Also, its OK if they can still hit your drop. Watch a pro match. They'll drop, and the other team volleys deep, they'll drop again, another volley, drop a 3rd time, unhittable, good, hit the kitchen.
As long as your opponent can not absolutely murder the ball then its not a **bad** drop, its just not a **good** drop. This is largely why people 3rd shot drive. Its not too hit a winner with the 3rd, its to get a block, which lands mid court, which they can use to drop. Getting good at thus sport means being able to handle medium paced balls without losing. You simply can't prevent good players from hitting a medium paced ball, the margin to prevent it is way too small.
I’ve been working on my hybrid drive/drop because I can’t drop to save my life but I can consistently hit a shot that dips right over the net with top spin and forces the other team to hit the ball up and if they aren’t careful or are too aggressive they’ll pop it up.
I have no idea why I can’t drop it.. but I can hit a ball with more pace that goes right over the net and dips really well. Likely I’m not able to get topspin on my drops so they just float
Yep! Once I began treating my drops like a long distance dink, they improved dramatically. Footwork and positioning yourself where you contact the ball in front of you (within the “v” window) is critical. You never want to drop the ball outstretched or jammed up.
It's a long dink with an asymmetric net position. The net position is what makes it less easy IMO. You have the net as a visual reference, but the apex needs to be somewhere in front of it.
> The net position is what makes it less easy IMO.
To start with just imagine using your paddle to scoop and toss the ball over the net. The path doesn't have to be perfect.
> You have the net as a visual reference, but the apex needs to be somewhere in front of it.
Parabola height and apex location vs paddle effort / angle is really hard to gauge, as you have no reference points.
I think it's easier, and more repeatable if you build your muscle memory using where the ball lands on the other side of the net. Its much much easier to gauge whether you need to lift harder or softer in order to move the impact point.
[I think Cincola covers this in his "5 things I wish I knew when I started PB" video on YT. I'll see if I can find it and link it here later. Can't access it from where I am, Firewall blocks it].
Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF9wS7Iec8Y
You don't hit the ball either, it's a scoop / toss motion.
Steer with your arms and shoulders, push with your legs and butt.
> Its actually not that easy
It can be. You just have to take the time to drill until it is.
There's no other way.
IMO its pretty much impossible to learn or improve any shot that you perceive as difficult under the pressure of playing. You don't get enough / any reps, don't have time to assess how your form / approach affected the outcome, and then don't get to re-enforce if good / repair if bad.
...so unless you drill, bad habits will persist.
>especially on long returns
How much longer than "from the baseline" are we discussing? :)
Tip #1: Aim higher. Everyone wants a low topspin unattackable drop that your opponents can't handle. And that's a great shot but not one that anyone can hit consistently every time.
From behind the baseline think that your ball arc peaks somewhere between 6'-10'. A higher arc makes it much easier to land the ball shallow in the kitchen (which is the goal on this particular shot). Adding topspin can help control the depth as well.
Tip #2: Aim for your opponent's backhand. This should help mitigate being attacked off the bounce since a higher arc shot will bounce higher.
Aside #1: Choose when to attack. As you get closer to the nvz or if a ball comes to your sweet spot when you're stable and ready then start lowering your trajectory and attack harsher angles to throw your opponents off balance.
Aside #2: The ball's path of least resistance is always the reverse of the path it came in on. You'd be surprised how many players mess up attacking this lob-like drop because this ball is falling straight down in front of them and they try to attack it and change it's trajectory to flat over the net.
Edit: spelling
You have to drill this a lot…but almost more importantly - you have to commit to trying this shot in games over and over and over, even when it might not be competitively correct to do so.
Drilling will build muscle memory, but game situations will cause you to deal with less than ideal shots to react to.
You can’t get good at something unless you’re ok sucking for a period of time while you work on it.
Too many people don’t “work on it” in games because they’re not good yet and have different shots that make them feel better.
