The Simple Reason 95% of Pickleball Players Plateau...

There's three big reasons why 95% of pickleball players never reach the advanced level. But the good news is they're super easy to fix. So easy that we're going to help our friend Audrey fix them so she can reach the advanced level by the end of this video. Let's go. Subscribe. Let's, let's do it.

So, I'm going to show you my favorite drill, actually, of all time.

There was a few things that were super helpful. The one is, the first reason that pickleball players struggle to advance is simply they lack the ability to get the ball back into play. It's a really simple but effective rule. The more balls you get back into play, the better chance you have of winning the rally. So, let's look at three different ways that you can improve your chances of getting the ball back in play and start advancing. But before we begin, we want to get a baseline of where Audrey's at right now so we can help her the best. So, since our first tip is all about defense, I want to see what Audrey's defensive capabilities are. So, we're going to place her in a compromised position, and that'll be at the midcourt for Audrey. So, I'll have her walk right there. Perfect. And we are going to stand up at the kitchen line. Our goal is to play offense and target her feet and make her hit uncomfortable shots from the midcourt to see what she's capable of. Step in a step or two.

So, after seeing the baseline defensive ability, the first thing we want to establish is her readiness. Let's talk about it. Can you show me what your ready stance is from back here for like receiving? Yeah. So, let's say that I'm at the net, I'm hitting balls towards you. Like, how would you get ready? Good. And then like, as you step forward, like maybe right here, what do you, what do you look like? Depends on their positioning, but I'll either still be down here or a little bit up. Okay. Yeah, that's good. And then what about as you get like, even closer to the kitchen line? I'll come more up, but still wide stance. Yeah. Oh, I think all those were the right answers. Uh, what I wanted to see was just like, as you move forward, what you do with your paddle because there's this concept called the seesaw effect, which clearly you know about, but it's that as you get further and further into the court, your paddle kind of gets higher and higher and higher because when you're back here, most shots are going to be bouncing in front of you. And if they are kind of high on your body and they're not bouncing, that means they're going out of bounds, right? So, the most likely place we want our paddle down low. So, it's good that you're already nice and low down here. And I also like that you said you're always going to be wide and low, right? That, that applies to everything here. It's hard to do in practice, though. It's really easy to say, but as we move forward through the court, before I hit any single shot, your goal is to get wide and low. And as you were saying, as you move up, you want to get slightly higher and higher until eventually you're at the kitchen line and you're up here, right? A little bit higher. Uh, but that looked really good. I think just one thing that I did see there is specifically when you're around this area, your feet were moving a whole lot, right? So, you, you're very, very, very active. Um, you were wide and low initially, then as I make contact, there's a lot of movement. I think one thing that would help you a lot is just when you're here, like you're just super solid and ready and there's not a whole lot of like, like moving of the hips left and right, but more just staying low and kind of moving your paddle and shifting your weight rather than moving your hips and your feet to kind of hit a ball here. You just don't have a lot of time.

Okay. And as you alluded to, your paddle position also depends on what your opponent is doing. As Caleb's paddle gets higher, you have to anticipate that he's hitting the ball down. And as his paddle gets lower, you have to anticipate that he's hitting the ball up towards the sky. And so even when you're in this midcourt, if you see his paddle go high, yours should naturally go low. And if you see his paddle go low, yours should naturally go high. I think you're already doing that really, really well. But just for the people at home, it's really important that you do know that. And we've got a really awesome drill to kind of solidify this concept. And it's really, really simple. You can do this with your friends at home. You only need one partner. Here's how it works. So we would have Shay in this instance feed a ball to me. We'll just pretend he hits it over. He either feeds me a high ball that bounces up high that I would then attack or he feeds me a soft ball that bounces low that I'm forced to lift. Audrey's only job in this situation is to read what I'm about to do and immediately prep her paddle beforehand. This just builds those instincts that we're talking about with the seesaw effect. It's a really simple drill that you can try. Improves your hand speed at the same time. So, we'll send Audrey to the midcourt right over there. I will stand right here and Shay will feed me just a couple balls, some high, some low, and I'll hit the ball that Shay feeds to me. So, Audrey, your only job is just reverse whatever my paddle is doing. Nice try. You definitely got a paddle on it. Honestly, that's all you need to stay in the rally. Nice attack. Your paddle raises, mine goes low. Nice. Nice. That's so good. So, that basically just reinforces that concept. But don't forget, there's also the middle ground. If my paddle is net height, hers can also be net height. You don't necessarily have to be high or low. You're just inversing whatever your opponent is doing. So, if you're even, then you're both net height. Anyways, that's a great drill. Try it with your friends. It helps out a lot with your reflexes.

