5 Pickleball Improvement Tips From World No. 2 Anna Bright

The gap between a casual player and a competitive one isn’t always talent. Anna Bright, the #2 pickleball player in the world, recently laid out the exact improvement strategies that have defined her rise through the sport. And here’s what’s refreshing about her approach: none of these tips require you to be naturally gifted. They require you to be intentional, disciplined, and willing to change how you practice.

In a recent breakdown of her training philosophy, Bright walks through five core principles that separate her from most players at pickleball. But more importantly, she explains how those principles can apply to anyone serious about getting better. These aren’t flashy techniques or secret paddle tricks. They’re habits. And habits, unlike talent, are something you can actually control and develop over time.

What makes Anna Bright’s perspective particularly valuable is her ability to articulate the mechanics of improvement. She’s not just telling you to “work harder” or “play more.” She’s giving you a framework for structured development that mirrors what top professionals do daily. The most striking realization from her approach is that improvement at the highest levels comes down to the same fundamentals that recreational players often overlook: repetition, accountability, intentionality, self-awareness, and observation.

Understanding the Path to Improvement: A Foundation for Beginners

Before diving into Anna Bright’s specific recommendations, it’s worth taking a moment to understand what improvement actually means in pickleball and why the traditional approach most players take often falls short of their expectations.

When most people start playing pickleball, they improve rapidly just by playing recreational games. Every time you step on the court, you’re encountering new situations, developing muscle memory, and building pattern recognition. This initial phase of improvement feels effortless because you’re starting from zero. Every session produces visible gains.

But then something happens. Usually around the 3.0 or 3.5 level, that rapid improvement slows down dramatically. You find yourself making the same mistakes repeatedly. Your rating plateaus. You start wondering if you’ve reached your natural ceiling. This is the point where most players either accept their current level or start looking for answers.

The reality is that improvement beyond the beginner stage requires a fundamentally different approach. Playing more recreational games alone won’t cut it because you’re no longer learning new patterns—you’re just reinforcing the ones you already have, both good and bad. This is where deliberate practice enters the picture.

Deliberate practice means working on specific skills in isolation, getting feedback on your execution, and making adjustments based on that feedback. It means creating situations where you get far more repetitions of a particular shot than you would ever get in a regular game. It means being uncomfortable, making mistakes in controlled environments, and building skills systematically rather than haphazardly.

Anna Bright’s five tips are essentially a blueprint for how to structure your improvement journey once you’ve moved beyond the beginner phase. They represent the transition from passive participation to active development. Each tip addresses a specific aspect of the improvement process, and together they create a comprehensive approach to getting better that works regardless of your current level.

Tip One: Drill More Than You Play Recreational Games

Let’s start with what Bright considers the foundation of her improvement: drilling significantly more than she plays recreational games. She estimates a 65-35 split between drilling and recreational play, and sometimes that ratio goes as high as 3-to-1 in favor of drilling. That means for every game of rec she plays, she’s spending three sessions drilling specific skills.

This might seem extreme to recreational players who view pickleball primarily as a fun social activity, but the logic is sound. When you play recreational games, you’re essentially testing what you already know. You’re playing points, trying to win rallies, and relying on the shots and patterns you’ve already developed. There’s value in that—you need to learn how to compete and apply your skills under pressure—but it’s not where most improvement happens.

Drilling, by contrast, is where you build new skills and refine existing ones. When you drill, you’re getting concentrated repetitions of specific shots. If you want to improve your third shot drop, you might hit 100 drops in a 30-minute drilling session. In a recreational game, you might hit 10. The difference in volume is massive, and volume matters tremendously when you’re trying to develop muscle memory and consistency.

Drilling also allows you to work on your weaknesses in a low-pressure environment. Most players avoid their weak shots during recreational games because they don’t want to lose points or let their partners down. But those weak shots don’t improve through avoidance. They improve through targeted repetition. Drilling creates a safe space to fail, adjust, and try again without the competitive pressure that causes players to revert to their comfortable patterns.

Bright admits that she barely drilled during her first year of pickleball because she was improving so rapidly just from playing. But eventually, every player hits a wall. The skills that come naturally through recreational play get developed, and then you’re left with the skills that require deliberate work. That’s when drilling becomes non-negotiable.

The implementation pipeline Bright describes is also crucial: you drill a shot until you have basic competency, then you test it in recreational games to see if you can execute it under mild pressure, and finally you deploy it in competitive situations. This progression only works if you’re actually putting in the drilling hours. Without that foundation, you’re trying to execute shots in competition that your muscle memory doesn’t actually support.

