Shadowing Practice: Super HELPFUL Tips for Returns, Drops, & Drives | ft. Nick Wade (5.7 DUPR) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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So in my endeavor to become the best pickleball player I can possibly be,

I realized that it's actually super helpful to have an extra set of eyes

and get constructive feedback from players who are better than me.

Dude, yours sounds so different.

This is my friend

Nick, and Nick started playing pickleball in February of 2023, and he's honestly probably the fastest learner that I know.

Nick played competitive tennis in college and he quickly climbed up the pickleball ladder in just a few months, even making qualifiers against Ben Johns.

In this video, I asked

Nick to give me some pointers on what I can improve in.

So three things that

Nick really helped me in this session are return of serves, drops, and drives.

This session was super helpful for me and I hope it can help you too.

Special thanks to HESACOR for sponsoring this channel and making this video possible.

so we don't want this part to be very rushed we actually want it to be nice

and controlled here yeah so we're gonna load this could be nice

and controlled and then we're gonna come up and get ready for

that next volley there and what you'll see is

that your next shot will be a lot easier

because you've got a deeper more penetrating return rather than one

that pops up and sits up a little bit more yeah that's on my back i'm already on my back foot

like when you're hitting the return i asked him

if like you're running while returning because that's what it looks like on tv

when i see pros it there it looks like this um

but you were telling me earlier

that it's actually more of like a lunge into it

so it's like here and then you say you load on the outside leg

and then you kind of lunge into it yeah versus more of a

kind of that because you could be a lot more uncontrolled

if you're just you know running through and hitting it yeah

but if you can slow it down at

that moment of impact it's way better and you're more controlled with your swing

and then you're just going to transition your weight forwards even easier as well like

that happens so often where i'm like i think it's i need to hit hard

because your serves are fast and you just got to time it a little bit better

and that's shallow yeah that's getting driven at me

or my partner yeah so i mean that's a very attackable ball uh but now

if you show me the one where you're transitioning forward

now i'm going to use nick's tip okay i mean look at that he's landed it

that felt so much better ridiculous i mean look at

that he's landed it another tip as well if we're talking about pace

and we're looking at numbers so let's think of the number 10

so if i'm giving ed uh eight serve he needs give me a two back

and use my power you know

if i give him a three then he's got to give me a seven back

so you've got to kind of match the pace uh with the server

so that it'll kind of get up to

that round number there good oh i like

that yeah yeah it feels better it should feel a little bit more controlled

and natural yeah okay i miss hit down my paddle

but i felt my body weight flowing better

and you can notice as well

that they're not popping up anymore like although there's sometimes a

bit short yeah the ball flight is way more low

and they're kind of penetrating through more um so you don't get ones

that pop up and sit up for a drive as much yeah

so first i'll show the one uh that is wrong here

and i see a lot of players do it's just going to pop up a little bit more

so next to that baseline yeah now i'm now i'm driving

that ball yeah he's able to attack me very well there

and you can see i'm i'm too close to the baseline

i haven't got enough time to react actual move forwards yeah

so it's just creating a very attackable ball

because i haven't got much reaction time and i'm not moving forwards and so now i'll show you the other one

yeah that's on my back i'm already on my back foot yeah on

that one and i didn't hit

that very hard at all i'm just using my body weight transfer

and i'm rebounding ed's power back to him cool

so the next thing that nick taught me earlier in the drill um our drill session was drops yep

and my drops some days they're really good i'm like i can't miss a drop i'm

so on fire right now

and some days i'm like i forgot how to hit draw

i don't know i'm quitting pick up all nick just showed me something

that i thought i've never heard anyone talk about before

but um it was hitting drops in front of you inside here mm -hmm

and I was reviewing my footage in my last video the survival drill where

i'm practicing surviving at the baseline

and i noticed how awkward i was hitting my drops i'm always hitting it to the side of me

and i'm always like kind of dipping here and i look like this

when i'm hitting my drops like this in front of him

and he didn't look awkward at all it's just buttery smooth

so we're gonna hit a few drops i'm gonna kind of show

that tip that nick yeah me uh the main thing there as well is

that ed was kind of doing a drop more like a drive

so he was taking it from the outside and there's just too much

that can go wrong out here

and he was taking too big a backswing we don't want any backswing there

because we're already getting a lot of pace from our opponent right

so keep everything out in front we kind of shadow the ball make sure it's in the right position

and then we just literally just hinging from our shoulder locking our wrist

and just pushing through the ball there yeah

and you can still generate top spin as well just by coming up the back

and the side of the ball a little bit as well

so it's almost like a granny shot like this that one just feels so much better already

right there

and it's almost like kind of like a beanbag almost yeah

i mean that's a great drop there yeah these feel

so much wow they feel so much easier to do

and i never heard anyone talk about this inside inside yeah brilliant so i'm like moving my feet really good

wow so one kind of key thing with the top spin is you know we are starting from

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that flat position there but this is just a starting point um

