69: Embracing The Suck. What It's Like To Learn A New Shot As A Top-Tier Pro

Hey, I just Venmo Deferent.

Nice.

Now I can instantly spend it whether I'm checking out online with Venmo,

or using the Venmo Devacore.

Same more.

More exactly, because the more you do with Venmo, the more you get.

Like earning up to 5% cash back with Venmo Stash on a bundle of brains.

So, order more pizza.

The math demands it.

Get the Venmo Devacore.

Venmo Stash bundle terms and exclusions apply.

See terms with Venmo.me slash dash terms.

Venmo check out not available with all merchants.

Venmo master cart is issued by the Bencore Bank NA.

Hello and welcome to Pluto Fo.

If you know the name of the movie you'd like to see,

just stream it for free on Pluto TV.

We're all your blockbuster favorites are landing all summer long.

Catch anchor man, the legend of Ron Burgundy.

Fantastic.

Men in black, one through three.

That's what I'm talking about.

Mean girls.

Side up.

Tite and egg.

I'm the key in the world.

And so much more.

For showtime, express nothing.

They're free 24-7.

That is so fast.

On Pluto TV, stream now.

Pay never.

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-sized 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-sized pickleball podcast

will be featured in a single shot for strategy

every single episode.

I am Mike Aloneo here in sunny Long Beach, California.

I'm joined by Mircha, Marariou,

there in Vokera, Tone, Florida.

Hello, my friend.

How are you doing, my friend?

I'm good, man.

I'm back off a nap.

I've been taking a pep tie now for the last month or so.

And whenever I take it, the next day

gives me a little lethargy.

So sometimes I have to take a midday nap.

And I'm very refreshed after this one.

So I'm excited to talk to ease today.

Definitely, let's do it.

Well, you and I talked about this a couple years ago.

This is something that was still at that time

a relatively new, especially at the kitchen line.

And what I mean by that, this is the two-handed,

backhand dink generally.

I mean, the two-ey in general.

But specifically, that two-handed dink roll

when you're on the left-hand side, when you learn that,

it opens up crazy offensive options.

But it's one of those things that a couple years ago,

you only saw a handful of people do.

And now when I look around my courts at Los Cab

in Long Beach, first of all, if you're under the age of 25

or a female, you're doing it.

I don't see anybody that's not doing it.

And this is as opposed to that more traditional,

one-handed, sliced dink, where it's a little more defensive.

Having this two-ey in your arsenal gives you a ton of offense.

And you, sir, are right in the process of learning it.

So you are embracing the suck of learning something new

and having to miss a bunch of balls when you're playing Rec.

And I just wanted to dig into that as someone who's obviously achieved

a lot of success in the pro-pig-a-ball world.

What it feels like for you to kind of start from scratch

and be a beginner at a particular shot.

Yeah, it's definitely interesting because I'm definitely

a beginner in a sense.

When I grew up playing tennis, I had a two-handed backhand

and it was actually my favorite shot.

And one of my strengths when I was playing tennis,

once I finished playing tennis and started playing squash,

no one has a two-handed in squash.

Everything in squash, it's about reach.

It's sort of a slice drive with more flat than anything.

But it's a completely different stroke in terms of your mechanics

because you're only using one hand, obviously.

So when I found pickleball, I really only had one hand.

It was good enough.

And I just got used to it and was able to roll it some.

I was able to drive some, not as well as it would like.

But I played a lot of singles.

I'd always meant to incorporate it to you.

But I was having success with what I was doing.

So part of it was having success, doing what you're already doing.

But the other part was some inherent laziness or fear

or some combination thereof bearing down

and deconstructing a shot that you already have.

And reconstructing something new.

And I had to do a lot of other things besides pointing pickleball.

So I didn't have multiple hours in a day to commit to doing it.

And I still don't.

But I've really taken the bull by the horns

and committed to learning it.

So it's been an interesting journey.

Yeah, I did that in 2023.

I came from a similar thing where I went from tennis

having a nice two-eat-a-rackeball

and having a one-handed backhand.

I hung in there for about two and a half, three years

with my one-e.

And then I said,

this the world's going to a two-eat.

And there's just so much more opportunity.

