Wall Drills That Will Make You A 5.0 Pickleball Player

Hi, I'm Ava Ignatovich. I'm a professional pickleball player on the PPA Tour. And if you're a loser with no friends, today I'm gonna be teaching you how to get better using just a wall. The main reason that I love hitting against the wall is because I feel like if I'm going out and practicing, I'm only hitting 25% of the shots during that hour. Whereas if I'm playing against a wall, I'm hitting 100% of the shots. I feel like it's so many more reps than just a regular doubles game. So it's so much more bang for your buck. So the first thing I'm gonna do here is I'm just gonna get some soft touches in, right? I'm gonna aim kind of below this line and above this line. This would be the net. So just some low, soft, this would be a dink, right? One kind of limitation of hitting against the wall is you don't see where your balls are landing. So you don't know if you're hitting the ball out or too deep, but that doesn't matter because I feel like feel is such an important thing. And that's what you're working on when you hit against the wall. And by feel, what I mean is when I'm hitting against the wall, the main things I'm focusing on is taking the ball out in front, feeling it through my fingertips, and trying to make sure that I'm hitting the sweet spot of the paddle every single time. So I'm literally watching the ball into the middle of my paddle. And this is how I'm going to develop good touch and good accuracy for when I'm actually playing real pickleball. So after I'm kind of done hitting my dinks and I'm feeling a little bit looser and a little bit warm, I'll go ahead and I'll mix in some speed ups against the wall and then some resets. So this is one that's really fun. You can just, in the middle of your dink rally, speed up towards the wall and then block it back so that it comes back soft to you. Speed up, reset, speed up, reset. By the way, it's kind of hard to do this and talk at the same time. So if I mess up, it is not my fault. Speed up, reset. I would say for the majority of my wall practices, I dedicate most of it to doing hands. I feel like this is the most beneficial thing to practice on the wall because you're really forced to hit the ball out in front of you and kind of get like a good feel for it because a lot of the time against the wall, you don't know where the ball is going to be coming back. So this is a hands drill I will do against the wall. I'll try and hit a forehand, backhand, forehand, backhand. I'll just kind of go back and forth and make sure that I'm hitting the ball out in front of me. That's the most important thing. That's why we do this, to learn to hit the ball out in front of us. That's why we use the wall, honestly. And when you're doing hands against a wall, it bounces back so quickly that it ends up making your hands a lot faster. So this is probably the number one thing that I would recommend practicing on a wall is hands. It just has so many benefits. It's also a great benefit for forearm strength because you're kind of just forced to be in this position the whole time and squeeze the whole time. Another thing that you could do that I've done a lot before, but I'm not doing today, is I'll load up my paddle with a ton of lead tape before I do hands on the wall to make my paddle a little bit heavier. And that's really good for forearm strength and wrist strength. It's just a good kind of endurance exercise for your hands. And the level will depend on how close you are to the wall. So if this is too difficult for you, just take a couple steps back and it should be a lot easier. And this is even how you can work on your reaction time, just moving forward and moving backwards. There's only so much I can cover in a video, but lucky for you, I've put together a 58-page, in-depth, complete pickleball system, roadmap from beginner to pro. It covers every shot in pickleball, high-level strategies. It has over 20 different drills that I use, and it even has structured practice plans for every single level from 2.5 to pro. If you're interested in really transforming your game, this is The Missing Piece, a collection of everything I've learned for the past few years playing on tour. Secrets from the best players in the world. I'll leave a link in the description and pinned comment down below. I highly recommend you check it out. One of my deepest, darkest secrets is that the main reason that I hit on the wall is to burn calories. I think that it's great cardio, and there have been times where I've hit on the wall for like 45 minutes and burned over 500 calories. Just a quick tip, if you're trying to be a Hawkgirl Summer. So anyway, so I'll show you some of my little things that I do with drives to burn calories. So obviously, if you're just hitting regular drives and getting really low and trying to hit through the ball, you're going to burn a lot of calories. But one thing that I'll do is I'll pick a drive and I'll try and move sideways with it. So I'll do this a lot. And I'll hit, and I'll just move back and forth across the whole wall or whatever. Again, not easy to do this while talking. But yeah, this is one that I do quite often. Think it's good, really good fitness. A lot of people struggle with their backhand drive, me especially. And the wall is a great way to practice it because you're not in a game. So you're not like worried about other people judging you for messing up or missing it. The wall doesn't judge you. The wall loves you. So backhand drives is a great way. It's a great way to practice them. The wall is good for taking out your anger too. A lot of pro players kind of hate on the wall and say it's not super beneficial, but I play with the wall more than I play with people. I do it so often that it's kind of sad actually. Anytime that I can't set up a game, I just, I hit on the wall. Another fun thing you can work on with the wall is crashes, crashing and poaching, the shake and bake type situation. So just kind of feed yourself a high ball and then come in off of it. A really good thing about the wall is that you don't have to be super perfect, right? You're not in a game. So you can focus a ton on your footwork and you don't really necessarily have to think about stupid things like where your ball is going. If it's going in, if it's going out, you can literally just work on your form and your footwork, work on perfecting it. Get a camera and film yourself hitting against the wall so you can kind of check your form and make sure you're not getting bad reps in. We don't wanna get really bad reps in while we're on the wall because muscle memory is, you don't wanna make muscle memory of you playing like an idiot. So make sure that you are split stepping. When your ball hits the wall, that's when you wanna split step. That way, in a game situation, you'll have that muscle memory in and your split will always be early. It's better to have an early split step than a late split step. So split step, moving, getting around the ball, getting under the ball and just hitting the ----. So you can practice open stance drives and closed stance drives. Open stance is when your stance is open. Closed stance is when you're sideways and your stance is closed. So you can work on those two things without fear of judgment. The wall is a great place to practice new shots, shots you're not comfortable with because there's no one there to judge you. So it doesn't matter if your ball is going into the net. It doesn't matter if your ball is going 30 feet out because no one gives a ****. But honestly, at the end of the day, you can work on whatever shot you want with the wall. Just hit it against the wall. So like, let's say I am not good at my forehand down the line speed up. I'm gonna go close to the wall. I'm pretending I'm on the right side, right? Where would my forehand speed up be? It would be directly straight. So I hit a couple of dinks. One, two, three, speed up, counter. You could literally just, the world is your oyster with the wall. You don't need wall drills. Just do, just hit, just hit against the wall. One thing that I've been doing is I've been changing my grip. I've been trying to choke up on it a little bit because I wanna be like Gabe Tardio. So, but in a game, when I do this, it feels weird and funky and I end up messing up the game for everyone else. No one wants to play with me, but against the wall, I can be as bad as I want with my choked up grip. So yeah, you could do anything. Practice new grips, play around with it. Just play, just play like a kid. But if you really don't know what to do and you just need somewhere to start, start with dinks, hands, speed ups, and then some sort of drill where you're moving forward and moving back because that's what we do in pickleball. We move forward and we move back. So if you're a total beginner and you're just looking for ball control, start out with a drive, a ground stroke, and just slowly move forward until you're taking the ball out of the air and move forward and then start to move back and pick a target. Try and hit it in that same place every time and just do this until you're comfortable and it's fun. Thanks so much for watching. I hope this video helped. If not, you're probably a lost cause. Remember to like and subscribe and also comment down below what you want to see me cover next and check out the description and pinned comment for my complete pickleball system, Roadmap from Beginner to Pro. It'll really help your game. It has 20 drills, a practice plan for every single level, and high-level strategies from the best players in the world.