5 KEYS to Dinking SUCCESS | Briones Pickleball

Hi, welcome to Brionis Pickleball. My name is Jordan Brionis and in today's video we're going to go over the five keys to dinking success. Let's jump right in. All right so first things first hit that subscribe button if you're not subscribed to this channel and also hit that little bell icon so that you can be notified every time we release a new video. We really appreciate it. Like I said in the intro we're going to be talking about the five keys to dinking success and the first one that we're going to start off with is the grip. This is really important because when you are dinking you have to know what grip to have. So when I'm dinking I have the continental grip and I'll show that in a picture right now. All right so the continental grip is the best grip to have because you can hit underspin, sidespin, and topspin if you need to depending on what kind of dink you want to hit. You can hit all those different shots with the continental grip. This is the best grip to use up at the non-volley zone line because you can hit a variety of dinks and shots and as you know the game could be really slow when you're dinking and then anyone could speed up the ball at any time and you have to be ready to defend or counter-attack with a volley. The volley grip is the same grip. You can use the same grip for the volley which is a continental grip. This is why it's really important to have a continental grip when dinking. So I'll show you here. It's really versatile and I could hit forehands and backhands with the same grip. I don't have to ever change my grip. All I have to do is get right back into my ready position. Just get back into my ready position and then I'm ready to go. So make sure that you have that continental grip and you practice with that and now let's jump into the next key thing that you're going to need. Before we hop into the second one actually I forgot to mention this is kind of like part b of the very first key to successful dinking and that is the grip pressure. This is really important. Just imagine a scale from one to ten. One would be holding the paddle really really lightly and ten would be like a really really strong death grip holding it as tight as you can. When we're dinking up at the non-volley zone, we want to make sure we have good feel and touch because we are hitting soft shots into our opponent's or around our opponent's non-volley zone. So I would suggest to have between a three and a four grip pressure so that you're holding the paddle tight enough but you can feel that and it's loose enough where you can generate good feel and touch. Alright so here we are dinking and whether I'm hitting a forehand or backhand or I'm taking the ball out of the air as a volley like that or I'm letting it bounce, my grip pressure is around a three or four and it really stays in that range because remember these are soft shots I'm trying to hit and my target where I'm trying to make that ball land is not far from me. So I want a really light grip pressure again so that I can feel the ball. Alright so now let's jump into that second tip. Alright key number two to dinking success is having a compact and consistent stroke. So by compact, let's start with that. This pertains to my backswing, my take back and also my follow through. Now this shot is a soft shot and I'm very close to my opponent so I want to make sure that everything is nice and short so after I finish even with my follow through I can get back into ready position very quickly. And another thing you want to make sure that you have in your mind a low to high swing path. I'm trying to get this ball up and over the net and I'm trying to get this ball to drop in front low in front of my opponent's feet. So I want to make sure that I am swinging low to high and my backswing and follow through are short and compact. Here we go. So again whether I'm taking the ball out of the air, hitting it with a forehand or backhand, look at my stroke. I want you to notice my take back and my follow through is very short so that I can get ready for the next ball right away. So hit some to my backhand and maybe hit some deeper dinks. So no matter if I'm hitting backing up or staying up at the line or hitting a volley or off the bounce doesn't really matter. I'm making sure that my strokes and my swing is very compact. Hi if you're really liking this content go ahead and give this video a like it really helps us out. Now let's get right back to the video. All right so now let's jump into number three and that is have a solid foundation when you are dinking up at the non-volley zone. No matter what shot you hit in pickleball, your stance is really important and the foundation that you build. Starting with the weight at the balls of my feet here and I have a nice little knee bend and I am in athletic stance. I have my chest forward. You can see that I'm never just standing straight up like this. I'm always in a good athletic stance so that I can be ready to move left and right and forward and back when I need to. So you'll see all the good players have a really good stance here. You can see my feet are a little bit more wider than shoulder width and whether I'm digging with my forehand or my backhand I'm ready to go. And you can see I'm kind of you know I'm lifting with my legs a little bit as I dink. It really helps the feel and you'll see a lot of the good players they actually use their legs for that feel to get that touch and you'll notice that as you as you develop your game and get further into court and hitting third shots you'll notice that using your legs and coming up like this that little initiation from the legs up that's going to really it's really going to give you easy power and it really develops your touch and and it works on that touch. So have a good solid foundation starting with the weight on the balls of your toes through your legs and then push up and lift up on that ball. Alright so now let's jump into number four and that is make sure that you give yourself margin or clearance over this net. A lot of times I see lots and lots of players dinking really close or really tight to the net. As you can see these dinks here I'm trying to get it really really close and they find themselves making lots of errors and why do they do this or why are they digging so close to the net? They're doing that because they don't want to pop up the ball but really I want you to think of this it really isn't how close or tight to the net this ball is that makes it a good shot it's where that ball is dropping and landing okay so as you can see here now I'm going to give myself some margin over the net about a foot to a foot and a half around that range over the net but you can see my ball is still dropping in front of my opponent okay so now I'm going to give myself good margin here okay so that's some good that's good height okay so as you can see I'm still clearing the net by you know six inches to a foot and a half and my ball is still dropping well in front of my opponent so that they cannot attack it okay so the key here is yeah give yourself some margin and you're going to cut down on a lot of errors remember your your target should not be a few inches above the net get that target a little bit higher and get that feel hit it softer so that it can drop in front of your opponent all right so now let's jump into the fifth and final key to dinking success and that is focus on your opponent's contact point instead of where the ball is actually landing okay so let me break this down when you are dinking or when I have somebody out here dinking with me a lot of times they are overthinking it or they are trying to make the ball land really short into the kitchen so I can't attack them or they're they're really focusing on where that ball is landing and sometimes that actually hurts you more than it could help you what I want to focus on and when I am dinking against even really great players I'm just focusing on getting the ball down making them contact the ball at a low contact point so whether they are balling the ball out of the air or they are letting that ball drop in front of them bounce and then hitting it as long as they are contacting the ball fairly low that that's still a good dink okay so we're gonna just dink a little bit here and notice as I'm dinking to my wife Katrina on the other side every shot every ball I hit whether she's balling out of the air or taking it off the bounce I'm making her contact it low okay so that's the key to to dinking success here we go so it's really easy to focus on a lot of people teach oh you really want to dink short into the kitchen so they can't attack it but really that's a that's a flawed way of thinking okay because that that can make you really tight and draw a lot of errors okay it's okay to dink close to that non-volley zone line and even beyond it sometimes as long as your opponent is is not contacting the ball early and out in front here if you're making them volley the ball low here it's still a good dink okay let's do a few more okay see even she can reach that last one out of the air it's it's a tough ball to attack because it's her contact point is is really below the net okay all right so that was the fifth and final key to dinking success hopefully this was clear and it was really valuable to you we thank you so much for watching us in this video and we'll see you in the next one thanks so much for watching for more free pickleball tips head on to brionespickleball.com also before you go don't forget to subscribe to this youtube channel and also hit that little bell icon so that you can be notified each time we release a new video thanks so much and we'll see you in the next one