6 Stubborn Pickleball Habits Losing You Matches (And how to fix them!)

Hey, it's Coach Jess, and today we're going to talk about the six stubborn habits that are losing you points and holding you back from leveling up in Pickleball. I've coached thousands of hours at this point, and I see the same themes over and over again. If you're a 3.0, a 3.5, a 4.0, trying to get up to that 4.5, 5.0 level, these are stubborn habits that I want you to really reconsider in your game in order to continue to progress. The sixth habit is a personal pet peeve of mine, so stay tuned to see what it is. All right, let's get into it. The first habit that I see students be stubborn about is their complacency in their dinking. So they want to dink to the same spot every time because it feels more comfortable to them. It's this kind of dinking anesthesia where you're going back and forth with your opponent, it feels pretty second nature, but it's not actually creating anything. It looks something like this. So we're kind of off the line, we're dinking, but nothing exciting really is happening here. When that happens, we're now not dictating the point, we're not putting pressure. And somewhere in our opponent's mind, they also know that we're not dangerous and we don't want them thinking that. So when we step up to the line, what I want you thinking about doing instead is we're moving our dinks around, no place more than twice. And we're thinking about the outside foot, the inside foot. Often if we can go two to Vicky's outside right foot there and then throw one into that inside foot, it will create just enough of a pop-up that we can attack either myself or my partner. Just the simple act of just moving the dink around. It looks more like this. Sending her out wide, sending her out wide, coming to that inside foot, okay? And then we're going to go again, we're going to do it again. I'm moving her around, okay? Inside foot aggressive, okay, boom. What we want to be thinking about here is creating advantage. And if we're just dinking because we think it's some boring exercise that our coach wants us to do to prove that we can get balls into the non-volley zone, we're missing the whole point. The stubborn habit that I want you to eradicate is thinking that your dinking has no purpose. Find those aggressive points deep into that kitchen line and create the pop-up that you're looking for. So the next stubborn habit is driving through transition, especially driving low balls through transition. There is a time and a place. These are not absolute rules that you never drive through transition. That's not true. However, we want to think about driving balls that we can gain advantage. And when a ball is low in transition, we don't have that opportunity. Let me explain to you a little bit about why so that you have some context as to and some visual as to why you don't want to drive through transition. If a ball lands short here and it's low, if I'm going to hit the ball over the net, we got to clear the net, right? The ball is going to go like this. It's going to go up. And if I'm hitting it hard, it's going to go right into the shoulder of my opponent who's going to slap it back down at me. My ball is going up hard. Guess what? It's up there. It's going to come back equally as hard right at my feet. What I see often at the 3-0, 3-5, 4-0 level is that ball comes and we do the same thing. And so we get locked into this drive and then a smackdown and then a drive and then a smackdown. And I'm not accomplishing what I'm trying to accomplish, which is to get to the non-volley zone. The solution is that in transition, especially on low balls, I'm dropping it into the kitchen. So this is a transition ball that we're going to take from low to high. And now that ball I was talking about that we're hitting hard, if we're giving it some arc and hitting it a little softer, it's going to come down. We're trying to get that ball from transition to come up and down, not just up and getting smacked left and right. So we're going up, it's coming down, and it's landing at Vicky's feet. Instead of this, where I'm stuck, instead of that, we're going to do this. Arc. That gave me time to get up to the non-volley zone and now be on par with Vicky and continue with the game. So the next mistake where I see people being entirely too stubborn is insisting that pickleball is not a game of footwork. Pickleball footwork is extremely important in order for you to level up. If you want to get to a four or five level, we've got to be thinking about moving our feet and positioning our body appropriately in order to do better in our games. So a lot of times this is what I see. What I see is a lot of reaching. I see a lot of balls that are being hit to the side of my body. And the problem with that is that that starts to involve our wrist. We want to, as a general rule, as much as possible, be hitting balls in front of our body and between our feet. And so if a ball is over here to my left, I got to get my foot out to the left so that I can keep my paddle in front of my body. Instead of reaching and then flipping our wrist, which has a lot less control and frequently leads to pop-ups, everyone wants to stop popping up balls, right? Start with your footwork. So what it's going to look like instead is that I'm moving, I'm reading, and I'm trying to keep my body behind the balls as much as possible. If you're dinking properly and if you're moving properly in pickleball, you're going to feel a little bit of a workout. We're low. I'm keeping balls in front. All right. And I'm really focusing on making contact in front of my body. What this looks like cross-court is that as the balls come to me, I'm really thinking about keeping balls on the inside of my knee. On the backhand side, that's if you're right-handed, that's going to be your left knee. Especially when I'm thinking about a two-hander, I'm really keeping everything in front here. Good. All right. As we were dinking, both of us were keeping balls in front of our body consistently. So we're trying not to let balls get too far outside us. If that means reaching forward and taking it out of the air, that's going to be the move. But making sure that we're moving, staying low, and thinking about those side shuffles and those steps to keep the ball within limits that are going to help us dink better. The next stubborn habit that we want to talk about breaking is not returning and running after every return of serve. Now, this is one of the most basic strategic choices that we make in pickleball. Return and run, you probably learned it on your first day of pickleball. But I cannot tell you how many students still feel more comfortable back, they feel a little safer, or technically they're not understanding how to move their weight into the ball so that they get from the baseline to the kitchen line as quickly as possible. When we're returning serve, this is where we gain advantage. We have an advantage over the server because we get into the kitchen line first. So we don't want to squander that. So it often looks like people standing a little bit too close to the baseline. They move back and they hit the return and then they're here. And now I'm hitting a ball from my feet almost at the baseline. And what I've done is I've given the server, the serving team, a ton