Transcription
Having fast hands is extremely easy when you understand six key principles that we're going to be talking about in this video. And the best part about each of these principles is that you can implement almost every single one of them immediately after watching. So, if you're ready to increase your hand speed, let's open the playbook.
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So section one is simple fixes that create fast hands. Now, what's great about the vast majority of these six fixes that we're going to be going over is that you can implement them immediately after you watch this video and instantly have an increase in your hand speed. And it won't just be a little bit of an increase in your hand speed. It will be a vast increase in your hand speed. So, let's start with number one, which is your grip.
So, the grip that you're using for your pickleball game is probably working for you. But there's a certain grip that you can use that the vast majority of pros use to instantly increase your hand speed. If you turn your paddle onto its edge just like this, as you can see, we have eight different bevels that go all the way across just like a stop sign. Bevel number one is right here on the top. Then we have bevel number two and bevel number three.
Now the most popular grip up at the kitchen line at the amateur level is continental grip where we're going to be going on bevel number two with the inside of our index knuckle and the bottom corner of our palm pad. So that looks like this. I got my index knuckle on that bevel number two. Now this is the most popular grip because it comes from other sports like padel, ping pong, and tennis. Another popular grip is eastern which takes us to bevel number three over here. This grip puts your paddle face down on the forehand side and helps you to be able to hit with more topspin, but it makes you struggle a bit more on your backhand side because now you have to invert your wrist in order to hit your backhands downward.
So, the cheat code to use to instantly increase your hand speed is to go in between continental, which favors the backhand side, and eastern, which favors the forehand side, and go right on this specific line in between bevel number two and three. So we have bevel number two right here, number three right here. We're going right on that corner with the knuckle bottom of our palm pad. So now that we're in this exact grip, that's going to help us to not only be able to hit down on our forehands, but more easily hit down on our backhands. That's going to be the elite grip to use to instantly increase your hand speed. I don't recommend necessarily using this grip 100% of the time, but when you get up to the kitchen line, in order to have faster hands, you want to be using this grip. And just so you know what grip to use when you're on the baseline, I use the eastern forehand grip. That allows me to be able to get more topspin on my forehand. And typically I'll hold that grip even when I'm at midcourt and resetting balls. And I'll slowly slide it over to that perfect in-between continental and eastern.
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Tip number two is probably my favorite tip of all time to instantly increase hand speed. It's very similar to tip number one that we just barely talked about because it has to do with our grip. So now that we have that perfect grip right in between eastern and continental, we are now going to be choking up our paddle to more evenly distribute the weight and make our paddle not as top-heavy. By putting our hand further up the paddle, we automatically take weight away and we're able to swing our hand faster through the air.
Now, what I'm not saying is to choke up your paddle and go in the pen hold grip like this, like we're playing ping pong. This is way too far up. We're leaving way too much paddle down here, and we're sacrificing way too much reach. You're going to have a ton of control in this position. Not a ton of reach, and you're going to lack a ton of power. So, instead, we're just sliding up where we just have a little bit of the bottom of our handle hanging over the edge of our palm. Now, you can experiment with this. Go up maybe a little bit more. That might be more comfortable for you. You might see more benefits from that. Remember, you're going to lose out on reach and power. Maybe you'll have more benefits from coming down just a little bit below that. But in essence, the further up you come on your pickleball paddle handle, the more speed you'll be able to swing with because you're taking that weight from the tip and putting it more into your hand.
Now, with this specific tip, a lot of you out there might be thinking, "Well, I've never seen any of the pros do that." And so, here are some specific pros that actually do this, particularly when they get up to the kitchen line in order to increase their hand speed. First and foremost is one of the top players in the entire world, Gabe Tardio. You'll see that he has like an inch below where the bottom of his palm is so that he can increase that hand speed. He probably has the best counter in all of pickleball. Particularly his backhand counter. His ability to be able to counter from that side so effectively and so fast is greatly due to the fact that he's choking up on his paddle. His paddle is much more light than yours and mine is just simply because he's going up that lever.
