Like all the other sports, pickleball can be a challenging game to master. Without the right techniques, any player will hit a ceiling, and making progress will seem impossible.
That being said, learning and practicing advanced stuff will help you become a better player at the game over time. Once you start to master the advanced skill, your win rate will significantly improvise and you’ll be an expert.
To help you grow as a player, we have the top 15 pickleball tips for advanced players that can greatly benefit you and your gameplay. Be sure to check them out all as we discuss them in detail in our article.
15 Pickleball Tips for Advanced Players
Below, we discuss the top 15 pickleball tips and tricks that’ll make you a pro but you should also use a professional pickleball paddle for better performance. Without any further ado, let’s check them out and discuss each of them right away.
1. Perfect Your Pickleball Player Posture
The first thing you want to master as a pickleball player is your posture. That is the single most crucial thing to focus on if you want to become a pro at this game.
Posture affects all aspects of your gameplay. Whether you want to build speed or control, there’s nothing more important than learning the proper posture. It’s the foundation of all techniques and most intermediate players tend to ignore this. That’s what holds them back and they can’t make any progress because of this huge mistake.
Read more “Advance Pickleball Players Mistakes- You should avoid“
So, you can now tell the importance of the right posture in the game of pickleball. But the question is how to do it? Well, it’s best to imitate professional players and study their posture for a while. The more you do that the better you can get at it.
But as a rule of thumb, you want to keep your knees bent slightly. And you want to have some space between your legs. That’ll give you more balance and control over your body, and you’ll be able to move fast and make accurate shots.
You’ll also notice that you’ll be bent over the weight slightly more with this posture. That might feel awkward as your body is not familiar with that extra hunch back posture. Know that’s completely fine, and it’ll make things easier in the long run. Before you move on to any other skills, take a few days or even weeks to master your posture. That’ll pay off big times in your progress.
2. Improve Your “Shots” By Looking at the Ball Getting Hit
Let’s not talk about different shooting techniques just yet. Before all that, you need to build a solid foundation with proper techniques that will allow you to get better shots with your paddle.
The basic rule you need to follow even if you are an expert at the game is to look at the ball hit your paddle. Even after practicing advanced skills for hundreds of hours, this one tip will make your gameplay significantly better.
Most intermediate players want to make this motion autopilot and they tend to focus on the opponent and the aim too much. That leads them to overlook this important trick, and that’s a terrible mistake.
This technique of looking at the paddleball hit the paddle will make your shots more accurate and balanced. You’ll make fewer mistakes, and your score will increase like magic. So, make sure to put your time and effort into this crucial technique, and it’ll make you a better player in days.
3. Learn to Always being in “Pickleball Ready” Stance
One of the worst things to do in the game of pickleball is to lose focus during the match. This is undoubtedly a fast-paced game and compromising your focus even for a second can make you lose a lot of progress, and even lose an entire game at cases.
That’s why you need to master the skill of maintaining a “Pickleball Ready” stance throughout the match. This might seem like a simple technique but that’s not the case. Most intermediate and advanced players struggle to keep their focus on the match because they don’t follow this method.
You see, if you compromise your “Pickleball Ready” stance during the match, you are very likely to lose focus, and the opponent will have an upper hand on you. But mastering the stance will keep you focused throughout the match, eliminating most of your chance of making any mistake.
And if you can do that, you’ll be able to figure out how to catch your opponent off guard when they lose their stance. You can probably guess how that works, and it’s an essential skill to master if you want to become a pro at the game of pickleball.
4. Keep Calm and Stay Loose
What makes pro players so good is that they can stay loose in their bodies throughout the entire game. If you get stiff while you’re playing, you won’t be able to get the most control and speed out of your movements. So, it’s super important to learn how to keep calm and stay loose during the gameplay.
The best way to do that would be to focus on your breath. But you definitely should not make a habit of consciously breathing while you play the game. You only should do it to get used to the feeling of letting go of any tension that’s built on your body.
Another great way to learn to stay relaxed is to consciously let go of the stiffness. Whenever you feel like you’re clenching too hard or putting unnecessary tension in your muscles, just let go. That should get you in a habit of staying loose during the match.
