Welcome to PrimeTime Pickleball, my name is Jordan Briones and in today’s video/blog we want say Happy New Year and thank you!
We’ll also leave you with a little treat at the end…Be sure to stay tuned till the end of this video/blog as I’m going to tell you the number one way that you can improve your game and take your game to the next level.
I don’t want you to miss out on that so stick around and we’ll talk about that.
Today’s video is going to be a little different than what we usually do.
As mentioned before, we just really want to say thank you to all the people who share our videos, like our videos and watch our videos.
If this is your first time here, welcome to the Primetime Pickleball family!
Our mission is to grow the game of pickleball and also to help you through instructional videos to play your best game.
It’s a new year, it’s a brand new year, it was a wild year last year.
What We’ve Been Up To..
We put out over 80 videos and we’ve been doing this for about a year now. We love the continued support that you guys give to us. It’s so nice to hear all the positive comments and all the feedback on how it’s really helped your game. We appreciate it!
We’ve had some top players on our videos which has been super helpful and we really want to thank them for their support.
So, if you’ve been following us for a while now, you might think of myself and/or Nicole as just some really cool people who started the PrimeTime Pickleball Youtube channel. And you would be right 😉
The reason this video is a little different is because we thought it would be cool to show us on more of a personal level. You can kind of get to know us a little bit more and see what happens behind the scenes. You’ll find out a little bit of what we do and how we really actually make it happen.
We both have full-time jobs.
I have a family with two small kids and a wonderful wife.
I really can’t thank Nicole enough. She’s just a super awesome person/friedn and an awesome partner to have.
All the videos that you guys see, everything, all the edits, all the emails, the website all that stuff, she handles all of that.
Hopefully you guys can get to know us more. We are a Primetime Pickelball Family. We like to call it that…a family. That’s how it feels.
All you people that watch us and enjoy our videos, we love it and we appreciate it.
Hopefully in this video we can show you a few things of our daily routines and kind of what we do so.. please enjoy.
Our Story
Real quick story, maybe something you guys wanted to know, is how Nicole and I actually got started into making these videos and trying to help more people improve their game.
Firstly, we’re both from Northern California.
I was invited to a pickleball event, a grand opening of pickleball courts in Oakland California, to be part of an exhibition.
This is over a year and a half ago, at that time, I had a smaller YouTube or rather my first YouTube channel just teaching some pickleball tutorials and stuff like that.
I met Nicole at that event and after hitting with her and meeting her we became friends. We had some coffee and we started talking about the things we’re interested in.
If you guys don’t know, Nicole right now is a tennis pro. She teaches tennis at the Oakland Hills Tennis Club over there where we met and that’s what she does full-time.
So like I said, we met, we had some coffee and right there is when PrimeTime Pickleball was born.
We had similar interests in showing people what we know and how we can help you improve your game.
So it all started through this pickleball event.
I forgot to mention that at the time we met, Nicole had only played pickleball a handful of times. She played D1 collegiate tennis and she’s been out of the game for a while. She didn’t play a tournament in tennis in about 10 plus years and she’s been focused on teaching tennis which is her passion.
As I got to know her that day and see her participate in the exhibtion I could obviously tell by her strokes, her shot selection and the way she moved her paddle that she was a tennis player which I later confirmed.
It’s hard to find mixed partners so I was like “wow this can be a super awesome person/partner”. She’s really awesome and she’s super good.
After that point we started training together. This was a summer of 2017.
We started training for Nationals to play mixed together.
We were playing great. I was a 5.0 pickleball player already. I was playing two plus years. She just started to come in and we were drilling for hours, five or six hours twice a week, and getting ready for Nationals.
Unfortunately, two weeks before Nationals, her back went out. This was due to all the wear and tear from her tennis days. It’s kind of an issue that has been ongoing.
Right now she’s rehabbing it and it’s getting better.
She’s of course met with a lot of different doctors but it’s definitely getting better. We wanted to thank all the people who are praying for her and sending positive words to her.
She’s not on the pickleball courts yet but she will be soon and when she gets on the scene you guys will know because she’s going to be a force.
That’s pretty much our story of how we came to be.
A Day In the Life of The PrimeTime Family
Here we are this is New Year’s Day 2019, January 1st, we’re here at the Concord pickleball complex. This is the Willow Pass Community Park courts. This is where Katrina and I have held our big Golden State Pickleball Championships tournament.
You can see there’s 14 courts here in beautiful Concord, California.
There’s a basket of balls for drills over there and a filming setup. I got the tripod set up and there’s my partner Danny. Danny’s been part of our team for a while, he helps us out with a lot of videos and I really appreciate him.
We’re here just getting done shooting some film. This is where we shoot most of our videos and I wanted to show you around.
Next, I’m driving through Berkeley California going to Nicole’s house to drop off some footage which she will later edit and make all perfect and great.
We’ll probably talk about some stuff. Maybe some future videos that we’re going to shoot and then maybe grab some dinner.
That pretty much wraps up our day.
