This is how I'd choose a pickleball paddle in 2023

so you want to upgrade or pie a new pickleball battle huh well I know it can be a daunting process but by the end of this video you're going to have a very clear idea on what you need to be looking for based on your own preferences and you'll be able to choose a pickleball paddle like a pro I've got some paddles out here in front of me I'm going to be showing you all the characteristics of these paddles and what you should really be looking for let's get started with the first aspect [Music] so one place where we can begin is with weight this is an easy one to start with because it's going to help us really narrow things down and also it's a very important characteristic to get right so when it comes to weight most manufacturers produce their paddles within a weight range so they don't come out of the factory with just one set weight there are exceptions to that though that I'll get into in a second most of them have a weight range in general the average weight for pickleball paddles is eight ounces that's kind of your standard so one thing that you can do and this is like super cool is get like a kitchen scale or something like that and what you can do is you can weigh your paddles so zero it out and just put it on on top of the kitchen scale and you'll get the weight as you can see this is an eight ounce paddle again that's like super super standard so if you're ever curious and if the manufacturer doesn't put the weight on the paddle when you buy one you you can just weigh it yourself super easy again just use a kitchen scale now some paddles do come with set weights already gearbox is one of them gearbox is really cool I really like gearbox because they make their paddles one by one and each of these paddles are a specific way so the gearbox cx14 here as an example is going to be 8.5 you can't read it on here but it's kind of on the it's on the paddle right here it's 8.5 every single time they have other paddles that are at specific weights as well but it's important to know your weight range what can you handle here's the general rule get the heaviest paddle that you can handle the heavier a paddle the more aggression and more power you're going to get however there's a threshold here if you buy a heavy paddle and you can't wield it properly so you can't handle the weight then you're going to lose power because you can't swing as hard okay so there are a couple of signs when it comes to using a paddle that's too heavy you're starting to get some tension on your arm or maybe even your elbow but you're also hitting overheads and put aways out the reason why this happens is because when you do an overhead and you start to swing down on the ball like this the paddle doesn't close down all the way so your paddle is open like this and it Sails Long but if you're using a paddle that's too light sometimes you can dunk things into the net because you're swinging it so quickly you see how that works so make sure that you have a general understanding of what you like in terms of weight sometimes this just takes an experimentation but it is well worth your time [Music] balance is a big deal just because a paddle weighs a lot doesn't mean that it's going to feel that way so if I grab the gearbox gbx here when I swing the paddle like this so kind of side by side I'm able to get a really clear idea of what it feels like in my hand and it in general make sure that you hold the paddle at the very bottom here don't hold it up here make sure you're holding at the very bottom in general if you like to do that it's all good but in general especially when you're trying out paddles make sure you're holding it at the same spot every time because if I were to hold a paddle up here like this this is going to feel a little bit different compared to if I was holding it down here it's kind of like holding a hammer if I hold a hammer at the very bottom that is going to feel very different than if I was holding it at the very top you see how that works balance is a big deal when it comes to pickleball but again it's a feel thing the next big point that we need to talk about is the handle oh boy I mean the handle is huge because this is your introduction to the paddle This is the connection point so what should you be looking for back in the day it was pretty rare to see pickleball paddles that had really long handles and by back in the day I mean like five years ago but you know if any some of you may remember this paddle This is like almost an ancient treasure at this point this is the Selkirk Omni look at the size of the handle it's tiny this is probably about four inches people used to make paddle handles like this but as the game has advanced this is no longer the case most paddles are going to be anywhere between you know like the sucker halo over here this is about 4.5 inches and then both of these over here are probably five inches somewhere around there sometimes you can even get handles that are longer now why should you get a longer handle here is the sneaky thing about this stuff if you are more of an aggressive player if you'd like to get Top Spin power that kind of thing you need to make sure that you have a long handle very very important the reason is is because when you hold the paddle at the very bottom of the handle like this it is increasing the distance between you and the center of gravity of the paddle whereas if I were to hold a paddle like this my hand is much closer to the center of gravity so the further you hold the paddle away the better this is why using a longer handle is good because of all of