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Navigate this Page Pickleball Warm-up Strengthen Mobility Chiro + Rehab Massage Therapy Shockwave Therapy Need a 2nd Opinion? How to Play Pickleball Pain-Free: Your Ultimate Guide What's Holding You Back: Pain or Your Partner?! Pickleball is fast, fun, and one of the fastest-growing sports in the country. But like any sport, it comes with the risk of aches, pains, and injuries that can keep you from playing your best—or playing at all.

Whether you’re looking to prevent injuries or recover from one, we’re here to help.

At REACH Rehab + Chiropractic, we specialize in helping athletes like you move better, feel better, and play pain-free.

This guide will walk you through proven injury prevention strategies and what to do if you’re already dealing with pain.

How to Prevent Pickleball Injuries

To keep your game strong and pain-free, it’s crucial to prepare your body and move efficiently. Common Pickleball injuries include:

• Shoulder injuries (e.g., frozen shoulder, rotator cuff injuries)
• "Pickle" Elbow Tendinitis
• Plantar fasciitis
• Knee and leg pain
• Hip pain
• Hamstring injuries
• Achilles’ injuries

Here are key strategies to prevent injuries and improve performance on the court.

1. Warm-Up Before You Play (Video Included!)

We all know it but don't seem to do it—ugh!

We understand in our go-go-go culture, it's difficult to get on the court in time, much less make enough time to warm up before a slew of matches.

However, jumping straight into a game cold is a recipe for injury. A proper warm-up prepares your body for pickleball's quick movements and repetitive motions.

🔥 Watch this quick lower-body warm-up video before your next match:

What a good warm-up does:

• Loosens up stiff joints
• Activates key muscles used in pickleball
• Improves movement efficiency and reaction time

2. Mobilize + Stabilize + Strengthen Key Areas

Pickleball involves quick lateral movements, twisting, and repetitive arm swings. Weakness or tightness in key areas can lead to common pickleball injuries, including knee pain, groin pulls, "Pickle" elbow, and lower back strains.

Areas of Focus:

• Hips, Knees, Feet/Ankles: "The knee will do what the foot/ankle allows and the hip cannot control." Strength, mobility, and stability reduce the risk of sprains, strains, and ruptures.
• Core: Your core is the anchor point for your arms and legs muscles—they only perform well if your foundation can support it. A strong and stable core improves movement quality and efficiency.
• Shoulders, Elbows, Wrists: Shoulder strength and mobility—along with proper technique—help prevent repetitive, overuse injuries.

3. Master Your Movement Mechanics

Proper movement patterns keep you quick and agile while minimizing stress on your body. Work on:

Efficient footwork to avoid sudden, injury-prone stops.

• This "lunge matrix" drill is a simple way to work on footwork while working core + hips strength and stability. To work on speed and quickness, simply lessen the lunge depth to focus on quick steps with control.

Proper paddle mechanics to reduce strain on the wrist, elbow, and shoulder. "Pickle Elbow" is often the result of "wristy" mechanics, which also impairs your power and accuracy—not just overuse!

Balanced posture and stance to improve power and control.

• Stability is the key here: The ability to control within the presence of change.
• Core-pelvis-hips stability is the key to power and performance, but injury prevention! The joints of your limbs, e.g., shoulders, knees, elbows, will do what the core cannot control.
• Here a few simple, yet effective, exercises to improve your stability: Dead Bug Exercise
• Pallof Press Exercise
• Around the World Exercise

4. Listen to Your Body

Soreness after a long session is normal, but lingering pain is not.If you’re feeling discomfort, take the necessary steps to recover before your next match.

Proper recovery, e.g., rest, sleep, nutrition, and mobility exercises, can keep minor aches from turning into major issues.

Not sure what to do for stretching and mobility?

Movement is medicine, and motion is lotion as they say! So, simply doing something is better than nothing, even if it's what you remember from your old high school team sports routine!

Want to be a little more strategic with your mobility? Effective and hyper-efficient, you say?!

Check out our "5-Min Daily Mobility Series" where Dr. Burr runs you through various routines based on the body region.

Better than Ever

A Custom Recovery Program Design Around YOU

Recover, Rebuild, Return to Play

Injuries happen—but they don’t have to keep you off the court for long. If you’re dealing with pain, now is the time to heal properly and come back stronger.

