The BIGGEST Difference Between 4.0 and 6.0 DUPR...

This team's about to lose the point and the point just started. And I'm going to tell you why. Watch this. I didn't guess that. I saw it about two seconds before it happened. And this is the biggest difference between 4.0 and 6.0. It's not about the drives, the quick hands or the drilling, which all makes a big difference. But even though we're watching the same rally, it's out of a different lens. In this video, I'm going to break down the five biggest things that 6.0 players see that the typical rec player might miss on the court. We're going to count down from five to one of the biggest things that I noticed out on the court, including the biggest impact that took me from a 5.2 duper to a 6.0 duper that most coaches aren't teaching you. Number five, stop watching the ball. And what do I mean by that? Of course we need to watch the ball, but that's only 50% of it. I need you to watch your opponent's paddle as that's going to dictate where the ball goes. And what do I mean by that? If your opponent has an upward facing paddle, that ball is going to lift up on us. If that paddle is closed, it's probably going to come lower and faster. Also goes to if my paddle is facing cross court, that's probably where the ball is going to go. That allows us to anticipate a little early. We can move a little early. We can expect where that ball is going to go based on where our opponent's paddle is facing. Oftentimes at open play, I see people waiting for the ball to be hit and then they react to it. The difference is these 6.0s are seeing where the paddle is placed. They're anticipating early and moving before the ball is even hit. While sometimes it's hard to teach anticipation, we can actually drill this. So the drill that Alex and I are going to do here is we're going to play a dinking game each time in my head or out loud. I'm going to guess before she hits it, whether she's going to hit it soft or hard. And that is primarily going to be dictated by where her paddle placement is. So let's give it a try here. Soft, soft, hard. Ooh, I got it. Soft, soft. Good. Hard. Yeah. Soft. She's down low. Good. Soft. The other thing is we can start to realize by our dink here, I'm putting her in a place that she has to keep that ball low and I know it's going to be, that might come faster. Yeah. Good. Good. I want to give a quick shout out to ecosports.com for hooking me up with my non-toxic gear. Yes, all my clothing is BPA free, PFAS free, non-toxic. We also have a non-toxic biodegradable plastic free pickle ball here. So make sure you check out ecosports.com look great, play great, feel great. So next time you go out and play rec or you play with your friends, just in your own mind, think about whether that ball is coming soft, whether it's coming hard, whether it's coming cross court or down the line, just a great mental exercise for you to continue to work on to get better at the strategic anticipation of where that ball is going. Boom. If you feel like you're already getting value out of number five already hit that subscribe button. Let's get into number four. Number four, I'm watching your feet because your feet tell the truth. Even when your paddle is lying player who is set balanced feet under their shoulders, weight moving forward, they can hurt me. But a player who is leaning back unbalanced, stepping, lunging, they're in a defensive position. And I want to take advantage of that. An off balance player can only do two things. They can either hit a great reset or they make an error. And we're in the driver's seat as soon as we see that happen. So when I see my opponent lunging, reaching for a ball off balance, I'm salivating. I'm starting to get on my tippy toes. I want to reach and I want to take that ball as high and as close to the net so I can hit an easy winner after that ball. I know when I see them stretch, they can't hurt me. And I have to capitalize on that. I'm going to try and take away as much time as possible and hit it into that open gap. Alex and I are going to play a down the line dinking game here. And you'll notice as soon as one of us gets the other off balance, we're going to start capitalizing on that real estate and wait for our opportunity to attack. Let me show you the drill. Most players judge danger by how hard their opponent can hit, but most pros judge danger by how balanced their opponent is. When most people look across the net, they see two opponents that they need to beat. But when I look across the net, I see gaps and holes in maps of where I need to place the ball so I can capitalize and win more points. But here's the thing. The map is always changing based on where they stand. If they slide and cover that line, well, that means their center is going to open up. If you see them crowding the kitchen line, that might open a lob and the baseline up. That's where the map is always changing depending on where our opponent is. Too many times at open play, I see players just attack bodies. It's just an easy target for them to go to. But my three favorite spots are to go line, chicken arm, and middle. And that also will change given the other opponent. But let's say we're just playing a one-on-one drill. The three spots I'm going to attack Alex is that line, the chicken arm and middle. Never do I want to attack her strong, comfortable backhand counter here. So let's drill that. So as you can see, hitting a speed up into their strong counter is not the spot we want to attack. That door should be closed on that map. So let's play a game. Let's play a drill where only I'm allowed to speed up, but my attacks need to be in one of those three spots. I want you to notice that Alex does a very good job of sliding with her backhand to cover that line, but that might just open up the middle for me. It'd be nice if I could stop letting everything. Good. You see her sliding all the way over there. I saw her move. So I went middle. I thought she was going to slide and cover that middle after I just beat her on it. But I did a good enough job of getting that to her chicken arm that set me up for the third put away after my speed up. Ooh, got her down the line on that one. Let's go. Let's move on to the next one