Are you a beginner pickleball player? These 7 tips will help you get ahead!
Taking up a new sport, like the game of pickleball, can be a daunting experience.
Luckily, we have a list of our top 7 pickleball tips for beginners, that we will gladly share with you, to help you find your pickleball feet fast.
We firmly believe that by following these pickleball beginner tips and drills, you will be playing at a comfortable and competitive skill level in no time.
Our top pickleball tips for beginners are:
- Dress For Success
- Choose The Right Pickleball Paddle
- Attend A Pickleball For Beginners Camp
- Learn The Basics
- Keep Your Focus
- Try To Keep The Rallies Long
- Make Having Fun Your Priority
We’ll dive deeper into each of these in this article, but the best advice for a pickleball beginner is to play often.
Pickleball is the fastest-growing sport in America.
With new courts popping up everywhere, it can only mean positive things for the sport of pickleball.
Even though the vocabulary can seem complicated, pickleball isn’t that difficult to learn, and you can potentially move up from beginner to intermediate in no time.
The more you find yourself on the court, the faster your game will improve.
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1. Dress For Success
Pickleball is a game where you move around a lot.
What you wear on the pickleball court is important, as you want to feel comfortable and not restricted in movement.
While there is now plenty of dedicated pickleball clothing on the market, it’s not necessary to invest right away (unless you want to!).
You can simply put on your regular exercise gear, as you would wear to the gym or any other sport.
The more comfortable your kit, the better you will be able to move on the court, which is a vital part of pickleball.
Plus, being comfortable in what you’re wearing will give you a confidence boost – which could enhance your play.
A very important tip for beginner pickleball players is to invest is a good pair of pickleball shoes.
A regular trainer doesn’t provide the required stability when moving laterally on a hard court, so this is one thing we do recommend investing in early.
Protecting your feet is super-important, as an unprotected foot, stands no chance when having to move quickly in multiple directions.
Many beginner pickleball players make the mistake of wrong footwear, picking up foot injuries before their pickleball adventure has even started.
Running shoes don’t last long on a pickleball court, due to a lack of stability in certain areas, leading to them being damaged quickly.
If you haven’t already picked up a pair of pickleball shoes, check out our article on the best shoes to get started.
Discover our best-selling pickleball clothing and accessories – perfect for both on and off the court:
2. Choose The Right Pickleball Paddle
Even as a beginner player, it’s important to use a paddle that feels good for you – and that can be overwhelming when you see how many options there are out there.
Luckily, there are lots of great pickleball paddles for beginners to choose between.
Even so, you’ll want to take some things into consideration when choosing.
One of the best pickleball beginner tips for choosing a paddle is this: the lighter the paddle, the more control you will have on your shots with less power.
There are three weight classes when choosing a paddle:
- Lightweight – Approximately 7.5 ounces and below
- Midweight – Approximately between 7.5 and 8.4 ounces
- Heavyweight – 8.5 ounces and above
A heavier paddle will add power to your game, but your control will be less. That’s why we recommend that you start off with a midweight paddle.
You will get a better balance of power and control and quickly figure out if you need to downgrade or upgrade on your next paddle.
Ensure that you choose a paddle model that features a fiberglass or graphite surface, as these are the best materials for a paddle surface.
Fiberglass equals more power, graphite more finesse.
Here are a few excellent beginner pickleball paddles to choose from:
- Onix Stryker 4
- Head Extreme Elite
- Paddletek Phoenix Genesis
- Babolat Renegade Power
- Onix Graphite Z5
- Prolite Rebel Powerspin 2.0
You may also want to check out our guide to the best pickleball paddles, which includes options for everybody from the first time you play to advanced players.
3. Attend A Pickleball Camp For Beginners
If you have time and spare cash, we can highly recommend that a beginner pickleball player join a pickleball training camp.
Pickleball camps are popping up all over the country, and it’s a great way to meet pickleball players while at the same time getting professional training.
We have identified pickleball camps that are beginner friendly and whose primary goal is to assist you in getting from a beginner to competing against intermediate players as fast as possible:
- LevelUP Pickleball Camps: At these camps, they teach pickleball to beginners covering all the required mechanics, techniques, and pickleball drills for beginners. Click here to see if there’s a pickleball camp happening near you.
- Engage Pickleball Camps: When enrolling with Engage Pickleball Camps for training you get professional training and a pickleball paddle included in the price. In order to enroll as a beginner, you will need to know the basics of the game and be able to serve. Click here for bookings.
- Bobby Riggs Rackets And Paddles: Located in Encinitas, California, the Bobby Riggs Centre hosts open play pickleball sessions during the week, with competitions on Saturdays. Private pickleball for beginners’ clinics can also be booked at the venue.
4. Learn The Basics
The more you play pickleball, the quicker you will learn the rules.
It does help to know some of the basic rules before you start your pickleball journey, like the following:
- Any point starts with one bounce per side
- Serving is done from behind the baseline
- A serve may not fall in the non-volley zone
- Games must terminate at 11, 15, or 21 points
- The ball cannot bounce twice
- The rules of the kitchen
In pickleball, there’s an area on the court known as the kitchen.
The rules surrounding what you may and may not do in the kitchen takes a while to get used to and still manages to trip up experienced players in the heat of the moment.
We suggest you familiarize yourself with the kitchen rules, as a lot of the pickleball action is in this area. The most important rule of the kitchen is to stay out of it!
