This will come as no surprise, but as we pickleball players get older, we slow down. Muscle loss, arthritis, decreased coordination, etc., all conspire to reduce our mobility on the court. Now I’m not suggesting there aren’t things we can do to resist this trend. There are – and I encourage you to do them – but age is a force that we can only resist so much. The longer we live and play pickleball, the slower our games will ultimately become.
When I mention the words age, mobility, and pickleball, most players conjure up images of no longer being able to chase down balls. Those images are correct, of course. Moving to balls, whether it’s running down a short drop or making a quick step to stretch for a hard, passing serve, becomes more difficult as our bodies slow down. But the shots I see that are most affected by mobility problems are not the shots requiring a player to move to a ball. Rather, it’s the ones that make us move away from the ball – the one’s hit directly at us – that create the most errors.
Shots hit directly at our bodies when we’re standing on or near the baseline require us to move away from the ball in order to strike it effectively. Moving away from the ball as it’s moving towards us allows us time to move back into the ball as we make our shot, and with our paddle extended comfortably away from our body. The difference between our best shots and our average/lousy shots is usually the distance between you and the ball when you make contact. The shots that are low, powerful, have that nice pop to them when the ball strikes the paddle, and feel effortless, come from having the paddle extended away from our bodies when we make contact. If we don’t move away from balls tracking right at us, we can’t extend the arm and our stroke gets jammed. And we usually mishit the ball.
I teach my students to think about their body and the ball as two magnets. If the ball is moving away from you, move with the ball as if a magnet is drawing you towards it. And if a ball is headed right at you, move away from it as if a magnet is repelling you. And make sure you’re already moving by the time opponent’s shot crosses the net.
I’ll end where I started – mobility. As we get older, moving away from shots hit directly at us becomes more and more challenging. While I want you to keep working on your positioning, recognize that you’re going to have to hit shots that jam you up. And for this reason, make sure you’re using a paddle that’s relatively wide above the handle. Players that don’t move away from balls effectively tend to mishit shots on the inside part of the paddle – the part of the paddle that’s closest to the handle (and to the body). For this reason, longer, blade-type paddles that are narrow but longer are going to create more mishits. The longer paddle might help you stretch for shots away from you, but again, the bigger problem are the shots hit directly at you. You need a paddle wide above the handle to keep you in the point when your legs haven’t positioned you optimally. You need a paddle shaped for your game, and for your mobility. If you’re mishitting balls that jam you, consider using a wider paddle.
Comments