The pickleball serve is a lot like a two-foot putt in golf. You expect it to
go in most of the time. When your serve doesn't go in it's disappointing because
after all that is the only time that you can score a point. When it starts to miss
often that can be devastating. What can you do when you lose your pickleball
serve? If it's ever happened to you you're gonna want to stay tuned.
Hey everybody its CJ Johnson. Losing a pickleball serve is no fun and I think
that it's probably happened to most of us at one point in time or another.
Today we're going to cover some of the reasons that it can happen and what you
can do to get yourself out of that slump. But before we get to the serve, if you
wouldn't mind hitting the subscribe button over here. That lets YouTube know that
you find this content important. You'll get a notification any time I post a new
video, which is usually every Saturday. If you're having issues with your
pickleball serve it may be a case of the yips.
Yips is pretty prevalent in my old sport of golf. It typically shows up and mature
athletes in the short game, either putting or in chipping.
In fact it's so rampant that Mayo Clinic did a study on the yips. I'm gonna put a
link to that study in the show notes down below if you'd like to see that.
Essentially what they found is that the yips is a task-specific movement. So it
only occurs when that person is doing that one particular task. They also found
out that in golf in putting in particular about when it occurs it's
usually excessive motion in the wrist and that's certainly something that can
throw off your pickleball serve. For some of us the Yips is probably physical and
in that case you should really should go and visit your doctor. For the rest of us
it's probably more on the mental side. We've lost some confidence, tension sets
in and we don't make a good motion and lo and behold we're missing lots of serves.
Let's start by checking your tension levels and the first place to check is
how tightly are you holding the paddle? So let's just say this if you hold your
paddle, a number one is it's almost coming out and 10 is it barely moves,
it's so tight. When you serve you'd like your grip tension to be somewhere around
4. What happens inside of any motion
whatever tension we start with is going to increase during the movement because
of the forces generated from the movement. So make sure that you start
with a light grip pressure. One of the things you also want to check is the
tension in your lower body. When we start to have serving troubles we tend to
plant ourselves at the pickleball line and allow for very little body motion.
Inside of a good pickleball serve when the arm is moving forward and backward
the body responds to that motion by moving as well. So make sure that you're
allowing your body to move. Another place to check for tension is in your jaw and
your neck and in your shoulders. That's where most of us carry our tension. When
I'm struggling with my serve one of the things that I like to do is kind of
tighten everything up so it's really nice and tight and then breathe it out
and let it relax, then make my serve. Sometimes when you have the pickleball
yips you just need to make a change to get
out of that habit and that's what you'll see a lot in golf. People will go from
the short putter to the long putter or they'll go from putting right-handed to
putting left-handed in pickleball. A lot of people are very ambidextrous and if
you're one of those fortunate people try serving with your non-dominant hand and
then play the rest of the game with your dominant hand just like Wes Gabrielsson does.
Another thing that you might want to give a try is the backhand serve.
Scott Moore is certainly one of the best at this backhand serve.
Now it has to be legal just like a forehand serve and if you're not sure
what that is click on the link that's coming up above it'll take you to a
previous video I did about making a serve legal and effective but once your
backhand serve is legal there's a little bit of side spin that tends to happen on
a backhand serve from the natural motion of the paddle.
A couple of things are a little bit different from the forehand serve one of
those would be it's more of a toss versus a drop because of your body position.
The backhand serve can be very tough on the arm and could cause injury. Make sure
that you're doing a lot of stretching and that you're doing some icing. After
all you don't want to get tennis or golfer's elbow. Now most of us don't have
the yips by definition because that's something neurological. If you do make
sure you go ahead and see if your doctor. Most of us just simply get into a slump
and the lack of confidence allows a lot of tension to come in to our pickleball
serves. Cure that by looking at your tension levels and trying something
different. Lastly practice practice practice that's
what will get you out of this habit. If you got value from this video if you
wouldn't mind giving it a little thumbs up, you can share it with your pickleball
playing friends or leave me a comment down below and tell us how did you get
out of a pickleball serving slump? After all we learn from each other. Because together we'll
Train Smart, Live Bold and Age Well