Transcription
If you ever want to be an advanced pickleball player, then you need to understand how to use Top Spin. Problem is, if you don't come from tennis, then learning Top Spin can be hard. Don't worry, regardless of your level, by the end of this video, you'll have all the tools that you need to start using Top Spin the next time you play.
So, what is Top Spin? Top Spin is the spin that you get when you roll the ball away from you. So, to get this on a shot, you have to roll up the back of the ball to make it rotate forward. And what this does is two things. So, when you get Top Spin, it makes the ball drop faster. So that lets you hit the ball harder without sending the ball past the baseline. So that's the first benefit. The second benefit of Top Spin is that when a Top Spin ball hits the ground, it accelerates towards your opponent. So if you see that bounce, it sort of jets off. And if I'm doing that in the direction of my opponent, it makes it harder for them to time the ball off of the bounce, which makes it harder for them to attack. So because of this, we see Top Spin as our aggressive spin. So a lot of the time when you're attacking in pickleball, you want to be adding a little bit of Top Spin to your shot to make it more challenging for your opponents. And it also gives you the ability to hit harder without hitting the ball long. So there's a lot of benefits to being able to use the spin.
The problem is, a lot of people that don't have a tennis background find it challenging. So today, I'm going to take you through the technique of how to hit Top Spin. And then I'm going to show you shot by shot how it changes. So if I'm hitting a Top Spin dink versus a Top Spin serve or Top Spin drive from the back of the court, the technique is actually very different. Different. So you need to make sure you understand the differences, which I'll explain at the end of the video.
Now guys, I'm going to go through the five main technical elements that you need to understand in order to get that consistent Top Spin on every single shot. If you don't get these, you're not going to be able to get Top Spin every single shot, and it's going to be really hard to stay consistent with it.
Before I get into that, though, if you've been thinking about buying any of our products, right now we're running our Black Friday deals. So if you want to get the best prices that you'll get all year, make sure to head to our site and you can check out all of our best products. They're all on sale. Go to our site now if you're interested in that. But now, let's get into the technical elements of Top Spin.
So the first thing you need to understand is what's called the brush. So the brush, all that is, is the upward motion of our paddle. So to get Top Spin on the ball, you need to ride up the back of the ball as you're hitting it. If I'm to go straight at the ball like this, I will hit the ball flat with zero spin. So to get Top Spin, I need to be moving my paddle forward while I'm also brushing up. So this motion is called the brush. If you're not getting that, you will never be able to get any Top Spin. A lot of coaches to demonstrate the brush will put students on the net like this and have them scoop up the ball to show them that you need to be going up. You can also do this on a wall. All you need to know, though, is to get Top Spin, your paddle needs to be going up as you're hitting the ball.
The next thing that you need to understand, though, is that to get the brush when you're hitting a ball, you need to be coming at it from below it. So a lot of players when they're first starting, kind of have this chopping high to low technique. To get Top Spin, you need to be going from low to high. So when I hit this Top Spin dink here, you'll see my paddle is going from below the ball and it finishes above the ball. So to be able to get Top Spin consistently, you need to be consistent with getting below the ball before you hit it. So if you don't have technique from tennis and you sort of taught yourself how to hit a forehand or a backhand, you might not be doing this. So what I recommend doing is just really exaggerate getting below the ball when you're first trying to get Top Spin and see if you can get the brush like that. You might already be doing it, but if you're not, you might need to force yourself to really set your paddle low before you hit the ball.
The next thing you need to understand is that there's two different ways to technically get the brush. The first is by lifting your arm, which looks like this. And the second way is by lifting your wrist. So we call this the windshield wiper technique, which looks like this. So these are both very different techniques, and usually depending on the shot, you want to be using the lift. But at the end of the video, I'll explain that shot by shot. Sometimes you want to be using your wrist, and sometimes you want to be using mainly the lift. And if you don't understand when you need to make these changes, you're going to have a really hard time being consistent with Top Spin. So just know there's two main techniques. I'll show them in slow motion now. The lift. So there I'm lifting with my arm. And the next one is the flick. So there I'm using my wrist. And I'll show them more at the end of the video when I go shot by shot.
