Depending upon where you play a drive can be just as popular if not more
popular than a third shot drop into the kitchen. If you're going to defend a drive
you need to have some good blocking skills and that's what we're going to
cover today. Stay tuned.
Hey everybody it's CJ Johnson. If you wouldn't mind hitting the
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Today you're seeing more drives than ever before. It's not replacing the drop shot but it
certainly is something that you need to be ready for and a good effective block
is going to help you to do that. The first thing we want to talk about when
we talk about blocking is getting in your ready position. What you want to
do is you want to make sure that your weight is up on the balls of your feet.
That way you can move from side to side. So you've utilized your split step and
you're ready to go. The next thing that you want to do is make sure that your
paddle is up here out in front of you because when we contact the ball we're
going to contact it out in front of us. Now typically it's a little easier for
most people especially if you're just starting out with this - to do the block
on your backhand side and that's kind of what I'm going to show you today. With
the block what I'm going to do is I'm going to take and my paddle is either
going to be straight up and down or maybe just slightly tilted. The feel
of the block is that I absorb the power of the shot coming to the paddle so it's
almost like it comes back and forward. It's just a very short little motion
back and forward. I'm not trying to necessarily hit this deep I'm just
trying to put it back into the court and take the power off of it. It looks a little
something like this.
Now if you've just started playing pickleball and you're new to blocking I
really recommend the motion being just straight back and straight through. And
again it's very small it's probably only about an inch to two inches type of a
motion for this block. If you've been playing for a little bit and you're
trying to really deaden the ball, you're starting to learn how to soften the ball
what you can do is tilt the paddle back just a little bit and make this, again
it's still gonna be a very small motion, make this a little high to low. So we're
moving the paddle down about an inch. Now there's no wrist. I'm not flicking my
wrist at it. It's still the same motion but the paddle goes a little bit more
like this. So again beginners you can go straight forward and if you've been
doing this for a while feeling fairly confident with it try and move the
paddle high to low. That's going to put a little backspin on the ball help to deaden
the shot and make it even more effective.
I am super fortunate that I have a great training partner and we can fire balls
that are basically a paddle high or so above the net to each other and that we
can practice this drill a lot. And one of the things I love about training with
her is she will intentionally hit one high every once in a while so I have to
get out of the way. So it also challenges me to make sure that I just don't get
into the habit of hitting the ball back that I let the ball go out if it truly
is out. If you got value from this video if you wouldn't mind giving a little thumbs
up. Tell me how do you practice your blocking. What are the things that you do?
Put it down in the comments below because together we can
Train Smart, Live Bold and Age Well.