Pickleball Drills for Warm-Ups and Waiting Players

How to use these drills

Each drill lists what it trains and how to make it harder. Two rules make any drill more useful:

• Count your rallies. "Let's get to 20 in a row" turns a drill into a game and keeps you focused on consistency rather than winners.
• Pick one target. Every drill below works better with a specific aim — a corner, the kitchen, the middle — than with "just keep it going".

Warm-up drills (5 minutes)

1. Kitchen-line dinking

Trains: touch, soft hands, a low ready position.

Both players stand at the kitchen line, straight across from each other, and hit soft dinks that bounce in the other player's kitchen. Start slowly and focus on a relaxed grip and a short, lifting motion from the shoulder rather than a wrist flick. After a minute, move to crosscourt dinking, which is what you will use most in real games.

Make it harder: play a dinking game to 5 points where any ball that lands outside the kitchen loses the point.

2. Volley-to-volley

Trains: fast hands, a compact backswing, keeping the paddle up.

Stand a step behind the kitchen line and volley the ball back and forth without letting it bounce, keeping it at chest height and at a cooperative pace. This wakes up your reactions and reinforces holding the paddle in front of you rather than down by your knees.

Make it harder: gradually increase the pace while staying in control, or alternate forehand and backhand volleys.

3. Groundstroke rally

Trains: timing, footwork, depth.

Both players at the baseline hit steady groundstrokes back and forth. Aim to land the ball in the back third of the court, which is where your serve returns and deep shots should go in a game.

Drills for a spare court (10–15 minutes)

4. Third-shot drop practice

Trains: the hardest shot in doubles.

One player stands at the kitchen line and feeds balls deep to a partner at the baseline. The baseline player tries to hit a soft drop that lands in the feeder's kitchen. The feeder catches it or dinks it back, and you repeat. Swap roles every ten balls.

Judge each drop by whether the net player could attack it. A drop that lands mid-kitchen and stays low is a success, even if it is not perfect. Our doubles strategy guide explains why this shot matters so much.

Make it harder: after each drop, the baseline player takes two steps forward and plays out the point from there.

5. Reset drill

Trains: defending fast balls by softening them into the kitchen.

One player at the kitchen line hits firm (not wild) shots at their partner, who stands in the transition zone between the kitchen and the baseline. The defender tries to absorb the pace and drop the ball softly back into the kitchen — a "reset". This skill rescues countless points in real games, where you are often caught mid-court.

6. Serve and return targets

Trains: deep serves and returns, which control the start of every rally.

Place a towel or a spare paddle near the back of the service court. Take turns serving and returning, aiming for the target. Most open play players serve and return too short; landing consistently in the back third of the court is a real advantage.

Make it harder: return deep, then walk to the kitchen line before your partner's next shot, exactly as you would in a game.

7. Skinny singles

Trains: the full rally, footwork and shot selection, with only two players.

Two players use only half the court — one service court on each side, split by the centre line — and play out points with normal rules. The narrow court rewards placement and soft shots over power and keeps rallies long. It is the best two-player game for an odd-numbered group.

While you wait for a game

Sitting out at open play does not have to mean cooling down. A few things worth doing on the sideline:

• Stay loose. Light shadow swings, ankle rolls and side shuffles keep you warm, so your first point back is not a pulled muscle.
• Watch one player. Pick someone a level above you and follow only them for a few rallies: where they stand after each shot, when they move forward, which shots they choose not to hit.
• Practise the score call. Quietly track a game's score as three numbers. It is the fastest way to stop being confused by pickleball scoring.
• Drink water. Especially outdoors in the heat, you lose more fluid than you notice between games.

For organizers: using a drill court

When the numbers leave two or three people over, a drill court keeps them moving instead of waiting. Put the players with the longest waits there, rotate them into the next available game, and keep the drill short. Fair rotation matters more than the drill itself: nobody should be stuck on the drill court for two rounds in a row. Tools that track waiting time, like CourtConnect's per-player wait timers, make it easy to see who should move next.