What's the best grip for pickleball? Like most things pickleball,
the answer is it depends.
If you come from another racket or paddle sport,
chances are you're going to bring that grip with you.
But what if you don't come from another sport or what if that grip isn't working
in your pickleball game? What then?
Hey everybody it's CJ Johnson. In addition to coaching pickleball,
I coach skiing and golf.
You can tell a lot about a person's aptitude for the sport by how well they do
the basics and pickleball is no exception.
If you want to get better and get better quickly focus on the basics.
Things like footwork and grip. Today we're going to focus on your grip,
but if you stick around to the end,
I'll make sure to share a link to one of my favorite footwork videos.
Some of you might be thinking, Hey CJ, what's all the fuss about a grip?
I mean hold the darn paddle. Well,
how you hold the paddle is going to influence the trajectory and the speed of
the ball. I'm curious, which grip do you use? If you know the name for it,
put it in the comments below or if you brought it from another racket or paddle
sport, share that down below as well.
When I'm teaching new players or somebody who's struggling with their grip,
I prefer to teach the continental grip.
I think it's the most universal grip for moving the paddle from your forehand
side to your backhand side. In tennis,
most players use one grip on the forehand and a different grip on the backhand.
Unlike tennis,
the court's much shorter and there's not a lot of time to change from one grip
to the other. The continental grip looks like this,
the V formed by the thumb and the four finger are on the side of the paddle and
the joint just below your index fingers sits on the top.
If you hold the paddle like this and simply slide your hand down to the grip,
you should be in the correct position.
Another way to approach the paddle is like you're shaking hands.
When my hand is in the correct position,
if feels like I'm using my fingers to control the paddle.
I often see players start with the continental grip and then they allow it to
slide into the palm of their hand.
When it's not in your fingers and it's more in the palm of your hand,
it becomes more difficult to control the paddle face,
which in turn impacts the trajectory of the ball.
You might just be experiencing more popups if you've got that paddle in the palm
of your hand.
Often you'll see a player grip the paddle with one or more than one finger on
the paddle and typically it's the index finger or the second finger on the back
of the paddle.
I'm not a big advocate of that unless you bring that grip with you from ping
pong and that's something that you're used to.
Now the advantage to it is it helps to stabilize the paddle movement by having
the finger there.
The big disadvantage is when I turn and I put this on the back hand side,
those fingers take up a lot of room on the paddle face.
The other thing that tends to happen is when I start to do that,
I tend to move the paddle into the palm of the hand and as I said before,
often when the paddle is in the palm of your hand,
it's very difficult to control the trajectory of the ball as long as we're
focusing on grip. Let's focus a little bit on grip pressure.
When you have tension in your grip,
it travels from your grip into your forearm all the way up into your arm and
shoulder.
It impacts your natural ability to swing the pickleball paddle.
It is extremely difficult to hit soft shots with a lot of grip tension.
Here's something that may help. Let's use a scale of one to 10.
One will be your lightest grip pressure,
so hold the paddle with a grip that's so light that if I walked by and pulled on
your pickleball paddle, it would come right out of your hand.
Now let's go to the other extreme 10.
I want you to hold that pickleball paddle so tight it almost makes your arm
hurt. If I tried to pull it out of your hand, it won't budge.
Now that you know the two extremes,
I want you to hold the pickleball paddle one more time.
This time find number five,
something that's right in between your number one lightest and your number 10
the hardest.
Most pickleball shots should be played with a grip pressure of somewhere between
three and five.
Another strategy that I use to alleviate tension while I'm playing games is to
actually take the pickleball paddle out of my playing hand between points.
That allows my hand to loosen up and when I take my grip again,
I'm aware of my grip pressure and keeping it light.
One last consideration is the grip size of your paddle.
A general rule of thumb is there should be enough space to fit your index finger
between your Palm and your fingertips.
This grip is just about right. This grip is too small.
See how my thumb overlaps my fingers?
If you're purchasing a new pickleball paddle and you're not sure what size to
get, use a ruler. Your palm has three creases.
Measure the distance from the tip of your ring finger down to the middle crease
in your Palm as shown in this photo.
If you're in between sizes, make sure you choose the smaller size.
It's much easier to build up a grip than it is to make a big grip smaller.
A couple caveats about grip. If you come from another sport,
tennis racket ball ping pong, try that grip on the pickleball court.
See if it works for you. If it doesn't, don't change it.
If you decide to make a grip change,
I run command applying the two PP's, precision and patience.
Precision. When you're changing that grip every time you do it,
take your hand off and put it back on the pickleball paddle.
Making sure that your hand is in the right position.
Patience because you're changing your grip,
you are changing your only connection to the pickleball paddle.
Chances are you're going to hit some errant shots during the process.
Improving the basics is going to help you become a better pickleball player.
By the way, here's that link to the footwork video that I mentioned earlier.
If you got value from watching this video,
give it a thumbs up or share it with your pickleball playing friends,
because together we can.
Train Smart, Live Bold and Age Well.