Mat Class for Pickleball

Hi. I'm Karen, and I'm here to go through some warm up exercises for people that love pickleball and Pilates. But what has happened in my practice is that people have chosen more pickleball over more pilates. Makes me a little bit sad, but then when they get injured, sometimes they come back and have to revisit their strengthening program, because I need you to know that more pickleball doesn't need more strength. Alright? So I'm not a pickleball teacher, but I am a Pilates instructor and physical therapist. And so what I'm going to go over here and help my client with is some ideas that we keep up our strengthening program and awareness using Pilates principles on the pickleball court during a warm up.

So it's really important that that warm up become dynamic in nature. So first, we're gonna do our breathing, and we're gonna use the paddle. So arm comes out, right arms are free, inhale up, Exhale down. Inhale up. XL down. Three more.

Press the floor away as you go up. Press the floor away as you go up. Last one, go up. Stay up. Now with both of your arms up side bend your torso to the right, and then pull yourself up. Side bend to the left, reaching that right pickleball pedal up, open up the right ribs, and then return.

Change hands with the pickleball pedal. So now when you side bend right, you reach that left pickleball pedal and then come up. And then one more time, to the left, and then bring it up, arm comes all the way down. Worbing up the shoulder now. So I wanna teach you something.

I'm gonna stand kind of in front of you. You're gonna take your pickleball paddle in your right hand. Give yourself a pat on the back. So you're gonna take your left hand and take your elbow up and pat yourself on the back. From the side, what this looks like is a long strong torso with my shoulder stretching upward. Very good. So reach this elbow higher. Good. Now, breathe in, exhale. Now, side bend your body to the left and feel this right side open, and then reach this elbow into my finger, and then bring it all the way up. Take your arm down.

And now you're gonna take the pickleball paddle behind you and reach up your back. Right? So that's shoulder internal rotation. Right? So we have this internal rotation here. Close off this space for me. Yeah. So reach that hand across your body. Good.

And now with your shoulder there, side bend torso to left. So you tie in the torso mobility with the shoulder mobility. That's so important. Very good. One more time on your own. Arm up. Pat yourself on the back.

There you go. And then arm up, bring the pole the paddle behind your back. Last one, arm up, pat yourself on the back, arm down, internal rotation of the shoulder. Up, switch hands. It's important to do both shoulders, arms up. Pat yourself on the back, pause here. Get this left elbow to reach up. Right? Not by arching your back, but by reaching through your ribs. There you go.

Give it a little put. That's it. Reach reach, reach good. And then bring it down. Take it behind your back, internal shoulder rotation. Good. Take it out.

Arm up over your back. Hold it there. Side bend to the right. Come on. Let's reach this elbow. There you go. And then bring it on up. Take the arm behind your back.

And then side bend to the right. There you go. Get those shoulders open. Very good. And then bring it back. Take the arm away. So now holding the paddle in your hand, like this, just take the arm up, take it to the side, push and pull the paddle with each hand.

And then as you side bend to the left, pull with the right, push with the left, bring the arms down. Now we go to our ready stance. Right? So in our ready stance, your pickleball paddle is ready. You get in this ready stance, your legs are loaded. Now we take the paddle and we push it to the left, put leave your hand there. We push it to the left, and we bring it all the way to the right.

We bring it into our belly. We push inhale. Exhale. Push with your right leg. One more time. Push with that right leg.

Stand up, rest. Now we have to push to the right to start. Ready? Ben, ready stance. Push to the right. Pull it all the way around. Push your left leg as you reach over to the right. Bring it in one more time. Reach, and then bring yourself back up.

So the ready stance is such an important leg load. Some of the most important things to understand in pickleball is slips and trips and falls sometimes because the legs don't catch up with the fastness of the arms. So our next awareness is going to be a little lunge series. Okay? And we're gonna use the paddle to help us, first in our right hand. So we're gonna take your left leg. Gonna take it out.

Put the paddle down and just come down to a knee length position. But don't fall with that. Okay. So you're you're not really resting on the paddle. You're just kind of pushing it down. So in this position, your left arm will go up.

You'll breathe. You'll feel lengthening through the right hip. Do you feel when you reach your left arm, you feel the right hip? So now put your left hand on that thigh, gently push the pedal down, not really hard, and push yourself up, bring that front leg back. So now we need to do about five of those in a row. But take your time.

So we're building a little lunge sequence. This is more vertical. So it's gonna be more, quadriceps focus. So I'll do one just so you can see it. So I'm gonna step down push up and back. Join me. Step down, push up, and back. Step down, push up, and back.