For recreational players looking to implement this principle, you don’t need to match Bright’s 3-to-1 ratio immediately. Start by dedicating one session per week to pure drilling and see how it affects your game. Focus on one or two specific skills that you know are holding you back. Get 50 to 100 repetitions of those shots, make adjustments based on feedback, and then try them in your next recreational game. You’ll be surprised how quickly targeted drilling translates to on-court improvement.

Tip Two: Hate Missing More Than You Hate Losing

This tip is more psychological than technical, but it’s arguably just as important. Bright hates unforced errors. Not the kind of errors where you’re attempting an aggressive shot and it doesn’t work out. Not the kind where your opponent hits a great ball and forces you into a mistake. She’s talking about the errors where you give your opponent a free point because you weren’t focused, weren’t prepared, or just executed poorly on a routine shot.

The distinction matters because it shifts your focus from outcomes to process. When you care more about making unforced errors than about losing, you’re taking responsibility for the aspects of the game you can actually control. You can’t control whether your opponent plays well. You can’t control whether the wind affects your shots or whether you get a favorable bounce. But you can control your focus, your preparation, and your execution on routine balls.

Bright points out that almost everyone watching her content could improve by half a rating point just by reducing unforced errors by 10 percent. That’s not hyperbole. Pickleball at every level is a game of mistakes. The team that makes fewer mistakes usually wins. When you give away free points through unforced errors, you’re essentially spotting your opponents a significant advantage before the game even develops.

She also mentions that Ben Johns, the #1 player in the world, is apparently disgusted by his own errors even in practice. If the best player on the planet cares that much about not missing routine shots, recreational players should take note. This isn’t about perfectionism or being overly hard on yourself. It’s about maintaining a standard of focus and execution that becomes automatic through repetition.

The practical application of this principle is straightforward: start noticing your unforced errors. After each session, think back to how many points you gave away through lack of focus or poor execution on routine shots. Then, in your next session, make it a goal to reduce that number. You don’t need to eliminate errors entirely—that’s impossible—but you should feel something when you make an unforced error. That emotional response is what drives improvement.

This is also where mental toughness enters the conversation. You’re not building a better forehand by ignoring your mistakes. You’re building a better player by acknowledging them, feeling something about them, and then making the adjustments necessary to reduce them. The pros who regularly make it deep into tournaments all share this characteristic: they care deeply about not giving away free points.

Tip Three: Try Harder in Recreational Play Than You Think You Should

Recreational play is practice. But the quality of that practice depends entirely on how you approach it. Bright and her practice partner Anna Leigh Waters are, by Bright’s own admission, “pretty psycho” about winning even in recreational games. They emote. They encourage each other. They care about the outcome of every point, even when nothing is on the line.

This doesn’t mean making tight line calls or being difficult to play with. It means bringing intention and effort to every session. The reason this matters comes down to a simple principle: every shot you hit either makes you better or makes you worse. There’s no neutral. If you’re being lazy with your footwork in recreational play, you’re building bad habits that will show up in matches. If you’re making poor decisions just because it’s casual play, those decisions will become your default when the pressure increases.

The standard you hold yourself to in practice becomes your baseline in competition. This is true in every sport and skill domain, but it’s particularly relevant in pickleball where the margin between winning and losing is often razor-thin. If you practice being sloppy, you’ll be sloppy when it counts. If you practice being focused and intentional, that becomes your norm.

What Bright is describing is the concept of “training intensity matching competition intensity.” If you only try hard during tournaments, you’re essentially asking your brain and body to perform at a level they’re not accustomed to. That rarely works. But if you bring competitive intensity to your recreational play, tournaments just feel like another session. There’s no gap between your practice self and your competition self because they’re the same person operating at the same standard.

For recreational players, this might mean rethinking what “fun” means in the context of improvement. Yes, pickleball should be enjoyable. But there’s a particular satisfaction that comes from pushing yourself, trying hard, and seeing measurable improvement over time. That satisfaction often runs deeper than the temporary enjoyment of casual, low-effort play.

Implementing this principle doesn’t require a complete overhaul of your approach. Start by designating certain sessions as “high-effort” sessions where you commit to trying hard on every point. Use good footwork. Make smart decisions. Communicate with your partner. Take it seriously. Then notice how that elevated effort affects your next competitive match. You’ll likely find that the gap between practice and competition shrinks considerably.

Tip Four: Watch Yourself Play

This tip makes most people uncomfortable, but it’s one of the most effective tools for improvement available to modern players. Bright watches herself play religiously. Not to relive winning moments or admire her own shots, but to learn. She watches full matches, especially ones where she didn’t play well, and she notices things that she’d never catch in real time.

