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How to Make Opponents Rush During Dink Battles
Serve Return Drill, Lunges, Snacks, MLP News, Stop Stubborn Mistakes, PB in Korea, Post Game Cuisine, & More
Health, Fitness, News & Fun for Picklers of All Ages
What's Cooking in the Kitchen This Week:
How To Make Opponents Rush During Dink Battles
What Happens When You Replace Protein Powder With a $2 Grocery Snack
DRILL OF THE WEEK: The Three-Lane Return Drill
Fitness Expert Glenn Dawson: You're Lunging Wrong (Here's The Fix)
Inside the Grind of a Major League Pickleball Player with Sliders' Alex Crum
Chef Janine Booth Shares What To Eat After a Round of Pickleball
New Jersey Fives Make A Statement With A Dominant Major League Pickleball Columbus Win
From Niche Hobby To Public Courts — Pickleball Gains Ground in Korea
HUMOR: These Escape Rooms Are Getting Ridiculous
Coach Mary: Stop Making These Stubborn Mistakes
🥷SKILLS
How To Make Opponents
Rush During Dink Battles
What’s The Rush?
Everyone has played against this person.
They aren’t speeding every ball up. They aren’t blasting winners. They aren’t doing anything that looks particularly aggressive.
Yet somehow every dink rally feels uncomfortable.
You feel like you’re reacting instead of controlling the exchange. The ball seems to arrive a little sooner than expected. You never quite get settled. Eventually you attack a ball that wasn’t attackable, force an angle that wasn’t there, or leave a dink just high enough to get punished.
After the game, it’s easy to assume your opponent was simply a better dinker.
Sometimes that’s true.
But often what you’re experiencing isn’t superior shot-making. It’s pressure.
The best kitchen players understand something many players never fully appreciate: you don’t have to speed up the ball to speed up your opponent.
The goal isn’t to hit harder.
It’s to take away comfort. Most players think of pressure as power.
If someone is hitting hard drives, attacking everything, and forcing fast exchanges, the pressure is obvious.
Kitchen pressure is different.
💪 Health & Fitness Section
What Happens When You
Replace Protein Powder
With a $2 Grocery Snack
Decisions, Decisions…
Most players who've heard the "eat protein after exercise" advice nod along and then don't do much about it. Protein shakes feel like a gym thing — not a recreational pickleball thing.
But underneath that advice is a question almost nobody asks: does the source of protein actually matter? And for players in their 60s, does any of it make a measurable difference?
Why it matters more after 60
Every time you play — lunging for a wide ball, grinding through a long rally, absorbing the impact of a hard overhead — you create small amounts of muscle damage that your body then repairs. That repair process is how muscle is maintained.
The problem after 60 is that this repair system becomes less sensitive. Older muscles require more protein to trigger the same rebuilding response that younger muscles get from less. So the recovery window immediately after playing — when muscles are most receptive to amino acids — becomes more meaningful with age, not less.
That's the backdrop for a study published this spring, which set out to answer a deceptively simple question: does it matter what kind of protein you eat in that window?
The 8-week experiment
Researchers recruited 17 untrained adults between 60 and 70.
🥷 DRILL OF THE WEEK
The Three-Lane Return Drill
Hey You! Stay In Your Lane!
Most players are happy if their return is deep. The problem is that when every return lands in the same place, opponents get comfortable fast. This drill adds a simple twist, forcing you to work three different lanes and learn which locations actually create trouble on the next shot.
Learn how the Three-Lane Return Drill can make your returns less predictable and your opponents' third shots more difficult.
🏋️ STAYING FIT with
GLENN & BRIANNA
You’re Lunging Wrong
(Here’s The Fix)
🏓 PRO NEWS
Inside The Grind of a Major
League Pickleball Player
With Sliders’ Alex Crum
(NBC4 Sports)
Pro pickleball sounds like a dream until Alex Crum describes the Red Roof Inn and Domino’s side of the grind. He’s still chasing crowds, wins, and a place with the defending champion Columbus Sliders, but his day-to-day looks a lot more scrappy than glamorous.
Read how Crum is building a pro career in a sport still figuring out what “major league” really looks like.
