99% Of Pickleball Players Aren’t a Threat… Let’s Fix That

My goal today is to make you become a threat on the pickleball court. There are two big mistakes that 99% of pickleball players, probably you included, are making that will prevent you from ever being taken seriously out here. But the good news is they're incredibly simple to fix if you know what you're doing. Today I brought along a doubles team to serve as our example. There are eight key fixes you're going to see them implement and I guarantee that by the end of it they're going to be a nightmare to play against. Go ahead and subscribe and let's get into number one. Here's the situation. You guys just hit a third shot drop and this is the ball that I have. Are you currently a threat? The answer is you're a target at this point. You're not a threat at all. But if I was down here, are you a threat? I could be. Okay, so that's the mindset shift we want to have fixed today is it doesn't necessarily matter where you are on the court. That's only half of the equation. The other half is what I'm doing. So I want you up there all the way to the kitchen line if you see me down here with it. But if I'm up here, like you're saying you need to be back. Okay, so the number one fix we have to make, you have to watch your partner as they're hitting their third. If Ed, if you're hitting this third shot, I need you to be looking at your partner. And what we're looking for is if you hit a good shot versus a bad shot. So we're going to say a good shot is a shot that lands around our feet. A bad shot is a shot that lands around our chest. I'm just going to drop a ball to you. I want you to hit a third shot drop and don't move. Just say good or bad. You see that? What are you doing? I'm waiting. Okay, I think you're not moving. I think you're even a little bit too close. Hey, number one fix, just look at your partner. You get a lot of information right away if they hit a good shot or a bad shot. Okay, the second fix is it'd be a lot simpler if you could just tell us if you hit a good shot or a bad shot. And so I don't need you saying good or bad. What I need you to say is just one simple word, either go or back. Let's try to implement that. Okay. Yeah, great. So it took you to about the ball is about right here and you got the word go out of your mouth. Okay. So just so you're aware, if you see it before he ever hits it and you know it's going to be good, you can go ahead and start coming up. Okay. Let's do the other way. So you hit some. I just want you to say go or back. If it's a good shot back, if it's a bad shot. Okay. Now, whenever he says go, I want you to get all the way up here as hard as you can, right? Somewhere around here. Give yourself a few steps off the kitchen line. Because what he's saying is my shot was good enough that my opponent is taking it below the net. So I want to already be pretty far up here. Okay. Let's switch it. How'd you go? Good. Try to get that out a little bit earlier. You should know when it hits your paddle. Okay. Yeah. I mean, fine. Mike's taking those around his hip and it's still not much of a threat, you know, like he's still not hurting you too bad. So you're making a lot of progress on a pretty okay. Hit shot back. Good. Let me move on to the third fix that I want you guys to realize here. It's really difficult to move forward and back when you're facing forward and back. So imagine this I'm right here. You're hitting the third shot. I have to look to you and then I either run or take a step back. It's much easier if I turn my body towards you and I'm like shuffling. Now, if you hit a good shot, I take my outside foot and I go right now I'm here. If you hit a bad shot and you say back, I go back right here. Okay. So that's the next step we're going to do. I want you to be hitting shots. I want you to be shuffling. Oh, good. Yeah. And when you're doing that shuffle, you can get ahead of him. So if he's making contact right here, it's okay for you to be up here because now you're quick on your feet. So if he hits a bad shot, you can get back and you're already in a good spot. All right. Good. Now that's, that's where you want to be. That's a threatening spot to be. Okay. Simple. Let's just reiterate this one more time. If you I'm just going to say go or back, and I just want you to do the correct thing. Okay. So if I say go, you're both going to go up to the line. If I say back, you're just going to take that front foot, move it back. So guys get ready. Go. Good. Back. Good. Next fix here, fix number four, if we want to be split stepped after we make our first couple of moves here. So what I noticed from you is whenever I said back, I would say back and you would, you'd be like this, right? What I really need to have happen is back, right? So now I'm balanced. I'm ready. And I can move either direction. No matter what sport you play, no matter what you're doing in life, you're going to be more effective if you're balanced, right? Rather than off balanced. Same thing applies going forward. If I say go, my partner says, go, I need to be up here and like ready to move, ready to pounce. So now let's put it into practice here. I want to feed a ball to Chuck and then Chuck, you just say go or back. And then you do what you're supposed to do. And