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so if we want to generate

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that top spin all we have to do is just come around the outside of the ball a little bit

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and then come over at the end um

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and the reason why is just

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because we can shape it more um rather than just it be you know a flat one

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and you can differentiate between the two you know you can have your flat one here

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and then if you want to hit

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that top spin you just come around from the inside

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and just come over it a little bit as well

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so that's how you get that top spin there can you show

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that one more time yeah sure so just from the inside and just coming around it a little bit more

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rather than that flatter one there which is what i was doing yeah

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so that flat one that you were doing there

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which is kind of like that yeah and if you want

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that top spin that's going to be more aggressive you know you can just shape it a little bit more

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and kind of go around that way a little bit

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so it's a very similar shot but there's just a subtle difference okay in

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that we're just kind of shaping it a little bit um

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and although it is top spin you know

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we're not actually kind of doing a top spin drive yeah yeah we're actually carving it more from the inside

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and coming round over the top of it so let me know

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if i got it right before i was doing kind of like this yeah

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so that's your flat drop

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which is great flat drops yeah i thought i was doing top spin

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because i was like yeah so that's yeah you don't want to break

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that wrist you want to keep the wrist the same

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but all we're going to do is kind of just turn it

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and come from the inside like this yes

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so we're just going to come round just a little bit not over no not over

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so here yep to here yep so we're just going to come around

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and then finish with it just a little bit over

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so it's here i'm just lifting it just like

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that got my large follow through oh my bad

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that's a good ball there it goes i'm just pushing it pushing that ball there we go

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so that's kind of what the flat drop will look like

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and now i'll start kind of brushing up

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and around the ball a little bit

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so this one is your top spin yeah

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this one will be the top spin drop now oh yeah those ones are deadly yeah these ones are dipping and

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if you look at it the spin as well some of

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them are actually getting a little bit of side spin um

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which is great because it has a very similar effect um

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but yeah it's just penetrating through a little bit more yeah

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that one has side spin yeah beautiful yeah

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and these these drops in a game i know nick could come forward on any of these drops 100

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because that spin that you do it makes it dip faster yeah

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so i'm like i'm my head's pointing down yeah i'm not going to be able to attack you yeah

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and the difference as well is with the flat drop it's going to kind of float a bit more yeah

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so you're easily able to attack it but when i hit

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that topspin drop it's going to bite

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and it's just going to dip way faster

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and it's going to be a lot harder to attack it and

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so one big thing with the drive as well is what

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i see a lot of players do is they're just too rigid

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and stiff with it you know it's not really loose

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and it just looks very stiff with it we actually really want to utilize our body and create a coil motion.

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where we're kind of ripping up on the ball and we feel like we're very loose as well

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so just feed me one real quick yeah and i'll show you what the rigid one looks like

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there goes the airplane

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so it's just very stiff that first one

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and you can see i'm not i'm not really doing anything with my body

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or my arm or anything like that

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and i'm actually hitting a lot of them face on

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but this next one i'll show you what it should be doing

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so i'm gonna be turning sideways i'm gonna be getting down creating

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that coil and ripping up the ball

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and kind of whipping over the ball to create that top spin

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and that wrist lag as well

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and also as well you really got to utilize this left hand as well to create

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that engaging kind of motion and allow yourself to use your body weight

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and kind of engage and rip through the ball whoa that's so fast

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yeah that's as much as i could do right my nipple

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all right so now i'll kind of show you what they look like in sequence with a different drop

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and the drive as well okay that was a beauty

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so good the main thing there as well is kind of have the same kind of setup from here

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and then once i've got my arms ready i then either transition into

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that drop here here or i turn my body

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and i go into that drive

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so same setup at the start get my arms ready

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and then i switch between here and here like when you're hitting these nick you don't really uh

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you're not really thinking about anymore

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because it's kind of like just yeah in your kind of like riding a bike for you yeah

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so it's almost kind of weird trying to dissect how to ride a bike

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because you're like wait yeah i guess i do push my right foot down then my left foot down

