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Today, you’ll learn seven game-changing strategies to help you dramatically shift the tides when you’re playing at the kitchen line! 

1. The Art of a Good Stance: 

Here’s a big mistake players make while playing at the kitchen. They have the wrong stance and stand up straight with their paddle down which leaves you defenseless against speed-ups (when a team goes from dinking to hitting the ball hard and fast).

So instead, keep your paddle up, knees slightly bent, and feet wide (about shoulder width apart). If your stance is bad, then none of these strategies will work, so it's important to keep an active stance.

2. Dink Placement: 

When you're in a dink rally, a good location to place a dink is at the opponent diagonally across from you, but the key idea is to target their backhand. 

Why? Because the backhand is often a player's Achilles' heel. And when you hit to an opponent's weakness, they often hit a pop-up (which you can crush) or hit a ball directly into the net. So turn their vulnerability into an opportunity for you and your partner.

3. Beating The Bullies:

Ever been targeted? Maybe your opponent spotted a weakness you have and they try to take advantage of it. 

Here's the ultimate pickleball bully repellent, if you’re getting picked on, one way to get out of that situation and get your partner involved is to hit down the line because what commonly happens after you do this is your opponent will hit the ball cross-court. 

But let's say you hit the ball down the line, and they still hit the ball back to you, here’s another option you can use... 

[Dink down the line, then go to an Erne Position: This is a striking position in pickleball where you run around or jump through the kitchen to catch your opponent off guard and hit the ball]

When you go to this position, it’d be a bad choice for your opponent to hit up the line. If they do, you smash the ball. If they don’t, they’ll hit it to the middle or cross-court, and your partner will get back involved and relieve some pressure from you. 

4. Disrupting Patterns:

Let’s start here. If a pattern is working against your opponent, keep doing that until it doesn't work. For example, if you’re hitting cross-court dinks and your opponent keeps firing into the net or hitting pop-ups, keep going back there. 

If it’s not that easy, consider this.

Change the pattern, move them around, and look for an opportunity to get them off balance. 

So create a pattern, then quickly break it to catch your opponent off guard. A good example could be, hitting 2-3 middle dinks in a row, then hitting a wide dink! This is typically a good strategy to create imbalance or indecision in your opponent.

5. Dead Dink Dominance:

[Dead Dink: Any ball that gets hit high, soft, or just gives you enough time to place or hit the ball however you want.]

And when you get dinks like those, get aggressive and speed the ball up... Now you have the what, so here's the how. Start paddle tip down, then rotate your paddle tip in a windshield-type motion until the paddle tip is pointing toward the ceiling (or sky). This will create that air that you need to get over the net but also speed the ball up.

**Example below of Top Spin Shot:

6. Where To Hit Dead Dinks:

This is strategy number six but we're still on the topic of dead dinks. When your opponent hits a dead dink your way, speed it up. But the next question is, where should you speed it up? A common place pros go that most amateurs don’t yet know about is at the right hip or right shoulder of your opponent (assuming they’re right-handed). 

If they’re lefties, flip it. 

Because most people sit backhand when waiting to counter, this creates what we call, “The Chicken Wing” position and often works in your favor!

Hit the ball toward your opponent's dominant shoulder or hip, so if they're a righty headed towards their right shoulder or hip and it's the same thing for lefties.

Quick side note: Contrary to common belief, the most important thing when hitting a speed-up, isn’t power, but placement. It’s not about hitting the ball as hard as you can, but rather catching your opponent off guard and putting them in a difficult position to counter your attack.  

7. Counter-Attack Brilliance:

For strategy number 7, we're actually gonna switch perspectives. Let's say you're on the defending end of a dead dink, how do you counter it? A great saying to remember at that moment is "Prepare for counter, recover to dink.” 

Because here’s the thing. If you always have the mindset they’re about to speed up, you’ll be ready. And if they just hit a dink instead, you can recover easily to that ball. But if you’re preparing for a dink and they speed the ball up, you’ll often get caught off guard, which will hurt you more than it helps. 

Bonus - Recovering Off-Balance:

The harsh reality is that when you're dinking, you're prone to get off-balance — especially if you're aggressive. So, how do you fix that? The one thing you don't want to do is go for, what I like to call, “The All or Nothing Panic Speed Up.”  That doesn’t typically work well. 

Instead, think — "survive" the ball. If they pull you out wide with a dink, hit a recovery dink back to the middle of the court so you can collect your stance and regain your balance within the point. 

That’s a Wrap!

These 7 strategies aren't just guidelines; they're a manifesto for kitchen line dominance. Learn and adapt with them on your journey of self-discovery as a player. Grab a few pickleball buddies and implement a few of these strategies at first, then nail them down. You and the gang will improve their game in no time!

OO, and before you go. I have a new video series of 18 advanced tips to help you move up a level and get one-up on your friends or foes each day. 

If you’re up for the challenge, tap here to get free access to my 18 advanced pickleball tips!