USA Pickleball Member

Training Tips

Welcome to the USA Pickleball Training Tips Hub! We’ve partnered with The Pickleball Clinic to bring our members exclusive training videos and content to improve your game. Each month, we’ll send members tailored tips via the USA Pickleball Member Newsletter. To suggest a future training tip topic, click the button below.

How to Develop a Strategy to Identify a Players Strengths or Weaknesses 1

How to Develop a Strategy to Identify a Players Strengths or Weaknesses

Tip 1: Exploit your opponents’ weaknesses Find your opponents’ weaknesses and exploit them. In the beginning of every game, one…

Strategies for Targeting an Opponent's Backhand 2

Strategies for Targeting an Opponent’s Backhand

Tip 1: Locate your opponents’ backhands Locate your opponents’ backhands. Locating where your opponents backhands are is one of the…

How to Return and Run to Kitchen and Keeping the Ball Low 3

How to Return and Run to Kitchen and Keeping the Ball Low

Tip 1: Return and Run One of the first strategies that you learn in pickleball is to “return and run.”…

How to Create Topspin Drive and Driving to get out of trouble 4

How to Create Topspin Drive and Driving to get out of trouble

Tip 1: Topspin drive Pace doesn’t phase strong players. That is a universal truth in pickleball. The stronger your opponents,…

Drive Preparation and When to Hit a Third Shot Drive 5

Drive Preparation and When to Hit a Third Shot Drive

Tip 1: Drive Preparation In pickleball, preparation is key. This could not be more true of the third shot drive!…

Third Shot Drive, Fifth Shot Drop and Driving Slice Return 6

Third Shot Drive, Fifth Shot Drop and Driving Slice Return

Tip 1: Third shot drive, fifth shot drop When hitting a third shot drive, the best possible outcome is that…

How to recover a lob that goes over your head and keys to hitting an overhead slam 7

How to recover a lob that goes over your head and keys to hitting an overhead slam

Tip 1: How to recover a lob that goes over your head If your opponent hits a good lob that…

How to get maximum power and prevent pickleball overheads from going into the net 8

How to get maximum power and prevent pickleball overheads from going into the net

Tip 1: How to keep your overheads from going into the net There is nothing more painful than missing an…

Where to Hit Overheads and Where to Lob 9

Where to Hit Overheads and Where to Lob

Tip 1: Where to hit your overheads Pace doesn’t phase strong players. That is a universal truth in pickleball. The…

How to Get Max Power on Pickleball Serve 10

How to Get Max Power on Pickleball Serve

Tip 1: How to Get Max Power Contrary to popular belief, power on the serve does not come from the…

Benefits of the Volley Serve and Varying Your Serves 11

Benefits of the Volley Serve and Varying Your Serves

Tip 1: Benefits of the Volley Serve If you want to get the most power and spin out of your…

Take Advantage of The Drop Serve 12

Take Advantage of The Drop Serve

Tip 1: Take Advantage of The Drop Serve The drop serve is a great way for beginner and intermediate players…

How to Disguise Your Speedups to Create Offensive 13

How to Disguise Your Speedups to Create Offensive

Tip 1: Holding Your Dinks Adding deception to your speedups is a great way to make them as effective as…

Successful Speedups Using a Target 14

Successful Speedups Using a Target

Tip 1: Speeding Up to the Wide Backhand If you want to have as much success as possible with your…

What Is a Speedup and When to Use a Speedup 15

What Is a Speedup and When to Use a Speedup

Tip 1: What Is a Speedup? Being able to create offense in pickleball is key to winning matches. Just because…

Where to hit your drops 16

Where to hit your drops

Tip 1 When in doubt, hit your third shot drops to the middle of the court. There are a couple…

Topspin Drops 17

Topspin Drops

Tip 1 If you feel like you’re able to hit your third shot drop consistently and you want to get…

Basics of the third shot drop 18

Basics of the third shot drop

Tip 1 The third shot drop is one of the most important shots in pickleball. It is a strategic bridge…

Defensive vs. offensive volleys at the kitchen 19

Defensive vs. offensive volleys at the kitchen

Tip 1 Being able to distinguish between defensive and offensive volleys is a valuable skill when it comes to playing…

How to hit a backhand punch volley 20

How to hit a backhand punch volley

Tip 1 If you’re tired of losing to bangers who hit the ball hard over and over again, you need…

How to hit a backhand flick volley 21

How to hit a backhand flick volley

Tip 1 Backhand flick volleys can be an extremely effective way for us to put pressure on your opponents by…

The one footwork step every player needs to know - the split step 22

The one footwork step every player needs to know – the split step

Tip 1 One of the most important footwork steps in pickleball for all players to know, that can be used…

Advanced kitchen line footwork patterns - offensive and defensive 23

Advanced kitchen line footwork patterns – offensive and defensive

Tip 1 One of the most common fallacies in all of pickleball is that you should not cross your feet.…

Basic kitchen line footwork to move more efficiently 24

Basic kitchen line footwork to move more efficiently

Play Video Tip 1 Good footwork habits can make or break your game, so you should make sure your movement…

Pickleball Reset Technique To Keep the Ball Down 25

Pickleball Reset Technique To Keep the Ball Down

Tip 1 When you’re hitting a reset, grip strength is key. Your grip strength should be very loose when you’re…

Pro Level Pickleball Reset Strategy 26

Pro Level Pickleball Reset Strategy

Tip 1 One of the beauties of watching pro players compete is they often do subtle things during points that…

What Is A Pickleball Reset Shot and How To Hit It 27

What Is A Pickleball Reset Shot and How To Hit It

Tip 1   The reset is an incredibly important shot to have because it allows you to slow down the…

How to Dink and Why It's Important For Your Success in Pickleball 28

How to Dink and Why It’s Important For Your Success in Pickleball

Tip 1 The dink is arguably the most fundamental shot in pickleball, which plays on pickleball’s defining characteristic: the inability…

Tips on How to Not Pop Up Your Dinks 29

Tips on How to Not Pop Up Your Dinks

Tip 1 If you want to become an advanced pickleball player, you need to get comfortable with dinking 10, 20,…

How To Hit and Create Topspin Dinks 30

How To Hit and Create Topspin Dinks

Tip 1 Once you reach a point in your game where you can dink consistently and are ready to take…