How To Get Better At Pickleball So FAST It Feels UNFAIR

Improving at the game of pickleball for most players feels like a long and slow process, especially if they don't know what they're doing. That doesn't have to be the case with you. There are four core pillars to improving your game. And if you start taking these seriously, you'll start improving so fast it feels unfair. So let's get into it. So obviously the best way to improve fast is to spend more time on the court and hit more balls. But let me tell you, not all practice is created equal. The first pillar of improving quickly is that there are two fundamental drills that you have to master if you want to improve fast. The more you do these two drills, the faster you will improve. So the first drill is called skinny singles. And all it is is essentially singles, but compressed to one side of the court. So you're playing what's called half court, and you play points when you're playing skinny singles down the line. So I even serve down the line. And my goal is to play the point like I would play a doubles point and try to win. So what this does is it really isolates the skills that you need for doubles, your serves, your returns, your drops, and your resets to move forward so that you simulate all those shots without having to play a real game. And why it's better than a real game for practice is because it's 1v1, so you're hitting all the balls. You're getting all the balls and you're really able to isolate the things that you need to work on. So if I want to work on my drops and my resets, it's a great drill to do this in an actual realistic point situation. It's also very good to work on hands battles because as you can see, most hands battles in games happen down the line. Well, that was a pretty good one. And it's just a good way to go through all the sections that you'll see in a normal point without having to have a partner and without all the crazy things that happen during a real point. So if you're doing this drill consistently and you go into an actual game, you're gonna feel a lot more stable and you're just gonna feel like you've seen these situations a lot more times. And the best thing that you can do with this drill specifically is try to do it with someone that's a little bit better than you are. Because if you do that, they will force you to play an advanced play style. If I'm trying to be a banger and hitting drives at Kennedy, she's like a 5-0 player, it's gonna be really hard for me to do anything and hard for me to come forward. So by playing someone that's a little bit better than you, it forces you to have to follow the advanced strategy that's gonna make you improve a lot faster. So it sort of accelerates the learning process of getting to the advanced strategy that you need if you want your level to go up. The next fundamental drill that you need to know if you wanna improve fast is called the dink game. So the dink game is also half court. You can pick either side, doesn't really make a difference. And all you do is you start off with two dinks back and forth, and then anything goes half court. So you hit two dinks, you might wanna keep dinking because we're waiting for an opportunity. And then eventually one of us speeds up and we try to win the point and it probably will end in a little bit of a hands battle. So what makes this game so good is that it isolates the skills you need at the kitchen, whether it's dinking or hands battles, and it teaches you how to have good shot selection. So that first speed up that I hit there probably didn't represent the best time to speed up because it was too low and Kennedy hit a good counter. So when you're playing this game, it really just teaches you to make good decisions so that you end up winning more hands battles and winning more points at the kitchen. Another thing I like to focus on when I'm playing this game are my speed up targets. So I've talked about this a lot on our channel, but for instance, a great spot to speed up is at the right shoulder or the right hip area. See I chicken wing Kennedy. So when you're playing this game, you can practice aiming for those targets. You can practice speeding up from different locations, but it's just a really good game to go through all the things at the kitchen that are gonna make you successful. So skinny singles in the dink game are definitely the two most important drills that you have to be doing if you wanna get better. But if you don't have the next two pillars, you're not gonna actually be able to improve while you're doing these drills. The next pillar you have to understand if you wanna improve fast is that you need to dial in your footwork. This is probably the most neglected of the pillars that I'm gonna go through and arguably the most important. So I see so many rec players that are just casually moving around the court. Maybe they're doing these drills. Maybe they're doing the fundamental drills I just talked about, but they're not moving properly. That makes it nearly impossible to improve. So now I'm gonna cover the most important areas of the court that you need to move on, and I'm gonna show you some cool drills so that you can master the techniques. So the first type of footwork that you need to master is the footwork of moving forward from the back of the court to the kitchen. Because when you're playing against advanced players, they're gonna do anything in their power to keep you back, and they're gonna try to make it really challenging. So good footwork moving forward from the back of the court looks something like this. She split steps. She takes lunging steps. She gets super low so that she can progress towards the kitchen and get into a dinking situation. Bad footwork when you're coming from the back of the court looks like this. She's really casual. She's not low. She's not bending her knees. And when I see rec players, I see so many of them in situations like this where they get stuck in the transition zone because they're not moving properly. So as a quick recap of transition zone footwork, she's super low, and she takes these lunging steps as I move her side to side in order to be in the right position to get these balls back. Because my goal in this position is to go right at her feet. So you see she's not taking an excessive amount of steps. She's really just lunging side to side. And obviously after she hits a good shot, she'll move