Transcription
By the end of this video, you're going to know exactly what stacking is, why you should consider using this strategy, and how to exploit your opponents when they decide to stack against you. And if you've been confused on what stacking is, that's, that's what we're going to talk about. Okay, here we go.
So, normal pickleball switching, right? So we're going to, here we're in our position right now. I'm starting the game. We're matching. It's zero zero two. And here's going to be important language. Starting position are two words we want to remember throughout this video. So, starting position is me right here on the right, Tyler right here on the left. So anytime our score is zero, two, four, six, eight, or ten, I'm going to be on the right side, Tyler's going to be on the left side. Anytime our score is one, three, five, seven, or nine, Tyler, you should find yourself on the right side and myself on the left side. Okay, so starting position, back to our starting position. Okay, this is our starting position. This is our, anytime the score is even. But if the score is odd, think opposite. Odd, opposite, opposite our starting position. Okay, important to know. Back to our original position. Start. Ready. Starting position on three. One, two, three. Positions. Your bike. Oh, here we go.
So, right, normal switching. We won the first point. If we win a point, we switch sides, right? Now I'm going to serve on this side. Okay, score is one zero. Now, imagine I win the point again. We're gonna switch back. Okay, that would be two zero, right? And so that's how pickleball is typically played. If you've been playing for just a few months, that's probably how you play. You play a little bit on the right, you play a little bit on the left. We're gonna call that the normal world.
Now let's go to the alternative worlds, which is stacking. Stacking is a specific doubles strategy the serving team and the receiving team can use that allows the team to have each player on their preferred side or their stronger side. Okay, for example, let's say that we love having, you know, so we're gonna stack Tyler on the left. We want to stack me on the right. Which means throughout all the points, we're going to want Tyler to be playing on the left side, we need to be playing on the right side. Okay, so we're gonna imagine that we serve it and we win the point. So let's just do it. Okay, split. Boom. We serve it. Okay, boom. And we win the point. We're not going to have Tyler switch. What I'm going to do is this is where the stack comes in. I'm gonna now come over here. There's nothing in the rules that says we can't have two players standing on one of the sides before we play. And so we're gonna stack. Stacking two players on one box in order to have Tyler on his preferred side, which is the left, and then after I serve to get me on my preferred side, which is the right. Okay, one zero two. Ah, let's go. Nice. So we won that. Okay, so now we're back in our starting position. It's two zero two. I'm back on my side. But now we don't have to worry about being on the same service box. Two zero two. Nice. Okay, Mrs. Boom. Miss the ball. Three zero two. Okay, I'm coming back over and Tyler's just gonna slide. Three zero two.
[Applause]
Okay, four zero two. So again, that keeps me on my preferred side in this circumstance, which is on the right. Keeps Tyler on his preferred side, which is the left. We're getting to the turning side and stacking here in a moment. Let's just stay on the serving side to keep it simple right now. Let's say it was a side out and then we got it back. Now it's, uh, back to a side out for us. We lost the first point. Now we're here at four zero two. Okay, so now Tyler is serving over to JT. Four zero two. We'll win one point. Okay, bowling ball goes out. Okay, so it's five zero two. We're gonna move over. I'm on my preferred side, the right side. Tyler is going to serve here because we got the stack on this side because remember, right now we have five points. So odd number five means opposite our starting position. Tyler started on the left, now he's on the right. He's gonna serve and slide over to his side. Here we go. Okay. Ah, nice. So then it would be a side out and we'll get to how you handle the return in the second.
Now let's talk about why you would stack. Today's video is brought to you by Selkirk. So I wrote down six different reasons and there might be a few more, but six reasons why you might consider stacking with your partner. If you're having a conversation with your partner like, should we stack? Should we not? Consider these six things.
Number one, if one of your teammates has more length. Right, so Tyler's a little bit taller than me. And if he has got more length, I can be bigger in the middle here, right? It's harder for Tyler to be really big with his backhand. I have a lot more length with my forehand here. So if I have, if I'm taller, a lot of times you're gonna see the taller player on the left. Not always, but it's one reason to consider.
