Special TRP Episode - Third Shot to Rec Play - Answering your Pickleball Questions

Pickleball Therapy: Special TRP Episode - Third Shot to Rec Play - Answering your Pickleball Questions Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. My name is Tony Roig. I'm the host of your weekly podcast. This is actually a special episode of the podcast. In this episode, I'm going to be answering a series of questions that we've gotten inside our TRP or Tony Roig Pickleball community. Questions from if the third shot drop isn't uh what I need to be working on, what should I be working on, how do I implement strategies that you're teaching inside rec play situations, what kind of grip pressure do I hold my paddle with? So, we have a wide range of questions that we're going to be answering inside this episode of the podcast. Um, as we dive into the podcast, I would be remiss not to express gratitude to the thousands of players who have come into Tony Roig Pickleball since we launched just a couple of months ago and uh, you know, taken advantage of the resources in there, joined us inside our Founders, uh, signed up for camps, you know, all of the things that we do here at Tony Roig Pickleball to try and make your pickleball experience as full and as enjoyable as possible. Uh, it's our privilege to be able to uh, do what we do. Uh, and it means a lot to us and we're very thankful to you for allowing us to do that for you, including this podcast. So, I'm gonna, um, with that said, I'm going to dive into the podcast. Uh, one quick, uh, housekeeping note. Um, if you can help us out, we um, uh, you know, as I mentioned, it's a new entity, right, Tony Roig Pickleball. Um, so we don't have a lot of Google reviews because we're new and Google uses reviews to determine whether the company is a legitimate company. Uh if you listen to this podcast then you know that we've been doing this for a long time. So we are a legitimate enterprise, a legitimate activity. So um if you can go into Google and look up Tony Roig Pickleball and then leave a Google review, that would be much appreciated as it helps uh us reach uh players out there and helps us, you know, be in the algorithm. So appreciate you doing that. All right, question number one comes from Jim. It's about paddle grip. How tightly should you be holding your paddle or is it even that much of a factor? Thank you. It actually is an important factor, but it's probably important in ways that maybe um might surprise you. It's more important from my perspective in terms of how your your in terms of your arm health than it is in terms of the performance. Um I would submit to you that a lighter paddle grip is going to be better for you all around. It's going to give you more power, which is counterintuitive. It's also going to give you a lighter touch on the paddle. But critically, and this is the critical piece to me, it's going to save your arm. You know, these forearm muscles are small, right? The tendons and all all that area around your elbow, your forearm, your wrist, your hand. So, we want to protect that as much as possible. And, you know, if you're playing pickleball two, three hours, three, four, five times a week, that's a lot of wear and tear on those small areas of your body. So, light grip pressure is going to be better for you than a tight grip pressure. And the way you do that is grab your paddle, hold it as tight as you can without hurting yourself. That's a 10. Half of that a five. Half of that call it a three. Three is amazing. So grip pressure three the entire game is going to work great for you. All right. Third shot drop. We're going to go right into the the heavy duty one here. So um basically the position that we take at Tony Roig Pickleball is that you don't really need a third shot drop in its in its form that you see it taught until you're a 4.0 pickleball player. So a couple of questions I have to do with that. Uh, one is if I don't use a third shot drop as a beginner, what are my more what are my more fundamental or percentage shots at this point to make on that point of return? Thank you. Um, so basically the reason we don't focus on the third shot drop until around the 4.0 level is because there's a lot of other areas of the game that are going to give you more bang for your buck. Um, we've been doing this for years this way where we focus on the return of serve. So, if you if you want to improve your game, focus on your return side. Focus on what you're doing on that side. You're going to be an amazing pickleball player. Plus, it's a it's a it's a becomes an obstacle for you. If you're not good on the return side, can't really advance. So, that's going to be your focus. How to score points on the serve side. Keep doing what you're doing because I'm assuming you know how to score points now. Learn how to stay alive longer. Learn how to get one more shot over the net. Better court positioning. That's better work. You're going to need that anyway even once you go get ready to master the third shot drop and all the movement that goes along with it. Um you're going to want these other pieces, your court positioning, uh your defensive shots, your staying alive shots, work on those now and when you have the third shot drop, you'll be able to round it out. And then Charles rounded out that question by saying uh by asking, you know, basically about a drop and a dink being the same thing. And you know, kind