So I kind of buckled down and we've done some shows

on learning a two-handed backhand.

Which maybe I can touch on if we want to.

Maybe I'll do a little bonus thing at the end

for those of you who haven't learned it yet.

It's hard when you know you're going to dip.

That's the hard part.

Is that you know as you learn this

and it starts finding its way into your game.

It's not about drilling it

because you can sit and drill it and drill it

and you can start getting comfortable with it.

But it's when you start trying to integrate it into games.

And now your footwork,

which is the most important part of this shot,

might not quite be there like it is when you're drilling.

And now you're making mistakes.

And it's hard, I think, because most of the time,

you play a little bit of rec.

But a lot of the time,

if you're playing for real stakes,

you're playing an internment or playing an NPL

or what a Champions League or whatever it's called now.

So you don't want to just make unforced errors,

but this thing has to start integrating

and finding its way into your game somehow.

And if you're like me,

sometimes when that happens,

when you're three or four months into working on something,

and it shows up in a point naturally,

and you're playing with someone who knows you've been working on it,

you're like, hey dude, you see that?

I hit the two of you.

Like I actually did it in the middle of a game.

It worked, you know what I mean?

Like do you get excited like that?

Oh, absolutely.

And I think I sent you a video

when I hit a particularly good two-eat cross-court

for a winner on a dink,

and I've really been focused on implementing it regularly

into rec games.

And an ideal situation,

if you are able to drill and get some instruction

on a new shot,

it's really important to start off with a basics

where you can just hit against the wall, try that.

So I was trying to hit it two against the wall,

just kind of get the feel of it.

And then I started doing a little bit of drilling in my hole,

where I actually literally just toss a ball,

and then just hit a two-eat-or-have-someone toss me a ball,

and then hit it that way.

And there's a lot of different aspects of this.

There's different levels there,

and there's different shots.

There's your return.

There is a passing shot if you're playing singles.

There is a third shot or fifth shot

with a two-eat-when you're playing doubles.

Then there is the transition zone

if you choose to hit a two-hander,

and that scenario I typically don't.

And there's also the kitchen where you're dinking

and then the speed-ups.

The easiest things are the returns and the speed-ups for me,

at least those have been the easiest ones.

Then the thirds are a little bit more difficult,

and the dink is a long-term project,

so that's gonna take a while.

Yeah, that's the one that takes a while to show up,

I think.

You reminded me, though, I did a podcasting conference

in, I wanna say it was the early 2024,

or maybe it was 2023, and it was in Orlando,

and I had a break for a few hours,

and I went to whatever the local indoor place was,

and just said, you guys have a ball machine,

and I just sat there for an hour and a half

and hit two-eats.

That's all I did.

I was just on the left-hand side,

feeding the ball across court to myself,

and trying to rip it down the line.

I tried every angle I could,

but I do feel like if you're at a level where you wanna

integrate, and this is a big shot,

like this is something that's going to be integrated

into your game forever.

It's not like learning some funky angle volley

or something, when you learn a two-eat,

and you get into a two-handed backhand,

like you said, there's like six different iterations of it

that you have to learn, and it's a big,

it's a pun intended, it's a big swing.

I remember when I went to Mike Johnston's drum camp

a couple years ago, and this is the guy's a very famous

drummer, has a great camp.

I'm a pretty competent drummer myself,

so I'm not used to being brand new at something.

I was pretty good already, but you go into his camp

and you get a little rubber Lance Armstrong bracelet

that says embrace the suck, because he will instantly

identify the thing that you struggle with,

and he'll make you do it, and you go,

God, I feel like I had this, and now I don't have it at all.

And you're in front of a bunch of people

that are also really competent doing what you're doing,

which is kind of what happens in pickleball.

You're playing with good players,

and you don't want to be the one that makes the mistake,

but at the same time, you kind of got to embrace it

and go, I'm going to push through this part of discomfort,

because on the other end, it's not going to be good

for all these people.

Once you get it down, now all of a sudden,

you've got something in your arsenal,

and to me, that thing of going, wow,

I have all of these new angles of offense

was the biggest thrill of learning the two-eat.

Yeah, you definitely have to throw your ego out the window,

and it's really important that you just focus on small steps.