Also, remember that you can definitely learn to do that. Most people have the bad habit of tensing up during the match, which is completely fixable. It just takes some time and effort on your part to do that.
5. Make a Habit of Serving Deep to Backhands and in the Court
Now, we’re diving into some playing techniques in our pickleball tips for advanced players which is pretty exciting. Serving deep to backhands and in the court is essential to winning against skilled opponents. And if you can master it, you’ll be a pro at the game of pickleball.
Serving the ball properly can set the tone for the entire game, and you must take advantage of this grand opportunity. All you have to do is learn how to serve deep to backhands and in the court, which should be the first strategy you learn as a pickleball player who wants to take their game to the next level.
The best tip for this one is to focus on the weaker side of your opponent. We’ll talk about figuring it out in our later segments. But for now, you need to practice your serves separately and prioritize them over other moves. That will pay off big times in your gameplay, and you’ll start to notice that in no time.
6. Master Returning the Ball with a Weaker Third Shot
This move is one of the best moves to learn as an advanced pickleball player. It basically throws your opponent off-guard and it’s super hard to defend. So, adding this move to your repertoire will help to make you a better player.
However, this move is quite hard to master as it’s very easy to make errors with this move. And if you make an error, your opponents will get a free score, and that’s not good. So, you should not start using this move in your gameplay until you’ve mastered it properly.
To avoid errors, you should aim at the middle of the court as there’s less room for error there. And once you get good at this move you can be more flexible with it and do more tricky shots to get an advantage over your opponent.
7. Deciding the Shot Quickly before Execution
You probably know that pickleball is a fast-paced game where both speed and control matter the most. In that case, aiming in your head before you even hit the ball can help you get better shots pretty consistently. This is what most pros do and it’s an essential skill to master if you want to be better at the game as well.
You want to have the spot ready in your head before you even hit the ball with your paddle. That’ll give you a better reaction time and you can really make your shots count. And mastering this technique will make looking at the ball while hitting it much easier for you, which we discussed in our previous tips segments.
However, you want to make a habit of planning ahead of time, which will make things more efficient for you. And it’s definitely a worthwhile technique to master, which will make you a pro at the game of pickleball in no time.
8. Know Your Strengths as a Player
Once you start getting good at the game where you approach a more advanced level, you should start identifying your strengths as a pickleball player. That’ll help to make things easier for you and make you an even better player in the matches.
Every player has some special strength that they are naturally good at, and that takes very little effort compared to other skills to grow. That’s a great thing as it can easily help you to win a match if you apply what you’re good at.
So, start by asking yourself what feels very natural to you with little effort? That should give you a roadmap of your strengths and you can start to use your strengths more and more against your opponents in the next games you play.
What you’ll notice is that the quality of your skills and techniques matters more than versatility where you’re just decent in all the techniques. So, keep that in mind before you jump right into your next game and make practice using your strengths more in your gameplay.
9. Learn to Keep the Pickleball Low
There are many things you can do to have more control of the pickleball and keeping the ball low might be the best thing to do as a player. It gives you more freedom to have controlled shots for better accuracy and speed. Not to mention, you’ll not have to move as much as well, which eliminates a lot of chances of you messing up during the game.
However, this skill is actually easier said than done. Mastering the art of keeping pickleball low during gameplay is extremely tough for some people. That’s why you need to practice hard to get good at it.
And with enough practice and dedication, you’ll be able to pick it up in no time. After you’re good at this, you’ll have a greater advantage over your opponents, which will significantly increase your win rate.
10. Aim at Your Opponent’s Feets
Here’s another tip from the pro pickleball player, shoot at your opponent’s feet. If you have got speed and control down, then it’s time to learn some advanced aiming tricks. And this one makes everything a no-brainer for you.
You can basically aim at the feet of your opponents rather than overthinking many scenarios. That’s the best way to overthrow your opponents as these types of shots are pretty hard to defend against. So, they’ll make more mistakes, giving you scores.
The best way to get good at this skill is, of course, through a lot of practice and repetition. But once you master it, you’ll see that you have a better score compared to all of your previous matches. It’s a simple, yet powerful tip to make you an expert player at the game of pickleball.
