When to use your wrist in pickleball
Last Edited
Dec 31 2024
Category
Instruction
Amateur pickleball players often get confused on when they should be using their wrist while hitting a shot and when they shouldn't.
In the James Ignatowich Newsletter last week, pro player Ryan Fu broke the decision down into two categories: "soft shots" and "hard shots."
Soft shots
Any shot that you are trying to have land inside the kitchen is considered a “soft shot.”
These shots include dinks, resets and drops.
The more wrist you use on these shots, the more likely you are to pop the ball up, allowing your opponent to attack. Adding wrist action also increases the variance of these shots.
Keeping a fixed and loose wrist will help you be more consistent in this area.
Fu gives a good demonstration in this clip:
Hard shots
These are shots where you're hitting through the court, such as serves, returns, drives, rolls and flicks.
You want to be able to generate spin on these shots, and wrist action helps accomplish that.
These shots are usually hit when the ball is above the height of the net, so it's important to use the wrist in order to come over the top of the ball to generate topspin.
It's also important to accelerate quickly through the shot.
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