For the next part of this readiness section, we're going to do a little drill here, just me and you. And this is kind of a test. I want to see where you're at. So, we're going to do a dink rally. I'm not going to tell you why we're dinking, but I just want to watch what you do and evaluate. Okay. Okay. Let's do it. Just be natural. Okay.

What we're looking at here is what we call shading or maybe some people notice tracing, but it's the idea that no matter where the ball is in the court, the tip of your paddle should be pointing at the ball. So, one thing I noticed there that when I have the ball on this side, your natural ready position is somewhere like around your left hip. So, you're naturally like leaning more towards your backhand, but pretty extreme to where it's on the other side of your body completely. So, uh, just to fix this, whenever we're in a rally at the kitchen line or even like back at the baseline, try to keep the tip of your paddle just pointed towards where the ball is because A, it keeps you ready, right? So, we're actually more engaged in the rally, but B, and maybe even more important is that it keeps your paddle in the right position to counter a ball or to speed up a ball if it comes at you. If the paddle's on the left side of your body and I hit to your right side, you have a lot of ground to cover to get to that ball. But if you're already positioned over here, it's really simple to get to it. Okay, so let's try that again. Uh, with just the emphasis on taking the tip of your paddle, imagine there's a laser pointer on it, and you want to point it right at this ball. Let's try it. One thing I want to, uh, just mention here is that you have a lot of say in where the ball goes. So, this should be pretty easy as the person hitting the ball because you know you're going to hit it. So, if you hit the ball over here, you should be already expecting the ball to come back from this direction, which is actually something we'll talk about later on when we talk about speed-ups, right? So, this is just a great groundwork to have. Wherever you hit the ball, paddle that direction because the ball's coming back from that direction. Cool. Let's try one more. And the last thing on this tracing is that your paddle tip shouldn't be pointing directly at the ball. It should be pointing a little bit to the left of it. And here's why. You can cover the majority of your body with your backhand. You can cover shots over here with your backhand, but with your forehand, it gets a little more difficult to cover. If our paddle's directly pointing at the ball, then we're not really giving ourselves a favorable advantage. But if we naturally shade to our backhand by pointing to the left of the ball slightly, then our backhand is more readily available to defend our body. All right. So at the ball and then a little bit to the left. Question. Should when you're bringing a little bit to the left, should it be from the wrist, the elbow or the shoulder? I think that I would do it from the shoulder, right? So I'm not bending my wrist really ever. I don't want to compromise my wrist, but I'm really moving my entire shoulder and my, I would almost call it a unit turn, right? So my hips, my shoulder, everything's kind of moving. Even your feet can move slightly. To emphasize that even more, I'll have you stand in the center of the court and I will be over here. I want you to move me wherever you want to move me, okay? Mainly at the kitchen line. And just try to focus on keeping your paddle face pointed towards where the ball is. Okay? And I'm going to speed up you occasionally. Okay? Let's try. Just move me around. Oh, nice. You're like tracking where the ball is. Big improvement. Good job. Thank you. Let's go. Personally, another advantage of shading that I really like a lot is, at least for me, it forces me to have something my mind is doing during a rally cuz otherwise I'm just kind of like ready for the next shot. But when I'm forced to like actually track the ball with my paddle the entire way, I feel like it gives me something to focus on and really ups my consistency. So, I felt like I was seeing that a bit in you. I feel like you were a little more consistent with the dinks. You were a little bit more focused. Keeps you locked in. So, shading's huge. You should do it.

