Transcription
Follow this one simple tip, and I guarantee you'll go from beginner to pro in less than 3 seconds. Add this one shot to your game, and you'll dominate Analy Waters every time. If you do this one simple thing on your dink, it'll cure your anxiety and [Music] depression.
All right, so now that we've got your attention, this video is going to be way more boring than that, unfortunately. So today, Lena and I are going to be going through a pro pit wall drill session. And while we go through all of these different elements of what we do, we're going to be answering a bunch of frequently asked questions that I've had on the YouTube channel as well. The real secret to success is actually consistent drilling, and that's the fastest way that you can improve. And today, Zay and I will show you some of our favorite drills that you can also use on the court.
First, I like to arrive 15 minutes early and go through my AI7 warm-up routine. It's free to download, and I'll leave a link in the description, but it's super important to be sweating by the time you hit the court. This helps you play better and helps you avoid injury.
So, the first step of our drill session is I always like to start out by by dinking. And I feel like it's really easy to get sloppy when we are just dinking as a part of this warm-up. So, I like to pretty much immediately turn this into a game. So, Lena and I are going to play a game to three. Rally scoring, but everything has to stay in the kitchen. Okay? If the ball goes into the blue, it's going to be out. She wins that point. All right. So, game to three as part of this drill session. All right. Well, I'm going to try and answer some frequently asked questions while we're doing this. And I'm down one zero already. 0-1. Um, people ask a lot of times what is my ratio of drilling to playing and what's a good ratio of drilling to playing. Um, for me, an ideal ideal day is I will hit about an hour of drilling before we end up playing an actual session. So, for me, it's probably about 1 to two. But fortunately, you know, I have a bunch of high-level pro pickle ball players around, so we can get really good quality games in all the time. Um, that's not the case for for everybody, right? So, I think, you know, one to two, unless you are, um, you know, wanting to work on something in particular, is a pretty good ratio in my opinion. Lena, don't miss. Lena, how much do you? Oh, that's out. Lena, do miss. Lena, do miss. Lena, what is your, uh, what's your ratio of drilling to playing? I think I drill a little bit more than I play, but since we compete so often, uh, maybe it evens out. But I would say on the days that I'm in town between the tournaments, I probably drill more like 60%, play 40%. Um, so I think pretty similar. Yeah. But kind of like you, if I have a game scheduled, I try to get to the court about an hour before the game to get some reps and then have some dedicated drill time where I really focus on specific skills and patterns based from, you know, the past tournament or like long-term improvements I want to make. Love it. All right. Well, who's winning? While you were talking about that, I got up 2-1. Okay. It's a distraction. Oh. Ah. Ah. Oh. Oh my god. Just a game to three here, but it's really good for building that consistency early in your warm-up. And I'm like ADD and need to turn stuff into a game. So it's perfect. It gets you competing right away, too. Game to three. Crosscourt. Dink. Oh no. 0-1 already. You don't like it. Sitting dink. Oh, I might have saved you. That was going to go out, I think. No. No. I was going to land in. Two zero. Three zero. All right, we'll go other direction. Oh, I saved you. Oh. Uh oh. Oh, that's heavy. Yeah, baby. One zero. Pressured. [Music] Oh, I missed it. Oh, look at that dink, though. That was a good dink.
So, the next drill that I like to do is something called protect the line. We just worked a bunch of dinks off of the bounce. Now, we want to take dinks out of the air. So, if you guys have seen my channel for a while, we've done this drill before. I won't go into all of the details of how to play it. I'll put the link in the description and whatnot, but essentially, we're dinking. But if I get the ball to land in the blue against Lena, or she gets the ball to land in the blue against me, that's her point because I should have been able to take that ball out of the air as opposed to letting it get behind me. So, we'll play a quick game this direction. We're just dinking, trying to work on taking the ball out of the air here. Oh, now this is no speed ups as we're doing this drill, too. This is just a dinking drill, cuz Lena would have crushed me that normally. She normally would have crushed me on that one. Oh, that's and that one, too.