of confusing to have both those terms. Uh actually Charles a few years back the IPTPA, which is the original uh coach certification program in pickleball. I know there's several now but IPTPA is the the grand the grandparent of all of them if you want to put it that way. Um which is the one that I'm certified with went away from calling it the third shot drop and they started calling the third shot drop the long dink. So they had the short dink, the medium dink, and the long dink. I do think it's simpler to just refer to it as one thing because it is it is essentially a dink whether you're hitting it from the baseline or hitting it from up at the kitchen line if you're trying to utilize the opposite non-volley zone or kitchen for your shot development. So you're trying to drop it in there doesn't really matter the shots the same basically and then you asked um you know just more energy and trajectory. I would say more energy and perhaps a different trajectory not more trajectory is how I would frame it but uh yes so that would be correct. Dink and drop. Same shot. So, um, all right. Next question has to... we're going to pivot now to drop in versus regular partner play. And I'm actually going to read these to you because I think this this exchange is really powerful and it shows the just the power of community, right? Where you can have a a constructive thoughtful exchange between two players uh and then we as coaches can then come in and and give our opinion as well, but the conversation's already happening between the players. So, in our this is posted inside our community. And by the way, our community is absolutely free to join. You can join the TRP community at any time that you choose to. Uh go to tonyroigpickleball.com. We'll put a link down below, but it's just tonyroigpickleball.com. Click on the header on top and there's a com... Join the Community button. Click that. Come into the community, see what's going on. Again, absolutely free. You can have really nice exchanges like this. Get your questions answered. Uh so, Bill says, "I like your perspective." Oh, and this has to do with partner play and how you play with the partners. So, I like your perspective, but I play drop-in, which most players do, right? I'm imagining listening to this. I get a various mix of partners and they play their own way. Your perspective is great if I have a regular partner, but I don't. What is your suggestion for this kind of play for being for like open play, rec play, or drop-in play? Um, we actually had we did make a couple of suggestions inside the course about that, but I'm actually going to expand on that over the next little bit. Uh my general advice on rec play versus open play. I'll share that with you in a second. Let me read the answer. Actually, I told you I was going to read the answer. So, let me not the answer but the conversation. So, Deanna wrote in, "Bill, open play or drop-in play is an important place to improvement uh to implement, I'm sorry, some of these techniques. Being encouraging and loose, i.e. not tense during and between rallies helps your partner relax and not feel like you're judging them when they miss an easy shot, for example. And if you're doing drop-in, I'm sure you have lots of experiences where partners miss easy shots, right? And communication during the rally. It's especially important with a partner who doesn't know what to expect from you. Your goal is not to make them play quote unquote your way, but to impact how they feel during the game in ways that allow them to show up at their best. And here's another thing I found. Once you've played with someone a few times and created the sense of positivity and acceptance between the two of you, you may find them open to some mild coaching that can also improve their game. At least that's been my experience. So, this is a great conversation between Bill. You know, Bill posing a question to the community and to us as coaches and then Deanna coming in and and and adding her perspective, right? Very thoughtful, very um helpful, right, to to give some additional information and how what she's experienced as a player is really helpful then to Bill and everybody else who's reading it to have that kind of exchange. So again, highly recommend you check out the community and come in if you're into this kind of positive uh supportive conversation about the sport of pickleball. Um, a couple of things that I would add to that, not add, but a supplement I guess to the conversation on what to do in rec versus, you know, more organized play where you're playing with regular partners is u one is control the controllables. And so, you know, you learning how to play as a you learning how to be a better partner is is awesome. Period. Full stop. Nothing else to do, right? Even if your partner doesn't really know how to do the things, right? So that your team can't really maximize the partner play strategies that you know so well. You knowing them is good enough. Period. Done. Second thing is when you show that you know partner play right that you excuse me that you understand these strategies then what happens is other players who understand these strategies notice that you are understanding the strategies. Now things change for you meaning in a positive way. But what they changed for you is that now you you more more doors open for you. You continue to play in the drop-ins you're playing in with your