Don’t Let Injuries Ruin Your Pickleball Journey: Top 5 Injury Prevention Strategies You Can Start Today

1.) Stretch Tight Muscles and Loosen Up Stiff Joints

Consider your muscles and tendons as guidewires and they ingeniously cross your joints and connect to your bones all in the interest of controlled movement. When some muscles and tendons become tight over time or as the result of poor postures or previous injuries while others remain flexible, this can cause imbalances in your body. 

You muscles become tight and joints can progressively become less mobile as you age and when you take up a sport like pickleball you expose your body to movements and positions that challenge these restricted areas. In turn, you can sustain injuries and/or develop

abnormal compensations which can place undue stress on other parts of your body. 

The Good Old Days

Go back to when you were age 15 or 20, remember how you could move through pretty much any motion in any direction you wanted? When your joints seamlessly and effortlessly participated? Imagine if you took measures all of the years since then to maintain that youthful mobility? You see life creeps in for many people. We sit a lot at work or with driving and then for meals and just for relaxing on the couch at the end of a long day. 

Muscles like your hip flexors become shortened over time and if measures aren’t taken to stretch them in the opposite direction (Hip Extension) they adaptively shorten. When you sit with one leg crossed and a foot on the opposite knee, most people use that same leg all the time and guess what? Yup, over time the rotation in the opposite hip becomes deficient. Multiply these things by many years. This happens in many regions of the body. 

A Little Help Can Go A Long Way

If you are stiff and tight and you just can’t move like you used to, it really is important that you get limber and get your joints moving a little more freely prior to getting too deep into your pickleball journey. If you aren’t sure where to start, it may be a great idea to see a skilled Doctor of Physical Therapy who specializes in athletes and sports so that you can be screened for mobility issues and imbalances. Even a few sessions can set you on a diligent path for a healthy and injury free pickleball career.

I also suggest getting in a pool and just exploring your own flexibility and mobility. Just see what moves well, what doesn’t move well, where you are restricted, where you really feel resistance. Just explore and begin gentle stretches but be consistent by doing this a few days each week if you can. 

You may have seen “stretch zones” or “stretch labs” where you can go in and get stretched and even have the hands-on stretch provider concentrate on certain areas. I recommend a Doctor of Physical Therapy as a best option but if you can’t get to a DPT or a reputable trainer, then you could try one of these facilities. I personally attended a Stretch Zone 1-2x/week and it was excellent.

Stretch For Permanent Flexibility Not To Warm Up

Let me leave you with this. Just before a pickleball game is NOT the time to focus on prolonged stretching exercises. These components of your overall plan should be done consistently throughout your week. To achieve lasting improvement, you need permanent length changes in your muscles, tendons, and other joint structures and this happens over time. In fact, sitting down and stretching prior to a match vs. a safe but dynamic, total body warming up of sorts can dampen your performance.

Use it or lose it is not just a cliché when it comes to your flexibility! Remember, your body was designed to move and in order to stay young, flexible, and injury free you must dedicate time to making sure all the “guidewires” are moving and reaching their full capacity!

2.) Improve Your Body Composition

All the muscles, tendons, bones, and joints of your body are exposed to a whole lot of tugging, pulling, torsion, and compression during a pickleball game and when you are even 10 pounds overweight, let alone 20-30 pounds, the impacts are magnified and so are your chances of getting injured. 

In Pickleball, Lean and Mean Matters

You see, in order to “float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” like Muhammad Ali famously said, you need to be equipped with lean and viable muscles and short on stubborn fat accumulation. 

Don’t think dieting and stretchy bands. Think optimal protein intake and real resistance training off the court. 

You substantially reduce your risk of sustaining an injury when your muscles and tendons are robust and can withstand the repetitive rigors of pickleball. You will play stronger and recover faster. 

Playing pickleball will actually help you progressively burn excess body fat and keep your fast twitch muscles alive and robust, however, you need to dedicate some time off the court to preserve and build your pickleball muscles!

3.) Cross-Train For Optimal Conditioning

It is healthy and helpful to your overall pickleball readiness to incorporate other fitness and wellness activities outside of pickleball. 

Dedicating some time to building a solid core foundation with Pilates or enhancing your functional strength, flexibility, and balance while sharpening your mental clarity, reducing stress, and cultivating inner peace with some personalized or group-based Yoga can both go a long way in functioning better on and off the court.

