Ava Ignatowich explains three habits that make pickleball players faster

The real separator is movement, not muscle

Ava Ignatowich’s advice cuts through the noise in pickleball: the players who look fastest are often the ones making the fewest wasteful moves. Her lesson is not about adding flash, it is about sharpening habits that make every first step, every reset and every shot choice cleaner under pressure.

That matters because the sport is getting bigger and sharper at the same time. SFIA says pickleball participation has jumped from about 4.2 million players in 2020 to more than 24 million in 2025, and its 2024 State of Pickleball report says the sport grew 51.8% from 2022 to 2023 and 223.5% over three years. More players mean more reps, more league matches and more people learning that the smallest details often decide the point.

Split step earlier than you think

The first habit Ignatowich highlights is the split step, and the key detail is the one most amateurs miss: advanced players do it slightly before contact, not exactly at contact. That tiny head start gives the body more time to react, especially when a speed-up comes flying at the kitchen line.

USA Pickleball describes the split step as a small hop that helps players stay balanced and react faster, which is exactly why it shows up so often in better rallies. In pickleball, where the non-volley zone or kitchen compresses time and space, balance is not cosmetic. It is the difference between getting set to counter a ball and lunging late with your weight already going the wrong way.

The practical payoff is immediate. An earlier split step helps you load both feet, move laterally with less recovery time and absorb pace without getting stuck upright. That is why the best players do not look rushed even when the ball is moving fast. They arrive organized.

Stay low at the kitchen, and your hands will play faster

The second habit is posture, and it starts with refusing to stand tall at the kitchen line. Advanced players keep bent knees, stay active through the feet and hold a lower base while dinking or waiting for the next ball. It looks modest on video, but it changes everything about how quickly you can react.

Lower posture gives you more stability and better reach on low balls, which matters because so many points at the amateur level are decided by balls that sit just low enough to tempt a stretch. If you are upright, that stretch becomes a lunge. If you are low, it becomes a controlled pickup, and controlled pickup is how you stay in the point long enough to force an error or create a better opening.

That same posture is what lets good players punish dead dinks right away. A short, soft ball that lands without pace is not a courtesy at higher levels. It is a trigger. Advanced players turn those balls into speed-ups or aggressive rolls before the opponent can recover, and the reason they can do it is usually posture, not raw arm speed.

Recover after every shot instead of admiring it

The third habit is the one that separates players who think they hit good shots from players who keep winning rallies. Elite players do not admire the ball they just hit. They reset instantly, based on where the ball is, where their partner is and where the opponents are standing.

That sounds simple until you watch how many points amateurs give away by freezing after contact. A decent dink, a clean volley or a sharp counter means nothing if the hitter is still planted in the wrong spot when the reply comes back. Pickleball punishes that pause more brutally than many racquet sports because the next ball arrives quickly and often into the same lane you just vacated.

Recovery is a discipline, not a talent. It forces you to treat every shot as the start of the next problem, not the end of the current one. The players who keep improving are the ones who build that reflex into their game, because they spend less time scrambling and more time ready.

Shot selection is where patience beats ego

Ignatowich’s final message is that smart shot selection matters more than reckless offense. Advanced players lean on high-percentage choices such as crosscourt dinks, middle attacks and controlled speed-ups instead of chasing low-percentage winners. That is not passive tennis thinking. It is how pickleball points are actually won.

The middle attack exists because the center of the court creates confusion and limits clean reads. Crosscourt dinks buy time and widen the margin for error. Controlled speed-ups are valuable because they create pressure without turning every rally into a coin flip. Put together, those choices make you harder to beat even when you are not hitting harder.

This is the part amateurs often resist. Power feels like progress; patience feels like restraint. But pickleball is full of points where the smartest player wins by refusing the wrong attack and waiting one ball longer for the right one. That is the hidden edge.

Why these habits matter more now

The growth around the sport makes these details more important, not less. SFIA’s 2024 report says the largest participant age group is 25 to 34, with 2.3 million players, and more than 1 million children under 18 joined from 2022 to 2023. That means the competitive ladder is filling up with younger, more athletic players who can cover ground and speed up rallies. If your only advantage is that you swing big, that edge disappears fast.

The infrastructure is expanding too. USA Pickleball’s 2025 Annual Growth Report says Pickleheads added over 2,300 new places to play in 2025, bringing the total to 18,258 locations nationwide, while the court database lists 82,613 total known courts and 14,155 new courts added in 2024. More courts means more play, and more play means more players discovering that the margins live in footwork, posture and decision-making.

That is why Ignatowich’s advice lands so well. It is not a fantasy of hidden talent or a shortcut to prettier highlights. It is a practical blueprint for getting faster in the ways that actually matter: split earlier, stay lower, recover sooner and choose higher-percentage balls. In a sport growing this quickly, those habits are what separate the players who plateau from the ones who keep climbing.