3 Pickleball Drills for UNREAL Touch (This Changes Everything)

Hi, I'm Maeve Ignatovich. I'm a professional pickleball player on the PPA Tour. And today I will be showing you three drills that are a cheat code to having unreal touch on the pickleball court. So this first drill is called the 50 ball drill. And so the purpose of this drill is just to kind of lock in the motion and to lock in your own feel and your own touch. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna start in the mid court. My partner's going to be at the kitchen line and we're going to rally back 50 dead balls. So you're gonna try and hit this ball as slow as possible. It doesn't have to be low, doesn't have to be perfect. You're just gonna hit a nice dead shot back. And then once you've done 50 of those dead balls, you're going to do a rally of about 10 shots where you're going as hard as you can. So your partner is trying to put the ball away on you. You're trying to hit perfect resets. And then that's it, that's the drill. Do this for a week and you'll never miss another drop. So now we're going to start. I'm going to be rotating between forehand slice dead shot and a backhand slice dead shot. Drew is going to be hitting the ball back cooperatively, not taking anything out of the air, hitting everything back super dead so that I can really lock in my touch here. So what I'm going to be focusing on is I want to be focusing on keeping my head super still at point of contact because that's something that I'll personally struggle with. In the middle of my shot, I'll kind of look up and check out what my opponent's doing. So that's what I am trying to do right now. That's what I'm trying to lock in is a really still head at contact point, keeping my eyes on the ball, not looking up and just hitting that dead shot over and over again. So after you get to 50, what you're going to do is you're going to play out a couple of rallies where your partner is trying to put the ball away. You're trying to reset it, keep it in the court, make your resets good and low, like you would in a point. So you're basically going from zero to a hundred here. And this way you can lock in all of the field that you just worked on into like more of a real game scenario. So here we go. There's only so much I can cover in a video, but lucky for you, I've put together a 58-page, in-depth, complete pickleball system, roadmap from beginner to pro. It covers every shot in pickleball, high-level strategies. It has over 20 different drills that I use, and it even has structured practice plans for every single level from 2.5 to pro. If you're interested in really transforming your game, this is The Missing Piece, a collection of everything I've learned for the past few years playing on tour. Secrets from the best players in the world. I'll leave a link in the description and pinned comment down below. I highly recommend you check it out. Our second drill to dial in unbelievable touch in pickleball. This one's kind of out there, right? But I personally have been doing this a lot because I want to dial in perfect drop shots at the kitchen line. I'm sure we've all been there where we're hitting our fourths and we're hitting a drive, and then the person at the net hits a perfect drop shot. We run and we just can't get to it. It's happened to all of us, but today I'm going to be teaching you how to perfect it every single time. So if you want perfect touch drop volleys at the net, this is how you get it. This is how you dial it in. I promise you, do this for a week. You're going to be able to hit winner drops every single time. So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to start in the middle of the kitchen, not behind the kitchen line. I'm going to be in the kitchen, in the middle of the kitchen. My partner is going to be at the baseline hitting a serve at me as hard as he can. Or if you're somewhat of a newer player and you're a little worried about this, it doesn't have to be as hard as you can, but for this purpose, I'm going to have my partner serve it at me as hard as they can. So I'm standing in the kitchen about an arm's length distance from the net, and my partner is going to serve the ball and he's going to try and hit me. That's his goal here. And my goal, my objective here is to drop the ball back into the kitchen on a hard serve. Not only does this train reaction time, it also trains good touch under pressure. That's in the kitchen. Yes, that was perfect. Now watch Drew do it. Watch a non-pro doing it so that you can see how much touch this takes. Oh, nice. That was sick. Loosen your grip at contact. It's not easy. So this next drill that I have for you is probably one that you've heard of before. It's called 7-11, but maybe you've never done this variation of it. So we're going to be doing this fully cross court. So when you do this fully cross court, you kind of take away the ability to win with power. You can only win this way with touch and precision and accuracy. So the rules, sorry. So the person at the baseline has to get to seven, and then the person at net has to get to 11 because it's easier to win when you're at net than you are at the baseline. So that's how the scoring system works there. So I have to get to seven. Let's go. All right. So then once you get to either seven or 11, whoever wins, then you switch roles. So now I will be at the net and Drew will be at the baseline. No, just hit a couple from the forehand side. Ooh, nice. Too good. Whoa. So that's cross court 7-11. Make sure you do it on both sides when you play. And yeah, I really hope that something from those three drills resonated with you and good luck on getting on Real Touch. Thank you so much for watching. 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