Pickleball Drills: The Practice List That Fixes Your Game

The pickleball drills that move your rating fastest are the ones aimed at the shots you actually lose points on: cross-court dinking, the third-shot drop, serve-and-return depth, punch volleys and resets, and split-step footwork. Games hide your weak shot because you can dodge it. A drill drags it into the open and makes you hit it a hundred times, which is the only way it ever gets better.

Here is a practical list, organised by what each drill fixes, with a rough rep target so you know when you have done enough.

The core drill list

Drill	What it fixes	Setup	Target
Cross-court dinking	Soft control, patience	Both at the kitchen, dink diagonally	30 in a row before speeding up
Third-shot drop	Getting to the net	Partner feeds deep return, you drop	10 clean drops into the kitchen
Serve deep + return deep	Consistency, depth	Alternate serving and returning to the back third	8 of 10 land past the midline
Punch volley	Firm hands at the net	Partner feeds at your paddle, you block	20 controlled volleys, no swing
Reset from the transition zone	Defending mid-court	Partner drives, you soften into the kitchen	10 resets that die low
Split-step footwork	Court coverage	Shadow or live, split as partner contacts	Every ball, no exceptions

Do not run all six every session. Pick the one shot that cost you points last time you played and drill that, then add one supporting drill.

Start with dinking — it teaches touch

The dink is the base skill everything else borrows from. Stand at the kitchen line with a partner and rally soft, unattackable balls diagonally cross-court. The goal is not to win the exchange; it is to keep thirty going without popping one up. Cross-court gives you the longest, safest angle and the most margin, so it is where control is built.

When straight dinks feel easy, add movement: dink to your partner’s backhand, then their forehand, so you are shifting your feet between every ball. Most missed dinks are footwork errors, not hand errors.

Drill the third shot in isolation

The third-shot drop is the shot that gets the serving team to the net, and it is the one most club players skip because it is hard. Have your partner stand at the kitchen and feed you a deep ball near the baseline. Your job is a soft, arcing drop that lands in their kitchen. Hit ten clean ones before you let yourself count score.

Once the drop is landing, chain it: hit the drop, then jog forward and play out the dink rally it sets up. That live-ball version is what makes it hold under match pressure.

Serve, return, and volleys

Serve-and-return is the least glamorous drill and the highest-value one, because every point starts with two shots that just need to land deep. Alternate serving and returning into the back third of the court; a deep return in particular pins the serving team back and buys your team the kitchen line. Aim for eight of ten past the midline before you worry about anything fancy. The exact legal motion is covered in our guide to the serve rules and the depth targets in return of serve — drill against those, not against a vague sense of “in.”

For volleys, have a partner feed balls at your paddle while you stand just behind the kitchen line. Block and punch — no backswing. Half the drill is hands, half is discipline about not stepping into the non-volley zone, which is a fault if you make contact with a volley there.

Footwork ties it together

Every drill above quietly depends on your feet. Add a deliberate split-step — a small hop that lands as your opponent contacts the ball — to every rep, and practise the shuffle-and-recover through the transition zone so you are balanced when you hit. A dedicated session on pickleball footwork pays off across every shot, because a ball you reach on balance is a ball you can control.

Ready to turn these reps into wins? Once the shots are grooved, the tactics in our pickleball doubles strategy guide tell you when to use each one. Drill the shot in isolation, prove it in a live rally, then trust it in a game — in that order, every time.