The Key to Playing Pickleball Pain Free

Bottom line, you can spend all the time you have training, but if your muscles are imbalanced, you will never reach your full potential as a pickleball player. In fact, you are at risk of injury, if not playing with pain already. Targeted dynamic movement, strengthening and stretching have been proven to eliminate knee and back pain, accelerate recovery, restore a healthy range of motion and build endurance. 

Fix the Root of the Issue

• Eliminate knee, hip, and lower back pain 
• Correct lower crossed syndrome and pelvic tilt
• Restore muscle balance and a healthy range of motion
• Increase efficiency and endurance
• Enjoy pickleball for years to come!

Adaptive Muscle Shortening Is Holding You Back

Our muscles are the engine by which we move, impacting every aspect of our bodies whether we realize it or not. Unfortunately, muscles do not naturally maintain their healthy or ideal range of motion on their own. In fact, it’s just the opposite. Muscles will change their functional resting length to adapt to the length at which they are habitually used or positioned.

This is bad news for most of us. 

As a culture we are spending more and more time sitting, which can result in weak hamstrings and glutes, with tight quads and hip flexors. This combination causes a rounded-forward posture with a pelvic tilt. Unfortunately, time spent playing pickleball does not fix these muscle imbalances, and can make the problem worse. Not only will shortened muscles impact your efficiency while playing, but they will eventually lead to injury.

We're not just talking about a bit of soreness after playing pickleball, tight muscles can cause a multitude of problems such as:

• Poor posture 
• Trouble sleeping
• Low energy in day-to-day life
• Circulatory issues
• Knee pain
• Lower back pain
• Underdeveloped glutes
• Hamstring & Quad injuries

If any of these sound familiar to you, don’t worry, because you’re not alone. Tight or shortened muscles affect nearly everyone, not just pickleball players. But before we get to the solution, we have to take a look at the root cause of the problem.

The Shocking Truth of Adaptive Shortening

Adaptive shortening is muscle tightness caused by a muscle being forced to remain in a shortened position for a prolonged period of time. Whether it be driving, sitting at a desk, or on the couch, the cumulative time spent in these positions have real consequences on muscle structure.

This shortening causes a reduced range of motion, a feeling of tightness in the muscles, and added stress on the connected tendons. However, most symptoms will not show up until the muscle has already shortened a significant amount. The results are postural distortion and the replacing of normal contractile elements with non-contractile tissue.

Chances are, your muscles are already unbalanced.

The earlier the intervention, the faster and better the results!

In every movement there are four main functions of the associated muscles:

• Agonists - the muscles being exercised/worked.
• Antagonists - the opposing muscles acting in contrast to the agonists.
• Stabilizers - muscles that hold the joint in place.
• Assistors - muscles that help the Agonist muscles.

Here's the truth:

Most people don’t realize that the cause of their problems is tight or shortened muscles. The impact tight muscles have on the whole body never occurs to us until we start to experience the symptoms. This can show up as a nagging injury, or in poor posture caused by upper and/or lower crossed syndrome. 

Shortened muscles and the resulting limited range of motion in the joints affects nearly everybody, but few realize they impact every aspect of the whole body. Diagnosing adaptive shortening can be tricky. Chances are, you won’t discover the problem until it has already limited your range of motion. The good thing is that it CAN be reversed.

Why stretching for 5 minutes before playing pickleball isn’t the answer. 

Knowing you have adaptive shortening in the muscles is one thing. Knowing how to take steps to reverse it is another challenge altogether.

Most of us were taught that stretching for a couple minutes before exercise would help loosen the muscles and prevent injury, but this is not the case. Holding a static stretch for 10 seconds will do nothing to lengthen the muscle, and barely scratches the surface of what needs to happen in the structure of the muscle.

Life is busy, so for most of us the idea of stretching for an hour every day may be an unrealistic goal. That’s where we come in.

Our mobility program has been designed to make the most of your time, targeting problem areas in a specific sequence to attack muscles from a variety of angles. Muscles have to be unpacked and balanced in a particular way to have the desired result. We also work on strengthening stabilizing muscle to ensure there is a strong muscle base for your movements. 

It is a combination of practices maintained over time that will help your muscles lengthen and sustain a healthy range of motion, especially as you age.

ABOUT DYNAMIC PICKLEBALL

Dynamic Athletics began in 2017 with the creation of Dynamic Cyclist. Our team has grown over the past 3 years as we have worked with our members to provide ongoing injury prevention and training specific for cyclists. In 2024, we launched Dynamic Pickleball as a means of providing a similar service to pickleball players. Our goal is to provide quality content from industry professionals in a form that is easy to use and experience results. 

Our Team is based in Kelowna, BC, Canada and is made up of a small group of athletic therapists, coaches, and weekend warriors who want to play pain free! 

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