11. Read Your Opponents More
The best way to get an upper hand in the game is to read your opponents. If you can get good at this skill, everything will get so much easier, and you’ll be able to tackle way more advanced players than you.
This skill is super hard to master and takes a lot of time. Basically, you start to learn from your experience, which then helps you identify similar opponents and predict their moves.
But it’s very important to stay conscious about reading your opponents when you’re playing the game. That way, you’ll learn it much faster, and have a better time learning it as well.
12. Keep Track of The Score
Keeping track of the score is a vital, yet overlooked skill for most pickleball players. But mastering that will help you play smarter and not harder. So, if you want to take your gameplay to the next level, there is no getting around learning this crucial technique and becoming natural at it.
This might seem like a very simple and straightforward thing, but you’ll be blown away to know how many players ignore this basic thing that can change their game. These players have a more aggressive approach towards the game where all they want to do is score more.
But a smarter player, on the other hand, will prefer to keep the scoreboard to his side. He will be very strategic about his gameplay and slow down a little bit when he’s in the lead. Maintaining the lead is more important to him than scoring big scores. And if he starts to lose the lead, then he starts to play more aggressively.
So, you can tell how it can help you change your gameplay and help you win more games. Be sure to implement this strategy to your gameplay and you’ll be surprised at how effective something as simple as that can be in the game of pickleball.
13. Make a Practice Routine
Now that you know a lot of techniques and skills that you need to practice, it’s time to learn how to practice in the best possible way. If you can make a good practice routine, you’ll be able to make much faster progress compared to all the other pickleball players. That, of course, will give you a better advantage over them as well.
The basic rule of thumb when it comes to an efficient practice routine is to have a clear goal towards what you’re working to develop. Also, you must not work on more than one thing at a time. That’ll make sure that you hone in on one skill and grow it as fast as humanly possible.
Once you have your practice routine, you want to be super regular at it as well. You can’t just expect to follow the routine one day every week and get good at the game of pickleball. You must work hard every day.
Remember, practicing only for 20 minutes every day is better than practicing 4 hours for one day a week. So, if you want to get pro at the game of pickleball, you need to make a practice routine and stick with it every single day.
14. Watch Other People Play More
One of the best ways to get good at the game of pickleball that most players tend to ignore is watching other people that are better at the game than you play a match. If you are serious about growing as an expert pickleball player, you need to watch other professional players play the game.
That will open your eye towards a lot of things that you might not think that is necessary, but they have the ability to transform your entire gameplay. You see, when you watch the gameplay of another pro, you are getting a glimpse of his craft that he put hundreds of hours into. And if you can learn from it, then you are learning from his experience rather than having to wander around for super long.
So, make sure to visit the games of pro pickleball players whenever you get time. You’ll not only enjoy the matches, but you’ll also grow your skills just by looking at them play the game.
15. Consider Upgrading Your Gear
Most people will argue about the gear that they use has a significant impact on the gameplay. That is absolutely true that the gear you choose has a significant impact on your gameplay, and if you want to become a pro at the game you should consider upgrading at one point.
However, that being said, there’s absolutely no need for upgrading a gear if your current gear is somewhat decent. You should work on your skills more and stop focusing on your gears so much. Know that better gear can’t make you a better player at the game of pickleball. However, if you practice hard enough and learn the right techniques, you’ll be a pro at the game with moderate gears.
But if you can afford some good quality gear, you should go for it by all means. That just gives you more impact in your gameplay, and you’ll be able to get a slight edge over your opponents, which is always a good thing. Of course, that will increase your win rate as well.
So, don’t think of gear as a priority and take your training more seriously than anything else. That’ll help you more than upgrading your gear, which should be quite apparent by this moment.
Final Verdict
The game of pickleball is easy to learn but quite hard to master. But learning and practicing the right techniques can make this journey a lot easier. And with our pickleball tips for advanced players, you’ll be able to skyrocket your progress in no time.
Be sure to follow an efficient practice routine to grow at a steady pace. Hopefully, these tips will come in handy making you a top-class player in the game of pickleball. Now, all you’ve got to do is follow the tips and practice regularly. You’ll be a pro pickleball player in the shortest amount of time possible that way.