The next essential drill to improve your defense is just hand speed. It sounds simple, but it really is applicable to all aspects of the court. So, we're going to make sure Audrey has an awesome drill that I'm going to teach her that's going to help us improve our hand speed, which is going to help us everywhere on the court, not just at the kitchen because hand speed helps, of course, in firefights. When you're at the kitchen, of course, that's when hand speed's applicable. But even when we talked about being in the midcourt and you're defending yourself down here, having quick reaction times and being comfortable moving your paddle in different positions really helps you get more balls back over the net. So, I'm going to show you my favorite drill actually of all time. First, just to warm us up, let's get a couple hand rallies going. So, we're going to do a couple volleys. Ready? Let's see where we're at. Nice. Perfect. And then there's one thing I like to do also as a warm-up here. I like to go just forehand to forehand. In my case, forehand to your backhand. So, kind of like down the line. And then we'll switch and go backhand to your forehand. But basically, let's do some straight shots back and forth. Keep it nice and easy. Just consistency. Okay, cool. And let's go the other side, too. This is another great warm-up. Sorry. Feel like that forehand side might be stronger for you. That, that was really solid. Okay, cool. All right, now for my favorite part. We just practiced hitting some volleys. This is the way to really up your reaction time. Come with me and step into the kitchen like this. One big step. Nice. Same thing. Let's do some hands battles.

All right. Now, I'm going to show you something cool. Step back out. Okay. And it should feel like everything's in slow motion. Okay. Do you feel how much time you have now? Yeah. So, I recommend doing this with your partner almost anytime you're about to prep for a match. Cuz to me, it feels like my hands are lightning fast after I'm done. So, yeah. What do you think? Fun. Yeah. So, that's pretty much it for hand speed. That's my favorite drill to practice hands. It, it is really simple, but truly I think it's the fastest way to improve your reaction time. As I said, hand speed applies everywhere. So, now it's time to take it back to the baseline and talk about the final defensive tip that we're going to give you. How to cover the baseline when your opponent has a smash. Let's do it.

Our final topic for defense occurs right here at the baseline. So, we talked about a lot of ways to keep balls back in play and hopefully keep yourself in the rally longer. But no matter who you are, no matter how good a player you actually are, you're eventually going to pop up a ball too high, you're going to be forced to cover and attack. So, I'm going to show you what to do when you're at the baseline and you lob the ball up and your opponent has a smash and it's coming at your feet. There actually are really true and sure ways to get this ball back consistently. So, let's break it down. So, we've all been in this position, but the biggest part about an overhead coming at your feet is being in the right spot before it lands. So, a lot of people just kind of want to get in front of the ball and they're just watching the ball and their opponent the entire way. But what you really want to do is pick the highest percentage area that they're going to aim at because you likely can't cover the entire court. So, you want to make an educated guess about where they're going to attack most often. That's why whenever you see your opponent rear up for an overhead, I want you to step not towards the middle of the court. Mhm. But over here out wide. Yeah. So you can just kind of split step like this. And we're going to want to actually keep our feet closer together because we're going to want to shuffle from this position. So instead of being like this, let's stand like this. Then from here is when you're going to be able to shuffle left to right. Most opponents, if they're smart, are going to hit overheads towards the corner because a ball out wide is harder to retrieve because there's less court to work with and likely not another partner standing over here to go get the ball. So that's why we always bias the corners when we see an opponent rearing up for an overhead. On top of that, if we stand back and we stand ready and we get low, shuffle if they hit out wide and then we just want to lob it back up to our opponents. But let's talk about if you're on this side of the court, the other side, you kind of have to communicate with your partner in these situations, too. Cuz if a ball is coming really, really fast, you need to know who's going to get what ball. In general, if you have a partner standing on the left side and they have a decently strong forehand, they should always receive a middle ball that bounces right there. This person on the right should really never go for that ball because it's much tougher to shuffle and hit with your backhand than it is to cover the outwide corner. So, the person over here, their job is to cover, of course, the corner, but we're going to stand just to the left side of our square. That way, we can shuffle this direction if an overhead comes this way, or we can shuffle to the right and cover the midcourt. Another big reason we give this middle ball to our forehand is because it is literally a longer reach than it would be with our backhand. With our backhand, I have to take my arm and cross it around my body, which compromises reach as a result. Lastly, the final thing I want to emphasize when an attack is coming your way is the type of shot you need to hit to counter it. A lot of people want to hit a hero shot and get themselves back in the point as quick as possible. But really, what we want to do when we're shuffling out wide is simply make contact well. They're providing all the pace. So, we're just going to redirect with our paddle and lob it right back up at them again. Only when you have an easier shot should you start to drop and work your way back into the point. Your goal initially is to make them hit as many balls as possible until you finally get a chance to work yourself back into the point. So, a lot of people try to play the hero shot. I don't recommend that at all. Use their own pace that they're generating. You barely have to even touch the ball. You just poke it back up. Let them fire away again until you can work yourself back into the point. It's really simple. It's more of a mindset thing than it is a skill thing. So that's how we cover overheads.

