Transcription
Three years ago, if you were to drive the ball, it was only because your opponents hit a super bad return and left the ball high in the court. With the advancements of pickle ball technology and with players just becoming better and better, we now see drives way more often than we're seeing drops. And so, that's exactly why I wanted to make this video today to be able to help you guys who struggle defending drives from the kitchen line with a few really simple tactics that you can literally implement as soon as you watch this video. So, if you struggle against the player that bangs the ball, which tends to be almost every single player that you play nowadays, this video is going to help you immensely. So, be sure to stick around. Let's open the playbook.
And by the way, I'm Coach Austin Hardy. I'm a PPR certified coach and a 5.5 rated player and the founder of pickleball drills.com, a program that helps all players at their current level get to the next level as fast as possible with proven drills taught by professional pickleball players. So, if you want to check that out and level up your pickleball game, you absolutely can. Let's hop into it.
So, first and foremost, in order to beat a banger, a player that likes to drive every single shot, we have to understand what they really enjoy. And there are two specific things that bangers absolutely thrive on. The first one is panicked opponents. If their opponent looks really uncomfortable when they drive the ball at them, that just puts a huge smile on their face because they know that their go-to game plan is going to work throughout the rest of the match. The second thing that bangers absolutely love is pop-ups. If you pop up the ball, every single time that a banger speeds up the ball or drives the ball to you, they're just going to continue speeding up and driving the ball to you. And so, all that we need to do is figure out how we can take the banger superpowers away so that we can not only be calm and relaxed on the court instead of panicky and also eliminate pop-ups so that we can keep our opponents back deep in the court so that they can never make it up to the kitchen line because the only way that they're making it up is if we pop that ball up. And all that it comes down to is five specific tactics that you have to follow in order to beat the banger.
This first tactic that we're going to be talking about is one of the things that I like to use all the time. And what you're going to see happens when you implement this is that the players stop hitting the ball hard to you. In general, they're going to start going for either your partner or they're just going to start trying to drop the ball in order to gain real estate and get up to the net. And the best part about this tactic is that it's super simple and you can literally implement it as soon as you go out onto the court. Keep your elbow away from your body. So, if both my opponents are back on the baseline and I am up on the net up here and I know that they are bangers, they like to drive the ball or at least one of them do and the ball goes to the player that likes to bang the ball a lot. I'm going to simply put my elbow away from my body just like this. I'm not completely straight. The reason that I don't want to be straight is because I'm going to be tense if I'm straight. So, instead, I have a slight bend. I'm still relaxed, but I have my elbow away from my body. And what this does is it allows the ball to come to my paddle. I meet it where it is, and then it helps me to be able to consistently get that ball to travel back deep a couple feet from the baseline. The reason that I want to be able to consistently do that is because then this banger is no longer going to be able to hit the ball hard. If the ball lands a couple of feet from the baseline, they choose to speed it up again, chances are they're going to miss the ball because that's a low percentage shot. They're going to have to be leaning back or they're going to be running to the side in order to get the ball. And so I've completely neutralized the banger just by simply putting that elbow out. The second thing that this helps with is it eliminates my back swing. So instead of me adding more pace to the banger's pace that they've already created, I'm instead taking their pace and I'm just putting it right back on them by having that elbow out. If instead my elbow is in, what this causes is me to be late reacting to the ball and also it's going to cause me to do a big back swing on a lot of shots. Obviously the more back swing I have, the less time I have to react. So not only am I going to be late, but it's also just going to be a sporadic shot. It could go 10 ft long or it could go 10 ft wide. Whereas, if I just simply stick that elbow out, now I'm just taking their pace and I'm putting it right back on them.
Now, that said, something that I need to clarify is that as soon as that banger makes it up to the kitchen line, you want to have your elbow back in, but you want to keep your motion compact in here. And the reason for that is because if my elbows extended outwards while we're all up at the kitchen line, they speed up the ball to me, I'm not going to have any time to react. Whereas, if my elbow is in here and relaxed, now I have a ton of time to react and move out towards the ball. So, if the banger's on the kitchen line, our elbow is going to be in. We're going to have greater reaction time from doing that. We're going to be more relaxed. If the banger's on the baseline, we have more time to react. We're meeting the ball where it is, and we're getting it back deep to them. This is automatically going to neutralize the banger. So, if you thought that this tip was valuable, just wait till you hear the next four.
