Sarah's Ideal Grip

Control means letting go...

I gave a lesson to near beginner last week. As I always do, I check the grip first and explain the advantages of the continental grip. But there is more to the grip than the paddle handle's relative position in the hand. Sarah Ansboury talks about some of the important parts of the grip in her RVPickler article The Ideal Pickleball Grip, an excerpt of which is below.

Ideal Pickleball Grip

The ideal pickleball grip requires you to hold the paddle with your fingers.  There should be space between the palm of your hand and the handle of the paddle. Rather than your thumb running up the handle, it should go around the handle. This will minimize the risk of hyper-extending your elbow or over-utilizing your wrist.

F.I.T.

Go hard or go home...

While all of D.J. Howard's tips are targeted toward improvement, today's is very specific. It talks about improvement through practice and three key elements of effective practice.

DJ's weekly pickleball tip:

Want to improve? Remember the acronym F.I.T.

Frequency

Intensity

Time

Third Shot Footwork

Getting the fundamentals right...

The Jordan Briones Primetime video series continues from a different position - the baseline. Today's post uses his video Pickleball | Essential 3rd Shot Footwork to show how proper positioning will help to make your third shot drop more consistent. 

The fundamentals of any consistent shot, especially the third shot drop, consist of hitting the ball in the same place every time. I talked about this extensively in the December 16, 2017 post Positioning and the Natural Swing. I stated:

I believe that everyone has a natural swing. The swing that you took the first time you touched a paddle was likely your natural swing. You performed it without thought and used what felt comfortable. Ever since that day, your swing has been influenced by your mind as it adjusts your swing to fix mishits and misplays and to add others' technical advice...

The principle of a natural swing is simple. It is all about comfort zones - something I have talked a lot about in this blog, especially when targeting spots to take your opponents out of their comfort zone. The same theory can be reversed when thinking of yourself. Getting yourself into a position to take your natural swing is the ultimate comfort zone. That's a place you want to be.

Jordan talks about hitting the drop shot in your comfort zone, i.e., not reaching and not allowing the ball to get too close to your body. It is the area when you are balanced and most in control. In order to always contact the ball at the same point, it is imperative that you move your body to the proper position. This takes anticipating the ball's path and and getting your feet positioned early.

More on Positioning at the NVZ Line

Getting the fundamentals right...

The next video in Jordan Briones Primetime video series follows up on the post from 2 weeks ago called Fundamental Positioning at the NVZ Line. That video discussed "depth", meaning distance from the NVZ line. This video literally changes direction to discuss positioning and footwork side-to-side at the Non-Volley Zone line. The video is titled Pickleball Footwork | Winning Footwork At The Net

Jordan's main point on positioning is that players should be in the middle of their half of the court, i.e., nearly equidistant from the center line and the sideline.

Fundamental Positioning at the NVZ Line

Getting the fundamentals right...

The Jordan Briones Primetime video series continues with fundamental advice. Today's post uses his video Pickleball | How To Dominate The Net to discuss positioning and footwork at the Non-Volley Zone line.

The discussion is focused on techniques after all players are established at the NVZ. There are 2 main concepts to remember. Each is discussed below.

1. Establish yourself right at the line. Not a foot back. Not even 6 inches away. Right at the line.

Scoring for Beginners

Scoring is how we keep track...

I need to remember that beginners are always coming to the pickleball world and provide some content to help bring them in. Luckily, there are others out there doing the same thing. PlayPickleball.com has created some really nice videos in its few months of existence. The following video on pickleball scoring is one of theirs.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball with Paddle Tracking

Keep your eye on the ball - even if you can't see it...

A recent article from Sarah Ansboury has caused me to revisit a topic I wrote about in May - keeping your eye on the ball. Sarah makes several good points and recommends a couple of techniques to help you with the right focus. The following excerpts are from Sarah's article Keep Your Eye on the Ball…A Simple Pickleball Tip on the RV Picklers blog.

Sarah's first recommended technique is one you have seen before. In Keep Your Eyes on the Ball - How to Do It, I wrote:

Matt Blom was an instructor at the Pickleball Summit and had students go through several ball toss drills while instructed to "watch the holes in the ball". This provides even more focus when a player is about to hit the ball.  Excellent advice.

Don't Strangle Your Paddle

Rip and tear and strangle the grip...

There are times when a stranglehold grip is appropriate...such as mountain climbing or climbing a rope. But pickleball is not one of those times. This is something with which I still struggle in cometition. During warm-ups and hitting practice, I can lightly grip the paddle and consistently hit soft shots time after time. But that consistency changes as the intensity of a real game increases. My grip on the paddle seems to tighten and results are deeper drop shots and dinks. That is not good for either me or my partner.

