6 Mistakes That Confirm You’re An Amateur Pickleball Player (And How To Fix Them)

There's six main mistakes that make you look and play like an amateur pickleball player. So today we're going to walk you through them and give you solutions to help you play like a pro. The first mistake amateur players make starts before the point, and it's that players don't have a good serve or return ritual. What is a ritual? Well, a ritual is a sequence of things you do before the point gets going to get your mind in the right spot and to get prepared to hit the shot. So on the serve, what you commonly see is you see players balancing the ball. You see this in tennis, you see it in pickleball, and what this does is it gets you mentally prepared to hit your serve. I'm also getting my stance ready while I'm doing this. And it also makes sure you start the serve the same way every single time. So you don't want to have one serve starting like this, one serve starting like this. You don't want to just walk up and rush your serve, right? So the reason you do a ritual is to sort of just do something every single time to always start in the same position. And you can choose your closed stance, you can choose your open stance. You don't need to balance the ball, but at the very least, step up to the line, get in your stance, and make sure your hands are in the right spot before you hit the ball. And this is going to make your consistency skyrocket. When it comes to the return, the same concept applies. On the return, you don't have as much control over what's happening because your opponent's the one hitting the serve. But what you do have control over is how you prepare. What you see a lot in football or sports where they're kicking is right before they're about to kick the ball, they do a little walk back like this, and they sort of get themselves in the right position. I like to do this on my return. What I do, I walk up to where I want to be. I like to be a little bit closer to the sideline, and then I take a few steps back. Usually, I take two little steps back like that to give myself space off of the baseline. And then after that, I generally do a little split step, small split step right before my opponent serves. And what that does is it always guarantees that I'm standing in the right spot right before when I'm hitting my return. And I make sure that I'm also leaning in a little bit when I do my split step so that when I hit my return, I'm moving slowly. So very simple. But just by doing this every point, walking up to the line, taking a few steps back, however many you like, getting that same amount of space, it makes it so you're hitting the return the same way every single time. And maybe if your opponents are serving harder, you can change that to three steps, right? You can give yourself more space. If they're hitting it slower, maybe just take one step off of the baseline. It's really about what you like, and you can make the ritual work for you on the return however you want. And it's not just about preparing for your serve and return. The next mistake we see amateur players make is they're not getting to their ready position in between each shot. It's crazy how many times I see players leaving their paddle down or where they last hit their shot. It's super important to make sure you're coming back to that ready position. That way, you're ready to react quicker to the next shot. So doing this well looks like this. If you notice, after each shot I hit, I'm making sure I'm having urgency getting back to my ready position. If I do this poorly, it's going to make it really easy for my opponent to blast the ball past me because it's going to take too much time for my paddle to get to the ball. And having a ready position isn't a one-size-fits-all thing. Depending where you are on the court, your ready position is going to change. So the standard ready position when you're at the kitchen is right above the net because balls hitting me here are generally coming hard right above the net. So my ready position, the height of my hands, is going to be just above that net height. But as I back up, what changes is players are going to start trying to hit more at my feet. So what I want to do is lower your ready position a little bit so you can have a better position for shots that are coming. And I know that you probably have heard a ton about having a good ready position, but this is the kind of thing you need to be constantly reminded of because it's so important. And I just see so many players that are on the courts like this, like Kennedy said. So if this sounds like you and it looks like you, just stand like this. It's a little bit more energy, but it goes such a long way. And the next thing I see amateur players doing wrong also has to do with preparation. And it's crazy how many times I see this still. And it's that a lot of amateur players have zero idea what to do with their feet when they get lobbed. So what you see is the ball just going over their head like this. They start backing up and they're looking up and they just don't know what to do. So while a part of it is what you're doing with your arms, which I'm going to explain later, the biggest thing that's happening here is you need to have a system of what you're doing with your footwork to get back quickly so that you can hit a smash. And what that looks like is this. So if I get lobbed, I am very, very ready and prepared to move back because of what I'm doing with my footwork. What you don't want to do is this. This is called backpedaling, and it's not very fast to do. So backpedaling looks like this. And if you're not, if you've never been taught this, it's the natural thing to do, which is why so many players are unaware of what to do and get lobbed. What you're supposed to do is when you get lobbed, you immediately turn your shoulders and you can take a quick step back like that. That's what we call a crossover step. And if you need to take two, it looks like this. And at that point, you're sort of just running backwards while looking up at the ball. So what this looks like in real time, I get lobbed, I take a few steps back, you can even do what's called a scissor kick, which is where you jump and go like this to get your rotation into the ball. It's a little bit challenging to do this, and you might need to practice this footwork because you can kind of fall or something if you're not used to it. Once you get the hang of it, it's super easy. I get lobbed, I take that crossover step, I get back so much faster than if I'm backpedaling. So guys, if you're the type of player that's backpedaling in this situation, just want to say it is kind of dangerous because you can lose your balance very easily and fall backward. And if you don't think that the crossover step is good for you, you're not quick enough to get that to work, that's definitely the best option. You can also turn and shuffle, which is still faster than backpedaling, and it's a lot safer than backpedaling. So that looks like this. Sort of a modification from doing the quick crossover. Both are good, but if you watch pros, they're always going to be doing something like I just did there. Before we get into our next step, which is also about the overhead smash, I wanted to tell you about our new paddle, the Duo, which is launching in