All right. So, next question that I'm asked all the time is how long do I actually drill for? Lena, what do you drill for on a given day? If you're doing a just a drill session, if I'm just doing kind of one session, usually that drill time is about two hours, I would say, and then I take a break, whether it's a lunch break, and then I come back on the court. But kind of that one bout of time is very frequently around two hours for me. I feel like I can really kind of give it my all maximum effort and focus. I honestly don't always think it's just about the time. It's about the focus that you bring and the intention. Um, cuz sometimes you could be on the court for a long time, but if you're not intentional, then you're not maximizing it. Yeah, definitely. Something that I've been working on is actually hitting less amount of time. But Oh, I got you. I got you. Something that I've been trying to do lately is hit a little bit less, but more intense and more focused. Really making the most out of the time that I am on the court. So, as I mentioned, we're doing a lot of 1 hour of drilling before we're playing. Um, if I'm doing drilling only for a given day, I'll probably just go about an hour and a half or so of real focused drilling. Oh, I got you. Oh, no. I thought you were going to speed up and I forgot you speed ups. So, that's to protect the line. We just demonstrated straight ahead, but I will like to do crosscourt both angles as well. Uh, like I mentioned in that video, and I'll put the link in the description. You can also, as you get comfortable with this, um, add speed ups over time.
So, the next thing that we're going to do is quick hands patterns. And I like to do this in a bunch of different patterns. So, as you'll see, we'll do random. We'll do forehand to forehand, backhand to backhand, and two crossbodies. Uh, John Sincola actually showed me this instead of just doing it randomly all the time. Uh, actually having a purpose and doing different patterns. So, he's got a bunch of good drills on his channel as well. So, I'll put them on screen, put the link in the description, and you can go check out a bunch of drills that he's got as well.
Another question that I receive a lot is, "What is the most important drill at every single level?" And we'll split it up. So, Lena, what do you think is the most important drill at the 3.0 level? At the 3.0 level, I would really focus on your first like four shots: serve, good deep return, making your third, either drop or drive, and handling the fourth. I think there are a lot of errors at the 3.0 level, kind of just like in the beginning of the point. Definitely getting into those kitchen rallies is super important at that 3.0 level, and, uh, yeah, for serve, return, third, and fourth, essential there. At that 3.5 level, that's when we start to actually get into some more of those kitchen rallies. So, then I would say some dinking consistency drills are super, super important. And what do you think at the 4.0 level? I think 4.0 level players should really focus on their midcourt gain, uh, and developing resets from kind of anywhere on the court because that would help them, uh, I feel like progress a little bit better and be able to make smarter decisions on the court, as well as just recognizing, I call this the pickleball IQ, is like leaving out balls or, you know, um, being able to add topspin to your shot, maybe start a little bit with more shape and trajectory at that level where you can really start dipping the ball. And I think for me, at the 4.5 plus level, at that point, it's all going to come down to quick hands. And so this drill that we're doing right now on screen is super, super important for any level, but if there's any drill that I'm going to do on a given day, it's going to be quick hands. It's the most important thing for, I think, anybody four five and above. I really like to make drilling competitive. For me, I lock in a little bit better when the drill sessions are turned into games. Uh, that's something that's key for me to help stay focused.
So, next part of our drill session is we're going to play skinny singles from the kitchen line. We've warmed up our dinks and we've warmed up our quick hands. Now, we're going to put it together and play some games. Rally scoring from up here where Oh, nice. One zero. You. Oh, you missed it. Oh, questionable by a mile. Like, if you're not cheating, you're not trying. So, for me, I feel like drilling is super important because I'm a numbers guy. I was an accountant. Get that out of here, Lena. And I found when I'm drilling, I'm hitting about five times as many pickle balls as opposed to when I'm playing. No. Oh, I think it caught the line. Oh, that was filthy. Was that in? I think it, I mean, like I think since I hit it, it was in, but I don't know. So, I think you hit about five times as many pickle balls when you're drilling as opposed to playing. So, it's just a great way to get a lot of really quality reps in a short amount of time, especially if you're somebody that's, you know, working a full-time job and still want to get better. Oh no. Oh no.
After we play a game straight ahead, we're going to play a game crosscourt from the backhand side, followed by crosscourt from the forehand side. Here are a couple highlight points from our games. Yeah, game. Those [Music] count. Okay, come on. Oh. Uh oh. I I I point Grinding. Nice. Go. Uh oh. I can't believe you got that one back. I thought that was a winner.