forward. And one of my favorite drills to practice this footwork is called 7-11. So in this game, we're doing half court just like we were before. I'm starting up. She's starting back. She has to win seven points before I win 11 points because I have a little bit of an advantage because I'm starting from the kitchen. So I'm going to feed the ball every single time, and she's going to try to score by moving forward. So as you can see during this game, my goal is to keep her back and try to win. So now she's made to the kitchen. So she was successful. She had good footwork. Now we're in a dinking situation and we can finish the point from there. But the really important part of the drill that's going to highlight what we've been talking about is right after she hits the first ball. So her first shot is pretty much simulating a third shot. So she's going to go for a drop. And here, I'm going to go right at her feet so that she has to get into that low position and take those lunging steps and focus on that footwork. So that's really going to be what trains you to be able to do this in an actual point. You can practice it and you can do it, but if you're not simulating in an actual situation where you're hitting the ball, it's going to be a little bit tricky to translate it to the actual game, into an actual point. So give 7-11 a shot. Make sure you have the transitions on footwork down and you're going to improve super fast. The next type of footwork you have to understand is your footwork at the kitchen line. So you can practice this in the dink game, but I think the best way to practice your dinking footwork and your kitchen footwork is to have one person stationary. So your partner is standing still and you're hitting every ball back to them. And they're literally just trying to move you around. So what that looks like is this. I have Kennedy literally just moving me side to side so that I can practice my kitchen footwork. As you can see, I'm sort of shuffling side to side, taking these big lunging steps so that I'm always stable. I want to have my head very still. As you can see, I'm not bobbing around and taking so many steps. This is what rec players look like when I watch them. They're taking a ton of steps, their head's bobbing up and down. You want to be very stable and take these big lunging steps so that your head is super still. I'm very on balance so that if she fires a ball at me, I'm very ready. So see, she fires a ball. Because my head is still, I'm ready to react. So make sure to give these two footwork drills a try. When you're on the court, just think about your footwork more. I think a lot of players, they go to the courts and the last thing they're thinking about is their feet. This is something you want to prioritize so you're always engaged and in the right position during the point. If you're too worried about your technique with your arms or what's going on in the game, a lot of time you're going to neglect your footwork and you're just going to play worse. So focus on your feet and it's going to help you a ton. Also, right now we're trying to become the first Pickleball channel in history to reach a half a million subscribers. So if you want to help us make history, make sure to subscribe. The next pillar of improving quickly is going to be removing all the holes from your game. But what are holes? Holes are the weaknesses in your game that aren't up to par with the rest of your game. So a lot of the time, for instance, players will have a really good forehand and a very weak backhand, that that's going to hold you back. Sometimes they'll also have weak drops and really good drives. This is why some players are bangers. So as you're getting better, you want to focus on your strengths, but you also want to manage your weaknesses so that everything improves at the same rate. So for instance, with drops, the way that you're going to do this is with drilling. So the best way to improve your drops or really any of the weaknesses in your game are with isolation drills. These are drills where we're not playing off the point. We're literally just rallying back and forth and focusing on one shot at a time. So with drops, what it looks like is this. I'm going to be back. My partner is going to be standing at the kitchen. And I'm literally just going to be hitting drops over and over again until I can become consistent. And as you're progressing, you might not be as consistent as I am, but what you're focusing on is getting the ball the right height over the net, getting it to land in the right area. And this is what's going to be what makes you consistent in a game. If you can't do this, you're not going to be able to make the drops in a game where it's way more chaotic. So I can even work on the different spins. I can do topspin drops like you're seeing me do here. I can do my slice drops. The point is you need a lot of reps of the shots that you're not confident with. So isolation drills, where you're literally just hitting the ball back and forth are going to be the best way to do that. So get a friend and tell them, hey, I need to practice my drops. Let's do some rallies and do something like this with them. You can trade positions so that they can do it too. This is going to be how you're going to improve super fast. If you're just practicing the shot in games or in points, like the other drills we were talking about, they're not going to improve very quickly. Another isolation drill that a lot of players need to do is for their backhand dink. So a lot of players just aren't as confident with dinking or with anything on their backhand. So it can be really helpful to just go back and forth and do things like this so that you get a rhythm and that you master your technique. And when you're doing these drills, you can really focus on your technique. So here I'm focusing on making sure my wrist stays steady. I'm focusing on my footwork and I'm making sure that I push my paddle towards my target. So my target right now is Kennedy's left foot, trying to hit that every single time. And everything that I'm doing with my feet and my arm is supposed to be geared towards making that happen. So like this, I can get a ton of repetition on this shot. And even if it's something I struggle with, over time, if you do this enough, you're going to improve. It's pretty much impossible not to improve your weaknesses if you're doing isolation