I have read and heard coaches talk about a grip tension scale of 1-10 and associate specific shots with points on that scale. Shorter and softer shots are on the low end as the grip should be looser in order to absorb more of the ball's energy. Longer but soft shots, like a drop shot, should be somewhere in the middle of the scale as the ball must have some energy to cover greater distances. A groundstroke hit with power requires maximum energy and the grip should be tightest on these shots.

Sarah Ansboury wrote about her ideas on grip tension in a blog titled Check Your Grip Pressure. An excerpt from that article is shown below.

Protect Your Shoulder

Sometimes we can avoid injuries by practicing techniques...

It seems the primary injury among my recreational group is the shoulder. Some have resorted to surgery whiles others have improved through rehab and rest. But the best solution is to prevent injury in the first place. Barbara Wintroub and the RV Picklers had an article discussing shoulder injuries called How to Prevent Pickleball Shoulder Injuries. An excerpt from the article is shown below. The entire article can be read at the link.

Prevent Pickleball Shoulder Injuries

Wouldn’t it be better to prevent these sorts of pickleball shoulder injuries?  In the video before, I show how posture, specifically the proper positioning of one’s shoulders, can minimize the incidence of shoulder injuries.  I also demonstrate simple exercises to improve your posture and shoulder position.

If you are currently under treatment for a shoulder injury, please review the video with your health professional before embarking on this or any other exercise program.

Aspen's Advice: Grip

"Grip it and rip it" is not a strategy...

Aspen Kern is the creator of the Pickleball Forum and often adds his thoughts on pickleball topics. Aspen is a top player in the game and knows what he is talking about. Since the subject of this week has been about the results of my new grip, his thoughts on the grip are very relevant.

Aspen's Advice

There are Pickleball coaches that recommend certain grips that come from tennis (mainly the continental), that translate well to the game of Pickleball. What they don't tell you is every tennis grip can be mimiced by making an adjustment with the arm and wrist. My go to grip is a slight variation on the continental, but as you can see below I use it with different wrist angles to construct a variety of Pickleball specific shots. The photo on the top is a continental grip wrist adjusted to project a downward volley. The 2nd photo is a variation I use on my forehand dink to disguise misdirections. These are the result of over 7000 hours worth of drilling, but I know they can be implemented fairly quickly because I have taught them to other players, and they were using them within a few months. If your a tennis player, start thinking Pickleball, and if your a Pickleball player, start thinking angles.

Continental Grip

Pickleball helps us keep a grip on reality...

Yesterday's post was about my personal decision to change to a continental grip. I tried to describe the grip and some reasons why I made the change. Today we will follow up with a couple of videos from Mark Renneson discussing the continental grip.

The first video is a quick description of the grip. It appears that Mark has removed the video from his playlist but the link I saved still works. The video was called Continental Grip.

Reinventing My Game - The Grip

Get a grip, but not around my neck...

Change is hard. Change means admitting that you are doing things wrong. Change means accepting that things will be worse before they get better. Change means stepping away and stepping back. Change means work through practice. But change also means a quest to improve. Therefore, it is necessary for most of us...since we are not the perfect pickleball player.

I decided in December that some parts of my game needed to change in order to get to the level I wanted. I started studying the basics of the game even more than usual. I studied serves, groundstrokes, volleys, and dinks. I wondered why I could not perform some of the shots I studied. Ultimately, I learned that I needed to start with the most basic fundamental of the game - the way I grip the paddle.

The Grip

Edit to this post - one reason this blog was started to document my learning process. This post was written early in the process. I later learned a lot more about the grip and wrote about in Reinventing My Game - The Grip and Continental Grip. Some of the concepts in this post are still good but be sure to read the others for a complete understanding of the grip.

There are lots of moving parts to the pickleball swing – pointing your shoulder, setting your feet, swinging through the ball, etc. None of that matters if something as innocuous as your grip has your paddle pointing upward, downward, or sideways. A proper grip helps to possible the shot you want.

Generally, the proper paddle position should be perpendicular to the court in order to propel the ball forward as low as possible over the net. Your grip should facilitate that angle. A significant complicating factor is that ball-striking occurs on both sides of your body. A forehand stroke occurs when hitting the ball on the same side as the hand holding the paddle. A backhand stroke occurs on the opposite side. The different strokes require the body to twist in different ways and puts different stresses on your wrist to keep the proper perpendicular position (say that 3 times fast!).