5 Signs You’re Still An Amateur In Pickleball (Fix These Fast)

There are five key signs that prove that you're an amateur pickleball player. So if you're watching this I highly recommend you use this video as a checklist to make sure you're not doing these in the future. So the first sign that you're an amateur pickleball player is you don't adjust your strategy based off of your opponents. So a lot of time I see players are so worried about their own game that they're not considering what their opponents are doing. So there's a few different ways that you can adjust your play style to better suit who you're playing against. The first one has to do with how aggressive or defensive you're playing. So a great example of this is when you're dinking. If you're dinking against your opponents and every time that you speed the ball up they miss, this is a sign that you should be more aggressive. So against a player like this you can actually deviate from dinking more often and go for more attacks and it'll work in your favor. However on the contrary if you're doing this going for speed ups and they're counterattacking and it's working for them that's a sign that maybe you need to be a little bit more passive and wait for better opportunities. And the same thing applies from the back of the court, specifically on your third shot. If you're going for a bunch of drives and your opponents are missing them or giving you weak shots that you can attack on on the next ball, by all means you should go for more drives on third shots. But if they're hitting them super deep and keeping you back that's a sign you should probably go for more drops and work the point and move forward more gradually. So another way you can adjust your strategy based on who you're playing is by targeting their forehand or backhand more depending on which side is worse. So if I'm dinking with Kennedy and I notice she has a weak backhand dink when I'm in a dinking rally with her I can target this side more and obviously I'm going to have a better chance of winning the points. From the back of the court the same thing applies if Kennedy has a weaker backhand I can target that and whether she's going for a drop or a drive it's going to make things easier on me at the net and it's going to be easier to keep her back. So all you need to know is that high level players whenever they're on the courts they try to figure out what their opponents aren't good at and take advantage of that. I see a lot of amateur players that come to the courts and they just sort of play without much of a strategy without adjusting anything depending on what's going on. So make sure you adjust your game style based on what you're seeing on the other side of the court and you'll play a lot better and win way more games. The next mistake that amateur players make is they don't use a split step or they don't use a split step at the right times. So one of the main times you want to use a split step is when you're trying to move forward and you'll usually be caught right here in the transition zone you're going to be using it on your resets. You'll notice I'm nice and low using my split and it'll help me lunge side to side a little bit quicker and on balance. The way you use the split step right as your opponent's about to hit the ball you get into this stance right here and what that does is it helps you have a low center of gravity which is going to help you push off side to side to react off of their shot. So in practice it looks like this. I'm making sure as soon as he's making contact with the ball I'm doing my split and then reacting moving accordingly and my goal is to eventually be able to move forward so I'm going to do that. I notice I hit a good reset and then I can work my way up. Another important time to use your split step is right after you hit the return. So you'll see I'll hit my return I'm going to follow it in I'm going to be ready for my opponent's third shot whether they're dropping it or hitting a drive. If I don't split step if I hit a bad return and I follow it in I might not be ready for that third shot especially if they drive it really hard at me so that's why it's super important to make sure you use that split and you get nice and low so you're ready to return that next shot. The next sign that you're an amateur player is that you attack at the wrong times. So what is the wrong time to attack? Well if I'm ever in a disadvantageous position let's say I'm at the back of the court and Kennedy hits a really hard shot at me that would not be a good time to attack. So another example would be I'm coming in I'm in the transition zone and Kennedy hits it hard right at my feet this is also not a good time to attack. The general rule of thumb is when you're in a disadvantageous position you want to use your soft game meaning you hit the ball into the kitchen so that your opponents can't really attack you again right because if Kennedy hits a hard ball at me back here and I drive it at her she can just attack me again so if she hits this hard ball to me I hit hard back that didn't really do anything for me because she can just keep hitting it hard and I can't move forward so whenever you're in a disadvantageous position the goal is to get the ball in the kitchen and get to a neutral position so a neutral position would be I'm at the kitchen with Kennedy and we're both dinking so here neither of us really has an advantage right so when you're in one of these crazy disadvantageous positions 90% of the time you don't want to attack you want to try to use the kitchen to give yourself the ability to move forward so as a general rule of thumb if you're behind this line right here and the ball you're making contact with the ball below your knee this is not a good time to attack because you have to hit the ball up so if I hit the ball well even if I hit it pretty hard Kennedy's going to be able to hit down on it so what that's going to look like is that right and if she doesn't hit that ball and I'm hitting it up it's going to sail way long so there's not really much I can do in this position other than just get the move forward to this neutral dinking position and the same concept applies even at higher levels usually you see this at the kitchen so a lot of players they'll be in dinking rallies they'll have a bad shot but they'll speed up and then their opponents will be able to counter them like that usually this happens because players are antsy or