Pickleball Machine

DON’T PANIC! I’M HERE FOR YOU!

Great coaches will help students enhance their overall learning experience.

They establish excellent rapport with their students.
They use a principle called ‘guided discovery’ to help their students become self-sufficient.
They use the best available teaching tools.

In all 3 of these qualities, ball machines can play a very important role. Here is how:

EXCELLENT RAPPORT: First, great coaches develop excellent rapport and personal relationships with their students. Unfortunately, the majority of group pickleball lessons involve “coach feeding” with calling out instructions and corrections from across the net. While feeding drills can be intermittently used without problem, coaches should avoid using them as the basis for all of their group instruction. In addition to pairing up students to hit with or feed to one another, ball machines enable and encourage close interaction between coaches and students.

GUIDED DISCOVERY: Second, great coaches use the principle of guided discovery as the basis of their coaching. The students need to reach their own conclusions through reason, logic, and experience. Then, on their own, they become self-sufficient problem solvers, instead of dependent learners waiting for their coaches to feed them new information. The consistent feeds of a ball machine definitely facilitate guided discovery.

TEACHING TOOLS: Third, great coaches use the best available teaching tools to accelerate the learning process. These would include video, ball machines, training aids that guide movement, and the regular use of highly visual target systems. These target systems provide immediate visual feedback encouraging players to recognize the four basic pickleball errors and to make adjustments. The four major errors are: long, in the net, to the right of the target and to the left. Players should always make intelligent corrections, seldom making the same mistake two times in a row.