Moving on from defense, the second reason why pickleball players struggle to advance and level is because they don't develop their offensive ability soon enough. So Audrey, I'm going to talk some metagame to you here. A long-term winning strategy is to get yourself into situations where you have a greater than 50% chance of winning the exchange, right? Like for example, when we're back here in transition zone, I don't want to be getting into hands battles here very often because I have a less likely chance of winning that point than my opponent does. One way you can increase your chance is by getting really good defensively, which we just covered, but another way you can increase your chance is by getting good offensively. So later on, we're going to talk about your speed-ups specifically and how you're going to be able to speed up some balls that maybe before this you couldn't speed up very effectively. If we can get that increasing higher and higher and higher, then your chances of winning a point go higher and higher and higher and so therefore you should win more points overall. So I've seen you in a lot of dink rallies before and your speed-ups are good. You hit a lot of speed-ups crosscourt. Um, and I think a lot of the times, yeah, well, it's not good. Why? It's because the opponent has a longer time to react to the ball so they can hit it harder at our teammate. But I think one reason why we do that is because the further in front of our body we make contact, the easier it is to hit the ball crosscourt because my paddle is not facing this way. If I'm reaching out in front of me, it's facing towards the side. So I got this from Tyson McGuffin, right? You probably know him and I'm sure most people watching this do, but he has this acronym called Sly, which is stable location yellow. All right, so number one, you want to be stable before you speed up a ball. Number two, it needs to be in the right location. So that ball that's really far out in front of me, I might not be able to speed it up. But if it's like right here in a good location, maybe I can. And then third is yellow. And I think this has actually changed over time. The yellow refers to a zone of your body. This would be my red zone from my toes to my knees. My yellow zone goes from my knees to my hips. And then my green zone is anything above this. So green I have full authority to just put away. Uh, yellow I can speed up. And then red I probably should never speed up. But I think as paddles have gotten better and as our technique has gotten better, we can start speeding up those lower and lower balls. So our goal right now is to get you really good at hitting those balls from like yellow, maybe a little bit into the red zone. Okay, three things that we're going to do to let you speed up well. Number one is disguise your speed-ups. So if I'm going to dink a ball, I want my dink to look the exact same as my speed up would. So what that means is that before I hit any ball, I want to be behind the ball and have my paddle tip kind of facing the ground if I can. That way I can roll over the ball and hit a dink or I can flick my paddle and speed it up. Second of all, we're going to get ready as soon as we make contact. So with our swing, we want to be as small and as minimal as possible because we have to anticipate the ball coming back at us. So we got to be ready. And then the third thing is you want to look for patterns. So if I speed up to this side of their body, I have to anticipate the ball coming back from that side of their body. This is where we make the full circle with the paddle tracing. Wherever I hit the ball, the ball comes back from that direction. So, I want to be putting my paddle in that position. So, to do that, we're going to run you through a drill. Uh, we're going to be hitting dinks back and forth. And what I want to do first is work on the first part of this, which is making your speed-ups disguised. So, I want to be hitting dinks back and forth, and then I want you to occasionally speed up the ball at me, but I want it to feel to you as if you're about to hit a dink. Okay? And so, keep it the exact same if you can. Let's try it. So, we're dinking. Just think about like what you're doing before you hit a dink. Like, where's your body position? And where's your paddle position? Okay.