How To Get To The Next Level
In the beginning of the video I promised you that I would share the number one way that you can improve your game and take it to the next level.
It’s no secret, it’s all over our channel. That number one way that’s going to take you from a beginner player to an intermediate player or an intermediate player to an advanced is drilling, practice and determination.
All those things go together for somebody who really wants to improve and get better. I’m a firm believer in that and I practice that.
It’s not something that I just tell people and throw out there but don’t do. I’m out here drilling.
I drill for one to two hours before I even play a game most of the time.
That can vary depending on where you are and where your level.
But, definitely drilling repetition is really what’s going to dial those shots in when you talk about serving, returning, hitting your third shot drops or driving. getting up to the non-volley zone, hitting your dinks, deciding on what kind of ball you’re gonna hit and how you’re gonna hit it, where you’re gonna hit it, etc. Those are all things that come in hitting more balls.
I still have a full-time job and work 50 plus hours a week.
I only get to play two days a week. For me, my best time is when I’m on the court drilling and hitting shot after shot when I can because I don’t have that much time.
So drilling is the number one way to get you better.
Yes, it does involve the right mechanics and yes, it does involve determination.
Playing a lot can make you better if you have a mindset of improving. Also, playing with better players can help you improve to a certain extent.
You have to be able to hit the shots under pressure and you have to be able to hit shots consistently.
This is why you hear a lot of people say consistency is so important in the game of pickleball.
If you look at the best players, the top of the top players, top tier players in the game.. what separates them from the average 5.0 player is that they are more consistent.
They can consistently hit those shots over and over and over again and that’s what gets them over the hump to that next level.
That’s what gets them on the medal stand every single time.
So, if you are 3.0 and you want to be a 3.5 by the end of the year or you’re a 3.5 and you want to be a 4.0 or 5.0 by the end of the year, whatever your goal is, you have to put the practice in. You have to put the time in.
I always hear from people that it’s hard to find drilling partners or that people don’t like to drill..to and extent.
People who don’t want to get better don’t want to drill. People who don’t really have the knack for practicing or who are not determined enough to really get better won’t put the time in. These type of people just show up to play rec games.
As soon as they park their car they hop on the court and start.
I came from a tennis background and Nicole came from a tennis background as well. She was a top top player in college. To get to that kind of level in any sport it takes drills.
It takes repetitive hitting of this wiffle ball to get to the top of the pickleball game or even to improve by level.
You just need to be more consistent. Shot selection is very important and mechanics are very important but you have to be able to do this consistently.
That’s the number one thing you see in any sport basketball. You look at the best of the best – Steph Curry, LeBron James.. You look at tennis stars Roger Federer and Djokovic..you look at any sport.. they’re not just playing scrimmage games.
They’re out there in the gym working out and shooting free-throws.
In tennis they’re constantly hitting the same forehand, different patterns.
In pickleball you’re getting dinks, you’re handing your resets, you’re hitting third shot drops, you’re coming to the net, you’re hitting swinging volleys, you’re working on placement dinking to maybe the backhand side more, or moving them around, etc.. You’re drilling.
In a game you’re only going to get half the balls or less if you don’t drill.
If I come out here alone and I’m only playing for about an hour to two by myself. I’ll probably only hit about 200 to 250 balls. But, if I go out with a drilling partner I could probably hit double that because I’m not spending too much time serving, changing sides, etc.. If I’m hitting with a partner I’m hitting every single ball that goes across that net. You’re getting double the amount of repetition that you need to improve and you’re doing it in half the time.
So for those people who say it’s hard to find drilling partners, you’re right. But you don’t need to find a drilling partner, you need to find somebody who wants to get better.
And then, when you find that person, you need to collaborate on what’s going to make both of you better. You’re going to need to hit the shots consistently and over and over and over again.
That’s how these these top guys have achieved that level. They’ve hit hundreds and thousands of balls.
So find somebody who wants to get better, find somebody who wants to improve.
Now for those people who want to go out there and just want to have fun, that is totally okay, that’s awesome.
bIf your new year’s resolution is just to have fun, get out of the house, and exercise and be healthy, that is super awesome!
But I’m talking about specifically to those people who are actually trying to play tournaments, who are trying to beat that person at on the other side of the net.
You got to get out there and drill. Find somebody that is willing to work with you and you’re going to drill and work with each other so that you can get better.
Thanks for watching our videos and reading our blogs. We really appreciate it!
Happy New Year!
We really hope that this is the best year that you’ve ever had!
Go out there and drill, practice. Practice with a purpose.
Take your weaknesses and make them into strengths.
Don’t go out there and keep running around your backhand because you know its weak. Go out there and hit your backhand every time and run around your forehand to hit your backhand. Those are the kind of things that push you into a better player.
If you want to see more videos on these drills that I’m talking about just click the description below or go to PrimeTimePickleball.com
We have a lot of videos on there for drills on how to improve your backhand, how to improve your third shot, how to improve your volleys, etc.. which are all vital for the game of pickleball.
Happy Pickeling!
