64: Watch Yourself Win: How Video Analysis Instantly Improves Your Pickleball Game

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Welcome to 4.0 to Pro.

The Pickleball podcast that focuses on a single shot, tip or strategy to improve your

Pickleball game with every single pocket size episode.

Our goal is to make you better on the court every time you hear our voices.

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another episode of 4.0 to Pro, your pocket size Pickleball

podcast.

When you teach you a single shot or strategy every single episode, I'm Mike Loneel here

in Long Beach, California, joined by your chef Marario.

They're in Boca Raton.

Florida?

Hello, sir.

Hello, my friend.

How are you doing today?

Well, I'm great.

I actually get to play some Pickleball.

I played since we saw each other in Arizona.

I was nursing a strained knee.

First of all, I can't believe I managed to play for two days with it in that condition.

I've been off the court for about 10 days or whatever it's been and I get to play a lot

this week, so I'm excited.

Well, I'm happy that it wasn't worst because you did definitely tweak that knee and it

was a Yomans effort to play the rest of the weekend for the event, but it was a great

event for charity.

So thank you for persevering.

We had a great question, Mircha, and that was a lot of people here, presumably, are trying

to get better at Pickleball.

And we have spoken on a number of occasions how filming yourself or watching film can

exponentially help your growth in Pickleball because a lot of times like, if we just think

about foot faults, no one thinks they ever foot fault in the history of the world until

they see it on video and then they've refalted and then they moved their foot back and they

go, oh, I guess I did.

In general, a lot of times we think we are doing one particular thing on the court when

we're not.

We think we're in the right place.

We think we've split step.

We think our paddles are properly positioned, but as video might suggest that is not the

case.

So we had a question about reviewing film and how we might decide to do such a thing to improve

our game.

Absolutely.

First of all, it's a great topic.

Second of all, it really hits home for me because I feel that that's really when I

was able to really expand my knowledge base and really approach the game from a much

more analytical perspective because we had just been playing and everyone was kind of

coming up and the pro game was just starting out.

But I was playing with all these local players with Julie Johnson and our kids, J. W.

and Georgia and Gabe and Anna Bright and James Ignato which and we were all playing and

we were doing some coaching, sort of some de facto coaching but not really, you know,

dedicated, intentional coaching.

It's certainly not like we're doing now.

And then when I was asked to coach the MLP team, the California Black Bears which were

formerly known as BLQK and was Andrew Koop and Fed Staxtrude and Maggie Brascia and Dylan

Frazier.

So then I really took it very, very seriously and I started doing a lot of video analysis.

So did video analysis of our own practice matches and our own game matches.

But particularly watching all our opponents and I watched so many pro matches and what

I did was I watched each individual player throughout an entire match.

I'd have another entire three game matches where I would only watch Ben Johns.

Long story short that yes, I think it's a great topic and I think you dramatically improve

both your approach to the game and how you implement the game.

As a quick aside, Mircha, we beat ourselves up a lot about not being able to play really

well in wind or if you haven't played for a while, what you're timing is like.

And this is very often happens to me if I take these long layoffs and come back to Pickleball,

I don't play very well.

And it's because my timing is off.

Here's the good news guys.

We just watched this PPA event in Texas and this is March 2026 that we're doing this show.

It was so windy on those courts that many of the pros looked like, you know, four-row players,

three-five players, they just kept missing ball after ball after ball.

So it's not just you, you guys.

It's not just you.

Anyway, let's talk about a bit, Mircha, about what we look for when we watch video.

So let's just start.

And I think there's an argument to be made where you do what you just said, which is like

just watch a single player and it doesn't hurt to watch the goat, either Ben or Anna-Lee

and how they move on the court and that kind of thing.

So first, let's talk about like, are you watching your own or are you watching somebody

else's game?

Yeah.

I think you should watch your own.

You can access that obviously really helps if you're a pro player because then you can

access all these matches from so many pros.

But definitely watch pro players play.

So that's very helpful.

If you can get video of your opponents in any way, that's also great.

But then ultimately watching your own with you and your partner and seeing the dynamics

that occur, it's incredibly helpful for your own technique, court positioning, footwork,

all these things.

And you know, a lot of times we're practicing to improve, to improve our gameplay and the

structure of our gameplay and improve winning patterns.

And you really need to include your partner in that.

If you have a regular partner, you really need to include them in that so you can both

grow together.

I think that's really key to making your team work better.

Yeah, I mean, that's ideal.