of space for them to hit it at my feet versus when I return and run, I'm looking to catch that ball higher so that I have the advantage, especially if they're driving low to high. I don't want to miss the opportunity to be taking that ball from a much easier position on my body. So I made it up here. You won't always make it to the kitchen line, but we want to get as close as possible because this is going to put the pressure on them and give us a chance to keep the ball at their feet and keep them back. So step one in order to be moving your weight forward is I want you to start a little further behind the baseline. If you're returning service, someone that you know has a really weak serve, that's one thing you know, you might want to stay inside the baseline, but remember that first ball has to bounce. So we want to give ourselves room and it's much easier to run forward than it is to go backwards. I see a lot of people starting at the line and their first move is back. I want you thinking about only moving forward on the return of serve so that your entire energetic presence is that of getting up to that non volley zone. The second thing that I want you thinking about is I want you thinking about when we know if that ball is coming to a forehand or a backhand, I want you to think about turning and planting into that outside leg and then taking that step forward. That's going to pull you up to the line that we're trying to get to. I promise you, you're going to set yourself up and win a lot more points. Okay. So the next stubborn habit that I want to talk about, and I see this constantly, is that people still insist on driving or speeding up the ball when they're out of position and off balance. And yes, once in a while, there's going to be a ball where you're on your back leg and you smack it and you squeeze it by the person and hits the line. But that's like a one out of a hundred shot. When we are off balance, what we want to be thinking about neutralizing the ball and getting it back in the kitchen so that we can get back into the point. Here's what it looks like when I'm speeding up off balance. Oh, okay. So we see that a lot for sure. Yup. And Vicky's there and she's ready to take that ball from a high position and put it down at my feet. I don't know if I was flying off the frame there, but if you saw me, I was fully in my left, left leg falling backwards. And this whole part of the court is now unprotected and leaving my poor partner having to try to scramble and cover everything, which isn't their responsibility. So instead, I want us thinking about when we're hitting that ball to this corner and I'm going to soften up my hands and I'm going to look to put a much softer dink into the kitchen somewhere in the middle of the court. And what this will do is that will give me time to get back in so that I can now get back into a neutralized position back on par with my opponents. And it will look a little more like this. Okay. So I went cross court with that one. If I turn my paddle a little bit, I'll get it over here. What we want to think about, most important thing, is that however aggressive that ball is coming to me, I have to, with an equal and opposite reaction, soften my hand. So if she hits an aggressive dink at like an eight out of 10, I got to somehow find a two in my hand to soften it up and put it into the no volley zone. So let's look at this from another angle of the court. This is what we don't want to do. Okay. Yeah. So once I read that that ball is coming aggressively, if I'm going to take it out of the air, I need to soften up. If I'm going to catch it late, I need to be even softer. My goal is to prevent her from putting the ball away. And the only way that I can do that is to somehow neutralize it back into the kitchen. Neutralized. Good. Neutralize. If I don't neutralize it, okay. And I hit it hard. She's going to be sitting on it. If you are off balance, you need to train yourself to slow it down, soften up and neutralize. All right. I swear neutralization is your best friend. You just have to believe me. Okay. This is the final stubborn habit that I want to talk about today. And it is my biggest pet peeve. And I actually am guilty of doing it plenty. And I see this at every level because everyone thinks that they're exempt from messing up this shot. The shot I'm talking about is when you and your partner have the advantage of the kitchen line. Your opponents are back. They're just trying to stay in the point and they pop up a ball. And instead of keeping them back or hitting that aggressive put away, you get the ball up here and you try to drop shot it. Drop shots have a time and a place. When you are in an aggressive power position, that's not the time or the place. And I see it over and over again where people do this thinking that they're going to pull one over on their opponents and instead they hit it past the kitchen line and their opponent comes in and joins them. And now they're in trouble. Often it's even a much easier ball where I could slam it that direction, take them off the court. And instead I choose to, from a high position, try to drop shot it. And yes, again, similar to the other habit we talked about where once in a while you get lucky. More often than not, I see people lose points where they try to be cute and they try to drop shot a ball from up here. Okay. If you really want to drop shot, there's a time and a place. And in my opinion, the best time is going to be if the opponent hits a ball that has a little bit more slope, but they're well behind the baseline and we can hit the drop shot from below the net. It's just a little bit easier to have touch in your hand. I still don't love it. I think that it's very rare that drop shots are successful at many levels. If you watch pro matches, it's one of the announcers pet peeves as well. It rarely works even at the top levels. Okay. But if you're insistent on doing it, a deep ball where they're behind the baseline and they drive it at you and you can at the last minute soften up your hand, that's what we're looking for. See, that one was even a little bit high. Let's do it again. Okay. The trick there is that I want to get a little bit of backspin, open up the paddle and soft hand. If I give the ball anything, it's unlikely that it's going to get short enough that it will be out of their reach. Okay. Now you want to consider your opponent. If you're playing someone who's maybe not as quick, a drop shot might be something you would consider a little bit more frequently. But as a rule, if you are in an aggressive position, you're in control of the court, you have a ball that is at your head or higher, please do not drop shot it. Remove that from your game. And I promise you, you're going to win those points that you already have the advantage on more frequently. They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. And that's really what we're talking about here. We're talking about identifying things that happen repeatedly that you can start to reduce that are going to help tighten up your game and get you to that 4-0, 4-5, 5-0 level that you're seeking. If you found this video useful, like and subscribe and leave a comment below. I'll respond. I want to hear how you're doing. And if any of these resonated for you, I'll see you in the next video.