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

How long have you been working on this?

Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,

the podcast dedicated to your Pickleball improvement.

My name is Tony Royg.

The host of your weekly podcast,

this is actually a special episode of the podcast.

In this episode, I'm going to be answering

a series of questions that we've gotten inside

are TRP or TonyWork Pickleball community questions

from if the third shot drop isn't what I need

to be working on, what should I be working on,

how do I implement strategies that you're teaching

inside rec place situations,

what kind of grip pressure do I hold my paddle with?

So we have a wide range of questions

that we're going to be answering

inside this episode of the podcast.

As we dive into the podcast, how do you remiss

not to express gratitude to the thousands of players

who have come into TonyWork Pickleball

since we launched just a couple of months ago.

And taking advantage of the resources in there,

join us inside our founders, signed it for camps,

all of the things that we do here at TonyWork Pickleball

to try and make your Pickleball experience

as full and as enjoyable as possible.

It's our privilege to be able to do what we do.

And it means a lot to us and we're very thankful to you

for allowing us to do that for you, including this podcast.

So I'm going to, with that said, I'm going to dive into

the podcast, one quick housekeeping note.

If you can help us out, we, as I mentioned,

it's a new entity right, TonyWork Pickleball.

So we don't have a lot of Google reviews because we're new

and Google uses reviews to determine whether the company

is a legitimate company.

If you listen to this podcast and you know that

we've been doing this for a long time,

so we are legitimate enterprise, a legitimate activity.

So if you can go into Google and look up TonyWork Pickleball

and then leave a Google review, that would be much appreciated

as it helps us reach players out there

and helps us be in the algorithm.

So appreciate you doing that.

All right, question number one comes from Jim.

It's about paddle grip.

How tightly should you be holding your paddle

or is it even that much of a factor?

Thank you.

That actually is an important factor,

but it's probably important ways that maybe might surprise you.

It's more important from my perspective

in terms of how you're, in terms of your arm health

than it is in terms of the performance.

I would submit to you that a lighter paddle grip

is going to be better for you all around.

It's going to give you more power, which is counterintuitive.

It's also going to give you a lighter touch on the paddle,

but critically, and this is the critical piece to me.

It's going to save your arm.

These forearm muscles are small, right?

The tendons and all that area around your elbow,

your forearm, your wrist, your hand.

So we want to protect that as much as possible.

And if you're playing Pickleball

two, three hours, three, four, five times a week,

that's a lot of wear and tear on those small areas

of your body.

So light grip pressure is going to be better for you

than a tight grip pressure.

And the way you do that is grab your paddle,

hold it as tight as you can without hurting yourself.

That's a 10, half of that, a five, half of that.

Call it a three.

Three is amazing.

So grip pressure a three, the entire game

is going to work great for you.

All right, third shot drop.

We're going to go right into the heavy duty one here.

So basically, the position that we take at 20-row pickable

is that you don't really need a third shot drop

and it's in its form that you see it taught

until you're a 4.0 Pickleball player.

So a couple of questions I have to do with that.

One is if I don't use a third shot drop as a beginner,

what are my more fundamental or percentage shots

at this point to make on that point of return?

Thank you.

So basically, the reason we don't focus on the third shot drop

until around the 4.0 level is because there's

a lot of other areas of the game that are going

to give you more bang for your buck.

We've been doing this for years this way, where we focus

on the return of service.

So if you want to improve your game,

focus on your return side, focus on what you're doing.

On that side, you're going to be an amazing pickable player

plus it's a, it's a, it's a, it becomes an obstacle for you.

If you're not good on the return side,

you can't really advance.

So that's going to be your focus.

How does core points on the serve side?

Keep doing what you're doing,

because I'm assuming you know how does core points now.

Learn how to stay alive longer,

learn how to get one more shot over the net,

better core positioning, that's better work.

You're going to need that anyway.

Even once you go get ready to master the third shot drop

and all the movement that goes along with it,

you're going to want these other pieces,

your core positioning, your defensive shots,

you're staying alive shots, work on those now.

When you add the third shot drop,

you'll be able to round it out.

And then Charles rounded out that question

by saying, by asking, you know,

basically about a drop in a dink being the same thing

and you know, kind of confusing to have both those terms.

