Transcription
There is a massive difference between intermediate forehand technique and pro forehand technique. So, in this video, we're going to show you step by step exactly how to perfect your technique for more power, more spin, and more consistency.
And throughout this video, we're going to have Drew demonstrating the technique cuz whenever we go play, everyone's always commenting on how Drew has the most beautiful technique and how he needs to go pro. And the reason for that is because me and Drew met at UCLA. We were on the tennis team together. He was a star player on the team, so he's been playing racket sports his whole life. So, this technique comes from tennis and he's molded it into pickleball. If you watch pros play, a lot of their strokes look very similar to Drew's. Let's get into it.
So, throughout this video, we're going to focus mostly on the forehand drive, but this technique is also pretty much exactly the same on the serve. So, at the end of the video, I'm going to show you some serving specifics, and we're going to show you slow motion examples so that you can see this technique in slow motion and all the specific parts broken down.
So, the biggest difference between a beginner and a pro or an intermediate player and a very high level player is the takeback. So, as you can see, when Drew takes it back like an intermediate player, there's a very clear difference. So, he's going to do a few like an intermediate player. That's how an intermediate player takes it back. A pro or high level player takes it back like this. So, the difference has to do with the tip of his paddle where it's pointing.
So, Drew in these examples is doing something called the loop. So when Drew takes back his paddle, he has the tip of it pointing up. So when he's doing this, he does a C motion. So he sort of does a C motion that brings him into this acceleration slot. So he doesn't just take it back straight down. He comes up from his ready position, which is here. And he keeps the paddle up. Then he drops his arm. That's what we call a loop. And when you do this, it gives you significantly more momentum.
So let's see a few more examples. So, as he goes from that ready position, his paddle actually comes up a little bit, right? You don't want to go super high, but you want to go high enough to where you get that momentum that you can carry it into your swing. So, few more examples of that.
The loop is a fundamental part of hitting the ball with power on a drive or a serve. Pretty much every single pro player uses some sort of variation of the loop. This is something that you're not going to see it looking the same every time on every player, but they're all doing some different variation of it. And the main thing that makes you successful on the loop is being loose. So if you're tight on the loop, it kind of defeats the purpose because you're using the loop to get momentum. So if you're tight, your arm isn't really getting momentum. It's just the same thing as starting from here. The looseness gives you momentum which you carry into the next portion of your swing, which I'm going to talk about now.
So the next part of the swing you have to understand and arguably the most important part for getting power. But there's another really important part too I'm going to talk about later. But this is really important for getting power in top spin is what we call the acceleration. So after you do your loop, you get to this point which I call the acceleration slot which this is where you start moving forward. Right? With the loop you're going back, you're back. Then you get to here and you start going forward. So this part of the swing is really important. And the reason for that is when you're moving forward, you want your butt cap to be facing towards the other side of the court as you're going forward. as you're going forward. And then right when you hit the ball, your paddle goes like this and it kind of snaps through a little bit which gives you a ton of power. So your arm is kind of functioning as a whip here. Your your paddle is lagging behind and then it flexes through. So this is what we call the flashlight technique. So if you do this when you're hitting your shots, you get more power. But there's some key things you need to think about in order to make it happen. And the first is being loose.
So Drew's obviously done this a million times, so it looks super natural, but what are you thinking about to make it happen? Yeah, I'm honestly just trying to be really loose with my arm. Um, and I'm trying to be in position with my feet so I'm not reaching. And I'm honestly, the last thing is really just making sure that the tip of my paddle is is moving as fast as possible because that's what's going to give you a lot of that power. It's not about how fast your wrist is moving through the shot or your arm. It's it's this one right here where the tip of your paddle is moving really quickly. That's where you get a lot of power. And you can't move your tip quickly if you're tight. So if you're trying to muscle the ball using your strength to hit it, you might be putting force behind it, but the tip of your paddle is not moving fast. That's what gives you power and what gives you a lot of top spin. So it makes a lot of sense that the looseness and focusing on that quick movement through the ball is what's going to give you results.
The next part of the swing, which relates to what we were just talking about, is how you're getting top spin. So it's a part of the acceleration and a part of your arm movement is what's going to give you top spin. You just have to use the flashlight technique in the right way. So the main thing to consider is that if I'm going to hit the ball right at this height, I need to be accelerating at the ball from slightly below it. So not like way below it, just a little bit so that when I'm hitting the ball, my paddle's moving at an upward angle. So the first thing that's going to give you top spin is just having an upward trajectory of your swing. When you're learning tennis or pickleball, you'll probably hear something like low to high. Because when you learn low to high, it makes you learn how to hit the stroke with top spin.
The next part of getting top spin is when you're flexing through with the flashlight technique, you can kind of flex a little bit upwards. So, you're not just going like this. It's not just like that. You're also kind of adding a little bit of what we call the windshield wiper technique, which is where you're going like this. You're not going to ever go like this in pickleball because you don't have strings like in tennis. So, it's just sort of a little bit of an upward flex, but that upward flex gives you a huge boost of top spin.