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but for us like kind of learning how to ride

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this metaphorical bike we're kind of like okay here here yeah

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but i think as we keep practicing that maybe yeah

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that kind of becomes more intuitive and the technique builds on it yeah

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and it's similar to the return you know you're loading on

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that back leg

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and then you're shifting all your body weight through onto the other leg straight ahead yeah

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so it's just getting used to that pattern

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and things will get a lot more comfortable yeah that's a ripper right there good yeah really good yeah yeah

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so you can just feel it as you're coming through

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and all that body weight is adding to the power of the shot

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so rather than you know swinging harder with your arm yeah

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you're just allowing your body to do some work

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now yeah exactly wow thanks nick that's i'm a 5 -0 hey

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if you guys appreciate those tips go follow my guy nick on instagram

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and youtube thanks for watching we'll see you guys in the next Let's go.

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156 sentences

Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson

This speaking lesson is built on the video “Super HELPFUL Tips for Returns, Drops, & Drives”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: drop, spin, ball, nick. This video has 200 sentences and 2400 words to shadow. The speech runs for 13:33. The speaker talks at a natural 177 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.

Key vocabulary in this video

15 words from the video worth learning, with pronunciation and meaning:

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
spin verb	/spɪn/	To rotate, revolve, gyrate (usually quickly); to partially or completely rotate to face another direction.
wrist noun	/ɹɪst/	The complex joint between forearm bones, carpus, and metacarpals where the hand is attached to the arm; the carpus in a narrow sense.
transition noun	/tɹænˈzɪʃ.ən/	The process of change from one form, state, style or place to another.
pace noun	/peɪs/	A step taken with the foot.
drill noun	/dɹɪl/	A tool or machine used to remove material so as to create a hole, typically by plunging a rotating cutting bit into a stationary workpiece.
stiff adjective	/stɪf/	Rigid; hard to bend; inflexible.
baseline noun	/ˈbeɪslaɪn/	A line that is a base for measurement or for construction.
penetrate verb	/ˈpɛnɪtɹeɪt/	To enter into; to make way into the interior of; to pierce.
loose adjective	/lus/	Not fixed in place tightly or firmly.
helpful adjective	/ˈhɛlp.fl̩/	Furnishing help; giving aid; useful.
engage verb	/ɪnˈɡeɪd͡ʒ/	To engross or hold the attention of; to keep busy or occupied.
swing verb	/ˈswɪŋ/	To rotate about an off-centre fixed point.
awkward adjective	/ˈɔk.wɚd/	Lacking dexterity in the use of the hands, or of instruments.
rip verb	/ɹɪp/	To divide or separate the parts of (especially something flimsy, such as paper or fabric), by cutting or tearing; to tear off or out by violence.
generate verb	/ˈd͡ʒɛn.ə.ɹeɪt/	To bring into being; give rise to.

Phrasal verbs you will hear

Word	Pronunciation	Meaning
pop up verb		To come up with a "pop" sound.
come around verb	/kʌ.məˈɹaʊnd/	To change one's mind, especially to begin to agree or appreciate what one was reluctant to accept at first.
come up verb		To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly.
brush up verb		To paint, or make clean or bright with a brush.
come over verb		To affect in a sudden, unprecedented or surprising manner; to overwhelm a person's ordinarily contrary impulse.
come round verb		To change direction.
come through verb		To come into a room or other space through a door or passageway.
follow through verb		To execute or complete a commitment.

Pronunciation to watch

The speaker uses 96 contractions and reduced forms, such as I'm, we're, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.

The “sh” and “zh” sounds: transition /tɹænˈzɪʃ.ən/, rush /ɹʌʃ/, shadow /ˈʃædəʊ̯/, brush /bɹʌʃ/, shallow /ˈʃæloʊ/
Long words — get the stress right: ridiculous /ɹɪˈdɪk.jə.ləs/, differentiate /dɪf.əˈɹɛn.ʃi.eɪt/, intuitive /ɪnˈtjuːɪtɪv/, metaphorical /ˌmɛtəˈfɒɹɪkəl/, qualifier /ˈkwɑ.lɪ.faɪ.ɚ/

How to practise with this video

Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like spin, wrist, transition.

What is the Shadowing Technique?

Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.

Shadowing technique: read the full step-by-step guide →

Shadowing Practice: Super HELPFUL Tips for Returns, Drops, & Drives | ft. Nick Wade (5.7 DUPR) - Learn English Speaking with Video

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