Why You’re Pickleball Pop-Ups Keep Happening (A Simple Backswing Fix)

I was working with a student last spring — a sharp, experienced player who had been stuck at the same level for months. She kept telling me the same thing: “CJ, I just can’t stop popping the ball up.” Every time it happened, she’d shake her head and say she’d hit it too high. But when I watched her dink rally, I could see immediately that pickleball pop ups like hers almost never come from what players think they do. Something else was going on entirely — and once I showed her what it was, she fixed it in about ten minutes.

If you’re dealing with pickleball pop-ups on a regular basis, I want to share what I showed her. Because the real culprit isn’t what most players think.

What’s really causing your pickleball pop-ups

When a pop-up happens, it’s natural to blame the height of your shot — you hit it too high, the ball sailed up, your opponent crushed it. But for the vast majority of pop-ups, height isn’t the root problem. The real issue is the depth of the shot — how much energy is in the ball, and how far it’s going to travel.

There are three sources of energy that determine how far your ball travels. Today I want to talk about the biggest one, the one I see causing the most pop-ups at every level: the backswing.

What “backswing” actually means

Before we go further, let me clear something up, because a lot of players have a fuzzy definition of this word. Backswing doesn’t just mean taking your paddle behind your body. Here’s a cleaner way to think about it: wherever you want to make contact with the ball, anything behind that point is your backswing. That’s it.

So if you’re dinking and your ideal point of contact is out in front of you, even a small movement behind that point counts as backswing. And if you’re hitting a groundstroke from the baseline and you need the ball to travel much further, you’ll naturally need a bigger backswing to generate that energy. The length varies by shot — but anything behind the ball is backswing.

Why too much backswing causes a pop-up

Here’s where it all clicks into place. Pop-ups happen when your backswing is too big for the type of shot you’re trying to hit.

Think about what’s happening at the non-volley zone. You’ve got seven feet on your side of the net, and your opponent has seven feet on theirs. You want your dink to land softly in their kitchen — unattackable, controlled, low. To do that, the ball needs very little energy. It doesn’t need to travel far.

Now picture what happens when you take a long backswing before that dink. You’ve loaded the shot with much more energy than the distance requires. That energy has to go somewhere — and it goes up. The ball bounces higher than the net, it becomes attackable, and your opponent pounces. That’s your pop-up. Not a height problem. An energy problem.

I always like to demonstrate this with a simple example. If I hold a ball at the apex of its natural bounce with no extra energy at all, it’s actually sitting below the net height — so to send it back over, I have to swing up on it. But if I add even a small amount of extra energy, watch how much higher the ball sits. It’s suddenly right in the strike zone, attackable from either a volley or a bounce. Energy changes everything.

What to do instead: shorten the backswing

The fix is simple to understand, even if it takes a little practice to build the habit. At the non-volley zone, I want you to think about where the ball is going to be at contact — and take your paddle directly to that spot. Then push the ball forward from there.

Instead of a long backswing followed by a short follow-through, flip it: a short (or no) backswing followed by a longer, controlled follow-through. The follow-through is actually what helps you guide the ball to where you want it to go. Hitting toward a player who’s closer might need a shorter follow-through. Hitting cross-court or further away might call for a little more. The backswing stays short either way.

A great question comes up here: what’s the ideal backswing length? Honestly, it varies by shot. But here’s the mindset I’d give you: take as much backswing as you need to get the job done — and not one bit more. Any excess is potential energy you don’t need and can’t control.

A simple drill to stop pickleball pop-ups for good

Next time you’re warming up at the net, try this. Get into a dink rally and ask yourself: how short can I make my backswing and still get the ball over? Keep testing it. Keep shortening. The shortest backswing that still clears the net and lands where you want it? That’s your ideal backswing for that shot.

Work on this drill consistently and you’ll start to notice fewer pickleball pop-ups — not because you changed what you’re aiming for, but because you stopped giving the ball more energy than it needed. It’s a small shift with a big payoff.

This isn’t just a dinking tip, by the way. This concept applies to your transition zone shots, your resets, your drops — any shot on the court where control matters more than power. Which, if you’re over 50 and playing smart pickleball, is most of them.

If you’re ready to put this into practice and get personalized coaching on the shots and strategies that’ll move your game forward, I’d love to have you join us at betterpickleball.com — that’s where you’ll find everything I put together to help players like you play their best.

Ready to stop the pickleball pop-ups for good and finally play the way you know you can? Come join us at a Better Pickleball camp — two days of on-court coaching where we work through exactly this kind of thing together. Find out what camp is all about at betterpickleball.com/pickleball-camps/.