How Much Should You Drill vs. Play? A Top Pro Did the Math

Drilling teaches your body how. Games teach your brain when. You need both — but intention matters more than just reps.

Kyle Koszuta thinks he has the answer to one of pickleball's most persistent questions: How much time should you actually spend drilling versus playing?

Here's the thing: most players think this is a simple math problem. Like there's some magic ratio you can plug into a spreadsheet and suddenly you're improving faster. But Koszuta's latest breakdown reveals it's way more nuanced than that.

The real question isn't about time allocation at all. It's about how you get better faster with whatever time you've actually got.

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Why New Players Shouldn't Drill Right Away

When Koszuta first started playing pickleball on August 21, 2021, he didn't drill once for 2 months and 11 days. Yes, he actually counted. And honestly, he thinks that was the right call.

Here's his logic: when you're brand new to the sport, you don't know what you don't know. You're still figuring out where to stand, what the score is, basic strategy; the fundamentals that take about 2 to 3 months of actual gameplay to absorb. Drilling during this phase is like trying to perfect your golf swing before you understand the rules of golf. It just doesn't make sense.

Fast forward to 2025, and Koszuta had an eye-opening experience that completely shifted how he thinks about drilling. He was prepping for a tournament with his friend Cam Luhring when he realized just how lethal Luhring's two-handed backhand was. So he asked for a lesson, and they turned it into a YouTube video.

After 45 minutes of focused instruction on court, they took a break. Then three hours later, they headed to the courts for a regular gameplay session with two other buddies. During that 2-hour match, Koszuta tried hitting the two-handed backhand 15 times.

Spoiler alert: it didn't go well.

The Drilling Math That Actually Matters

If you play five times a week for two hours each session and you get 15 attempts at a new skill during gameplay, you're looking at:

75 reps per week
300 reps per month
3,900 reps per year

Sounds decent, right? Except there's a massive problem. All those reps are happening in the worst possible context for learning something new.

You're mid-game, thinking about winning, worried about messing up in front of your partner, stressed about ruining the match. Your brain doesn't have time to process what you're doing right or wrong. You're just reacting.

At that rate, it might take a year to feel somewhat comfortable with a new skill, and way longer to actually feel confident.

Now flip the script. What if you drilled that same shot for just 5 minutes a day, 5 days a week? Koszuta actually went out on court and tested this. In 5 minutes, he got 125 reps.

Do the math:

625 reps per week
2,500 reps per month
32,500 reps per year

That's over eight times the reps in a fraction of the time. A 2,000% return on your time investment. And honestly, that's a pretty good deal.

But Wait, There's a Catch

Here's where most players get it wrong. Psychologist K. Anders Ericsson spent decades studying what actually drives improvement, and he called it "deliberate practice."

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The key insight: just doing something over and over doesn't make you better.

You have to practice with intent and get feedback so you actually know what to fix.

Think of it like this:

Every rep you take is digging a groove in your brain
The more you repeat something, the deeper that groove gets

But here's the problem: your groove gets dug whether you're doing it right or wrong. Your brain doesn't know the difference between correct and incorrect. It just learns what you repeat.

So if you practice bad technique dinks for 500 reps, your brain digs a groove of those 500 bad dinks. Then a coach watches you play and says, "Hey, you have a bad habit there." Now you're stuck.

You've been practicing it wrong for months, maybe years, and now you have to unlearn that groove and build a new correct one. That's frustrating.

The Two Keys to Actually Getting Better

When you're drilling, two things matter more than anything else:

Intention. Before you start, decide what you're working on and why. After you finish, reflect. What were you trying to do? What actually happened? What will you change next time? This isn't complicated, but it's the difference between mindless repetition and actual improvement.
Feedback. You need something or someone outside of yourself telling you what's really happening, not what you think is happening. Your memory of what happened on court isn't typically very good or accurate. So film yourself, get a coach, join an online pickleball school, or use AI software like Pickle Ball Vision. Without feedback, you're just reinforcing whatever you already do, which might be the exact thing holding you back.

Drilling Alone Isn't Enough

Here's another thing Koszuta emphasizes: drilling teaches your body how. Games teach your brain when. You need both.

In drills, you know exactly where the ball is probably going. You're working on one specific skill, usually playing half the court. There's some decision-making, but not nearly as much as in a real game.
In games, you're reading opponents, reacting in real time, trying not to let your partner down. There's pressure involved, which changes everything.

You've probably heard someone say, "I play great in practice, but I suck in games."

That's because drilling is easier than real games. You drill to build the wiring in your brain, then you play to test whether that wiring holds up under pressure.

And honestly, for a long time when learning a new skill, it won't hold up. That's normal. Don't beat yourself up too much. Give yourself grace because the learning process is messy. But that's also what makes it beautiful; when you finally nail that skill you've been chasing, it means something.

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The Actual Recommendations

So what's the real answer? Koszuta gives specific guidelines based on where you are in your pickleball journey:

0 to 3 months: No drills. Just play to learn the game
3 to 6 months: Drill once a week for about an hour
6 to 12 months (or if you're trying to win your league): Drill twice a week for 60 minutes, then play the rest
Retired with unlimited time: Drill three to four times a week and play three to four times
Competitive player: Drill every day (Koszuta has won three gold medals on the A tour, so he's earned the right to be obsessive)
No time to drill: Show up early to the court and spend 15 to 30 minutes isolating something specific before rec play.

And if you truly just hate drilling? That's fine. But invest in a personalized match breakdown from a coach. It's one of the fastest ways to improve, especially when you're not drilling.

The ratio doesn't matter as much as the intention behind it. You could drill for 10 hours a week without intention and feedback, and you'll stay stuck forever. Or you could drill for 30 minutes with clear intention, test it in games, notice what fails, go back to drilling, and you'll improve faster than 99% of players.

That's the real math that matters.