Are you ready to score some easy points in your pickleball game? I got you covered.
Hey Everybody is CJ Johnson. Earlier this
week, I got together with Tony Roig from In2pickle and we did a webinar on three
power moves that you can add to your game to help you to win more rallies.
Make sure to check out the entire webinar.
In fact, I will link to
move number one and number three from this particular video.
So make sure you watch the cards coming up
above or click on the description down below.
You're also going to want to spend a
little time checking out our new online learning community, VIPickleball.
It is sure to be the talk of 2021.
Welcome, everyone, to three power moves to win more pickleball points.
Today, you're going to learn how to play
better pickleball by making the ultimate shift from someone who struggles with
strategy and performance to a player who confidently and instinctively executes.
So let's talk about what is going to be happening during the day.
Here's the agenda.
We're going to get to those three power moves momentarily.
After we do, we are going to introduce you
to our new immersive online pickleball community VIPickleball.
And then after that, we'll be staying here
to get all your questions answered in a Q and A session.
Absolutely.
C.J. and I talked about it and we came up with what we think are three really
interesting power moves that we can share with you today.
We're going to talk about short returns.
You're going to see that's a super
overlooked part of this game, that power, super nice power.
We're going to get some nice, easy points there.
We're going to work on some offensive lobs
at the non-volley zone, a skill for anybody.
Anybody can use this skill effectively.
And we're going to talk about aggro dinking, which is really interesting way
of thinking and looking at the game a little differently.
All right. Let's jump in to power move number two.
Take it away here, Tony. You got it.
C.J. is one of my favorites.
This is the non-volley zone lob.
I love this lob because it allows you to break a stalemate at the non-volley zone.
And one of the beauties about this shot is it's available to all skill levels.
No matter where you are in your game, you can bring this into your as part of your
repertoire while you're playing at the non-volley zone.
And it's basically just a long dink.
We're trying to throw it in a second.
But let me just set it up on the board
real quick and I'll just do it really quickly here.
So you're up here.
You're one of these you know, you're dinking, dink, dink, dink, dink, dink. All r
ight so the ball comes here.
That feels pretty good to you. You
're able to take a kind of put your weight into this ball.
And then what you're going to do is you're just going to take that ball and you're
going to throw it up and over your opponents.
There. Now what happens when you do that, when you hit this ball is these two
players have to decide, what do I do that obviously just can't let it bounce.
Right? So now either one's got to go back.
This one's got to go back.
They both go back, whatever.
But the point is, one or both of them have to have to depart the non-volley zone.
So what that means is
you now have control of the non-volley zone at one or both of your opponents are
off the non-volley zone, which is what you want.
It's a power move because it allows you to take control of the rally.
CJ, you want to give them some of the
advantages of the non-volley zone lob I'm going to spool ups
some rallies and really show them how this works.
Absolutely.
So, again, there's three things to keep in mind when you're doing this.
A few of the advantages is when you're in a dinking stalemate, right.
You're across the non-volley zone from some people who are very capable
dinkers who can hit twenty, thirty dink shots right in a row,
being able to have that non volley zone lob or
the offensive lob is going to give you the
opportunity to make those players retreat and pull away from that dinking battle.
A really good thing here is this can be done at all levels.
There really isn't a downside
as long as you're getting that person to step two to three paces off the non
volley zone line. And with the exception, if they're not a
fantastic smasher, I mean, if they absolutely have a great overhead, might
not be the best time to try it against that person.
But for the majority of people, if you can
get them to three steps off the line, you're going to cause a problem.
And then the third advantage to this is you're keeping them guessing.
It makes them uncomfortable.
If you're in a dink rally and you don't
know if that person is going to lob you or not, your body weight goes forward, maybe
your body weight comes back just a little bit, but it really keeps them on edge.
So those are some of the advantages to using this strategy.
So, Tony, it looks like you have the video cued up, is that right?
Ready to go, C.J.?
And I love the fact that the last thing
you said is amazing so that when you keep your opponents on their toes, I mean,
that's if you can make your opponents uncomfortable power to you.
All right.
So let's start with the power move number two rallies.
We're going to break down for you.
And so here that looks like CJ Johnson, I think there.