Actually, Charles, a few years back,

the IPTPA, which is the original coach certification program

in Pickable, I know there's several now,

but IPTPA is the, the grand,

the grandparent of all of them,

if you want to put it that way,

which is the one that I'm certified with,

went away from calling it the third shot drop

and they started calling the third shot drop the long dink.

So they had the short dink, the medium dink, and the long dink.

I do think it's simpler to just refer to it as one thing

because it is, it is essentially a dink

whether you're hitting it from the baseline,

or hitting it from up at the kitchen line.

If you're trying to utilize the opposite non-valley zone

or kitchen for your shot development,

so you're trying to drop it in there,

doesn't really matter.

The shots are saying basically,

and then you asked, just more energy and trajectory,

I would say more energy and perhaps a different trajectory,

not more trajectories, I would frame it,

but yeah, so that would be correct.

Dink and drop, same shot.

So, all right, next question has to,

we're gonna pivot now to drop in

versus regular partner play,

and I'm actually gonna read these to you

because I think this exchange is really powerful

and it shows the, just the power of community, right,

where you can have a constructive, thoughtful exchange

between two players, and then we as coaches,

and then come in and give our opinion as well,

but the conversation's already happening

between the players.

So, and this is posted inside our community.

Oh, and by the way, our community is absolutely free

to join, you can join the TRP community at any time,

but you choose to go to TonyRoyGPickleball.com,

put a link down below, but just TonyRoyGPickleball.com,

click on the header on top,

and there's a community, join the community button,

click that, come into the community,

see what's going on.

Again, absolutely free,

you can have really nice exchanges like this,

get your questions answered.

So Bill says, I like your perspective,

and this has to do with partner play

and how you play with the partners.

So I like your perspective, but I play drop in,

which most players do, right?

I'm imagining listening to this.

I get a various mix of partners,

and they play their own way.

Your perspective is great if I have a regular partner,

but I don't, what is your suggestion for this kind of play,

for like open play, right play, or drop in play?

We actually had, we did make a couple of suggestions

inside the course about that,

but I'm actually going to expand on that

over the next little bit.

My general advice on rec play versus open play,

I'll show you that within a second,

let me read the answer actually.

I told you I was going to read the answer,

so I mean, not the answer, but the conversation.

So Deanna wrote in,

Bill, open play or drop in play is an important place

to improvement, to implement,

I'm sorry, some of these techniques,

being encouraging and loose, IE not tense,

during and between Rally's helps your partner relax

and not feel like you're judging them

when they miss an easy shot, for example.

And if you're doing drop in,

I'm sure you have lots of experiences

where partners miss easy shots, right?

And communication in the Rally,

it's especially important

with a partner who doesn't know what to expect from you.

Your goal is not to make them play, quote unquote, your way,

but to impact how they feel during the game

in ways that allow them to show up at their best.

Then here's another thing I found.

Once you've played with someone a few times

and created a sense of positivity and acceptance

between the two of you,

you may find them open to some mild coaching

that can also improve their game,

at least it's been my experience.

So it's a great conversation between Bill,

Bill, that posing a question

to the community and tell us his coaches,

and then Deanna coming in and adding her perspective,

very thoughtful, very helpful, right,

to give some additional information

and what she's experienced as a player

is really helpful then to Bill

and everybody else who's reading it,

to have that kind of exchange.

So again, highly recommend you check out the community

and come in if you're into this kind of positive,

supportive conversation about the support of Pickleball.

A couple of things that I would add to that,

not add but a supplement, I guess,

to the conversation on what to do in rec versus,

more organized play where you're playing

with regular partners is one is control the controllables.

And so you learning how to play it as a bit,

you learning how to be a better partner

is awesome period.

You're a full stop, nothing else to do, right?

Even if your partner doesn't really know how to do the things,

so that your team can't really maximize

the partner play strategies that you know so well,

you knowing them is good enough period.

Done.

Second thing is when you show that you know partner play,

that you, excuse me, that you understand these strategies,

then what happens is other players

who understand these strategies,

notice that you are understanding the strategies,

now things change for you, meaning in a positive way.