Three more. Step down, push up and back two more, step, down, push up, and back to last one. So a chance, So that was stepping with the left leg. Now we'll step with the right leg. We're gonna first step and hold. Okay? So you're gonna put get get your it helps us set our distance. Right? And so, the right arm lifts up now.

So as you reach this right arm up, take your ribs with you, take your lower belly with you, feel the reach, feel how that lengthens that feeling in the front of that down knee. Put your hand on the thigh to help you if you need to. Push up, step back. So step forward with the right, drop down, up, and back. Here's two.

I think we can make a video. Oh, we are. Here's it go. One more time. Good. And then come back. You feel your thighs working.

So we have this lunge sequence. Right? We have that forward lunge. You can do that walking around the pickleball court. Sometimes if you have a place to go, Like, so it'll take you probably on the pickleball court, five, ten, take about 15. You can alternate them, treat it like that. So our next awareness after we do lunging is gonna be the leg lift.

We're gonna take our paddle. You're gonna pick up your left leg, and you're gonna put the paddle in front of it and pull that leg up. And then down. Same leg over and over again. You'll get better at it.

So if you do this, And you can't do that, that's okay. Just keep practicing it. So as you lift or don't even use the paddle, use your hand. Maybe the paddles for balance. Who the heck knows? Most important thing here is to feel the back of that right butt as we lengthen up. That's very good.

Let's do that three more times. Go, lift and lower. Press down into that right leg as you lift the left. Good. Two more reach. How high can you lift that left knee? That's it. Last one.

Woo. Did you feel you're standing? That was good. Okay. March in place a little bit. Now we have to lift the other leg. I'm gonna switch the paddle. First, I'm gonna lift up my right leg I'm gonna balance on my left.

The goal is not to be perfect. The goal is to go through the action of doing the thing. It's already better. Good. You join me now. Raise.

How high can you lift that leg? How high? There you go. Stare it one thing. Good. Last one. Can you hold it up there and take three breaths? One, two? No, I can't.

But it's okay to ask the question. You can. Okay. Very good. Ready stance. So now in our ready stance, we have to build some footwork. Right? Now we're gonna do, let's see, maybe, three steps to the left and three steps to the right. Okay. We'll do it about four times. Staying low. Okay. Go.

+1, 23. Back to 3. Stay low. +1 23. Back 23. 2 more times. +1 23.

Back two three. One two three. Back two three. Rest. And the pickleball court, you could do that in the kitchen line. You can do that on the back line. On the side, you can go from back right diagonal I mean, back up left diagonal. So let's go in that direction at a diagonal.

One, two, three go backwards. Diagonal. Diagonal. Stay low. Stay low. Push the feet. Be late. Be late.

Other diagonal to the right. To footwork. Be light. Light as a feather one more time. Rest. So just by doing those little things, I can feel my heart rate, like I've just done a hundred beats on the reformer.

So these are things not instead of pickle ball, but before so that your body is warm. So it's more than just, oh, I'm gonna go do a pickle ball warm up. Oh, but I gotta get out there and play. If you prepare yourself, with some strengthening things and some mobility things, you will feel better before you even start. So now we gotta go to calf raises. So you know when I said be light on your feet, So now when we do our calf raises, we're going to do just do two feet parallel.

Just go up and down a little bit. Don't need to think too hard about it, but you have to do enough of them I want you to feel like your head is gonna be stuck to the ceiling, like with double stick tape. So you have to push down. You have to push down with the balls of your feet. Rest. Now we're gonna do 10 left leg in front, right leg in back.

Okay. So now with the knees bent, still wanna have a trajectory upward. Okay? Show me what you can do. Yes, exactly, and down. With the knees just a little bit bent. Push. Almost like now, I'm going forward. Push. And push.

Here's four. The front leg is working more than the back leg. Can you feel that? Yes. We love yes. Four, three, two, one, switch the legs, right leg. One, whoa, two, Three, push down in that right foot. That's my challenging leg. Four, five, five more. One, two, three, four. Five. So to build a better pickleball player, not by teaching pickleball, is to teach NICE a body awareness and nice understanding of how the body needs to be prepared.

To do physical effort. Last thing we're going to do is a little bit of what we call in Pilates like jumping or plyometrics, but we don't want you to go get a a jump rope if you've never jumped before. But we're gonna just treat it like this. We're gonna bend the knees, and we're just gonna try to clear the floor. Not a mouth where it's gonna jump.

Jump. Jump. Five more. Jump. Jump. Three four Five. Now we're gonna skip.

Yes. So a skip have you ever skipped? It's been a while. It's been a while. Okay. So a skip is a step and a hop. Right? So we can travel or we can stay put. So I'm gonna I'm gonna talk it through, so it's gonna be a step hop.