Number two, stronger forehand. So when you think about mixed doubles, you're often going to see the guy on the left. Not always, a lot of times though, the guy has a bit more power with his put away in his forehand. And oftentimes the girls actually have a better, you know, two-handed backhand and they like, not always, but a lot of times they like their forehand in. So you'll see the guy play the left side in mixed doubles because of that. Let's say we have a lefty. Time, put the pad on your left hand, almost exclusively. If you see a righty, lefty playing together, you're gonna see the righty play on the left side and the lefty play on the right side because it puts both forehands in the middle. One thing I learned, I heard this from the Johns Brothers one time. They talked about they think the future of pickleball is actually righty, lefty because it's so much harder for people to speed up through the middle because we have length and power. Now, there are some downsides to the middle, like you have two forehands. Who's going to typically be the person that takes the middle ball? Because sometimes both players want it, right? Then you get caught. But if those guys work, those girls work it out, then it can become a huge advantage.
Number three, if you want to hide a player's weakness. So Tyler, nice guy and a budding player, okay? But right now he has a weaker backhand. And because he has a weaker backhand, we can actually hide that weakness in tournament play by sticking him on the right side exclusively. And so he doesn't have to hit many backhands. Because if a ball goes, go ahead and hit a volatile's backhand, I can come in here and I can actually protect his backhand. Where if he's on the left, boom, right? If he's on the left, he's gonna potentially have more trouble. And then on the flip side, highlight a strength. Right? So a lot of times you're like, well, what side should we play? Well, I've played with guys who have a much bigger forehand in the middle, and that can be a big weapon. So a big forehand in the middle might be a strength, and it's going to be hard for a player on the right side to get as many forehands when there's a lot of middle returns. Another one might be for me, for example, I love to Ernie on this side. So it's a big threat for me to be on the left side. I can't Ernie as much on the right side. Highlight a strength.
Number five, you might want to put a certain player in front of another player. Let's say JT and I are dinking and JT keeps speeding up at Tyler off the bounce, boom, and just owning him. Now, that actually is pretty realistic. I love he's my friend, okay? He might be speeding up and so I might say, let's just, we gotta, we gotta change something. I maybe say, I think I can handle that. Let's stack me on the right. Okay, so I can be the one that JT is typically speeding up on again. Now we have Tyler with his backhand, though. So, you know, you got to play, you got to figure out the different situations and what's going to be best for your team to win the most points. Um, and then number six is just giving a different look. Like if you're down zero seven and you might get stuck on one side where like they're just abusing Tyler's backhand, right? Well, then we might want to switch it up and just, let's just change it up and give them something different. Oftentimes, that'll help you get off of a number if you're stuck on like zero or one or something like that.
So we lost it, five zero two. Tyler was serving. Now this is often where people get really confused when they're stacking, right? They're back and forth, it's a lot going on. There's a really long point and then all of a sudden it's a side out. Means the other team gets the serve. Ball goes over there and now the scoring currently is zero them, five us. And we're like, wait, where are we supposed to stand? Well, remember starting position. Okay, I started on the right, Tyler started on the left. Meaning I should be on the right if we have zero, two, four, six, eight, or ten points. But if we're on an odd number, that means opposite of starting. Okay, so on the return, it's zero five. We have five. I'm gonna be on the left side. Okay, now that's one way to get over the confusion, which still happens. That took me like a year and a half to get this right. So I want to help make it simple for you on the return. Remember, the purpose of stacking is it's a doubles strategy to help me and my partner be on our preferred side for all the reasons that we just talked about. So after Tyler returns the ball, there's a couple different ways that we can do this. The first one's called an after return switch.
Okay.
[Music]
Good. So they won the point, which would mean they're on one five one now, right? I switched and I ended the point over here, right? And this is where we get confused. Now I would come back, boom, and I would go back here and we'd have a wrong returner situation. If you're playing in a tournament, remember, you can always ask the ref, am I the correct returner? The ref will tell you, they'll say no or they'll say yes. And if they say no, then you'll move around. But remember, you can always tell because we have five points right now, so I should be on the opposite of where I started. Okay, so it's one five. Tyler, I'm gonna return. We're gonna do an after return switch. And as a quick note, the partner who's up at the net should give a signal to the partner who's about to return to avoid any confusion. The standard signal for switch is a five and the standard signal for stay is a fist.