When you watch footage of yourself, you see tendencies you’re completely blind to during play. You notice that your technique isn’t as clean as you thought. You realize you miss certain shots far more frequently than you believed. You discover you make significantly more unforced errors than you expected. You might notice that you’re not getting to the kitchen line as quickly as you should, or that you’re consistently hitting a particular shot to the same location, making you predictable.

The discomfort that comes with watching yourself is temporary, but the information is permanent. Bright recently watched footage of herself playing against Ben Johns and realized she wasn’t mixing up her shot placement on a particular ball like she thought she was. Ben knew this. Ben was sitting on it. She only learned this by going back and reviewing the footage. That single observation likely prevented her from making the same mistake in future matches.

The broader principle here is that self-awareness is the foundation of improvement. If you don’t know what you’re doing wrong, you can’t fix it. Most players have a mental image of their game that doesn’t quite match reality. They think they’re more consistent than they are. They believe they’re mixing up their shots more than they actually do. They overestimate their strengths and underestimate their weaknesses. Video footage corrects these misperceptions with objective data.

For recreational players, implementing this tip has never been easier. Almost everyone has a smartphone capable of recording video. Ask a friend to record one of your recreational games or tournament matches. Then, when you get home, watch it with a notepad. Don’t focus on the points you won or the great shots you hit. Focus on the mistakes. Count your unforced errors. Notice your positioning. Watch your footwork. Look for patterns in when and why you miss certain shots.

The first time you do this will be uncomfortable. You’ll feel slower than you think you are. You’ll look more awkward than you imagine. Your technique will seem less polished than it feels during play. That’s normal. But with repeated exposure, you’ll get past the discomfort and start seeing the footage as data rather than judgment. And once you have that data, you can make informed decisions about what to work on in your next drilling session.

Tip Five: Watch Other Players More Than You Watch Yourself

Here’s a secret that top pros don’t really hide: they copy each other constantly. Bright watches other players religiously. Not just pros at her level, but peers and players slightly better than her. She learned her forehand misdirect up the line by watching Vivian David. She’d rewind YouTube videos 10 seconds at a time, watching the same shot over and over until her subconscious figured it out.

This is the cheat code that nobody talks about. You don’t improve in a vacuum. You improve by studying the people around you and adapting what works from their games into yours. Most of how Bright got good, by her own admission, is copying techniques from other players and adapting them to her style. She can point to specific people she learned most of her shots from.

Ben Johns has said openly that he’s copied countless techniques from other players and picked up bits and pieces throughout his career. The best players in the world are essentially a blend of shots and strategies they’ve observed, practiced, and integrated over time. No one invents pickleball in isolation. You learn by watching, copying, and adapting.

When Bright practices with Anna Leigh Waters, she watches her hit a particularly effective shot and immediately does a shadow swing, trying to figure out the mechanics. She’s actively stealing techniques in real time and incorporating them into her own game. This approach accelerates improvement dramatically because you’re not reinventing the wheel. You’re learning from people who have already figured out what works.

For recreational players, this principle is incredibly accessible. You can watch professional matches on YouTube and study specific aspects of top players’ games. You can watch the better players at your local courts and notice what they do differently. You can ask stronger players for advice and then watch how they execute the techniques they’re describing.

The key is watching with intention. Don’t just watch passively for entertainment. Watch with specific questions in mind. How does this player generate power on their serve? Where do they position themselves during kitchen exchanges? How do they move after hitting a third shot drop? What do they do with their non-dominant hand during volleys? When you watch with specific questions, you start noticing details that would otherwise go unobserved.

After watching, the next step is experimentation. Try incorporating what you observed into your own game during drilling sessions. It won’t feel natural immediately—copying a technique requires repetition before it becomes comfortable—but over time, these borrowed techniques become integrated into your personal style. Eventually, you’ll have a game that’s a unique combination of techniques you’ve learned from dozens of different sources, all adapted to your strengths and preferences.

Why These Five Tips Matter Right Now

The pickleball world is getting more competitive every year. The gap between casual and competitive players is widening as more people take the sport seriously and invest in structured improvement. But here’s what Anna Bright’s framework shows: you don’t need a tennis background or natural athleticism to close that gap. You need intention, discipline, and a willingness to approach improvement systematically.

You need to drill more than you play recreational games. You need to care about your unforced errors. You need to bring effort to practice sessions. You need to study yourself through video analysis. You need to study others and adapt what works.