social and your friends, but perhaps you get a call for that Tuesday 11:00 a.m. game or that, you know, Friday morning game that that you've been looking at and haven't really been able to get into. Why is that? Because you understand the game the way that those players understand the game. And so now more doors are open to you. Uh, and then the the last thing I would say is that what I do in open play is I play a more uh conservative uh style. What I mean by that is I will give myself more space to read the situation. So you can play basically like a center fielder in in baseball where you're kind of like making sure that nothing gets behind you, right? So I play a little bit more like that when I'm in rec play, particularly when I don't know what my my partner's going to do. I also am very open to them hitting whatever they want to hit. I don't get in the middle of, you know, if I see that they like to come across the middle and hit a lot of shots that I would think are mine. Okay, it's fine. It's just one game. I'll get through it. I'll I'll survive it. So, those are things that I would do in in open play. Uh, all right. Next question. This has to do with uh with forehand in the middle. So, Mark says, "Love this thinking." and he's talking about uh a piece that I wrote, an article that I wrote about the middle coverage myth about forehand in the middle. Uh it's actually published by The Kitchen community, is also available on our website. Uh but Mark says, "Love this thinking. Biggest challenge is getting your partner to understand this." When so many players think it is forehand that takes the middle. Um I uh if you've known me for any amount of time, you know that I'm a Respect the X adherent. Not only that, I'm the Respect the X creator back in 2018. So, Respect the X is what I believe is a better strategy for middle cover. What I would suggest to you is when you have players who are um adherents to forehand in the middle, the blog is public knowledge. Obviously, you know, you do it in a way that's right for you in terms of your relationship with your friends and and you know, the players at your facility, but you can feel free to share it with them, right? It's just out there. So, it's the myth of the forehand in the middle at Tony Roig Pickleball. Uh and uh you can share that with them. One other thing I'm going to mention, I want to uh invite you to listen to this Friday's podcast because just today I was exposed to this idea, this term called Google knowledge, which is kind of like a shallow knowledge of different subjects, you know, like just what Google tells you and not much more. And uh it's not a criticism of that kind of knowledge. It's just one form of knowledge. Um, but I believe and I'm going to explain that more on Friday, but I think that's what allows sometimes or or or bars us sometimes from having a more constructive conversation amongst players about different strategies in pickleball is because we're coming from at it from a Google knowledge level rather than from a real knowledge level, which I'll explain more on Friday, Friday's episode. And also, I'm going to be I'm actually going to be using Respect the X uh in comparison to forehand in the middle to explore this idea of Google knowledge versus real knowledge. So, I I encourage you to um to tune in for that. Uh Brenda asks about the serve. Is there a sweet spot to serve from? How far from the baseline is it best to be when serving? And is it better to serve from a position closer to the center line or should one serve from middle of the serve side of the court? Thanks. Uh Brenda, this is actually a uh a very nuanced question. I know it seems it's on on the surface, right? It seems like a very kind of a simple question. Where do I serve from? Right. And I know you didn't you weren't asking it a simple question, but just for everybody listening, it just seems simple, right? It's like just where do I stand? Just tell me where to stand, right? Um the reality is that there's a lot of factors to consider into where to stand. Um where you want to stand. One factor would be where do you where would you rather hit your third shot from? Would you rather hit your third shot from your backhand or would you rather hit your third shot from your forehand? And then what you're going to do is you're going to you're going to slide left or right along the baseline within the space that you have to serve from to expose more of the side that you want to hit. Okay? So that'll affect where you stand. Another thing that might affect where you stand is um are you stacking? I see a lot of players who stack on serve. They actually do it what I would I consider to be the the less optimal way which is they'll stand far away from the center line serve and then have to run all the way across the court to get to their side as opposed to just standing right next to the center line serving and then sliding over a less amount of space. So those are things that you can think about in terms in terms of left to right in terms of on the line or off the line that'll depend on the sort of mechanic that you want to use. Uh some players now are stepping through the serve. Nothing wrong with that. I mean, it's another variable in your shot mechanic, but you can step through the serve. If you're going to step through the serve, then obviously you need to give yourself space. Um, but if you're not stepping through the