5. Keep Your Focus
Focus is important in all areas of life. When we lose our focus, bad things tend to happen.
It’s the same in sports. As soon as an athlete loses focus on what is required on the field, performance levels will drop.
Focus On The Ball
One of the fundamental rules for old and new players in pickleball is to focus on the ball.
It may sound like the obvious is being stated – and it is 0 but when your focus is on the ball at all times (literally focusing on the holes in the ball), you will start hitting the ball consistently and out of the sweet spot.
By focusing your eyes on the holes in the ball, you will find that you remain present in the game, decreasing the wanderings of your mind and resulting in a much more engaging experience.
Focus On Your Breathing
A pickleball game is supposed to be fun, but when trying your hand at a new sport there will always be an element of nerves at play.
It’s perfectly normal to hold your breath while focusing, but by fully exhaling, you elevate Co2 in your lungs, alleviating stress.
A good pickleball tip for beginner players, who can get frustrated more easily, is to relax when you are still learning the game’s mechanics.
Basically: remember to breathe!
Focus On Your Movement
Ask any pickleball expert what the most important aspect is when playing pickleball, and most would say movement on the court.
If you come from a tennis background, you will find that you have no problem with moving fast on the pickleball court.
Tennis players are used to playing up on the balls of their feet, as this allows for faster movement on the court, compared to playing from the heels of your feet.
Be like a tennis player and stay on the balls of your feet. You will find that you are more agile on the court and respond much quicker to serves and shots.
6. Try To Keep The Rallies Long
When you start playing pickleball, you won’t be able to play all the spins and dinks at first, and that’s perfectly fine.
Our pickleball tip for beginners is to keep it simple in the beginning. Hit as many balls as you can.
Get a hitting partner and get the rallies going, where your only goal is to get the ball over the net for as long as possible.
Rallies give you the perfect opportunity to get your swing mechanics going, ready to fine-tune as you advance to a higher level of play.
7. Make Having Fun Your Priority
The most important tip for pickleball beginners is to have fun. Pickleball is a competitive sport, but most importantly, it’s fun.
From the very beginning, tell yourself that every time you step out on a pickleball court, you will have fun no matter what.
With this attitude and expectation, you will quickly learn to love the sport as millions of players do.
And, in no time, you will be more competitive as your game progresses.
Fun first, results later!
Top 5 Common Mistakes That Beginner Pickleball Players Make
In pickleball, the best way to learn is through trial and error.
Your goal should be to minimize the errors when you want to take things to the next level, so here’s a heads up on the top 5 most common mistakes beginner pickleball players make.
Don’t be hard on yourself; we have all made these mistakes in the beginning. The most important thing is that you focus on how you can start to eliminate them.
1. Moving Up The Court After A Serve
A common mistake beginner pickleball players make is moving up the court after completing a serve.
The problem with this is that the receiver has one goal: to hit a deep return, putting as much pressure on the next shot as he can.
Pickleball drill for beginners: Serve and stay behind the baseline. Your instinct might be to move forward, but straight after a serve, it’s not recommended.
You can ask a friend to monitor your movement after you serve, scoring you negatively if you “scoot” up the court.
You could even agree that a certain amount of scoots results in you buying drinks afterwards!
2. Attempting Fancy Shots
When you are a brand new pickleball player, you might have watched videos online of the best players and noticed their advanced pickleball strategies.
Intricate spin shots and clever dink shots are part of pickleball, but it takes many hours on the courts before you can perfect them.
Many beginner players try these shots from the get-go and, as expected, fail to convert more than 95% of these fancy shots (leaving the player dejected.)
Pickleball drill for beginners: Make it your focus to get as many balls over the net without worrying about putting a spin on the ball.
Long rallies are essential in figuring out your swing mechanics and improving your pickleball skills.
3. Mistakes In And Around The Kitchen
The non-volley zone. A source of frustration for many a beginner pickleball player (for experienced players too!).
It takes a while to learn the nuances of the kitchen area’s rules and successfully implement them in your pickleball strategy.
Pickleball drill for beginners: Practice squatting down instead of leaning over the kitchen line when playing shots.
4. Not Getting To The Kitchen
Most pickleball action takes place close to the kitchen. A common mistake that new pickleball players make is not getting to the kitchen in time or at all.
Yes, it’s best if you stay out of the kitchen, but you can’t stay away from the kitchen completely, as most points are lost and won here.
Pickleball drill for beginners: Practice taking a step towards the kitchen after playing the third shot.
Follow up that initial first step with continued movement to the kitchen area, ensuring to stay out of the kitchen when volleying.
5. Hitting The Ball Too Hard
Pickleball is all about finesse, control, and precision; it takes time to learn how to control the pace of the ball with your paddle.
Many beginner pickleball players initially tend to hit the ball too hard when receiving and attacking, especially on the third shot.
Here’s what we mean by that…
A pickleball ball travels at different speeds, depending on how much power your opponent puts in the swing, the connection of the ball and paddle, and so forth.
When you hit the ball too hard, especially in the third shot where your opponent has made his way to the kitchen, it gives him the perfect opportunity to smash the ball.
Pickleball drill for beginners: Get someone to hit fastballs at you.
Focus on taking off speed and returning the ball at a shorter distance than where the attacker hits from.
The exercise will teach you about pace control and playing shots with precision.
Want more beginner pickleball tips for beginners?
We hope you’ve found these pickleball tips for beginners helpful!
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