Sprint training is an outstanding way to help you breeze through the fast-paced bursts of movement you encounter in pickleball. Now, depending on your fitness level and in light of any orthopedic concerns the word “sprint” can take on several different meanings. Running quickly straight ahead on level ground or even an incline may be appropriate for some while for others lower impact, yet still vigorous, elliptical bursts may be a better choice. 

High speed footwork and agility drills can sharpen your quickness and ability to change direction on the court. 

Strength training is an absolute critical component of cross-training and a must if you want a long pickleball journey. You may have been playing pickleball for a while with no injuries and think you are fine without it. Trust me, you aren’t ok without it and it only takes one injury to interrupt your ability to play the sport you and interact with the friends you play with! 

Special emphasis should be placed on the rotator cuff muscles of the shoulders, the spinal muscles, and possibly most importantly your lower body muscles; think glutes, soleus, and gastrocnemius to name just a few. 

Swimming and Stretch sessions are beautiful additions to your fitness and wellbeing initiatives off the court as well. Water is therapeutic and the hydrostatic pressure is great for any swelling that can be present. Having a skilled stretch specialist stretch the soft tissues crossing all of your joints can be so refreshing and make you feel so young and limber, especially with consistency.

Big Picture Perspective

Keep in mind the intent of cross-training; To prepare you for better performance and to protect you from injuries. So, knowing that pickleball already exposes your body to a lot of impact, it behooves you to stay fit while unloading and giving your “pickleball muscles” and your “pickleball bones and joints” a chance to “do something else” !

4.) Warm – Up Properly and Adequately

Ya know, what you do in the 15 minutes leading up to a pickleball match can actually be the difference between winning and losing, not to mention the result of sustaining an injury or walking out healthy for the next match.

I know many pickleball players just walk onto the court and start playing and really pay no mind to warming up. It is a mistake. Even 3-5 minutes of what I call “Smart Prep” can change the outcomes!

There are 2 components of a proper warm up:

• Total Body Warm Up and Safe, Dynamic Movement Prep

• Pickleball Technique centric warming up (Volleying & Shot Specific)

The second one seems to be natural and adopted without too much thought, but the first component may take some convincing and some perspective. 

Follow these steps and you will master # 1:

• Start moving in a manner that gently gets your heart rate on the rise with small but progressing to big, multi-joint movements. (Think small arm circles progressing to big windmill type circles while simultaneously alternating left and right knee raises/hip flexion while standing in place, first to waist level and progressing to as high as your hips will allow, while being gentle and fluid especially in and out of the end ranges of movement) Do this for 30-60 seconds

  
  

• Next, break into an ever so gentle jog forward with small steps and then incorporate little shuffles to the left and then to the right. You can then progress to gentle accelerations in multiple directions (think about standing in the middle of a big clock and darting out to each number of the clock either shuffling forward or alternating left and right-side shuffles). Either way, you begin to “prepare” your muscles and tendons for the acceleration, deceleration, and change of direction demands of pickleball play! Do this for 60 -90 seconds.

  
  

• After dedicating the 2 to 2.5 minutes to the steps above you can repeat the sequence with progressively more vigorous effort for another 2 to 2.5 minutes. 

  
  

• In a sport that I rarely see players warming up at all, I would recommend you strive for a minimum of 5 minutes and the closer you can get to 8-12 minutes the better.

  
  

• There are many other “dynamic type” movements that you can incorporate into the mix, but for this article I wanted to give you the general idea. Follow me for complete dynamic, pickleball warm up routines that will be released.

5.) Feed Your Body & Hydrate Optimally

Think about putting ultra-premium fuel in your vehicle and making sure your spark plugs are operating efficiently so that your car is “running on all cylinders.” Similarly, your body and brain need very high-quality fuel sources for optimal performance and to avoid breakdown. 

Cleaning up your nutrition on the regular makes game day nutrition a breeze.

To avoid premature fatigue, your muscles need a full supply of stored glycogen (think complex carbohydrates) and plenty of electrolyte rich fluids....1-2 days leading up to play)  When your body is fatigued your reaction time decreases, your movements are more sluggish and the fast-paced demands associated with pickleball can lead to injury if you aren’t at your best. So fuel up, friends! 

Final ThinkaDink^TM

If I know a little bit about you, you absolutely love pickleball and it’s not just the game, it’s the people, it’s the belonging! For some, it is the competition and for others you win just by playing the game!

You may think that you can get away with just jumping on the court and playing the game, but I assure you, injuries can come out of nowhere! Dedicate some time to the components outlined in this article so you can continue to play and win in pickleball and in life!