So, next up, what Lena mentioned was the most important drill at that 4.0 level is that midcourt. And so, we're going to work our midcourt. While I'm in the midcourt, Lena is working on her flicks and rolls and attacks and whatnot. So, something that doesn't go noticed a ton is people don't think about how many balls they use while they're drilling, right? Have you ever thought about how many balls you're actually using? And have you ever been intentional about that decision? So, for me, I'm very intentional with that decision. When I'm doing a drill that requires a lot of focus and the intent is to make a lot of balls and be disciplined, I'm going to only use like one or two. So here, when I'm working on defense, I don't want to be sloppy. I don't want to go pick up that ball. So I'm just going to use one or two balls this whole time. As you notice earlier, when we were doing quick hands work, we used a whole bunch of different balls, right? We don't want to go chasing them. So, next time you're hitting, think about Sorry. How That's a good ball. Think about how the amount of balls you are using actually impacts the way that you're going to focus in that drill. So, in a lot of these drills, we'll start out pretty cooperatively, like I'm not trying to smack winners right now, but as Lena gets into a good rhythm, I'll start to push it more and more and give her a little bit more difficult shots. Yeah. After we get into a rhythm this way, something that people neglect in that midcourt is going crosscourt. We got to reset crosscourt sometimes, and we've got to flick crosscourt sometimes. So, we will do the transition zone drill going diagonally as well. [Applause] Is that in? I don't know.
So, next up, after we've done that transition zone, we're going to follow the same thing from the baseline. We're going to work our drops and drives from each angle. Okay. So, early on, I'm going to start getting warmed up by just going on those third shot drops, giving myself plenty of margin as I hit one right into the middle of the net. So, a question that I get a lot is, do I always follow the same sequence of drills? And for the most part, yeah, but with some exceptions, right? Some days I might feel like I'm pretty dialed in on dinking or third shots or something or another, but one shot or another needs more work. On those days, I'll certainly set a focus for for more on one thing or another, but for the most part, it follows the same general flow. It's definitely a function of what I need for a given day. Okay. So, we'll have Lena head back. Do that. Can tell when I start driving. Yeah, exactly. So, let's just pretend like we did that for all the different directions. It is really, really important to work your third shot drops diagonally. We almost never do it, but I would say probably at least 50% of our drops are going crosscourt. So, especially you, Lena, like you're hitting your backhand drops crosscourt what, probably 75% of the time at least. Yeah, I would say so. And especially trying to target those thirds obviously to the person that's coming in, but, um, I feel like crosscourt I'm just kind of like able to dip a little bit better and have a little bit more room. So, definitely higher percentage I would say. Yeah. So, we skipped it. We're not role models. All right. We know that. But it is super important to do those crosscourt third shot drops and drives, too. Yeah.
So, the next drill I love to do and a drill that I feel like is neglected is working serve and return, but we're adding a third shot in because once again, like we worked on our third shot with somebody up at the kitchen, but a real third shot comes from somebody who's back at the baseline hitting a return. It's different in its pace, its spin, its trajectory, everything. So, we're gonna just hit one, two, three, and after I hit my third shot, Lena is just going to catch that ball, and she's going to serve it back. Serve. Nice. Oh my god, that's just blistering. Something that I'm working on during this drill is definitely the the depth on our serve. Right now, as we're just warming up, it's a great time to to work on that depth. There's no consequences. And as you guys know, depth is the most important piece of, uh, most important thing that we want on our serve.
The last thing that I like to do as part of my drill session is a groundstroke to groundstroke drill. Because a groundstroke is really, really similar to our serve, our return, and our third shot. So, if we hit from baseline to baseline, it gets us a ton of really good repetitions on serve, return, and third. Yeah. What? Hey, got him.
So, I paid Lena a lot of money to be a part of this video. I can't get anybody to actually drill with me, but when I can't get anybody to drill with me, what I do is I've got a bunch of different drills that I can do against the wall. I've got a whole video on what to do if you have no friends and still want to play pickleball. So, I'll leave that there.
So, there you have it. We didn't do any drills that are going to help you beat Analie Waters in less than 10 seconds. It's not sexy, but this is the way that people really do get better in a time-efficient way in pickleball. If you have any questions, there are plenty of different drills that I've got on my channel. And if you have any specific questions, feel free to check out the link in the description to my Cameo. I will create a personalized video answering any questions that you've got. Check that out down below. And, uh, what did I miss? I think the most important part is being intentional in practice and focused, like Zane was talking about. And grab yourself a buddy who is positive and encouraging because I think that will really help, uh, build you up. I usually end these videos by saying something ridiculous. You got anything ridiculous to say? Um, no, I don't. No, nothing ridiculous this time, unfortunately. You hate to see it. All right, that's the end of this one. Sorry.