Tip number two is to hinge your body slightly forward. So when I'm up here on the kitchen line, I'm going to hinge slightly forward, have a slight knee bend. All the weight is on the balls of my feet here as I'm leaning into the shot. Now, this is going to be totally foreign land for a lot of players that have played against bangers because typically you're super tense and you're backing up as you're hitting shots. So, one of the biggest things that has to do with this is making sure that you are holding the line. You're leaning forward and you are just taking that drive. This is much easier said than done. This is definitely something that has to be drilled over and over and over again in order for you to just get comfortable against that player that continuously bangs the ball to you. Now, what I'm not saying is if your opponent is banging the ball from right where we're standing right now that you should hold the line. Absolutely not. This is when your opponents are back on the baseline hitting drives. They're trying to move forward. As soon as they make it past about midcourt, we're going to want to take a step back so that we have more reaction time. It's not going to make any sense to hold the line when our opponents make it past midcourt. So, I'm leaning in on the balls of my feet slightly forward. What this does, what leaning forward does is it automatically puts my paddle face downwards. If instead I lean back, my paddle face is upwards. And a lot of people that struggle against bangers, players that are hitting the ball hard, is that they're leaning back as they're hitting the ball, which is causing that popup, which the bangers absolutely love.
Tip number three is to start out in front, as we talked about before, with that elbow, and end out in front. We don't want to have a big huge motion as we're trying to bang the ball. And a lot of you out there are like, "Well, of course we don't." But I'll guarantee that the vast majority of you actually have a huge follow through on your swings when you're trying to defend against the banger cuz you're trying to really quickly get to the shot and you're hitting this massive shot coming behind you with your paddle. So instead, it's a really simplified motion. We're just simply finishing right out where we just started. I'm not going any further than that back. And I'm not finishing any further than that back. Start and finish out in front of you and continue to have that elbow out in front of you every single time that you hit that ball. Now, remember that the goal when we're playing against the banger is to keep them back. We're trying to hit the ball about 2 ft from the baseline consistently. From experience, the most difficult players and pros that I've played against are ones that can hit that fourth shot and that sixth shot and that eighth shot in the rally consistently deep in the court and never allow us to come up to the net. So, just remember if you're countering the bangers drive, start and finish your motion out in front of you. Keep it really concise. It's going to pay off.
Now, this next one's super interesting and it's more of a hack than a tactic, and that is that you want to have a loose wrist until you contact the ball. Right at contact, you're going to firm up that wrist. Now, the reason that you want to do this is whenever we have a loose wrist in pickle ball, it's because we're doing things like dinking or we are resetting the ball. We want to absorb our opponent's pace and totally cut it off and get that ball back down into the kitchen area, back down at their shins, we're taking off their pace. On the contrary, when our opponents are banging it from the baseline, we start with a loose wrist and we finish with a firm wrist because we want to take their pace and put it right back on them. So, as I said before, this is more of a hack than a tactic because just by doing it, it's one of those things that you have to try and you'll be like, "Whoa, now I know what Austin was talking about. You go from that loose wrist to that firm wrist right when you make contact, your consistency automatically shoots up and your ability to hit with depth automatically shoots up. You're absorbing the ball less and instead putting their pace back on them more. So, in other words, I know that the ball is going to my backhand. I'm here. I'm loaded up, leaning forward, ready to counterattack that ball. I'm extremely relaxed and then I'm firm as I make contact with the ball. Again, I'm finishing out in front of me. I know it's going to my forehand, super relaxed, and then I'm firm right as I make contact with the ball. Try it. It's going to absolutely change the way that you counterattack bangers drives.
The last one's super simple and it's not something that people think about. When you hear this, you're going to be like, "Well, yeah, duh." But it's not something that you think about and it's an absolute game changer. And that is that the faster your opponent drives the ball, the smaller your motion needs to be. The smaller that counterattack needs to be. It's already small as it is. We're keeping it out in front of us every single time that we hit the ball. But it needs to be more compact the faster that they're hitting the drive and less compact when they have a softer drive coming at us. We're going to be able to hit more through the ball because obviously we're not using all their pace to get it back on the baseline. We need to add a bit more. This is one of those things again where you have to have multiple different experiences with people's drives in order to know how hard you're going to be hitting that next one. And it's just going to come down to muscle memory after you've gotten those reps in over and over and over again. So remember a smaller motion when they're hitting harder and a bigger motion when they're hitting softer. That way you can keep them back into the court.