So you kind of have this analog of watching the pros where they're going to obviously be

moving a lot better and then ourselves where we're not going to be moving quite as well.

And very often we can feel this on the court.

I think if you're a, if you let's say you're close to a five or then a four or a, but

you play often, this is kind of my case where I will often play with players that are much

lower level.

And when you end up playing with someone who's higher level, it's so refreshing because

they think they are what they're supposed to be and they do get the balls they're supposed

to.

And it's all of a sudden these points open up and it feels way, way, way easier.

And you realize how much of a real team sport this is and how much individual effort is

great, but very difficult to completely take over for two people when someone's just not

hitting the right shot or not in the right position.

And a lot of times you're out there playing, you know, I've kind of trained myself to

do some self analysis as much as I can or our own analysis or analyzing our opponents.

And that's a, that's a skill that you can work on.

But ultimately it's really difficult because you're out there playing and you're not, you're

reacting to the ball.

You're not analyzing and you can't always tell where you are specifically on the court.

And court awareness is just huge.

Court, you know, we've talked about a time and time again, you know, beyond the footwork,

position is probably the lowest hanging fruit.

And one of the most critical things to improving your game.

So when you're in the right spot, you tend to get the right ball and you tend to get an

easier ball.

And video analysis kind of reveals those habits and patterns where you and your partner

are on the court and where you are relative to each other.

Because how often have, have one of us like sped up and, you know, the ball gets counted

off the middle and you're looking to your partner and you're thinking, well, where

where are you?

Or your partner is looking at you and, well, where were you?

Sometimes there's a question about who's ball it is and hey, with a video, you can just

take a look and you can see which way that ball is going.

Particularly if you have the proper positioning where ideally you know, you have, you're

basically, you're filming from the back of the court or perhaps a little bit to the side.

But it's at least looking forward or backward depending on your looking at it.

Looking over the length of the court as opposed to just the side of the court.

Yeah.

I just watched that match with CJ Klinger and JW Johnson versus Ben Johns and Gabe Tardio.

And to your point, precisely whenever one of them would speed up, let's say that Gabe

sped up, well, inevitably, JW or CJ, who are some of the greatest counter, counterers

in the game, would fire it right back in the middle and Ben is there waiting.

I just watched three points in a row that it was exactly the same pattern.

They get into these hands battles where your partner completely expects that ball to come

back at them because of positioning.

And I just heard something else as well.

If you get body bagged, it is always either your fault or your partner's fault.

It is never their fault.

You're the one who put that ball in that position and you were in that position not to be

prepared for the counter.

So it's always your fault.

Would you put court positioning above footwork or footwork above court positioning?

No, I'd put court positioning above.

I mean, you definitely need both, obviously.

So you know, you can't really discount their kind of inextricably linked.

That being said, you don't have to have perfect footwork to be in the proper position.

Yeah.

One of the lowest hanging fruits as well is to basically not be running through the ball.

But you brought up a good point and actually had this come up in rec play just the other

day. It was four guys, all senior pros playing and a couple of the guys were coaches and

they were also quality tournament players, NPL slash CSP, whatever you want to call it.

So the team league players, I just noticed that they were speeding up for themselves and

not speeding up for both themselves and their partner.

Whenever you speed up, when you're playing doubles, you're speeding up for two people.

You're not just speeding up for yourself.

And that's something that you can see clearly when you analyze the video, because you can

see one person might be back and they're unprepared or they they're just or your team is just

getting up to the kitchen after being back.

So if you hit, you maybe hit a third, maybe a fifth.

So one partner is a little bit back and the one ahead is attacking a low ball, which isn't

a tackable ball in the pro game or a high level game.

It could be a very reasonable ball to attack yet the counter goes to their partner low and

their partner is struggling to get it back because they're not in the proper position because

they were just coming up.

So the person that's attacking is attacking just for themselves.

And that's one of the things you can see on the video.

Yeah.

And just to put a bow on court positioning, what are the kind of things that we should be noticing?

You know what I mean?

Like in terms of our positioning and our opponents positioning, what are some of the things if

we just had a couple of bullet points of we're watching the video, what should we be looking for?

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So first off, what do you do to start off with?

You serve, right?

Yes.

You start off serving.

So first you look at the pre-served position, right?

And it's incredible how much you can gain from this because I just had a video analysis review the other day

and it was a lady that was playing with her female partner.

And she was the starting service, so she was serving from the right and she was starting from...

All the way on the right.

Almost all the way on the right, like almost to the sideline.