What they change for you is that now you,

more doors open for you.

You continue to play in the drop ends you're playing in

with your social and your friends,

but perhaps you get a call for that Tuesday 11am game

or that Friday morning game that you've been looking at

and haven't really been able to get into, why is that?

Because you understand the game,

the way that those players understand the game

and so now more doors are open to you.

And then the last thing I would say is that,

what I do in open play is I play more conservative style.

What I mean by that is I would give myself more space

to read the situation so you can play basically

like a center fielder in baseball

where you're kind of like making sure

that nothing gets behind you, right?

So I play a little bit more like that when I'm in rec play,

particularly when I don't know what my partner's gonna do.

I also am very open to them hitting whatever they want to hit.

I don't get in the middle of, you know,

I see that they like to come across the middle

and hit a lot of shots that I would think are mine.

Okay, it's fine, it's just one game.

I'll get through it, I'll survive it.

So those are things that I would do in open play.

All right, next question.

This has to do with forehand in the middle.

So Mark says, love this thinking and he's talking about

a piece that I wrote, article that I wrote

about the middle coverage myth about forehand in the middle.

It's actually published by the kitchen community

is also available on our website.

But Mark says, love this thinking,

biggest challenge is getting your partner to understand this.

When so many players think it is forehand

that takes the middle.

If you know me for any amount of time,

you know that I'm respect the X adherent.

Not only that, I'm the respect the X creator back in 2018.

So respect the X is what I believe is a better strategy

for middle cover.

What I would suggest to you is when you have players

who are adherents to forehand in the middle,

the blog is public knowledge.

Obviously, you do it in a way that's right for you

in terms of your relationship with your friends

and the players at your facility.

But you can feel free to share it with them, right?

It's just out there.

So it's the myth of the forehand in the middle

at Tony Roy Pickleball and you can share that with them.

One other thing I'm gonna mention,

I wanna invite you to listen to this Friday's podcast

because just today I was exposed to this idea,

this term called Google Knowledge,

which is kind of like a shallow knowledge

of different subjects, you know,

like just what Google tells you and not much more.

And it's not a criticism of that kind of knowledge,

it's just one form of knowledge.

But I believe, and I'm gonna explain that more on Friday,

but I think that's what allows sometimes,

or bars of sometimes from having a more constructive

conversation amongst players

about different strategies in Pickleball

is because we're coming from a Google Knowledge level

rather than from a real knowledge level,

which I'll explain more on Friday's episode.

And also I'm gonna be,

I'm actually gonna be using Respect the X

comparison of forehand in the middle

to explore this idea of Google Knowledge

versus Real Knowledge.

So I encourage you to tune in for that.

Brenda has about the serve.

Is there a sweet spot to serve from?

How far from the baseline is the best to be when serving

and is a better serve from position closer to the center line?

Or should one serve from middle of the serve side

of the court?

Brenda, this is actually a very nuanced question.

I know it seems, it's on the surface,

it seems like a very kind of a simple question.

Where are I serve from?

I know you weren't asking it a simple question,

but just for everybody listening,

it just seems simple, right?

It's like just, where do I stand?

Just somewhere where to stand, right?

The reality is that there's a lot of factors

that consider into where to stand, where you wanna stand.

One factor would be, where would you rather

hit your third shot from?

Would you rather hit your third shot from your back end?

Or would you rather hit your third shot from your forehand?

And then what you're gonna do is you're gonna slide

left or right along the baseline

within the space that you have to serve from

to expose more of the side that you want to hit.

So that'll affect where you stand.

Another thing that might affect where you stand is,

are you stacking?

And I see a lot of players who stack on serve,

they actually do it, what I consider to be

the less optimal way, which is they'll stand far away

from the center line, serve, and then have to run all the way

across the court to get to their side,

as opposed to just standing right next to the center line,

serving and then sliding over a less amount of space.

So those are things that you can think about,

in terms of left or right.

In terms of on the line or off the line,

that'll depend on the serve mechanic that you want to use.

Some players now are stepping through the serve.

Nothing wrong with that.

I mean, it's another variable in your shot mechanic,

but you can step through the server,

you're gonna step through the serve,

and obviously you need to give yourself space.

