Pickleball drills, by the problem they fix

Choose drills by the problem that costs you points: dinks that pop up, returns that land short, third shots into the net, getting stuck at the baseline, or missed serves. Give each drill a count you can keep, then judge it by your games, because how a drill goes in practice is often a poor guide to what you’ve learned.

Which drill fixes which problem?

Start with whatever keeps ending your rallies.

If you don’t know which it is, your games can tell you. How to get better at pickleball sorts it by whether you lose more rallies on your own serve or on theirs.

Dinking drills, for dinks that pop up

A dink that sits up is a ball the other team can attack. USA Pickleball blames the wrist first: players pop dinks up by flicking the wrist through the swing, and Your wrist should be fully still throughout the swing. It adds that the wrist takes over most when you’re reaching for a ball, so the fix starts with your feet. Move until you’re behind the ball, then swing from the shoulder.

The 100-ball dink rally

Two players at the kitchen line dink straight ahead or crosscourt. Ashley Griffith’s goal is to rally 100 consecutive dinks with a partner without making a mistake, so count out loud and start over after a miss. Aim each one to be a neutral dink that stays low, doesn’t pop up, and cannot easily be attacked. If 100 is out of reach, start lower: USA Pickleball expects advanced players to be comfortable dinking 10, 20, or even 50+ times in a row.

The crosscourt dinking game

Once the count holds up, add a score. In a pickleball.com roundup, Tanner Tomassi and Kyle Koszuta play crosscourt dinks to five points with no speed-ups, with one more rule: if you hit it into the net, you lose all your points.

Then try Griffith’s dead dink drill, where one player hits a deliberately higher dink, the other attacks it, and you play the point out at the net.

Return drills, for short returns

Hit the return deep and follow it to the kitchen. Of about 2,000 rallies The Dink charted at two tournaments in 2024, 386 were at DUPR 3.5 to 4.0, and there the returning team won 70% of rallies after a deep return, one landing in the far ⅓ of the court, and 51% after a shorter one. The gap held at every level from 3.5 up. Below 3.5 it was smaller and not statistically significant.

Pro Michael Loyd’s advice is blunt: You need to hit baskets of balls on serve and return. One player serves from a basket and the other returns, then switch. To aim at depth, we borrow the cone line from the serve drill below: set cones across the back third of the server’s half and count how many of ten returns land past them. The line and the count are our adaptation, not a published drill.

Third shot drop drills, for drops into the net

The return has to bounce before the serving team can hit it (rule 10.A in the 2026 rulebook), so the serving team starts the rally back at the baseline. That’s why the third shot is so often a drop: a soft ball into the kitchen that the other team has to let bounce, which gives you time to come forward.

Tug of War

From Braydon Unsicker on Pickleball Effect. You hit drops from the baseline while your partner feeds from the kitchen line on the other side. You start with 10 points and play until you reach 20 or fall to 0.

• A good drop: plus 1.
• A drop too deep, easy to put away: minus 1.
• A drop into the net: minus 2.

The scoring is the lesson: you are penalized more for hitting your drop shots into the net, because a slightly long drop at least keeps the ball in play. Notice which feeds cost you points, such as backhands or balls with heavy spin, and ask for more of those. You’re there when you reach 20 most times you play.

Transition drills, for getting stuck at the baseline

You get from the baseline to the kitchen a few steps at a time.

The Slinky

Griffith’s version: one player starts at the kitchen line and the other at the baseline. The baseline player works forward with drops and resets until they reach the kitchen, then the other player works back, and the roles keep switching. The key is not rushing. Players should focus on making quality shots from every position on the court.

Resets from mid-court

Tomassi and Koszuta’s drill: one player stands in the middle of the court while the other, at the kitchen line, speeds the ball up at them. The mid-court player tries to reset each one softly into the kitchen. After three resets, move up to the kitchen line and attack, then switch.

