How to Hit Topspin Drive in Pickleball with Ben Johns

Want to add more power, spin, and consistency to your pickleball drive? In this video Ben Johns provides some expert tips on adding topspin on hitting your forehand drive in pickleball. With power paddles and the game getting faster with people coming over from tennis, the forehand drive is a shot you will want to master. Instead of just smashing the ball and flying out the court, with topspin, the ball will dive down staying in the court and letting you extend the rally or have “winners”. Enjoy the video and make sure to like and subscribe.

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While accomplished as a professional player, with quarterfinal runs on both the PPA and APP Tours, Josh prides himself on his work as an instructor and coach. Over the last six-plus years as a certified instructor, Josh has taught thousands of hours from coast to coast and even internationally with Pickleball Getaways. These days, when not running a clinic or lesson, he can be seen on the bench giving counsel to the World Number 1, Ben Johns.
Josh is also the author of the first children’s pickleball book, “Pickleball with Pop.” Since its publication in 2018, over 1,500 copies have been sold, introducing pickleball to the youngest generation!

#pickleball #topspin #forehand #drive

but more rely on the twist of the hips for the power cuz that’s much more consistent cuz this doesn’t have really a huge range of motion unless you’re coming up a lot as you’re hitting um so this is why using your hips for power and just kind of staying low through the ball usually keeps the ball low ball back now down one great serve and that is in by several feet last video from pickall getaways Mexico uh a lot of talk about power paddles a lot of talk about people with racket Sports background coming into the sport uh this video is going to focus on sort of that third shot drive and sort of harnessing the power so adding some Spin and consistency to make sure the ball lands in um obviously no introduction in the left really no introduction in the middle um pron probably got one of the hardest he probably hits the ball harder than most people you know Ben yeah sure all right so we’re going to feed you a couple just do Preston do your normal stuff and then uh we’ll work on some contact point face angle swing pass and things to sort of get some Top Spin and we’ll sort of understand like the ratio of everything so um then you may want to clear out uh cuz we’re going to let the uh let the big dog eat no no sometimes gosh these are Elite drives these are perfect just a bit long just a little bit all right one more one more feeling loose feeling good all right um obviously if he hits me great shot if he hits the net and it goes over great shot other than that I mean honestly if I was playing in a tournament I saw you getting in that motion I’d go sit on the sidelines and let it I may all four to the people on the next court over four fully different results there yeah yeah um so you’re probably going full power so I just Ben let’s talk about like what are we thinking about as as far as power versus spin versus consistency and how we live that sure I mean there’s certainly um varying levels of how much power you’re putting into it um combined with Spin and all that based on what you’re trying to do whether it’s a drive and then a drop kind of philosophy uh which works in a lot of situations or where you’re trying to drive in clothes or go big Drive partner clothes like there’s a lot of different ways uh and therefore for different ways to hit your drives to approach what you’re doing with the third shot um but let’s just kind of go over more basic dry form in its entirety that such that you would be able to apply it to Any Given one of those uh and for Preston here like he’s got a very fast wrist so that’s where all of his power is coming from or most of it which which is mostly this uh which is a good thing to have for a lot of reasons um but here you want to you know harness it a little bit and rely on your body a little bit more because the wrist has a little more variance in ter in terms of its range of motion so therefore when you use it a lot it might not always end up exactly where you want it therefore you get uh varying Heights at and uh results even though you got power so you want to have a little bit of wrist motion but more rely on the twist of the hips for the power because that’s much more consistent because this doesn’t have really a huge range of motion unless you’re coming up a lot as you’re hitting um so this is why using your hips for power and just kind of staying low through the ball usually keeps the ball low um and yeah so I mean you could get tons of Power with the wrist plus the hips but at that point it’s usually not necessary for anything you’re were trying to do so um let’s hit a few where you kind of focus on twist the hips don’t use quite as much wrist uh and then we’ll kind of get into the the Top Spin part of things and what we’re trying to do with it just CLE I I obviously drive a little bit more open than I’d say the average human um should I be semi closed so that I can allow my hips to go or does it really not matter I prefer fully closed honestly yeah so open stance is a no-o semi closed you can get by with um but yeah I would go fully closed just cuz it’s the