167. Are Power Paddles Hurting You, or Helping you in 2026?

[00:00:03] All right, what's up guys? We are back with another podcast episode. This week we're going to be talking about some of the long-term grit testing, Duper Reset, the new Matchday PB app if you want to keep track of Pro Pickleball. Proton's back somehow from seemingly the dead. And then we've got a couple of paddles to talk about. And then we're going to continue what we were talking about last week, which is do you need a power paddle in 2026? Because I actually went and played a tournament with the Vatic Pro Prism.

[00:00:29] So we're going to talk about some of those results. And then in the kitchen, we're going to talk about some fitness stuff that I think will be a little relevant for Pickleball players. But before we do it, the question of the week I have this week is, what is a paddle you tried and hated? I would love to know. We obviously get to try a lot of paddles. I mean, there are a lot of paddles we hated. Yeah, but I'm curious what people have tried and they hated. So, curious to see if it's because I feel like most people they can avoid the really bad ones.

[00:00:57] Most people probably didn't buy a metal bone. Most people, you know, they didn't buy any of the egregiously bad paddles because there were so many warnings. So I'm curious what people didn't like. Next up, just wanted to talk about this. For those of you who like melon hats or have wanted to buy a melon hat, melon came back with the discount code. So that will be live 24 hours from the moment you see this podcast go live until the next day.

[00:01:19] And you can use code THEPICKLEBALLSTUDIO20 at checkout to save 20% on your hat. And that'll be live for 24 hours. THEPICKLEBALLSTUDIO20. And if you're new here, you guys, most of you have probably already heard this, but we love these hats for a lot of different reasons. And actually, they just recently made it. They've had it for a while now. But one of the complaints a lot of people had prior about melon hats, which is the reason I like them. So it's always funny. Just two different people, different things.

[00:01:49] But the hats are like structured hats. So they're very firm. They're like more stiff. Keep their shape. But they have one called the Adventure Club now, which is like a dry fit hat. Very flexible. Like you could literally squish it and toss it in a backpack at the bottom of your bag. Like a running hat. Yeah. So if you're someone who likes that style of hat, they now have that. The reason Isaac and I like these hats, Pickleball Will, for those of you who remember him, is actually the one that got us turned on to these. But they just clean very easily. I like how they look. They come in a lot of different shapes.

[00:02:17] There's like flat brim baseball style hat, which is what I wear. There's like... I think they have five different shapes now. Might even be six. Dang. So whatever size head you got, they probably got a hat for you. But that's the main reason I've liked them is that they have just... They last forever. Last forever. Really cool collabs. Different colors. Cool designs. Yep. They have great designs. They're into golf. They have a lot of cool golf hats. So love melon around here. Yeah. I've had the white hat that I usually wear. I've had that for like two and a half years now.

[00:02:46] It's easily my most worn hat. I just come home, wash it with some dish soap in my hand. Right back to white. Every time. Unreal. So yeah. They're great. Check them out 24 hours and let's get on to the rest of this. All right. Okay. So long-term grit testing. Got my paddles back from John. His slow motion camera finally decided to not explode. So John has had... I sent him... For those of you who don't know, I sent him a stack of paddles because we're going to work together on some tests. He's obviously doing things with a cannon.

[00:03:16] I'm doing it with my arm and more in the real world. And I was like, John, I don't want to do what you're doing. You don't want to do what I'm doing. So how about we just work together? How about I just send you the paddles when they're brand new? You test them. I'll test them. And then I'll send them back to you at the end. And then we have both pieces of data. So his camera was broken for a while. It's no longer broken. He sent my paddles back. And now we started working on it. I think I'm going to start with the Boomstick. That was another paddle I used this weekend so I could get ahead on some of the grit testing.

[00:03:45] So I don't know how long this is going to take because as you guys know, I play these up to about 100 games and in between reviews is a lot. But I'm trying really hard to crank through these now that we have the paddles back. But John also just did a great video sharing his results so far from the cannon. So check that out if you haven't already. Nice. Okay. So next up, Duper and Duper Reset. So either last week or the week before, I was under the impression that after this tournament,

[00:04:10] when I hit my minimum number of games for Duper Reset that I was going to see my rating, then someone in the comments let me know that was wrong. And they were right. I played my tournament this weekend and I did not get my Duper Reset rating. And I won't until the end of the reset period. Gotta wait like everybody else. Which kind of sucks. But it is what it is. But I'm very curious to see what it is.

[00:04:33] Because I don't know if anyone is more consistent at holding their same exact Duper than me. I am not kidding you. Every single tournament, it's like men's day. Maybe go down a little bit. Mixed day, go right back up to where I was. Or I start a tournament and I finish right where I was. I don't know if I'd say your mixed results are definitely better than your men's. Well, it can go either way. Sometimes it's flipped. Right. But it's interesting. Your mixed rating is not really higher than your men's rating. Yeah.

[00:05:03] So we'll get to that in a second here. But yeah, it's crazy. Maybe a 4.69. Then I go right back up to 4.71. Yep. I just don't know if anyone is that consistent. It is crazy how you've stayed in the same exact spot for so long. It's insane. So that's why I'm curious when I get my Duper reset rating if it's very different.

[00:05:28] Because a lot of the teams that I have played during the reset period have been a good bit higher than me. Not all of them. But I'd say maybe 50-50 have been like 5-1s. And I've had score lines that are 9-11, 13-15. Maybe sometimes I even beat one of them. So I'm like, okay, with 100% reliability, I'm not moving much. But with Duper reset and zero reliability, is it going to move a lot more? Yeah, true. But then if that happens, it makes me... Let's say I end up a 4.95. Let's just make up a number.