Now let's talk about what we want to do when our opponents make it up to midcourt. So, when our opponents make it up to the midcourt line, we have to kind of throw some of those tactics out the window because our entire goal behind those five tactics was to keep our opponents back. But once they make it to midcourt, well, they're halfway up. And since they're halfway up, we have to change our thought process a little bit. And this is what a ton of players get wrong and causes them to pop up the ball time and time again to the banger. So that said, there are a couple of principles that we need to follow as soon as our opponents make it to midcourt. The first is something called conceding the kitchen. Now, this is a very foreign topic because it doesn't come natural to a lot of players to concede something, especially in any other sports that they've played where it's just aggression, aggression, aggression. In pickle ball, we obviously have resets, we have our drops, we have our dinks, we have our soft shots where we need to be nice and controlled and allow our opponents sometimes to come up to the net. What the banger absolutely loves, as I talked about before, is when we pop up the ball. And what I see in 99% of the amateur wreck matches that I watch is that players will pop up the ball continuously because they fail to concede the kitchen. So, let's talk about what conceding the kitchen is. So, conceding the kitchen is where me and my partner are both up at the kitchen. Both the opponents are back. They're driving the ball. And I notice that both of the opponents have made it up to midcourt. Now, the big mistake that players make is all of a sudden the opponents make it up to midcourt. They don't have a ball that's above net tape. It's now low near their knee area, and they're choosing to speed that ball up to try to keep their opponents back. But here's the thing, your opponents have already made it forward. They're already at midcourt when you're making contact. So, that means that they're going to be past midcourt by the time that they hit the ball. And since you're hitting from this low position, you have to hit up because the net is in your way. You have to hit it obviously over the net. So since they've hit it to about knee height or lower, it doesn't make any sense to still try to keep them back and still try to keep it at their feet from this position. Now, if the ball is way up here, that's a totally different story. Obviously, I want to try to hit my opponent's feet. I'm no longer trying to get it a couple of feet from the baseline. I'm trying to hit it at their feet, at their ankles, make it really uncomfortable for them. But as soon as that ball goes below the net tape, it doesn't make any sense to speed up this ball. And this is what I see all the time. Players fail to concede the kitchen. They speed up this ball, pop the ball up to this player that's at midcourt, they attack that ball, put it down at their feet, and the point's instantly over. So conceding the kitchen is I recognize that ball is below my knee.
So now we've covered how to beat the banger when they're hitting drive after drive on the baseline. We've covered how to beat the banger by conceding the kitchen when the opponent is up at midcourt. Now, let's talk about how we beat the banger when they've made it up to the kitchen line. Now, remember those two things that we talked about earlier. Bangers absolutely love pop-ups, and they absolutely love when their opponent is tensed up. If you hold your ground at the kitchen line when the banger is about to speed up the ball, you're going to get body bagged over and over and over again. The only way to beat the banger at the kitchen line is to take a step back from the line. Now, this works for two reasons. First of all, you're going to have more reaction time to counterattack their shot. And the second reason that it works is it doesn't give the banger someone to hit just from you taking that step off the line, which is probably about three feet back from that kitchen line. It makes their target go way down for what they're used to aiming for. And trust me, bangers are not trying to hit the ball into the kitchen. They're more often than not trying to either hit you or hit the ball deep into the court. And so just by simply doing this, first of all, they're not going to speed up the ball to you as often. Second of all, you're going to have a way better shot at counterattacking that ball and taking advantage of the point consistently over and over and over again. And so that brings us to the question, how do we then take advantage of the banger from this position? Because what's going to happen is they're not going to be used to you taking that step back. So they're probably still going to speed up the ball to you, but they're going to learn really quick that that's not a good decision. And so what we're doing from this position is we're applying the five tactics that we talked about earlier. Number one, we're pointing our elbow out in front of us. We're keeping it out in front of us so that we can keep a compact swing. They're creating all the pace. We're going to put it right back on them. Number two, we are leaning forward. As we lean forward, it gets our paddle face downwards. We're on the balls of our feet. We have that slight knee bend. If you lean back from this position, you're in worse trouble than you were when your opponents were back on the baseline because you're a closer distance to your opponent. So, make sure that you are on the balls of your feet ready to counterattack or reset that ball. Number three, we are starting out in front and we're finishing out in front. We don't have some big huge swing as we hit through the ball. Starting out in front and we're finishing out in front. Number four is loose wrist until we contact the ball, this is going to pay dividends. You're going to be able to consistently hit that ball right at your opponent's shins. And then of course number five, the faster that speed up comes, first of all, be ready to get out of the way. But the faster that speed up comes, the more compact a swing we have, the slower that speed up comes, the bigger a motion we can get away with.
