Transcription
Poke, roll, flick. You might think these three things are the same thing, but they are not. And if you're using them interchangeably, you're wrong.
In this video, I'm going to teach you the difference, when to hit each shot, and how to hit each [Music] shot.
So, the first shot is the Poke. The Poke is when we're at pretty much full reach. And since we're so extended, we don't really have the ability to get much topspin or brush on this ball. Really, what we're trying to do is just take time and space away from our opponents. At full reach, one of the biggest keys to the Poke is just making sure that you're hitting good targets. That chicken wing or that right hip of the person in front of you is really, really good. This also helps when they might be transitioning into the kitchen. Being able to take a lot of space away with that poke can be very helpful as well.
All right, so the way that I'm going to work on the Poke, the flick, and the roll is I'm going to get my Lobster ball machine out here and I'm going to set it up. Oh, that out of [Music] here. There we go. Much better. All right, now back to pokes, rolls, and flicks. Um, I'm going to set up my Lobster back here. Um, I'm aiming it for about the kitchen line on the on the other side. So the setup that I use, I have this feeding uh about every 8 seconds. Um, a relatively flat trajectory with the elevation. Uh, speed is a little over 20 mph, and it's pretty much a flat ball, no topspin or no slice.
So, the first shot here is the Poke. The Poke is all about just getting as much reach as possible and taking away as much space. So, as you can see, there's really not much in the way of wrist action here. It's really just going directly at that ball and picking good targets on our [Music] opponent.
All right, the next backhand attack is the Roll. This is the one that you're probably most familiar with. It's where you drop your entire body and your paddle below the level of the ball and you roll up the back of it. This is generally used now when your opponents are back or when you're trying to hit a precise shot right down this line. The roll takes a little bit more time to execute because we're getting our whole body into it. We're really dropping the paddle below the level of the ball and we're having a bigger swing. This allows us to get more pace and more spin on the ball, but it takes more time to execute when compared to the Poke or the flick.
The first one always goes crazy. I don't know what it is. So, the roll here, I'm really going to make sure that I'm getting underneath the ball with my legs. This is primarily arm action going upwards. There's a little bit of wrist here, and I'm dropping the paddle head downwards, but I'm really getting a lot of brush with the upper body. As you get better and better at this, you can also start to add a little bit more wrist in there as well to generate a little bit more pop and a little bit more uh spin as well.
The backhand flick, roll, and poke have been some of the most requested shots on my channel for a very long time, and now it's your turn to choose which shot I break down next. So put your request below, and the most creative comment wins. I will make a video about the most creative comment.
Last but not least, we have the Flick. The main thing that differentiates the roll and the flick is the amount of wrist movement. With a flick, the majority of our power and spin is coming from the wrist action. Whereas with the roll, the majority of power and spin is coming from our body and our arm. When we're speeding up from the kitchen line, the flick is going to be used a little bit more than the roll will because it takes a little bit less time to execute. It also allows for a little bit more reach than our roll, but you have to have a really, really strong wrist in order to execute this shot.
Watch this. It always skyrockets the first one for some reason after turning on. So weird. The flick is going to be more extended here and getting the majority of our power and spin just through this wrist snap here. What this does is this allows us to get a little bit more reach and take time away from our opponents. So, the first step here is I'm going to my wrist backwards here. You need to make sure that you're able to snap through the ball as well as snapping up the ball. This one takes a very, very strong wrist. Not for the faint of wrist. Chris Olsson should never try this one. A big key here is also to make sure that we're not getting overextended on this shot. It's going to be used primarily when our opponents are up at the kitchen line. So there, that next ball is going to come back, and we got to be ready for the counter.
All right, now you know the difference between the roll, the flick, and the poke. And if you want to learn about the backhand that's going to be taking over pickleball in the future, the Tomahawk, check out this video. Don't forget to send this to a friend who needs to work on their poke, their flick, or their roll. I'm sending this to Connor Garnett. That's it. Gucci Nation.