Drills for Players

Hi all,

The following drills were used with the Skills and Drills class the TVPBC put on last Saturday.   These seemed to work quite well with the group we had.  They all seemed to have played some and could easily use the drills with little supervision.  I was in charge of two courts and I could start one, then leave them to start the other.  When it was time to go back to the first, I would introduce a variation or move on to the next drill.

I pass this information on, as it might be useful to improve your own game and maybe you will be bringing a friend up to speed.

Rich

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These came out of a video on YouTube, by High Five Pickleball, link is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMTFnE-u1y8

1) Dink, dink, Play; dink twice being friendly, then play to win.  Speed ups allowed.  Try to hit unattackable dinks.  I had them dink straight back and forth for a bit, then cross court.  The goal was to hit the dinks into the kitchen.  After some drilling, this was morphed into a dink game with the kitchen boundaries being the outer bounds.  The idea to keep the ball bouncing in the kitchen was to provide a goal.  I wasn't thinking that it was very applicable to a game.  But later I watched the men's doubles of the recent Texas open and all of their dinks were in the kitchen.  Note that this was not true for the ladies, who play a more aggressive game.

2) Cooperative Volleys; at the kitchen line or closer, volley back and forth.  Try to make controlled volleys that can easily be volleyed back.  Useful for blocking and resets.  This caused balls to be flying everywhere.  A lot of the shots were hit from a very high location, e.g., over the head.  But the part about being "friendly" was useful as the need to soften a high shot was constant.

3) Dink, dink, speed up; somewhat like the first drill, but with an emphasis on a speed up when available.  Practice the speed up and the blocks and resets.  My groups basically skipped this one.  I had them do number 4 next.

4) Beat the Feet; one player at the kitchen line, other inside the baseline.  Starts with a friendly hit from the KL, then transition player wants to hit shots to get to the KL.  Helps with fielding the awkward shot heading for a foot.  This was harder to get started.  Lots of shots were missed as this is a much tougher skill.  Note that missed shots means more ball chasing and less drilling.  Having plenty of balls on hand is helpful.  I had them do two reps and then change roles.  The drills were conducted with a single person on each side of the net, so there was parallel action.  

5) Serve, return, drop, defend; A deep serve, a deep return, a drop shot and then play out the point as a skinny singles point.  We did a little of this, but I quickly just had them do some serves.  I wanted to emphasis getting them.  Some of the players needed some serving techniques.  I stressed some body and weight shifts when serving, which I think are important for consistency.

As soon as they had that down, then I had them play some full games.  It seemed that they had had enough new skills and any more would be over doing it.  So they played a couple of games, then we were out of time.  Almost everyone kept playing, which seems to be a good reflection on how the classes went.

A final thought -- as an instructor you want to be very flexible in what you teach and what pace.  A homogeneously skilled group is obviously easier to work with.

I imparted some technical stroke stuff, but not too much.  They were all very reasonable for beginner plus players.  I changed one person's grip, I noticed she was struggling a bit with the dinks.  Grip checks are important in my opinion as getting it wrong, makes some strokes much harder than they have to be.  It makes others easier, so I wouldn't rule then out.  An informed student is a happy student!  Besides if you change a grip, it will probably be back to what it was in a couple of minutes.  :-)