The next thing that you need to understand is that it's a lot easier to get topspin with a more closed grip. So what is a closed grip? An open grip is where my paddle is facing upwards, and a closed grip is where my paddle is facing more downward. So the two main grips in pickleball are the continental and the eastern. And a lot of the shots that you hit in pickleball, you need a continental grip. I have a full video on grips if you don't understand them. But all you need to know is that if you're trying to get Top Spin with a continental grip, depending on the shot, it might be a little bit harder because the continental grip is harder to close. So right now I have a continental grip, and as you can see, it's really hard for me to flatten out my paddle. If I was to go down to an eastern grip, though, it becomes a lot easier for me to close my face, which makes it easier to ride up the back of the ball. With the continental grip, I might open my face, and when I do the brush, it might be harder for me to not pop the ball up. So just know, especially on your forehand, if you're trying to get Top Spin, it may be easier with an eastern grip than a continental grip. It definitely changes shot by shot, but if you're having trouble getting topspin, a big reason for that could be that you have too open of a grip. So try out the eastern grip on your forehand if you're having trouble with that.
The last part of the technique to get Top Spin that's really important is that regardless of the shot, when you're trying to get Top Spin, you want to be hitting the ball out in front. And I think this is just because it's easier to get the brush when you're doing it in front of your body. So it's a lot easier for me to brush it like this versus hitting the ball back behind me. Usually, when the ball is behind you, you're probably going to be hitting slice. You're probably not in the best position to where you want to be aggressive. So if you're getting Top Spin, you want to make sure you're making contact with the ball out in front and generally to the side of your body so that you can be getting that brush. This doesn't apply to every type of Top Spin, but for the most part, you want to be getting that ball in the right contact point, out in front, to the side.
After you understand the technique of getting topspin, though, you need to actually go and apply it in real life. And the best way to practice this is on a windscreen or a wall. You can actually practice Top Spin without a partner, which makes it really easy to get the hang of. What you need to understand is that understanding the technique that we just went through and understanding what you need to be doing might not actually apply when you do it in real life. So to understand how to use topspin in real life, you need to go to the courts and start practicing it. When you first start off, you might, you sort of just be coming at the ball square. You need to get the feel for it. So the way we do that, my favorite way, is to go on the windscreen and try to make the ball jump up. So if I can hit the windscreen with Top Spin, the ball will jump up, and it essentially tells me that I'm doing a good job. So simplest way to do that looks like this. As you can see, ball jumps up a little bit when I get a lot of Top Spin. So it's a really good way to gauge if you're getting that spin or not. If I'm hitting the ball and it's sort of just falling down, that probably is a good sign that I'm not getting spin. So I recommend going on a wall, testing this. You can also see if the ball is getting Top Spin. So try to watch the ball, see if it's spinning away from you like this, and that's also a good gauge if you're getting the spin.
After you start getting the hang of it, what you can do is practice different speeds. So if I'm hitting a Top Spin dink, the speed that I'm hitting the ball is a lot different than if I'm hitting a Top Spin drive or a Top Spin serve. So try the different speeds, and what you'll notice is you actually kind of need to change the way that you're coming at the ball when you hit the ball slow versus hard. So on a dink, I really exaggerate my lift to get this spin because I'm not really going forward as much with my paddle. So on a drive, I don't necessarily need to be quite as extreme with my low to high motion because I'm going so fast that I can come over the ball and it still generates a lot of spin like that. So I'll explain this more in a little bit, but just know when you're practicing the spin, as you can see there, it's getting a good lift off the fence. When you're practicing the spin, you want to go over the different types of Top Spin because it is a little bit different shot by shot. And so far, we've only been demonstrated with forehands, but no, you can actually get Top Spin just as good on your backhand too. If you have a one-handed backhand, the technique is the same. You need to brush up behind the ball, go from low to high. You can practice it the same way on the fence. And if you have a two-handed backhand, same exact thing applies. You just need to work on getting below the ball and finishing above it. So regardless of the side, forehand or backhand, this motion right here is what's going to give you that Top Spin. And shot by shot, you just need to figure out the right amount to be getting.
