As an ex squash pro, I’m used to doing hours and hours of solo practice, as well as hours and hours of two person drills, with a little bit of matchplay sprinkled in each week.
Not so simple in pickleball. Ideally training to be your best should be something like ~ 30% play, 70% drills/practice – but I’m spending at least 70% of time playing. The culture is to show up, and play games. But also, HOW and what to practice, how to drill (outside of just dinking a bit straight and cross court) seems still to be evolving in the community as a whole, and most people just have their “routine” they do for drills. Here are my current thoughts on practicing solo, 2 person and 4 person.
Solo Practice :
Serve practice might have some use if you’re working on a big serve, or using a ball machine to work on ground strokes or resets, but it takes a lot of effort to get set up, and ball pickup every few minutes is pretty annoying. Spending 15 minutes before a group session if you have access to a bucket of balls is nice.
Fast hands against the wall is definitely worth doing. I always try to do things that are challenging for my level, either getting closer to the wall to increase the speed, or working on excessive spin or something that pushes the envelope.
Two Person Practice:
Two person drilling is hugely useful, you can get a lot of reps dinking, working on fast hands, and resetting from the baseline or transition area. Skinny singles challenges your skills of moving forward, working on serve/return, and hitting some challenging volleys. What’s missing in two person drills is the feedback on how your dinks (and pops) move and manipulate a team of 2 players, because the court positioning in 1 on 1 dinking is really different, and shots to the middle would often be taken by the other player.
Four Person Practice:
Getting 4 people to agree to drill together as a group is challenging to pull off. If you have enough players for a game, you should play real games right? I have been able to play some 4 person games with everyone starting at the kitchen line, with a dink serve to start. This cuts out the serve/return, and allows you to get at least twice as many points in. Serves, drives, resets, 3rd shots can all be isolated and practiced in 2 person drills, but the complexity (and what I think is the most addicting and fun aspect of pickleball) of having 4 players at the net building a rally and trying to manufacture opportunities can’t be replicated easily outside of actual play.
All in all, I have a good setup and lots of people willing to drill and wanting to get better. I wish I could get more 4 person drill sessions going…..I’ll keep working on it.