At REACH Rehab + Chiropractic, we specialize in helping athletes recover, prevent re-injury, and optimize performance.

With 380+ reviews and counting, we are your trusted resource for muscle, joint, and nerve pain guidance.

Our goal is to not only help you feel better and solve your problem but to empower every individual to live healthier, independent lives.

We offer an innovative and advanced integrated approach to provide you with the highest standard of nonsurgical care to not only correct the problem but learn how to keep it that way.

Feel better, move better, play better. Because life is too short not to be Pickling!

Feel and Move Better with Chiropractic + Rehab

Classic chiropractic doesn’t address why your pain keeps happening, so you have to endlessly keep going back to get “cracked."

That's why we strategically blend the best of Chiropractic, Physical Therapy, Manual Therapy, and Sports Rehab to individualize your care to your specific needs.

Utilizing a hands-on, holistic approach to relieving muscle, joint, and nerve pain, we customize a recovery plan of targeted treatments with your long-term goals in mind. You take an active role in your care to not only get better but learn how to keep it that way.

How what we do helps you:

✔️ Pinpoint and address the root cause of your pain, not just slap a band-aid on the symptoms.

✔️ Utilize hands-on treatments and therapies to restore movement and function.

✔️ Curate individualized performance rehab exercises to get you back to playing safely, quickly, and better than before.

Dissolve Stress + Tension with Massage Therapy

Massage feels great, but what if all your pain and tension keep coming back?

Goal-oriented bodywork, manual therapies, and massage options create sustainable changes in pain, posture, and flexibility. Hands-on manual work improves range of motion and to “undo” built-up tension, allowing your body to heal. And we teach you how to cement the changes.

The Miracle Wave® HP50 Radial Shockwave Therapy

REACH Rehab + Chiropractic’s shockwave therapy service uses Miracle Wave® HP50 to provide extracorporeal shockwave therapy (ESWT)—wow, that's a mouthful!

ESWT is a non-surgical procedure used to deliver consistent, targeted, and non-invasive pain relief for sports injuries and heal chronic conditions such as:

• Plantar Fasciitis
• Patellofemoral Syndrome (Runner's Knee)
• Lateral & Medial Epicondylitis (Pickle Elbow)
• Rotator cuff tendinitis tear/sprain/strain
• Frozen Shoulder
• Achilles Tendinopathy

These conditions can impact the quality of your life and keep you off the Pickleball court.

The safe, easy-to-use device has a high success rate, delivering powerful pain relief and healing without imaging tests, injections, or invasive procedures.

ESWT benefits patients because their condition can be treated extracorporeally, meaning outside of the body. Since ESWT is non-invasive, there is no lengthy recovery period and virtually no side effects or time off from work.

Shockwave therapy is innovative and can target specific pain in the bones, joints, muscles, tendons, and ligaments. The non-invasive treatment is administered in our clinic and gives most patients significant or total pain relief.

Need a Second Opinion?

Have you bounced around from clinic to clinic hoping to be "fixed" or "healed," frustrated with the results, and you surmise it’s something you’ll just have to live with?

If your answer is “yes,” then don’t lose hope because we can help.

We help you successfully resolve most muscle and joint complaints regardless of previous diagnosis and imaging studies.

Our assessment process allows us to quickly determine whether we can help you within a few visits. If we believe we cannot help you directly, we can at least help you indirectly by referring you to the correct provider so you don’t get stuck in the healthcare limbo—we'll always advocate for you.

If we believe we’re not the right provider for your care and treatment goals, there is absolutely NO obligation to begin treatment.

Premier Pickleball Injury Experts at REACH Rehab + Chiropractic

If other treatment approaches have been ineffective, we'd love to take a "dink" or "drive" at your condition, keeping you away from the Pickleball court!

Whether picking up a pickleball, barbell, or laundry basket, pain and injury shouldn't rob you of the activities you want or need to do. At REACH Rehab + Chiropractic, we believe there's always an underlying cause of pain and injury, so treating the "why" to achieve sustainable results is imperative. And get back to the life you deserve.

• No X-ray diagnostics scare tactics
• No long-term, endless care plans
• No "once you get cracked, you always come back"
• No B.S.

Schedule an appointment today with the area’s most trusted leader in non-invasive musculoskeletal care or by calling (734) 335-0212.