Just at the beginning, it's really getting to position,

getting your footwork technique lined up,

getting your hips lined up,

making sure you're making contact.

I mean, that's really the biggest thing to start off with.

One of the other key concepts that you have to realize as well

is the difference between tennis and pickleball

is that in tennis, you're mostly hitting from the back court

with your two-hander,

and your right hand is typically dominant in tennis,

where in pickleball, it's typically the left hand.

When you watch, for example, Analy Waters,

one of the best two-eats out there, if not the best,

of men or women, she is able to create incredible angles

because she is using the left hand as the dominant hand,

and that's really critical in developing those cross-court angles.

And it also helps with deception,

deceive your opponent in terms of where you're hitting the ball,

also by changing the direction and the dominance of your hand as well.

That's one thing that I like,

that I can really take the ball down the line

or sharp cross-court by just suddenly increasing

or decreasing the dominance of my left hand.

Yeah, in fact, the very first thing I did

when I made the decision, okay, I'm learning it too,

I grabbed the dog, grabbed a pair of headphones,

went to the local tennis court where they had a backboard

or any wall works,

and I sat and hit about 45 minutes of left-handed dinks against the wall,

just focusing on getting under the ball and around the outside,

so I can get that proper dip spin on it.

And I did that.

It's shocking how much footwork matters

because you really have to lift up with your legs

as you're doing this left-hand dink.

And if you hit the ball correctly,

you'll hit the wall,

and because it's spinning in this sort of topspin, sidespin way,

it'll actually bounce back to your paddle, again,

if you spun it correctly.

And it's almost like watching a boxer

with one of those punching bags,

where you can just keep doing it

and it'll keep spinning back to your paddle,

and then you really get into a groove with it.

And then after you've done that for 45 minutes,

you put that second hand on the paddle.

Now you're put to hand below your other hand,

and you keep the exact same motion,

and you go, oh, that's what it is.

And then I take that to the court with someone else doing the same idea.

And once you do that,

I just have people start stepping back every couple of steps,

so you're in the transition zone,

and now it requires a little more back swing,

and but more forward push on the ball.

But otherwise, the swing is pretty much exactly the same

until you get to a drive.

When you're in that transition zone area all the way in,

it's just a less exaggerated version.

And then of course, when you're at the baseline,

you want to rip it, then you sort of take a traditional

sidestep tennis type drive.

But otherwise, I think you can learn a ton

by that 45-minute session on the wall.

I think that the wall training is key,

especially learning to use that left hand,

and dinking with that left hand is a key to start off

with when you learn the back hand,

two-hand to dink.

I start off most of my drilling sessions

by dinking with my left hand,

and then adding my right hand on that stroke.

You really need that left hand to guide where the ball is going.

Again, it increases your angle,

and it also maintains that softness,

because if you just use your right hand,

what I learned too is that,

I think at the beginning, what I was having the biggest struggle with,

was that from the back court, so basically from the baseline,

you're driving through it, and it's pretty similar to tennis.

It's pretty similar when you're at the baseline.

But the mistake I was making was the closer I got to the kitchen,

I was still trying to hit it the same way on the speedups, for example,

but I was keeping my elbows too tight.

What really helped me?

It's a different stroke.

Yeah. It's a different stroke.

What really helped me is to loosen up my elbows,

keep my elbows a little closer to me,

and just keep them loose when I'm up at the kitchen line.

That made literally all the difference in the world.

When I first started doing them at the line,

I was focusing on, so by the way,

we're assuming we're on the left hand side for this discussion,

where we're trying to hit cross-cord dinks backhand to backhand,

just for this part anyway.

And when I was doing that,

I would drop my paddle tip to the ground,

and I was using my wrist to flip it up,

and where I've landed now, my far more consistent version,

is to have my paddle tip facing almost 45 degrees up,

and I have more of a locked wrist,

so that my motion is just a little lift with my elbow.

I'm not following through all the way over my shoulder,

like I would for a drive,

but it's a very short, compact swing,

but I'm finding that for me,

it worked a little better to have my paddle tip more facing up.

I'm curious where you are in your journey.

It really depends on the shot,

if I'm really able to control it,

so let's start.

