Can A Robot Make You A Pickleball Pro? (Testing 5 Drills)

What is up, my pickleball team? In today's video, we're gonna go over my five favorite drills to do with a ball machine. It's a beautiful day here on Incline Village. Let's head up to the pickleball courts. We're walking up to the pickleball courts. Yes, we were walking by the tennis courts. They do have a machine for tennis as well, but let's get up to the pickle courts. Getting this bad boy set up is super easy. As you can see, it's lightweight, it's compact, it's portable, it's just over 18 pounds, meaning that it's lighter than a two-year-old. It's got a nice strap that's easy for you to carry. It's super simple to set up. One of the things that I love about it is that once it's charged, it doesn't need to be plugged in so you don't need batteries anywhere besides what it comes with. As you can see, you just fold up the little laps there, and then you're just gonna dump your bag of balls in there. It holds up to 75 balls, which is more than you will ever need. If you are interested in a ball machine yourself, check out the link below, but let's get into the video where I give you my honest feedback and my five favorite drills. I've played pickleball at a pretty high level for a long time now with three top 20 wins on the PPA Tour, and I'll tell you the single hardest part of getting better at pickleball isn't the fundamentals. It's finding somebody that'll feed you the same ball 200 times in a row without getting bored and affordable. I wanna introduce you to my friend who doesn't get bored. It's Tenex Pickle. Full disclosure, Tenex did send me this product to collaborate with them, but what they didn't tell me what to do was how to use it for the five best drills when you're by yourself, and also I hope you know me well enough by now that if there's something I don't like about it, I'm gonna let you know so that you have the full range of how great this machine actually is, good or bad. So make sure to hit that subscribe button and stay tuned to the end where I give my honest feedback who I think this machine is perfect for and how you can maximize this when you don't have anybody to train with. Let's get into it. So a very underrated drill in pickleball is return of serve. So what I really wanna prioritize is moving through that return and staying balanced. And as you can see, we actually have probably an extra second here, but I'm allowed to split step at the kitchen and get balanced and ready, and I can attack that four shots. That's one of the reasons I love this drill so much. Game, pause. Hi, Tenex. Drives. Adjust to drive. Game, start. One thing I want you to notice here is that I'm moving forward through the return here. I'm not waiting for that ball to get to me and then hitting. You'll notice I'll get my feet set up, I give myself a little bit of room, but I'm moving through that ball. As I'm hit, I'm actually transitioning forward and get balanced up at that kitchen for a dominant fourth here. That's a great drill to work on your return of serve, move forward. And I had plenty of time, which actually is a good thing because I can work on my footwork and split step when I get up to that kitchen and get ready to attack that fourth, especially if we're in that 3-0 to 4-0 and the thirds on the other side of the net aren't perfect, I wanna continue to attack those balls. So it's actually a two-shot combination drill. Good work. So we just worked on the second shot, which is our return of serve. We actually don't need a robot to work on our serves. We can just do that with a basket of balls. Let's work on our third shot now. And I wanna work on that drip. So we're gonna dip this paddlehead on the backhand and roll around that. We're gonna have the same ball over and over again so we can work on those mechanics and fundamentals to make sure that we're repeatable on our end. So I'll see you on the other side. Hi, 10X. Hello. Backhands. Switch to backhand training. Game start. Hi, 10X. Hello. Shorter interval. Faster. So you'll notice here that I'm staying pretty square to the net. I'm not turning too much like a tennis player. Sometimes that foot comes in front, but I'm really trying to stay as balanced as possible. Okay, that's a great drill for repetition. As you can see, I was just working on keeping that paddle dipped, rolling over, and making a consistent third shot into the cones. As you may have noticed, I didn't make every single one. And sometimes people leave balls high. So now we're gonna work on a fourth shot where we're up at the kitchen and I want us to roll balls deep with one hand back to our opponent. So we're gonna work on this oney roll here. Let's get into it. One of the things I want you to prioritize in this drill is taking the ball as high and as close to the other side of the net as possible. So don't let that ball get to you. You go get that ball. And if you feel like mixing up, feel free to start hitting some cross court. At the intermediate level, I see a lot of slices on returns. And when you get that backspin coming your way, it's actually easier for you to hit a topspin drive because you can just continue to use their spin. So I've set my 10X over there to give me backspin drives here. And I'm gonna really make sure I get under these and hit heavy topspin third drives back to 10X over there. Let's see what that looks like. Adjust to drive. Backspin. Adjust to backspin. Forehand and backhand. Switch to forehand and backhand. Game start. Especially on these backhands here, you can see I really have to sit low into that right knee and get under this ball so I can maximize on the topspin here. If you ever watch pickleball videos, you know that lobs are becoming more and more important in pickleball. So we need to make sure we can defend against those lobs with overheads. Luckily for us, that 10X gives awesome lobs. So let's throw some lobs out. Let's make sure we get in that trophy position. We drop that right step. We get in that trophy position and you're gonna throw that arm, make contact with that ball as high as possible and keep depth on these overheads. Depth is gonna be the most important part. Lobs. Adjust to lob. Game start. I want you guys to notice on the footwork here that my first step