right now. All right, team, you're crushing it. Let's get into number two. And this is going to run my entire decision tree here. It's one simple question. Is that ball above the net or is that ball below the net? Let's break that down. If that ball is above the net, it puts my opponent on the offensive position and me into a defensive position. So we want to look at the feet. We want to look at the paddle. We also want to recognize where my opponent is attacking that ball and where I need to put my paddle accordingly. So if my opponent is hitting up on that ball, that gives me permission to hunt, to go look for an offensive ball. If my opponent is attacking from above the net, we may want to take a step back. We may want to get in a counter or reset position to get us back into that offense position in a shot or a couple of shots. So let's see what that looks like here. I'm going to try and keep Alex below the net and see if I can hunt a ball. She's hitting low. Even if I keep her down there, I'm hunting right now. I'm always hunting until I can get a ball that I can attack. I did a good job of keeping those balls low. Let's see what happens if I accidentally pop up a ball. I'm going to try and get myself out of trouble here with the reset. Oh, good. There we go. I'm back in it. Good. Oh, give me that chicken arm. I'm sorry. Okay. But do you see how I knew she was attacking because I left those balls a little bit high. Just got myself into a reset position. I actually got a little lucky and hit some good shots there, but it totally changed the point where I was able to get it back down, get myself back into an offensive position. Here's where I see the biggest mistake with this one in bangers. I am looking at you here. Sometimes we just get into one gear, one shot fixes all when that ball comes to our shoelaces and we decide to bang the ball. I know you're heading up on that and I get to be in an offensive position. So we need to have multiple gears in pickleball, right? Same goes for me. Reading your ball is same goes for us attacking that ball. If that ball is high, I want us to attack. If that ball is low, I want us to attack. So bangers a little better shot selection. Also if you're playing against a banger and you see them swinging from their shoelaces, you'd be ready to put that counter away, right? Good. We are down to the last and final tip here in my favorite tip. How to tell someone's going to speed up at you. I am tired of seeing my students get bullied by being sped up over and over. Today is the day we stop letting people bully us with speed up after speed up. When we learn how to read and counter these speed ups properly, they're going to stop speeding up at you, but we have to punish them for bad speed ups. So let's break down the three biggest things that I noticed when I know a speed up is coming. The first thing is the urgency of footwork. When people are dinking, they're calm, relaxed, they're smooth. As soon as they go to speed up, their feet get really quick. Their whole body gets really quick. The second thing I noticed is their forearm tightens, their core tightens, their body tightens. When they get into this speed up position, they're getting ready to coil and unleash on you so you can feel the tenseness of their body before they're coming at you hot. Those two are the biggest differences I see at the 6.0 level. At the 4.0 level, and if you're not noticing this last one, you better start making this adjustment quickly here. It's the big wind up in the take back. It's really hard to hit a slow easy dink when my paddle is all the way back here. So when I take a big take back here, it's really hard to hit an easy dink and hit that ball slow. That ball is coming fast. So when you see the big take back, the core engaged, the arm squeezing tight, you get ready for that strong counter. In the last piece and most difficult piece of reading the speed up here is knowing where they're going to attack that speed up. But because we see where their feet is set, we see where their paddle tip is going. We see where their chest is pointing. We know the anticipation. We know where the odds are that they're going to hit that ball. So we can start to move into that counter because not only do we know the speed up is coming, we know where it's going. Now I've talked to some of my friends on the PO tour about this and they start to watch their opponent's eyes where they're going. When I get a dink here and I look middle, probably going to speed up down the middle, which allows us to cover that counter strong. That's obviously an elevated practice action when you're starting to read people's eyes and body language. But the biggest take that you can take away right now, as soon as you see people turn, take that big swing that goes behind their body, you best get that paddle up and ready for a counter. In this drill here, only Alex is allowed to speed up when she wants to, AKA we need to recognize when she takes those big backswings and be ready into a counter. But a pro tip here is I would rather have you sit and be ready for a counter and they hit a dink. We can go down and get that super easy. Opposed to us being ready for a dink and they hit a fastball at our chest and we have to come up and try and counter that. That's when we give easy pop-ups away. So I'd rather you be ready for a counter than anything. So that's what the 6-0 actually sees. The paddle face, not the ball. The feet, not the swing. The gaps, not the players. The contact tight, not the pace. And the decision, not the speed up. Here's your homework. Don't try all five of these at once. Pick one, go to the court. Maybe it's guessing whether they're going to hit it hard or soft and just run that through your head this next day, this next practice. Master one of these and I promise you the game will slow down dramatically for you and feel so easy. Comment eyes below. And I also want you to comment which one you're going to practice this week. I read all the comments and if there's something you want me to make a video about, I'm happy to do it. So make sure to subscribe. See when that next video drops. I appreciate you guys following along. I can't wait to see you out on the court. See you next time.