So, if you can see on actual shots, it's very subtle, but Drew is getting a lot of RPMs when he's hitting these balls. And the reason is because he has that technique in place. He comes at the ball from slightly below it, finishes slightly above, and has that little bit of wrist flex through each one. And when you do this, it sucks the ball down. If you're hitting a drive at your opponents at the net, they're going to have to hit it from lower. If you're hitting a serve, it's going to jet off the bounce and you can hit it harder because the ball gets sucked down by the top spin. So, when you use top spin, there's what's called the Magnus effect. and the ball falls faster. So, you can hit harder without hitting the ball long. So, try this technique. Not a lot of players get good top spin. I'm watching WCK players right now on the other courts. They're not getting that much top spin. So, give this a shot. It takes a lot of practice, but if you get it down, your forehand is going to get way better.
So, to show you a few more examples of the technique, if Drew is not coming at the ball with the flashlight technique from below it and using the windshield wiper, Kennedy is going to get a much higher ball even if he hits it low because the ball's not getting sucked down. So, she's going to hit the ball about a foot over the net, which he can attack with. When he does use this technique, you can see he can force her to hit the ball from around the height of the net or even below the net in some cases because the ball's getting sucked down. So, the only way to get that amount of spin is if you're using that technique. You see there that like hit her knee when it got so it's really dropping, right?
Another thing to consider is if your paddle isn't gritty and you're trying to brush this aggressively, the ball sometimes going to feel like it goes down. But if you ever hit top spin and it feels like the ball kind of falls downward off of it, you might not have a gritty enough paddle. So this is a T700 carbon fiber paddle. Most of the best paddles have this material on the surface. When you use a paddle like this, when you brush up, the ball kind of gets pulled up with you. So it feels like the ball comes up a little bit, which allows you to go so much more aggressive with how much you're coming up on the back of the ball. And it gives you way more RPMs when you're using top spin. So if you want to try a paddle like this, but you don't want to spend over $200, head to our site and use code SPIN. get $20 off any of ours.
The next part of the swing that's almost as important for power as the flashlight technique is our rotation. So, when you're hitting a forehand, you're always going to start off, you should always be facing the court when the ball's about to come to you. But, as the ball comes to you, you should notice immediately that's going to be a forehand and turn your shoulders like Drew is doing here. So, generally, you want to be what's called closed stance on a drive. On serves, it's not always the case, which I'll show you. On a drive, though, when you see it's coming to your forehand, you immediately turn your shoulders so that you're square to the side of the court. So you want to be facing the side of the court and this is where you should start your swing. So you have to do it kind of quickly because the pickleball court is not that big. You don't have that much time. So you see the ball's coming, you turn your shoulders and then when you hit it, you uncoil towards the net. So you should go from facing the side of the court to facing the front of the court by the time you're done with your forehand. So that looks like this. Show you a few examples.
And he's using his rotation, guys. That's where almost all of his power from his arm is coming from. If he was just arming the ball, it would look like this. So, a lot of players do look like that. They kind of just use their arm, something like this. You can't get that much power like this. So, if you want to get the most possible power, most of it is coming from your rotation and from your wrist. So, it's really just a combination of those two things that equate to like 90% of your power.
The other thing that really helps with getting power is getting your weight into the ball. So, if Drew was trying to push me and he didn't get his weight into it, he can't really push me. In fact, he's the one that's falling back, right? But if he gets his weight into it, has a good base, now he's going to be able to push me very easily. So the same thing applies when you're hitting a forehand or honestly any groundstroke. You want to make sure you're leaning into it, you have a strong base, and you're getting your momentum forward. It increases the power by a lot. So try to make sure that you're always getting your body weight towards your target. Okay? So try to lean towards your target as you're hitting the ball. You'll also get way more power.
When it comes to serves, all the technique we just talked about is the same. There's a few differences. So with the arm, he's doing the loop, he's doing the acceleration, he's doing the flashlight technique. One thing is that he obviously has to toss the ball to himself. So when you're hitting a normal drive, you want to try to be hitting it right around here. So on a serve, you're essentially just tossing it to your ideal contact point. So see what that looks like. So on a drive, you can hit it above your waist. On a serve, you can't. So you're to toss it a little bit lower than you would want to hit it on a drive. But to get your serve down, you need to have a very accurate toss. I talk about the toss more in other videos, but just know that you're trying to get the toss in the ideal position for power. So, where you can get the most power is around right here. So, on a serve, you toss it here. On a drive, you're trying to get the ball in this position when you hit it. And you use your feet to do that. So, that's one big difference. Obviously, you have to toss the ball to yourself.
The other big difference on the serve is your stance. So, most people serve with what's called a closed stance. And usually, you want to drive with a closed stance, too. Because when you use a closed stance, it's actually easier to carry your weight forward. So, it's better for drives. Some people though on the serve, probably 20 30% of people serve with an open stance. So, you see them like this. And what this lets you do when you're serving is it lets you rotate and unrotate a little bit more aggressively. So, when you're open stance, you can really uncoil and give yourself power. So, you see more higher level players, more pros choosing to use this technique. Which one's better for you? It's probably just about what you're more comfortable with. You can serve really hard and really effectively with closed stance as well. So, let me know in the comments which you prefer. I'm actually kind of curious. I've never asked my audience about that. Let me know in the comments which serving stance you prefer. And if you want to watch a video about the backhand technique, watch this. [Music]