Pickleball: How to Select Exercises to Improve Your Game

Pickleball…exercises, does the title say?

Just like any sport, you get out of it what you put into it. This means that doing exercises off the courts can be extremely helpful for improving your game. If you already feel like you’re strong enough for pickleball, consider that there are also exercises that will focus on improving other play aspects such as control, power, endurance, positioning, and speed. The sky's the limit!

If you’re already someone who does exercises, do you take into consideration why you’re doing the amount of resistance or repetitions that you select? Truth be told, it makes a huge difference in what you get out of an exercise, especially if you’re trying to train your body to achieve specific pickleball goals.

Let’s say that you want to build strength. In order to best achieve this goal, you’ll want to select exercises that you can do at a high resistance for a low number of repetitions before having to stop due to muscle fatigue.

Strength is a pretty easy concept, and it’s the aspect of exercise training that most people know about. However, I would argue that for most (but not all) pickleball related goals, what you actually want to achieve is greater motor control and endurance.

Motor control is the ability of a muscle to consistently fire as desired when needed. When you’ve been in the middle of a game that’s 16-17 in the blazing heat of Naples, and you find that your shots are starting to get sloppy (either your power is inconsistent or your aim is off), the main problem you’re dealing with is a lack of motor control and endurance.

If motor control is our priority, the exercise prescription is actually the exact opposite of what you’d do to build pure strength. You want to select a lower resistance, such that you can do your selected exercises for a higher number of repetitions (I’d say 20 would be a minimum if this is your goal, though your target number may vary depending on what you want to achieve).

For pickleball, positioning and footwork are going to fall more into the category of motor control and endurance training. I would argue that most, but not all of the arm movements that we make to hit the ball and maneuver the paddle also fall into this category.

Certain types of returns, such as some put away shots and blocking are going to rely more on raw strength. The same goes for the occasional jump you may make in order to swat at one of those pesky lobs.

Those forward and side lunging and squatting maneuvers that you do in order to get those low flying balls? Truth be told, I’m inclined to say that most pickleball players would be best served by focusing on a mix of strength and control, since there’s no rule saying that you have to focus on the same thing every single day. Working on control and endurance is great since these are moves that pickleball players should be frequently during play. Strength is good to work on as well, especially if you find that deeper squats and lunges are difficult to do consistently.

To illustrate the differences between strength and control based exercises, a player may pick a few days each week to do shallower depth walking lunges as control based exercises, as well as side-lunges with an exercise slider (or a towel, if you’re cheap like yours truly). A couple other days of the week, they’re instead working on doing deep squats and lunges while holding onto a weight to build the raw strength component.

As far as what specific exercises to work on to achieve other goals? Well, there are a lot of small goals that a person can make in pickleball, and many different joints that are beneficial to work on. I’ve written different blog posts on this website for specific joints, so checking those out may be helpful for getting you started if you need ideas. If, on the other hand, you want something specifically tailored to you and your goals, I would be happy to help you with that through an in person visit as needed.

Regardless of how you choose to exercise, always remember the cardinal rules!

1. Be aware of the difference between soreness and pain. Soreness is expected with an adequately challenging workout, but true pain should not be a part of a good exercise program.

1. Let form dictate what you do. Good form is critical in order to prevent injury, and ensure that you get the most benefit out of an exercise. If fatigue begins to make your form deteriorate, acknowledge that it’s better to stop, even if you haven’t hit the number of repetitions that you’d like to get to.

It’s a lot to keep in mind, and I’ve met many people who choose to always do exercises for a certain amount of intensity or repetitions for the sake of simplicity. However, understanding how to structure your exercises to get the best benefit from them to achieve your specific pickleball goals is pretty simple once you get the basic gist of it.

Since you’ve got real games out there to play, it should all be about working smarter, not harder.

Need help getting started? Here at Serendipity Physical Therapy and Wellness, we’re well versed in working with pickleball players to help improve body mechanics, technique, and physical issues such as stiffness or aches and pains.

If there is anything we can help you with, or you have questions, please give us a call at (239) 232-8155, or send us an email at Contact@SerendipityPTW.com. We would love to see how we can help get you moving at your best!