[Music]
Go. Good. If you're playing a tournament in like the first month or two of playing pickleball, don't stack because you're gonna end up spending way more time talking about stacking and way less time thinking about actual pickleball, and it's actually going to hurt you. So you would definitely want to practice this before you go into a tournament. First tournament ever played, I didn't even know you could ask the ref. We got caught like six times in the wrong position. So that's the after return switch. You know, a lot of players like to do this. Part of the reason it's, it can be a good thing to do is Tyler, let's go. Imagine that Tyler had just returned the ball and he's running to his position. There is a moment here where he like loses vision of the ball, right? He has to cross my back. Okay, now the benefit of this, I can cover the middle while Tyler's getting there, and then I can kind of slide back, which is helpful. That's the after return. There is some danger to it. But there's another way to actually do it. Okay, so Tyler's back here and this is called the of port step on. Okay, so in this situation, I'm actually gonna eliminate anything about Tyler like losing vision or whatever. And I'm just gonna stand right here. Okay, Tyler is gonna serve, he's gonna return the ball, and then he's gonna get over there, right? Now he's got to hit a good return, otherwise there's a lot of court open and I'm just gonna step on. So he'll never lose vision. Let's go ahead and play a point. Ah, got it. Yeah, good. Quick interruption. Zoom in a little bit. Out. I got a video series, a new video series for you, 18 Advanced tips to help you move up a level. Go to the description below, click the link, type in your email, and start getting videos immediately. One video a day for 18 days. Let's go. Now back to the video.
Let me give you two bonus tips here on some stacking strategy. I'm going a little bit past what Tyler probably told me I should do if I should stop here, but I want to give it to you so you have some. One specific strategy for the serving team. If we notice that they're stacking throughout this game and we want to try to take advantage of what's called unwinding the stack. It's what we just showed you on your return when you have to unwind the stack, return from one side and run to the other. That's more difficult, right? It's much easier to just return it and go to your position. So let's try to exploit what we know is about to happen, which is an unwind to the stack. Tower, let me just play the left for this position and you're gonna, yeah, we'll stack like this. Perfect. Okay, so they're unwinding the stack, meaning Jack is going to be running, go over to where JT is after the surf. JT is a responsibility, he's got to cover his partner and Jack, you need to, you need to get your butt over there. But we're not talking about them yet. We're talking about what you should do as a serving team. Okay, what I'm going to try to do is I'm going to try to attack the guy or the girl in whatever situation you're in who's on the move. Let's just see if it works. Right now, here we go. Clan for real. Ah, go. This guy. Here's another example. I, I'm recognizing, you know, I might see the hand signal from Jack. He might put five behind his back, which is a hand signal for like stay or switch. Let's assume he's giving the, the switch. So I know JT's running over here. So this ball is anywhere towards me, I'm probably going at JT on the move. Here we go. Yeah. Pause right there. Right, backhanding. So good example. So JT, why didn't you run to the kitchen like you stayed back on that ball? Uh, I feel the best angle to handle anything that you're gonna hit at me was further back. Okay, all right, so that's fine. And what I do like though, is that because I hit a drive and he was all the way back there, now we're in the most advantageous position. We're at the kitchen and they got one guy back. So one more time. Ah, boom. All right. And so like, you're on the move, it's really hard for you to be able to like stop and dig a ball or whatever, right? Yeah. Okay.
Let me give you one specific strategy as the return team. Okay, so they're serving and I know I have to go all the way over there. So number one, I'm gonna return down the line. If I return cross-court, let's show an example. Yeah. Okay, that's a really hard shot for me, as you just saw. I returned it short and I had to run all the way over there as Jack is running in, as you notice, and he could drive the ball to really hard volley for me. So instead of me returning cross, right or left, if you return it deep, you're probably going to be fine anyway. But you're trying to remove some of the margin for error and give yourself more time. So what I like to do is I actually like to return it line because I know if I return it line, all you have to do, Tyler, is step over and cover the, the line, right? And then he would have to hit a cross-court ball, which is going to be, the ball's gonna take longer to go cross-court than it is line, right? So I, I like the ability to return cross-court because I have the lowest part of the net in front of me and I have the most room to work with. But I don't like that his ball is going to be short going line. So I'm going to take a shorter route. Tyler's going to cover the line and I'm going to make JT hit a cross-court ball and if he decides to, here we go. Boom. Okay. And one other thing is this. If I hit it down the line, that's going to JT's backhand, which most players have less offense or a worse drive. And if he runs all the way over there and runs around it, I'm okay with that. Like it's a long time to get over there and it's a long shot for him to do anything to put too much pressure on me. I can just block that ball. Ah, a. So that's what stacking is. It's why you might consider doing it. And if you enjoyed that video, you might also enjoy this video, which is all about what do you do when you're the partner who's not the one hitting the third shot drop. I call it the traffic light system as a way to think about how do you move in the correct way so you actually can get to the kitchen and be more aggressive. Check this video out. Seriously.