The Most Important Pickleball Tips I Learned in 3 Years (12-Minute Guide)

Hey everyone. I put together a list of my best pickleball skills I would focus on if I was looking to improve my game the fastest. My name's Tanner. I have a duper rating of a 6.0. I compete professionally on the APP Tour and I've given thousands of lessons. Watch this video and you'll become a better player immediately. Tip number one is if you struggle missing balls into the net when your opponent drives the ball at you like this, it's because you're doing this one thing wrong. What you're probably doing is your paddle is here and as he hits it, you're trying to attack the ball like this. That's great and all, but if your timing isn't 100% perfect, you're going to miss the ball into the net. What I do, watch this, I'm all the way out in front and I can catch the ball. I don't have any take back. That's how you handle with somebody cranking the ball at you. Tip number two is for our third shot drops. It makes a world of difference if when we hit the drops, we wait for the ball to decline before we make contact. Look how I'm letting the ball bounce before I hit it. And what this does, the ball's here. I hit it here when it starts to drop. What this does is when the ball starts to drop, it has the least amount of spin on the ball, giving you the most consistent shot. It's very hard to hit a drop. If you short hop the ball, it would look like this, like that. It's very hard to gauge and be consistent in doing that. Tip number three is 99.999% of your problems stem from having sloppy or lazy footwork. If you fix your footwork, you'll stop missing balls. It's a literal cheat code. Most players dink at the kitchen line like this with cement feet, just using their arm to reach. Now, when I play, especially in a tournament, look how active I am with my feet. I'm getting the center of my body behind that ball. I'm never really outstretched or reaching, and this is going to make sure that I'm able to get close and use my big muscles, like my shoulder and my back, to push the ball, as opposed to just using my wrist. If I hang on this bar more than three seconds, you will all have to subscribe. Subscribe anyway, because we're closing in on 100K. Tip number four is if your partner ever goes to speed up the ball at the opponent, you want to make yourself more proactive instead of reactive. Here's what I mean by that. If Zach goes to speed up the ball, watch my paddle. See how my paddle was out in front, waiting for the ball? What every amateur player does, including myself when I get lazy, is when that ball gets sped up, I'm here with my paddle, and then I try to react. It's way too fast and bang, bang. You'll never react in time. When your partner speeds up the ball, whether it's your forehand or backhand, put your paddle out in front, most likely where the ball is going to go. Here's the wrong way. This is what everybody does. Here we go. Watch my paddle. Look where it is. See? I'm delayed. I can't react. Now watch. Watch the little difference, how big of a difference it makes. Look. Watch my paddle. See that? That out in front makes you hit the ball so much better. Tip number five is if you're missing overheads into the bottom of the net, it's probably because you haven't learned this one thing that's so important. What it is is when the ball's coming at you for an overhead, you only want to hit it like this over your head if your elbow is fully extended. Ridley, feed me an overhead. So on that one, see I was all the way up here. The mistake amateurs make is if their elbow is creased like this, they still try and hit the overhead. That's not what we want to do. If our elbow is ever creased, we want to turn the paddle sideways and come over it like this. It makes such a big difference. Here we go. Like that. See that? Do it again. Same spot. If I try to hit that as an overhead, that's going to happen every time. Only overheads when your arm is fully extended. For that example, I saw it was coming low, so I squatted so I could get that arm extended. That is a key rule that you need to live by. Tip number six is if you're ever in a dinking rally at the kitchen line and you accidentally hit the opponent a dead dink, meaning a ball that sits up in the kitchen like that, nine times out of 10, the opponent is going to attack that ball. Instead of you staying here and trying to guess where he's going to attack you, the second you see that dead ball, you want to actually step back so you have more time to react. This makes a huge difference of being able to read his attacks or getting beat. Let's see what it looks like. I'm dinking with Ridley. I hit him a dead ball. Back. Bam. Way easier to read. Now watch. Let's see. Here we go. Dead ball. I don't back up. Look. See? He caught me off guard. Back up. I'm back in it. Okay, let's see again. Here we go. Speed it up anywhere, Ridley. I don't back up. See that? I can't read it. Let's see what happens now. Speed it up anywhere. Catch me off guard, Ridley. I back up. Okay, I hit the net. But you see, so much easier to read. Dead ball. Give yourself time. Back up. Tip number seven is how to effectively cover the middle off of an opponent's speed up like this. There's two things that we want