How To Block & Counter In Pickleball | Shut Down Hard-Hitter Attacks (& Fast Hands Tutorial)

hey Nicole hav from Prime Time pickle ball here are Your Hands slow at the net or would you just like them to be faster I mean probably right we all would like to be faster and have lightning fast hands at the net and that is definitely something that is trainable and achievable and we're going to dive into all of that in today's video how you can develop Lightning Fast hands at the net and it's not just about having fast hands you really need to know what the objective is with the shot that you're hitting there's

multiple ways that you need to be fast yes you're receiving a fast ball but depending on what fast ball you're getting and what you think you can do with that ball then there are different options for you and different things that you should be doing in order to be most effective with what you choose to do you don't just handle every fast ball the same way there's really five different types of shots that you need to be able to hit when a ball is coming in at you fast so again it's not just about being

able to get your paddle on the ball what are you trying to achieve with that shot that's going to help you win the point either right then and there or ultimately okay let's dive into those five shots how to hit them and how to train them so those five shots really fall into two different buckets a Counterattack or like the reset block bucket so you can either be basically be offensive on the incoming fast shot CU that's when you need your fast hands or you're going to have to be forced to be more defensive and

get yourself out of trouble for a little bit of ter terminology housekeeping I want you to bear in mind as we walk through the examples in this video that whenever I say attacking I'm generally talking about the first attack and any attack subsequent to that first attack within that same point I'm calling a Counterattack some people say re attack so just bear in mind that most shots in a firefight where they're not a block or reset are typically going to be referred to as a Counterattack except the first one which generally will be the attack

so we're going to cover three shots today that are in the aggressive bucket and we're going to cover two shots that are in the defensive bucket we're going to start with the full swing Counterattack and we have some examples of that going on right here so this is Katie right here this is Alex and this is Lisa they're going to help us demo all five shots today and we're starting with the full swing Counterattack there it is okay there's a slow-mo of it that's a cleanup shot so that's one example and then another example after

this one is we have Alex here is about to do a full swing Counterattack so we have two examples of the full swing you can go for more of a full swing Counterattack when you really got a good read on their attack or if their attack just didn't really overwhelm you and you have enough time to set up and take a big cut at it and you can either hit it to more of an open space or rip it right back through their body and put the hurt back on them and expect a really weak

shot off of your full swing so when you have the time to hit more of a full swinging Counterattack it means that their attack really just wasn't all that strong and you're going to make them pay for that typically you're going to be thinking maybe you can end the point right then and there or set yourself up for a clean finish right like Katie did right there so that's what it comes down to on the full swing is that you just really got a good jump on it and it's high and you can lean on

it and you're really trying to finish the point so those are ideal I mean those happen a little less frequently if you're playing a team that's really pretty well matched up and are kind of battling out evenly and they're going to happen more frequently when you're the stronger team or stronger player but I wouldn't expect too many of these opportunities freely on a good team you're really going to have to set yourself up for it moving on to the next type of Counterattack which I tend to like to call the short swing attack or the

half swing attack so play these examples for you and uh walk you through it so mostly from the counterattacking perspective those three shots that are in the counterattacking bucket I expect against an evenly matched team and and and you guys are both you know strong you're going to be hitting mostly short swing counterattacks and push counterattacks which we about to cover next full swing you really have to earn that short swing is going to be more used for when you're hitting either an offs speed type of attack and you're trying to get it low and

for more placement but you do have time to put a little extra punch on it because the speed isn't really pressing you 100% it's pressing you somewhat because you're not able to get the the full swing going on it but you can really lean on it a little bit but you expect it to come back so you have to have an abbreviated follow through so that you can reload right away after your swing so notice how she doesn't really have like the highest contact so she can't hit super down and hard and be very offensive

she's more doing like a placement attack and you know getting it maybe middle or maybe jamming them up a little bit low on the body here or low on the body to Alex and they in turn like Lisa gets a contact somewhere in here she doesn't get a high contact that she can also punish Katie with so that's what hands battles a lot of the time come down to is these short swing counterattacks or push counterattacks that we're going to talk about next so again on the on the short swing you do have a little

bit of extra time so you put a little extra power on it just because you either read it well or they hit it into a location where you know it's it's a little bit in your wheelhouse and you're not like totally jammed but you can get a little bit of Swing on it and then be ready to reload cuz it's coming back down on you and probably with some speed again because if they're strong and they have Top Spin they're going to try to Counterattack right away and either Jam you up or get it away

