The Most Important Pickleball Tips I Learned In 4 Years (18-Minute Guide)

After four years of coaching, I've realized that not every tip is created equal. In my experience, around 20% of tips will bring you 80% of your results. So in this video, I'm gonna walk you through the most important pieces of advice that I've learned since I started. These are things that will give you crazy results if you understand and implement them, so make sure to pay close attention. So the first thing that I see so many players getting wrong with that makes such a big difference are shuffle steps and split step. So most players still aren't doing these two things at the right time, and if you're watching this, you probably aren't either. When I got into pickleball, I didn't really understand how to move as I was moving forward and I got up to the kitchen, but this makes a massive difference. So when you're at the kitchen, as you move side to side, you want to be doing what we call shuffle steps. So as you can see, I am not crossing over. So a crossover step would look like this. So you rarely want to do that at the kitchen, and if you ever get backed up, you do this sort of a step. You still shuffle, you never cross over backwards. So if she backs me up one direction, what I do, I shuffle back and I always shuffle back to the center of my little side here. But why do I do this? Well, for one, if I'm crossing over, I'm not looking at my opponent anymore. So if I do this, she can fire the ball at me and I'm not even in the right position, I'm not in my correct ready position. So we're shuffling to have better position, and when we're facing the court, if she hits me a ball that I can reach into the kitchen on, I can reach farther when I'm doing my shuffle steps. So when you're at the kitchen, you're always shuffling side to side, and if you have to go back a little bit, you keep one foot closer to the kitchen, so your inside foot should be closer, it's kind of like your anchor foot, and then you lunge back into this outside foot. So if she gets me back on a dink, I lunge back, and I'm always shuffling, and I always sort of have one foot that stays closer to the kitchen so that it's very easy for me to recover back. In terms of when I use the split step, I use it when I'm moving forward, and I see so many players that are just running in like this, they don't stop with the split step. You wanna stop with your split step, so you jump into this stance right when your opponent's about to hit the ball as you're moving in. So what that looks like is this. Kennedy's gonna be hitting this shot, I jump into this stance, and it helps me stop my momentum so I can move out to the side, right? So I'm kind of splitting, I'm splitting, and then I'm shuffle stepping to get to that shot, because she's gonna be trying to get me off balance when I'm moving forward. So then I'm coming in, split step, and once I'm up here, you don't really have to split step as much unless you want to, some players do this, and I'm back to my shuffle step game. So make sure that you understand how to do the correct shuffle steps. We call these drop steps sometimes when we go back, and make sure to understand when to split step, and it's gonna make you so much more on balance, and it's gonna make your soft game way more accurate. So the next thing that you're going to want to start doing is something that I see the pros use all the time, but that recreational players almost never use, and it's called the poach, and it looks like this. So what I did there, I hit a drop, I moved forward, and I recognized Kennedy was back in the court. So Kennedy's my partner, she's back. And when this happens, this situation happens, your opponents are gonna see that she's back, and if they're playing smart, they're probably gonna hit to her. So what you can do, you can anticipate that, and intercept it. So ideally, your partner would move in with you, right? That's generally how things go, but sometimes, especially at the rec level, maybe I'll hit a good drop, and she just doesn't realize it, so she stays back. So I have to use my peripheral vision to see that she stays back, but this does happen pretty often, so if you're in this situation, know what your opponents are thinking, and understand that you can cross over, and poach, and attack that shot, because they're gonna be hitting it deeper. You should have a very good angle to attack. Give the poach a try, and I guarantee if you use it properly, you'll get some free points from it. Guys, real quickly before I get into my next tip, I just wanted to announce that today marks the launch of our new paddle, the Duo. So the Duo has a completely unique foam core that we actually have a patent pending on. What this does is it gives you a ton of power, and a ton of spin, and because it's foam, it lasts significantly longer. So if your paddles have fallen apart, maybe you had a gen three paddle, this is the answer. These last a long time, and you're not gonna lose the feel of the paddle, you're not gonna lose power. Reviewers have been saying it's one of the best foam core paddles