If You Keep Hitting Dinks into the Net, You’re Probably Not Following Through Enough
We’ve all been there. You step up to the kitchen line feeling confident, ready to dominate the dinking battle, and then it happens. One dink into the net. Then another. Before you know it, you’re caught in a frustrating cycle where every soft shot seems magnetically attracted to the tape instead of clearing it by those crucial few inches.
This problem plagues pickleball players at every level, from recreational enthusiasts to competitive tournament players. The dink is supposed to be one of the foundational shots in pickleball, a soft, controlled placement that keeps the ball low and forces your opponents into difficult positions. Yet when nerves kick in or pressure mounts, this seemingly simple shot becomes maddeningly difficult to execute.
The good news is that there’s often one simple culprit behind most netted dinks: inadequate follow-through. When players get tight or anxious, they tend to abbreviate their strokes, chopping at the ball rather than smoothly guiding it over the net. Understanding why follow-through matters and how to incorporate it properly into your dinking technique can transform your kitchen line game almost overnight.
Understanding the Mental Game Behind Netted Dinks
Before diving into the technical solution, it’s worth examining why we start hitting dinks into the net in the first place. Pickleball is as much a mental game as it is physical, and the kitchen line is where psychology often trumps athleticism.
Picture this scenario: You’re playing with a new partner for the first time, someone whose game you respect. You desperately don’t want to be the weak link. Or perhaps you’re facing opponents who are particularly aggressive at the net, constantly attacking any ball that rises even slightly above the net line. Maybe you’re in a tournament setting where the pressure feels amplified, and suddenly every shot carries extra weight.
In any of these situations, tension creeps into your game. Your muscles tighten. Your breathing becomes shallow. And most critically, your stroke mechanics change in subtle but significant ways. Instead of the smooth, flowing motion you use during practice or casual play, you start making quick, jerky movements. You try to muscle the ball over the net through sheer willpower rather than trusting your technique.
This mental tightness manifests physically in your follow-through, or more accurately, in your lack of follow-through. When anxious, players instinctively want to control every millimeter of the ball’s trajectory. This desire for control paradoxically leads to less control, as abbreviated strokes produce inconsistent contact points and unpredictable ball flight.
Your opponents will notice this struggle quickly. Experienced players recognize when someone is having trouble clearing the net, and they’ll adjust their strategy accordingly. They might start targeting you specifically, knowing that the pressure will likely cause more errors. They might crowd the kitchen line more aggressively, understanding that you’re unlikely to successfully attack balls that are already giving you trouble. This creates a vicious cycle where mounting pressure leads to worse execution, which invites more pressure.
Why Follow-Through Is the Foundation of Consistent Dinking
The follow-through is one of those fundamental concepts that applies across virtually every racket sport, yet it’s often overlooked or underappreciated, especially in pickleball where the distances are short and the shots appear deceptively simple.
At its core, following through serves several critical functions in your dinking game. First and most obviously, it ensures that you’re actually swinging through the ball rather than stabbing at it. When you commit to a complete follow-through, you’re forced to maintain paddle speed through the contact point. This consistent paddle speed produces consistent results, with the ball reliably clearing the net by a comfortable margin.
Second, a proper follow-through naturally encourages better contact points. When you know you need to follow through, you’re more likely to let the ball come to you and meet it at the optimal position relative to your body. Players who chop at the ball often make contact too early or too late, resulting in mishits that either die in the net or pop up for easy attacks.
Third, and perhaps most importantly for the mental game, committing to your follow-through forces you to trust your stroke. You can’t overthink every tiny adjustment when you’re flowing through a complete motion. This trust is what separates smooth, confident play from the tentative, error-prone approach that leads to netted dinks.
When you’re playing your best pickleball, you’re not consciously thinking about each individual shot. You see the ball, you react, and your body executes the appropriate technique automatically. This is the state of flow that athletes in every sport chase. Following through helps you access this state because it provides a simple, concrete checkpoint that ensures you’re executing properly without requiring detailed conscious thought about every element of your stroke mechanics.
The beauty of focusing on follow-through is its simplicity. When you’re in the middle of a game and things are going wrong, you don’t have time to run through a mental checklist of fifteen different technical points. But you can remind yourself of one simple thing: follow through on every dink. This singular focus often corrects multiple technical flaws simultaneously.
The Technical Mechanics of Proper Dinking Follow-Through
Understanding why follow-through matters is one thing; implementing it correctly is another. As professional player Zane Navratil explains, there are specific technical elements that make for an effective dinking motion, and the follow-through is intricately connected to your contact point and body positioning.
