Recently, I shot a video with Laura Fenton Kovanda where we focused on the reset shot.
That's the shot that you use when you're transitioning from the baseline to the non-volley zone.
Afterwards, the emails came in from those of you asking how do you open the paddle face
without popping it up and giving a nice juicy kill shot to your opponents who are there
waiting at the net?
That's what we're going to focus on today.
Hey everybody, it's CJ Johnson.
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A good reset shot is going to make for a smoother transition for you and your partner to get
to the net.
If you missed last week's video with four time us open champion Laura Fenton Kovanda,
make sure you start there first.
Just click on the link that popped up on your screen.
Before I show you my favorite drill, we need to talk a little bit about grip pressure.
It's almost impossible to hit a soft shot with hammer hands.
The unfortunate part is most of us don't even realize how much tension we have in our grip
and once we put tension on our grip, that transfers into our forearm and our shoulder,
and before you know it, our entire motion is tense.
And we're trying to hit a soft shot, and most of the time it just won't work.
Here's how you can be aware of your grip pressure.
What I'd like you to do is to hold your pickleball paddle, but hold it lightly enough so that
if I walked by, I could pull it out of your hands.
That's number one.
Now let's do the opposite side of that scale.
Hold the pickleball paddle again, but this time tighten so hard that if I walked by and
tried to pull it out of your hands, it would pull back.
You should feel that tension go right into your forearm.
Now you have the two extremes, 1, the softest, 10 the hardest.
Take the pickleball paddle in your hand one more time and now find the pressure right
in the middle between one and 10 that's your number 5.
Most pickleball shots should be hit with a grip pressure of somewhere around three to
five.
One of my favorite ways to teach people to open the paddle face is by using the double
dink drill.
The objective of this is to take a dink after the first bounce, pop the ball up in the air
in front of you and then hit the next ball over the net.
That teaches us to open up the face and to control the ball, and the trajectory as well
as the speed.
Once you've mastered the double dink shot here's an additional one for you to try.
Let's try double volley.
What I want to do as the same thing as in the double dink.
We want to open the paddle face up enough so that it stays in front of us in the air, and
then send the next shot over the net with an arc back to our practice partner.
If you focus on controlling the ball by opening your paddle face and the softness of your
touch, your reset shot will improve in no time.
If you got value from this video make sure that you give it a thumbs up or share it with
your pickleball playing friends, because together we can
Train Smart, Live Bold, and AGE-WELL.