One thing that I think you'll notice right away is that balls out to the side of your body feel really uncomfortable speeding up. It's difficult to speed up a ball over here, right? What we can do though is we can move our feet behind the ball and get it in the right spot on our body. So like even, even on that one right here, if I hit the ball over here, go ahead and take one shuffle step, get it in the center of your body. Love that. Nice. Nice. That's it. I think I'm seeing it a lot over, over here on your forehand side is you tend to, you tend to create a lot of space. Yeah. When you could be getting behind the ball and then flicking from in front of your body. Okay. So, move even more to my forehand. Nice. It has the, uh, added benefit of this. If the ball is outside of my body, it's really difficult to hit it crosscourt. I really don't have a lot of options. I can hit it down the line or I can hit a really wristy shot and try to get it crosscourt. But if I can slide over now, I can really hit a good crosscourt shot. I can speed up down the line. I can speed up middle. I just have more options. There it is. Oh, all right. Let's, let's talk about the second thing here, too, is, uh, the slow backswing. So, before you're making contact with the ball, I can see you speeding up because your wrist is going backwards. So, try to keep it in front of you and just push it forward. A really important concept is that your speed-ups don't have to be hit with a lot of speed. They have to be placed well and they have to be disguised. Okay? So, when you're hitting these, think about hitting me around the shoulders because this is the place where it's hardest for me to defend my body. And so, if you hit these spots, you don't have to hit it with a lot of speed to be very effective with your speed up. Good. Nice. I think, um, another thing here just to be aware of, I know I'm throwing a lot at you. A lot of these things are going to be useful for people to go back and reference. One thing here that you can do to help your chances of hitting good speed-ups is getting ready earlier. So, as the ball's coming to you on your dinks, you're kind of already set up ready to hit the ball. But if you're speeding it up, your paddle's still moving and then you're like getting a little momentum to hit the shot. So, on your speed-ups, I'm going to get ready and then I'm already ready. Paddle low, right? I can speed it up without really a lot of movement. Nice. All good. Let's move this a little bit further. So, we'll have Caleb step in now, too. And what you're going to be doing is speeding up at Caleb, but hitting crosscourt dinks with me. We'll be hitting crosscourt dinks whenever you feel comfortable. So, your feet are stable, you're behind the ball, it's in the right position, and it's like above your knees or maybe slightly below. Feel free to hit Caleb. If I manage hopefully to counter it back at you, give me that one, two punch. Okay. My goal will be to kind of set you up. I want you to like finish strong. A lot of people just kind of hit one and think the point's over cuz they sped it up. So, let's, let's get that one two punch going. Okay. Here we go. Am I still rearing up to do it? You are. I think there's like a mindset of I got to hit this ball hard. Yeah. Let me just hit some example ones out of him. I'm not going to hit him hard. Just I'm going to try to place them well. Kind of the, the point here is to not hit a ball that wins. It's what Caleb was saying. It's the one two punch. So, I want to make you feel awkward and then pop it up and then I can put it away. Got it. I just have to. Right. The other kind of part of this is if you do let it go long, I want to make sure it lands in the court if I can. All right. So, all right. Let's try a few more. Focusing on placement. A lot of those I was trying to hit you high. Okay. Around here. That's good. So, the shorter your swing is, the more you're ready for the next one, too. So, really focus on placement. Short swing and then you're ready for that one two punch. Love that. Let's go. Nice. There we go. We're not going to drill this next part cuz we're running a little bit low on time, but I just wanted to mention to you as we get better at this and you start thinking more about where you're hitting the ball, start thinking about patterns. So, this is the example I mentioned earlier. If I speed the ball up from here to this side of your body, I want to go ahead and shade my paddle in that direction. Thinking that if you're hitting the ball from that side, it's probably coming back this way. So, I would usually speed up here and then look to put away here. And then same thing on the other side. If I'm going to like speed up with the backhand and I speed up across your body, I'm looking for my next shot to be probably around here because I can put it away from here. So, the more intentional you are with where you speed up, the better chance you have of knowing where the next ball is going.