most fundamental way to do it and uh you can vary it after you learn how to do that really well uh because once you learn how to do close stance and hit you get the feeling for what your hip should be doing enough to where then you can be like okay maybe I’m a little lazy on this one for whatever reason I still engage my hips by twisting my core and all that um but it’s best to start off with a fully closed stance more less yeah so now we’re kind of going to get into what the r should be doing in terms of how we’re generating in Top Spin uh so right now your hips like you you transition your weight well you’re swinging your hips well uh you’re staying pretty low now the thing that is causing a little bit of height variance is your wrist has varying contacts of uh how much it’s open versus closed and all that basically your wrist is definitely moving a decent amount as you’re hitting so on the next you try to do the same thing in all other respects but uh when you get to about contact right about heish try to make sure the paddle is a little more closed than what it is currently and that it’s not doing this at all as you’re hitting um just just close it more than you think and obviously low to high swing always low to high swing yeah yeah so that one again is still I’d say not quite closed enough it’s kind of more flat when you’re hitting it so flat with a down up swing is going to create a ball that goes up all right now do the closed like that again a little more down up with that closed and then again fully closed stance if you can get there give me a little more time that’s yeah that’s nice all right so now uh with that I would also say that it’s something that is a little foreign to people that didn’t play a lot of tennis is hitting the outside of the ball I played tennis at least three times at least three times have a swing path feels like he’s hitting more inside yeah yeah so uh it’s also a phenomenon in golf it’s how a lot of righties hit slices basically they come from kind of the outside of over here to the inside here such that you’re hitting the inside of the ball this way so this is inside this is behind the ball this is out outside and now it’s very like small like the ball’s not big it’s a small adjustment but it actually makes a huge difference so when we’re hitting these drives uh instead of just behind the ball and especially not this we want to be thinking hit outside of the ball like so and I’m creating some sort of not necessarily down but over the ball it’s certainly fine to be having it at least like this even if you did it like this you’d kind of want to still close at least have something where you can feel the paddle is not perfectly straight it’s a little bit like this in whatever manner you want that if you want to drop the wrist a little bit that’s fine uh if you want to just kind of bend it this way a little bit without dropping it that’s also fine but just try to Envision if you were to hit the outside third of the ball okay at contact easy enough leading leading into the ball paddles facing down and then the rotation gets the paddle around the outside of the ball um I wouldn’t say that necessarily cuz that would only work if you were to rotate with the proper contact Point uh and the contact point is not always consistent so for instance if you hit it more behind like a little bit here it hasn’t rotated yet so you’re not going to get outside of the ball it’s more that you need to be thinking in your mind the paddle face with your wrist again the wrist controls your range of motion it controls out side of the ball a lot as well you want to think that wrist is at whatever contact Point paddles outside the ball okay cuz if you only rely on this pronation this natural pronation of the wrist that’s not always going to get outside of the ball it is if you contact it in front a lot but uh not if you don’t contact it perfectly in front so PR shop and pickle ball move your feet proper positioning open hips everything um and then it’s more set the wrist to meet it to where you’re outside the ball I’m not really transitioning my wrist as I swing right no there’s not a ton it’ll do some stuff naturally which is fine but I wouldn’t really be thinking in that capacity I would honestly mostly just be focusing in my mind on let me hit the outside third of the ball in whatever way I can we’ll see what that looks like outside third check by the way last time we did this he said I had exemplary drive form so I’ll show you some videos of me you can work to mimic yeah so I like that um let’s do that a couple more times uh do the same thing but uh don’t come up as you’re hitting just kind of stay down through it stay low start low stay low and it’ll also help especially on um you can get away with that on ones where you’re not coming in off of it but if you are trying to hit a driving close it’s even much more important to do that so so good to have that I I feel like his ball has a slight tail to it like it is still in ever so slightly to’s not naturally hitting the outside of the ball it’s certainly not severely yet it’s more like behind the ball right now so behind now get around bro get hug this thing check that watch oh wait it came up sorry so that one was good on the outside of the ball portion like it wouldn’t be extremely outside of the ball but it would be yeah that that that was very straight