COACHING & ASSESSMENTS

If you’re trying to up your game and you want enthusiastic, friendly and mindful coaching, you’ve come to the right place!

My name is Joel Adams and I created Dink Dynasty. I have my DUPR Coach certification and I love to play, analyze, teach and just generally talk about pickleball!

I offer personal coaching as well as running clinics!

You can read about my pricing, services and my story below, or just go to the “Bookings” page if you’re ready to book some coaching or want to check out upcoming clinics.

Coaching

I offer personal coaching for those wanting to work on specific things.

Coaching Prices are as follows:

  • 1 person – $40/hour
  • 2 people – $30/hour each
  • 3-4 people – $20/hour each (minimum of 2 hours)

Prices do not include court booking fees. Client may book or I can book and add the cost to your session.

Request Coaching Session

Assessments

As a certified DUPR coach I can also provide provisional DUPR ratings to those who do not have one yet.

This can be great to see where you stand and also to play in events that require a DUPR rating.

I can also do assessments for people with a rating, but that would just be an informational assessment for your personal information as I can’t change an existing rating.

DUPR assessments can be done from a video, multiple videos, in person or as part of a coaching session (this assessment requires playing games, so minimum 3 people must be booked – I’d be the 4th).

The pricing is as follows:

  • Video Assessment – $30 for first video plus $15 for each additional video
  • In person Assessment – $40 each plus court fees, 1 hour session, minimum 3 people

All in person assessments will end with me giving you a range I think you will fall in, followed later by a specific rating. I will record all in person assessments so I can study them after and narrow the rating down.

All videos you send me or I take will also be analyzed by PB Vision AI system. This serves as a “second opinion” to my assessment and helps ensure I am giving accurate ratings to all of my clients.

Please bear in mind that the more gameplay I can see, the more accurate your rating will be. If you send me a single video where you played exceptionally well, your rating may be inflated and if you send one where you played exceptionally poorly, your rating may be lower than expected.

About Coach Joel

I’ve been playing pickleball for a long time and have always loved it. When my partner started playing not long ago, I found myself getting more competitive and wanting to improve.

Over the past few months, I’ve stepped up my game with drilling, reading books, listening to audio books, watching videos and, what all good coaches should do, getting coaching from other coaches!

If you asked people who know me what it’s like to play with me, I think they’d say that I am relentlessly positive. Not only do I never disparage my partner, I take it one step further and make a point to compliment the things they are doing great that game. I believe (well, actually, it’s scientifically proven) that positive reinforcement is key to playing our best. I’ve seen it happen too. Someone might be having a bad day and not have won a single game that day, and then they end up winning one: the one they played with me. While I’d like to think my skill plays a part in that, I cannot take every shot and I firmly believe I bring out the best in my partners.

This positivity is something I also try to apply to myself, and the more I learn about pickleball the more I learn that mindset is perhaps the most important and most overlooked skills in the game. As a coach, while I absolutely spend time on the technical skills of pickleball, I think that training the mind is the best thing you can do.

I have also started utilizing PB Vision to use AI to assist analyzing not just my own game, but my opponents and my clients! Before you count it out, PB Vision is an official partner of DUPR and their ratings are based on DUPR criteria. They also have plans to integrate AI ratings into DUPR in the near future.

I’ve compared the AI rating of PB Vision to actual DUPR ratings of dozens of players and found that in most cases, it’s quite accurate as long as you’re averaging the results of at least a dozen games or so – except in the cases where someone makes dramatic improvement quickly – then your DUPR can take a while to catch up.

This is why I include PB Vision video processing in my services – it gives you a much better idea of your level of play with enough data.

It does give you quite a few free minutes of processing, and if you do end up getting the premium service, use this link to sign up and get 4 hours extra processing time for free.

In addition to 1 on 1 coaching, I also regularly hold clinics, either coached by just myself or in tandem with one or more other coaches.

I’ve talked about myself too much, so now I want to hear your story! Message me on Facebook, Pickleheads send me an email or flag me down at the court (I’ll be the guy wearing a Dink Dynasty shirt) and say hello, ask questions or just tell me how much you love pickleball!