Gale Leach -- Author
  • Home
  • Books
    • The Art of Pickleball >
      • The Art of Pickleball
      • Excerpts
      • Reviews
    • The Disappearance >
      • Chapter One
      • Reviews
    • Bruce and the Road to Courage >
      • Bruce and the Road to Courage
      • Excerpts
      • Reviews
    • Bruce and the Road to Honesty >
      • Bruce and the Road to Honesty
      • Excerpt
      • Reviews
    • Bruce and the Road to Justice >
      • Bruce and the Road to Justice
      • Excerpt
      • Reviews
    • Bruce and the Mystery in the Marsh >
      • Excerpt
      • Reviews
    • Bruce and the Road to Freedom >
      • Bruce and the Road to Freedom
      • Excerpt
      • Reviews
  • About the Author
  • Pickleball
    • Pickleball Tips
  • Author Blog
  • Leach Lines
  • Contact
  • Please Leave a Review
  • The Disappearance

What would Buzz Lightyear say?

10/27/2019

3 Comments

 
PictureImage from Wikimedia Commons (cropped and filtered). Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters (2042592753)
Getting to the next level, whether 3.0, 3.5, or higher, isn't easy. The answer is practice, of course, but just getting out to the court every day isn't enough. You must practice with a goal in mind, and you must know HOW to practice to achieve that goal. One "simple" way to get better is to concentrate on the skills that are missing from the level above your current level (based on these criteria as noted by the USAPA). ​
Let's say You haven't been playing pickleball that long and you want to get to be a 4.5 player. What do you need to do? What are the major differences between 3.0 and 4.5?
The table below (info from the USAPA website) lists these definitions:

Picture
Information in this table derived from the USAPA website: https://www.usapa.org/player-skill-rating-definitions/
I highlighted two items in the table that popped out at me: CONSISTENCY and STRATEGY. Other elements are important, of course, but by the time a player has achieved 3.0-level skills, he or she knows how to do a lot of things—just not how to do them well, or consistently. What that player doesn't really know yet is the strategy that goes along with what is known: when to hit a dink instead of a drive, when to break out of dinking, and so on. That's the strategy bit, and learning is not all—it's also being able to know how to do it automatically and not have to think about it.

If you've read my posts before, you know I stress PRACTICE, and not just aimless hitting back and forth over the net. It's important to have a goal—one that's reachable and measured. Like consistently hitting that forehand that sometimes goes out of bounds or into the net.

Get a friend to work with you (or better yet, take classes) and make sure 1) you're doing the stroke correctly before you continue to learn it wrong; 2) concentrate your focus not on everything about that shot but rather small parts of it: hitting it at about the same height and to roughly the same spot on the court.

Once you have mastered that, move the shot to other areas. When that's easy, work on your backhand and do the same thing. All of this takes time, but if you do this practice consistently (couldn't resist putting that in), your game will improve.

Take things slowly and methodically, knowing it took a while to get from novice to 3.0. With patience and some help from your friends, you'll get there.
3 Comments

    Subscribe for my best content

    Blog Mailing

    Author

    Gale Leach lives in Arizona with her husband, two dogs, and a cat. When she's not writing pickleball tips, she's working on the second in a new series of novels for young adults and updating The Art of Pickleball.

    Categories

    All
    Backhand
    Body Position
    Carbohydrates
    Chris Sacca
    Communication
    Control
    Court Position
    Dink
    Drills
    Errors
    Etiquette
    Extraordinary Tennis For The Ordinary Player
    Extraversion
    Falling
    Fear
    Five Factor Test
    Food
    Health & Fitness
    Healthy
    Injury
    Level
    Meditation
    Mental Game
    Non-Volley Zone
    Paddles
    Patience
    Personality
    Pickleball
    Placement
    Practice
    Rating
    Relaxation
    Resolutions
    Right And Left Handed
    Right / Wrong
    Rules
    Safety
    Simon Ramo
    Singles
    Skill Level
    Snacks
    Stacking
    Strategies & Tactics
    Strokes
    Tournament
    Unforced Errors
    Visualization
    Websites
    Winning And Losing
    Yoga

    Archives

    May 2020
    April 2020
    January 2020
    November 2019
    October 2019
    December 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    March 2018
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014

    RSS Feed

© 2020 Gale H. Leach