on the market. And to make things even better, we're launching with a Black Friday sale that makes it $25 off. So if you wanna get one of these, head to our site and check it out. So the next tip is probably the most important tip, and the tip that I've given most on this whole list. And it has to do with having a good ready position. But it's not just having a good ready position. You need to have a good ready position depending what situation you're in on the court. So the first thing I wanna go over is that when you're at the kitchen, you don't want your ready position to be too far out in front. So you want your ready position to be a little bit closer to your body. So if you were standing at my side, it would look like this, not like this. You don't want it to be too close to your body. You want it to be about right here, because when you have your ready position right here, it gives you space to counter attack. So if she gives me a ball that I want to attack on, I have enough room to extend and get power. You don't wanna be at the last little bit of your reach, because then you don't have any space to work with getting more power. The next thing you wanna think about is pointing your paddle towards the ball. So if you're dinking down the line, obviously your ready position should be facing in front of you, whereas if I'm dinking cross court, I'm going to shift my ready position towards the player that's over there. So that's pretty obvious, I'm sure you know that. What you might not be doing is changing the height of your ready position. So at the net, generally I want my ready position, I want my paddle to be around that height, because if my opponent speeds up at me, it's probably coming right above the height of the net. So in this case, when I'm at this height, I don't need to move my paddle very much. However, as you start to back up, you want to lower your ready position down, so that when your opponent's hitting the ball at your feet, you're in a better position to react fast to that. So pretty much with your ready position, you're just trying to put your paddle in the closest possible position to any shot that you could receive. So if she's right in front of me, it's right here. If she's to the side of me, I'm gonna be like this, right? So you have to be smart about this, though, and this is something that I think everyone knows, but when I'm looking around at the courts, not everyone is doing. So think about this every time you play, and it's gonna make your reactions a lot faster. The next thing kind of has to do with your ready position, too. And instead, if you're the cross-court player, meaning the person across from you, not in front of you, is hitting the ball, you need to make sure that you're covering the middle, because a lot of the time, when you hit a ball cross-court, you leave a gap in the center that you need to be ready to cover like I just did there. So a general rule of thumb is that if the ball is across from you, you should squeeze towards the middle, because, sure, so you can hit a dink that's super far out wide, but that's a slow ball. So generally, I have enough time to move to get that. What she can do very hard, though, is hit a ball down the middle. So in this instance, I need to do what's called shading and move towards the center. But just moving with your body isn't good enough. You should also be moving with your ready position and with your paddle. This is an extreme example, but in this instance, instead of pointing your paddle towards the ball, you can sort of sit more on your forehand, because if Kennedy hits hard here, she kind of has to go down the middle. So I know she's gonna be hitting it to my forehand. If she goes to my backhand, it's gonna go probably out wide, right? So she might not be able to hit it quite as hard. So I can sit more on my forehand, because if she's going to hit it to my backhand, I know she's gonna have to hit the ball slower so that it drops in. So this is an example of what we call paddle shading, where your paddle is sort of just waiting more so where the person is probably going to attack if they do. This makes your reactions way faster, because you don't have to decide whether to hit a forehand or a backhand. You're just waiting in the stroke that you're gonna use. So the next thing has to do with the third shot or the shot that you hit after your serve when you're the server. So the third shot is right after my serve. So I serve, she returns, then I hit my third shot. So it's a technical thing, and it has to do with the trajectory of the ball. And it's that when I'm hitting a third shot drop, meaning I'm trying to drop the ball into the kitchen, you generally want to make contact with the ball as it's declining or on the way down. So in tennis, it's actually very common to take the ball on the rise, which looks like that. So I'm taking the ball, some people call it short hopping the ball, as it's coming up. But in pickleball, we don't really have to do that very often, especially on our drops. If I try to take my drop on the rise, I can do a good job, but the odds that