drills like this. So just get with a friend, like I mentioned earlier, and get rallying. It can be a little bit boring, but let me tell you, when you get to the games and your shots feel way better, it becomes a lot more fun. So it's worth it in the long run. Every player has something that they're not as good at as the rest of their game. So don't feel bad about this. For you, it might not be your backhand or your drops. Figure out what it is, pick a good isolation drill to work on it, and you're going to improve rapidly. The next pillar, though, has to do with optimizing your gear. So this is something not a lot of players think about. So optimizing your gear is actually the only one of the pillars that can give you progress immediately because all the other stuff requires practice, whereas if you just change your paddle and it makes you better, it actually can make you better right off the bat. So there's a few different aspects to optimizing your gear. Obviously, your paddle is going to be the main one, but you can also talk about your shoes. In this video, I'm going to focus mainly on your paddle and the different ways that you can optimize this have to do with the shape of the paddle, the power level of the paddle, and just the overall quality of the paddle. So when we're thinking about the shape of the paddle, there's a spectrum from elongated paddles to wide-body or standard-shaped paddles. So the difference between these is that standard-shaped paddles are shorter and elongated paddles are longer. But the difference isn't just your reach that you get from the paddles. With elongated paddles, you're going to have more power from the back of the court, and you're just going to have more power when you're taking full swings at the ball. So elongated paddles give you more power. With a wide-body paddle or a shorter and wider paddle, you're going to get more control. So on your drops in your soft game, you're going to have a little bit more control. And because it's shorter, it's actually quicker in your hands. So you're going to have faster hands when you're in a hands battle. So whether or not you choose one or the other depends mostly on preference. But if you're trying to optimize your game, and let's say you want to have faster hands, you might want to go with a wide-body paddle. If you want to have more power on your drives and on your serves, maybe you're going to go for an elongated paddle. How you choose should depend on what you think is going to help your game the most. So for instance, I just switched to a wide-body paddle because I was a tennis player growing up. I actually get power very easily from the back of the court. So where I struggle more is actually at the kitchen when I'm dinking and in hands battles. Sometimes players' hands are so fast that with the elongated paddle, I just feel like I was a little slow. So by switching to the wide-body, now I feel a little bit more confident when I'm at the kitchen and when I'm in those situations. So when it comes to optimizing your gear, the main thing is preference. You might just like the feel of an elongated paddle better, but if you're like me and you're like, hey, I want to get a little bit better at the kitchen, maybe a wide-body paddle could be for you, or even a hybrid. So there's actually a paddle in between called the hybrid that's sort of the best of both worlds. So when you're thinking about the shape of your paddle, you should also be thinking about your game and what you want to improve. The next thing you need to be thinking about is the power level of your paddle. So some paddles simply hit harder than other paddles. The Turbo, for instance, that I'm holding is a power paddle. So if you're the type of player that can't control your balls very easily and you tend to spray the balls long, this might not be the paddle for you. For you, you might want more of a control paddle or an all-court paddle. I think a rule of thumb is, if you can control a power paddle, meaning you're not gonna be popping up dings, you're not gonna be missing returns long, you probably should use a power paddle because it just gives you a little bit more abilities and it makes you better in firefights. There's a lot of benefits to using a power paddle. Most pros use a power paddle. However, if you can't keep your control with a power paddle, that's where you might want to try a control paddle or an all-court paddle. It's a little simpler than the shapes, but it's something that you want to think about because it can actually help your game a lot by dialing in the right power level for you. So the last part of picking the right paddle is more obvious and it has to do with the overall quality level and the sweet spot of the paddle. So in general, I consider a good quality paddle one that has a very good sweet spot. So your paddle is one where when you miss off the center, it just dies and goes into the net. It's probably a poor quality paddle. Even some more expensive paddles actually do this. So it's not really just the price, but some paddles, they have bad sweet spots. And so when you miss off center, the ball dies. Good paddles, when you miss off center, you shouldn't get that different of a reaction, which just gives you more consistency. It gives you more control. Even the best players in the world, they miss the center of the paddle. So you want to have a paddle that has a good sweet spot so it's going to make you way more consistent. And if you want paddles that have great sweet spots, great power levels, and they're more affordable, make sure to check out our paddle series, the Duo and the Turbo. These are some of the best reviewed paddles on the market. And as you can see, the prices are pretty crazy for how good they are. We just recently launched the Turbo and this one's been getting a crazy amount of attention because it's pretty much as good as a $250 paddle, but after you use code Turbo, it's only $99.99. So this is a crazy offer. Even if you're the type of player that's used more expensive paddles in the past, this thing is going to be probably as good or better than whatever you had. So if you want a paddle that's at a crazy price and highlights all the points that I just went through, head to our site and check out the Turbo. If you want to watch another video where me and Kennedy take you through seven pro tips that you can use throughout these drills, watch this.