The 12 Drills You Need to Play Your Best Pickleball in 2026

There’s a certain honesty required when it comes to improving at pickleball that most players aren’t willing to confront. We all want to believe that if we just play enough games, the skills will naturally develop. We convince ourselves that our serves are getting better, our dinks more consistent, our volleys sharper. But the reality is that unstructured play only reinforces existing habits, both good and bad. Jordan Briones, the coach behind Briones Pickleball Academy, understands this fundamental truth about skill development, and his comprehensive drilling guide offers something that’s increasingly rare in the pickleball instruction space: a methodical, progressive approach that assumes nothing and builds everything from the ground up.

What makes this particular framework compelling isn’t its novelty. These aren’t secret techniques or revolutionary approaches that will transform your game overnight. Instead, it’s the deliberate sequencing of 12 fundamental drills that address the most common weaknesses in intermediate play. Briones has structured these exercises to build competency progressively, starting with footwork and hand control before advancing into complex game situations. The underlying philosophy is simple but profound: you can’t just show up and hit balls randomly. You need a plan, and that plan should mirror how skills actually develop in the human brain and body.

Understanding the Progressive Drilling Framework

For those who might be newer to structured pickleball training, it’s worth taking a moment to understand why this progressive approach matters so much. Think of it like learning a musical instrument. You wouldn’t start by attempting to play a complex symphony. You’d begin with scales, then simple melodies, gradually building the muscle memory and coordination required for more sophisticated pieces. Pickleball skill development follows the same principle. The dinking warm-up that starts Briones’ sequence isn’t just about getting loose. It’s about establishing the fundamental movement patterns and paddle control that every subsequent drill will depend on.

This concept of progressive skill building is particularly important in pickleball because the sport demands such a wide range of competencies. You need soft hands for dinking, explosive power for drives, precise footwork for transitions, and split-second decision-making under pressure. Trying to develop all these skills simultaneously through random recreational play is inefficient at best and counterproductive at worst. The drilling structure Briones presents creates a logical pathway where each exercise prepares you for the next, building confidence and competence in a way that feels natural rather than overwhelming.

The Foundation: Starting with Movement and Control

The first drill in the sequence, the Dink Warm-Up, reveals Briones’ coaching philosophy immediately. He’s not concerned with speed or power at this stage. Instead, the focus is entirely on footwork, specifically the shuffle step and angled shuffle step, while working on taking balls out of the air. Spend at least five minutes here, he suggests, and that timing is deliberate. Five minutes is long enough to move past the initial awkwardness and start developing genuine comfort with the movements. It’s also short enough that players won’t lose focus or get bored.

What’s particularly insightful about this opening drill is the emphasis on creating space. Many intermediate players crowd the kitchen line, thinking that being as close as possible to the net gives them an advantage. But without proper spacing and footwork, you’re actually limiting your options and making yourself vulnerable to balls hit at your body. The shuffle step creates lateral movement while maintaining balance, allowing you to position yourself optimally for each shot rather than reaching desperately from a static position.

The Dink Patience Drill builds directly on these movement patterns by adding structure and competition. Players go to 10 points using rally scoring, switching sides after each miss to practice dinking from the even side, odd side, and straight on. This rotation is more strategic than it might initially appear. Each court position presents slightly different angles and challenges. Dinking from the even side requires different paddle angles than dinking from the odd side. By forcing players to experience all these positions repeatedly, the drill develops adaptability rather than just groove mechanics from a single spot.

The competitive element here is also carefully calibrated. Rally scoring to 10 points is enough to create genuine pressure and investment in each rally, but not so much that the drill becomes exhausting or demoralizing. The goal isn’t to win points through aggressive play but to outlast your opponent through consistency and patience. This removes the temptation that plagues so many intermediate players: the urge to attack prematurely, before you’ve actually created an opportunity worth attacking.

Developing Net Play and Volley Control

The transition from dinking to volleying represents a significant gear shift, both in terms of pace and the technical demands placed on players. The Volley Hands Control drill mirrors the dinking progression but introduces speed and reaction time as critical variables. Briones emphasizes hitting volleys at 60-75% power, moving the ball around without trying to put winners away. This percentage is crucial. It’s fast enough to challenge your reaction time and hand-eye coordination but controlled enough that you can focus on technique rather than just surviving each exchange.

The technical detail Briones emphasizes here separates recreational players from competitive ones: compact strokes and keeping the paddle in front of your shoulders. Many players, when volleying, pull their paddles back for what they think is preparation but is actually just creating unnecessary movement that slows their reaction time. By keeping the paddle forward and using compact, punch-like strokes, you maintain better court vision and can respond more quickly to balls hit at different heights and angles.

