How Much Should You Drill vs. Play? A Top Pro Did the Math
There’s a question that keeps coming up in pickleball circles, the kind that sparks debates at courts across the country: how much time should you actually spend drilling versus playing? It seems simple enough on the surface, like there should be some magic formula you can follow. But when you dig into it, the answer reveals something far more interesting about how we actually improve at this sport.
Kyle Koszuta, a competitive player who’s been methodically tracking his own development, recently shared his breakdown of this drilling-versus-playing dilemma. What he discovered wasn’t just a simple ratio to follow. It was something that challenges how most of us think about practice entirely. The real insight isn’t about how to divide your time. It’s about understanding what actually drives improvement when your court time is limited.
Why Complete Beginners Should Skip Drilling
When Koszuta first picked up a paddle on August 21, 2021, he didn’t drill at all for over two months. That wasn’t an accident or laziness. Looking back, he believes that was exactly the right approach for someone brand new to the sport.
Think about what happens when you’re truly a beginner. You’re still figuring out where to stand on the court. You’re learning what the score means and how to call it. You’re discovering basic strategy like why everyone keeps talking about getting to the kitchen line. These fundamentals take real gameplay to absorb, usually somewhere around two to three months of consistent play.
Drilling at this stage is like trying to perfect your technique on something when you don’t even understand why that technique matters. You need context first. You need to know what the game actually feels like, what situations come up repeatedly, where you consistently struggle. Without that foundation, drilling becomes an abstract exercise disconnected from anything meaningful.
This isn’t just about beginners being too new to benefit from drills. It’s about the learning process itself. Your brain needs to understand the broader picture before it can effectively focus on refining specific skills. When you play games as a beginner, you’re building that mental framework. You’re learning cause and effect. You hit the ball too hard, it goes out. You stand too far back, you can’t reach the kitchen. These lessons stick because they happen in context.
The Moment Everything Changed
Fast forward to 2025, and Koszuta had an experience that completely shifted how he thinks about skill development. He was getting ready for a tournament with his friend Cam Luhring when he noticed just how effective Luhring’s two-handed backhand was during rallies. It was a weapon. So Koszuta asked for some instruction, and they turned it into content.
They spent 45 focused minutes on court working specifically on that two-handed backhand technique. Koszuta was learning the grip, the stance, the swing path, all the mechanical details that make the shot work. Then they took a break for a few hours before heading back to the courts for a regular pickup game with two other friends.
During that two-hour game session, Koszuta tried to use his newly learned two-handed backhand. He attempted it 15 times total. The results? Not great. Most of the shots didn’t work the way he wanted. Some were completely mis-hit. A few were okay, but nothing felt natural or reliable.
This is where the math gets interesting, and where most players completely underestimate how long it actually takes to develop a new skill through gameplay alone.
The Math That Actually Matters
Let’s say you’re like many recreational players. You get out to the courts five times a week, playing for about two hours each session. That’s a pretty solid commitment. Now let’s say during those games, you get 15 opportunities to attempt a new skill you’re trying to develop. Maybe it’s that two-handed backhand, or a consistent third shot drop, or better dinking placement.
Here’s what those numbers look like when you extend them out:
- 75 repetitions per week
- 300 repetitions per month
- 3,900 repetitions per year
On the surface, nearly 4,000 reps in a year sounds pretty good. That should be enough to get comfortable with something new, right? But there’s a massive problem with these numbers that most players never consider.
Every single one of those repetitions is happening in the worst possible environment for learning. You’re in the middle of a game. You’re thinking about winning the point. You’re worried about letting your partner down if you mess up. There’s social pressure, competitive pressure, all kinds of mental noise. Your brain doesn’t have the bandwidth to really process what you’re doing right or wrong. You’re just reacting, trying to survive the rally.
At that rate of learning, it might take a full year just to feel somewhat comfortable with a new skill. Actually feeling confident enough to use it consistently in pressure situations? That could take several years.
Now consider a different approach. What if you dedicated just five minutes a day to drilling that specific skill? Koszuta actually tested this. He went out to the court with a partner and a timer. In just five minutes of focused drilling on one shot, he got 125 repetitions.