And then the ball was getting returned in the middle and her and her partner were not sure which one was taking it.

And she was often getting back hands, which is her less preferred wing.

And so I said, hey, if you both want four hands, it's pretty simple.

You stand right next to the middle stripe when you're serving from the right and your partner start is on the left side.

And she starts from close to the sideline.

That way you both definitely get four hands.

Positioning, serve, return, that's where you start and then the next.

Can I comment on that before you go to the next level really quick?

This happens all the time.

This is probably my most suggested quick fix with a new partner.

And I can't believe how often it's a completely novel like, oh, I never thought of that.

Yeah, just stand closer to the left and you won't get these back hands.

But if you do, what we're just talking about now, where your partner's, the left side players all the way to the left,

you're right next to the tee as you serve, you can literally go through pretty much an entire tournament without ever hitting a backhand third.

You can completely go through the entire weekend or a day of wreck play without ever hitting a backhand third.

Now, a lot of people, and we've joked about this in the past, say, oh, my backhand's just as good as my forehead.

No, it's not.

I mean, unless it's crazy, but generally 95% of the time it's not.

So just try that and you'll be good to go.

But I would say the second thing, Mircez, to answer a question is once you've served or returned as the returner,

you want to make sure you're getting all the way up to the line if possible or making sure that your partner is protecting the middle as you're coming up and you're watching for that ball so you can take the proper fourth.

And make sure your split stepping before you get that ball, especially if you're against big drivers or bangers and then as the server, you're obviously watching for that return.

And whether it's a shaken bake or you guys are trying to earn your way up to the kitchen together, you guys are moving in sequence.

And I think maybe one of the biggest challenges in this world is your partner not properly watching your third and either selling the farm and just going all the way up to the line, you've got a big duck ball that they can fire right back at him or maybe not being aggressive enough.

And you've got a great drop and they stay back and now you've left all kinds of room in the court.

So those are the kinds of things I look for in positioning.

Yeah, and the other thing you have to consider is how you can manipulate your opponents into changing their court position and you can do that as well.

Your point about the serves and returns I typically focus on where the returns are going and how you're hitting your thirds because that can be dictated somewhat by your opponents in terms of the court positioning.

And the perfect example is when you first start playing, especially with someone that you haven't played before, try to tell each other where you're dropping or driving.

And when you look at the video, it's amazing how often players don't know what their partner is going to do in terms of their thirds.

So I'll see the person serving they return your opponents return to the partner partner drives that the person standing at the net and the ball gets crushed at the person that just served because they went up because they thought their partner was hitting it somewhere else.

And that's a simple fix.

And people just don't quite appreciate how important that is in terms of getting up to the kitchen, at least knowing what your partner is going to do in terms of dropping or driving and where they generally target that drop or drive as the third.

Yeah, I love that. And we've talked about footwork ad nauseam.

The show could probably be called the pick a ball footwork podcast. Obviously just looking at footwork beyond positioning split step stable base.

If you split step before that's the two in hopscotch. If you split step, you're loaded up, you're on your toes ready to go in either direction. That is ideal.

And a stable base where you're not running through no matter where you are on the court.

You need to be stable as you are hitting the ball. If you are moving while you're hitting the ball, it's unpredictable in almost every instance. Now raw athleticism can cover for that. But in general, split step, stable base. That's what we are looking for.

And I would argue, Mircha, that when people review their own film and when you guys watch, if you're just sitting on the sideline watching a three five to, I mean, really five.

But three five to four five. Generally, you can look at most mistakes that are happening on the court and attribute them to somebody moving through the ball or being off balance when they hit.

100% if you remember one thing from the podcast, watch how many balls you miss pop up, et cetera, when you're in transition and moving through the ball.

Even at the kitchen line, watch when you're moving as you're hitting the ball, how often you pop it up or miss it. Also watch when you're attacking or trying to instigate while off balance or proposition.

This kind of goes back to the split step and being balanced, having the ball in your comfort zone. That's when you want to attack. Make sure you're balanced and ready. And your footwork is proper when you're about to attack.

If you just focus on those few things, you're going to really learn a lot.

Yeah, you could even take a lot of this episode. And if you're the three five to four or five level, if you probably just focused on footwork and court positioning, you would, you would go up significantly.

Now we're going to get into some slightly higher level stuff. And this is something I think you're exceptional at, Mircha, which is partner teamwork.

How are we, how are we managing the point together? We've already talked about some of it. Like if you're speeding up, make sure your partner's ready for that ball.