serve, right, as you move away from the baseline, you're making your job harder to hit the serve deep, right? You have to you have to hit it harder to get it deep. So, I I would recommend being close to the baseline, unless you are, you know, part of your mechanic is to step through the serve while you're serving. So, hope that helps you out, Brenda. Thanks for the question. Um, we have a question. Next question is about uh split step complexity uh from Steve. So um uh basically it's seems like I'm hearing contradictory information. When the opponent is ready to hit the ball, you say stop and split step. Understand? Then you mentioned continuing moving to hit a volley in the transition zone rather than split stepping as you move to the NVZ. Again, this this is one of the beauties of our sport. It's nuanced. It has shades to it, right? Uh, and I think that's one of the things that makes it so interesting to us because if it was, you know, plain and binary or black and white, probably wouldn't be as exciting. Um, so the the issue here, uh, Steve, has to do with the type of shot you're dealing with. So, every time you hit the ball, if your body's under control, you're probably going to hit a better shot, right? Your percentages of hitting a better shot go up because your body's in control and your paddle's going to swing along the arc you want it to. You can see the ball better. All those things. Um, the exception to that, not exception to whether it's going to be a better shot, but the exception to to perhaps getting your body set is when you're hitting your after you've hit your return serve and you're making it up to the line. The reason I make an exception to the split step there isn't because a split step wouldn't be great. It would be in theory is because what I've seen happen in reality is that when players try and do that on the return side after they return serve, that ends up being their default. So, what ends up they end up split stepping all the time, even when they don't have to. And so what ends up happening is you end up hitting a lot of fourth shots off the line even when you don't have to. So I I in that situation, my my preference would be I'll take the few times that I might have a higher risk of missing because I'm coming through it moving. So I'm I'm not always going to miss it when I'm moving and hitting, right? It's just a percentage thing. So, if I'm moving and hitting those particular shots, okay, I take that chance or I take that additional risk on those because I gain the other times that I'm going to be at the line, be able to handle the fourth shot. Um, so that's just a trade-off that I that I've come up with as a coach that I've the decision that I've made as a coach as to which one's more important. Now going back to in theory if you can manage to split step only the times that you need to hit shots u coming to you as the returner making it to the non volley zone line and it does not impact the other times great then that's a better approach. So that's how I see it but it's a very nuanced thing as you can see and again one of the beauties of our sport. Um we got several questions or comments I should say about getting beat on dinks to the outside. So we had part of our partner play series was about court angles and coverage. And so that elicited some conversation about the outside shot because the premise that we play with is that you can only cover two of the three angles. You can cover line, cover middle. You can't really cover the diagonal kill shot. Um and so the players, you know, understandably were like, well, I get beat out there, right? And I know you get beat out there, okay? I get beat out there and I beat my my opponents out there, right? So it happens to all of us at all levels. If you watch the pros, it happens to them, too. Um, what I would suggest to you is that within the bigger picture of your game, it's probably something not worth too much focus on right now. And the way to test it, and I welcome you to test it because I want if you can if you can prove what I'm saying wrong, I want to know. Video your games and look at how many of the points that are being scored against you are as a result of that particular type of shot. Because I'm going to bet that it's super small. Maybe in a session in an entire session, six, eight games, however many you play in a session, 10 games, once or twice, maybe three times. Um, it's not like all the time. And then when you compare that to miss fourth shots, miss returns of serve, short returns of serve, you're getting cracked, stuff like that, it really you can see how the the scale of it is is totally different. So that'd be my recommendation. Again, if you do it and let me know either way, right? If you do and you're like, you know what, I I counted so many games and this is what happened. Um, one way or the other, let me know. So, tony@tonyroigpickleball.com. Uh and then the last couple of questions here. One question here is uh about a back brace. Anybody use a back brace due to sciatica issue? If so, what brand do you find helpful? Um I answered that inside the community. I basically I've used Walgreens, CVS. I suffer from sciatica too. Uh it flares up and I use it. Um what I wanted to talk about was a couple of ideas. One was uh here was one of a couple of ideas was one was um like focusing on the areas that are that that trouble you outside of when they trouble you. That's