All right, so to round out the offense, let's finish out with what most people think of when they think of offense. We just covered speed-ups, but up next is drives. Audrey, what kind of player are you? Are you soft game? Do you like, it looks like you like to hit it pretty hard. What do you think? Yeah, I like to think I'm a bit of a more aggressive player, but like in mixed levels, I'll definitely be more of the soft game. Yeah, makes a lot of sense. Okay, cool. Yeah, I'm actually the same way. I like to play the aggressive game as well. So, drives are kind of what I started playing pickleball with, and it's what I love the most. So, whenever I see a ball that's high, maybe feel this way, too. I like to smash it. Let's say you get a high ball in the middle of the court like here. Mhm. And you're going to hit a drive because you want to stay aggressive, right? What's your thought process before you hit a drive, if at all? Zero judgment, I swear. Is it just smash or is it like, you know, do you have a, I mean, I try to have some kind of idea of where I want to place it. Um, I usually will look to see where they are on the court first. Perfect. Okay. What are your typical, like, let's say go-to 90% targets that you want to hit? Their body. Body. Okay, I don't mind body. That's definitely part, part two. Body and I do, I mean, what I try to do, not that I do it successfully, is go to the sides.

I'm going to cover quickly two of the best targets to have when you are going for drives and just some important things you should keep in mind, a little bit of technique, a little bit of mental willpower to control your drives so they just go in more often. Cuz the biggest problem with drives, kind of like we showed up at the kitchen line, even when we're speeding up, is they go out or they go into the net. So, we just talked about kind of with defense high percentage plays, we want to make sure our drives go in every single time. And there's actually a couple ways to maximize that. So, let me show you. Um, step one, if you don't know where to drive at all, let's say it's on the middle of the court, you want to turn your brain off and you want to have one target only. There's a surefire place to aim every single time you drive the ball. It's super simple. You're going to aim just over this middle part of the net. There's several reasons the middle is the safest and often best place to aim when you're driving. First of all, the net is literally a couple inches lower on the middle. So that means when you hit your shot, you have more clearance. So your margin of error is actually higher when you're aiming over the net. So you're going to be less likely to make contact with the net because the net is actually lower for you. On top of that, on the other side of the net, your opponents have to make a decision whenever you hit a ball towards the middle because one of them either has to take a forehand or one of them either has to take a backhand. The one thing we want our opponents to do the most is think before they hit a shot. That results in errors. So, if they have to communicate or maybe even shuffle to take that ball, you're adding more factors that cause them to make an error. So, you're more likely to receive a pop-up when someone has to hit a ball that's coming towards the middle because maybe someone steps in too much and takes a backhand. Maybe they don't expect their partner to take a forehand. It's a great place to go. The only thing I will advise you if you do hit over the middle because there is an opponent with a forehand, we need to make sure we're not aiming too high. That is going to get the ball smashed at you. So, I don't recommend that. Another awesome reason we like to aim towards the middle is because it gives our opponents less options. So whenever you hit your big drive and you know your opponent is about to receive it, we want to give them as little court to work with as possible. When a ball is in the middle, the actual angle they are going to hit is going to be less sharp than what it would be on the side of the court. For instance, if you hit a drive over here, they're able to hit crosscourt with much more angle. Versus if we get their forehand in the middle, it's much tougher to get that out wide shot. It's a much lower percentage shot for them to hit as sharp an angle to the corner. So that's another big advantage of hitting down the middle. Always safe. Middle solves the riddle. But let's talk about the second thing you should do when you get an opportunity on a drive. And this sounds like your favorite. It's just body bagging. So, super fun. Okay. So, the next thing we like to do when we drive, which makes a lot of sense. We talked about this with speed-ups, is we like to pick a target that is your opponent's body. Some people think that that's a bad idea, like it's mean or something. And I admit maybe in wreck play against a lower level player shouldn't be trying to body bag every single point. But in a competitive game, 100% this is a valid choice. And just like Shay talked about, I'll go into a bit more detail. There's some places we want to aim. We don't just want to aim at our opponents down the line. We want to hit their right hip and their right shoulder. The reason why try to defend up here. It feels really awkward. Maybe you can, but this is one of the most uncomfortable positions in pickleball because most people try to block with their backhand first. You're forced to do something strange like this. Same thing on your hip. A lot of people do what's called a chicken wing when they need to defend their right hip. So, we like to target these areas because they're very, very prone to a pop-up. So, this is the safest option when you're hitting a drive to again enable that one-two punch we talked about earlier. Lastly, let's emphasize this. Let's just give you a couple drills. I just want you to try those two big high percentage shots. So, when you see a drive that's on the right side of the court, I want you to try aiming down the line right at me who's feeding the ball. But, when I feed you a ball in the middle, instead of trying to hit a tough shot at my body, I want you to instead hit right back down the middle. Perfect. It's all right. Nice. Awesome drive. That's really solid. Go out wide. Yeah, that's the time to go down the line. That's solid. Here we go. Perfect. Your drives are really solid. I can tell you like that style of play. All right, I'm going to feed you one in the middle. I just kind of want you to decide what you want to do here. Okay. All right. Here we go. Good. I like that choice. Always safest on the middle. Good.