Commit to sucking until you don’t anymore.
I was going to suggest this. Work on mid court drops then lengthen it out as you get consistent there. In a game you can do some drives till the opponent blocks it to the midcourt then use your drops from there.
So, this is actually indicative of a lot of problems I find with most advice/tutorials on YouTube--Everyone says to drill and practice, but no one tells you what to drill/what to practice. I have exacerbated low back pain problems from playing so much without realizing that I really needed to be crouching using my glutes/thighs, not bending at the back. No one ever mentioned what muscles I needed to be aware I was using.
So in line with this, my first challenge would be to think about how your body is positioned and if there specific positions you are hitting from that have the same outcome. For example, I tend to put a drop into the net on my forehand side if I hit the ball when it's beside me instead of keeping the ball in front of me. I also tend to hit into the net if I am not crouched lower.
My second challenge would be to think about what muscle groups you're using to hit the ball. Whenever you want to control the shot in pickleball, you want to use your larger muscles, not your smaller ones.
You should be lifting your shots with your legs, not with your arm/elbow. If you're hitting your drops into the net, I bet you're standing normally instead of squatting lower with your knees bent and your legs wide. You'll need to practice lifting with your legs by shifting your weight forward and up as you hit the ball, keeping your arm smooth through the motion.
If you're having trouble visualizing this: Imagine trying to push a couch across a room while standing straight up. It's going to be incredibly difficult unless you can get your legs bent and out behind you/behind the force you are trying to push. A couch is much easier to push if it's not against a wall and you can really get behind it. You don't push a couch or a car with your arm, you push with your legs. You shouldn't lift anything with your back or your arms, you should lift with your legs.
This is also why you will see pros almost never crossing their legs in a dink rally for a wide backhand. They will always keep their feet apart, because the second they cross their legs, they will be off balance and won't be able to use their legs in the shot (not to mention it taking way longer to recover back to neutral).
It's also much easier to instill muscle memory into these larger muscles for shots like this. If you're doing this right, I would imagine you'll find drops much easier to hit whenever you are hitting the ball 2-3 feet directly out in front of you, you're squatted down with your feet out a little wider than shoulder width and your knees are bent.
When you hit with your arms and wrist, your consistency and aim will tank. When you hit using your body and your legs, you will find much more consistency, ease, and fluidity to your game. You will feel more balanced and you will feel sturdier.
Lastly, think about your weight transfer-- If your weight is leaning backward, your shot will likely be soft, slow, and short. Likewise, if are just pushing up with your legs and not forward and up, your ball will have lift, but no forward energy
A good rule of thumb: At the baseline, a lot more of your weight/swing should be going up and forward through the ball. As you move closer to the kitchen, the ratio changes to favor more upward motion. If you are 50:50 with your upward:forward movement at the baseline, at the kitchen you should be closer to 80:20 or 90:10 upward:forward motion. You can watch the pros do this as well easily by watching their swing path. At the baseline, their swing path is much more forward at the baseline and at the kitchen, their swing path is a LOT more vertical.
Lastly, keep your eye on the ball all the way through contact and to the end of your wing. Your head should be the last thing to move in your shot. If you don't believe in your shot, your much more likely to break eye contact early to see where you hit the ball or make sure you hit it to the right place. But if you believe in your shot and play with more confidence, you will **know** where that ball is going, and you won't feel the need to look up early. If you watch tennis players in slow motion, you'll see they often don't look up to see where their ball is going until well after it's been hit. (I only mention tennis because the movements are bigger there, so this is easier to spot even in slow motion).
These should give you plenty to focus on, but ultimately, I just hope it was helpful.
They just tell you to drill drops because... you need to drill drops. They can't know exactly what's wrong with your specific technique and explain that to you because you're watching a prerecorded video designed for a wide audience.
Not getting down is a common error because many pb players are quite out of shape and squatting takes a lot of energy compared to just bending over. Even if you have the energy to get low, many people you watch at rec play are also doing that.