So a big thing in pickleball that I see people messing up on is they're going too low to high. So a lot of times I'll see someone hitting a dink and they sort of mishit it because they're going so low to high. There's a balance of low to high and forward movement when you're trying to get Top Spin. The way that you figure that out is by doing drills like this, practicing with your friends, and getting some repetition.
Now guys, I'm going to take you shot by shot how to adjust your Technique to get the most possible spin. So we're starting with the serve. Before we get into that, though, I want to address a really important thing to this all. That's if your paddle has a smooth surface. So if you can see here, mine's a very gritty surface. If your paddle has a smooth surface, you're not going to be able to get as much spin. So technique still the main thing. If you can do the brush, you can get spin with anything. You can get spin with a frying pan. But to get the most possible spin, you want your paddle to have a gritty surface. So if you have a smooth-faced paddle, I'm sure you've felt your paddle face before. If it's smooth, you're not going to be able to get the same level of spin. So for me, because I have a gritty surface paddle, when I use the brush technique, I get the maximum possible RPMs on the ball, and that gives me more of the top spin's benefits. So this paddle here is called The Sweet Spot Pro. It's ours, and why it's good is because it has the highest level of grit with the best surface material. So this is T700 carbon fiber. All the best paddles have this surface material, and with this, you get the most possible spin. What's different about this paddle, though, is that most paddles with the surface material are $200 to $300. But right now, because it's Black Friday, if you use code Top Spin, you can get this for 80 bucks, which is unheard of for something at this level. This is a Gen 2 thermoform paddle with T700 carbon fiber. Has the maximum level of grit so that you get the most spin. So if you want to upgrade your spin and you need a paddle that has a gritty surface, make sure to go check this out.
The technique of our serve and our drive when we're hitting a ball in a rally, we're actually pretty much exactly the same. The technique of our Top Spin is identical. So what changes here that I already mentioned is that you don't need as drastic of a low to high motion. When I'm coming at my serve, I probably want to be coming from about 6 inches below the ball, like you see here. And with this, I want to finish a little bit above the ball. So if you watch this in slow motion, you'll see it's a very subtle brush. But one additional thing that you can focus on in these shots, especially if you have a gritty paddle, is you can actually angle your paddle forward a little bit. And assuming the grit is good, the ball will catch the paddle face as you're going up a little bit, and this will give you even more spin. So if you slow this down, you'll see that my paddle face is actually going a little bit forward, especially as I brush over the ball. So I sort of have a little bit of a motion like this when I'm hitting my forehand drive and my serve. This is something that you have to practice a lot to get the hang of. But when you become an advanced player, you should be able to do this very consistently. So just know on a serve and a drive, you don't want to go for such an extreme brush, and you also can go over the ball a little bit, like you see here. The other thing you want to keep in mind is that on this stroke, most of your Top Spin is coming from a lifting of your arm motion. But to get that extra little kick, you can also roll your wrist up a little bit too. So here you can actually use both the lift and the windshield wiper technique to get the maximum level of spin. And guys, when you watch high-level players do their serve or their forehand drive, you might see a lot of crazy stuff with their takeback. You'll see differences in their follow-through. Just note, the only thing that matters to get Top Spin is this section of the swing right here. So even if I have a really high takeback, as long as I'm dropping below the ball and brushing upward, I'm still going to get the same amount of spin. So while the takeback and the follow-through are important, I don't think that they're super important to think about when we're learning Top Spin. Whatever you have now should be fine, as long as you get the technical aspects that we just talked about.
The next shot that I want to cover is a Top Spin drop. So if you want to be able to hit aggressive drops, which are really effective, you need to be able to get Top Spin on them, like I am here. And this is a really hard shot. So this is probably the hardest shot to get the hang of on our list. And what you'll realize is that the technique of how I'm getting topspin here versus my serve and drive is super different. So the first thing to keep in mind is that most of my spin on the drop, if not all of my spin, is coming from lifting my arm. So I really don't need to be using any wrist flick here if I don't want to. So what that looks like is this. So generally, we teach the drop technique as a very compact forward swing of the arm with very little wrist. So all you need to change if you're hitting a Top Spin drop is you need the same motion, but you also need to be going up during the motion. So normal drop looks like this. A Top Spin drop looks like that. So I'm going up more. And you really, when you're hitting the ball slower, and you're getting Top Spin, you really need to exaggerate that lift more. So on my serve, I'm sort of just going like this, very gradual lift. On a drop, I really want to finish up so that I exaggerate that brush on the back of the ball. If you're not doing this right, it might feel like it's really hard to get spin, specifically Top Spin on your drop. So when you start off, this, I recommend exaggerating this, you really get the feel for it.