this empty space right here all this empty space means there's no weight here which means there's further a weight away from you it's kind of like a fly swatter imagine using a fly swatter with that regular long handle right and then imagine using one that has like a tiny little handle and the distance between your hand and the Swati thing is not very far that would just be really really awkward right the reasons why you wouldn't want to have a long handle is because you're not a power player maybe you're more of a casual player you don't want to hit the ball very hard or maybe that's that's hard for you then definitely get the smaller handle a four inch or four and a half inches something like that but again when it comes to the Omni here and these tiny grips manufacturers rarely make grips like this anymore so definitely focus on a sort of four and a half inch handle that gives you more sweet spot closer to your hand which is good it's also important to talk about the bevels so let me see if I can show this to you so do you see the Highlight right here you see that highlight these are bevels that are on the paddle some handles have them some handles don't if you come from tennis and you like those bevels then this is going to be a good idea for you in tennis they use the bevels to kind of adjust their grip and pickleball we don't really do that as much but if that's you then great make sure you get something that have bevels on them luckily a lot of the marketing images that manufacturers put on their website show the bevels quite easily another thing that you can do is just look at the end cap here so you see the octagon shape you can see that pretty clearly there now one thing that's important to mention here is that if you do like the bevels but you also like over grips it's possible that you can over grip too much to where you're reducing the Contour effect of the bevel so make sure you're aware of that if you want to apply an over grip but you still want that Contour effect make sure you remove the grip first then put the wrap on there the next thing is grip circumference now this is just total personal preference here you're not going to notice a big difference in performance going from a really thick beefy handle to a more skinny or narrow one like the gearbox cx14 here the grip is quite narrow it's not as thick most paddles are going to be like this it's pretty rare to see grips that are super skinny more but again in general you should get a grip that's small and then build up the grip with wrap if you want to but again watch out for those bevels so combining all these elements together you get shape and shape is really one of the most important things about these paddles when it comes to making your choice like the Selkirk halo over here is your traditional eight inch wide eight inch wide paddle here you've got the four and a half inch long grip at least it should be that long this is a very traditional paddle super traditional then you have the more elongated version so you have 7.5 over here and then you also have another 7.5 over here this is the width of course what does that mean 7.5 versus 8 inches what that means is that you're getting less sweet spot on the sides of the paddle so you have a quarter inch less on each side however it makes the paddle a little bit more aerodynamic so you can swing it a little bit harder however Again The Sweet Spot is going to be crunched a little bit on the side the paddle I have over here on the right is a more slender sort of teardrop I guess you could say paddle you're seeing a lot of these more often and what's going on with these paddles is that they have a tendency to come up a little bit more after the handle so if you can see this if I kind of lay these over the top both of these paddles are the same height but do you see how you can see the gearbox gbx underneath that's because the Selkirk Halo here is coming up more so it's a little bit more slender again and makes the paddle more aerodynamic but most importantly guys it's for the two-hander this is a big deal you've got to start learning the two-hander and with these slender paddles how they come up like this there's so much room on the neck for you so you can wrap that two-handed grip around there you can still do that on the more traditional elongated paddles like the gbx here but I can kind of I can kind of feel it on my on my fingers right here so it's not as comfortable it like overall it's fine like it's not a big deal but some people really really care about this kind of stuff and it makes sense so in general if you are a control player if you don't have a lot of aggression if you don't like to hit the ball hard stick with these traditional eight inch wide paddles you'll be fine there's nothing wrong with that however if you're more of an aggressive paddle then I do recommend going for more of the Slender shapes with the longer handles going from a traditional paddle to the more slender shape over here is a big difference you're going to feel it for sure by the way if you've made it this far in the video thank you so much for watching I really appreciate it if you don't mind leaving a like on the video it helps to spread the videos that I can help more people thank you very much now I do need to get into a couple of other things here that are important price now price is kind of an iffy thing to do in a YouTube video because price can change over time right and it's possible that you're watching this video well into the future so in general at the moment in early kind of mid-ish early 2023 the most expensive paddles are anywhere