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

What's Cooking in the Kitchen This Week:

• Who Takes The Middle? A Simple Plan You Can Use Every Game

• Scientists Found Two Vitamins That May Slow Down Aging

• DRILL OF THE WEEK: Baseline Drive To Target Drill

• Fitness Expert Glenn Dawson: 5 Moves That Fix Shoulder Pain (From A Biomechanics Expert)

• Preston Engel Breaks Down 5 Pickleball Rules Players Most Often Get Wrong

• How Pickleball Supports Brain Health As You Age

• Is Pickleball Slowly Strangling Tennis?

• France Just Made a Move That Could Accelerate Pickleball in Europe

• HUMOR: One Quick Game to 15…

• Coach Mary: How To Execute The 4th Shot

• Poll: How Often Do You Want To See Drills Section?

🥷SKILLS

Who Takes The Middle?
A Simple Plan

We’ve all been there. The other team threads a ball right between you and your partner and you either both lunge for it or both watch it go by.

Why “forehand takes the middle” isn’t enough

You’ve probably heard the cliché: “forehand takes the middle.” It’s not wrong, but it’s incomplete—and it breaks down in three common situations:

• You’re playing with a lefty.

• You’re both comfortable using your forehand in the middle.

• One of you is out of position or stretched wide.

In those moments, “forehand takes it” can give you two people charging the same ball, two half‑swings, or both players looking at each other while the ball skids through.

The fix is to stop thinking in clichés and start thinking in lanes.

Step one: decide who owns the “middle lane”

Imagine a narrow lane running from the net to the baseline, centered between you and your partner. If nobody owns that lane, everyone hesitates. If one person owns it, the game gets much simpler.

Before you serve or receive:

• With two righties: the player on the left side usually owns the middle lane with their forehand.

• With two lefties: the player on the right side usually owns the middle lane with their forehand.

• With righty–lefty: you have two forehands in the middle, so you must choose:

  • Either the person with the stronger, more reliable forehand owns that lane, or

  • You split it: one player owns “short‑middle” at the kitchen, the other owns “deep‑middle” off the bounce.

💪 Health & Fitness Section

Scientists Found Two Vitamins
That May Slow Down Aging

Your body has two ages. Your chronological age which just counts the years. And then there’s your biological age. It measures how well your cells are actually holding up. And that’s the most important of the two. 

Two people can both be 65. But one person’s cells might look more like a 58-year-old’s. The other’s might look closer to 72. That gap is biological age.  

The good news is that unlike your birthday, your biological age is something you can influence.

What the Research Found 

A study tracked over 15,000 people. It found that two specific vitamins are directly linked to how fast your cells age. People with higher levels of both aged more slowly at a cellular level. And the difference was significant. 

Those two vitamins? Vitamin C and Vitamin B2. 

After a long winter of comfort food and fewer fresh vegetables, most people are running low on both. 

The Two Vitamins That Make a Difference 

Vitamin C protects your cells from damage. Think of it as a shield. Every hard game, every hour in the sun, every bit of physical stress creates wear on your cells. Vitamin C helps absorb that wear. 

Vitamin B2 keeps your cells’ energy system running clean. It helps your body repair itself after exercise. Without enough of it, that repair slows down.  

🥷 DRILL OF THE WEEK

Baseline Drive To Target Drill

Most missed drives feel like bad timing. They’re not. They’re going exactly where you aimed, you just didn’t realize where that was. This drill flips the focus from swinging harder to picking a spot and hitting it on purpose, until your drive actually creates problems instead of handing over easy blocks.

Train your drive to hit targets, not just pace, and see how quickly your misses clean up.

 🏋️ STAYING FIT with
GLENN & BRIANNA

5 Moves That Fix Shoulder Pain
(From A Biomechanics Expert)

🥷 SKILLS

Preston Engel Breaks Down
5 Pickleball Rules Players Most
Often Get Wrong

Most players are confident on the rules until something weird happens mid-point. A ball curves around the net, a serve has extra spin, or the paddle makes contact twice and nobody’s sure if play should stop. A pro coach just walked through five situations that trip people up all the time.

See the five rules most players misunderstand and what’s actually legal on court.

🗞️  NEWS

How Pickleball Supports
Brain Health As You Age

You’re tracking the ball, reading angles, reacting in a split second, and making decisions before you even realize it. That constant loop of see, think, move is what makes pickleball more than just a workout, it quietly puts your brain to work every rally. And it might be doing more for you than you think.

See the specific in-game skills that are quietly training your brain every time you step on court, click here…

🗞️ NEWS

Is Pickleball Slowly Strangling Tennis?

An Analysis of Court Conversions and Infrastructure Pressure
Indian Wells calls itself “Tennis Paradise,” but 12 of its courts now hold 45 pickleball lines. It’s not about one sport replacing another, it’s about what happens when facilities realize they can fit more players, more often, on the same space. The shift isn’t loud, it’s happening one repaint at a time.

See why some are saying tennis didn’t lose courts, it gave them up!
Read more here…

🇫🇷 GLOBAL NEWS

France Just Made A Move That
Could Accelerate Pickleball
in Europe

France didn’t just “grow” pickleball, it handed the sport to its national tennis federation. That means instant access to clubs, coaches, and a system built to scale, not scramble. Instead of parks filling up first, the structure is already in place, and that could change how the game spreads across Europe.

See why this move could speed everything up and reshape how pickleball develops overseas. Read more here…

🏓 HUMOR

RALLY RUNDOWN:
LOCAL HIGHLIGHTS

CAYCE, S.C.: Special Olympics South Carolina State Pickleball Championship Draws 100+ Athletes To Cayce
AUBURN HILLS, MI: Two-Story Pickleball Club Opens In Metro Detroit With Featured Stadium Court
ASHLAND, OR: Pickleball Noise Debate Stalls $1.2 Million Hunter Park Court Upgrade
ENDICOTT,NY: Pickleball Meets Purpose: Tournament Raises $12,000 For Terminally Ill Patients
BROUSSARD, LA: Broussard Breaks Ground On 24-Court Pickleball Resort And Veterans Memorial
Cape Coral, FL: Local Athlete Set to Represent Team Florida In Pickleball at 2026 Special Olympics USA Games
YUMA, AZ: Sunrise Optimist Hosts Pickleball Tournament Fundraiser For Special Olympics Yuma
GRIFFIN, GA: 3 Georgia Communities Battle For Pickleball Bragging Rights


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

  💪 How To Execute The 4th Shot

Tanner Tomasi shares two short but great videos on
“How to execute the 4th shot.”

I covered this with my advanced drill class Tuesday, and along with the videos, Tanner also covers this in his outstanding book: “Pickleball in 60 Seconds.” One of my students recently gave me this book-thank you!

Your opponent is at the baseline, executing a third shot drop into your Kitchen (NVZ). You want to be aggressive and keep them back, so you are going to try several things.

1. Try to take it out of the air! Reach out into the Kitchen, drop your paddle down, and use topspin on either the forehand or backhand side to return the ball to your opponent’s feet as they try to move in towards the net.

2. If you cannot take it out of the air, first turn sideways, so you can generate power.

3. Take a short step backwards to create space. Short backswing, low to high, brush over the ball, and aim for their feet.
   The first video shows the footwork and the strategy. The second video shows the two-person drill, with the feeder putting 3rds across the net, and Tanner executing shots out of the air and off the bounce.

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