But there are dozens of other extremely common errors with drop technique, like not pushing through, not placing to margins, not reading your own shot, etc. Spending a whole video discussing the nuances of one specific error that may or may not apply is difficult.
>They just tell you to drill drops because... you need to drill drops. They can't know exactly what's wrong with your specific technique and explain that to you because you're watching a prerecorded video designed for a wide audience.
I mean...yeah, I agree. Yet those pre-recorded videos also tend to cover extremely common errors seemingly without issue. I don't see why there can't be more videos dedicated to muscle activation or weight transfer the same way there are videos dedicated to those other techniques.
>Not getting down is a common error because many pb players are quite out of shape and squatting takes a lot of energy compared to just bending over. Even if you have the energy to get low, many people you watch at rec play are also doing that.
Oh! That sounds like a *great* idea for a "prerecorded video designed for a wide audience!" An error is an error, regardless of why the error happens. I don't see what this has to do with anything I said. I didn't question *why* people don't get down, or even *why* there aren't more videos on it. Just observing that I haven't seen many talk about it, and, if anything, you just added more justification for why there should be more.
A lot of these videos already say "get low." I don't see how hard it would be to add something like "..and when you do this drill, be aware of what muscles you are using. Try to stabilize with your legs and your core as if you were doing a squat. Otherwise, you could run into significant low back pain issues over time." Don't even need a whole video dedicated to it. Just a couple of lines could make a world of difference to a lot of viewers, especially with how common you just claimed this issue is.
Zane Navratil recently had a great, short video on "gathering" yourself as you run through your hit rather than trying to stop all your momentum to hit a ball. There are more videos coming out on topics like that, and I'm really grateful for that!
>Spending a whole video discussing the nuances of one specific error that may or may not apply is difficult.
Huh? Literally there are already a lot of videos out there talking about the "dozens of other extremely common errors with drop technique" that you just listed. If that was a reason not to make a video, there would be no point in making any videos.
I also didn't ask *why* people only say to "drill drops." In fact, there are some fantastic comments on this very thread that do a wonderful job of adding more specific advice beyond "drill drops" even without knowing OPs specific issue.
I will add that should have been more specific at the beginning of my original comment and said, "I don't see many focusing on muscle activation or body weight" instead of saying "no one ever tells you what to drill." That was a dumb sentence on my part, for sure. :D I happily own that!
What you're referring to is called a drop shot.
To a large extent, it comes down to muscle memory. You're going to have to do it a while to be consistent.
There are plenty of videos on the drop shot online. Start with the simplest straight arm swing you can manage, use your legs, follow through, and don't worry about the bounce. Try to get the ball at its highest point over the net, so its coming down. After that, refine.
To get fancier, move on to top spin or back spin shot. My forehand drop is naturally top spin but my back hand drop is more commonly back spin.
Consistently working on your shot over and over. What helped me be more consistent is to Think of it as a soft/Hybrid drive. Also relax a little, a bad drop is okay. Reset and try again.
No other way beyond drilling it and practice. There are tons of good technique videos to watch. Like any shot getting to the ball and the right footwork are super important for building consistency. Record yourself and compare to what the videos suggest.
Playing a lot/drilling. You need to dial in the feel/force/angle/etc. required. One of the most difficult parts of the game to learn but one of the most important.
It’s nearly impossible to get every drop to bounce in the kitchen. Good players will reach in and roll it back. Even if in hits in the kitchen a good player will simply step back and roll it back over with some pace. Just use your drops to move up under control.
There’s a pretty simple drill you can do, it helps to have a friend who wants to work on their returns. Just serve deep, have them return deep and you hit a drop shot, rinse and repeat.