Now, the main thing is is just because I took this step back because I anticipate that my opponents are speeding up the ball. Maybe because the dink was popped up high by my partner or myself, or I just see that my opponents have some type of big load up. They're turning their shoulders towards me, they're ready to absolutely tee off on the ball. I take that step back. That doesn't mean that I'm absolutely stuck in this position. As soon as I counterattack their first speed up, I move into the court. And by doing this, I'm applying a ton of pressure on them to not pop up the ball, which if I counter correctly, they're going to pop up the ball like 90% of the time. And I'm taking tons of court away from them. So, they're having to hit up now from that position. So, they can try to dink the ball, which bangers don't really dink the ball, or they can speed up from that position if they choose to. This is the most pivotal thing because this is what happens very often. They choose to speed up from this low position where you just counterattacked the ball and moved forward. Get out of the way every single time. Get out of the way. They have to hit up. Since they have to hit it over the net, there's no way that they can possibly hit that ball into the court. And if they do, it's because they either mishit it or got extremely lucky. And so, it's only going to happen maybe one point in a match. Let them have that point. That's absolutely fine because we got out of the way of the other 10.
Now, what's really important when we take this step back, sometimes our partner or ourselves pop up that dink super high. And so, because of this, we take a step back. If we have more time, we'd obviously want to go further back into the court so that we have more reaction time. If we don't, you know, we're stuck in this position. And that's where it comes down to learning the offensive reset and perfecting the offensive reset. We want to reset any ball that is below waist level because our waist because our waists are right around that net height. So, anything that's below my waist, I'm resetting. I'm absorbing the pace of that ball and I'm trying to put it back on my opponent's shins. Hence the name the offensive reset. We're not hitting some high loopy ball that lands in the kitchen. If we do that, they're just going to tee off on the next one. We're going to lose the point every single time. So, in other words, we're trying to draw more or less a straight line. Reset anything that's below our waist to our opponent's knees/shin area. We then move up and we do that same exact thing that we talked about before. We're putting away that next shot. We're leaning in. We're applying that pressure.
Now, sometimes from this position, we're going to be resetting the ball even when it's above our waist. And you might be thinking to yourself, okay, well, how do I decide to reset the ball or counter the ball if I don't even know because sometimes it's above the waist we're resetting the ball? Which is a super valid question. So, if you ask that question, that's really cool. And what it comes down to is time. I like to actually picture that there is a bubble that comes a foot off of my chest in my stomach area. And if I have time to meet the ball out in front of me, I'm going to be counterattacking the ball. This is going to be about 75% of the time. I'm going to have time because I moved back from this position. My elbow's out. I'm going to be contacting that ball out in front of me. But sometimes our opponents don't allow us the time to step back all the way. And so with that, we're now resetting the ball. We're absorbing their pace, drawing that straight line to their shins. So all that it comes down to is if you can keep your paddle outside that bubble that comes a foot off your chest, counterattack the ball. If the ball ever comes inside that bubble, we're resetting the ball. Again, this is some one of those things that's it's way easier said than done. You have to get out. You have to drill. Get a partner, a ball machine, or a wall, and you'll automatically build that muscle memory so that you don't have to think about it anymore. Again, it's a really cool principle to think about that bubble, but you're not going to be able to in a game be like, "Oh, I don't have time. I will now reset the ball." It's going to come down to getting out there and getting reps in with those shots.
So, that's it for this video. I hope that you guys enjoyed that. That's exactly how you beat a banger. Use those five tactics, understand them, and apply the things that I taught you of what to do when the opponent's on the baseline, at midcourt, and on the kitchen line. You're going to start beating players that you've never beat before, and you're going to feel extremely good about your pickleball game. Don't forget to check out the Pickleball Drills app at pickball drillsapp.com. This is the app that has all of the drills that you need to take your game to the next level. I appreciate you watching. If you want to see more videos from me, you can check out this video right here. and I'll see you over there. Peace.