How to improve your ‘LIFT DINKS’ in pickleball
Lift dinks are the building blocks of dinking. Becoming confident in lift dinks is a vital starting point. It involves tracking the ball, connecting well (on the sweet spot or center of the paddle) and being able to place the ball to a specific location in the kitchen.
Learning and becoming strong in this technique is vital before moving onto or adding spin, slice and more advanced dinking.
When you’re hitting a lift dink, visualize how you would throw a ball to land into the NVZ, or kitchen area.
If I wanted to throw a ball, or a bean bag, at a certain height over the net and into a specific location in the kitchen, the movement would be slow & controlled with a gentle release. You wouldn’t flick your wrist at the end of a throw, so don’t do this at the end of a lift dink!
Lift dinks are the same motion as an underarm throw, our paddle face is stable, the swing speed needs to be slow and controlled, hinging from the shoulder, elbow slightly bent with no flicking of the wrist. We need to aim to get the ball around 6” over the net so that we have margin and don’t catch the tape or hit the net.
When you next practice your dinking on court, try placing three cones or targets and work on hitting into the target areas.
Simply getting the ball over the net is not enough, we need to dink with purpose, placement and try to make our opponent uncomfortable. We are looking to cause an error, to move our opponent on the court giving us space to then attack or to create a pop up!
