Playing great pickleball requires mastering a ton of specific skills. But playing good pickleball – especially as a beginner just getting started – is a much more approachable possibility. Let’s look at three key skills for new players.
1. Movement: Setting Up for Success
One of the fundamental aspects of pickleball is effective movement around the court – after all, you can have the most beautiful swing in the world, but if you can’t get to the ball, you can’t use it!
Understanding how to position yourself optimally to hit the ball can make a substantial difference in your game. Being agile and responsive to the shot your opponent sends is the fundamental skill of pickleball. A light, athletic look is a great starting point. Combine this with the expectation that you’ll have to run – or at least move – and you’re off to a great start.
Pickleball is growing in North America, yes. But I love seeing the sport grow globally. That’s why I was so excited when I was invited to travel to Shenzhen, China, to spend a week working with some of that country’s up-and-coming pickleball coaches.
I learned a lot from working with those instructors. Here I want to share three things that stood out as differences between coaches in North America and the coaches I worked with in China.
We just got back from nationals and wanted to share three observations from the pro-level play. It's part of an exciting journey, and we're looking forward to diving deeper into our experiences.
Let it rip, baby! This is a trend we have commented on over the last few years, and it continues in full force. Elite players are looking to speed things up by default, and only slowing things down when absolutely necessary. If you’re going to play with the big kids, you better expect some heat!
If recreational pickleball is your thing, there’s a good chance you play about equal amounts from the left and right sides of the court. If you’re serving from the right and you win the rally, you simply slide over to the left and play the point from that side. The score dictates where you play. Simple.
But if you play competitive pickleball, this kind of thinking means you’re missing opportunities to be better than you are. Nearly everyone plays better on one side or the other. Or should I say, nearly everyone is stronger on one side or the other. In this article, I want to address how to figure out which side of the court you should play on.
Welcome to Part 1 of our series exploring why tennis players are so annoyingly good at pickleball. We delve into the skills that give them the edge and often leave us shaking our heads. Let's unravel the secrets behind their seamless transition and dominance on the pickleball court.
We don’t need to tell you that pickleball is still exploding! Go to your local community center or public courts – especially when it’s not ridiculously hot out – and you will see the flood of people knocking that plastic ball back and forth over the net.
Whether you're a seasoned coach or a novice instructor, one thing remains constant: the importance of making pickleball lessons fun. While technical skill development and understanding strategy are essential, injecting an element of fun into the learning process can be the difference between average lessons and great ones. Let’s talk about why it is crucial that pickleball lessons prioritize fun.
When people attend pickleball clinics, they want to improve their game. They desire a better serve and a more effective return. They aim to master their drop shot once and for all. They aspire to learn how to use and handle spin, and they want to finally grasp how to stack while keeping track of the score. They want to IMPROVE!
But they also want to make friends. At the very minimum, it would be nice to develop some new social connections. This desire should not be overlooked by a coach.
A common complaint we hear on the pickleball courts has to do with when people consistently hit hard. The Bangers, as they are often known, look to gain an advantage through speed and often draw the ire of other players who claim they "aren't playing properly" or "have no strategy." In this short article, we're going to give you some practical tips so instead of getting mad or being overpowered, you can find yourself hanging with the banging.
As we've discussed in previous articles, people participate in pickleball lessons for a wide range of reasons: they want to have fun and get some exercise; they want to build a community of friends that they get to know on and off the court; they want to have fun, be active, and spend most of their time participating, not standing around. But they also want to improve. They want to get better. And this is a key responsibility of any instructor.
So, how do we track improvement? It's not good enough to just assume our players are getting better because they're putting in hours on the court. We need some way to measure changes in performance.
Of all the different pickleball clinics we run, the ones focused on spin are by far the most popular. There are three kinds of spin: backspin, sidespin, and topspin. In this article, we are going to talk about topspin, why it matters, and when to use it.
Pickleball is a game and games should be fun. But what if pickleball was more than that? And I’m not talking about those people — including yours truly — for whom pickleball is a means to earn a living. I’m talking about regular players for whom pickleball literally changed their life — maybe even saved it.