So, now we've covered some defense. We even got some offense. Now, it's time to put it all together and play better pickleball. Let's break it down. The third and final reason why players struggle to advance is because they can't put it all together. So, some people like yourself are more offensively minded. Some people like myself are more defensively minded, but we struggle to do both. So, now we're going to talk about your different roles depending on if you're the server or the receiver. Okay. So, let's come back here as the server. So, what in your mind when you're serving, what are you thinking about? Are you more aggressive or more defensive? In a doubles, especially mixed doubles, um, I usually will start out with a pretty aggressive serve. And depending on how their return is, I might switch it up because a lot of times if I could do a little bit of softer or a little shallower serve, their return is going to also be softer and shallower. Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. I think one thing I like that I hear you say is that you're really thinking about your serve, which we're going to talk about here. But what I want you to realize is that maybe on our serve, we want to be really aggressive, but just by the nature of how this game works, our opponents are going to already be up at the line. So, we are in a more defensive position. So, when you're the serving team, you're naturally the more defensive team. So, we need to be making decisions that allow us to eventually be offensive. One of the things that people just don't even think about is where they're going to aim their serve. And I won't cover like all the different places you can aim, but what I want you to be thinking about is when you're about to serve, just have a place in the court where you're specifically aiming. It's the most overlooked thing you can do, right? If you can pinpoint literally the exact location on the court that you want to hit the ball, your chances of hitting that spot go way, way, way up. Okay, so we're going to do that. But to put it together, we are the serving team. We have to hit a third shot. We want to also already be thinking about where our third shot is going to go. So maybe the other team has like a worse player or a player that has a bad forehand or a bad backhand and we know we want to target that. I want to know where they are lined up before I hit my serve so that when the ball comes back to me, I already have that decision made for me. So to practice that, we're going to do a little drill here. We're going to have you serve. Number one, pick a spot. Hit the spot. Okay? And then number two, Caleb and I will be lined up over there and I just want you to hit whatever spot we call out. So, serve and tell the camera where you're going to serve and then think about hitting your third shot just down the middle. I'm going to hit it more towards the middle. Okay. Nice. Was that where you were trying to aim? Yeah. I think sometimes though you can hit drives if it's like the right ball. Okay. But also just know where you're hitting that drive. So, same thing here. I want you now to aim to me. Okay. Another secret. We're going to hit it to the corner. Okay.

