galaxypickleball

[galaxypickleball]

Three Things that Hold Back Beginner Players

My regular venue for playing pickleball is a local park where I see a variety of play levels. There are regulars who are advanced intermediate. A variety of beginning to intermediate players filter through as well. These are some of the signs of beginner players and tips on moving through to intermediate level of play.

1 Neglecting your backhand

When observing where a player stands for serve receive, I can tell how comfortable they feel about their backhand shot. When a player stays sharply to one side of their half of the court, typically they are protecting their backhand but the downside of their position is that they leave themselves fairly open to an ace (or a defensive popup) if the server has power and aim.

In order to play longer rallies, it is valuable to try to strengthen your backhand. It can be beneficial to hit against a wall and get repetitions on just hitting your backhand shot for a few minutes. In a game, a player might not feel confident about hitting backhand shots for fear of losing the point but in a non-competitive scenario, it can help to understand things like timing, paddle angle, placement of the ball contact, and follow through on the shot.

2 Premature use of spin

Many newer players try to use underspin but the stroke looks awkward because they are using spin simply for the sake of using spin. They might win a few points here and there but there is not much consistency in the placement of the ball (whether it stays in the court) and also there is lack of intention on where the ball lands because the player ultimately does not have much ball control.

Instead of using spin to win the point, it is more prudent to focus initially on getting consistent ball placement (deep in the court on return of serve and when the opponents are standing near the baseline). Even if the player is hitting the ball flat, if they can keep the ball relatively low to the net and deep or near the opponent's feet, this is generally more effective than using a spin with low consistency.

But this is not to say that newer players should never use spin. Just that spin should be the lowest priority and order in which they learn technique.

3 Timing and momentum (moving through ball)

Newer players (especially those that did not have racket sports or sports requiring hand-foot-eye coordination) tend to look more awkward when they are swinging their paddle at the ball. Often the point of contact is wrong (typically more late) or the trajectory of the swing looks wrong (too big, like a tennis swing) which also results in nonoptimal timing with the paddle contact against the ball.

Here is one video by PrimeTime Pickleball with some pointers on where to target deep balls in the court. While the video does not go into depth on how to hit deep balls, PrimeTime Pickleball features a lot of content for beginning and intermediate players.

Lastly, I'd like to recommend the use of a journal to track your progress in pickleball, like skills you would like to improve on and the status of your current skillset (what you feel proud of). I have two print journals available on Amazon.

Pickleball Guided Journal

Pickleball Training Journal

[galaxypickleball]

My Favorite YT Channels for Pickleball

Tournaments

PPA Pickleball

MLP Pickleball

APP Pickleball

The Dink Pickleball (they are listed below for podcasts but they also live stream the Tues Night Pickleball Series held at the Orchard)

(I study my favorite players to identify techniques I'd like to learn or specific techniques/patterns I'd like to emulate in my play; for example a 2-handed backhand roll dink or how do players slow down the ball when the fast game is not going well)

Tutorials

USAPA Pickleball Ratings (I use this as a general guide to gauge where my skills are and which skills I'd like to develop)

John Cincola YT (consider his content to be intermediate level but always good to be aware of)

Pickleball Journey (mix of beginner and intermediate content)

Simone Jardim YT (she doesn't post as many new tutorials lately but if you go back into the history of her videos, there is a lot of really excellent content which I watched when starting out; she explains really well about how to use a technique in context of a certain game situation)

Selkirk TV (their tutorials with Dom and Evans are good; they have a nice series on performance training and stretching; they have a series with James Ignatowich answering user questions)

PrimeTime Pickleball (they are not as active with new tutorials as in the past but in their history, they have a lot of great content; Briones has a separate YT channel which I'm not currently following but he explains techniques very well)

Podcasts

The Dink Pickleball (Picklepod with Zane Navratil; It Feels Right with Nunnery and Stone)

[galaxypickleball]

Can I be Good at Pickleball if I'm not Athletic?

This week I was chatting with one of my friends about how she got into pickleball. She said she had not played raquet sports and she called herself clumsy. That being said, she and her husband make a pretty challenging team to beat. So I do not think you have to be the most athletic person to be good at pickleball.

If you are not the most athletic person, you might want to partner up with someone who is more athletic than you however. Then your focus is a little bit more on playing consistently, making minimal mistakes, and setting up the ball placement/shot to make the next opportunity an easy put away for your partner.

These are helpful skills:

deep serve

deep return of serve

effective drop shot

effective dinking

good ball placement (down the middle, cross court, down the line)

consistent shots from both forehand and backhand sides

ability to reset the ball (from the transition zone and non-volley zone)

ability to block or counter hard-driven balls (at the non-volley zone)

ability to run down a lob

I would suggest when playing games, choose one skill to focus on that day and be deliberate about it. If you have a place where you can drill against a wall, maybe choose a few skills that you want to practice.