I hit a poor drop are very high because as the ball is going up, I'm changing the direction of the paddle. When the ball is falling, I'm just reversing the direction of the ball, right? Because I'm hitting the ball up. So if the ball is coming down, I'm just sending it back the same place that it was going. There's also a lot less spin on the ball as it's declining. But I see a lot of players doing this wrong. Because if your opponent's hitting super deep returns, you have to use your footwork to be able to do this. So as you can see there, I actually backed up to hit my drop so I could do it as the ball is declining. So you need to make sure you're good with your footwork and that you're tracking the ball off your opponent's paddle so that you can do this properly. See there, I had to move back again because he hit the ball and landed pretty deep. So for me to get it while it's falling, I actually need to back up. So after you serve, be awake with your feet and be very aware of what your opponent's doing and where their ball is headed so that you can always catch your third shot drop as it's falling. So the next step has to do with how you respond to players hitting very hard. One of the most common mistakes I see is when your opponent drives the ball at you, you miss the volley into the net. I'm sure you've done this. A lot of time, it feels like you're gonna hit the ball perfectly good, but then the ball goes straight down. So why does this happen? Well, it happens because a lot of the time I see players using their slow ball volleys against fast balls. So if she hits the ball slow, I need to have a very different technique than if she hits the ball hard. So that's something that not a lot of players know. When the ball is slow, I'm going to use more spin and I'm gonna use more wrist. When the ball is hard, I want to use less spin. I wanna have a firmer grip and I want to use less wrist. So your technique against hard shots, you need to switch very quickly into a more linear stroke so it's less up and down. You wanna have a firmer grip on the paddle and you want to go for less spin. You don't need to go for slice. When you're a tennis player, you go for slice on your volleys like this. You kind of have a little bit of backspin. You don't need to do that in pickleball. You can kind of just hit flat volleys, maybe a little bit of topspin. So that looks like this, but we don't want to be going for your extremely spinny volleys that you would do on a roll. So that's what this would look like on a hard shot. I made that one, but as you can see, the ball is coming really fast. So if I'm doing this crazy up and down motion, the odds that I miss this on the sides of the paddle are a lot higher if she's hitting the ball really hard. So it should look something like this. She hits really hard at me. I'm just blocking the ball back. And see, I actually made the mistake there because it is, even when you're doing it right, it's kind of hard. So when she's hitting the ball hard, compact motion, give yourself some margin over the net too. Don't aim right above the net. Give yourself a little bit of space and then aim for those normal targets that you want to go for once your opponent is back and coming in. But where are these targets? Well, the next tip is that when you're in an aggressive position, you need to understand your clear set of targets depending on what shot you're hitting. So generally, your best targets when you're up and your opponents are backs, you're the aggressor, and they're on defense are at the depth of their feet out to their side. So if they're back, what does that look like? Well, we have one target down the middle. We have one target out to this side and we have one target out to that side, right? You have to be able to adjust where you're aiming specifically based on what shot you're hitting and where they're standing. So as they start to move forward, your targets are going to move in with them because if I hit a deep shot here, Drew might be able to intercept that out of the air. So now I'm actually aiming shorter in the court and I'm gonna have to go for slightly slower balls at their feet. So I want to hit their feet so that I can't attack the ball out of the air. Your targets also change as you get higher shots. So I need to go for the depth of their feet if I'm hitting a shot that's lower. So let's say they hit me a drop. I don't really have much of an angle, right? So I don't have the ability to take the ball off the court. But as I get higher shots, my court opens up. So I actually don't necessarily need to aim for the depth of their feet if I have a higher ball. If I have a higher ball, I could potentially just hit the ball off the court like that, which is better than going to Drew where he might be able to get that shot back. So the rules change depending on where you are in the court, how high the ball is and where they are in the court. Make sure though that you're thinking about this when you're playing because I see so many players that are just hitting hard shots at random and they miss the shot or they lose opportunities