Health, Fitness, News & Fun for Picklers of All Ages

What's Cooking in the Kitchen This Week:

• 3 Ways to Change Your Dink Arc and Create More Pressure

• The Difference Between Before and After Pickleball Game Stretches

• DRILL OF THE WEEK: The Backhand Wall Drill

• Fitness Expert Glenn Dawson: 3 Desk Job Stretches to Relieve Back & Neck Pain

• Inside Anna Bright's Rise: The Habits Mindset and Competitive Fire Behind Her Game

• A Simple Strength Plan for Better Pickleball at Any Age

• Adaptive Pickleball Clinic Brings Athletes of All Abilities Together

• HUMOR: When Your Opponent Says Your Ball Was Out

• Coach Mary: Senior Players: How to Defend the Lob

🥷SKILLS

3 Ways To Change Your Dink Arc
And Create More Pressure

3 Ways to Change Your Dink Arc and Create More Pressure

Most players judge a dink by one basic standard: did it stay low enough that the opponent couldn’t attack it?

That matters. But it leaves out a huge part of what makes a dink effective.

Two dinks can land in almost exactly the same place and create completely different problems depending on how they got there. One may float slowly through the air and give your opponent plenty of time to get balanced. Another may travel on a lower, more direct path and arrive sooner. A third may rise higher, drop steeply, and force contact from a different position.

The landing spot matters.

So does the shape of the ball on the way there.

Once you start changing that shape intentionally, a dink rally stops being a series of soft balls and becomes a way to control timing, contact points, and pressure.

1. Use a Lower Arc to Take Away Time

Use this when your opponent looks too comfortable in the dink rally.

💪 Health & Fitness

The Difference Between
Before & After Pickleball Stretches

The Difference Between Before and After Pickleball Game Stretches

A lot of pickleball players have one stretching routine.

They do a few calf stretches, pull a heel toward the backside for the quadriceps, reach for the toes, circle the shoulders, and call it done. Sometimes that routine happens before a game. Sometimes after. Sometimes both.

The problem is that your body needs something different before pickleball than it does after pickleball.

Before a game, you are preparing to move. You are about to accelerate, stop, reach, rotate, shuffle sideways, bend for low balls, and react quickly to shots you cannot predict. Your warm-up should help your body become ready for those demands.

After a game, the goal changes. You are no longer preparing for explosive movement. This is a better time for slower stretching that allows you to spend more time in positions that may help maintain or improve flexibility.

That is why the same stretching routine does not necessarily belong on both sides of a pickleball game.

Before Pickleball: Think Movement, Not Flexibility

One of the most common sights at the courts is a player arriving cold, putting one foot on a bench, leaning into a long hamstring stretch, and then walking onto the court.

🥷 DRILL OF THE WEEK

The Backhand Wall Drill

A “weak backhand” can mean a dozen different things. Maybe your touch is fine but pace exposes you, your volleys break down when the paddle drops, or your reset disappears the moment the exchange speeds up. This drill runs your backhand through all of it, and the wall makes it very clear where the real problem starts.

Learn how the Backhand Wall Drill can pinpoint the exact part of your backhand that needs work, then help you train it without hiding behind your forehand.

 🏋️ STAYING FIT with
GLENN & BRIANNA

3 Desk Job Stretches To
Relieve Back & Neck Pain

🏓 PRO NEWS

Inside Anna Bright’s Rise:
The Habits Mindset & Competitive
Fire Behind Her Game

Anna Bright’s paddle twirl is easy to spot, but it’s only one piece of a much bigger mental routine. She touches the back wall before points, uses box breathing during timeouts, and admits that in the highest-pressure moments, some of those habits can become almost impossible to skip.

Learn what’s behind Bright’s on-court rituals, how she handles mistakes, and where that “killer instinct” started.

⚕️  HEALTH NEWS

A Simple Strength Plan For
Better Pickleball At Any Age

A lot of players count pickleball as their workout, then wonder why getting low, recovering from a wide ball, or staying strong late in open play keeps getting harder. This plan targets the basic strength behind those movements with six simple exercises you can do at home in about 20 minutes, twice a week.

Learn how to build a realistic pickleball strength routine at any age, with home-friendly exercises and simple ways to progress without turning your week into a gym schedule.

 👏 COMMUNITY NEWS

Adaptive Pickleball Clinic
Brings Athletes Of All Abilities
Together

Twila Adams has shown up to pickleball courts in her wheelchair and been asked if she has other wheelchair players to play with. Her answer is simple: “No, I’m going to play with you.” Now a Charlotte clinic is putting adaptive and able-bodied athletes on court together, challenging assumptions on both sides.

See how the clinic is expanding access to pickleball and changing what players think is possible.

🏓 HUMOR

When Your Opponent Says
Your Ball Was Out

RALLY RUNDOWN:
LOCAL HIGHLIGHTS

LEBANON, PA: Veteran 90 Notches Pickleball Win at Golden Age Games
ELK GROVE, CA: Pickleball for a Cause: The Elk Grove Fundraiser Supporting Rescued Beagles
PIPESTONE, MN: SUMMER SERIES: Pickleball Isn't a 'Fad' in Pipestone
SAN DIEGO, CA: Opinion: Fastest-Growing U.S. Sport Still Lacks Public Home in San Diego
BRECKENRIDGE, CO: Pickleball Tournament Raises Over $40000 for Community Health Center in Breckenridge
MARIN COUNTY, CA: Pickleball Fight Ends With a 4-Court Compromise
PHOENIX, AZ: 14-year-old Kelly Goodnow On Pro Pickleball Fast Track
CRAIG, CO: 'Bringing People Together': Craig Receives $15000 AARP Grant to Support Community Connectedness Through Pickleball


DO YOU HAVE LOCAL NEWS TO SHARE? REACH OUT TO US AT
[email protected] and send us a link to your story!

  💪 Senior Players:
How To Defend The Lob

1. Safety: One of the biggest causes of injury in Pickleball is seniors backing up to defend the lob.
   

2. Turn sideways first: Use a throwing motion, keep your head up. Point your finger at the ball, or your elbow at the ball, like a quarterback.
   

3. If you hit a short dink that is easy for your opponent to lob, quickly take a couple of steps back and get your paddle up so you can defend the lob. Stay balanced!
   

4. If your team is at the net, and your opponent is lobbing from their own baseline, do not try to hit a line, or a winner that goes out. A good target is deep middle.
   

5. Early on, when your opponent sends up a lob, call it! One of you calls it or says yours, right away.
   

6. If you do have to chase a lob down, turn sideways, call it, turn and run with your head down, and run past the ball. Do not try to look up at the ball while you are running. Use a “C” shape to run to the side of the ball, and past it, so that when it bounces, you are behind the ball and can either execute a third shot drop or a lob.
   

7. Steve gives one last tip for senior players: If you are getting lobbed quite a bit, one of you may play off the line, rather than right up at the NVZ (kitchen) line.
   

8. How to prevent your opponent from lobbing? Keep the ball deep to their backhands! Paddle up, be safe, and do not be that player who always lobs the seniors!

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