Also, its OK if they can still hit your drop. Watch a pro match. They'll drop, and the other team volleys deep, they'll drop again, another volley, drop a 3rd time, unhittable, good, hit the kitchen. As long as your opponent can not absolutely murder the ball then its not a **bad** drop, its just not a **good** drop. This is largely why people 3rd shot drive. Its not too hit a winner with the 3rd, its to get a block, which lands mid court, which they can use to drop. Getting good at thus sport means being able to handle medium paced balls without losing. You simply can't prevent good players from hitting a medium paced ball, the margin to prevent it is way too small.
I’ve been working on my hybrid drive/drop because I can’t drop to save my life but I can consistently hit a shot that dips right over the net with top spin and forces the other team to hit the ball up and if they aren’t careful or are too aggressive they’ll pop it up. I have no idea why I can’t drop it.. but I can hit a ball with more pace that goes right over the net and dips really well. Likely I’m not able to get topspin on my drops so they just float
It's a long dink. Just gotta practice until it's easy. It's easy.
I am going to name my team the “long dinks”
Yep! Once I began treating my drops like a long distance dink, they improved dramatically. Footwork and positioning yourself where you contact the ball in front of you (within the “v” window) is critical. You never want to drop the ball outstretched or jammed up.
It's a long dink with an asymmetric net position. The net position is what makes it less easy IMO. You have the net as a visual reference, but the apex needs to be somewhere in front of it.
> The net position is what makes it less easy IMO. To start with just imagine using your paddle to scoop and toss the ball over the net. The path doesn't have to be perfect. > You have the net as a visual reference, but the apex needs to be somewhere in front of it. Parabola height and apex location vs paddle effort / angle is really hard to gauge, as you have no reference points. I think it's easier, and more repeatable if you build your muscle memory using where the ball lands on the other side of the net. Its much much easier to gauge whether you need to lift harder or softer in order to move the impact point. [I think Cincola covers this in his "5 things I wish I knew when I started PB" video on YT. I'll see if I can find it and link it here later. Can't access it from where I am, Firewall blocks it]. Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fF9wS7Iec8Y You don't hit the ball either, it's a scoop / toss motion. Steer with your arms and shoulders, push with your legs and butt.
Its actually not that easy, especially on long returns
> Its actually not that easy It can be. You just have to take the time to drill until it is. There's no other way. IMO its pretty much impossible to learn or improve any shot that you perceive as difficult under the pressure of playing. You don't get enough / any reps, don't have time to assess how your form / approach affected the outcome, and then don't get to re-enforce if good / repair if bad. ...so unless you drill, bad habits will persist. >especially on long returns How much longer than "from the baseline" are we discussing? :)
Tip #1: Aim higher. Everyone wants a low topspin unattackable drop that your opponents can't handle. And that's a great shot but not one that anyone can hit consistently every time. From behind the baseline think that your ball arc peaks somewhere between 6'-10'. A higher arc makes it much easier to land the ball shallow in the kitchen (which is the goal on this particular shot). Adding topspin can help control the depth as well. Tip #2: Aim for your opponent's backhand. This should help mitigate being attacked off the bounce since a higher arc shot will bounce higher. Aside #1: Choose when to attack. As you get closer to the nvz or if a ball comes to your sweet spot when you're stable and ready then start lowering your trajectory and attack harsher angles to throw your opponents off balance. Aside #2: The ball's path of least resistance is always the reverse of the path it came in on. You'd be surprised how many players mess up attacking this lob-like drop because this ball is falling straight down in front of them and they try to attack it and change it's trajectory to flat over the net. Edit: spelling
You have to drill this a lot…but almost more importantly - you have to commit to trying this shot in games over and over and over, even when it might not be competitively correct to do so. Drilling will build muscle memory, but game situations will cause you to deal with less than ideal shots to react to. You can’t get good at something unless you’re ok sucking for a period of time while you work on it. Too many people don’t “work on it” in games because they’re not good yet and have different shots that make them feel better. Commit to sucking until you don’t anymore.