But let's talk a bit about what you look for. If you're analyzing video, what are you looking for from a teamwork standpoint?

Well, the biggest thing to start off with is how you're getting to the kitchen. And if you're not getting to the kitchen, why are you not getting to the kitchen?

Back to what I had said earlier, if your partner keeps driving balls at the person that's up at the net, if they're going to keep doing that, cannot advance.

One thing you might want to adjust is basically staying back either at the baseline or behind the baseline when your partner is getting that third.

Don't make it tougher for them. There's some people that just don't have a good skill set for a drop when they have either a hard return or even just an easy return.

Their skill set is not dropping. So you have to adapt to that and realize that if your partner gets a really short return and they're crushing it in, you're getting pop-ups, then you can move forward and put some pressure.

But if your partner is driving the ball on every third and they're just getting crushed at your feet and you're in the transition zone, you need to adjust that.

You need to be back. So that's really the first thing that I look for. And then the second thing I look for is the spacing.

In the dinking patterns, when one person is pulled out wide or older to the side, are you following your partner and closing off the middle or covering the middle when you should be?

Or are you just standing there watching them play?

Yeah, I will look for, very often you see this, if I'm watching or playing like a three-five group or something like that, a lot of times the middle is wide open.

And somebody's not covering the middle. One of you has to be covering the middle. And there are a million scenarios that it is one person's role or the other person's role to cover the middle depending on where the ball is.

But let's start by looking is the middle wide open is the lowest part of the net and the most margin for error on the left and right side of the court is that being covered because that is a major issue with that group.

And the second thing is to watch the eyes. So if you're watching your eyes and your partner's eyes, where are you looking? Are you literally watching the ball hit their paddle and then going back to your opponents or are you watching that out of your peripheral vision and keeping an eye on your opponents where you can counter if the ball comes back at you quickly?

Maybe those two things are to me the next two important after that court positioning and covering the middle.

Yeah, and one of the other things is the separation between you and your partner during times of stress is one person backing up continuously beyond the peripheral vision of the other.

And that's one of the other big mistakes. Once you've established yourselves at the kitchen, unless someone is lobbying and you need to adjust by scooting back a little bit, you do want to generally try to hang in there as much as you can because the further you go back, the harder it is to reset

and the harder it is to count. If you are backing up halfway through the transition zone or more with the exception of someone's lobbying or they ever like super high overhead and obviously you need to back up a little bit.

But if your partner is getting attacked and you keep backing up, it's harder for you to reset. You open up your feet. If you counter, you're going to be countering from all the way back so you are giving your opponents what they want.

And you're also leaving opening up that space in the middle. That's one of the things that I often look for is, are you really putting yourselves at a greater disadvantage by backing all the way up on balls that you don't need to?

And you do see some ejection happen on the court sometimes. You think, I know that but you they could have trusted their defense a little better and stayed a little more in the point versus giving the other players so much room to hit funky angles.

This next part, I do think maybe starts entering a little more when you get to that 425 and above level, but I think it's worth noting my first recognition of a pattern on a pickleball court was when I was on the right hand side, my partner was on the left and we were playing a particular guy that I know well.

So I was right across from him. He was on the left side on the opponent side. And if I sped up to his left shoulder, he would 100% of the time counter cross court right into the wheelhouse of my partner at their forehand, assuming two righties.

And that was the first one. So I just said, hey, look, every time you're on that side, just speed up right there and I'll be ready for the counter. And it would just work like a cash register dude, like over and over and over and over and over again to this day. I don't think he ever recognized that he still does that. That was the first pattern I ever recognized on a pickleball court that was like, oh, if I just do this one thing, then this thing happens.

And I think as you dig deeper into film study, those patterns can start emerging a little bit more.

Oh, absolutely. Adderance in terms of winning and losing patterns. First of all, you definitely want to see what the winning patterns are, but you also really need to recognize what the losing patterns are because a lot of people don't realize how important both those aspects are.

And it might be a simple thing, for example, you return to one player and the player is just hitting a perfect drop or a great drive putting pressure on you every single time and you just don't realize that you're getting down in the points because you return you one player.

Another example might be targeting someone in the mid court. You have one player is typically a better defender than the other. And when you are attacking consistently the better defender and your opponents are getting up to the kitchen every time, that's another winning path. Excuse me. That's a losing pattern. So anyway, I feel that both those patterns are really, really important to analyze.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think sometimes a little tougher to spot when this is a little bit where between this and and technique, which is kind of our final bullet point here, those are the kinds of things that you could potentially drill. You may not physically be able to get the ball to the location you're trying to yet, meaning if you're, if you recognize that you're trying to swing somebody really wide with a backhand to backhand dink, but you don't have your two e top spin corner.