The Initiator Attack Game introduces a fascinating asymmetry that forces both players to develop complementary skills simultaneously. One player is designated as the initiator and can attack off balance or out of the air, while the other can only counter. This creates a perfect practice environment for two of the most important skills in competitive pickleball: offensive aggression and defensive patience. The initiator learns to recognize and exploit opportunities without forcing attacks that aren’t there. The counter player develops the ability to absorb pressure and reset points, transforming defense into neutrality.

What makes this drill particularly effective is that it removes the ambiguity that exists in regular play. When both players can attack at will, it’s easy to fall into overly aggressive patterns where you’re just trading errors. By clearly defining roles, the drill creates a scenario where both players know exactly what they’re practicing, and the feedback is immediate and unambiguous.

Mastering the Transition Zone

If there’s one area where intermediate players struggle most consistently, it’s the transition zone, that awkward space between the baseline and the kitchen line where you’re vulnerable to balls hit at your feet. The Three and Go drill addresses this weakness directly and methodically. Briones stands in transition while his partner pressures him below the waist. The requirement to hit three resets minimum before advancing to the net is the key constraint that makes this drill so effective.

Three resets might not sound like much, but when you’re in the transition zone being pressured, it requires genuine composure and technical skill. The first reset is usually manageable. The second becomes harder as your opponent adjusts. By the third, you’ve had to move, adjust your positioning, and maintain consistent paddle control through multiple high-pressure shots. Only after demonstrating this level of control are you permitted to advance, which reinforces the fundamental principle: you earn your way to the kitchen line through quality shots, not by running forward blindly.

The Transition Attack Drill flips this dynamic completely. Now Briones feeds short balls to his partner, who attempts to drive them aggressively. The benchmark is realistic and instructive: win at least one out of three attempts. This isn’t about becoming an unstoppable attacker. It’s about developing the confidence and technique to recognize genuine attacking opportunities and convert them at a reasonable rate. One out of three means you’re creating pressure without taking excessive risks. It’s the sweet spot between passive play that never creates offense and reckless aggression that generates more errors than winners.

Baseline Play and Shot Selection

The Three and Go drill returns, but this time from the baseline, focusing on drop shots instead of drives. This repetition of concepts in different contexts is pedagogically sound. You’re learning the same fundamental principle, patience and quality before advancement, but applying it to a different technical skill. Briones makes an important point here that deserves emphasis: you don’t need a perfect third shot. This is perhaps the most liberating thing an intermediate player can hear.

Too many players have internalized the idea that the third shot drop must be a perfect, unattackable ball that lands softly in the kitchen. This creates enormous pressure and leads to tentative, overly cautious shots that float high enough to be attacked anyway. Briones’ approach is more pragmatic. Give yourself margin. Make good decisions about when to advance. A decent drop that allows you to move forward safely is infinitely more valuable than a perfect drop that you can only execute occasionally while missing badly the rest of the time.

The Drive and Drop drill combines two essential shots in a sequence that mirrors real match situations. Receiving a deep ball, driving it, stabilizing, and then hitting a fifth shot before advancing creates a rhythm that players need to internalize. In actual games, you’re rarely executing shots in isolation. You’re chaining them together, and each shot sets up the next. This drill develops that sequential thinking, the ability to plan two or three shots ahead rather than just reacting to each ball individually.

Serves, Returns, and Court Positioning

The Serve Counter Drill introduces an unconventional setup that produces multiple learning outcomes simultaneously. One player serves aggressively while the other volleys from the net, then they play out the point. This works on serve placement, counter volleys, and court positioning all at once. The aggressive serving forces the server to think about placement and power in combination rather than just blasting the ball as hard as possible. The net player develops the quick hands and anticipation needed to volley returns aggressively.

Briones also addresses a more subtle strategic concept here: shading. When your opponent is serving, the middle of the court becomes more vulnerable. Understanding this and adjusting your positioning accordingly is the kind of tactical awareness that separates players who just know the shots from players who understand the geometry and probability of the game. You’re not just learning how to hit balls. You’re learning where to stand, when to move, and how to maximize your coverage based on the situation.

Defensive Skills and Mental Readiness

The Overhead Defense Drill creates a scenario where both players are developing complementary skills. One player feeds deeper balls while the other lobs them over the net. The lobber then plays defense while the feeder attempts overheads. This is elegant in its efficiency. Rather than having one player stand around while the other practices overheads, both players are actively engaged in meaningful skill development throughout the drill.

The defensive positioning required when you’ve lobbed someone is fundamentally different from standard court positioning. You’re expecting a hard, downward shot, which means you need to be slightly deeper, balanced, and ready to react laterally. The overhead player, meanwhile, is working on one of the most technically demanding shots in pickleball, requiring coordination, timing, and power generation from an awkward position above the head.

