7 Reasons You Pop Up Dinks (and how to avoid them)

one of these seven reasons is why you're popping up your dinks I guarantee you're doing number five all right so number one it starts with your stance so if you're in a dinking exchange and right now we'll just stay right in front with me and Tyler right but if you're in a dinking exchange what happens a lot of times and the mistake people make is they stand up really tall while they're at the kitchen line if you stand up tall you're not in an athletic position so you can't move well and then you end up

having to bend over to hit balls instead of already being low so one of the cues is I want to be below the height of my opponent as a way oh no as a way to tell if I'm playing low so if you're tall and your stance is narrow that's a mistake get your feet a bit shoulder wide get your body down in an athletic stance and this is where you starts I've played for about 3 years now and even just a couple weeks ago I realized the whole game is played low not just your

dinks so if you're ever in question should I be tall or should I be low you know what the answer is uh low no you should be tall I yeah you should be low be lower here's the second reason you're popping up your dinks your grip is too tight most likely this right here I'm holding this as hard as I possibly can if you hold it this tight while you're dinking it's just physics right watch this okay I'm going to hit them over there right I'm use my left hand if I'm holding it tight and

the ball comes hard it's just going to Ricochet off it's not going to absorb the contact take another ball boom if I'm holding it looser and the ball comes in WoW slower you give yourself a better ability to control the ball and when you're dinking you don't want to be hitting it really hard unless you're speeding it up what you really want to do is be hitting the ball into a shallow area of the Court where you cannot be attacked cuz remember you're not dinking just to dink you don't even have to Dink it's you

don't have to the reason you're dinking is you're trying to set up the ability to attack if you dink it well and they dink it poorly you smash the ball smashing ball equals good Ty I want you to hold your hand down imagine that you're holding a baby bird a gentle baby bird can't let it Escape you can't let it Escape right but you want to comfort it as well you that's how you want to think about your dinks when you're around the net back over there oh nice you put it in your hand I

like that okay here we go ready baby bird in our hand so we're down in a stance oh wow felt good we're down in a stance boom and we're holding the paddle very Loosely I don't know maybe a three out of 10 I don't need to be holding it tight right the moment I do hold it tight is when popups start to oh je start to happen one quick note before we keep going I'm building an online pickle ball school beginner in advanced concepts drill libraries a place to answer every question you've ever had if

you want to be the first to know when it's officially launched head to the description below and get on the priority list now let's get back to it here's the third reason people are popping up their dinks big swings and I get it when Tyler's back there he is going to take a bigger swing right here we go boom and when we first learn to play we then often we don't dink a lot right so then we translate what we did back at the baseline or previously in our tennis days if you played tennis up

to the kitchen the int of your dink is to get it to bounce boom in an unattackable position right so that's a that's a good unattackable position that's an unattackable position anything where your opponent is not hitting down on the ball that's attackable unattackable is when they have to hit up on the ball so here's what it looks like when you're taking huge swings you come back here you take these big swings right and so all of a sudden you have all this momentum in your swing and then you're asking yourself to hit it softly

right at the last second let's be really so hard it is really [Applause] hard and we're being kind of silly right now but it actually isn't that far off from what many people do when they first start so instead of taking these big swings here's what you want to think about play in front Okay my paddles in front of me as much as possible right as why I'm not taking a big back swing but I'm also not following through very extended right so if you could be here in the reason is if I do miss

after having taken a really big follow through and he attacks me now I have to go from back here to back in front so I like just actually finishing my follow through right back here in front of my face my ready position boom because when he does attack me I'm completely prepared to be efficient with my Counterattack so one other way to think about it is I don't want my paddle is it'll happen occasionally but I don't want my paddle to break the plane of my body as you see the plane right here on my

body if the paddle breaks the plane that's not good right so that would be a big swing that would be a big swing that would be a big swing okay now let's flip it okay play in front play in front play in front hand back out insert the baby bird ah put the paddle back in there okay now flap your wrist around okay at home right now just do this with your wrist okay this is not the way you want to dink what happens when you use too much wrist like this back to your spot

is you just end up losing control it's harder to control the smaller muscles in your in your um in your body which is in your wrist but what you can control more consistently is using your shoulder as a hinge instead of your wrist okay wrist is a more advanced thing to put some like Top Spin on it which I wouldn't start there as level one but you can progress to that what I would start with is keeping a more neutral wrist right so my paddle is actually not moving my wrist is neutral okay my shoulder

