You Can Add Power to Your Pickleball Game

Many of my students want to add power to their pickleball game. Though fitness is important, lifting weights to build muscles in your arms or shoulders is not the key. Instead…

The Learning Curve

When we are first learning to play pickleball we tend to focus on the basics. We focus on watching the ball. We work to make contact with the ball in front of our bodies. Perhaps we focus on paddle direction. While important, we also need to focus on our body.

In order to control your paddle, your body needs to be in control. It will be difficult to make solid contact if your body is not in balance. Instead of focusing on the “little things”…we need to direct our focus to the gorilla in the room.

Adding Power Requires Body Rotation

Imagine for a moment, a golfer hitting a ball with one hand without ever turning his shoulder or his body. I suspect he would not win the longest, or straightest, drive contest. You may have observed the same thing watching someone with a very weak backhand. Typically, that player crosses their paddle arm across their chest and attempts to direct their ball with only their arm.

To add power to your pickleball game, we need to utilize our full range of motion by rotating our body. Power in pickleball, like all racket sports, comes from the ground up. To lift a heavy box you would bend your knees into the ground. Keeping your head and chest up, you push-off the ground to lift up. This same motion is essential to creating power in your pickleball game.

Learning to Rotate

When we watch high-level play, we see players utilizing their whole bodies: the right side and left side. To learn what this feels like at home, stand up tall with your feet roughly shoulder-width apart. Now extend your arms in front of you and grasp your hands together. Rotate to your right side. Your hips should turn with you. Turn fully, allowing your left heel to come off the ground. Now turn to the left. Focus on moving as one unit (arms, shoulders, chest, hips, etc). This is “rotation”.

I imagine an axis, from head to feet, down the center of my body. When I am moving for a forehand, whether it is a dink or a groundstroke, I want to lead with the left side of my body … my left shoulder and my left hip. This will allow me to rotate my weight onto my right side when connecting with the ball. I will push-off my right foot and allow my left side to open up and rotate around.

Adding Power and Accuracy

You will note above, that I said I would rotate on a groundstroke and a dink. Why? Am I trying to add power to the dink? No. This rotation allows the ball to stay on the paddle a bit longer. By extending my followthrough towards the target, while rotating my body, I can guide the ball to my target more accurately.

My body does the majority of the work. It sets up my paddle to be in the correct position from start to finish. Without engaging my body properly it is impossible to hold my paddle in the correct spot consistently.

Adding Power Exercise

To better sense proper body rotation, add this simple exercise to your normal routine:

Stand in your ready or neutral position as if you were at the non-volley zone line;
Imagine you need to pick up something on the outside of your right foot and place it on a high shelf left of you (if you like, place a medicine or physioball there outside your right foot);
As you lift and turn your arms, shoulders, chest, and hips should rotate to the left and your right heel will come off the ground.
Now return the object to its starting position.
Again your entire body will rotate 180 degrees and your left heel may come off the ground.

Repeat this exercise slowly focusing on your form. Perhaps you want to practice this in front of a full-length mirror or have someone watch you. Practice 10 times, starting from the right and then 10 times starting from the left.

If you want to add power to your pickleball game you must focus on your body. Proper body mechanics, i.e. rotation, will not only add power but it will improve your accuracy!

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