Have you heard of Pickle scramble?

It puts the fun into drilling!

I invented Pickle Scramble because I knew that in order to get better at anything you have to practice. The best way to practice pickleball is to drill your shots, hit them over and over again until you have muscle memory and consistency.

After teaching Pickleball for several years, I found my students loved coming to my lessons because I made learning pickleball fun. Each skill had drills that involved competition. For example, hit 20 backhand dinks in a row aiming for a target. They count how many they get in the targeted area out of 20. However, after the class few of my students were drilling the shots they learned., they just wanted to play. 

Pickle Scramble is designed to be great practice and skills based.  There are multiple courts going at the same time. Each court is focused on a pickleball shot or skill; 3rd shot drops, dinks, blocks, drives, digs, volley, moving into the NVZ and serves and returns. Players move quickly between courts.

So, what is happening on a Pickle Scramble court? One court may be focusing on hitting deep returns. The ball machine hits a ball to the forehand simulating a serve, players try to see if they can hit a target that is placed deep on the other side. The machine oscillates so they can also work on their deep backhand returns. There is an instructor on the court making sure their form is correct.

Another court has an instructor feeding 5 balls. A deep shot, a ball in the transition zone, a dink, a backhand volley and an overhead. The player hits five balls and counts how many they get in and towards a target out of 5. They then pick up five balls and runs to the next court.

A third court has players playing out points with the serving team having to hit a third shot drop. If they don’t hit a drop or they miss two third shot drops in a row they move onto the next court.

Players of different skill levels can participate because only on one court are various levels of players playing together. The instructor on that court can adjust the four players to make the play fairly even. The focus is more on the skills being taught vs winning the points.

To add fun and to get adrenaline going, great music is playing. I’ve yet to hold a Pickle Scramble where participants don’t start randomly dancing.

As pickleball evolves, I believe our drilling needed to evolve also. Want to get better, practice and drill. Want to have fun while drilling? Pickle Scramble! You can find more information at PickleScramble.com