In corner dink yet to swing them wide because you're like, wow, every single time I do this, we win the point, but it was kind of lucky that I got that one. I just hit a kind of a fluky shot. Well, the good news is you have something to drill now.

You know that when you're up against that person, they struggle with that particular ball. Those are conversations you're having with your partner as you're playing the point, but you may not quite have the technique yet to execute that. So that's a really lovely thing when you're taking notes watching your video is, oh, I got to work on my wide angle.

Two e top spin roll dink because it puts XYZ under pressure and I play XYZ all the time. We end up seeing each other in the samis all the time.

Yeah, I mean, there's so many ways you can look at this. I go back to again, not running through shots being stable. Those things are obvious. One of the things that is most difficult to do is to try to be so still with respect to your torso and shoulders and head movement when you're resetting the ball.

And if you look carefully, people often try to what I call help the ball, you know, like they get an attack or a, you know, aggressive shot at their feet and they try to help the ball by moving their body or moving into the shot and they end up mishitting it or hitting into that or popping it way up.

Instead of allowing the ball to bounce on the court, bounce off your paddle and drop into the kitchen. They often try to help by, you know, having excess body motion, not just running through the ball with their momentum, but also moving while they're hitting the ball with their torso and their shoulders or head or whatever.

And that's one of the things you can pay attention to that you often have difficulty recognizing when you're in the middle of gameplay.

Another thing is just taking the huge swings. When you take huge swings, whether it's volleys or ground strokes, balls off the bounce, you will notice if you watch carefully that a lot of the balls that you're taking giant swings at, you're missing higher, missing low, dumping in the net.

And part of it is because you're taking such a giant swing, even if you have like an easy volley and you take a giant swing, your effective contact point, meaning when you actually hit the ball is not where you think you're going to contact the ball because you've taken that big swing, the ball has dropped.

You can see that on video. One just last quick tip you want to watch your matches in different ways, which really helpful is to watch them first time all the way through.

Then watch for the second time, watch it again and then watch yourself or watch your partner and then maybe even a third time watch your opponents. If that's how you want to analyze specific patterns, that's one thing you can do.

I will say something to that point is that it's also super helpful. We haven't mentioned it is just to watch footwork. If you watch a point or a game of, let's say, Analy Waters, literally just look at her feet the entire time. Don't even look at the point. Just watch her movement and her footwork and you will learn an extreme amount about how to be good at pickleball.

That's a great tip, Michael, because I've always how did that if you're going to watch one particular player in terms of their footwork, she's the one to emulate absolutely. And when you watched her and her mom play, even from, you know, when she was very young, you almost saw the synchronous footwork where they both split step at the same time. They totally did it. They hop at the same time. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, it's super cool. Actually, all right, why don't you wrap this thing for us, Mircha, just go through the ball point real quick.

And we'll get these guys on their video to wrap it up. First of all, definitely do it. Number one, number two, the things to look at your core positioning and your footwork, how you're interacting with your partner. So partner teamwork, definitely pay attention to the winning and losing patterns from the different levels of the court from the back court to the transition zone to the kitchen. Definitely take a look at your technique. Again, the biggest thing is not be moving through the ball, whether you're running through it with your feet or moving.

Your shoulders or torso and then make sure that you're watching it with intent both the pro matches, your own matches and maybe your opponent's matches have some sort of organization in terms of your approach and you're going to get so much out of it and improve your game tremendously. Yeah, it's truly one of the lowest hanging fruit in game changing. And by the way, guys, if you want to make a video and send it to us, we can do some analysis.

It's not free, of course, but if you'd like that to happen, reach out to us for O to pro at gmail.com. That's all one word and or you can find us on Instagram 4.0 to pro and we will analyze and maybe we can help you guys get better in 2026. Mircha, thank you. You guys get out there. Just record this stuff with your iPhone. Your needs any fancy camera setup.

You'll get a little tripod or something on Amazon and don't get too fancy with it. Just to get in there, analyze and let's play football.

Thank you for listening to 4.0 to pro. For more tips, find us on Instagram at 4.0 to pro. If you have a pickleball question, submit it at picklehelp.com. Now, get out there and dominate. But don't forget to have fun.

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