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

What's Cooking in the Kitchen This Week:

• How To Improve Your Court Awareness In Doubles

• How To Improve Your Balance For Better Movement On The Court

• DRILL OF THE WEEK: The Kitchen Corner Escape Drill

• Fitness Expert Glenn Dawson: How To Do Push-Ups Without Shoulder Pain

• Movie Review: THE DINK

• Dallas Surprises & LA Capitulates At MLP In San Diego

• The Exercise Benefits of Pickleball for Seniors

• Upset Analysis: How Anna Leigh Waters & Catherine Parenteau lost

• HUMOR: Checking Your Phone For The “Let’s Play” Message

• Coach Mary: How To Get Rid of the ‘Yips’ On Your Serve

🥷SKILLS

How To Improve Your Court
Awareness In Doubles

One of the biggest differences between newer and more experienced pickleball players has very little to do with how they swing the paddle.

It has to do with what they notice.

Some players see only the ball. They react to each shot as it comes, trying to hit the next one well. Others seem to know where the openings are before the ball even arrives.

They notice a partner drifting too wide, an opponent leaning toward the middle, or someone creeping forward before a speed-up.

It can look like instinct.

Most of the time, it is awareness.

Court awareness is not about watching more things at once. It is about learning where your attention belongs at different moments during a rally. The best players are not constantly looking everywhere. They shift their focus as the rally unfolds, gathering information that helps them make better decisions on the next shot.

The good news is that court awareness is a skill you can practice.

Stop Watching Only the Ball
Many players spend an entire rally doing one thing: following the ball.
That sounds reasonable until you realize how much information they are missing.
The ball tells you where the rally is.

💪 Health & Fitness Section

How To Improve Your Balance For
Better Movement On The Court

When pickleball players say they want better balance, they often picture standing on one leg for as long as possible.

That can be useful, but it is not the kind of balance the game demands most often.

On court, balance is rarely still. You are moving toward a ball, stopping before contact, pushing in a new direction, reaching outside your normal base, and trying to recover before the next shot arrives. You may be balanced at the start of a rally and lose that balance only after one hurried step, one late reach, or one swing that pulls your body too far forward.

The kind of balance that matters most in pickleball is dynamic balance: the ability to stay in control while your body is moving and to recover quickly when a shot pulls you away from your ideal position.

That is why better balance training should not consist only of trying to stand still without wobbling. It should also teach you how to slow down, change direction, absorb your own momentum, and regain a useful position after reaching for a difficult ball.

Regular physical activity that challenges balance is included in current guidance for older adults, and structured exercise can help maintain balance and physical function.

🥷 DRILL OF THE WEEK

The Kitchen Corner Escape Drill

Getting pulled into a kitchen corner is not what loses the rally. The real trouble starts when you rush the escape, force an angle, or try to recover the whole court with one shot.

Learn how the Kitchen Corner Escape Drill builds the patience, placement, and footwork to work back to neutral one dink at a time.

 🏋️ STAYING FIT with
GLENN & BRIANNA

How To Do Pushups
Without Shoulder Pain

🏓 PRO NEWS

Dallas Surprises & LA
Capitulates At MLP in Dallas

Dallas looked like a team that had fallen out of the championship conversation. Then everything changed in San Diego, while the Los Angeles Mad Drops stumbled through one of their toughest weekends of the season and raised new questions heading toward the playoffs.

Catch up on the biggest surprises, standout performances, and what they mean for the MLP playoff race.

⚕️  HEALTH NEWS

The Exercise Benefits Of
Pickleball For Seniors

Pickleball can give older adults a real workout, with research linking regular play to meaningful cardiovascular activity, balance work, and lower-body strength. The injury risk is real, especially for players over 50, but the takeaway is caution rather than avoidance.

See what the research says about the benefits, the risks, and how seniors can start playing at an appropriate pace, click here…

 🏓 PRO NEWS

Upset Analysis: How
Anna Leigh Waters & Catherine
Parenteau Lost

Olgian Pickleball breaks down how Jorja Johnson and Tyra Black knocked off Anna Leigh Waters and Catherine Parenteau, using AI to uncover the patterns that didn't show up on the highlight reel.

See the key tactical adjustments and match data that helped produce one of the biggest upsets of the season, click here to see the video analysis…

🤩 ENTERTAINMENT NEWS
MOVIE REVIEW: The Dink

The Dink isn't just another sports comedy. Roger Ebert's review says the film leans into pickleball's quirky culture, with Jake Johnson leading a cast that includes Ben Stiller, Andy Roddick, and John McEnroe, while asking whether the sport can carry a Hollywood comedy.

See why the film earned its review, what worked, and where it missed the mark.

🏓 HUMOR

RALLY RUNDOWN:
LOCAL HIGHLIGHTS

NORTH HEMPSTEAD, NY: North Hempstead Serves Up Three New Pickleball Courts At Martin Bunky Reid Park
LOS BANOS, CA: Los Banos Opens Nine New City-Owned Pickleball Courts
EDGERTON, MN: Pickleball Tournaments Draw Players To Dutch Festival
NEWPORT BEACH, CA: Sip N' Dink Wine And Pickleball Tournament For Charity Comes To The Tennis & Pickleball Club In Newport Beach August 1
BALTIMORE, MD: These Businesses Just Launched a $5 Pickleball Pop-up in Inner Harbor
SUMMERVILLE, SC: How 4 Women Broke A World Record Inside Summerville Pickleball Venue
SALEM, NH: ZBA OKs Pickleball Courts With 'Silent Paddles'
LOUISVILLE, KY: Shawnee Park Opens Up New Athletic Complex With Tennis And Pickleball Courts


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

  💪 How To Get Rid of
The ‘Yips” On Your Serve

It happens in every sport, pickleball included, some times your brain and body forget how to function together and you get the dreaded "Yips."

In pickleball the "Yips" come in to play on your serve, when you start missing your serve in games, and you do not know why.

Coach Mary's tip of the Week: Getting rid of the "Yips"

Let's turn to some of our favorite online instructors for some help.

From @fun.pickleball:  People get the Yips when their brain and body are not working together.  To fix it, you need to change it up.  The easiest way to do this is to let the ball drop lower prior to contact.  You will contact around knee height, which forces you to get lower and be more athletic, and to accelerate through the ball.  A clever, simple trick.

From Jilly B Pickleball:  Jill Braverman emphasizes looseness, soft grip, remembering to calm your arm down, let it hang, like a whip or Gumby. 

From tanner.pickleball:  Tanner says he has hundreds of students who have come to him with the Yips, and these are some of the tips that he shares with them.

He says it is most likely that you are stiff -legged.  When you bend your knees consciously, a low athletic stance, you will serve with more power and control. 

Tanner says that where your chest and hips point, that is where your serve will go.  Point your lead foot where you want the ball to go.  Your body and back leg will naturally align your body.

Too much movement in your backswing.  Slow that down, let your paddle arm rest naturally at your side, and let your ball arm just reach out in front of your hip.  Pretend you have a sniper scope, and line your paddle up behind the ball.  Line up your paddle straight back, not behind your body.

And a personal note on the Yips:  I tell my students to stop thinking about it and stop worrying about missing.  Go back to your mechanics.  Athletic stance, short backswing, use your hips and shoulders, follow-through to your target and stand up.

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