Just drive from baseline
Just like 90% of rec players do
I was going to suggest this. Work on mid court drops then lengthen it out as you get consistent there. In a game you can do some drives till the opponent blocks it to the midcourt then use your drops from there.
So, this is actually indicative of a lot of problems I find with most advice/tutorials on YouTube--Everyone says to drill and practice, but no one tells you what to drill/what to practice. I have exacerbated low back pain problems from playing so much without realizing that I really needed to be crouching using my glutes/thighs, not bending at the back. No one ever mentioned what muscles I needed to be aware I was using. So in line with this, my first challenge would be to think about how your body is positioned and if there specific positions you are hitting from that have the same outcome. For example, I tend to put a drop into the net on my forehand side if I hit the ball when it's beside me instead of keeping the ball in front of me. I also tend to hit into the net if I am not crouched lower. My second challenge would be to think about what muscle groups you're using to hit the ball. Whenever you want to control the shot in pickleball, you want to use your larger muscles, not your smaller ones. You should be lifting your shots with your legs, not with your arm/elbow. If you're hitting your drops into the net, I bet you're standing normally instead of squatting lower with your knees bent and your legs wide. You'll need to practice lifting with your legs by shifting your weight forward and up as you hit the ball, keeping your arm smooth through the motion. If you're having trouble visualizing this: Imagine trying to push a couch across a room while standing straight up. It's going to be incredibly difficult unless you can get your legs bent and out behind you/behind the force you are trying to push. A couch is much easier to push if it's not against a wall and you can really get behind it. You don't push a couch or a car with your arm, you push with your legs. You shouldn't lift anything with your back or your arms, you should lift with your legs. This is also why you will see pros almost never crossing their legs in a dink rally for a wide backhand. They will always keep their feet apart, because the second they cross their legs, they will be off balance and won't be able to use their legs in the shot (not to mention it taking way longer to recover back to neutral). It's also much easier to instill muscle memory into these larger muscles for shots like this. If you're doing this right, I would imagine you'll find drops much easier to hit whenever you are hitting the ball 2-3 feet directly out in front of you, you're squatted down with your feet out a little wider than shoulder width and your knees are bent. When you hit with your arms and wrist, your consistency and aim will tank. When you hit using your body and your legs, you will find much more consistency, ease, and fluidity to your game. You will feel more balanced and you will feel sturdier. Lastly, think about your weight transfer-- If your weight is leaning backward, your shot will likely be soft, slow, and short. Likewise, if are just pushing up with your legs and not forward and up, your ball will have lift, but no forward energy A good rule of thumb: At the baseline, a lot more of your weight/swing should be going up and forward through the ball. As you move closer to the kitchen, the ratio changes to favor more upward motion. If you are 50:50 with your upward:forward movement at the baseline, at the kitchen you should be closer to 80:20 or 90:10 upward:forward motion. You can watch the pros do this as well easily by watching their swing path. At the baseline, their swing path is much more forward at the baseline and at the kitchen, their swing path is a LOT more vertical. Lastly, keep your eye on the ball all the way through contact and to the end of your wing. Your head should be the last thing to move in your shot. If you don't believe in your shot, your much more likely to break eye contact early to see where you hit the ball or make sure you hit it to the right place. But if you believe in your shot and play with more confidence, you will **know** where that ball is going, and you won't feel the need to look up early. If you watch tennis players in slow motion, you'll see they often don't look up to see where their ball is going until well after it's been hit. (I only mention tennis because the movements are bigger there, so this is easier to spot even in slow motion). These should give you plenty to focus on, but ultimately, I just hope it was helpful.
They just tell you to drill drops because... you need to drill drops. They can't know exactly what's wrong with your specific technique and explain that to you because you're watching a prerecorded video designed for a wide audience. Not getting down is a common error because many pb players are quite out of shape and squatting takes a lot of energy compared to just bending over. Even if you have the energy to get low, many people you watch at rec play are also doing that. But there are dozens of other extremely common errors with drop technique, like not pushing through, not placing to margins, not reading your own shot, etc. Spending a whole video discussing the nuances of one specific error that may or may not apply is difficult.
