What is Your Best Advice to Improve Your Pickleball Game?

Beyond Reps and Rallies: The Smarter Path to Progress

Pickleball’s meteoric rise has brought with it a new generation of players—some with deep racquet sport backgrounds, others stepping onto a court for the first time. And while it’s easy to get caught up in paddle specs, league ladders, and flashy highlight reels, the best improvements often come from a handful of core principles.

The question “What’s your best advice to improve?” is deceptively simple. It isn’t just about drills or technique—it’s about habits, mindset, and a long-term approach that values learning over quick results. Whether you’re playing for fun or pursuing a tournament podium, improvement doesn’t hinge on talent alone. It’s built on intention.

Here’s a comprehensive, field-tested answer to that question—advice drawn from coaches, competitors, and players who’ve turned casual curiosity into confident, consistent performance.

1. Master the Fundamentals—Then Never Stop Practicing Them

In pickleball, the fundamentals are deceptively important: the serve, the return, the third shot drop, the dink, and the volley. They may seem basic, but every advanced strategy in the game is built on these core movements.

Improving doesn’t require reinventing your game. It requires executing the simple things with consistency, under pressure, from any court position.

Practical Tip: Allocate 50% of your practice time to fundamentals, even at advanced levels. Drill the same shot from different angles and with different footwork—this builds confidence that carries into match play.

2. Play With Better Players—and Ask Questions

Nothing accelerates improvement like playing up. Stronger players challenge your reactions, expose your weaknesses, and force you to adapt. But just playing with them isn’t enough. Observe how they:

Control the tempo.

Move efficiently to the kitchen.

Communicate with their partners.

Use shot selection to construct points.

Then, when the game ends, ask questions. Most experienced players are happy to share a tip or two—especially when approached with humility and curiosity.

Practical Tip: After a loss, ask: “What’s one thing I could have done differently?” You’ll get honest, specific feedback—and a roadmap to improvement.

3. Get Comfortable at the Kitchen Line

The non-volley zone—or “the kitchen”—is where most pickleball points are won or lost. Yet many recreational players avoid it, staying back where they feel safer. This limits your control and makes you vulnerable to short shots.

Learning to navigate the kitchen with balance and control is essential. That means mastering:

Soft dinks that arc over the net and land low.

Volleys that are quick but controlled.

Footwork that allows you to step in for a bounce, then retreat behind the line.

Practical Tip: Play games where you must stay at the kitchen line. It forces you to build comfort in close-quarters play and sharpens reaction time.

4. Drill More Than You Play

Games are fun. But games without focused intent can reinforce bad habits. Drills allow for repetition, correction, and muscle memory. Whether it's a solo wall drill or a partner feeding balls, practice sessions should be intentional.

Just like a musician plays scales or an athlete runs sprints, pickleball players need repetition to build precision and automaticity.

Practical Tip: For every hour of open play, spend 30 minutes drilling. Focus on your weak spots—especially if it’s something you avoid during matches.

5. Focus on Footwork First

You can't hit what you can't reach. Good shots begin with good positioning. Most missed dinks, drops, and volleys aren’t paddle problems—they’re footwork failures.

Work on:

Split stepping before your opponent hits the ball.

Lateral movement along the kitchen line.

Balance when hitting on the move.

Players often think in terms of hands. But pickleball is a feet-first sport.

Practical Tip: Record yourself. You’ll often see that your body was late or off-balance before the shot even began.

6. Learn to Reset

Resetting—a soft shot that neutralizes an opponent’s attack—is one of the least glamorous but most essential skills in pickleball. When your opponent speeds up the ball, a smart reset into the kitchen slows the game and returns control.

Rather than trying to out-hit aggressive players, the best defenders defuse them.

Practical Tip: Practice blocking drives and rolling the ball softly into the kitchen, especially from the transition zone (the area between the baseline and kitchen).

7. Improve One Thing at a Time

Trying to fix five things at once rarely works. Improvement is most effective when it's focused. Choose one aspect of your game to work on—like your serve depth, backhand dinks, or third shot drops—and build consistency before moving on.

Practical Tip: Track your focus for each week. Write it down. Give yourself mini-goals, like “hit 10 consecutive forehand dinks without missing.”

8. Watch Yourself—and Others

Video analysis is a powerful tool. Watching yourself play helps identify patterns, mistakes, and missed opportunities. Watching high-level matches, whether live or on platforms like YouTube, helps reinforce what great play looks like.

Pay attention to:

Positioning after each shot.

How advanced players neutralize pressure.

The types of mistakes that lose points.

Practical Tip: Film a few points from a phone set courtside. Even short clips can reveal valuable lessons you’d miss in the moment.

9. Play With Purpose

Many players plateau because they fall into autopilot. They play, but they don’t learn. Improvement requires intentionality—asking yourself before each game:

What am I focusing on today?

What type of player am I facing?

How can I adjust mid-game?

Even rec play becomes practice when approached with curiosity and awareness.

Practical Tip: Keep a short journal of your games. Jot down what worked, what didn’t, and what to focus on next time. Progress over time becomes easier to measure.

10. Embrace the Process, Not Perfection

Improvement in pickleball is rarely linear. Some days you’ll feel unstoppable. Others, you’ll struggle to find the court. This fluctuation is part of every athlete’s journey.

Consistency comes not from constant progress, but from the willingness to show up—especially on tough days. Players who improve most are those who treat mistakes as feedback, not failure.

Final Thought: The best advice is this: Don’t chase perfection. Chase growth. The game rewards effort, repetition, and humility. With time and focus, your game will improve—not just in outcomes, but in the way you think, move, and play with purpose.