In this video we cover the #1 mistake we see that is absolutely killing dinks. If you’re doing this than you need to stop immediately and start handling your dinks differently.
Watch the video to see what may be killing your dinks and what you can do to fix it.
Here’s Jordan to walk us through it…
Today we’re talking about what the number one thing that I see people doing that is really affecting their dink game in a bad way.
What they’re not doing is getting the ball early and out in front. So today we’re going to be focusing on working on those points.
You’ll see a lot of players doing okay with the short drinks. But, it’s the dinks that come really close to their feet that they have an issue with.
They’re not catching the dink early and out in front.
The thing that you don’t want to do is to contact the ball really close to your body. You don’t want to even let that ball get close to your body or behind. If the ball gets behind you then that’s even worse.
When you let the ball get too close you’re going to try to compensate by using your wrist and it’s just going to cause all sort of inconsistencies.
Usually what people do if they get some deep dinks is that they’re not going to catch it early and they’re also going to let it fall right next to their feet. This is the worst thing you could do.
Instead of that we want to catch the ball in front and early so that we can hit a very consistent and solid dink.
Drill
I have set up some cones. These are cones that you could just get at any store. You could use a line of tape or anything that you have accessible to you.
This exercise is going to show you how to stand your ground and also how you can make sure you’re catching every ball early and out in front which is really going to impact your game in a positive way.
So Katrina and I are going to do some dinking now and she’s going to try to hit these cones. If she hit a cone then she gets a point.
I’m going to try and guard this line of cones so her balls don’t hit them. To do this I’m going to have to take a majority of the dinks out of the air out in front of me.
This will allow me to hit the ball out in front at a good distance. It will also force me to get the ball over even faster and to not contact it too close to me or behind me.
You’ll see the short dinks are fine. I’m not worried too much about the short dinks because I could hit it those out in front.
It’s the ones that might land close to my feet that I want to catch early.
I’m getting really low and I’m protecting the cones.
This drill is going to teach you to put a lot of pressure on your opponent and it’s also going to keep you up at the non-volley zone so that you can be a real threat here at the net.
I’m leaning in to every ball and I’m looking out in front.
I’m also making sure to catch it early as well as trying to make sure I clear the net every time.
It takes away a lot of time from my opponent and they have less time to set up especially when I’m taking these dinks out of the air.
Hopefully this blog/video is a great visual for you guys.
Go out there and try it!