And you can see the curious thing about
this photo is you can see the ball there, it's you just turn.
I want to stop here for one second just
because this is a really good shoulder turn.
And a lot of players make the mistake of backing up.
We're not focusing on that today, but super dangerous to do that.
You want to turn your shoulder just like C.J. does here.
So kudos C.J. on the shoulder turn. All right.
Let's get rolling on this thing here.
And see what's up.
All right, so what we're going to do, oh,
I love this rally, C.J. This is Stephanie Lane on this side, Stephanie Lane.
You can't see right now because like a gift that we're unwrapping for you.
Stephanie lane is the queen of lob.
She is a 5.0
senior player with a ton of medals on her wall. I don't know if she hangs
them on the wall, but she has a ton of medals and many of them are because of
this one shot in her arsenal. S he's very good all the way around.
But this one shot in her a rsenal is her killer shot.
So here we have the serve by Dave Weinbach.
He's going to hit a little third shot here.
So basically, Stephanie, Stephanie just came into the picture there.
Stephanie, with the white tank top.
Stephanie is running up to the nvz.
So basically, we have this is our standard non-volley zone.
We're going to start working. Right.
And the players on the other side, just to
give you the power of this shot, players on the other side are probably 20
years younger than the players on this side.
Maybe even more.
The player on the left there is Josh Grubbs.
He's the son of Rocket Rodney Grubbs from
Pickleball Rocks, if you know that company.
Really good player, young active player. Let me stop here real quick.
I want to show you. So this is Stephanie is going to go up to
the first ball, nice and smooth little dink, right?
No big deal.
Just move the ball around a little bit, get scooped up there.
Now, Stephanie is going to move Josh over.
She dooen't like Josh's crowding her there, I think.
So, she moves him over. Right.
So then here we go.
And now what's Stephanie going to do here? A dink?
Don't think about it.
You're going to lob it, right?
So look at that.
So it looks like she's going to come over there and dink it.
Up it goes.
Now one thing I want to stop here, so right here.
Right here, the players there, opponents are just starting to realize that it's a
lob and that ball's over their head because of that delay that happens in our
mind, between our eyes, our brain and our hands and our feet.
Look at that.
Now, Josh is like, oh, I better get going right?
Now they're in trouble. So then he goes his partner rightly starts
to move over because she says, well, I got to cover the other side.
But there's that delay we talked about right now.
Look what happens. Ball comes over. Oh oh, courts o
pen, Stephanie Lane, little poker
end of the rally. So the non-volley zone lob here allows
Stephanie and her partner Dave to basically take control of that rally.
Right before the lob gets hit, I mean, this is a really good Aggro dink and we'll
talk about this in a second because this is a really nice dink by Stephanie.
Right. But.
After after Josh hits it, he's a young athletic player, he recovers.
He's back in position, his partners in position.
What's she going to do here?
Dink again? No, what she does is she uses the power movement.
Like C.J. said earlier, power does not have to be aggressive and hard.
This is basically a really long dink. Look at that thing.
It's just a big dink, a huge dink over their heads.
And that allows her to take control, push
them off the line like I showed you on the board. Right.
Create space and win the rally.
OK, let's look at it a couple more times here.
We're going to look at it in a this is a mixed doubles match.
We're going to see here is I like this rally.
This is one of my favorite rallies here.
We're going to see a beautiful execution of a of non-volley zone lob in a second.
So we have the serving team on this side.
OK, so now they've moved up.
Right? So
here.
See this nice little neutral ball like I
showed you on the board that right, right in the middle, right?
Player in blue, what's he going to do?
It looks like a dink right? It looks like a dink, to me, but he says not so fast.
Let's throw that puppy up there.
Look at that, look at that thing.
So the player next to us, I mean, she's
almost like I feel like she's got to run into me, right.
She's coming back. Boom.
She got to hit that ball.
Now, her partner, who is her husband, stays up there.
I like this little attack there to him right?
Now he backs up. Now, we had the line we over there.
But look where they're standing, right?
They had gained the non-volley zone.
Player in blue, hit one shot, pushed them off the line, right?
. So now they're going to keep him back.
That's good technique.