where they should have ended the point because they aren't following the system. So the next step has to do with how you're attacking from the kitchen. So watch this shot. This is what a normal attack from the kitchen looks like. See my paddle? It's sideways, right? And that's okay. You should be attacking with your paddle like this when the ball is above the height of the net. But what a lot of high level players are doing is they're attacking with their paddle like this. So that looks like this. I have my paddle facing down and there's a few benefits to this. The first is if the ball is lower, this is just easier to attack because your paddle is lower, right? If I'm like this, I actually can reach a little bit farther with my paddle down because think, I'm just gonna have my paddle lower. I can hit a slightly lower shot. The next thing is that if I'm hitting a volley dink, this is generally the technique I'm using. So I have my paddle down, right? Because I'm reaching. By attacking from this position, it's better disguised. It doesn't look very different from what I do before my volley dink. So I could be dinking or I could be attacking, right? There's less of a period of time where she can see I'm doing something different. So it's just a better way to attack when you're reaching into the kitchen. And you just see so many players at a high level doing this. So if you don't do this, highly recommend trying this. It's definitely more of a backhand thing than a forehand thing, but you can do it on both sides and you can just really just dangle into the kitchen and attack even on balls that are below the net sometimes. The next thing has to do with minimizing the use of your wrist on your soft game. So I see a lot of pro players doing stuff like this when they're hitting a drop or a dink, where they're like kind of using the wrist. This is something that you can do, but it's definitely an advanced technique. So if you're someone that struggles with your soft game in terms of pop-ups, what I challenge you to do is to hit your dinks, hit your drops by minimizing the use of your wrist. So what does that look like? Let's say I'm hitting recents back here. I keep my wrist completely steady and this gives me a lot more control. And when I'm hitting drops from the back of the court, same thing. I don't necessarily have to do crazy topspin drops where I'm using a ton of wrists or riding up the back of the ball so much. If you're not there with your consistency yet, keep your wrist isolated. Don't move it very much. Use your shoulder for power. Don't even use too much of your elbow. And it's gonna make you a lot more consistent. So you don't need to even there. I'm a 5'0 player and I'm missing my drops. You don't need to be using so much wrist, right? Topspin drops are very effective, but it's not worth it if you're gonna be missing half of them because you're not used to coming up the back of the ball like this, right? So keep your wrist isolated. When you're doing your drops, keep your wrist isolated on resets. And especially when you're dinking, you don't need to be doing so much wrist. I keep my wrist very steady, stable, and it makes you a lot more consistent. Start off like this. Then you can get more complicated, add in topspin, and potentially add some windshield wiper with your wrist. The next thing is something that you can do on your serve that makes you get a lot more power with not that much effort. So I see so many players doing this. They're serving, and they're doing what we call arming the ball. They're using only their arm to hit the ball. If you wanna get more power, the easiest way to do so is to add rotation to your serve. So what does that look like? So I actually don't even need to use that much arm on my serve to get power if I'm just going from here to here with my upper body. So it's sort of like a golf swing, how I hit it like this. And by the end of my stroke, I should be facing forward with my chest. I see people doing that, but they're just sort of turning slowly. With your rotation, you want to initiate your arm with your rotation. So I want to actually rotate before I start my forward swing so that my arm actually kind of works like a slingshot. So you can actually do this with open stance too. You see a lot of pros serving like this because it forces you to unleash like this. It forces you to rotate. So if I have this open stance, I'm forcing myself to do rotation. You don't have to do open stance to do that. It's just a very extreme way to give yourself rotation. But just focus when you're serving on opening up very quickly and you're gonna get a lot more power. And as a bonus, also focus on getting some wrist lag. So make your butt cap of your paddle face forward and you're gonna get significantly more power. I guarantee it. Guys, of course, if you're looking for more power in any part of your game, your serve, your counterattacks, I highly recommend getting a more powerful paddle. Like we have the Duo right here. As I mentioned, today is the launch day of the Duo. 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