Another pro that comes to mind that goes way too far up the paddle is Tyler Loom. He's losing out on reach, but this is something that he's been doing for the past 14 years that he's been playing pickleball. And so, he's been a pro for that period of time. He's used to it. I don't recommend it for pros starting out now because you're going to be left behind just simply because you don't have enough power that you're putting on the ball. Now, that said, it works for him. It's just that I don't recommend it specifically for you unless you've been playing pickleball for 14 years.
And then last but not least is Ben Johns. If you watch him, he has significantly throughout the past 2 years put his hand further up the paddle handle. So you might be able to find some clips from about a year ago where his hand was hanging off the paddle. But now what you'll find particularly when he's up on the kitchen line, his hand is choked up his paddle and you can see the bottom of the handle is hanging out. The significant reason for that, it instantly increases his hand speed, which he needs because he puts a ton of weight on the throat of his paddle in order to increase his overall control. But with that added weight, that means that he also needs to be swinging faster in order to react to his opponent's balls.
And that's something very interesting. If you put weight on your paddle, obviously your paddle is going to weigh more. You're not going to be able to swing it as swiftly through the air. So, why do the pros do it? Well, the reason that the pros put weight on their paddle varies from pro to pro because it depends on where you are putting the weight. If you put the weight near the top, you're going to increase in power because it's going to become more top-heavy and you're also going to create more spin. The more top-heavy, the more spin that paddle is going to be able to create. If you put weight on the sides, you're going to increase in stability. That means when you make contact with the ball, it's not going to shake as much as you make contact. It's going to be a way more pure shot. It's going to feel a whole lot better. If you put weight on the throat like someone like Ben Johns does, you're going to increase in control. It's going to bring or at least feel like it's bringing your sweet spot down. And the reason that you want to bring your sweet spot down is so that it feels more like your hand is making contact with the ball because we can obviously feel where our hand is whereas we can't necessarily feel where our paddle face is. Again, that's a benefit of choking up the paddle handle is we're bringing the ball closer to our hand. So weighting your paddle is definitely something you can experiment with as well. But let me just tell you that this is one of the most important tips that I can possibly give you to instantly increase your hand speed is to just choke up your paddle just a little bit. Try it out. It'll blow you away.
Okay, number three. This is another fantastic one that's going to blow you away. And that is your ready position. A lot of people will be like, "Ready position? I know what that is." And they move on. But this is extremely important because the ready position that you're most likely holding right now is incorrect. and it's making it so that your hand speed is extremely slow. So, if you just implement this simple tip and try out this golden ready position that we're going to be going over, you'll instantly increase in your hand speed.
So, the old ready position in pickleball used to be where the paddle was up here at chest level guarding your chest. That way, you can get to your face and guard your face. But that has since changed because paddles have become faster. It doesn't make sense to have your paddle all the way up here because chances are if the ball comes up in this general area, it's going out just simply because paddles hit so much harder than they used to even 2 and 3 years ago. So instead, what we're seeing from players like Ben Johns, Gabe Tardio, JW Johnson, Leia Jansen, Judith Castillo is that they're all putting their ready positions lower.
Now this is significant for two reasons. When our ready position is lower like this, it automatically relaxes our arm. Now, if you want to have really slow reactions, you want to have your ready position up here because it tenses up your arm. The more tense you are, the slower you're going to be, whereas the more relaxed that you are, the faster that you'll be able to move your arm through the air. So, what I recommend for a ready position for almost every single player out there, and you can experiment with maybe a little bit lower and maybe a little bit higher, depending on what's more comfortable for you, is putting your ready position right around that belly button area and pointing your paddle tip directly towards your opponents. The reason that I recommend this area right around the belly button is because if any ball goes above the belly button, you're automatically going to be counterattacking that ball with topspin since you're coming up into that ball. If any ball goes below your belly button, you're automatically going to be counterattacking that ball with a reset. And the reason that I say counterattacking with a reset is because you should be hitting a more aggressive reset that's drawing a straight line to your opponent's shins. If anybody's watched my past videos, they know exactly what I'm talking about with that aggressive reset. We want to be even aggressive when we're on defense. And so, we're cutting and coming down on the ball whenever it's below that belly button area, and we're coming up and hitting with topspin whenever it's above the belly button area. Again, you can experiment with going a little bit lower with your ready position. The point is, you want to be relaxed. And the second point is you're automatically going to put yourself in a good position to hit with topspin if it comes high and to hit with underspin if it comes low.
