to get the momentum in the middle of a match it can be very very useful okay number six and something on this kind of the same line as the serve is lack of shot Arsenal having a wide array of shots to use in a pickleball match is really important because as I said earlier the more you hit the same shot over and over and over again the more you're helping your opponent train how to hit your shot so a great way to do this is just be brave and try something new as an

example I really don't do lobs very often it's a bad habit that I've gotten into but you know when you're in a practice match or you're just warming up just try to lob every now and then and see what happens okay so if I'm Deacon here right try the ball lob as well so do two different versions of it so I'll do the regular kind of ground stroke lob like this and then I'll also do the the volume AAB so in balls coming over just wait for that shot and then do it now the thing

about this though is that you kind of have to trust yourself a little bit so I know it can be awkward to try a shot you never try before but you got to break through that barrier first and foremost once you break through that initial barrier of being sort of nervous about doing a new shot it'll start to become more and more comfortable and as you do that you'll gain more confidence and then you'll be able to use that in tournament play it turns you into into an unpredictable player and that is deadly on the

pickleball court all right number seven and one that trips me up every now and then his bad footwork footwork is huge in pickleball I want to talk about one aspect of footwork but just in general try to untangle your feet keep your feet sort of spread out think in strides don't think in terms of steps but let me discuss one bit of footwork that happens all the time which is the lunge over here on the backhand I see this all the time where people will try to get a shot over here and they'll do something

like this or they'll cross over with the right foot now if you're doing a slice a backhand slice and trying to go cross-court that's okay that's what you have to do for a slice like that but if it's just a regular dink over here right then that's the last thing you want to do so she thinks in my backhand I'm gonna lunge instead like this you see how my foot is over that's how you want to do that okay so see how I'm lunging I'm not crossing over my foot you see that it's like that

I know I hit into the net but notice how I'm lunging like that it man it really gets your quads going that's for sure so just remember that to get a look if you get a backhand shot don't cross over your feet just lunge it's very simple one step your anchor foot my right foot over here doesn't even need to move okay so think about that think about things and strides and steps alright number eight playing tight oh man all right we could do an entire podcast episode on just playing tight but it's something that

crops up every now and then especially I mean with anybody really but with intermediate players it seems to be something that they don't quite realize what's going on like and I get that of course playing tight just means that you're trying to play the game safe so if you're in a high level match of some kind or an important match I should say oftentimes people will try to play safe right and they just don't swing through the ball very well and I don't they're not really being themselves okay so let me just give you an

example let's say that I'm doing I'm feeding her some thirds and she hits them an example of playing safe would just be like going like this and not really swinging through the ball and being very timid okay in a tournament setting that's gonna kill you instead we want to be ourselves loosen up go for those shots right don't be timid be yourself and a tournament setting easier and said than done obviously but it's very very important that you loosen up hop around a little bit and hit those shots because you know that you can make

them okay so if you feel like you're being tight you feel like you're trying to play too safe don't do it it's gonna ruin your games gonna ruin your time be yourself all right let's go back to some dinking number nine is body thinking I know it can be very very tempting to use your opponent as your target right so if I'm thinking back and forth over here it's very common just to use my opponent as my target right I can just hit it right to her easy there's a target right you can even target

the foot over here the problem is though is that you're not moving your opponent at all a big part of pickleball is control over your opponent and in this case I'm not really controlling my opponent I'm getting the ball over but hey you're trying to become an advanced player right so we've got to change up things hit it to where they're not instead that's gonna get them to move and when they move that's when things can happen so very very important to get out of the habit of dinking to the opponent and instead dink to

whether or not you can almost even tape like little X's on the court during practice patches or whatever and that will help you have sort of a visual aid to force yourself to do that so again start to dink to where they're not really deadly stuff when once you get used to it all right number 10 it's pase pase is a big part of pickleball or the mistake is not respecting the pace and not trying to reset the pace so when someone hits a hard shot at you they're trying to make you pop up the

ball that's really the whole point of the drive or the flick or the roll or whatever it's just to get you to pop up the ball don't fall for it don't fall for that if you have a hard shot being hit at you you can try to hit it hard back if you can but most of the times you're gonna have to reset by having soft hands and blocking the shot okay so if if I hit a hard shot at Linda here she's gonna block it like that she's not gonna fall for it it's the

last thing she wants to do is fall for it like that she's blocking these beautifully now she could have hit that one hard back but oh she did hit that hard back because she could which is great you can't hit it hard back then you want to do that but if it's too hard then it's the last thing that you want to do good so that again if it's a dead thing I'm looking for those bed Dinks by c1 I'm going to try to hit it hard back over good that was really good night I

ended up getting her on the backhand but notice how the first one was a nice little block I want her to pop up the ball that's all I'm trying to do is get her to pop it up see notice how she reset that now I can't do anything as a young guy who hit the ball pretty hard I can't do a single thing about that it's a great way of diffusing people's power hi guys those are the top 10 most common intermediate player mistakes that I see out on the courts once again I make these

mistakes sometimes it happens we all forget about these things try to worry about it when you make these mistakes don't get down on yourself just trying to let it happen over and over and over again it's that pattern that really matters guys thank you so much for joining me in this video I hope it was helpful for you head on over to pickleball kitchen com if you want a bunch more stuff got a podcast articles all that sort of stuff so thank you guys so much for joining me I'll see you next time