Yesterday I received a call that no friend ever wants to receive. My friend was at the hospital, and needed help. Upon arriving, I learned that my friend has joined a growing list of friends and acquaintances that have injured themselves playing pickleball. As injuries are an unfortunately common occurrence in pickleball, I think it is fitting that I do a post about common injuries I have seen and how to prevent some of them.
Eye Injuries
Unfortunately these can be quite common and can be of varying levels of seriousness. I have seen people get hit in the eye with both paddles and balls. In the case of the paddle, be sure to keep a safe distance from your teammate to avoid hitting each other with your paddles. To avoid hitting yourself, try to keep your paddle extended out farther away from your body. Holding the paddle straight out in front of you is not only safe, but also provides a great position for receiving the ball. To avoid get hit in the eye by a ball, the best you can do is stay alert or invest in some protective gear. Accidents happen, and the best way to protect your eyes is to start wearing protective glasses or goggles when you play. My mom’s pickleball league all started wearing goggles after numerous people started getting detached retinas from stray balls. If you know anyone unfortunate enough to get a detached retina, then you know this is a very serious injury that will likely require multiple surgeries and lots of time to recover from.
Wrist Strains
Wrist injuries typically occur from lack of a warmup and bad form repeated over and over again. Usually, the player is holding the paddle too close to the body, and trying to turn the paddle with their wrist rather than to twist their body. Another cause can be gripping the paddle too tightly. I find you hit better shots with a loose wrist, and it is also a less injury prone form. Another great way to prevent wrist injury is to grip your hands together and do circles for a minute. This will warmup the wrists before you play. You can also do various exercises like wrist flexors or extensions with free weights or bands, which can greatly improve your wrist strength and prevent injury.
Pickleball Elbow
Playing pickleball requires many repetitive wrist movements while gripping a paddle, which can cause inflammation and pain around the elbow. This injury is called “pickleball elbow” and is a form of Tendonitis that can take a long time to heal. I have battled this injury personally for the last few months, where I feel piercing pain in and around the outside of my elbow joint. As there is really no way to avoid working this joint during a game, it can be a good idea to invest in a compression sleeve, which tightly wraps the area and increases blood flow. I will typically wear a compression sleeve over my paddle arm elbow, and it both reduces pain and speeds recovery. There are a number of exercises you can do to strengthen the muscles around the elbow, and I can go into greater detail on that in another post.
As I got into writing this post I realized there is far too much information to cover in just one post, so I will stop here and post part two tomorrow.
All photos were taken by me on a cheap Oppo. Thank you for reading! :)