Your voice is one of your most important tools on the court. Whether you’re running drills or giving feedback, the way you speak shapes how players understand and respond. A coaching voice isn’t about being loud, it’s about being clear, confident, and engaging so everyone feels guided and supported.
Pickleball Coaching
Set the Lesson Tone: First impressions Matter More Than You Think
Whether you’re running a beginner clinic or working with advanced players, the tone you set at the start of a lesson shapes the entire experience. Before you even feed the first ball, players are forming opinions: Is this coach prepared? Do they take this seriously? Am I in good hands?
One of the easiest and most effective ways to set a professional tone is by arriving early and showing up looking like a coach. These small habits build trust and create a strong foundation for learning.
Keep It Game-Like, Coach! The Importance of Training Players Through Play
In pickleball coaching, one of the most effective ways to help players improve isn’t a complicated drill or a long explanation—it’s simply to make practice look and feel more like the real game. When your drills reflect the actual situations players face in matches, their learning sticks, their decisions improve, and their skills transfer more easily.
How to Give Effective Feedback: Coaching That Drives Improvement
Providing effective feedback is one of the most important skills a pickleball coach can develop. The way you deliver feedback can make the difference between a player feeling motivated to improve or becoming frustrated and discouraged. One of the best ways to ensure that your feedback is clear, constructive, and encouraging is by using the "What, Why, How" feedback method.
Building Progression in a Lesson: A Coach’s Building Blocks for Pickleball Mastery
One of the most effective ways to help players improve in pickleball is using a progression-based approach to teaching. Instead of overwhelming players with multiple concepts at once, start with basic skills and build up gradually. This method ensures players develop solid fundamentals before advancing to more complex techniques.
Keep It Simple Coach: Less is more, especially in the coaching world
Starting with the Fundamentals: The Big Five
No matter your skill level, mastering the fundamentals is key to improving your pickleball game. Too often, players jump ahead to advanced strategies without first developing a solid foundation. By focusing on the Big Five—Grip, Setup, Impact Point, Sensation, and Recovery—you’ll build consistency, control, and confidence on the court. Let’s break them down.
It’s the Little Things: Being a Caring Instructor
A great coach is not just about having successful drills and teaching effective techniques it's about connection. The best instructors don’t just teach the game; they make their students feel valued, supported, and motivated. It's the little things in every lesson that make the biggest impact on players.
Coaching a Game of Movement: Throw and Catch Drills
If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times: pickleball is a game of movement. You can have the nicest swing in the world but if you can’t get to the ball, you can’t use it. That’s why pickleball coaches should get their players – especially those who maybe don’t have an extensive ball sport background – to work on their catching skills. Here’s are three examples of catching-related drills that will help your players improve:
Show, Don’t Just Tell: Why Great Coaches Demonstrate
When it comes to coaching pickleball, one of the simplest yet most powerful tools at your disposal is demonstrating. Whether you’re teaching technical skills or running a new drill, showing players what to do — and how to do it — can make the difference between confusion and clarity, between a practice session that drags and one that’s dynamic and effective.
If you’re serious about helping your players improve, here’s why demonstrating is essential — and how to do it well.
Setting the Tone: The Importance of Punctuality and Professionalism
Pickleball Technique, Pickleball Coaching, Pickleball Strategy
In Praise of the Short Return
One of the first things new players learn in pickleball is that they should try to return serve deep. Never mind that most people misunderstand why a deep return can be effective, it has become virtually axiomatic in most pickleball circles that you try to push your opponents as far behind the baseline as possible.
While deep return can be in effective tool, I think there is good evidence to suggest a short return of serve can be as good or even better. Let’s look at three reasons why:
Pickleball Coaching, Pickleball Technique
Need a Better Backhand?
If you are like most people, you don’t love it when the ball comes to your backhand side. This may be when you are up near the net hitting a volley, a dink or a smash, or could be when you’re at the back of the court playing a return of serve, third shot drop or a drive. For many people, when the ball comes to their non-dominant side panic sets in and that is never a good thing in pickleball. So here are three tips to improve your backhand.
Pickleball Coaching, Miscellaneous Pickleball
PB Coaching: It's Not Who You Are -- It's Who You Pretend to Be
“WHAT’S A GREAT DRILL FOR NOVICE PICKLEBALL PLAYERS?
“HOW ABOUT INTERMEDIATES?”
“WHAT ARE THE BEST DRILLS FOR ADVANCED PLAYERS?”
These are questions that I am asked on a pretty regular basis from pickleball instructors who want to know what drills and games they can use with players of different skill levels.
I’m always happy to share my ideas. In fact, I wrote a whole drill guide about it. But whenever responding to these questions I always add something like this:
Myth Busting, Pickleball Coaching, Pickleball Strategy, Pickleball Technique
5 Things We Get Wrong About Pickleball Strategy
If you ask 20 people why they should run to the net after returning a serve, you’re likely to get a variety of different answers. The most common ones will be some version of: it’s where the game is won or lost; because it’s not tennis; if you control the net, you control the point; the first team to the net usually wins. None of these answers actually get to the tactical value of returning and running. So let’s make it more clear.
Pickleball Technique, Pickleball Coaching
What Counts as ‘Good' Pickleball Technique?
One of the great things about pickleball is how easy it is to start playing. Even without a strong racquet sport background, new players can have fun almost immediately after hitting the court.
This low barrier to entry also means that we see pretty wide variations of technique (i.e. how people use their body and paddle). Drop in on your local courts and you'll see a plethora of different grips people use to hold their paddle. You'll see some people prepare for the ball in a sideways position and others who are almost always facing forward. You'll notice some players using two hands on their backhands and others who only use one.