But if you're not stepping through the serve,

right, as you move away from the baseline,

you're making your job harder to hit the serve deep, right?

You have to hit a harder to get a deep.

So I would recommend being close to the baseline

unless you are part of your mechanic

as to step through the serve while you're serving.

So hope that helps.

Yeah, I'll bring it and thanks for the question.

We have a question.

Next question is about split step complexity from Steve.

So basically it seems like I'm here

in contradictory information.

When the opponent is ready to hit the ball,

you say stop in split step, understand.

Then you've mentioned continuing moving to hit a volley

in the transition zone rather than split stepping

as you move to the MVZ.

Again, this is one of the beauties of our sport.

It's nuanced.

It has shades to it, right?

And I think that's one of the things

that makes it so interesting to us

because it was plain and binary or black and white,

probably wouldn't be as exciting.

So the issue here, Steve has to do

with the type of shot you're dealing with.

So every time you hit the ball,

if your body's under control,

you're probably gonna hit a better shot, right?

Your percentage is a hitting a better shot

and go up because your body's in control

and your paddle's gonna swing along the arc you want it to.

You can see the ball better, all those things.

The exception to that,

not exception to whether it's gonna be a better shot,

but the exception to perhaps getting your body set

is when you're hitting your after your future return

and you're making it up to the line.

The reason I make an exception to the splits

that they're there isn't because the splits

that wouldn't be great.

It would be in theory.

It's because what I've seen happen in reality

is that when players try and do that on the return side

after they return serve, that ends up being their default.

So what ends up, they end up splits

stepping all the time, even when they don't have to.

And so what ends up happening is you end up hitting

a lot of four shots off the line,

even when you don't have to.

So in that situation, my preference would be,

I'll take the few times that I might have a higher risk

of missing because I'm coming through it, moving.

I'm not always gonna miss it when I'm moving

and hitting, right?

It's just a percentage thing.

So if I'm moving and hitting those particular shots,

okay, I take that chance

or I take that additional risk on those,

because I gain the other times that I'm gonna be

by the line, be able to handle the foreshot.

So that's just the trade off that I've come up with

as a coach, that I've, the decision that I've made

as a coach, as to which one's more important.

Now going back to in theory,

if you can manage to split set only the times that

you need to hit shots coming to you as the return

or making it to the non-balli's line

and it does not impact the other times,

great, then that's a better approach.

So that's how I see it, but it's a very nuanced thing

as you can see and again, one of the beauties of our sport.

We got several questions or comments,

I should say about getting beat on dinks to the outside.

So we had part of our partner play series

was about chord angles and coverage.

And so that elicited some conversation

about the outside shot, because the premise that we play with

is that you can only cover two of the three angles,

you can cover line, cover middle,

you can't really cover the diagonal kill shot.

And so the players, you know, understandably,

we're like, well, I get beat out there, right?

And I know you get beat out there, okay?

I get beat out there and I beat my opponent's out there,

right? So it happens to all of us.

At all levels, you watch the pros, it happens to them too.

What I would suggest to you is that within the bigger picture

of your game, it's probably something

not worth too much focus on right now

and the way to test it.

And I will give you to test it

because if you can prove what I'm saying wrong,

I want to know video your games and look at how many

of the points that are being scored against you

are as a result of that particular type of shot.

Because I'm going to bet that it's super small.

Maybe in an entire session, six, eight games,

however many you play in a session, 10 games,

once or twice, maybe three times.

It's not like all the time.

And then when you compare that to miss four shots,

miss returns a serve, short returns a serve,

you get in cracked, stuff like that.

It really, you can see how the scale of it is totally different.

So that'd be my recommendation again, if you do it.

And let me know either way, right?

If you do it and you're like, you know what?

I counted so many games and this is what happened.

One way or the other, let me know.

So Tony at TonyWordPredable.com.

And then the last couple of questions here,

one question here is,

about a back brace, anybody use a back brace

due to sciatica issue.

So what brand do you find helpful?

I answered that inside the community.

Basically, I've used Walgreens CBS.

I suffer from sciatica too.

It flares up and then I use it.

What I wanted to talk about was a couple of ideas.