Several years ago, I was running pickleball clinics on the east coast of Canada. I was reading a short newspaper clipping posted on a message board at the club. It was about the growth of pickleball in the region and some of the key people that were contributing to the community. Seemingly out of nowhere, a woman, let’s call her Jean, walked up to me and said “That’s a really good article. It’s amazing what has happened here. Actually, pickleball saved my life.”.
Whether you're a novice or an intermediate player, these easy-to-implement strategies will provide you with immediate improvements on the court. If you're eager to take your pickleball skills to the next level without a steep learning curve, then you've come to the right place. We'll delve into key aspects such as shot selection, handling high balls, return of serve, positioning, and utilizing easy angles during serves. Get ready to pick the low hanging fruit and witness a noticeable boost in your Pickleball performance. Let's dive in and discover these simple yet highly effective tips that you can apply right away.
How hard is too hard? How easy is too easy? If you’re an instructor who gives pickleball lessons or someone who takes them, this question should matter to you.
Whether you’re working on a drill or playing a game, finding the optimal challenge is a key ingredient in making the activity successful.
This is the second in six part series where we are exploring the Quality Standards. This framework is used as part of Canada’s pickleball instructor certification course delivered collaboratively between Pickleball Canada and Tennis Canada. The concept of Quality Standards was developed by Wayne Elderton, one of Canada’s foremost coaching experts. I would argue that no matter what sport you teach — or even if you teach in a classroom setting — thinking about Quality Standards can be helpful.
Definition of Active Participation: The proportion of time a player is engaged in meaningful activity.
What is it that makes a good pickleball lesson? Specifically, what qualities should be present during great group training?
In the six part series, we are going to introduce something called the Quality Standards. This framework is used as part of Canada’s instructor certification course delivered collaboratively between Pickleball Canada and Tennis Canada. It was developed by Wayne Elderton, one of Canada’s foremost coaching experts. I would argue that no matter what sport you teach — or even if you teach in a classroom setting — thinking about Quality Standards can be helpful.
If you are like most people before you start playing a game, you hit some balls with your partner or opponents; probably a bunch of dinks, maybe a few volleys and smashes, some forehands and backhands from the back of the court, and possibly some drops and lobs.
But how deliberate is your warm-up, really? How focused are you during it? Again, if you're like most people, the answer is probably not very. You probably hit a few balls casually back and forth, maybe even while having a conversation. You are likely hitting a quality of ball that will hurt you in a game – too high, for example but don't think too much about it. Let's look at why the warm-up matters and what you can do to make it great.
Have you ever left a lesson feeling like a superstar, only to find yourself struggling to apply your new skills in a real game? It can be frustrating, demoralizing and even embarrassing. But fear not, because there might just be a simple yet crucial mistake lurking in your coaching experience: the lack of context. In this article, we delve into the importance of contextualizing skills in pickleball and explore how it can make all the difference in your game – and the game of your players.
Let’s face it, the sexy part of a pickleball shot is making contact with the ball; that fraction of a moment where the ball and the paddle come together to (hopefully) produce a magical result where the ball ends up exactly where it should. In all striking sports — games where players hit a ball with an implement like a racquet, stick, bat or paddle — announcers, camera operators and fans pay closest attention to the moment of contact and then what happens next (“Wow! Her ball landed just inside the line!”; “Look how great his drive was!”; “That ball had so much spin on it!”. It makes sense — contact and what happens next is the fun things to pay attention to!
If you want to play good pickleball it’s important that you know what istrue. For example, it is useful to know that the distance your ball travels is related to the height, speed and spin you put on it. But it is also important to know about what’s not true — and pickleball sure has its fair share of myths. Let’s explore a few of them:
“Poacher!” That’s what someone – a spectator – yelled during a recent intermediate pickleball game I watched. It was meant not as an observation, but a reprimand of the man who crossed the centre of the court to put away an attempted dink that floated a little too high. With the tone she used, she might as well have yelled, “Ball hog!” (or something worse!. It was clear that this spectator viewed poaching as a kind of etiquette infraction, a pickleball sin that was both rude and obnoxious. But is it?