The Lob Retrieval Drill introduces controlled chaos into the practice session. Players dink normally, but at any moment, one player can lob the other without warning. The lobbed player must let it bounce, track it down, and then play it out. This unpredictability is exactly what makes the drill so valuable. In matches, lobs come when you’re not expecting them. You’re focused on the dinking battle, and suddenly the ball is sailing over your head. The ability to transition instantly from offense to defense, to track down a deep ball, and to recover back into the point is what separates players who can only execute in predictable situations from players who can handle anything.

Bringing It All Together

Skinny Singles serves as the capstone drill, a competitive game played crosscourt only. Briones plays to five points, though he notes most players go to 11. This is where all the individual skills developed in the previous drills come together in a game-like scenario. You’re serving, returning, dinking, attacking, defending, all within the constraints of a narrow court that demands precision and consistency.

The crosscourt-only rule is more than just a space constraint. It forces you to work angles, to think about placement rather than just hitting balls away from your opponent. In regular singles, you can often succeed by just moving your opponent side to side. In skinny singles, you need to use depth, pace variation, and strategic positioning to create advantages. It’s a more sophisticated game that demands more sophisticated skills.

What makes this entire drilling sequence so effective is not any individual drill but the way they build on each other. You start with simple movement patterns and progress toward complex game situations. You develop technical skills in isolation before combining them into sequences. You practice under controlled conditions before introducing competitive pressure and unpredictability. This is how skills actually develop in the human brain and body: through progressive overload, through repetition with variation, through challenge that’s calibrated just above your current ability level.

The Philosophy Behind Structured Practice

There’s a broader lesson here about improvement that extends beyond these specific drills. Briones’ approach represents a fundamental philosophy: consistency beats intensity, structure beats randomness, and fundamentals beat flash. Most players, when they decide to improve, start working on the exciting stuff. They want a bigger serve, a more aggressive attack game, the ability to hit spectacular winners. But these advanced skills are built on a foundation of basics that most players have never truly mastered.

The shuffle step in the opening drill isn’t glamorous. Patiently dinking to 10 points isn’t exciting. Hitting three resets from the transition zone before advancing feels conservative and slow. But these are the movements and habits that allow the exciting stuff to happen consistently. You can’t attack effectively if you’re not in the right position. You can’t defend successfully if your footwork is sloppy. You can’t execute a perfect drop shot if your hand control isn’t reliable.

This is why random recreational play, while fun and valuable for other reasons, isn’t an efficient path to improvement. When you’re just playing games, you’re practicing everything simultaneously, which means you’re not really focused on anything. You’re reinforcing existing patterns, good and bad, without the deliberate attention required to change them. Structured drilling creates an environment where you can isolate specific skills, work on them with focused attention, receive immediate feedback, and gradually integrate them into your overall game.

Implementing This Framework

The practical challenge, of course, is implementing this kind of structured practice into your routine. It requires finding a willing practice partner, someone who’s equally committed to improvement and willing to spend time on drills rather than just playing games. It requires discipline to work through the entire sequence rather than skipping to the fun parts. And it requires patience to trust that this progressive approach will yield results even when the improvement isn’t immediately obvious.

But for players who are genuinely serious about taking their game to the next level in 2026, this framework provides a clear roadmap. You don’t need to wonder what to work on or how to structure your practice time. You don’t need to invent drills or figure out progressions on your own. Briones has done that work, organizing these 12 drills in a sequence that builds logically from simple to complex, from isolated skills to integrated game situations.

The beauty of this approach is that it meets you wherever you currently are. If you’re a 3.5 player struggling with consistency, the early drills on dinking and volley control will provide exactly the foundation you need. If you’re a 4.0 player looking to become more competitive, the later drills on transition play and strategic shot selection will challenge you in meaningful ways. And if you’re somewhere in between, working through the entire sequence will identify your specific weaknesses and provide targeted practice to address them.

Why This Matters Now

Pickleball has evolved rapidly over the past few years, and the skill level of the average player has increased significantly. What worked to reach 3.5 or 4.0 a few years ago might not be sufficient now. The game has become more athletic, more strategic, more technically sophisticated. Players are studying the pros, taking lessons, and dedicating serious time to improvement. If you want to keep pace with this evolution, you need to be equally serious about your development.

This drilling framework represents that kind of seriousness. It’s not about playing more. It’s about practicing smarter. It’s not about trying harder. It’s about building better habits. The 12 drills work because they address real weaknesses in most intermediate players’ games. Whether you’re struggling with consistency, transition play, or decision-making under pressure, there’s something here that will help you improve.

The commitment required is significant but not overwhelming. Running through this entire sequence might take 90