One was here was one of a couple of ideas was one was

like focusing on the areas that trouble you

outside of when they trouble you.

That's difficult for me too, right?

Because when my back flares up, I'm very aware of it.

You know, I'm taking care of it.

And then for the few weeks after I'm taking care of it,

then maybe three months later, back to normal, right?

And normal in quotes.

And then maybe six months later, I get it again.

And I'm like, oh, I forgot to do those things.

So yeah, I think if you can incorporate

some preventative cares helpful,

there's also some other concepts

that I think are worth looking at.

I'm not an expert in these areas.

I know enough to suggest them to you.

And then for you, do you research,

I may perhaps deeper than Google and knowledge

if you want to.

But basically, there's like this proximal versus distal strength

that you can develop.

Proximal as I understand it is basically like super core.

It's not like your abs on the outside.

It's like on the inside, like where the muscles

that literally connect your spine to your hip,

they all run like inside, you know, very inside your body.

Working on those parts of your body

will help that proximal strength and proximal strength

then makes it less likely that you're gonna have distal

issues, you know, distal being a way as I understand it.

So it's worth checking that out.

And I also suggest sometimes looking at indirect causes

of a problem.

So like sometimes when I've had issues

in some part of my body,

it's because of a problem with another part of my body.

So for instance, my knee might hurt,

but it's because my hip is tight, right?

Or my back might go out of whack,

but it's not because of my back,

it's because of my glutes are tight, you know?

So be aware of that as you work on yourself

with your body.

And then on the brace, the other thing I suggested,

what I answered in the community was,

I've used braces just from like walking CBS,

but I don't only use them when you need to use a brace, right?

So avoid the temptation to use them all the time

because then what happens is your muscles get weaker

because they're not being used.

So anyway, that's my non-health care advice

on back braces just from personal experience.

And I guess I gotta say it's not health advice.

I'm not a doctor, but this is what's worked for me.

And then the last piece I wanna share with you here,

there was some conversation inside the community

about connecting and finding other local players,

other players who are local to the player who was posting

to see if they could drill together

and work on their game together.

I think that's awesome.

I highly encourage you to do that

and if you can find somebody locally

who's in the same kind of, same mindset as you

and same growth ideas as you, that's amazing.

But what I would add to that is don't lose sight

of doing it virtually.

I recognize that being local and being able

to go to lunch afterwards or breakfast before,

whatever it's nice, but if that's not possible,

don't issue the entire thing just because

there's nobody in your immediate vicinity.

The online way of doing it is also feasible

where you basically, you meet, you share ideas

as to what's gonna happen in the future.

It becomes like an accountability thing

because then you have to go back and say,

the next meeting is like, this is what I did or not.

And then that helps you and helps the others as well.

So just, you know, anything you can do

to establish community and connection.

And that's why I encouraged you earlier

to join the community at Tornary Pricaball

because what you'll find in the community at Tornary Pricaball

are players who are interested in growth,

they're interested in personal development,

they're interested in understanding,

they ask questions like this,

they have exchanges like the one I read to you earlier.

And I know that if you listen to this podcast

at all, and if you're listening to it

at this stage of this particular episode,

you're not the average bear in Pricaball.

You're not, you know, you're not just here

to bat a ball around, you want more.

And our community is a place where you can find

other players who share that kind of passion with you

and for our sport.

So that's this special episode of Pricaball Therapy.

I hope you enjoyed it.

If you have questions, please post them inside the community.

That's really where our focus is going to be,

is going to be inside the community.

If you're inside your Pricaball coach,

if you're one of our students posted in there,

you can also post it in the main chat if you want to,

depending on who you want to interact with.

If you're in the big community,

in the general community, post it in there,

that's where these questions came from.

My plan is I will be in there looking for questions,

seeing what's happening,

and then I'll pull certain questions,

I'll put them into a file like I did this time,

when there's sufficient number of questions,

I'll jump on the microphone,

answer your questions and share with you my perspective

on the different areas in which you're wondering

what the answer may be regarding Pricaball

or anything you want to ask.

So I encourage you to do that.

So I'll pledge you to be with you for this special episode,

tune in this Friday for that episode on Google Knowledge.

And till then, be well.