from you but a lot of these Counterattack half swings are going at the body and they're going to try to get you like in the right shoulder in the right hip anywhere on this on the right side that for Alex and same thing here on Lisa but they're practicing two on ones here so Katie at times is attacking crosscourt but typically you're going to be wanting to attack the player Straight Ahead from you since they're closer and they have less time to respond you don't want to be taking your attacks across court all that often

but you do want to surprise this player from time to time to keep them honest and if you get a really good angle that you feel you can hit hard and hit them in a tough spot then go ahead and do that you'll see that happening at the pro level you don't want to limit yourself to just one target but you want to maybe favor the smartest Target and then mix in the other Target that maybe is a little more dangerous but if you strike it well then it's going to pay off for you so

you definitely want to have more options so do work on those crosscourt attacks as well but again you mostly want to probably be taking that down the line if you're enjoying this video please go ahead and subscribe to this channel so that you don't miss out on any future videos as they come out also please go ahead and give this video a like and uh ring that notification Bell when you engage with the video it definitely helps us get this information out more broadly to more people and we appreciate it thank so much okay next

up is the push counter attack let's focus on Katie here she does two of them there's one there's another one so we do have a backhand and a forehand push counter attack there's a forehand push counter attack there's a backhand notice the difference from what you saw earlier it's really like you're just pushing that paddle right through the ball there's no back swing there's virtually no follow through you're just taking their pace and knocking it back right on them on one of these she gets a nice high contact yeah right there so she can push

it down on the other two she had a contact about here so she has to be hit that a little more bit more level and you're just trying to get it low crossing the net and down into their shins right as best you can so I would say the key that you want to be focusing on when you're counterattacking and resetting or blocking as we show coming up as best you can the goal is to keep that low crossing the net if you keep it low Crossing net it's going to be low when it gets

to them the danger when is when you hit it high and it gets to them high and it's rising to them that's the worst if you can get it you know kind of level that's okay but the best would be to to get it so that it's crossing the net and it's headed down you can do that in a more or less straight line if you take a little bit Pace off it and then it drops or you can just you know knock it back hard as long as they're contacting in this neighborhood here even

up to this line they can't get very punishing and down on you yes they'll hit if they're good players they'll hit some strong and good ones from this neighborhood either away from you like of course they would have to bounce and then and then go away um or they can jam you up here or there into your shoulder or they can knock it towards your feet either side side and if they get it more down here that's the best and strong players can do that off of contacts here and even here but it's much more

difficult and it's much less likely to happen so if you keep it in this range and you keep the net in their way forcing them to hit up or at least straight crossing the net then you're going to be in very good shape okay so please keep that in mind for all of these shots the best thing you can do for yourself is keep it low crossing the net which will keep it low down on them is there a risk of missing into the net of course but that's why you have to practice and get

good at that small Target it's all about being able to hit the small targets which means being accurate if you can hit a small Target you're accurate and you're a good player and if you can do that off of fast incoming shots like these then you're going to definitely level up your skill so this is why you want fast fast hands to be able to execute these five different types of shots depending on what incoming hard shot you get and how much it presses you or doesn't press you so let's get to developing those fast

hands but knowing what exactly it is we're trying to achieve with those fast hands based on the ball that we get and the options we have with the ball that we get all right let's move on to the side by-side comparison of these three different types of counterattacks here we have the full Counterattack swing here we have the short swing or half swing as I call it and here we have the push Counterattack okay okay first let's go over the similarities so look at her nice athletic base she has a wide stance wider than shoulder

width she's got her the weight on the balls of her feet here notice how in in all cases she's leaning forward not back and really trying to put her body weight onto that shot notice how she has that slight athletic stance so a knee Bend she's sitting down a bit on all of these so you don't want to be standing tall all all of these players even Alex and Lisa are always in this athletic stance now let's talk a little bit about the differences and again towards the end of this video I'm going to talk

about how you can train all five of these shots two more coming up these are the first three again in the counterattacking bucket okay so let's start with the the back swing okay so we're paused there here she takes it the most back here it doesn't get very bar far back at all it stays pretty much in front of her body look at her back swing it doesn't come to here beside her body it's still in front here she's very in front and she's just looking to push that ball back down no back swing at

all it's really just a punch punch volley is also what they call this so this one's going to have a bigger swing again looking to end the shot this one's going to have a more abbreviated swing expecting the ball to come back in both cases in all cases of course this ball can come back but on this one we're looking to end the point more CU we got a good jump and read on the ball we saw it early and we can be very offensive with it so this is like the most offensive this is

less offensive and this is often the least offensive because the reason you had to punch it was cuz it's kind of in a in a bad spot and you don't have time to get a swing which would put more power on it but the good news is often when you're punching it's because the ball's coming a little bit more towards your body whereas here it's coming towards her side so she can hit more cleanly a forehand here the ball is kind of headed into her chest so she has to ra that paddle straight up because

