You must have heard a lot of times already- ‘Practice makes a man perfect’. In any sport, just as in the game of pickleball, practice is the special key to success. Regardless of whether you are just stepping into the world of Pickleball or have been an advanced player in the zone already, you will always benefit from practice and some imperative tools that can either make you more successful or help you stick to your success in the game. If have you recently started to develop interest in the game of Pickleball, then we have some of the best useful pickleball drills for you.
Practicing through drills is effective for any game. For pickleball, it’s more beneficial to follow some specific drills that will help you get better.
There are some pickleball drills that we have compiled to allow you the inspiration and motivation to try and implement in your game and training.
If you concentrate on these pickleball drills, you are bound to see great results. How so? Well, most of the drills will focus on the crucial aspects of the game and in doing so, you will be paying attention to what can benefit you and your game.
Let us discuss these drills which can help improve your game and win more points. We will start with some beginner drills and slowly make it to advanced drills for more experienced players.
Starting a new sport is always a challenge. However, fortunately, pickleball is easy to pick up. To start with, you must be well equipped and you must wear the right outfits to ensure the start is smooth.
Before jumping to the drills, we must advice you to take a good look at the several choices of balls, paddles and shoes available in the market, designed especially for pickleball. You can choose what suits you best and get ready to show your vibe on the court.
Pickleball courts can be either indoor or outdoor. Your equipment should differ depending on where you will play or start off the most.
Let us take a look at some of the basic drills now.
1.Useful Pickleball Drills: Wall Drills
Hitting the ball when it bounces off a wall is a great way to do this drill. Yes, it can sound simple and monotonous to start with but it really is the best drill for you to start with. It is the minimal effort that you can give all by yourself, in case you do not have a coach or a partner to practice with.
To run wall drills, you first need to make up your mind about the type of shot you want to practice. For example, if you are looking to practice your swing of underhand, you should stand about 20 feet from the wall. Then you can practice the pendulum swing to work on the swing and techniques of connection.
If you want to practice solo wall drills, put down a line of tape or chalk around 7 feet from the wall and around 36” up the wall. Wall drills can help you become adapted to the interaction between the ball and the paddle of a pickleball which in turn will train you well in maintaining consistency and reaction speed.
2.Useful Pickleball Drills: Serving Drills
It is imperative to get your hand in serving your ball well. It can be really hectic to start with. It is often a challenge to make sure your serves land the ball in the place you want them to go. Serving drills are hence useful. They can be done alone or with a partner.
You can combine returning volleys with serving and other parts of the game of pickleball too. You may also use the wall for serving drills because it will allow you to repeat serve after serve. It is true that this may feel a bit boring after a point. In that case, by using an empty court to practice, you can mix this drill up a bit as well.
3.Useful Pickleball Drills: Volley Drills – Five Minute
This drill is sort of short and focused, proving to be highly useful for beginners. This is because the goals of the 5-minute volley drills is to keep the ball going, not scoring points or trying to make extravagant shots.
In this drill, you must spend at least 5 minutes with the ball in the air, not allowing it to touch the ground in any manner.
This is extremely essential drill for you when you are just starting off as a pickleball trainee. You have to learn to maintain the consistency in keeping the paddle connected with the ball. The most effective way to do it is to hitting the ball on a regular basis while it is in the air.
Advanced Drills – Useful Pickleball Drills
If you have already had the chance to get the basic practices down and are looking to improve your game and tactics on the court, this section about advanced drills is for you. You can define yourself as an advanced player in several other ways too.
We will now get down to discussing some drills which can be used by any player but can prove to be most useful and efficient for those who already have strong basics of the game. You need to practice well and spend a good amount of time to improve your techniques. It will help you become a better-rounded player in the game of pickleball.
1. Warm-Up Drills – Timed Dink
This is also kind of a short, focused drill, which can be highly effective for advanced players. Time warm-ups are essential for more advanced players because it can highly improve the dinking shots and game strategy for them.
In this drill, 2 players on the 2 different sides of the net have to use only the drink shots for a given interval of time. This time ranges from about 2 to 5 minutes. By using only dink shots, both of the players have to make sure that the volley goes on.
How to make this drill work the best? Well, if you have one player setting up the other to do the dink shots, it will be highly effective. When the clock ticks, the sides can be switched to allow both have the turn to do dink warm-ups.
2. Drink vs. Dink Games
This is another kind of a time dink warm-up drill. It differs due to the fact that the time is extended for an entire game or for a fixed number of points. Both the players are allowed to use only the dink shots, including during the time of serving the ball.
You are able to step up the challenges to make it even a more advanced drill. One such addition can be not allowing any kill shots until the fourth dink is reached. These new sort of challenges can help you acquire newer skills as well.
3. The Drink Lob Drill
The Dink- Lob drill is pretty advanced. It required at least 4 players to be executed. All the players need to dink the ball for around 4 to 6 shots while standing in the non-volley line.
Only then the designated lobber can connect with a lob shot. After the lob, the volley should stop and repeat with the next person in the position of the lobber.
You can change this drill a little to give it a fresher look. You may alter the number of shots before the lob. However, this can get hard to follow. The more complicated you make the drill, the harder it will be to follow. Ensure that everyone can get at least one turn as a lobber.
Three D Game
This is the point where play the game at least in 3 D’s- deep, deep, dink. What does this entail? It consists of a dink, a deep return and a deep serve, on the third shot. You must be aware that this is a pretty advanced drill and you should only try this if you have already mastered the earlier dinking drills.
A deep serve means you need to make a shot that will direct the ball to the baseline of the opponent. A deep return occurs when the opponent hits the ball back deep into your baseline. The dink belongs to the player who served. If you want to benefit from this drill, take turns of being the server or the dink shot and playing. If you are the deep return player, you will get the most benefit.
Final Words
Now that we have laid down the most important drills for the game of pickleball, you have a point to start improving your game and tactic. All you need to do is get out on to the court and implement the drills in your pace.
You have the freedom to produce your own variations of these drills to make sure the game is interesting for you, as well as that you are enjoying the practice.
