Stop Trying to Hit Your Drives Harder
Summary
Aylex Pickleball Academy pushes back on the urge to keep adding drive pace. Once your drive is already solid, squeezing out a little more pace takes a lot of practice time that would be better spent elsewhere.
A useful checkpoint: you should be able to hit about an 80% drive that opponents cannot take a full swing and crush. If they can only block it, your fifth is easier. If they can crush it, the drive isn’t doing its job yet — fix that before chasing max speed.
Key takeaways
- More drive pace isn’t always worth the practice time
- An ~80% drive that only gets blocked is ‘good enough’
- Drives you can crush back make your fifth shot harder
Action items
- In drilling, hit drives at ~80% and note whether the return is a block or a full crush
- If partners are crushing your drives, work depth and dip at the feet before adding pace