mid-November. The core of this paddle is a combination of EPP foam in the middle and EVA foam on the sides, hence the name, the Duo. And what this does is it gives you the durability of a foam paddle, so pretty much these cores last forever, but it gives you the power and the sweet spot of a Gen 3 paddle. So Gen 3 paddles have been known to be the highest performing paddles, but they have a problem. They break very quickly. So if you've ever had a Gen 3 paddle, what you probably noticed is that over time, the sound changes and it kind of starts to fall apart. With this paddle, you get a similar sound to that and you get the same amount of power, but it doesn't fall apart. So it's pretty much the best of both worlds. If you guys want to get one of these, make sure to stay tuned. It's going to be launching with a Black Friday sale, so it might sell out fast. The next mistake we see amateur players making also has to do with the smash. It has to do with the motion of going up and down like this, rather than doing like we were just talking about, turning, but also turning our shoulders and getting our paddle up and back. So to show the difference, what we see amateur players doing is they'll kind of go up and down like that, rather than turning their legs and their shoulders back. So the benefit to turning and pointing your elbow back when you're hitting an overhead mainly has to do with power. Think, if I'm throwing a ball, am I going to throw it like this? You ever seen a baseball player do that? You haven't. They all throw like that, right? They turn their shoulders and they have their elbow back, and that's what creates the kinetic chain that gives them power. So on smash, it's the same thing. When I get lobbed, I'm going to turn my shoulders, and by putting my elbow back like that, I have one shot kill power, meaning I can end the point by hitting it so hard that my opponents aren't going to be able to get the ball back. Like this, there's certain situations where I might be able to end the point, but I just can't get nearly as much power by going like this and putting my paddle back. If you watch pros, they all do it this way. You're never going to see a pro hitting a smash like this. You're always going to see them pointing their elbow back and using their kinetic chain to get power. The next mistake I always see amateur players making is they use a big backswing at the wrong time. So there's a lot of times where you should be taking a big backswing, if I'm hitting a smash, if I'm hitting a really hard drive from the back of the court, but the two times you don't want to be using a big backswing are when you're using your soft game and when you're hitting a speed up. But why wouldn't I want a big backswing on my speed up? Well, if I use a bigger backswing when I'm about to speed up the ball, the second my paddle goes here, my opponents know I'm about to hit the ball hard. So you're indicating to them that you're about to hit hard. So if you're in a dinking rally, I see so many amateur players doing this, you're in a dinking rally, you want to try to have a disguised take back when you're going for a speed up. So you see, I look like I'm about to dink and then I speed up after that, right? If I do it too early, I'm indicating to them that I'm going to speed up and they know based on where I'm going to be hitting the ball from, they can prepare differently with their paddle to react to that. They just have more time to react. So when you're hitting a speed up, you always want to pretend like you're hitting a dink, then at the last second, you flick your wrist. You don't use your whole arm to get power on the speed up. The next time you don't want to take a big backswing is when you're hitting your soft game shots. So that's your resets, your drops, your dinks. If I'm at the back of the court, the last thing I need to do is take a big backswing to hit a drop. I can still potentially do it well, but when you're hitting your soft game shots, you want to take the smallest backswing that you need to. If I'm hitting a drop, that looks like this. I really just kind of prepare right behind the ball. I need a little bit of power since I'm at the back of the court that I'm really just setting my power right behind the ball. On a reset, I don't really take any backswing at all. If you're hitting it hard at my feet, I'm really just going to stick my paddle there and just move it just as much as I need to. So I have literally no backswing. If I have a backswing here, it's going to go way too hard and I'm going to pop the ball up and they're going to be able to kill the next one. On dinks, the same concept applies. I'm really just taking my paddle back enough so that I get that amount of power that I need. When you have a smaller backswing, you have more control. So in the soft game, you have to make sure you take that small backswing or you're going to look and play like an amateur. The next mistake we see amateur players make is that they're attacking at the wrong time. When you're in this zone, it's called the transition zone, but you should honestly think of it as the reset zone. A lot of times when I see players playing, they're trying to hit it as hard as they can from this zone. What that's going to do is it's going to hit the ball hard and up to the net player and they're going to be able to smack it back down at your feet. And it's okay to attack from the zone if somebody's hitting the ball up higher at you, but for the most part, when you're transitioning up, people are going to be hitting the ball low at you. So you need to try your best to dump it back down at their feet, aiming for the kitchen. So resets in this area look like this. And when you watch players that are under 4-0, they very rarely are using this shot. So it's an essential shot to move forward because if I had to drop from back here, my opponent hits the next ball at my feet, it's pretty much impossible to attack on that shot. The reset is your tool that you use to disarm your opponents so that you can keep moving forward. Even if you hit a shot, they can hit down at your feet and it carries into the kitchen too. Even when you're at the kitchen, if your opponent hits a good shot at you, that's lower or harder, what you can do is reset it or what they call sometimes blocking it just to drop it back in the kitchen to get back into that dinking situation. So what that looks like is this. So if we're dinking, let's say we're in a dinking rally and I accidentally give Kennedy a higher one and I don't want to counter-attack on it, I can just go back to that dinking rally with the block. You rarely see players that are below a certain level doing this because it is kind of hard to slow that ball down, but once you get this skill down, it makes your game so much more high percentage and smart because you don't want to attack when you don't have a good opportunity. Pickleball is all about attacking when you have the right opportunity. So by resetting at the kitchen when your opponents are attacking and you don't have a good opportunity, you can potentially wait for a better chance where you can attack and that's how you play smart pickleball. Thanks so much for watching guys and if you want to see some more videos where me and Kennedy take you through all the stuff we know in pickleball, click this.