The ideal contact point for a dink should be approximately one forearm’s length in front of your body. This distance is crucial because it allows you to see the ball clearly, maintain good paddle angle, and most importantly, have room to follow through without the ball being too close or too far away. When the ball is too close to your body, you’re forced into cramped positions where following through becomes difficult. When it’s too far away, you lose control and power.
From this optimal contact point, your follow-through should be compact but complete. This is where many players misunderstand what “following through” actually means. They assume it requires a big, exaggerated motion similar to a groundstroke or serve. In reality, an effective dinking follow-through is much more subtle and controlled.
Think of your follow-through as ending right at the centerline of your body. Your paddle shouldn’t sweep dramatically across your body and over your opposite shoulder as it might on a more powerful shot. Instead, after making contact out in front, your paddle should move forward and slightly upward, finishing near the center of your chest or just past your midline.
This compact follow-through serves multiple purposes. It ensures you’re guiding the ball up and over the net rather than chopping down on it. The slight upward trajectory of your paddle naturally imparts the lift needed to clear the net while keeping the ball low on the other side. Additionally, this centered finishing position leaves you ready for the next shot. You’re not recovering from some extreme position or trying to bring your paddle back from way across your body.
The key distinction is between “compact” and “abbreviated.” A compact follow-through is complete but controlled—you’re swinging through the ball with intention and finishing in a deliberate position. An abbreviated follow-through is incomplete—you’re stopping your motion prematurely, essentially pulling out of the shot before you’ve properly guided the ball.
Your non-paddle hand also plays a role in maintaining balance and ensuring proper follow-through. Many skilled players keep their non-paddle hand up and forward, using it as a counterbalance and reference point. This balanced position makes it easier to execute a smooth, controlled follow-through without overrotating or losing stability.
Breaking Down the Self-Sabotage Cycle
When you’re in the midst of hitting multiple dinks into the net, a predictable pattern often emerges. Understanding this cycle can help you recognize it early and break out of it before it costs you the game.
The cycle typically begins with one or two dinks that catch the net. Maybe they were genuinely difficult shots, or maybe you made a legitimate error. Either way, these early mistakes plant a seed of doubt. Instead of shaking it off, you start thinking about the net. You become hyperaware of it, almost fixated on it.
This fixation leads to the first self-sabotaging behavior: you start trying to will the ball over the net through mental effort alone rather than trusting your mechanics. Your stroke becomes tentative. You’re no longer swinging with confidence; you’re carefully guiding each shot, trying to ensure it clears that net by any means necessary.
This tentative approach manifests as chopping at the ball. Instead of a smooth, flowing stroke with a complete follow-through, you’re making quick, jabbing motions. You make contact and immediately stop your paddle, as if you’re afraid that following through might somehow cause the ball to sail long. Of course, the opposite is true—this abbreviated motion is precisely what causes balls to drop into the net.
As more dinks find the net, you start overcompensating. You begin shaving every shot to the absolute slimmest margin, trying to barely clear the net by millimeters. While this might work occasionally, it’s an incredibly low-percentage approach. You’ve essentially given yourself zero margin for error. Any slight miscalculation in contact point, paddle angle, or swing speed results in another netted ball.
Meanwhile, your opponents are taking note of your struggles. They recognize that you’re playing scared, and they adjust their positioning and shot selection accordingly. They might move slightly closer to the kitchen line, crowding you. They might start targeting your side of the court more frequently, knowing that you’re likely to crack under pressure. Some opponents might even start talking more, trying to get in your head further.
Breaking this cycle requires both mental and physical adjustments. Mentally, you need to let go of the previous errors and focus on the present shot. Dwelling on past mistakes only perpetuates the problem. Physically, you need to return to the fundamentals, and the simplest fundamental to focus on is the follow-through.
The next time you’re caught in this cycle, take a brief moment between points to reset. Take a deep breath. Shake out your arms. And give yourself one simple instruction: follow through on the next dink. Don’t worry about placement, don’t obsess over the net, just focus on making solid contact and following through to the center of your body.
This singular focus can be remarkably effective because it redirects your attention away from the net (a negative focal point) and toward proper execution (a positive focal point). Instead of thinking “don’t hit it in the net,” you’re thinking “follow through completely.” This subtle shift in mental framing can make an enormous difference in your results.
Practical Drills to Develop Better Follow-Through
Understanding the concept of follow-through is important, but ingraining it into your muscle memory requires deliberate practice. Simply knowing you should follow through won’t help much if your body hasn’t trained the proper movement pattern.
