Tip 1
If you want to become an advanced pickleball player, you need to get comfortable with dinking 10, 20, or even 50+ times! On that same note, one of the most frustrating things in pickleball is popping up a dink and getting attacked. One of the most common causes of popped up dinks is flicking the wrist through the swing, on both the forehand and backhand sides. The wrist is a very small muscle, and it accelerates very quickly. To stop the ball from popping up, focus on keeping your wrist locked in position and dinking by raising your shoulder. Your wrist should be fully still throughout the swing. The wrist tends to be overused more when you’re hitting out of position, i.e. when you’re stretching wide to hit or hitting the ball from behind your body. In these cases, it’s very hard to swing using your shoulder, so you have to use your wrist to overcompensate. So, make sure that you get right behind the ball by moving your feet and staying on your toes. That will allow you to use a compact swing from your shoulder rather than flicking your wrist.
Tip 2
One of the biggest fallacies in pickleball is that you should never cross your feet at the kitchen line. While it’s not something you want to get in the habit of doing on all of your dinks, there is one specific (and rather common) situation where it is beneficial: on very wide backhand dinks. The point of the crossover step is to quickly cover as much court as possible. When you cross over on your backhand side, you’re moving your dominant foot over your non-dominant foot, which moves your paddle side across the court towards the ball. So if your opponent hits you a wide backhand dink that you won’t be able to shuffle to in time, feel free to cross over! Just keep in mind that you should never cross over on the forehand side. Crossing your feet on the forehand pulls your dominant shoulder back, which doesn’t help you gain more reach.
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