Do that math over time:
- 625 repetitions per week
- 2,500 repetitions per month
- 32,500 repetitions per year
That’s over eight times more repetitions in a fraction of the time. A 2,000% return on your time investment. And these aren’t just any reps. They’re focused reps where you’re thinking about one thing, getting immediate feedback, making small adjustments, and reinforcing the correct technique.
The Problem With Mindless Repetition
Here’s where things get tricky, and where most players who do start drilling make a critical mistake. Just doing something over and over doesn’t automatically make you better at it. In fact, it can make you worse.
Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson spent decades researching expertise and high performance. His concept of “deliberate practice” revealed something important: the quality of your practice matters infinitely more than the quantity. You have to practice with clear intention and get accurate feedback on what you’re actually doing, not what you think you’re doing.
Think of it this way. Every repetition you take is creating a neural pathway in your brain. The more you repeat something, the stronger that pathway becomes. It’s like digging a groove. The more times you run water down the same path, the deeper and more permanent that groove gets.
But here’s the thing your brain doesn’t care about: whether you’re doing it right or wrong. It just learns whatever pattern you repeat. If you take 500 repetitions of a dink with poor technique, your brain creates a deep groove for that poor technique. Then a coach watches you play and points out the problem. Now you’re stuck. You have to somehow fill in that old groove and dig a new one in a different place. That’s incredibly frustrating and takes way longer than just learning it correctly from the start.
This is why you see players who have been playing for years still struggling with the same fundamental issues. They’ve been practicing their mistakes for so long that those mistakes have become ingrained habits. Breaking those habits requires not just learning the right technique, but actively unlearning the wrong one.
The Two Essential Elements of Effective Practice
If you’re going to drill, two things matter more than anything else. Get these right and your improvement accelerates dramatically. Miss either one and you’re basically wasting your time.
First is intention. Before you start any drill, you need to know exactly what you’re working on and why it matters. After you finish, take a moment to reflect. What were you trying to accomplish? What actually happened? What felt good? What felt off? What will you try differently next time?
This isn’t complicated or time-consuming. It’s just being deliberate instead of mindless. Most players skip this step entirely. They just hit balls back and forth without ever thinking about what they’re reinforcing. That’s not practice. That’s just hitting.
The second essential element is feedback. You need something or someone outside of yourself telling you what’s actually happening, because your memory and perception of what happened on the court is usually pretty inaccurate. You think you hit a great shot with perfect form, but video shows your paddle face was completely open and you got lucky with the bounce.
This is where filming yourself becomes incredibly valuable. Or working with a coach who can watch and give you immediate corrections. Or joining an online program where you can submit videos for analysis. Or even using AI software that can track your shots and patterns. Without some form of external feedback, you’re just reinforcing whatever you already do, which might be exactly what’s holding you back from the next level.
Why Drilling Alone Isn’t Enough
Here’s something that might seem obvious but needs to be said clearly: drilling and playing serve completely different purposes. You need both, and you can’t replace one with the other.
Drilling teaches your body how to execute a skill. It’s about mechanics, muscle memory, technique. In a drill, you generally know where the ball is going. You’re working on one specific thing, usually playing on half the court or in a constrained scenario. There’s some decision-making involved, but it’s limited and predictable.
Games teach your brain when to use that skill. They force you to read opponents, react in real time, make split-second decisions under pressure. You’re not just executing technique. You’re choosing which technique to use, when to use it, and adjusting based on what your opponent is doing. There’s emotional pressure too, especially if you care about the outcome or don’t want to disappoint your partner.
You’ve probably heard someone say, “I’m great in drills but I fall apart in games.” That’s this exact phenomenon. Drilling is easier than real games because the variables are controlled. The pressure is lower. You can focus on one thing at a time.
You drill to build the neural pathways, to make the technique automatic. Then you play to test whether those pathways hold up when your brain is busy with a hundred other things. For a long time when you’re learning something new, those pathways won’t hold up under game pressure. That’s completely normal. The technique that felt smooth and easy in drilling suddenly disappears when you’re down 9-10 in a close game.
This is actually a sign that your learning is progressing correctly. The skill is getting wired in drilling. Now it needs to get reinforced under pressure through gameplay. Eventually, with enough practice in both contexts, the skill becomes truly automatic. It works even when you’re tired, stressed, or distracted.
The Actual Recommendations Based on Your Situation
So what’s the real answer to the original question? How much should you drill versus play? Koszuta offers specific guidelines based on where you are in your pickleball journey and what your goals are.