biomechanically like it's hard to get out of the way of your arm for a forehand um but you can put more pop on it with a forehand so if you can get it with a forehand that's nice and then this one came the highest so she's able to push it down and be very offensive with it so the ability to hit down on it makes up for the fact that she can put less swing so that's more offensive obviously when you can get down on it here these two balls are lower so she has to

hit them a little bit more level but um because she can get a good swing on it that's going to be extremely offensive so these are the balls that you can be more counterattacking with because they're higher all of these in all these cases like the Nets not in this picture but these are all she's going to make contact with these let's move forward to contact so there's contact for all of these she got the highest contact on this one and these two are very close this one's a little bit higher but she got the

best read on this one so she's able to time it in such a way that she can really put a little extra something on it so the common themes on these counterattacking shots and the reason they were able to be more of counterattacking rather than full defensive is because they're a bit higher she got a really good read on them they're not jamming her and she can see that she has a good Target that she can either hit with a more trater trajectory that or that may get a little bit down on them if she

can put some Top Spin on either to an opening or to really Jam them up in the body pretty well when you see that you have that opportunity on a shot then you definitely want to be counterattacking it's only when you don't have that opportunity and you're going to be very rushed or jammed that you then have to fall back to defending and we're going to cover that now so in the shots that you need fast hands for that are in the more defending bucket that's going to be blocks and resets so we're going to

cover blocks first and blocks look like that that does that'll little bit of Swing on it but and that one didn't so that's more classic but the other one is is still a block because she got jammed look at that she had to move out of the way it didn't have time to take a swing at it had to react but was able to get the paddle in the way and just block it down so that's when you can't be offensive because as you can see here she has to get her body out of the

way it's pressing her it was a good attack by Lisa here that jammed her up into the body was headed basically right into the middle of her chest and she had to get get out of the way to take it with a backhand that she was able to block back so blocks and resets are often used interchangeably and you you certainly can but as I I'm trying to break things down here in a little bit more detail to show you the differences blocks tend to be kind of high look the contact was there like okay

you might ask oh that was a high contact why couldn't she punish it well because she was jammed she didn't get a good read on it it didn't have the time wasn't in a good spot for her Lisa hit a good attack and the fast shot did press her that's why you want to have good attacking skills so that you can press your opponents even if they got a high contact they're not able to punish you with it because they're either stretched or in this case she was jammed so we'll talk a little bit more

about the in the technique when we do the side by side let's move it along now to the reset so the goal with the block and the reset are essentially the same you want to just knock it back low and force them into a low contact the way I think about the block and reset different is that on a block you did get a high contact but you just couldn't be offensive with it on a reset you got a low contact and you really had no choice but to drop it back or just knock it

back uh low on them as best you can if they get it out of the air or it bounces it doesn't matter you just have to really make force them into a low contact and that's what will bail you out of trouble in this case she hit a half volley often they'll be able to get hit it hard right here you're going to just going to block with your paddle right here put that paddle down and let it bounce off and try to keep it low as you can Crossing that the goal is to make

sure it gets down once it's to them this is resets the toughest shot because means they did hit a very good attack and the Nets in your way and you have a very short distance to get that ball up and down off of a hard shot so I I would train this one a lot hard incoming shots low on you that you take either as a half volley as did here or out of the air that you just stick your paddle out there you're able to find the perfect angle and the perfect amount of softness

in your hands in such a way that when the ball hits your paddle it just gently knocks over the net low onto their side this is the toughest of the five shots and it's the shot that most players that are lowlevel struggle with because it requires a huge amount of finesse you're taking Max Speed shots low and trying to just take all the pace off and with precision and accuracy drop it onto their toes not easy but highly trainable and doable all right so let's take a look at the side by side on these just

to get a better look all right now we have a much clearer view of the difference the high contact and the low contact which is in my view PR is the only thing that differentiates a block from a reset ultimately you're trying to do the same thing with it because on on the reset she had to get much lower she has more of a knee Bend here she has less of a knee Bend but still always an athletic wide based stance with your weight forward on the balls of your feet and you have this kind

of shape going on with your body paddle as best you can always in front making contact in front very little motion just let it bounce off your paddle here too just's a little more push on it cuz it was a bit of a softer off- Pace attack but very little motion just wait to see how she gets that padal all the way down to the ground and bending at the knees not at the waist these are super key the Block in the reset is really the simplest of motions it's not too different from a dink