they're feeling pressure in a dinking rally so they bail out by going for the hard shot and that's what gets them to lose the point so when you're in this situation advanced players what they do is they stay calm and they just wait for the right opportunity so if you watch pros play pickleball I'm sure you've seen these dinking rallies that lasts for like a hundred balls until finally someone hits it just a little bit higher and then that's when they finally attack so you need to be comfortable when you're in a rally like that waiting for the right opportunity so that when you attack you don't get burned and you don't lose the point so just know that one of the main things that separates amateurs from the higher level players is when they're in worse positions they stay calm they use the kitchen and they wait for the right opportunity the next sign that you're an amateur player has to do with the technique of how you're hitting your smashes to end the point so the technique and how you do this really determines how hard you can hit it and how easy it will be to end the point let me tell you I'm seeing like 90 percent of players doing this completely wrong before I get into that though I want to tell you about our new paddle the turbo so what makes the turbo different is the value is absolutely insane and if you look here I have a green one and I have a blue one so the green one has an MPP foam in the center so the core is made up of MPP foam and the blue one has EPP foam so depending on if you like MPP versus EPP you might prefer one of these versus the other this is the first MPP foam paddle that's anywhere near this price point if you listen MPP has a really deep hollow sound so if you like that feel this is going to be the first paddle at this price point that sounds like that and plays like that so if you want to get these head to our site on March 1st and use code turbo to get $20 off these are going to sell fast so be ready there are a few key things I see amateur players doing wrong on their overhead the first is that they're not turning their shoulders and they're using the incorrect grip if you want to get power on your overhead you're not going to be able to get very much if you're just arming the ball like this if you turn your shoulders and your body you're going to be able to rotate all the way into the shot and if you're using a western grip you're not going to be able to use your wrist as much as well so you want to be holding at least an eastern or a continental grip when you're hitting your overheads another thing you want to make sure you do on your smashes is when you need to run you don't want to just back pedal back you're going to lose balance and again you're not going to be able to use your full body you want to make sure that you turn and you're crossing your leg over the other that way you can get back quicker and stay on balance if crossing over is too hard a modification you could do is you can turn and shuffle back just make sure you don't back pedal because it's going to be a lot more dangerous and you're going to be a little bit slower so good examples of smashes look like this the next time you're an amateur player is when you're up and your opponents are back you're not being aggressive enough to keep them back i can't tell you the amount of times i've seen an amateur player do this their point hits them a drop they just give them a super easy shot that lets them move forward if you ever have a mid-height ball when you're up and your opponent is back it should look more like this if i have any ability to hit the ball down over the net because it's higher i want to use as much power as i possibly can your goal is to win the point while they're back you don't want to bring them in so even if the ball is a little bit lower i still want to roll at her feet so she can't really come in right if i was to float that ball up at her so she gives me the same ball and i float it up she can attack me and she can easily move in so my goal is to go as hard as i safely can right at her feet to prevent her from coming in and when i'm doing this i'm using topspin so that when the ball gets to her feet it accelerates even more it makes it more challenging for her to use a reset so what that looks like is this i'm rolling it right at her feet so i get easier shots she pops it up and then i can kill that next one so the use of topspin on these shots is critical so that you're making it slightly more challenging for them to move forward if i was to slice on these they're just really easy shots that my opponent can use to attack she could use a drop and come in the slice doesn't really move as much towards your opponent as a topspin shot does so even on a lower ball i can't hit it very hard but i can use topspin which makes it a little bit trickier for so that i get those pop-ups and i can end the point so if you don't have that topspin technique down it takes some practice if you watch high-level players they all do this for a reason because it prevents your opponent from coming forward and if your opponents are using drives at you the same thing applies except you want to use less spin so if she's driving at me i'm gonna hit a punch volley which looks more like that so same technique but i don't want to flick as much because if she's driving at me i need to keep my wrist a little bit more firm because these shots a lot of time you'll miss hit the ball so if your opponent drives at you you might miss the side of the paddle and then the ball will go on the net so in that instance you want to have a very firm grip so that even if that does happen the ball still goes where you want it and you can keep her back so you're not going to be using as much spin because the ball is going so fast if you use a ton of spin the odds you miss off center are a lot higher than on a slower ball so on drives we're still aiming for our opponent's feet trying to keep them back but we're using a slightly different technique with our hand so whenever your opponents are at the back of the court try your very hardest to use these techniques to keep them back and that will prevent them from scoring so this is usually when your opponents are serving and you're the returning team this is going to prevent your opponents from going on scoring streaks and it's going to make it a lot easier for you to win games and if you guys want to watch another video where kennedy and i take you through our best tips watch this