Tip number four is something that will help majority of players out there to instantly increase their hand speed. And that is just to simply point the tip of your paddle wherever the ball is. So if you dink the ball crosscourt, you finish by pointing the tip of your paddle crosscourt. And the reason that you want to do that is because it opens your paddle towards where the speed up is going to come from. And so to show you what that looks like, if I dink the ball directly towards where you are, I'm now pointing my paddle where you are. And what this does is it opens my paddle face slightly towards my backhand side because I don't need to cover my forehand side from this position. If you were to speed up the ball from the exact position that you're in to my forehand side, that ball has to go out. You don't have enough court to work with. It's going to land somewhere over here based off of where I'm standing, based off of where you are hitting. Instead, it really has to come either at my body directly or to this side of my body, to the middle of the court. And so just simply opening my paddle face towards that side by pointing it directly at the ball helps me to be able to get to my backhand side faster and avoid getting to my forehand side. And let's say that you instead dink the ball. Well, since it's a dink, I have all the time in the world to now go to my forehand side, walk over to the dink and dink the ball back or speed it up or do whatever it is that I want. Suffice to say that I have time to go to the forehand side when I'm in this position just simply by pointing the tip of my paddle wherever the ball is. Now, if instead I dink the ball and then I put my paddle back over here in this neutral position, well, now it's going to take me a split second longer to get to that backhand side. And that's why we see so many pop-ups going on. So, remember, point the tip of your paddle, whether that's down the line where you dink to, or it's crosscourt where you dink the ball to, point the tip of your paddle wherever the ball is, and you'll instantly have a faster reaction time.
Tip number five is that whenever the player that's directly down the line from you has the ball, first of all, we're obviously going to be pointing the tip of our paddle towards them. We want to always put all of the weight on our outside leg. The outside leg is always going to be the leg that's closest to the sideline. So, if I'm on this side of the court, my outside leg is going to be this leg. I'm going to put all the weight on this leg whenever the ball is directly in front of me. Whenever it's directly at the person directly in front of me. Now, something important to note is that if they speed up this ball, they can either speed it up over the lowest part of the net at the middle or they can progressively speed it up over the highest part of the net down the line. If they speed the ball up over the highest part of the net, I have the advantage because they have to hit the ball up high. The net is 36 inches here, whereas here in the middle, it's only 34 inches. It's a 2-inch difference, but it makes all the difference when it comes to speeding up the ball from that close trajectory. And so knowing this, all of the weight is on my outside leg because I'm going to shift in that direction. So as soon as I know that my opponents are going to speed up the ball, I obviously can't necessarily shift prior to them speeding up. But as soon as I know that they're speeding up, I am now shifting towards that sideline since all the weight is on this foot and I have time to counter since it's over the highest part of the net. Now notice what side of my paddle I am countering with as I shift towards the side. When I shift towards the sideline, I open my paddle face towards the middle of the court. It's the same exact thing over here. If I shift towards the sideline, I open my paddle face up towards the middle of the court. But chances are in this position, your opponents are going to speed up the ball to this side of your body. That's just simply because it's a lower part over the net. They're going to be way more consistent in doing this. And so putting all that weight on the outside leg helps you to not only prep for shifting, but counterbalance yourself should they choose to speed up the ball to this side of your body. So you're in this position pointing your tip of your paddle at where the ball is. And now you're able to very simply get to that side while almost leaning into your shot. Whereas if you put all of the weight on this side and you're going to shift to that side, now you're not counterbalancing yourself. You're in a very awkward position to counter that ball now. So, always put the weight on that outside leg and open up towards the inside of the court as you shift out towards the outside.