And when we're thinking about Top Spin dinks, the technique is actually very similar to our drop. So very little wrist, if not no wrist, you want to be riding up the back of the ball. So sometimes it can be hard to get topspin on a dink if your opponent hits a really hard dink. But all you need to do to get it is really ride up the back of the ball. So I tell my students sometimes that it's sort of like you're hitting a ping pong forehand. You want to go up the back of the ball as you're going forward with that dinking motion. So just looks like this. Nothing too extreme, but you really need to exaggerate your Top Spin motion. The slower that you're hitting the ball. So if I'm hitting the ball with a dink, this is the slowest shot that I can hit. So I really need to go upwards in order to spin the ball because a lot of the spin comes from actually the force you're putting on the ball. So no, on a dink, you need to exaggerate it. You can also get Top Spin on your backhand dinks, and there's two ways to do this. The more common way, but it won't work for everyone, is to use two hands. So you see most pros hitting topspin backhand dinks with two hands. And then when they want to hit a slice dink, they'll use one hand. But you can also do this with one hand if you don't like the two-handed backhand. It just looks like this. So I just have to brush up on the back of the ball like I would on a Top Spin backhand drive. Very hard technique, though. I personally only use two-handed Top Spin dinks, and most pros do that. If you can get the hang of the one-hander, though, by all means do it. But I wouldn't beat yourself up if you're having trouble with your one-handed backhand Top Spin dink. It's just a little bit of a challenging shot to get the hang of.
And guys, this next shot is actually one of the coolest, most important ways to be able to get Top Spin in pickleball. It's called the roll volley, and I'm going to teach it to you right now. But if you've been liking this video so far, make sure to subscribe to our channel and hit the thumbs up button below. This really helps us grow, and it helps the sport grow. So if you want to have more friends play with in the next few years, make sure to like this video and subscribe to our channel.
So there's a few different names for this shot. Some people call it the roll volley, some people call it the flick. If you do it off the bounce, some people might call it a speed up. But what you need to know is that this is the wristiest shot in the entire sport of pickleball. And when you're hitting this shot with Top Spin, pretty much all of your spin is coming from your wrist. So this is the only type of shot where you're using primarily your wrist to generate that spin. And the technique of this is really simple. You just need to rotate your wrist upwards as you're hitting the ball. So on a backhand, it's exactly the same. You're rotating your wrist upwards to generate the brush. So on a volley, that looks like this. I'm riding up the back of the ball and generating spin. A lot of the time, you're aiming these shots right at your opponent's feet as they're moving forward, so that it accelerates towards them. So on a roll volley, you're going low, right at their feet, and you're going for maximum spin. So you really can brush upward here to mess them up as they're coming in. On this speed up, the technique's really similar. In this case, a lot of the time, your opponent's at the kitchen, and maybe you're accelerating from a dinking rally. And why using the wrist is important here is because a lot of the time, you're pretending that you're going to dink, and then at the last second, you flick your wrist to accelerate right at them. So the spin isn't quite as important here as it is on the roll volley, but the technique is pretty much exactly the same. You're just maybe hitting the ball a little bit lower. So a speed up looks like this. Pretending I'm going to dink, and then I flick with Top Spin to keep the ball low so that I can surprise them with an attack.
And if you guys think I missed any Top Spin shots, make sure to drop them in the comments. I want to see if I forgot anything. I don't think I did, though, but maybe I did. And if you want to learn how to hit spin on your serve, so specifically side spin, watch this next video where I go over the screw ball serve and the banana serve. These are both really tricky spins that you can use to mess up your opponents.