If you’re in your first zero to three months of playing, his recommendation is simple: don’t drill at all. Just play. Learn the game. Figure out what pickleball actually is. Understand the flow, the strategy, the social dynamics. Build that foundational context that makes drilling meaningful later.
From three to six months in, start adding one drilling session per week for about an hour. You now understand the game well enough to know what you need to work on. Maybe your serves are inconsistent. Maybe you struggle with dinking. Maybe your transition from baseline to kitchen is awkward. Pick one thing and drill it deliberately.
At six to twelve months, or if you’re actively trying to win your local league, bump it up to two drilling sessions per week for about 60 minutes each. Then play the rest of the time. You’re at a stage where you have decent fundamentals but you’re trying to refine specific skills to get to the next competitive level.
If you’re retired with unlimited time and a deep love for the game, consider drilling three to four times a week and playing three to four times. This is ideal for steady, consistent improvement without burning out. You’re balancing skill development with the pure enjoyment of competition and social play.
For competitive players seriously pursuing tournaments, drilling every day becomes part of the routine. Koszuta himself drills daily, which makes sense given that he’s won three gold medals on the A tour. At that level, you’re constantly refining tiny details and maintaining extremely high skill levels.
But what if you genuinely have no time to drill? Maybe you can only make it to your regular rec play sessions and that’s it. Koszuta has a solution for this too: show up 15 to 30 minutes early. Before everyone arrives for open play, grab someone and isolate one specific thing. Work on serves and returns. Drill dinking for 20 minutes. Practice your resets. Those short, focused sessions before games can actually be incredibly effective because you can then immediately test what you worked on in real gameplay.
And if you truly hate drilling and just can’t bring yourself to do it? That’s okay too. But then invest in getting your games analyzed by a coach. Record your matches and get personalized feedback on what’s actually holding you back. This is one of the fastest ways to improve when you’re not putting in drilling time, because it gives you that external perspective you need to know what to work on during your gameplay.
Understanding This for the Average Player
If you’re relatively new to thinking about pickleball improvement this way, let me break down why this matters and what it means in practical terms.
Most of us approach getting better at pickleball the same way we approached getting better at anything as kids: we just do it a lot and hope we improve. That works to a point. You will naturally get better just from playing more. But there’s a ceiling to that approach, and it’s frustratingly low.
The distinction between drilling and playing is really about focused learning versus applied learning. Drilling is like studying for a test. You’re isolating specific information, repeating it until it sticks, making sure you understand it deeply. Playing is like taking the test. You’re using everything you’ve studied in a complex situation where you have to recall the right information at the right time under pressure.
Imagine trying to learn a language only by having conversations with native speakers. You’d pick up some things, sure. But you’d also reinforce a lot of mistakes because nobody’s correcting you in real time during natural conversation. You need focused study time where you learn grammar, practice pronunciation, build vocabulary. Then you use conversations to apply what you’ve studied.
Pickleball works the same way. If you only play games, you’re constantly in test-taking mode. You never have time to actually learn the material properly. But if you only drill and never play games, you’re studying for a test you never take. The knowledge doesn’t become practical or useful.
The magic happens when you do both intentionally. You drill to build skills in a low-pressure environment where you can focus on doing it right. Then you play to test those skills in the chaos of real competition. When something fails in games, you make a note of it and take it back to drilling. This cycle of learning, testing, adjusting, and repeating is what drives real improvement.
What makes Koszuta’s approach valuable isn’t that he’s prescribing exact time splits. It’s that he’s helping you think about your court time differently. Five minutes of intentional drilling where you’re focused on one thing, getting feedback, and making adjustments is worth more than an hour of mindless hitting. One game where you intentionally try to use a new skill and notice what happens is worth more than five games where you’re just trying to win without thinking about improvement.
The ratio of drilling to playing matters far less than the intention you bring to both. You could drill for ten hours a week with no clear focus or feedback and stay stuck at the same level forever. Or you could drill for 30 minutes with crystal clear intention, test it in games with awareness, notice what doesn’t work, adjust in your next drilling session, and improve faster than 99% of players out there.
The Bigger Picture
What Koszuta really figured out through all his tracking and analysis is something that applies way beyond pickleball. Getting better at anything requires two distinct types of practice: the kind where you slow down and focus on