The player on this side, the female player, is working and working.
I think Donna's her name, Peter is her husband.
So you got them working.
Now, she just basically she's she's working her way up there, right?
She's working, working and working. Right?
Keep on working. And I love this part here, C.J..
So here you have finally the husbands up there and boom.
And if you watch this match, it's online, but if you watch this match right
here, I think it's curious because everybody's clapping right now.
Right? It's just a put away.
No, no, no, no, no. His wife, she did all the work.
She went back, she got that thing. She got him up to the line.
The listen it's a great overhead, b ut come on, she did all work.
All right. Let's look at one more.
Here's a non-volley zone lob attack.
This is a really good, really interesting match.
It's eight to nine in a fifteen point
game. Here you have these players coming up.
Look, now we got the non-volley zone, right?
They're going to battle back and
forth. These are some of the best senior players around. Right?
Super-senior even.
So, you have some just some nice little
dinking here going on. A little movement there. T
hese four players here can dink, they c
ould dink for another forty five minutes out here, right?
But wait a minute. What are we doing?
Oh, look at that. Right.
So Gary's his name with the black shirt comes over.
Looks like a dink. Right?
Looks like a dink to me.
What about you CJ? Looks like a dink and t hen boom there you got the lob right.
Oh oh, player in blue has got to run back, right?
Look at this is a mess now for the other team.
Right.
So this is right here is what you're looking for.
You're looking to push him off the line, win or lose.
It's not necessarily that you're going to
win every time, but you push him off the line and making him work.
Now they have to work their way up.
They're keeping him back, they're keeping him back.
So now the team on the other side just has
to keep working and working and working to try and make it back up.
I'm going to speed it up a little bit here.
So basically, it's just, you know, it's a
lot of work now for the team on the other side.
And then you have a little bit of defense on this side here.
You know, so now they're fighting. Everybody's fighting.
Everybody's fighting again.
But the key there was the key power move there was the lob by Gary.
Pushing him off the line, getting then to move back and have to work again.
So keys to the offensive lob.
Available at all levels.
Indefensible if hit well. Nothing you can do about it except go back and get it.
And as CJ mentioned earlier, it creates a lot of discomfort and uncertainty.
You have teams moving around not knowing if you're going to lob.
The narrative of the game,
you can go out there and play pickleball passively and just take whatever
happens to you win or lose or you can be the protagonist in your own game, take
control of it and ultimately, hopefully win more games.
And it's the same thing CJ with learning pickleball.
One of the things that you and I talk
about, all learning pickleball are going to learn it passively or proactively.
So the question at the end of the day is,
would you like us as a player to teach you how to take control of your game, gain
confidence and ultimately become the player you really want to be?
Because here's what we've got for you.
At this point in time, t here's really two options.
I mean, you can try to keep improving on your own without a plan, but you're going
to run the risk of being in the same place next year.
Or option number two, you one hundred
percent commit to improving your game with coaches like Tony and I and the community
designed to answer your questions and support you every step of the way.
If option number two sounds like something
that interests you, we'd like to invite you to VIPickleball.
CJ and I built VIPickleball to be the
only, the only immersive pickleball training community of its kind that
teaches you techniques and strategies to create a clear path to success.
So here are some of the things that we
focus on in building this model. We wanted to make sure that you learn how to
understand the best strategy for the situation that you're in.
Learn to apply the tactics at the appropriate time, like we talked about
today when we talked about the short return attack and things like that.
How to become proactive in your game as opposed to just being reactive as you
play. Using these power moves as one of the elements of doing that.
Creating reliable shots, including a
reliable third shot and overall improving your pickleball fitness.
Now, here's one of the things that Helen had to say about online learning.
She said, I'm an information person.
The sessions were well organized and content rich.
C.J. shared great resources and provided
us access to additional items mentioned during the sessions.
The online format made it easy to interact with her, and that is from Helen.
So inside VIPickleball, there are three major components.
So there's a 24/7 on demand digital library.
There's live coaching with Tony and I. And
then of course there's a community full of resources and support.
For more information on VIPickleball,
Check-Out, ware pickleball.com f or more information.
You're going to want to be a part of this community.