Introduction: If you’re new to pickleball and lacking a tennis background, you’re likely familiar with the frustration of facing lobs and missing your overhead smashes. We aim to change that narrative. Despite not having a tennis background myself, I’ve dedicated ample time to practicing overhead smashes with a ball machine. However, I still felt something was missing compared to the techniques used by professionals. So, I enlisted the help of an ex-tennis player to teach me the nuances of hitting overheads effectively, akin to tennis players. We hope to empower you to execute overhead smashes like a pro.
Setting Up the Drill: Using the ball machine set to the overhead drill, we positioned ourselves as instructed. The key was to emulate real-game scenarios, ensuring the drill mirrored actual gameplay.
Implementing Techniques: With expert guidance, I began refining my overhead technique. Key adjustments included timing, weight transfer, and wrist snap. Initially, I struggled with timing, often hitting too late. However, with precise instructions, I learned to load onto my back leg and transfer weight seamlessly, resulting in crisper smashes. Moreover, I discovered the importance of staying sideways, maintaining a balanced posture throughout the swing.
Hip Positioning Revelation: A pivotal moment came when I realized the significance of hip positioning. While I focused on keeping my shoulders sideways, I overlooked the importance of my hips. By maintaining hip alignment and focusing on a circular swing path, I achieved smoother, more powerful overheads.
Noodly Technique: Another crucial aspect was mastering a “noodly” technique. Rather than relying on brute force, I learned to loosen my wrist and arm, allowing for greater wrist lag and snap. This subtle adjustment transformed my overheads, enhancing both accuracy and power.
Conclusion: Mastering pickleball overheads is a journey that requires dedication and practice. While the techniques may seem elementary, their execution demands precision and finesse. By incorporating expert tips and diligent training, you can elevate your overhead game to new heights. So, grab your paddle, hit the courts, and unleash those lethal overhead smashes. Your opponents won’t know what hit them!
Transcript
“Intro:
So, if you just started playing pickleball and you don’t have a tennis background, you might feel like the most frustrating thing in pickleball is getting lobbed and completely whiffing your overhead smash. Well, today, we’re going to try and change that. I don’t have a tennis background either, so I’ve been practicing tons of overhead smashes with my ball machine. This has been super helpful, but I felt like I was still doing something very differently than the pros. In this video, I asked an ex-tennis player to teach me how to hit overheads like he would in tennis. By the end of this video, hopefully, we’ll be able to do something like this: [insert video clip].
Special thanks to Topspin Pro for sponsoring this channel and making this video possible.
Alright, y’all, today we’re making a very important video. You’ve all been here, and that is how to punish lobs. Yes, we all hate lobbers, myself included. So for me, because I didn’t come with a tennis background, my overheads are boo-boo. It’s probably, I—I don’t tell anyone this because I don’t want people to start lobbing me, but if you hit a lob on me, I am probably going to mess that up. Nick, on the other hand, I mean, I’ll let you kind of talk about your lobs, but um, Nick is super good with overheads. Like, you try to lob him, yeah, it’s not coming back.
So, we’re going to use the Titan ball machine to feed us some lobs. Nick is going to coach me through how to hit better overheads when someone lobs me. I’m really excited for this drill. If you have one of these machines, just select overhead, and we’re going to run through this together. Let’s set this up.
Sweet. Okay, on the app, on the overhead app, you can see where it tells you to put the ball machine. So, it’s telling me to put the ball machine on the baseline. That was better.
You okay? So, watch another one of mine.
Nick’s Overhead Demonstration: Yeah, so it’s all about timing.
I’m just waiting with it loaded, and then as soon as I go, I release. Okay, that’s it, go.
Again. Load. It’s a little bit better. Load.
You take all of these. I should take those.
Fixing Ed’s Timing: Okay, I’m not going to hit any of these. Am I hitting it early or something?
Yeah, your timing is just off right now.
So, do I need to hit earlier or later?
Let me have a look. Earlier. Hit earlier. There you go. Snap. Yeah, earlier. There you go. Hit earlier. Yeah, hit earlier. Load and hit early. Got it? There you go. You can hear the snap. There you go. Wait, it’s a lot earlier than you think.
Mhm. That was awkward.
Yeah, nice. All right, you go.
Ah, yeah. So, load, load, and then transfer and hit early.
It’s early.
Yeah, ’cause it takes time to swing, uh-huh. So, you have to swing a little bit for the dude.
Comparison: Yours sounds so different. Oh my God. It sounds crisp. I think the cops are coming. I think gunshots are firing over here.
I’m going to pause it real quick so Nick could kind of do a deep dive in terms of technique.
Yeah, for sure. I’ll replay some of this footage for you guys in slow motion. Of Nick’s. You don’t want to see my slow-mo, but maybe I’ll do a side-by-side. But I want Nick to kind of just nerd out and kind of walk me and walk you guys through.
Nick’s Technique Breakdown: Yeah, ’cause I’m sure you know a little bit.
Yeah, so I mean what you were kind of doing was, you kind of just sitting there and like falling off of it. You weren’t transferring the weight anywhere, uh-huh. So basically, what we want to do is as soon as we see the ball go up, we want to get into what’s called trophy position. Trophy position is, we’re just going to tuck this right arm and then we’re going to have our left arm pointing at the ball and we’re going to turn sideways straight away, yeah. So, this is the position right here, okay? And then when we’re in this, we’ll just carry on pointing at the ball wherever it is the whole time, and we’ll either move backwards or forwards for where it’s going to be in our strike zone, uh-huh. And then when we know that, we can then load onto that back leg and then spring up and transfer our weight onto that left leg there. Oh, okay. So, you just had a little bit lack of transfer. But once you get that down, you know you’re pointing at the ball correctly, you got it in the right zone, you’re shuffling back, backwards, and then when you’re in the position, load onto that leg and transfer through. And also, another thing as well that I saw was you were hitting a bit late. So, all you had to do was a quick fix was just swing a bit earlier. And you could just tell even just by the sound of how much harder you were hitting it there.
Can I hit a couple of shadow overheads like shadow ones for you to kind of show you if doing that right? I think the tip that helped me a lot was swinging earlier because I wasn’t sure. I’m like loading, I’m focusing on the loading and I’m like hitting the ball here, so I’m shanking it upwards. But, load. There goes the fun. That’s why I don’t play with my phone. So, like here, loading and then swing early, yeah.
And what you’re doing as well is you’re turning your hips very fast, so you’re going like this. I want it to be more of a load and then onto that other leg, so you’re kind of just like you’re just turning. I’m doing a rotation, yes. I want it to be more of a load and transfer onto that other foot, okay. So, load, transfer. But you did a little hop there, okay. So, you did like a little bunny hop, but I want you to just load. It’s nice and simple. You just keep it simple. It’s good. So, load onto the other foot. Okay. Load. No, so, for I want you to, once you land, I want you to finish like this, my left foot, and just hold the balance there on your left foot, okay. I was trying to load and H to my right foot. Load on my right foot, transfer to my wait. Hold on, but don’t bring that right foot back through yet. I just want you to, yes, just hold it on there.
Oh, it’s just a rocking, yes. Exactly. Okay, so it’s load, yes. Exactly, ’cause you’re just transferring that weight. Load. There you go. Oh, I see. Yeah. So, it’s here and then there