you just put your paddle down and in front and you push a little bit and in some cases you don't push when all the speed is already provided by the incoming shot the challenge is that you have to be minimal and quick in your motions and get very precise because that ball is coming in Fast and you have to have just the right amount of pressure on your grip to be able to take all that pace off so that's what makes it the most challenging and you need to train this a ton if you hope

to be competitive at that 40 plus level as many of us do okay now that we've broken down the five shots that you need fast hands for and the key things to focus on when you're hitting these shots let's cover how to train them so one of the best ways that you're going to want to do all the time all the 5os I know and the pros I I know do this all the time they just feed in a high shot and then they go at it and they hit mostly everything fast and that way

they just put themselves in a position where they're forced to figure it out when can I hit a full swing when do I need to use a fast swing or a push when am I so press that I have to hit a reset or a block and you just put your feet to the fire day in and day out with just these firefight points as you can see there he fed it out of the hand and they just go at here they're having having a bit of fun cuz they've been going at each other Alex

went at Katie right before so she just kind of went just was going full swing no matter what came at her but that was just uh for a little bit of fun mostly you just want to pick the right shot for the right time so feed it hard and choose between your full swing your half swing and your push Counterattack so all counterattacking virtually all the time unless you are absolutely forced to hit a block or reset then do it but basically just make the drill that it's an attacking and counterattacking Bonanza you are trying

to hit it hard no matter what main goal is to keep it low and as you do this over and over again you will figure out when you need to do each one of those three it's going to come more naturally what you can also do is set up each of these in isolation so let's go back to the full swing let's say you wanted to practice your full swing uh counter attack so let's just get all these four players on the screen here here Alex is getting ready for a feed let's say that you

have decided that um you Katie needs to practice her uh full swing counter attacks and then you can then take turns about who is the solo player like for a while Katie can be here then Lisa then Alex and you're all wanting to work on your full swing Alex can just feed her a ball that's an attack but maybe wasn't the strongest attack and she could take the first shot off the feed as a full swing and then they play the rest of the point out attacking counterattacking mostly and blocking and resetting were absolutely necessary

and you do it that way and that way every time Katie's definitely at least seeing one full swing Counterattack because she's practicing it off the feet the same thing goes for anything else he can then feed her a more of a pressing attack but that she's still able to hit a half swing on and she'll start the first shot every time off the feed Alex will always feed or Lisa will always feed and the first shot after that is the one she's trying to practice which in this case now will be the half swing and

then you play out the rest of the point and then she'll get another feed so you're ensuring that on every Point she gets at least one crack at the shot that she's practicing so of course number three in the counterattacking bucket is the push Counterattack so you feed her a little bit more of a harder shot that could Jam her but might not and uh a bit of a higher contact that she can then push Counterattack back on you that's when you would typically use the push counter when you're jammed or or you just don't

have the ability to swing at it and you just have to push down on it so set them up off the feed and then play with the rest of the point you she'll get tons of reps in that way same thing goes for the reset in the block feed one on the reset that's down on her and on the Block high and hard either there or there that's the hardest of all of the ones you've done because she's forced to block on a high shot and then of course when you're playing out the rest of

the point you're going to get the opportunity to possibly hit all five shots or at least many of the five each and every point so that's a great way to practice it and here in this case they're do it two on-one and of course one of the ways to get the most amount of reps in is when you go oneon-one with a drilling partner that's willing to do this and you can alternate who feeds every time or however you want to set it up you can also isolate one person specifically and they're getting all the

feeds for 5 or 10 minutes on whatever shot it is that they want to work on and then switch it up to where the other person is receiving all the feeds and that first feed is right into whatever it is that they want to be working on it could be the same could be different could be more forehand specific could be more backhand specific I ating drills like this where you give them the shot that they're looking to practice right off the feed and then you play it out is a great way to get your

training in and of course playing it out is just going to make you hit that many more shots as well and several of the ones that you're trying to work on so get out there and get into this firefight training your hands will get better you'll see the ball slower even though it won't be slower and you're just going to be such a better offensive player and defensive player and you're we going to be a menace at the net for anybody lean into this type of training do it often you will be amazed at the

results and your hands will get so fast in the process as helpful as we think the tips we're sharing in today's video are there's more to achieving success on the doubles Court want a complete a toz step-by-step blueprint for playing winning doubles pickle ball check out our dominating doubles system today go to doubles system.com to learn all about it if you enjoyed this video please like comment and share for more Pro Player pickleball tips techniques strategies and more on how to take your game to the next level please visit prime time pickleball.com you'll find a

clickable direct link in the video description below thanks for watching we'll see you in the next one and until then Happy pickling