Advanced kitchen line footwork patterns – offensive and defensive
Tip 1
One of the most common fallacies in all of pickleball is that you should not cross your feet. This is only partially true - you should almost never cross your feet on your forehand side. However, crossing your feet on the backhand side can actually give you an advantage in certain situations.
If your opponent hits you a wide and short dink to your backhand side, you might want to utilize a crossover step in order to gain more reach.
A crossover step on the backhand is where you cross your dominant foot over your non dominant foot in order to gain more reach.
When you’re moving your dominant foot over your non dominant foot, you are moving your whole dominant side of your body. I.e., your paddle arm will cross over with your foot, allowing you to reach farther over on your backhand side. This is an advanced footwork step, and it should only be used on wide and short dinks. If your opponent hits you a wide and deep dink, you should still shuffle, and use a drop step to create more space.
Tip 2
An important skill for defending the kitchen line is the drop step - where a player will take a half step back with one foot off the kitchen line with the hitting foot to create extra space. The hitting foot is your foot on the side that you are hitting the ball. I.e. For a righty hitting a forehand, the hitting foot is the right foot.
By creating this space, it gives you more time to handle aggressive dinks, especially in those situations where you may be scrambling out wide or potentially being dragged off the kitchen line.
The beauty of the drop step is that you’re pivoting off of one foot versus moving back with both feet. We don’t want to give up that valuable position on the court, so by doing this by breaking it down into a few steps:
- Move towards the direction where the ball is taking you.
- Take a step back with your hitting foot on a 45° angle with the kitchen.
- Hit your dink, then bring your foot back forward towards the kitchen line and slide step back into position if it requires shifting.
It’s a common misconception in pickleball that you should never back up off the kitchen line. However, when you’re only moving one foot back, you can create more space and time for yourself to execute a good shot without sacrificing your court positioning.
