7 EASY Steps to a Powerful & Consistent Pickleball Serve

What's up my pickleballers? In this video, I'm going to take your serve from this to this. One of the biggest difference between professional pickleball players and pickleball players that just can't seem to win matches at the end is how big they're going on serve. In today's lesson, we're going to cover on how to add maximum power and control so that you can win more points starting off on your serve. We're going to go over seven easy steps to add velocity to your serve, to add topspin to your serve, and add depth to your serve. So what are we waiting for? Let's jump into it. The first thing I want you to think about when we're serving here is getting into this wide low closed stance. And what I mean by closed stance is this is what open stance looks like and this is what closed stance looks like. You see a good variety of it on the pro tour, but I would say majority of people are sitting in this closed stance position. The benefit of being in this closed stance position is we're able to sit low into our legs here and we're going to learn in further steps. We're going to use all of our body to get maximum power. Tip number two, this is called the flashlight. I'm sure you've seen this on a lot of Instagram videos of really getting this paddle back here as if I had a flashlight that's pointing out here. So I want to make sure that this paddle is behind me. The butt of my paddle is pointing towards the other side of the net here. This cocked wrist is going to be essential for when we start to swing and make contact out in front. Okay, pretty easy right? Those are some pretty basic fundamentals to get us in the right position to start attacking the ball. The third thing we're going to talk about is loading this back leg so that we can coil this back leg and explode into our serve here. So when we get in this closed stance position, I want us to get low and athletic so that when we get ready to attack the ball, we can power off that back leg and attack the ball. My fourth tip and my final body mechanic tip here is we want to fire this left hip for me because I'm right-handed. My front hip, we want to fire that hip at the same time that we're pushing off this back leg. They go hand in hand here. So you see how everything's firing and rotating together and I really haven't even swung the paddle yet right? I'm still in this flashlight position and see how the paddle is moving because my hips and legs are driving. So what I like to think about is a golfer, let's take Tiger Woods, can hit the ball 300 plus yards and he doesn't even move his feet at all right because he comes back here and then he drives those hips off this back leg and generates an insane amount of power with no footwork right? So that's what we're going to do with our pickleball serve here. Well done team. Now we've fundamentally added power. Now I want us to add depth and topspin to our serve as well. This next tip is going to be the most important tip I'm probably going to teach you today. It is making contact out in front of your body. Most of the time when I'm working with beginners on serves they drop it between their legs or they just toss it right in front of them. I want you to drop or toss in front of you almost a whole foot in front of you because as our body weight shifts forward now I'm on top of the line or over the line. So if I just toss it on the line I'm now even with the ball again. If I toss it a foot in front of me I'm forced to go attack that ball. So see how I'm throwing my body into it because I'm hitting out in front. And if we go back to step number two, the flashlight. If you remember I have this cocked back wrist here because I have the flashlight here. As I drive this out I'm still locked back here as I make contact out in front of me. Can you see that I have about a foot in front of me between this paddle and my body with a flat paddle here. So let's take this cart as just a wall here. So I want to hit this square. You see how I'm meeting that perfectly square here. A lot of times a lot of people hit it with the tip of their paddle first and the ball will fly way left on us right or vice versa. If I hit it with the butt of the paddle first it's going to fly out way right on me. Let me show you a couple examples of what I mean by that here. So if I'm too far in front here I'm too far in front it's going to go away left. If I don't close it in time it goes way right. So we want to make sure that we are driving this paddle out square to our target as far as we can go. So I'm going to drive as far as I can go. Those five steps are the fundamentals of how you have an aggressive attacking serve that's going to set you up for great third shot drops, third shot drives. It's putting you in a position to win from the very beginning. These next two steps here are really what separates the cream from the crop here. I'm only 5'11", 150 pounds and I can hit the ball harder than 99% of the world because I'm going to add these two little cherries on top that most players don't do. So the last step we worked on was meeting the ball out in front with this cocked wrist. Now as I meet this ball over and I can't go any further before my arm starts to turn over I'm going to snap that wrist over. So two things here, see I can generate power just from snapping my wrist right? I can generate power just from snapping my wrist. I can generate power just from driving my arm and not snapping wrist. So I want you to combine the two of driving the arm and snapping the wrist all in the same motion. So the timing has to be correct here. If you look at Ben Johns, his timing is always so perfect which is a part of what separates him of being so good. So we're out in front and we snap that wrist. You'll also notice the more I snap the more topspin I can generate too. So I can generate a lot of dip on that. I missed that way long but you see how much topspin and roll I can get? That's a great ball. Alright and the final cherry on top which kills me when I see this in rec play is I want to make sure that you are finishing your swing all the way to the other side of your shoulder, your left ear. Feel free to catch it if that's more comfortable but I want you to finish your swing. Too many times I see people will hit a ball and stop halfway through. Well if you're only going to hit the ball halfway you're only going to get half the power. I want you to let this arm go and finish all the way to the other side of your body. So we're out in front and we're going to attack all the way to the other side of the body. See how my paddle's up here? Let me show you one more time. Stop halfway here or we finish all the way across to the side of the body here. Alright and my bonus pro tip here is if you feel comfortable walking up into this serve you can generate that extra momentum, that extra body weight to add that last little extra miles per hour here. When we go back to step one we're in this low square base here. We're just nice and smooth cruising through that serve. If we want to add a little bit of extra sauce in here I want you to think about taking this left foot behind you here and stepping into it. Legally you are allowed to take two steps into your serve. If you watch Annalie Waters or Kaitlyn Christian they are walking into their serve. So they take one step, two step and smash the ball. So I like to keep it a little simple and just take one big step and smash it here. So boom. Everything I got into that serve. Do you think you can return this serve? Oh I like how slow that stayed. Oh yeah that's nice. You're gonna get a lot of free points on that serve. Alright if you can successfully implement those seven easy steps you will increase your velocity, your topspin, your depth on your serve which just sets you up for more opportunities to win more points on your serve. If you have any questions about this feel free to drop it in the comment section. I will respond or maybe I'll even make a video, a more in-depth video trying to answer your question. And make sure to follow and subscribe as I'm making a ton of pickleball content that's going to help take your game to the next level. Thanks team. I'll see you in the next video.