Let's say it's a cross-cord dink,

you're trying to hit a dink roll.

So at the kitchen line,

when the ball is below the net,

and I'm typically going to speed it up,

I will dip the tip of my paddle down,

and then go through it and bring it up.

If it's a relatively easy dink,

hold on, you're going straight across there,

you're not speeding up a cross-cord for that.

No, so I am. It depends.

It depends. I think it's harder to get my paddle angle correct

if I dip it too much to the middle, but go ahead.

Again, it kind of depends on the ball,

so you have to just try it out and judge it

and see what works best for you.

If I'm, and occasionally,

you speed up a cross-cord,

because you can do it pretty aggressively,

and when you speed up a cross-cord,

which we've talked about before,

typically not a great speed up,

and if you're going to do it,

you don't want to do it cross-middle

into someone's forehand when they're on the left side.

What you want to do is go into the right hip,

or right at their belly button.

The other option is, of course,

going straight ahead,

which is really nice.

You can go straight ahead down the line.

Again, this is when you're on the left,

so you can speed up down the line,

kind of stretch the player in front of you out.

If it's a right-hand,

or you kind of stretch out their forehand,

or you go cross-body,

where you're going into their paddle side body,

so right hip, right chest,

or belly button, that area.

Or if you've opened up the court,

meaning if you've pulled them out,

or your partner, for example,

say your partner's on the right side

in the dink, an aggressive dink cross-cord,

and the player right and front knee

has been pulled out a little bit,

you can go to where their backhand would have been

if they're right in front of you,

and that's another spot that you can go to.

If it's, but only if it's been opened up.

In that scenario, I often have the paddle tip a little bit down,

and then I come up through the ball to generate that spin.

A lot of times, if I just have an easy,

relatively easy dink,

but I'm going to go cross-cord,

I'll have the paddle tip either parallel to the ground,

or a little bit,

the tip will be a little bit up,

so I can bring it over.

Again, it really depends on the ball,

whatever you're most comfortable doing.

I'm curious where you'll land with it,

because I think right now you're probably in full experimentation zone,

and I'm curious what will end up giving you the most consistency

that you'll see in tournaments or something like that.

Hey, it's Kelly Rowland.

You may not know this, but I have Exema,

so I get how it can steal your time.

But why let Exema take over when you can talk to your doctor about Epglyce?

Epglyce, Lebrichizema, LBKZ,

a 250mg per 2mL injection,

is a prescription medicine used to treat adults and children 12 years of age and older,

who weigh at least 88 pounds or 40kg with moderate to severe Exema.

Also called a topic dermatitis that is not well controlled with prescription therapies used on the skin,

or topicals, or who cannot use topical therapies,

Epglyce can be used with or without topical corticosteroids.

Don't use if you are allergic to Epglyce.

A allergic reactions can occur that can be severe.

Eye problems can occur.

Tell your doctor if you have newer, worsening eye problems,

you should not receive a live vaccine when treated with Epglyce.

Before starting Epglyce, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection.

Pay partnership with Lily.

Respect your time.

Ask your doctor about Epglyce and visit Epglyce.com,

or call 1-800-LilyRx or 1-800-545-5979.

One crunchy bite of her Hershey's Cookies and Cream Bar,

and I'm taken right back to college move-in day.

I was a little overwhelmed by the newness of it all.

Boxes were everywhere.

I needed a break from unpacking.

But just as I was able to take a breath and open my Hershey's Cookies and Cream Bar,

my new roommate Rachel walked in.

I offered her a piece, but she said no.

Then after a beat, she said,

actually, those are my favorite ones.

We laughed.

The ice was broken and we've been friends ever since.

Hershey's.

It's your happy place.

Well, let's talk a little bit about.

You're on the left hand side.

You get a relatively dead dink to your backhand,

and you're about a foot or two feet back from the kitchen line.

How awesome is that roll that you can really actually hit harder and spinnier than you

imagine, and you can swing somebody so wide from that shot that is,

you might have had it as a onee, but it's one of the more difficult shots as a onee.

But as a twoe, it's one of the more satisfying.

Just you can rip it.

It's ALW does it all the time.

