My Sunday pickleball was different, we only had 4, 2 guys and 2 girls. It was a lot of fun games and the guys were guys I don’t really play with a lot. I got a good work out and definitely was tired. I felt very worn out when I was playing, which is a bit of a concern since I’ll probably be in situations of needing to play back-to-back days or for significant periods of time in the future.
I guess I have to figure out a way to get in a little bit better pickleball shape. That is an interesting thing to contemplate because what is good pickleball shape?
It’s not like the other sports I played where you ran for hours on end so you could last a two-hour game. Pickleball shape is being able to be on your feet, 4 or 6 hours, not eat and not hydrate. It’s being able to play while doing all the things that can really wear your body down.
And then, what does the next day look like? It’s a good thing to recognize early. And probably cured by simply drinking a lot of water. I imagine there’s probably some level of stamina that needs to be factored in as well.
I did actually switch my paddle today because I didn’t want to – this is so sad – I didn’t want to have to swing as hard. I was willing to sacrifice touch to not have to put as much ooomph into my swings. So I used my Selkirk paddle half the day.
I didn’t have any trouble with it. I missed probably the same number of shots that I did with the Icon but I felt good about how I played with it. I was able to do this kind of backhand inside out successfully several times which was encouraging.
There were a few things that were very distracting and messed with my focus, which is another area that has to improve. One was the pants I wore. It’s easy to fix – don’t wear these stupid pants. I swear to you that I cannot find a pair of leggings that I like no matter how badly I want to wear them.
The second distraction was one game where I thought I had a ball in and it was called out. We lost the next 3 points and then we didn’t score on our next 2 serves. It was 5 interactions before I got it together and was able to reengage. That is horrible. There was no reason for me to think that anybody’s going to make a bad call of purpose. I did not think I hit it out but I can’t see it. I’ve got to just move on. I don’t know that that happens too often but it definitely happens and is definitely distraction for me.
The absolute worst distraction was the last game. I won every game but that one and we had already gone around our rotation. It seemed like it wasn’t as intense as the other games, but we all were still trying. Our opponents were like, chatting, having a full-on conversation between points. By doing so they dramatically slowed the game down and that was a huge distraction. It definitely messes with flow and it was hard to work through and we did not. It was just so slow, so unbelievably slow. I really don’t think that that would happen in any kind of competitive scenario but I think there easily can be a situation where someone does something similar to slow down the game, whether it be stop and wipe off their sweat or go and get balls slowly as they can, things that really disrupts the flow of the game and disrupts the opponents pace.
I think that is a something for me to put in my back pocket as something to do and also something that could be done to me so I need to be prepared for that.
I was kind of wiped out and my drops were a little sloppy. We had good dinking battles. I had lots of drives that were just kind of pointless because they were so bad but I didn’t move my feet to be where they needed to be. I’m happy we were able to get 4 people to play and I’m really satisfied with how much I got to play this weekend.