👩🍳 REAL KITCHEN NEWS
Chef Janine Booth Shares
What To Eat After a Round
of Pickleball (Fancy)
The co-leader behind The Fort’s Florida Room explains the ethos behind the pickleball-forward and Florida-focused eatery.
Florida Room is not serving the usual post-pickleball protein bar routine. Chef Janine Booth’s menu at The Fort leans into the swankier side of court culture, with bright salads, seafood, wood plank salmon, caviar-topped tater tots, and a baked Florida worth saving room for.
Learn what to order when your post-play meal calls for something a little more polished than a banana and electrolytes.
🏓 PRO NEWS
NJ Fives Make a Statement
With a Dominant MLP Columbus Win
New Jersey came into Columbus with something to prove, then nearly ran the table. After losing to Columbus in last year’s final and again in Dallas, the 5s answered with a dominant weekend, a sweep of St. Louis, and a 22-1 game record that reset the early MLP conversation.
Get the biggest takeaways from MLP Columbus, including New Jersey’s statement win, Miami’s surprise flashes, and what the weekend changed in the standings.
🇰🇷 GLOBAL NEWS
From Niche Hobby to Public
Courts - Pickleball Gains
Ground in Korea
Imagine (Pickleball) In Your Korea
Pickleball is starting to pop in Korea, from converted tennis spaces to a new 14-court complex along the Han River. But as younger players, expats, celebrities, and longtime seniors all crowd onto the same limited courts, the sport’s next test is whether Korea can build space fast enough to keep up.
Learn how pickleball is moving from niche hobby to lifestyle sport in Korea, and what could decide whether the boom lasts.
😂 HUMOR
These Escape Rooms
Are Getting Ridiculous
🧭 COMMUNITY NEWS
RALLY RUNDOWN:
LOCAL HIGHLIGHTS
WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA: City to Host Pride Pickleball Tournament at Plummer Park and West Hollywood Park
BYRON CENTER, MI: Youth Pickleball Association Brings Competitive Play to Young Players in West Michigan
JASPER, AL: Jasper's Elezar Lopez Chases Pro Pickleball Dreams
SALT LAKE CITY, UT: Utah Pickleball Champs Go to China
MADISON, WI: Is Madison The Country's Pickleball Capital? City Ranks First In Courts Per Capita
LOUISVILLE, KY: Festival Transforms Downtown Louisville Streets Into Pickleball Courts
ARLINGTON, VA: Pickleball Play Begins, Dedication Ceremony Nears at Walter Reed Complex
JAMES ISLAND, SC: First indoor Pickleball Club Opens On James Island
DO YOU HAVE LOCAL NEWS TO SHARE? REACH OUT TO US AT
[email protected] and send us a link to your story!
HOLDING COURT with
COACH MARY
💪 Stop Making These Stubborn Mistakes
Have you ever been on the pickleball court and found yourself frustratedly saying something like "Again? I always do that" or "Darn! That keeps happening." It happens to the best of us.
This week's pickleball tip may help.
We often get frustrated with our execution of shots during competition. Online instructor Coach Jess from Athena Pickleball spotlights some of the more common stubborn mistakes she sees often and offers some simple fixes.
1. “Serve and Stay” – the problem is that you move into the “Zone of Death” inside the baseline. You creep in and then a deep return handcuffs you. Serve and stay back.
2. Attacking crosscourt is not your best bet. Attack middle or right across from you. If you go crosscourt, your partner might get attacked.
3. After a speed-up, not expecting the ball to come back. As you move up a level, you need to prepare for the ball to come back at you! Get your paddle and your energy out in front, forward. Do not be complacent.
4. Do not back off when you are attacked at the NVZ! Hold your ground, be strong in your arms and stance. Do not retreat to the transition zone. Keep your paddle up, with force and courage. Punch, reset, keep it small and strong. Be fearless!
5. Too much movement, too fancy, with stepping and splitting. “Establish one step in any direction.” Contact in front, parallel, back, to the side, etc. Not Too Happy Feet! Take the ball out of the air when you can.
6. 6. Slapping high put-a-ways! If it is high, do not point your paddle to the sky. Point it to the side, so it is in front of your power shoulder. Your paddle should not be behind your shoulder ever! Get out to the side so you can engage your upper body and your shoulder, rather than just your arm.