to look out for. All amateur players make these mistakes. Yes, literally almost all of them. So what it is, is when we know we're going to have to cover the middle, we want to step parallel to the kitchen line, like here. The mistake those amateurs make is they always step like this. And when you have that extra space here to here, it throws your timing off. So when you swing, the ball goes into the net. Whereas if you step properly, the ball goes over perfectly. The second mistake is when they cover the middle, they take a huge swing and try to murder the ball. The key is to never let your paddle leave your peripheral vision. I can see it here. This is going to ensure I have a tight, compact swing. Let's try one, Ridley. Here we go. Tip number eight is how your team should handle getting lobbed. This is what it should look like. This is the good way. Okay, here we go. Perfect. So let's break that down, what we just did. Ridley, go back over there. Okay. So whoever gets lobbed, in this case, Zach lobbed it over Ridley's head. It's always the diagonal person's job to run back and get that ball, while this player slides over and back. The reason they slide over and back is if I try and hit the ball and it's high, Zach is able to punish and hit that ball hard. So if Ridley's up there, he's going to get smoked. The second thing is you always want to hit a drop. Okay. You never want to drive the ball. And the reason is we're scrambling, we're out of position. If I drive the ball and it's not perfect, Zach is going to be able to punish us by hitting it while we're scrambling. So you always want to drop that ball and then you would move up as a team. Tip number nine is how to stop getting chicken winged off of an opponent's speed up. So if this is happening to you, we're going to fix it. Okay. Here we go. Oh, good shot, Ridley. Okay. So as you see, he caught me in my shoulder there. And it's because we're paddle tracking wrong. What we want to do is if the ball is in that corner, the mistake amateur players make is they flip their paddle sideways and try to only cover with the back end. They're paddle tracking incorrectly. What we want to do is the balls over there, the tip of my paddle should be pointed at it like this, as opposed to this. That's a subtle thing that goes such a long way because now if he speeds that up, I can still react to the backhand or the forehand. If I'm sitting on the backhand, I'm never going to be able to flip. I have to fully commit. So now let's try here. Watch the right way. Here we go. Look at my paddle tip. Good. Oops. Sorry. See how I'm able to accurately read that ball. Let's paddle track, baby. Come on. Here it is. Look at the paddle tip. Good. Good. Perfect. Now I'll show you the wrong way one more time. Here we go. Watch my paddle tip sideways. It's impossible. Even there, I tried to flip open. I was too late. You have to paddle track. Tip number 10 is something subtle that all pro players do when attacking balls out of the air, and that's they attack with their paddle tip down like this, where amateur players attack with their paddle sideways like this. With our paddle tip down, there's two main advantages. The first one is we now are a threat of being able to attack balls that are beneath the height of the net. So if Ridley hits me a ball down here, I can still attack that with my paddle down. Bam. See that? Okay. Give it back. Now the second thing is I can never miss wide with my paddle head down. I could miss long, but I will never miss wide. I would prefer to miss long because he's right in front of me. If I hit this ball really hard, he's going to struggle getting out of the way because it's coming so fast at him. However, if I miss wide, he's definitely going to be able to get out of the way. So watch how hard I hit this. Ridley, let's play it out. Let's see what happens. Here we go. Get ready. Okay? Okay. So that ball was going so far out, but he can't get out of the way because we're so close, and I'm targeting right at his chest. Now if we do it the wrong way with our paddle head sideways like the amateurs, you'll see why it's so much worse, okay? The first thing is if the opponent hits a ball that's slightly below net height, it's the opposite, okay? If the ball's down here and my paddle's sideways, I am going to hit this ball into the net every time, okay? Watch. Look how low it is, okay? I can't get that ball over because I have no upward spin. With the paddle down, I have upward spin. Sideways, the ball has to be clearly over the net to be able to attack it. Your opponents will notice that, and then you're not a threat by attacking sideways, okay? The second thing is if Ridley hits me a ball, and I want to try and attack it, and I'm sideways, I could potentially mistime it and spray wide left or spray wide right. Here we go. Like that, okay? I mistimed it by a millisecond, and it caused the ball to go way over there. So you need to be absolutely perfect. The pros attack with the paddle head down. You should too. Thanks for making it to the end of the video. Make sure to comment down below which tip you found most beneficial. I'll see you next week. YouTube thinks you should watch this video next, and so do I. Keep getting better at pickleball.