Like this is her shot, and she'll unload on it.

I mean, she'll take a full swing,

but I'm curious if you've had a few of those in your in your journey.

Oh, yeah. I've had a few of those.

Right now, they're kind of few and far between my favorite ones are the speed up either

straight ahead off the bounce, or sometimes I'll go again cross court to the person's right hip.

That's often if you see AL or Emily loading up, that's a lot of times where she goes.

She'll go cross court into the left side player's body,

or she'll just go straight down the line with that two handed backhand.

But occasionally she rolls really sharply cross court, and that's the one you have a hard time doing

with one hand. I mean, with one hand, I can speed up straight ahead off the bounce, no problem.

And I can also do it cross court, but I can't really do a cross court roll sharp very easily

with a one handed backhand. That's something you really needed to enter.

One of the things about hers in particular is you mentioned that she'll she's got those options.

Man, she's so good at waiting until the last possible millisecond to change her paddle angle and

hit that ball. You've got to honor the middle on that shot when you're the left side player.

You've got to stay home, but then that at that last second, she'll kind of take it little off speed.

And like you said, go so wide with it and you go, how do you defend that? There's no way to defend

that ball. It was over before she hit it. You know what I mean? Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean,

it's a very deceptive shot. It's very effective. But it definitely takes a while to learn. I mean,

the steps are if you do commit to learning this shot, which I highly recommend, you do have to commit

to it. It can't be, you know, once a week. And honestly, that's kind of what I was doing at the

beginning was, you know, you can't work on it in a wreck. Well, you can work on it in wreck for sure.

No, but I mean, you can't you can't just think you're going to be playing wreck and it's going to

get better. Oh, absolutely. You have to drill this. You have to drill it, but you do have to use it in

wreck and you have to use it. I mean, not just saying don't use that as your training ground of just

I'm going to start from scratch and never drill it at all. Oh yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. You have

to drill it. You have to learn the basics. You have to drill the basics. But you do have to use

it regularly when you're uncomfortable. So expect for a month or maybe two that it's not going to be

good. I mean, a minimum two to four weeks, I would say. Yeah, I was going to say three, three months

is when I start showing up for me, but that's some different. That's just the minimum that it's

going to feel uncomfortable. After that, the more you use it, the more comfortable you get. And

when you start using it without thinking, that's when you know you're getting somewhere. And I've

gotten to the point where I'm thinking about the decisions still at the low on the learning curves.

But I'm able to start to control and hit the ball where I wanted to go, especially on returns

and on the speedups off the bounce, I'm able to control the ball and have relatively speaking

know where I wanted to go and hit it to that spot. And it's incredibly gratifying.

I was watching MLP this weekend. They just had the finals. And Hayden Patrickwin does something

pretty interesting. We've talked a little bit about his ability to hunt when he's at the kitchen line.

So he and Gabe are so good at playing six four, whether they are six four or not, but they're at the

line. They're leaning in. Their paddles are reaching out. And they're looking for offense. And if

it's not there and their opponents hit a good drop, then they'll hit a dink back. But if they can

get out of the air and flick it, that is their default. And the other thing that Hayden does by

default is he holds his paddle with two hands, especially like a sumi's on the left hand side.

And he goes for the two handed roll dink whenever he can. On occasion, he'll it'll come to his body

or it'll be a little more wide outside. And he'll release that second hand and hit a slice dink

that we've been talking about forever, never, never. But that's not his default. His default is

to hit this two-y roll. But the thing I thought was interesting is that his motion and his setup

is exactly the same, whether he's hitting the two-y or the one-y, he just releases his hand to

hit the one-y. But otherwise, he's still prepping like he's hitting the two-y because that's his default.

Yeah, that's definitely one technique. And to back up a little bit, he started with the two-y.

