How to CONTROL your DINKS & VOLLEYS | Briones Pickleball

in this video i'm going to show you some really fun and practical drills that you can do that's going to improve your ball control your dinks and your volleys i know a lot of you in the philippines may still be on lockdown and also you may not have access to ports like we do here in america so hopefully this video will inspire you and know that you can always practice your game wherever you are and improve even if you don't have a core alright so the first thing that i'm going to talk about is how

to practice your paddle and ball control so this is really important especially if you're just starting out and this is something that you can do to improve your hand-eye coordination and also your paddle control with the paddle in your hand all right so i have a ball here and i have a paddle it doesn't matter what kind you have anything will work and the first thing that i just want to make sure is that we're in the continental grip so how do you get in that grip just as you were to shake somebody's hand um

like i'm shaking your hand here this is the continental grip and just just for clarification i'll show a picture of that right now all right so now that we got our continental grip that's really important so that when we are dinking and hitting volleys and any shot in pickleball that we have a good grip for the forehand and the backhand side so we're going to take our ball and the first thing that we're going to do is just easily just bounce it up and down on our paddle okay we want to focus on a couple

key things trying to get the ball in the middle of the paddle in the sweet spot every time keeping our eye on the ball and our grip pressure we want to make sure that we're not gripping it very very tightly we want to have a light grip pressure and this will help when you're thinking and volume as well okay here we go before outside all right so just you can tell my control is is really good and it's easier to start off by bouncing the ball offer your paddle uh fairly low like this okay it's

a lot easier to control than going like this it's a little harder when you're going higher so just start off with a nice low bounce and my grip pressure is very very loose i'm keeping my eye on the ball and trying to hit my sweet spot every time all right so now we're going to move on to the backhand side same thing focusing on the ball looking at it hit the sweet spot on my paddle every time and i'm focused on my light grip pressure all right okay now we'll get a little fancy if that's

too easy we're gonna alternate from forehand to backhand and then after that i'll show you a variation where you go forehand to the edge guard to the backhand all right so now let's do four into backhand all right same things here i'm focusing on the ball bouncing off my paddle and i'm switching it from forehand to backhand and you'll notice here if you have the correct continental grip then it should be easy to switch back and forth so you got to make sure you're in that grip and also um concentrating on that ball and having

a light grip pressure okay all right so now what we're going to do is a little bit more advanced we're going to bounce it off our forehand side onto the edge guard to the backhand side and then back to the edge guard to the forehand all right here we go all right so this is just really good for hand-eye coordination and then to step it up a level you can go on to just the edge guard bounces here here we go all right so that takes a lot of practice obviously start with the first two

exercises that i just showed you then work your way up to the edge guard bounces alright so as for paddle control these are really good exercises that you can do remember you're in that continental grip you have a light grip pressure you're keeping your eye on the ball and trying to hit that sweet spot each and every time now let's move on to thinking all right so now let's move on to some thinking i'm going to show you some key fundamentals with your technique when thinking and these are something that you can practice against any

wall all right so what i'm going to do is i'm going to pick a spot on the wall i'm about you know 7 to 10 feet back from the wall okay depending what kind of wall i have and making sure i'm that in that continental grip and also i have a light grip pressure okay on a scale of one to ten it's a three or four and i'm not gripping it really tight so that i can feel and have that control i'm thinking here i'm going to start with the forehand side okay i have this

laid back wrist here okay so here um a lot of beginner players will dink like this okay so this is um something that i would not recommend okay if i were to toss a ball i just wanted to show you this here okay if i were just to toss a ball to you like this just just look at my hand position here okay it's just like this so if i were to actually put the paddle in my hand tossing it like that my paddle would be in this natural laid back position so when i'm thinking

i kind of want to be just like this and on the backhand it's like this as i think i'm going to be pushing from my shoulder here okay so like this all right and i'm not flicking my wrist not doing any of that kind of thing like that and you'll notice that my my stance is in a good athletic stance so i could be ready to move left and right and you'll see here i think it's just like this and i'm pushing up with my legs you'll notice it's short compact all right and my contact

point is always out of front so now let's start with some four hands here hopefully you can see this good so notice i'm getting low through the ball my laid back wrist like what i talked about okay and keeping my eye on the ball trying to hit the sweet spot and my contact point is out in front and also don't forget that light pressure three to four on a scale from one to ten all right so now let's jump onto the backhand side we're gonna do the same thing remember on the backhand side i'm pushing

with my shoulder okay i have a little slight bend in my arm and i'm really controlling it from my legs and my shoulder i'm not swinging it's just a nice little upward push upward motion okay here we go some back ends here notice too that my air pressure's light again staying low to the ball okay and my contact point as you can see hopefully you can see in this angle it's always out in front of me okay every time that ball hits my paddle i want to make sure it's out in front and i can

see it on the front because you're going to always have the most control when you're seeing the ball out in front of you and that ball is contacting out in front of your bike okay all right so now what we're going to do we're going to hit some forehands and then some backhands all right so if you have to move your feet to get a good contact point out in front after i hit this forehand i might slide over hit a backhand slide over hit a four here we go same kind of things notice my

grip pressure trying to aim for the same spot same spot every single time and my contact point remember i'm not this is not a swing i'm pushing for my shoulder lifting up all right it's not that much effort all i'm doing is letting the ball come in my paddle and i'm doing a slight lift all right all right so that's the basics and essentials for dinking remember this whole exercise and the whole purpose of this is to really get better ball control and feeling the ball and controlling the ball now let's move on to some

volleys now when we're falling we want to make sure we're not swinging okay there's a difference between a suede volley and more of a traditional volume right now we're going to talk about just hitting traditional volleys every player needs to be able to hit um regular traditional volleys because you're going to hit a lot of volleys when you're up close to the net when i evolve all i'm doing is pushing out towards my target okay that's my forehand and then my backhand is here you'll notice my paddle face is face towards my target and you'll

notice here um right here it's just a push okay you can see that um i don't have my i paddled down like this it's up here my wrist my wrist especially on my backhand side you can tell it's kind of caulk and locked in okay so i have stay a stable grip here and i'm just pushing out okay this is my backhand side all right and then my whole hand would be just like this all right so it's just a nice compact stroke [Music] now we're going to hop on to backhand volleys and i'll show

you that now [Music] now we're gonna go four hands and then backhand [Music] [Music] [Music] all right so those are the exercises that you can do against a wall remember a wall is great because the ball comes back to you each and every time also if you do have a partner and you have two paddles and a ball now i'm going to show you some things that you can do anywhere and all you need really is kind of something in the middle of you two and you can dink or volley over that so i'll show

you a little compilation here that we made and now we'll show you a couple clips here [Music] all right so hopefully you enjoyed those clips that we put together for you just know that if you don't have a court to play on you can always practice and improve your game i just want to say thank you so much for supporting us here on this channel remember if you want to stay connected and you want more tips on pickleball strategy and other pickleball tips follow us on our youtube channel youtube.com slash briones pickleball we would really

appreciate it and also for more pickleball content go to brionispickleball.com that's our website and that's how you can get connected with us thank you so much and we will see you in the next video see you later [Music] you