The DRILLS You Didn’t Know You Needed

I’ve mentioned before that my favorite drills are 3-person drills, and I’m excited to finally be sharing exactly what I like to do with you guys! Everyone should drill more, but I find that to most amateurs having 3 people to a court is a borderline emergency situation, a nightmare, a crisis, and usually means the fourth player has no-showed and no one has any idea what to do, or even whether/not they should just drive home. 

But, I’m here to rescue you from this scary situation! After this piece, it’s my hope that you even look forward to 3-person drilling and schedule it regularly. I promise it will help you improve quickly and will help you unlock your next level. 

To maximize this concept - I recommend you also watch my YouTube video on this topic where you can see me actually play out some 3-person games I really like to do. 

The Advantages of 3 Person Drilling 

The beautiful thing about pickleball is that you can always work on something. Even if you’re alone - you can hit serves, use a wall, or work on your general fitness. Obviously, with 4 people you can play games, which is likely your favorite thing to do! 

Drilling comes in moreso when you either have one or two other people sharing the court with you. I generally don’t recommend drilling with 4 people - I find it’s unproductive and you may as well just play games. But if you’re in a group that loves to do it - great! All the more power to you! 

I will write another piece in the future on the best drills to do and what to focus on in a session with one other person as this absolutely also should be a regular part of your pickleball improvement routine. Where three-person drilling really shines is for working on kitchen skills and simulating real-gameplay situations. 

When you play a normal game, oftentimes the shot you want to work on simply won’t come up much. You’re probably only hitting half the balls, you’re probably not getting to the kitchen as much as you’d like to be, and you’re also trying to win, so it’s hard to actually focus on working on the shot you want to hit. This is a major reason it’s so hard to implement something new!

But… with 3 person-drilling, when you’re alone in particular, you get to:

Personally, I do not do much 3-person drilling that includes kitchen arrival or a real baseline component, I prefer to just drill with one other person to isolate these things. I’ll write more on that another time!

Most of my 3-person sessions last about an hour and a half, and either I do this with two other pros and we all rotate and get turns alone, OR I will pay my two people to do this with me where I can be alone the entire time. Both sessions are very productive, and I do both regularly.

The first type of drill I like to do involves ONLY dinking! NO speedups, by anyone on the court. This is great because you can hyper-focus on your consistency and ball movement. A lot of you might be chronic cross-court dinkers - hitting with 3 people will force you to work on this as the person in front of you will quickly become annoyed you aren’t ever hitting them the ball😂. I typically play this game to 7 just because it takes a while, but if at your level a game to 7 goes by quickly, just play to 11 before rotating. A few things to take note of when you do this:

This is a great drill to do where the person alone can really hyperfocus on working on their speedups in general, or a couple specific ones they are looking to implement into actual matchplay. You’re hitting every ball, and you’re the only one that can “win” a point! All the other people can do is “lose it”. This is a major cheat code to getting reps at using a speedup or shot that’s new to you as the points can be as long or short as you want them to be, as long as no one is missing a bunch. I usually play these games to 11 before rotating. Some things to focus on:

This is usually the last drill I do in a session - and as the title suggests - anyone can now speed the ball up! You can either do this where all speedups are valid OR where only speedups out of the air are allowed. Your choice. This game brings everything together. Now, you should be focusing on:

I hope this piece gave you some inspiration and I would urge you to schedule a 3-person session with your drilling buddies! I find these sessions to be the most productive out of anything I do. Additionally - spots for Brighter Pickleball Academy are filling up and if you want a way deeper look into my brain, I highly recommend you attend a webinar and apply! You can do that here!

Love you guys always, and get out there and DRILL !!!

Dink big, dream bigger - your internet bestie, Anna🫦✨♥️