More on the Push Shot

 I touched briefly on the push shot as a way to punish bangers at couple of posts ago.

But this shot is applicable to much more than an anti-bang block.  

One of the difficulties with hitting a pickleball is that the ball is so light that it slows down quickly.  Both of those variables affect the timing of any hit.  I'll also add wind and spin to that list of variables.

So if we want to become more consistent, then we want to minimize the timing of a shot.  The usual way to hit the ball is to swing at it.  This implies that the paddle face is going to square up to the target location for just a moment.  Think about a gate swinging shut, it faces everywhere as it closes and if we were to toss a ball at a closing gate and expect it to be hit back to us, there is a small moment in the swing where this works.  And a swinging paddle is not much different.

We do have a few things going for us.  The paddles don't weight much and we can move them fairly quickly.  So last minute path and face angles are quite possible, usually.  Also, we are paying attention to the wind of course, and also noticing the spin as the ball came off the opponent's paddle and we can adjust a swing before the hit.

But at the last fraction of a second things frequently will not go well.  Now, let's return to the push shot.  Using this pushing technique, the paddle face is always pointing toward our target and we don't swing it, but push the paddle maintaining the face of the paddle and its angle.  Doing this will help remove a lot of last minute issues with a difficult strike.

There are some shots where a push is not useful as sometimes we need to add a lot of energy to a shot.  Think service return or even serve, we need a swing for these as that will deliver more power.

But if you think about defensive shots, say returning drives from the baseline, or when at the net, here the energy comes from the ball and a push or just a block is enough to return the ball properly.

Inherently a push shot has less energy, but you will get more accuracy and control.  It is a difficult opponent to beat who doesn't hit a ball out.  I think the Master talks of that to Po on a regular basis.

So, other than drives, serves, and service returns, you might find that a pushing shot works well.