Now, let's talk about the last tip, which is tip number six, which will give us some specific patterns that we can follow and build into our muscle memory so that we can always anticipate what our opponents are going to do next. Okay, pattern number one is if I speed the ball up down the line, down my line here, I need to anticipate that that ball is going to come back down my line. So again, since I'm hitting it down the line here, the ball's going to be on this side. All of the weight is going to be on my outside leg. So I speed up the ball. All the weights on my outside leg, and I'm ready to counterattack that ball, no matter where it is at. Chances are that it's going to come back down this sideline. So you can anticipate whenever you hit up the sideline, it's coming back down the sideline. The second place is if you speed the ball up towards your opponent's chest area or belly button area, expect it to come directly back towards your chest area or belly button area. So, if I speed up from this position, I'm ready for it to now come back directly to here. If you do that, the vast majority of the time it's going to come directly back in the direction that you sped it up. The next place is crossbody middle. So, I have a dink that comes to me out wide. I speed up the ball. It goes across the body of my opponent directly to this side of their body near the middle of the court. I can almost always expect to counter that ball on my forehand side up the middle. So if I go crossbody middle, it's almost always going to come back to the middle. So automatically I am anticipating that I'm going to hit a forehand in this position. And again, that brings us back to if they end up hitting it to this side of our body, chances are that ball is going to go wide. So we don't need to cover that side of our body anyway. Just remember, if you speed up across the body of your opponent towards the middle, cover middle, the ball's automatically going to create that triangle effect directly to your paddle. The last position, and not the most effective speed up, but if done correctly, it can be good, is crossbody line. So, I have a ball landing near the middle of the court. I go across their body towards that right hip area. I don't want to go out further than that because again, I'll hit the ball wide. I go towards their hip area. And what happens is it's going to create that triangle effect and come down my line here. So if you speed it up down the line from the line, it's coming back down the line. If you speed it up at your opponent's body, chances are it's coming back to your body. If you speed it up across their body, chances are it's coming up the middle. If you speed it up across their body this way, chances are it's coming back to the line. So this is a super simple way to just watch patterns and be able to anticipate where your opponent's next shot is going to be.
So, now that you know those six key elements to increasing your hand speed instantly, you need to get out and get reps in with specific drills to help you win more hands battles. And so, I'm going to take you through a series of drills that we have on pickleball drills app.com that are proven to help you increase your hand speed. These are drills that I have used as well as thousands of others to help increase hand speed. So, I hope you enjoy.
For this drill, both players will be up at the kitchen line. Each player will take one step inside the kitchen line so that your heels are inside the kitchen line. This is a hand speed drill that will speed up your hands. It is a cooperative drill where one person is hitting forehands and one person is hitting backhands. You will keep the ball into this pattern which will have a hands battle that is much faster than any hands battle you will have in a match. After doing that, you will switch so that the person hitting forehands will now hit backhands. After this, take the step back and continue the drill but in a normal kitchen position where you're not stepping in the kitchen. It will now feel much slower and your hand speed will be quicker.
"Hey, my name's Jack Sock. I'm a professional pickleball player and this is one of my favorite wall drills. This is a speed-up reset combo and I love this to train my hand eye as well as my speed-up and then looking to be ready for that next ball. Notice as soon as I hit that speed-up, I look and get ready for that next ball, which even though it's a counter, you have to make sure to track it correctly on your paddle. And this translates really well to games. As soon as you hit that speed-up, instead of hitting that reset, then you can look to be more aggressive, snapping through that counter."
Begin this drill by starting just across the net from your partner on either kitchen line. Set a timer for 20 minutes and hit as many slow, fast, slow volleys as you can. The goal with this drill is to start slow, speed up to where it gets slightly uncomfortable, and then go back to slow volleys again. This will quickly help you increase your volley speed over time as you get more and more comfortable getting faster and faster. Do this drill down both lines for 10 minutes each.
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