is going to be the movement point that directs the ball so I'm down in a stance head below my opponents I have a loose grip I'm going to play out in front and I'm going to use my shoulder to push the ball I'm not going to use my wrist and for a backhand I might just I'm similar right now we're dinking in front okay but I'm going to do the exact same thing right here it's okay if you want to use two hands like Tyler is same thing I'm in front right now I'm not using

any wrist I'm just using my shoulders to punch to excuse me to push paddles out in front I'm playing in front Okay that's baby bird in the hands boom man it's actually crazy and at first I used to hear a lot of people say this is like I would hear them say about uh the loose grip just to go back to that for a second I believe in that so much now like on your drops too like looser grip especially when you feel pressure when you feel pressure your grip tightens when you feel pressure your

grip tightens when your grip Titans you feel tense when you feel tense you pop up balls and when you pop up balls everybody hates you here's mistake number five it's not taking enough balls out of the air so this mistake has a couple parts to it right if you're dinking and you back up a lot you're not going to be able to take it out of the air right I call this being sporadic at the kitchen line you're forward and then you're back and then you're forward when I'm up here I like to keep my

ground so that I can do all the things I talked about earlier which is be in a stance right have a light grip on the paddle take it out in front because I I want to stay up here and look to take the ball out of the air because I remember I'm not dinking to just dink I'm dinking looking for an opportunity to attack so if I'm closer and I can take the ball out of the air eventually I can punch one at my opponent I can steal their time per se right if Tyler dinks

the ball there's more time before I hit the next ball if I take it out of the Air Boom I take away his time which often will get you off balance [Music] now let's go into this a little bit more let's say I am at the line and I don't take it out of the air this is the tricky one and often why people pop up dinks because they should have taken one out of the air but they didn't they end up hitting what's called a short hop right so that means I'm taking the ball

on the rise what happens is right they end up getting on their back foot taking the ball on the rise which is a way more difficult Dink and then you end up popping up the dink so if you ever get caught with the ball at your feet and jammed up taking a short hop you should ask yourself could I have taken that ball out of the air now occasionally you're going to miss not taking it out of the air and you are going to get caught in this position when you do get caught in this

position I recommend trying to let the ball hit its peak and then you hit it on the way back down so go ahead and hits my left hand okay so I'm here boom it gives you a little bit more time to gain your balance and then get yourself back to the kitchen line so let's put ourselves in a crosscourt situation now when I'm thinkinking crosscourt I'm still looking to take balls out of the air okay I'm leaning in right but I'm also at times going to take the ball right when it either hits its peak

or even sometimes on its way down right I missed that one there so that idea of taking it out of the air more so you can avoid more short hop dinks is valuable but if you do get caught in a short hop situation see if you can let it drop a little bit more before you hit the ball and then if you end up do taking a short hop dink don't do anything crazy with it just try to get it back shallow in the kitchen so you can survive okay do you know when it's hard

to take it out of the air when you're standing up tall do you know when it's hard to take it out of the air when you're standing up tall here's number six off balance dink knowledge if Tyler pulls me off balance here wide a lot of times we try to go back crosscourt or we try to do something too aggressive and it leads to us getting attacked right so Tyler puts me out wide boom right and then he can attack very easily so the ability to know where you should hit the ball when you are

off balance is so valuable it's understated it's overlooked it's not talked about enough if he pulls me out wide I want to take the ball back towards I wouldn't even say the middle forehand there what I would say is I would take the ball back to that person's backand as my safest Zone if I'm on the right side and happens here we go I prefer to take the ball back to the middle now because put your backhand out right that's your backhand I don't like going back to the same spot because that's that person's forehand

so keep in mind if you get off balance take the ball back to your safe Zone don't try to do something too aggressive it'll lead to popping up dinks and you'll go home that night being like wow I popped up all my dinks but in reality you just kept hitting it to the wrong targets so what's one thing you could do and when you're actually playing matches or league play or even just going out playing wreck establish your safe zones before the match even starts here's number seven It's the final one on targets a lot

of times people pop up their dinks because when they're playing in a dink exchange with four people they take too many dinks down the line and they don't take enough dinks crosscourt the main reason we were dinking down the line and I do recommend it for training is cuz it forces you to have to dink in a smaller Target so I really do like this but in an actual game I would prefer to take more dinks crosscourt because I have more space to work with as you'll notice in this visual right here right so I

can hit my dinks with a little bit more margin for error people take their dinks too often down the line and what happens is because of the shorter distance it's only 14 ft they end up getting crushed because players are sitting right in front of them looking to attack so those are seven reasons you're popping up your dinks and if you want to go one step further into five more advanced kitchen mistakes that many players are making click this video right here I'll show you how to avoid him let's go thought you going to say