One thing there, I want to mention it because we covered drives earlier. Thinking about being the serving team. We are in a defensive position, right? So, you're back there. I'm up here. So, when you're hitting your drives, you don't have to hit winners. We're just trying to hit balls that allow you to hit a fifth shot drop and then come up to the kitchen. So on your drive, you know, Caleb talked about if it's on the line, hit it down the line. The net's higher over here. So, you know, if you hit the same shot you hit over there, it's going to hit the net every time. It doesn't have to be hit hard, but just aim over the net and try to give yourself a better chance of hitting an easier fifth shot drop. Okay. All right. This time, your third shot's going to go crosscourt. You can drive or drop up to you. Okay. Okay. We're going to hit a short serve to the center. Okay. Love it. I guess Caleb could have probably hit that a little bit harder if he wanted to, but still like, it's a difficult spot to generate a lot of power from. So even though you hit it high, you then had a really easy fifth shot. So that's on the serving side when more defensive. Now Caleb, the more offensive player, we'll talk about on the returning side how that changes.

Okay, so we just covered one of the best ways to visualize what you should be doing when you're serving, but we also need to focus on the more offensive role, which is when you're the returner. So, there's one big thing we want to think about when we're returning the ball in pickleball. Kind of like Shay mentioned, we want to have a target. Typically, when you're playing a team, you should be able to identify it, even in warm-up, sometimes there's going to be a weaker player. That's, that's pretty common. And the other person's going to try to compensate for that. So, we want to be returning as often as we can to the weaker player to get ourselves the best chance to get up to the kitchen line after the return and stay offensive during the point. The only thing we don't want to do when, when we are the returning team is lose our offensive pressure. So, the easiest way to do that is to hit to the player who's likely to pop the ball right back up to us. And sometimes they're more balanced. I'm not saying that's the case every time, but if you can find that person, that's the go-to target, but if you can't find that person or you're still unsure where you should hit the ball, there's a couple other options. Just like we mentioned with hitting a drive down the middle, I also like to return down the middle. Again, it makes our opponents communicate more often because when we're in the middle, someone has to decide. Right? Just like at the net, if they're going to come over and take a ball or if the person with the backhand is going to come take that ball. So, I like the middle as the best option. And also, it eliminates again those angles from our opponents. When we return down the line, we're giving our opponents a big chance to hit a sharp corner diagonal across the court. Just like we talked about with serving, there's also third shots. So, we don't have to think about our third shot when we're returning. We're the second shot and then we are the fourth shot. So, when you do finally make your way up to the kitchen, unlike when we're serving where we don't know exactly if we're going to drive or drop, we know every single time when we're returning, we're moving straight up to the kitchen. The biggest decision you have to make over here is if you're going to hit a roll/volley or if you're going to be hitting a dink. And that just depends on the quality of your opponent's shot. The biggest mistake we see in lower level players is they pick the wrong shot to go for and often don't play safe enough when they should be hitting a different shot. So, for example, if we hit a return that's crosscourt and our opponent hits a very solid drop, I see a lot of people not respecting that drop and instead trying to reach and take a volley of the air. But, we do have a drill that's going to help you identify the right shot to hit every single time. So, let's just, let's just go through it. Here we go. I want you to pick a target. It doesn't matter. It can be Shay. It can be me. I want you to know your game plan in moving forward. But the key is Shay and I are both going to mix up hitting perfect and imperfect drops. Sometimes we're going to hit the ball too high. I want you to attack us and keep the pressure going. Okay? But when we hit a perfect drop, respect that drop. Take a step back and enter a dink rally.

That was awesome. What, what was the most helpful actually? Um, I think there was a few things that were super helpful. The one is getting behind the ball. I think from the sports that I come from, it feels unnatural. So, it's not something that's in my mind. So, actually getting behind the ball instead of setting myself away from the ball and also picking the spots not just on the serve, but on the return and on the third shot. Now, Audrey has what it takes to reach the advanced level, and so do you. If you like that video, please consider subscribing. And if you want more, you can click on this video right here. It's right in front of your head. You can't even see Audrey anymore. It's just, just a video.