Pickleball Tip To Jump a Full Level (Beginner to Intermediate)
So you’ve been playing pickleball for a while now, and you’ve watched your skills improve to the point where you’re winning a good portion of your matches against other beginners. Perhaps you think it’s time to take the leap from beginner to intermediate. But, how do you get there?
In today’s article and shared video, we’re discussing a pickleball tip to help you jump a full level in competition. And, believe it or not, it has less to do with your skills and more to do with your mindset.
Let’s get started.
One Drill to Rule Them All
The drill we want to discuss today not only helps you understand the game and some mistakes you might be making but should also help you change your mindset about how you want to attack shots in pickleball.
One of the biggest mistakes we see with beginning players is that they tend to “pop up” the ball too much, which gives their opponents an opportunity to slam a shot right back at them or at their feet. But, we’ve noticed that these same players don’t understand what they’re doing wrong.
They think that a pop-up is due to hitting the ball too high when it’s actually due to not hitting the ball with enough power.
It’s not a height issue, it’s a power issue
Think about the last time you hit a pop-up shot and your opponent took advantage of it. You may think, “If I had just hit the ball lower, then maybe they wouldn’t have been able to score on me.” But, you should be thinking that if you had hit the ball harder, with more drive, then they wouldn’t have been able to score on you with their return shot.
Consider this drill:
Place your paddle to the side for now and grab a few balls.
Grab a basket and put it in your opponent’s kitchen (can use a ball basket or any type of target really).
Stand at your own kitchen line and toss a ball into the basket or target, using an underhanded motion.
What do you notice?
If you toss the ball too softly, it falls short–maybe even on your side of the net. If you toss it too hard, then you miss the target completely and leave the ball in a position where your opponent could do some serious damage. But, if you toss it correctly, you not only hit your target, but you should notice that the ball is on a trajectory that your opponent couldn’t really do too much with.
So, it isn’t the height that puts you in a bad position. It’s the amount of power used.
Treat your paddle like a butterfly net
The underhand toss is a great way to start this drill because it shows players how they naturally understand the amount of force to put on the ball for a proper hit or what would be a dink shot in a match.
When we put the paddle back in their hands, that’s when there’s a difference. There is a tendency to hit the ball, which leads to a shot with too much force and a “pop-up” that your opponent can crush.
Instead, we want to reinforce that it doesn’t take much force or motion to get the ball into your opponent’s kitchen. So, we do this by grabbing a dollar store butterfly net.
Using your net, stand at your kitchen line and have someone (or a ball machine) hit balls toward you. Your job is to catch the ball with the net. Take notice of how your catching the ball. You aren’t moving the net forward like you would in a shot with a paddle. Instead, you’re allowing the momentum of the ball to catch itself into the mesh of the net.
We want to mimic this same motion when the paddle is in your hand.
Grab the paddle
Okay, now it’s time to put this new mindset to the test. Grab your paddle and have someone (or a machine) hit balls at you and try to “catch” the ball with your paddle. You should notice immediately that the ball jumps off the paddle, with virtually no effort needed from you. And, if angled correctly, the ball should either go right over the net or come pretty darn close.
And that’s truly all the amount of force that’s needed to dink the ball back into your opponent’s kitchen. You keep it low, it lands short of their kitchen line, and their only play is to go down for their next shot.
This mindset shift should help you allow less slams and win even more matches. This is the difference between a beginning player and an intermediate one.
To see this mindset shift in action, check out this video from John Cincola Pickleball. For more strategies and tips, keep reading the Pickleball University Blog.