between like 200 to 250 even up into the 300 range oh my do you have to buy a paddle that's this expensive you really don't if you want to go for it nothing wrong with that okay but there is nothing wrong with buying a 150 paddle these Selkirk Halos here both of these are 140 dollars great starter paddles by the way the gbx is 200 and the Selkirk Power air here that I haven't shown is 250 dollars but that's at this point in time that can change always remember that if you are a complete beginner first of all it's important to understand what kind of beginner you are were you just invited to go play this weekend at the lake house and you need to get a paddle there's no need to buy anything over a hundred dollars but if you got home from the lake house and you're like this is the greatest thing ever I need a paddle then try to get something above 100 maybe even 80 something around there that's going to be fine again going with a sucker Halo Halos here is a great option they're 140 bucks if you're more of an advanced player and you're going from something that is cheap like a 20 40 60 paddle that you got off Amazon and you go to one of these more modern paddles you're going to notice a massive difference there is no question about that now in general you're going to find two different types of faces on these paddles you're either going to find a fiberglass or you're going to find carbon fiber in terms of the differences between these two types if you use a carbon fiber paddle as you can see here all three of these very well used paddle faces are carbon fiber you get a little bit more pop a little bit more explosiveness but it's going to depend on you whether you like this or not now there's one other thing that I'd like to get into which is in general the materials that are used now I know that you may be surprised that I hadn't gone over this earlier in previous iterations of these guides that I've done I have spent a lot of time on the materials but these days guys they're pretty much all the same as an example with the cores of the paddle which is the inner the inner part the the chunky stuff that's inside here most of it is plastic or they call it polymer it's plastic basically okay most of it is the same it comes from the same couple of companies in China they just smash them together and ship them off now there are some companies that are doing different stuff stuff with like thermoforming and the foam injection and all that is really cool but most of these these materials are going to be the same where you will find a difference is in is between fiberglass and carbon fiber so traditionally this is what fiberglass used to look like here you can see it's kind of transparent hope that you can see that you can kind of see through it a little bit is there a big difference between these paddle types yeah a little bit I mean if you're going from a really cheap paddle as an example and you go to one of these more modern carbon fiber pedals oh my goodness you are gonna notice a huge difference now if you're going from a fiberglass face paddle to a more modern carbon fiber paddle will you notice a difference yeah you'll you'll probably notice a little bit of a difference will it be extreme probably not but that's up to you and that's the thing about these paddles guys whether you like it or not is oftentimes in the eye of the beholder but where it really makes a big difference is in the grittiness of the surface and this is the big one so a term that you're going to come across here you're going to hear this a lot is raw carbon fiber now in terms of a mechanical term I've asked an engineer about this I asked them like what is this and he just kind of chuckled like it's not really a real thing but it means something colloquially that I think is important what it refers to is the textured surface on the face that does matter you will get more spin with a more textured surface so if we take the gearbox the cx14 here which is one of my favorites do you hear that I mean that is something else you can really hear the texture on the face that means more spin however you actually have to have those Strokes in the first place if you don't have the proper technique then these textured surfaces aren't going to do much for you same thing with the power air here you can again really hear that textured surface that texture does matter when it comes to the kind of spin that you can put on these paddles but just be aware for the marketing buzzwords guys most of the stuff doesn't really mean anything what really matters is the player behind the paddle that is what really matters with this stuff guys understand that paddles can be really fun they're fun to hit with these expensive carbon fiber paddles they're super fun and everything but the critical thing to understand here is that your paddle does not count for your entire game right there are other aspects of your game that matter that have nothing to do with your paddle like your footwork your strategic understanding how well your partner is playing many other things so always understand that that your paddle can only go so far what really matters is how well you understand the fundamental mechanics of the game and how to make the best decisions on the court then you can have fun with that awesome paddle so if you'd like to learn more about some of these skills click this video right up here and I'll see you over there thank you so much for joining me

Channel: Pickleball Kitchen

Views: 37,085

Keywords: pickleball, pickleball instruction

Id: DQd3WAtDRsM

Length: 16min 54sec (1014 seconds)

Published: Tue May 02 2023