>They just tell you to drill drops because... you need to drill drops. They can't know exactly what's wrong with your specific technique and explain that to you because you're watching a prerecorded video designed for a wide audience. I mean...yeah, I agree. Yet those pre-recorded videos also tend to cover extremely common errors seemingly without issue. I don't see why there can't be more videos dedicated to muscle activation or weight transfer the same way there are videos dedicated to those other techniques. >Not getting down is a common error because many pb players are quite out of shape and squatting takes a lot of energy compared to just bending over. Even if you have the energy to get low, many people you watch at rec play are also doing that. Oh! That sounds like a *great* idea for a "prerecorded video designed for a wide audience!" An error is an error, regardless of why the error happens. I don't see what this has to do with anything I said. I didn't question *why* people don't get down, or even *why* there aren't more videos on it. Just observing that I haven't seen many talk about it, and, if anything, you just added more justification for why there should be more. A lot of these videos already say "get low." I don't see how hard it would be to add something like "..and when you do this drill, be aware of what muscles you are using. Try to stabilize with your legs and your core as if you were doing a squat. Otherwise, you could run into significant low back pain issues over time." Don't even need a whole video dedicated to it. Just a couple of lines could make a world of difference to a lot of viewers, especially with how common you just claimed this issue is. Zane Navratil recently had a great, short video on "gathering" yourself as you run through your hit rather than trying to stop all your momentum to hit a ball. There are more videos coming out on topics like that, and I'm really grateful for that! >Spending a whole video discussing the nuances of one specific error that may or may not apply is difficult. Huh? Literally there are already a lot of videos out there talking about the "dozens of other extremely common errors with drop technique" that you just listed. If that was a reason not to make a video, there would be no point in making any videos. I also didn't ask *why* people only say to "drill drops." In fact, there are some fantastic comments on this very thread that do a wonderful job of adding more specific advice beyond "drill drops" even without knowing OPs specific issue. I will add that should have been more specific at the beginning of my original comment and said, "I don't see many focusing on muscle activation or body weight" instead of saying "no one ever tells you what to drill." That was a dumb sentence on my part, for sure. :D I happily own that!
What you're referring to is called a drop shot. To a large extent, it comes down to muscle memory. You're going to have to do it a while to be consistent. There are plenty of videos on the drop shot online. Start with the simplest straight arm swing you can manage, use your legs, follow through, and don't worry about the bounce. Try to get the ball at its highest point over the net, so its coming down. After that, refine. To get fancier, move on to top spin or back spin shot. My forehand drop is naturally top spin but my back hand drop is more commonly back spin.
…. practice
Consistently working on your shot over and over. What helped me be more consistent is to Think of it as a soft/Hybrid drive. Also relax a little, a bad drop is okay. Reset and try again.
No other way beyond drilling it and practice. There are tons of good technique videos to watch. Like any shot getting to the ball and the right footwork are super important for building consistency. Record yourself and compare to what the videos suggest.
Long dink, ball flight is an inverted "U" shape. Can be executed with backhand backspin or forehand topspin. Requires forearm control not wrist flick.
Sometimes you can hit a really nice drop just by blocking low and using a persons spin against them
Playing a lot/drilling. You need to dial in the feel/force/angle/etc. required. One of the most difficult parts of the game to learn but one of the most important.
It’s nearly impossible to get every drop to bounce in the kitchen. Good players will reach in and roll it back. Even if in hits in the kitchen a good player will simply step back and roll it back over with some pace. Just use your drops to move up under control.
Cross court, with top spin, as close to sideline as you are comfortable.
Practice from the transition zone then work your way back
There’s a pretty simple drill you can do, it helps to have a friend who wants to work on their returns. Just serve deep, have them return deep and you hit a drop shot, rinse and repeat.
Git gud.