difficult for me too, right? Because you know when my back flares up, I'm very aware of it. You know, I'm taking care of it and then for a few weeks after I'm taking care of it, then you know, maybe three months later, back to normal, right? Normal in quotes. And then maybe six months later, I get it again and I'm like, "Oh, I forgot to do those things." So yeah, I think if you can incorporate some some preventative care is helpful. Um there's also some other concepts that I think are worth looking at. I'm not an expert in these areas. I know enough to suggest them to you and then for you to do your research and perhaps deeper than Google knowledge if you want to. Uh but basically um there's like this proximal versus distal strength that you can develop. Proximal as I understand is basically like very like super core. It's not like your abs on the outside. It's like on the inside like where like the the muscles that literally connect your spine to your hip, they all run like inside it, you know, very inside your body. Um, working on those parts of your body uh will help that proximal strength and proximal streng strength then um makes it less likely that you're going to have distal issues. You know, distal meaning away as I understand it. So, it's worth checking that out. Uh, and also suggest sometimes looking at indirect causes of of problems. So like sometimes when I've had issues in some part of my body, it's because of a problem with another part of my body. So uh for instance, my knee might hurt, but it's because my hip is tight, right? Or my back might go out of whack, but it's not because of my back, it's because of my glutes are tight, you know? So be aware of that as you as you work on on yourself um uh with your uh with your body. And then on the brace, the other thing I suggested um uh I I what I answered in the community was I've used braces just from like Walgreens, CVS, but I only use them when you need to use a brace, right? So avoid the temptation to use them all the time because then what happens is your muscles get weaker because they're not being used. So anyway, that's my non-healthcare advice on back braces just from personal experience. And I guess I got to say it's not health advice. I'm not a doctor, but this is what's worked for me. And then uh the last piece I want to share with you here, there was uh some conversation inside uh the community about connecting uh and finding other local player, other players who are local to the player who is posting to see if they could drill together and work on their game together. I think that's awesome. I highly encourage you to do that. And if you can find somebody locally who is in the same kind of um same mindset as you and same growth ideas as you, that's amazing. But what I would add to that is don't lose sight of doing it virtually. You know, I I recognize that being, you know, local and being able to go to lunch afterwards or breakfast before, whatever. It's nice, but if that's not possible, don't don't scrap the entire thing just because there's nobody in your immediate vicinity. Um, the online way of doing it is also feasible where you basically you meet, you share ideas as to what's going to happen in the future. It becomes like an accountability thing because then you have to go back and say you know the next meeting is like this is what I did or not uh and then that helps you and helps uh helps the others uh as well. So um just you know anything you can do to establish community and connection and that's why I encouraged you earlier to join the community at Tony Roig Pickleball because what you'll find at the community at Tony Roig Pickleball are players who are interested in growth. They're interested in in personal development. They're interested in understanding. They ask questions like this. They have exchanges like the one I read to you earlier. Uh, and I know that if you listen to this podcast at all. And if you're listening to it at this stage of the this particular episode, you're not the average average bear in pickleball. You're not, you know, you're not just here to bat a ball around. You want more. And our community is a place where you can find other players who share that kind of passion with you and for our uh sport. So, um, that's this special episode of Pickleball Therapy. I hope uh you enjoyed it. If you have questions, um, please post them inside the community. That's really where our focus is going to be is going to be inside the community. If you're, uh, if you're in inside Your Pickleball Coach, if you're one of our students, post it in there. Um, you can also post it in the main chat if you want to, depending on who you want to interact with. Uh, if you're in the in the big community, in the general community, post it in there. That's where these questions came from. Um, my plan is I will be in there looking for questions, seeing what's happening, and then I'll pull certain questions, I'll put them into a file like I did this time. When there's sufficient number of questions, I'll jump on the microphone, answer your questions, and share with you my my perspective on the different areas in which you're wondering what the answer may be uh regarding pickleball or anything you want to ask. So, I encourage you to do that. So, a pleasure to be with you this uh for this special episode. Uh, tune in this Friday for that episode on Google Knowledge. Until then, be well.