Do you hate popping up the ball?
Frankly, I don't think anyone likes to pop up the ball, but it happens.
Now one of the things that I often hear people say is I wasn't ready,
but is that the real reason that you popped up the ball?
Today, I'm going to share something with you that I bet you've never heard before.
One of the reasons that you're popping up the ball.
Stay tuned.
Hey, everybody. I'm CJ.
Johnson, together with my partner, Tony Roig from Into2Pickle, We Are {ickleball.
And we help players over 50
live their best lives on and off the pickleball court.
If you popped up the ball to your opponent's shoulder height,
would being ready help you to defend in this instance?
Probably not.
Don't get me wrong.
The paddle position and being ready
is extremely important, but this video isn't about the ready position.
If you want an in-depth primer
on the ready position, you're going to want to click this link
that came up above and go over to visit Tony on Into2Pickle.
He's going to tell you everything you need to know about the ready position.
Today, we're going to focus on another
error that I see happen more often that leads to pop ups.
There are generally a couple of reasons
that you are popping up the ball, and a few of these are talked about a lot.
One is mechanically you're doing something mechanically incorrect in the stroke.
The second would be the point at which you're making contact with the ball.
The third would be how hard you're holding the paddle or the grip pressure.
The fourth, which we're going to talk
about today, and I don't see it talked about a lot is your movement to the ball.
That movement causes more improper strokes
resulting in pop ups than I think most anything that we see.
There are three connections that you have to a shot.
The first one, and I think that's probably
easy understood, is your connection to the paddle.
So that goes from the paddle all the way up the arm.
The second one is the connection
of your feet to the court or where we position ourselves on the court.
The third one that you just don't hear
talked a lot about is the connection between the foot and the pedal.
Now it's that connection, When it gets disrupted, it can pull our shoulders down,
which ultimately pulls the paddle out of position.
And that's what we see causing a lot of pop ups.
I'm going to have Lori feed me some balls.
What I want you to notice is when I am using the correct footwork.
So I've got the connection to the court.
The connection between my foot
and the shoulder stays consistent, so my shoulder height stays consistent.
It doesn't drop low because if it drops low, it's dropping the paddle.
Okay, Laurie, go ahead and hit me a shot.
I'm going to show you how to do this correctly.
So I'm here and I step towards the shot, and you'll
notice that as I step towards the shot, I can easily lift the dink shot
and control the height and trajectory of the ball.
So even though I've got a lot of heigh
over the net when the ball bounces, because
I can control the trajectory, it's not a pop up.
When the ball bounces, it's staying low on the other side of the net.
One of the things that we see is we see
two common mistakes in the connection to the court
that disrupts the connection between the court and the shoulder.
The first one is that we see people plant their feet and then reach.
Anytime you plant your foot
and then reach, what you'll notice is my shoulder drops because now I'm reaching.
Okay, so let's go ahead.
I'm going to have Laurie feed me again.
You'll notice it's much harder for me to get to this shot.
I'm getting it over.
There's a pop up.
I'm getting it over.
But it's much more difficult for me because I'm off balance and I'm reaching.
What you'll notice when I do this, these shots are flying
a little deeper a little further into the court, and because they're flying
back a little further, there's more energy behind the shot because of the position
that I'm in, and these shots become more attackable.
And that's all because of the shoulder position that's in somebody's
strike zone, if you remember,
I said there were two things.
So that first thing really comes from the
mechanical pillar and that's good footwork.
And I'm going to give you the solution in just a second.
But there is a second reason that people
tend to do this, and it's not just planting the foot and then reaching.
Another thing we see a lot of on the
courts, especially as we get older, w e tend to take smaller steps.
We tend to stand a lot taller.
That's not an ideal position from which to move.
So I see a lot of people who have their feet about
shoulder width apart, and then they go down to hit a shot.
So even though they're in the right proximity to execute the shot because
they're down here hitting a shot, they're off balance when they do that.
So let me show you what that looks like.
When I'm here, I can't get myself low.
So when the ball comes off of the paddle, it typically comes higher and deeper.
It's hard to get low because I'm so off balance.
Go ahead. Give me another shot.
Now, when I miss into the net, I can't bend and keep balance.
If I do bend, go ahead and hit me another one.
If I do bend out, it looks like that.
And it's very hard for me to get back to balance.
So here are two things that you can do to help you with both of those.
The very first thing is, before you do any of this, put yourself on
camera, set up your iphone, put yourself on camera and see, how do you move to the
shot? Are you leaning so that you're losing this connection?
Is your footwork good, or do you have your feet really close
together? If you are leaning? What I want you to practice is
as you take a shot, I want you to move one small step in the direction of the shot.
So Laurie is going to feed me some shots and I'm going to show you what
this looks like when we take one small step into the direction of the shot.
So go ahead, Laurie.
So I take a small step in the direction of the shot and I can control the shot.
You notice that had a lot of height to get over the net.
I needed to take a little bit bigger step in that one.
That had a lot of height to get over the net, but it's still not bouncing high
when it's on the other side of the net, because I am able to control the
trajectory because I'm keeping my shoulders relatively level.
Now, if that's not your problem, if you turn yourself on video
and you see that your feet are really close together, it's a balance issue.
So there's two things that I'm going to give to you.
One of those is get your feet a little bit wider.
Go over to Tony's video.
It's the one that I recommended earlier.
Go over to Tony's video.
He talks about that in detail in that video.
So that's the first thing.
The second thing is I am going to give you a balance exercise.
And even if your feet aren't close
together, balance exercises are super important.
If you are over 30, you are probably, not probably your balance is diminishing.
So simple.
This is easy to do.
All we are going to do is you're going to stand on 1 foot.
Now, you can do this when you're brushing
your teeth, you're watching TV and you're standing up at night.
Stand on 1 foot, hold it for 30 seconds,
then go ahead and go over to the other foot.
Hold that for 30 seconds.
Okay, that's the first level.
Second level is if this is too easy for
you, what I want you to do is I want you to go ahead and rotate the leg at the hip.
This is called dynamic balance, which
means simply it's balance while we're moving.
And we need a lot of that in pickleball.
30 seconds on one leg, 30 seconds on the other.
If both of those were too easy for you, I got one that will challenge you.
Take either one of those,
standing with or without moving the leg and close your eyes.
You might not be able to see through my
glasses, but I guarantee you my eyes are closed, and that's a tough one.
So close your eyes with any of those two that will help to improve your balance.
And you're going to find that you have less pop ups.
If you'd like to learn more about this as well as the other reasons that we pop up
ball, make sure that you click the link down below.
We're going to send you a free
Three Pillars resource to help you start improving your pickleball today,
and you'll one of the first to know when our next pop up webinar comes your
way because together we can train smart, Live Bold and age well.