Anna Bright, Len Yang Share Secret Training Hack in PxP’s ‘Breakfast with the JOOLA Stars’ Event

There are no ifs and buts about it: If you want to be a great pickleball player, you need to train… train… and train some more. This commitment to training is what separates the Anna Brights and the Len Yangs—the best of the best in the sport—from the rest.

But there also has to be a method to all the madness of intense training. Otherwise, you might not be maximising your training sessions, and that would be a shame because that’s tantamount to wasting time and energy. The question now is, what’s the best way to train so you can get better at pickleball?

Anna Bright and Len Yang shared their perspectives on pickleball training in a wide-ranging interview at the Breakfast with the JOOLA Stars event organised and hosted by The PxP Pickleball Club, a premium indoor pickleball facility located in Pavilion Damansara Heights in Kuala Lumpur. Both Bright and Yang competed at the recently concluded Panas Malaysia Cup 2025, with Bright and partner Ben Johns winning gold in Mixed Doubles and Yang and partner Ting Chieh Wei making it to the Round of 16.

One training hack Bright and Yang swear by, in particular, is doing drills as much as possible.

“I would say if I’ve been home for some time, I try to play twice a day, always drilling at least once,” Bright told everyone who attended Breakfast with the JOOLA Stars. “I drill at least half the time, sometimes even two-thirds of the time…”

For the serious players who want to excel at the highest levels of pickleball, Bright recommends drilling with three players—something she says is “most effective” for her, especially in enhancing her kitchen line skills.

“My favourite thing to do and what I would recommend if you’re really looking to get better is to drill a lot with three people, especially if you want to work on skills with the kitchen line,” Bright added. “I think drilling with three people is for me the most effective.”

Yang concurred, saying that he drills more in training than he plays.

“Like Anna, I drill a lot more than I play,” Yang shared. “I probably drill nine times versus play one time… When I’m home I try to drill twice a day, once in the morning, once at night, and then like each drill session will be around like one hour and a half. In a one-hour-and-a-half drill session I’ll work on probably like three things max like in the morning. It depends on who I drill with actually. Like if I drill with like a stronger player, I’ll focus more on kitchen stuff, probably just like a one speed-up pattern and just do that for an hour and then like at night if I’m drilling with a slightly weaker player, I’ll probably just do drops and just like baseline stuff.”

Doing drills, though, isn’t the only thing Bright and Yang agree on. They’re also in the same boat in terms of being on the road a lot—the blessing and curse of being a top-tier professional who must travel to different places to compete at the highest level.

Both Bright and Yang admitted at the Breakfast with the JOOLA Stars event that it could be very challenging to follow training routines with all the travel. Even so, drilling (and lifting weights every now and then) are non-negotiable components of their training—and they’ll always try to sneak in both whenever they can.

With this commitment to training, it’s hard not to see why Anna Bright and Len Yang are at the top of their game.