Mike's going to play the ball. Go. Perfect. Now, even though that ball hit the net, there's no harm for you going, right? And if it did go over the net, you're in a really good spot. If nothing is said, you can assume it's just an okay shot, right? Cause like sometimes we don't know. Sometimes it's just okay. Unless you have a really good read on it. Just kind of hang out in the mid court. Yeah. Yeah. Totally fine. Yeah. And you're in a good spot to control it. Just missed the shop. Just fine. Here we go. Go. Yeah, buddy. That's excellent. Did you, you were completely balanced before you hit that shot too. That's really, really good. So really quick, the four things you were watching him, right? He communicated with you. You were shuffling so you can move either direction and then you were balanced. Great. Good job. Good job. Let's flip it around. Let's do the other side. Okay, good. Yeah. The second you hear that back, even if you are coming up, yeah, that was great. Really good job. Good job. So fix number five, I think you guys are already doing it, but we want to stack on our serves. So what we're doing right now is we're essentially running a plate. Ideally you hit the third shot and the truck you're running up here and you're being, you're being a minute. You're being a threat up here, right? It gets a lot more complicated. If you guys start switching on serves, because now you have double the scenarios you have to learn and like see and respond to. So currently you're lefty and righty, which is great. So you're already stacking, but even if you were a righty righty team, I would suggest always stacking on the serves and just having one person always be the left side. One person always be the right side. So I know you know how to do that. Let's just quickly show it. Let's say that you were serving zero, zero. You get the point. You would then step over here. Yep. It's one zero. And instead of you going over there, you're still off to the side, like you've done here. Chuck, what would you do? You would serve here. Go ahead here, serve, step across. The key point here is just because you're serving from this side, doesn't mean your partner has to be on this side. They can just be stepped across. So I'm going to test your brains a little bit here. So score is five, zero, and you're serving. Where are you at? Okay, good. Score is seven, two. You're serving. Where are you at? No, I'm here. The reason this is important is because in tournament play, as long as you know the score and who's serving, you know where you're going to be standing. The second mistake is covering the wrong area at the kitchen. And there's three things I want to show you. Three fixes here that's going to solve everything for you. Number one is we need to move as a unit. So let's say we're a team, you're a team. I'm about to hit the ball all the way over to Chuck on his sideline. What should you guys do? So here, boom, right. You have to move and you have to move, right? You're moving as a unit. So one person moves, the other person moves. And now, same thing. Chuck has the ball. What happens? You move and you move. Okay, so that's, I think, the part where most people get wrong is whenever your team is hitting the ball, you don't tend to move. Usually we respond to where you guys hit the ball, but we don't respond to where we hit the ball. So that's the big thing I want to ingrain in your head here. You need to move whenever, whoever hits the ball. I hit the ball to that side. We both slide over. Great. Cool. And then now from your side, Ed. Perfect. Yeah, hit to Mike's sideline over there. Good. Big focus here. Whenever you hit a cross-court shot, it's also your job to move as well. And I'll explain why in just a moment. Fix number two. Number one, we want to move as a unit. Fix number two, aggressively cover your sideline and trust your partner to have the middle. So imagine this. I have the ball right here on the sideline. I need you to aggressively cover your sideline. You should never let a ball go down there because you have this beast right here who we know is a threat on the court with a big forehand in the middle. From here, I have so many options, right? I can speed up on the sideline. I can speed up at you. I can speed up to Chuck or I could hit a cross-court dink. So it's really important that if Chuck or you hits a ball to the sideline, I need you covering your sideline. I'd even cover a little bit more because right now what you're saying is this, let's just get ready here. If I hit here, whose ball? The reason it's currently yours is because of where you're standing. Imagine taking one more step. Yeah. Take, take one more step. He's on cover. Now I hit that ball. It's definitely his, right? It's really tricky because this is a problem a lot of mixed teams run into. I've even done it with my wife there. As the person who is on the sideline, you can make your partner's life so much easier if you just give them a little more space. So we hit the ball to the sideline. I need you covering your sideline. Your goal is to never get beat down the sideline. Okay. So come on over here. Boom. Okay. I'm going to speed up somewhere else. Get ready. Easy. We don't have to guess whose ball it is because you have the sideline. He's got the middle. In