always generally is that right foot dropping behind me and getting into that trophy position so I can have a consistent overhead. All right team, before we get into my honest review of the 10X Pickleball Machine, we're gonna go ahead and try match play level three. We haven't tested it out. I have no idea what it's gonna be like. We're gonna see how intense it is. We're gonna see if a 6.0 duper can handle the boss level 10X machine. Match mode level three. Game start. All right, we're gonna have an interview with my new best friend, the 10X here and give you my honest feedback because I gotta say I love this machine. There were some things that were amazing about it. I can do a lot of drills with it but it had a couple weaknesses so let's talk about it. Some of the things that I really liked was the ball that was coming out of it. You could add topspin, backspin or just no spin at all and I was able to get the ball where I wanted it to go. If I needed a ball at my knee, I either adjusted the spin, I adjusted the power or I just adjusted the machine to make sure it was getting into the right spot. Maybe it was one extra step but I was able to hit the balls that I wanted to hit and really get in a good practice session. It hits strongly for the basics, the third shot drops, the fourth shot volleys, the return of serves, some of the shots that you just need to practice over and over again. It was giving me the same consistent ball so I could really focus on my fundamentals, on myself and I didn't have to worry about an inconsistent ball every single time. The other part was I love how portable and easy this machine is. It fits in my car, it doesn't take up a lot of space, it's under 20 pounds and really just the ease of use is nice and also it's fun wearing this little band here. I feel like Ben 10 where I'm like in the future where I just tell it what to do, game start. As you saw, I carried it from my car and they put the pickleball courts in the boondocks where nobody thought they would get used. Of course, they're super busy but I carried it all the way. It's about a five minute walk and it wasn't that bad. I would say maybe wheels will be the next iteration of this adding a little more portability but that takes up more space and a little more friction sometimes when you add wheels. I'd say the last and final thing that I love about it and it's really the main purpose of why you would get one of these is that I could use it by myself. It's no plugin, it's portable, it's super easy for me to work on what I wanna work on. I'm playing the left side in this upcoming tournament so I'm really trying to hammer home my one-handed flick and I just wanna sit here for a half hour drilling that shot and who wants to feed me balls, who wants to be on the other end of that when we're doing this monotonous drill but that's how you get better, that's how you raise that duper is by drilling that shot over and over again so that when you get into match play, it's just second nature for you. I would say one of the things that I didn't love about the machine was the huge variety of shots I was getting. Like I mentioned before that it hits the basics pretty well but when I'm playing at a 6.0 level, I see 20 different types of shots, spins, placements and I was able to about find five to 10 with the 10X machine here. One of the biggest issues where we were trying to set up just a dead dink so I could work on my push dinks, my roll dinks or even disguise speed ups and I wasn't able to get that ball to just sit softly in the kitchen. It came with a little bit more pop, a little bit more depth than a traditional dink would do and I think maybe it's gotta generate enough pace to shoot that ball out so that's just a work in progress for them to get that soft ball that sits a little dead in the kitchen. 10X tries to make this as simple as easy with short commands to give everything that you need. I will say it's a little bit of learning a new language, it takes a slight learning process. As getting any technology piece of device, there's a little bit of learning curve. When you get a new iPhone, it takes a little second to use the apps properly, to use all the technology properly. Slight bit of learning curve how to use this properly so don't expect to just go out there and start hitting balls. I would spend the 15 minutes reading the manual, learning the verbiage, how to maximize the voice command here. One of the most common questions I get with this machine, is it worth the price? And I understand that it may be a lot but let's talk about what you're getting with it. I don't wanna compare it to a $200 lesson and it's four lessons and all of a sudden we're even here but it is an hour of time of somebody feeding you balls perfectly where you want it to be. It is a machine that gives you the flexibility and freedom to play whenever you want, wherever you want. And when it comes down to it, it is a pretty cool piece of technology that helps you get better at pickleball. So instead of three new paddles that aren't gonna be the end-all be-all of you getting better, this is what's gonna help you get better by yourself. If you've watched any of my YouTube videos, you know I post a bunch of drills. I think drilling is by far the best way to get better and I get asked by thrills all the time, how do I take that next level? It's reps, it's consistency, it's hitting those shots over and over again and the 10X or whatever ball machine is the way to get those reps because sometimes it's hard to find a coach that's busy that you like. It's hard to find a partner that's willing to feed you those balls. So this is the easiest way to do it. And one pro tip is I would get the same batch of balls. I used a hosh posh of balls here accidentally and it fed slightly different feeds for each ball, especially the lifetimes, those would just fly out. So at the end of the day, I love this machine. I would definitely recommend it. It was easy to use. I got a lot of great reps out of it. Yes, it has a couple of things that I would like to see improved that I'm sure it will. And if you wanna get a batch of balls with that, make sure to check out the link below where you can get the 10X machine and any other pickleball gear that might go with it.