It was actually kind of funny. I remember one of my favorite wreck games was Dave Weinbach and I

played him and White Stone back in the day. This is relatively soon after I started maybe a year or

so and it was a lot of fun. We had like a three-hour session and you could see that with talent,

those young kids have. But he started with that. So the player that you want to pay attention to if

you are started with a one-handed or going to a two. A couple of them come to mind, which is Ben

and JW. Ben. Because JW had a two-handed in tennis, but when he started off playing pickle balls,

mostly one-handed, mostly a slice. And same thing with Ben. Ben has one of the most beautiful

sliced things you'll see out there. Obviously, he's the male goat. So there's that. But you can see

that even for him for all these years, he really didn't need to change his game or work on that two-hander

until over the last year, year and a half or so. Then he's committed to learning it and now he's

using it quite regularly. Even for the highest IQ players and the highest skill level players,

it still takes quite a bit of time. But don't be too discouraged. I'm telling you, even if you use it

five to ten percent of the time, and even if you're only using on certain shots, it makes a really

big difference. And one of the things that's helped me a lot is when people had a very high drop

and it bounces a little bit when they hit a high drop to my backhand, I used to always have to

slice it down or keep it low. Now I can take a two-hander and hit it more aggressively and

hang a little bit or take a little pace on it. And he thinks fourth. Exactly. Even if I just

use it for that one shot alone, I'm totally fine with it. I have two questions for you.

Well, actually one is that I think the guy that I noticed the most integrating the two-way,

probably in the last year or so, is Jack Sock, who didn't really have any backhand. And he's

been aggressively working on his two-way and it's starting to show up in his games. It's not a

weapon weapon yet, but it's way better than what he had. But I was curious about you, obviously,

been on the senior pro-turkett for a circuit for a while. I don't see a ton of people doing two-way

roll dinks on the senior pro-circuit. Or do you see that changing as well? I see it changing slowly.

The majority of players definitely have one-handers and one-handed slice dinks. But there are a bunch

of players that are starting to integrate it more. More women have been using it in general. And I

would say that, I don't know if it's because more women have been playing tennis more frequently

coming into Pickleball or that women in general have had two-handers more on the playing tennis.

That's one of the possibilities. But definitely female players are the ones that more often have

that two-handed roll. My mixed partner for the last year and a half or so,

Audra Spielberger. She has a two-hander, been playing with Karen Karin lately and she has a two-hander,

very good two-hander roll. So it's definitely getting there. Being a more torque on it,

as a female, you can get more power and torque with a two-way. I'm just watching,

Anna Bright and Annelie Waters, but Anna Bright, man, when she attacks with that two-way,

it is the torque on that thing is insane to watch. It's like poetry and motion. I don't know

how much opportunity there is, but let's talk about where you might use it when you're on the right

side. And let me qualify this a little bit. If you and I are dinking and I'm on the right and you're

on the left, and I have to hit a two-way backhand, it means it was probably at my left foot,

and that should have been your ball in the first place. Usually, yes. You know what I mean?

Eventually, you're going to have to hit a backhand when you're on the right side. It's just the way

it is. Unless you're Colin Johns and you're playing with Ben, then you almost never

hit backhand. But even then, you actually probably have to hit a backhand now and then.

Certainly the transition zone, but not at the net, it's probably more rare. Yeah, it's definitely

less common. But again, senior pro, 50 plus, your partners are not quite as mobile as you

they were back in their 20s. Myself definitely included. You have to be comfortable hitting those

backhand dinks. So it just, again, a matter of practice. If you get a fluffy, easy ball with that

on your backhand side, you can definitely speed up straight ahead or again, inside out to the right

handed player and you definitely would want to go body in that scenario. I think where it shows up

the most when you're on the right is at the baseline. It would be a third. And I'm notorious for

saying I'd rather give you the forehand third than me have to hit a backhand drive type third.

But if I do end up getting that ball, if it's going left foot and my partner says you, I'll typically

hit a drop to the middle with my two. That will, that'll be the shot that I hit there. I pretty

rarely try to drive it from there every once in a while. I might if I'm feeling it. But,

pretty often I'm dropping straight ahead or maybe even trying to cornhole drop a little bit to

the outside. What about you? Yeah, the drops have been the toughest. Next to the dinks, I think

they're the dinks are the toughest than the drops are the second toughest because you really need,

again, to keep your grip loose and to keep your elbows loose. And inherently, when I put a two

hand around there, it's a little bit tougher for me at least. That's been one of the tougher

things. Also, I feel my defense is good enough with my one hander. So when I'm in the transition

zone, I typically don't use two hands. So I really am going to probably stick with the one hander there.