Step, hop, step hop. Give it a try. Say it out loud step. Very good. So the reason why we do skipping is it's a way to get our body, you know, into these faster moves. It's not that we do skipping on the pickleball court.

So now we're gonna put this together in a little bit of a a square. I want you to watch me. I want you to watch my feet. Most important thing is doing this warm up. You don't wanna fall. That's why we practice these.

So I'm gonna skip forward. I'm gonna say step hop every time. Step hop Step hop, step hop. Stop. Now when I go to the left, I'm gonna step hop, put my foot down. Step hop, put my foot down.

One more time. Step hop, put my foot down. Go backwards. Step, step, hop, step, hop, stop. Now I'm gonna go to the right. Step my right leg out. Hop, put it down.

Step my right leg out. It's kinda like a side lunge. Hop one more time. Step hop, rest. So there's no feet crossing. So it's not that, karaoke old school, which is a good exercise, but we're tying in the hopping business. Okay? So you start right about here.

Okay. So you're gonna go forward three times step hop. Step hop, step hop, step hop, stop. Step with your left, hop on the left, stop. Step, hop, step, hop. Good. Now let's go backwards. Step, hop, step, hop, step, hop.

Good job. Go to the right. Step with the right. Get lower, get lower. Yes. Rest. So so it's really important that we're doing the whole stepping business to get us ready for moving around on the pickleball. Court. So, the last thing I want to show you is something you could do sitting on the bench if you're chatting with one of your friends or one of your pickleball people, where, you know, you're making conversation and stuff like that, and maybe they'll ask you what you're doing. So come and have a seat here.

I'm gonna take this. So I've had a person recently have really, pain in their shoulder, but what they say is, oh, my shoulder's tight. Know, tightness is just a feeling. We always have to work our strength through our own mobility. So you're gonna take this band.

Give it a little pull. Let me see how tight it is. Yeah. I think that's good. So give it a pull part Ra it up over your head, and then pull your band down, the bar the the band will come in front of your face. There you go. And then let it release.

So as you go up and pull out, up up up and out, you feel your blades and your upper back. Yes. Good. Bring it in front of your face. That was a definite, wasn't it? And then release. Two more times. So pull up and pull out Good. Pull it down in front of your face. Pull it down in front of your face.

One more time. Up. Pull out. Bring it down right in front of your face. Right in front of it. Good job. So you feel when you keep it close in like that, it really works your shoulders. Okay. Arms come up again.

Right. So with the arms up again, stay right there and side bend your torso to the right. Really pulling here, really pulling here. Good. And then use that to come back up. Engage those shoulder blades, upper back. There you go. And then come on back, and then bring your arms down.

So you could do that five let me have the band plates. You could do that five or 10 times or something like that. But the most important thing when you get this discomfort in the front or say the shoulders are really rounded forward and you're in your ready position, which is a good position, but you forgot that you need shoulder blade reaching and shoulder blade reaching. So now to wrap it up, put your left leg cross it over your right. Good. Now leave your hands there. Take your bow forward in your hips just like you know in your good pilates class, so you're not gonna round your back, lift your chest.

There you go. So you're in a different position. So if you have that effects underneath this hip, big time. Big time, and then bring yourself up. So your whole torso and chest is long. That's it. So that's it. So the bow is just a hinge.

Do that one more time and stay there, gather your blades, and now just wiggle your blades side to side. So you feel the back of that hip. Very good. Switch your legs. So the setup is everything. So you go through the trouble of getting your foot in this position.

You get set up long in your torso, okay, try not to lead with your head. Right? Open the chest. Remember those blades? That's your challenge. I think. Keep those blades bow forward. One more time, bow forward. Hold it there. Bring this throat back there.

You go bow forward. Yeah. You go. That's your work. And you that's every time. That's really good. And then move that thigh side to side.

Good. And then pricked your leg down. Stand up. Very good. Because pickleball is such a social sport, and you have good friends and pickleball, and you like to do different things with them, I've had a little challenge that's kind of fun. So you're gonna face a friend. You're gonna take this left hand and you're gonna grab it at with my handle with me.

I'm gonna grab yours with you. You're gonna separate your feet. Oh, about pelvis or hip distance apart. We're gonna do a squat. You're gonna set your blades. Your body will bow a smidge, and then you're gonna squat down, but you can use me. Right? And I'll use you.

That's it. And then stand up. Five times. Go. Pull me. Pull me, and I'll pull you. That's it. Sit down there. Press the feet.

Good. You can use me. You can use me. Press the feet. Two more. Come on.

Last one. You got it. So don't hesitate to get strength through your legs, rotation through your trunk, breath through your whole body, and certainly, certainly have fun.