like a bullet he just put a little spin on it uh let me get a little bit of an earlier contact Point you’re kind of letting it drop a good amount so let’s go Peak bounce right that’s nice uh let’s do a couple more yeah so again I’d go back to focusing a little more on outside of the ball and close paddle with the upward swing in order to generate Top Spin nice drive though still outside still outside though huh yeah that was the best one yet when honestly like when you focus on outside of the ball it is tough to like get outside of the ball and not have a nice Top Spin swing usually when people get outside they naturally close the paddle face enough too cuz you have to so one of the reasons like when I say close uh outside of the ball that I really mean Top Spin is it just naturally happens so uh it’s nice to focus on that and also get Top Spin is like a bonus well I hope you guys can see this but it’s definitely more toppy every single time and it doesn’t feel like it’s going to happen but oh it I was catching them here here here now we’re down here I’m going underhand yeah you can still contact the a little bit earlier and your swing path is still like you are trying to get to the outside of the ball but because you kind of come from like this angle like try to think more starting goings do need uh farther contact from my body cuz sometimes I feel like I’m doing you like you tend to drop the paddle face and come here rather than being out here so it is harder to hit outside the ball if you’re closer to your I’m going get outside and around yeah I mean I watched tennis and like the do Jo fed they’re like forearm their arm is almost fully extend far away very far yeah like so like I feel like you’re coming in here um so just that full extension may be able to give you a little extra outside and around I will say or like a 34% increase compared to when you started ah I got to open more or close more sorry you need more down up swing close more yeah uh contact the ball earlier at its peak like you’re still letting it drop a good amount so that was a good contact point now again close paddle face down up swing Let It Drop I got still still dropping a lot yeah yeah that’s Peak that’s good okay few more uh and again still rely on that that paddle face nice paddle face to take Pace off so instead of like not swinging as hard like if you want to swing hard that’s fine but you can also just close the paddle face more cuz that’ll take Pace off okay that when you kind of let it lag and that was inside the I need a little more separation it’s nice yeah I mean if you could do that every time you’d be the best yeah so just to kind of give you a little more an extreme visual let’s uh I’ll hit like one very outside of the ball so you can kind of just see it that one right there you can see it’s like it’s it’s the Very extreme like I wouldn’t even recommend like finishing over this shoulder this right shoulder like I wouldn’t do that I’m just saying that would be the extreme of an outside of the ball one more so you can see it’s actually curving like this and when it curves from right to left as a righty forehand uh you’re definitely also getting a good amount of to I mean so in golf we do a lot of exaggerated motions because when we actually do it in real life it’s nowhere near as exaggerated so just hit a couple big exaggerator boys let me exaggerate I’m going exaggerate the heck out of this dip it in over there baby I’m dipping baby yeah so with that if you are dropping that much you need to swing up a lot to compens okay low to high exaggerating yeah there you go that’s full outside of the ball I’m sick that’s a wrap bang and you also like to hit the top of the net a lot more again when you drop the paddle face and you hit outside of the ball you hit the top of the net so pretty much for anybody low to high obviously uh never open stance you said that’s a no no yeah uh and then getting outside the ball I have found to be wildly conducive to more top SP yep um camera’s probably like up your nose right now but that’s cool got boogies um thanks bud hey Ben you know what you get a handshake sir appreciate your time thank you sir final parting shots no I mean I think if you want to rip hard you just got have good form cuz I know for me I rip hard and apparently form does that work so do what he says but also I’ll tell you drives were coming in less hard but I had to stay in there cuz I knew they had a chance to land and they were getting down lower so they literally not only they more consistent but I would definitely say more effective too yeah no I mean they’re definitely dipping 10 times more than before so all right Ben you can leave PR I’m going to feed you one you think you can hit it over that fence that fence yeah I don’t know if a ball will literally travel that far yeah we’re just we’re we’re finishing right now Preston’s going to hit one over the fence ah almost cleared the court one more one more back of course just for fun oh oh I think you can do it I think so yeah that’s a Franklin this is bloopers for sure all right this one’s this one’s gone got a little precipitation I’m putting my body into this one sunning Port warning track power it’s got to be it’s got to be possible all right guys I got you got to leave I I’m leaving leaving oh you’re leaving oh my everyone we’re saying bye to Erica here live bye guys thanks for