7-Eleven

This game is the closest of these to a real point. One player starts at the kitchen line and plays to 11; the other starts at the baseline and plays to 7. Each point starts with a feed. It’s the drill Griffith would choose if she only had 10 minutes to practice before a tournament, and pickleball.com explains why: This drill creates realistic match pressure because each player has a different challenge. Play it in half the court, as skinny singles.

Serve drills, for missed serves

A missed serve gives the rally away without the other team touching the ball, and as The Dink points out, your serve is the only shot in the sport you control completely. Coach Michael Oaksen’s drill: put cones across the back quarter of the court and serve until 20 in a row land past them. Don’t end the session before you get there.

To raise the stakes, The Dink suggests serving right after 10 jumping jacks, so you serve a little out of breath, as in a game. It also says to leave spin alone for now: Most club players should skip spin entirely until they can hit ten flat serves in a row under mild pressure. Our rules guide covers what makes a serve legal.

Pickleball drills for beginners

Start with the shots in every rally. USA Pickleball’s four drills anyone can do are partner drills for touch, dinks, drop shots and serves, and Loyd calls serve and return baskets the best thing to help you jump a half level if you’re a beginner. From the drills above, the 100-ball dink rally (counting to 10, then 20), serving at cones and Tug of War all work in your first months.

Leave the speed-up and hands drills until both players can keep their dinks low, since they’re built around attacking a high one.

Partner drills for two, three or four players

Every drill here works with two. With four on one court, run two pairs crosscourt or in half courts; with three, the third player feeds from a basket or rotates in after each game.

Or just play skinny singles, half-court singles, with whoever is there. Pro Greg Dow’s pick: If there’s one drill more people should do, it’s just playing skinny singles.

Wall drills and practicing alone

A wall at home, such as a garage wall, gives you volleys, dinks and hand speed. An empty court gives you drops and serves, where pickleball.com suggests aiming at cones or towels for 10 to 20 good serves in a row.

• Wall volleys. PPA Tour pro Connor Garnett’s drill: Stand about two steps away from the wall and hit one backhand, one forehand, and just keep alternating that back and forth. When you can do 50 in a row pretty easily, he says, you’re starting to use your whole body.
• Wall dinks. pickleball.com suggests marking a net line on the wall and keeping your dinks just above it.
• Drops. You need a court for these: drop a ball at the baseline and hit soft, arcing shots into the kitchen.

Returns and the transition still need a partner.

A 30-minute practice session

For two players, built from the drills above. The times are ours; the counts come from each drill.

Keep the counts from one session to the next.

Is your practice showing up in games?

Check in games. In a 2015 review of learning research, Nicholas Soderstrom and Robert Bjork call performance during practice often an unreliable index of lasting learning, and add that people often mistakenly interpret their performance during acquisition as a reliable guide to long-term learning.

In games, each problem shows up in a different place:

• Serves, third shots and getting to the kitchen show up in the rallies your team wins when it serves.
• Returns show up in the rallies you win on their serve.
• Dinks show up in both.

You can count one of these by hand. For a few games, keep a tally of the thing you drilled: serves in out of serves hit, or returns that landed deep. Give the bigger numbers a month or two. The share of rallies you win on serve and on return shows real change in that time, while in our model your win-loss record over 20 games against an even team can land anywhere from 30% to 70% by chance alone.

Seeing it in your own games

Rally Trace measures the games your drills are for. Tap the side that won each rally on your Apple Watch, or keep score on your iPhone, and every game is saved with its score and momentum, plus its heart rate and effort when you wear the watch. Your record builds up overall, with each partner and against each opponent. All of that is free, and nothing on the watch is ever behind a paywall.

Rally Trace Pro adds the rallies you win on your serve and on theirs in every game, which is where a month or two of drilling should start to show, along with points per service turn and your win rate month by month. Rally Trace doesn’t track drills, and it records who won each rally, not how it ended, so a missed serve counts as a rally lost on your serve. Download Rally Trace and score your next session.