fact, you'll see when Ben and Colin were playing together, Colin want to get all the way over here and like literally sometimes be off the court. And he knows that there's nothing coming down the sideline he can't get because he's got his brother here in the middle with a big forehand, right? Let's go to this side. I'm hitting this ball down the sideline. That's yours. Good. Really simple. Your ball. Good job. Now I know that the burning question here is if I were to hit this ball way over there, that's harder to get to, right? All you got to know is that that ball over there, you just don't have to be a hero. You got to get it over the net. So when that ball goes all the way over here, all you have to do is just dump it over the net. So, I mean that, that solves all the issues. So I hit it way over here. What are you going to do? Easy. And now we're playing that sideline. And what I just did really hurt me because I hit a ball all the way over there and I'm still over here. So honestly, I want them to hit that ball over there. As long as you know, don't be a hero just yet. Let's get over the net. And then you're setting yourself up for a big gap in the middle. Okay. One more point here. The better spot to hit your dinks is in the middle. If you hit the dink in the middle, you never have this issue, right? Because you guys have two big forehands in the middle. You can cover the outsides easily, but it's when you hit balls really aggressively cross court, you're going to run into this issue. When you do just know what to do. And it's a good shot because you want us to move. So you're going to want to hit it over here. When you do hit that ball over here, just know what to do. And now you do. So let's just run that. If you will hit a cross court dink to me, I'm going to speed it up. So a little drill here. Cross court dink to me. Good. One more time. Go ahead. Easy. So I hit dead middle and I hit sideline. Both are easily covered. Hit a cross court dink and then cover it. Good. Easily there. Yeah. That's money right there, Chuck. So what I just noticed there was when you covered your sideline, I got a flip because I'm here, but you were completely on your backhand. If I were to go to your right hip, that's a really difficult shot. So now lasting to implement laser pointer at the end of your paddle, always pointing at the ball. Okay. Whenever the ball is on our side of the court, no matter where you are laser pointer there, it's tricky because for you, I want you to point at the left side of the ball. Chuck, for you to point the right side of the ball. What we're saying there is for a right-handed player, you want to point the left side because I can cover a little bit more of my backhand, right? All this is pretty easy to cover my backhand. It's hard to cover with my forehand, right? So if I'm shaded slightly to the left, I'm going to get a little more of my backhand. What this prevents though is my paddle being all the way over here because now in that example, they hit to my forehand. It's really hard for me to come all the way back over here and hit it. And then for you as a left-handed player, I want you to point to the right side of the ball. That way you can cover most stuff with your backhand, right? But if you're sitting over here and it comes over here, it's hard to get over here and smack it. It's going to be amazing. This does two things. Number one, it keeps you focused. Number two, it keeps your paddle in the right spot. To emphasize this, just go ahead and get ready positions. Over here, where are you at? Where are you at? Where are you at? Where are you at? So now, okay, so a little bit far, a little bit far. Left side of the ball there, right? So now I go across your body. You can get there easily. I go across your body. Easy. I go down the sideline. Okay. I go to Chuck. Good. Okay. Let's do the same thing, dinks only, and just watch you guys move as a unit. Cover your sidelines and laser point this ball. Yeah, buddy. I mean, I'll say right here, I think you can probably attest to this, but it looks like you're playing 2v1 right now because you're both on that side of the court. Mike's right there. He's in a lot of danger right now, right? That's what I would call a nightmare to play against is if I'm sitting right here and I got two big guys right there, a big forehand just staring me down. I've got like one good shot and it's a really hard cross court dink. So that's kind of what you have to do to be threatening. That's a good job. It looks really good. It's some footwork stuff, which we can talk about after, but if you can get there in a really effective way, it's just right foot in, left foot out. I had a mentor tell me, imagine you have 300 pounds on your back. You wouldn't go here. You'd probably die if you did that. You'd go like this. So I'm moving that way. I'm just here. Now I got all of it covered. So check this out. I hit that really wide shot. What do you do? Excellent. You covered a lot faster that way. There you have it. If you master those eight things, I would personally hate to play against you. If you liked that video, please consider subscribing and YouTube really thinks you're going to like this video next. You should click on it. Thanks for watching. See you in the next one. Peace.