So left foot, like if it's down by your left foot, you'll still hit a while. I'll hand her.

Yep. I'll hand her. I'll just reach out and take it in the air or I'll hop it with your little scoop.

Yep. We'll do that little scoopy thing. It's amazing. We need a full episode on how to execute

that shot because it's, I don't know what to say. It's almost like a night-scream scoop thing,

but it's reverse. One of my favorite shots in Pickleball and one I worked on when I was playing

senior pro singles a lot was if I, if we've served and they've returned, I'm on the left hand side,

they, well, I'll talk doubles first. They've returned to the left hand side line. So it's on the left

side somewhere and I want to do a cross-court drop. So to the left side players left hand or,

you know, left side, man, if you execute that ball well where you're hitting this lovely dipping

drop and you, and you really nail it, it is one of the more satisfying shots in Pickleball

and it doubles it mattered a lot because if people were crashing the net and they were tall,

that was one of the only safe spots you had. So I had to work on that shot a lot just to

survive and, you know, senior pro singles Pickleball. But if you had some occasion to go for some

of those diagonal, you've got plenty of room, plenty of time, it's kind of a dead return. So you

can really get a hold of it. Lovely cross-court drops. Yeah, I mean, those really, really feel good

when you dial it in. I mean, that's really a nice shot. I'm pretty happy with my slice drop. I've

gotten it where I feel like I've gotten to where I want it. I know I had nothing's perfect. So

it's always really nice to work on new things and learn new shots. But make sure you're not ignoring

your bread and butter shots. So that's I think one of the things that people make some mistakes is that

when they work on a new shot, like that's all they do and they don't work on their strengths. Like

it's really good to work on your strengths as well, at least for a component. If you have a drill

session, let's say it's an hour, I would definitely have about 15 minutes or so with your bread and

butter shots that you feel, you know, you still feel confident with it. It also gives you that

confidence to get into that drill session, especially if you do it at the beginning. Make sure you

don't not ignoring your strengths that we could all work on and get a little bit better.

Agreed enough. For that particular shot, if you line up on the left hand side and you have

somebody feeding you balls, it may be or maybe a little short where you're stepping into the

transition zone. Do your slice drops and do your two e drops. Like work on them both and work

on a middle work on them cross court and get those integrated. Again, the more you drill this,

we've said it for years now. If you can play three times a week and you can drill one of those

three days, you'll get better exponentially faster than everybody else you play with. If you just

play wreck for that time, you won't. Even if it's an hour before you play with your normal gang,

it will make a huge difference. One thing that also want to emphasize is the one hander is still

going to be valid. The two handed backhand often doesn't replace one handed resets, some wide

defensive gets, some one handed dinks if you're stretched out, flicks, obviously you have much more

reach with a one handed flick than you do a two handed flick. Or sometimes like an emergency block

when you're getting attacked quickly, then you definitely are more maneuverable with one hand.

So greed. Yeah, absolutely, especially if you get swung wide and you've got to really reach out

and grab it. All that being said, Mayor Chant, I'm glad you are working on it. Glad you're integrating.

I'm looking forward to get on the court with you again and seeing how far you've come. Not that we

need to do you get any better, but we're always trying to evolve here. So congrats on that and congrats on

taking the big step, my friend. Yeah, it's a big leap and working on it and it's still a working

progress. So we'll see how it goes. Folks, get that second hand on that paddle for that backhand.

Give it a go. Put your favorite tunes on. Get on that wall for a while and then find a drill

partner and get this thing down because it is truly one of the most fun shots in pickleball.

Haven't mentioned yet today, but if you need any pickleball gear, carbon in fact has a brand new

really, really, really, really cool backpack. And I don't have it yet, but I just emailed Kyle and I

said, you got some new backpacks in because it's really awesome. Carbon pickleball.com,

CRBN pickleball.com, 402P at checkout or 10% off of whatever they sell. And I'm still loving my

barrage elongated. So if you guys are looking for paddle or bags or any of the things, check out

carbon pickleball.com. Until then, for Mircha, I'm Michael. You guys keep on rocking. Enjoy the courts.

We'll see you next time.

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.