One of the most effective drills for developing consistent follow-through is straightforward dinking practice with a specific focus. Find a practice partner and engage in extended dinking rallies, but make follow-through your primary focus rather than placement or winning the point. Count how many consecutive dinks you can execute with complete, proper follow-through. This takes the pressure off making perfect shots and redirects your attention to technique.
Another valuable drill involves exaggerating your follow-through during practice. Deliberately finish each dink with your paddle at the center of your chest, holding that position for a brief moment before resetting. This exaggerated pause reinforces the proper ending position and helps you develop awareness of where your paddle finishes on each shot. Once this motion feels natural, you can speed it up to match game conditions.
Shadow dinking is another useful practice tool, especially when you don’t have access to a court or partner. Simply go through the dinking motion repeatedly, focusing entirely on the follow-through. Pay attention to your contact point positioning and ensure your paddle finishes in the correct spot every time. This type of visualization and physical rehearsal helps build the neural pathways that make proper technique automatic during actual play.
Video analysis can be incredibly revealing as well. Have someone record your dinking during games or practice, then watch the footage with a critical eye toward your follow-through. You’ll likely notice patterns you weren’t aware of—perhaps your follow-through deteriorates when you’re under pressure, or maybe you consistently abbreviate your stroke on backhand dinks but not forehands. Identifying these patterns allows you to address them specifically in your practice.
Understanding Dinking for Beginners: The Basics of This Essential Shot
If you’re relatively new to pickleball or still learning the terminology and tactics, the concept of dinking might seem confusing at first. Why would you want to hit the ball softly when you could hit it hard? Why is this particular shot so emphasized in pickleball strategy and instruction?
A dink is essentially a soft shot hit from near the kitchen line (the non-volley zone that extends seven feet from the net on both sides) that arcs gently over the net and lands in your opponent’s kitchen. The ball should barely clear the net and stay low, making it difficult for opponents to attack. Think of it as the pickleball equivalent of a drop shot in tennis, but it’s used far more frequently and is fundamental to the game rather than an occasional change of pace.
The reason dinking is so crucial in pickleball relates to the sport’s unique rules and court dimensions. You cannot volley the ball (hit it in the air) while standing in the kitchen. This rule prevents players from simply standing at the net and smashing every ball downward. To work around this rule, players engage in dinking exchanges, patiently hitting soft shots back and forth while waiting for an opportunity to attack.
During a typical point in competitive pickleball, both teams eventually make their way to the kitchen line, standing just behind the seven-foot zone. From here, they engage in what’s often called a “dinking battle”—a patient exchange of soft shots where each team is trying to force the other into an error or into hitting a ball high enough to attack.
This is where proper dinking technique, including adequate follow-through, becomes essential. If you keep hitting dinks into the net, you’re giving away free points. You’re also likely to become frustrated, which leads to more errors in a cascading effect. On the other hand, if you can dink consistently and confidently, you put pressure on your opponents to execute perfectly or risk losing the point.
The follow-through becomes especially important because dinking requires touch and feel more than power. You’re not muscling the ball; you’re guiding it. A complete, smooth follow-through helps you develop that touch, giving you the control needed to place your dinks precisely where you want them while ensuring they clear the net with a comfortable margin.
For beginners, it’s worth noting that dinking often feels counterintuitive at first. In most sports, we’re taught to hit hard and be aggressive. Pickleball requires patience and finesse at the kitchen line, which can feel passive or weak initially. Trust the process. As you develop your dinking skills, you’ll begin to understand why this soft shot is actually one of the most strategically important elements of the game.
Common Follow-Through Mistakes and How to Fix Them
Even when players consciously try to improve their follow-through, certain mistakes tend to recur. Being aware of these common errors can help you identify and correct them in your own game.
One frequent mistake is following through too far or too dramatically. Players sometimes overcompensate for their previous abbreviated strokes by swinging wildly, with their paddle finishing way across their body or high above their shoulder. This excessive motion creates its own problems, pulling you off balance and leaving you poorly positioned for the next shot. Remember that the ideal dinking follow-through is compact—complete but controlled, finishing near the center of your body rather than sweeping dramatically across it.
Another common error is following through in the wrong direction. Some players follow through downward, essentially chopping at the ball even while technically completing their stroke. This downward motion imparts topspin and drives the ball into the net despite the follow-through. Your follow-through should move slightly upward, lifting the ball over the net while keeping it controlled. Think of brushing up and through the ball rather than slicing down on it.
Inconsistent follow-through represents another challenge. Some players follow through beautifully on forehands but completely abandon the technique on backhands, or vice versa. This inconsistency creates an exploitable weakness—opponents will quickly recognize which side is more vulnerable and target it relentlessly. Make a conscious effort to develop equally
