My pickleball partner and I travel various places to get some games in against other players. We also travel via plane and lengthy distances in our cars to compete in tournaments. The result is always worth it. We get some much-needed physical activity in and refine our craft by fine tuning our skills in the game we love so much. However, after sitting a car seat for an hour or more, our bodies contort to a shape that is not conducive to playing 2-3 hours of pickleball.
Cars and planes do not give us much room to move. Bent knees, flexed hips, and our backs being supported by the confines that our car seats offer a scrunched-up position to our bodies that causes muscles to shrink and compress. After we arrive to the courts, I sit out a game or two and perform the dynamic stretching routine that we train all our personal training clients in Napa to do before their exercise sessions. However, my partner does not take the same measures before he goes out to play. He simply gets out of the car, grabs his paddle, and starts running around the court practicing his high level pickleball skills. Then the classic, “My body feels like it’s going to fall apart,” comes out on the way home. If my partner had done some mobility and flexibility exercises before he scurried off to the court to play 10 games, maybe he would not be hurting so bad at the end of the night. In fact, research supports that performing a uniformed warm up routine of a few exercises of just 5-10 repetitions before physical activity improves performance.
My pickleball partner heard my response about ensuring to warm up before he goes out to play before. It’s my trade to ensure people warm up their joints and neuromuscular system correctly to ensure their bodies perform correctly and avoid injury during exercise. He mentioned that he is impatient and is chomping at the bit to go play when we arrive. Hence why he “never has time to stretch.” However, he did mention a useful suggestion to at least warm up his body before he even steps out of the car. “What if I were to perform some stretches while I was in the car?”
We encourage our personal training clients to perform exercises in the car often to get as much productive exercise possible in throughout their day. We call these “stop light exercises.” First, I would not encourage anything other than looking at your speedometer and the road when driving 70 MPH on the highway. However, when you are stopped for 30 seconds to a minute at a stop light, or better yet while you are in traffic, there are some useful exercises to perform while sitting. Here are 2 examples:
- Posterior pelvic tilt: This is an exercise I learned from my physical therapy internships as one of the first exercises my mentors would teach patients coming in with back pain symptoms. Possessing adequate strength around the pelvis and surrounding musculature of the back substantially assists in the structural integrity of the spine. To perform, sit up right with hips underneath your arm pits, ears in line with the neck. “Tuck” the crests of your hips toward your ribs and roll your tail bone forward. You should feel a brief muscular sensation in your abdomen’s muscles and a slight stretch in the low back. Revert to your initial position and repeat for 10 repetitions.
- Scapular protraction and retraction: Once again, this exercise is top of the list for the clients during my physical therapy internships that my mentors taught to people with chronic neck pain and shoulder rotator cuff pain. Similar to the setup of the anterior pelvic tilt, this exercise requires optimal posture to render optimal benefits. For this exercise, you can put your hand on your steering wheel, about arm pit height. Glider your shoulder blades backward against your spine and contract your shoulder blade muscles. Immediately change the direction of the tracking of the shoulder blades to glide forward toward the chest. Flex and hold the muscles of the anterior deltoids, pectorals, and attachment underneath the armpits. Rinse and repeat for 5- 10 repetitions.
There is nothing worse than having your favorite recreational activity or exercise taken away from you because your body isn’t able to endure the stress imposed upon it. Sure, we deal with aches and pains often. Some more than others due the history of injury and physical maladies in our lives. However, we do not need to settle on pain and watch our bodies deteriorate after partaking in the physical activities we enjoy. Whether it’s in the car or a few minutes before embarking on your recreational activities, it would be productive to prepare your body by choosing warm up exercises to perform better and decrease pain.
Sean McCawley, the founder and owner of Napa Tenacious Fitness in Napa, CA, welcomes questions and comments. Reach him at 707-287-2727, napatenacious@gmail.com or visit the website napatenaciousfitness.com.
