The importance of stretching

I wanted to share an e-mail I got from Andrea Reichert. For those that don’t know Andrea, she’s become a big fan of pickleball and is helping to get new pickleball courts in Long Branch.

Here is Andrea’s E-mail:

Greg,  Love the website and I just thought I’d email you about an important subject. Maybe you can put in one of the upcoming news features on the site and maybe include a video. As you know I’ve been out with what I thought was a strained glute muscle for the past 5 weeks and I finally got myself to my orthopedic surgeon to take a look and let me know what was really going on. Well after an exam, some x-rays and some other testing, it was determined that  the “glute strain”  or “pickle butt” I was so convinced I had, turned into a pretty nasty hamstring tear and my doctor telling me (much to my dismay) that if I was a professional athlete this would be a “career ending” injury. Of course I tend to forget that my 25 year old athlete’s mind is encased in a near to be xx year old body.  I was upset, shocked and not ready to believe that my pickleball career had ended before it began. His first question I was asked was did I stretch well before I got on the court? To which I sheepishly answered, I did not.  He proceed to explain how important this is to the older athlete and that this is at least a 2 month recovery with 4 weeks in physical therapy. So there I am. And I hurt every day.

I figured I’d write this to you as I’ve been talking to the physical therapists, (at least 4 different ones) who have described patients coming in with calf tears, sprained ankles and ham string tears all from starting this new and wonderful game called Pickleball. Seems that as much as this is a wonderful game for those of us “older athletes” , it’s killing us because we are not doing the thing we need to do the most, stretching and warm up before the game.

I am being told by the therapists that “dynamic stretching” is what will keep us from tearing muscles and generally get us warmed up enough to play safely. There will always be accidents and strains but if just one person benefits from talking about this, maybe they wont have this “pain in the arse” that I have. The therapist told me to go on Youtube and look up “Dynamic Stretching” for tennis as it is so close to the body’s action in Pickleball and there are some good videos there that might be helpful. I’ll send them on in a few. One is hilarious as it looks like it was made a while ago with some older people but it gets the point across with some basic dynamic stretches and they are easy to remember and do.

Anyway, I just thought this was an important point to emphasize so we can avoid the potential injuries that can occur. My doc told me there is a very strong likelihood I’ll do this again to my hammie but so be it. I want to strengthen it and get back on the court. My therapist thinks I can do that so I’m in.

So the morale of the story is: Don’t end up with “Pickle Butt” or something worse. Take a few minutes to stretch before you get on the court.

There are a number of videos on YouTube about  Dynamic Stretching for Pickleball and Tennis. While some of these exercises look funny, it’s up to us to establish this as a norm and not something to be laughed at.  I know I will be emphasizing this as part of Pickleball Boot Camp

Here are a few. Some are better than others, but some are just fun to watch.