[00:05:57] It makes me go, okay, so this whole time with 100% reliability, Duper thinks I'm just a 4.71. But then I reset my reliability to zero and I go up to a 4.9. If I end up being the exact same, then okay, well, I guess this algorithm is a genius. Yeah. But if it's higher, I don't know what to make of that. It won't be higher. We'll see. I mean, it can't give you the lower one. It always takes a higher one. Yeah. It better at least tell me if it was lower. It should. I think it does.

[00:06:26] If it's lower, this algorithm is busted. Because I've been looking at people's dupers and none of them are that low. And the teams that are low, we usually blow out of the water. I mean, yeah, you beat some teams that are pretty good. Yeah. I'm very curious. When is the end date for the reset? It's like May 15th or 17th. Okay. So you got a little less than a month. Half a month. Yeah. All right. But then, like I was talking about, those new Duper features rolled out. So they have a career high, which will show you what your highest Duper rating ever.

[00:06:55] And my question that I want to know, I want to see this in the comments. I kind of hate that this is a thing. No, this should have been my question of the week. I want to know who has the biggest disparity in the comments between their highest and what they are now. Ah, sure. So my highest peak apparently was 489. I didn't even know that. And now I'm a 471. But I want to know if someone was ever like a 5-0 and now they're a 4-0 or they were a 4-8 and now they're a 4-1 or whatever, you know? I mean, yeah.

[00:07:23] I saw one guy who was like a 5-1 is now a 4-4. Dang. That's a pretty big drop. So drop your Duper career high and lowest in the comments. The problem is now, not that I'm ever asking people what their Duper is because I just don't care. But anytime you ask, you already know. People are just saying whatever the career high is. No, that'd be crazy. You gotta be like going around fact checking people and be like, are you telling me your career high or are you telling me your current? If anyone is saying their career high when you ask what is your Duper, that is crazy. Especially if there's a decent gap.

[00:07:53] Or they're always just going to start with the career high. Well, it's 5-3. My career high is 5-3. Yeah. Career high is going to be an interesting one because... I don't feel like it matters if you... Like, I'm not going to go around and tell people like, well, I was a 4-9. Yeah. I'll tell them what I currently am. Okay, here's the thing. I, overall, the new features are cool. I like the stuff they added. The mix rating is interesting. I think it's kind of unique and cool. Mine was odd, but also not odd that it was quite a bit higher than my current rating.

[00:08:23] I mean, I've always had better results in mixed tournaments. But the only thing I ask for, Duper, is please. Please, please. For the love of everything, give us a dark mode. The white background. Guys, you did not make it look better. You added great features, but it does not look good. A dark mode would be better. I dark mode everything on my phone and computer. I just want dark mode. The first time I opened that app, I was like, I'm blind.

[00:08:52] It's like a flashbang going off. It was so bad. But the features are cool. Yeah. My mixed rating was 4.73. So I guess, you know what? You're just a 4.7. I guess I'm just a 4.7. I must have. We'll get to this when we talk about the control paddle experiment this weekend. But I just must have the highest floor and the lowest ceiling. Like, I feel like most people, they have a lower floor and a higher ceiling. But like, clearly, I'm just squarely a 4.7. Yeah. Like, guess it is what it is.

[00:09:21] And then also, one of the features is age rating. So they'll show that if you're over 50 and over 65. But they don't have other age ratings. Okay. So it makes sense why I didn't see that. See, that one's bad. That one we don't need. Why? Talked about this. We don't. If it's supposed to be universal rating, your age should not matter. A 4.0 50-year-old should be the same as a 4.0 19-year-old. In theory, that should apply to Mix, too.

[00:09:50] Yes. I mean, I would agree. But I think age is worse to have another rating for than a different, like, division. I mean, I would generally agree that I think age shouldn't matter when we're talking about... I think... I mean, we've said this before. I think the only way you could truly have a universal rating system is if all the tournaments and stuff didn't separate by gender and age.

[00:10:20] Yeah. I think when you're separating all of that, like, if we had a lot more, like, you could have three women on the court and one guy or two women versus two men or whatever split you want to have across ages, I think we would have a... It feels like we would have a much better data set. I'm not a data scientist, so I wouldn't know, but that feels like how it should work if you really wanted a truly universal rating system. But right now, when it's so segmented by age and gender, it just feels like it doesn't really work that way. But I don't know.

[00:10:50] I know people... Obviously, people who are older will play down. So I guess there is probably going to be some of that in tournaments. No. But a lot of times, people will choose to play whatever their age is. I will say, though, I will be playing the younger age as long as humanly possible. Everyone's like, oh, you're turning 30 this year. You're going to start playing the older division? And I'm like, nope. No, I will not. I will keep playing the young division as long as I can. You're getting old, man. I don't know what day. Maybe there'll come a day where I'm like, you know what? It's not worth it anymore.

[00:11:20] But for now, keeping it the way it is. Okay. Next piece of news. There is a new app called... Let me make sure I'm 100% right on this, but I'm pretty sure I am. Yeah. It's called Match Day or Match Day PB. So it's actually kind of cool. I'm just going to pull it up on my phone here. But you guys can find it on the App Store. I believe it's available for iOS and Android. But it is an app to keep track of Pro Pickleball.

[00:11:45] And just glancing through it throughout today, it's actually a pretty solid app. You can see the live scores that are happening right now. It'll tell you when an upset's happening, who's playing who. People, I think, can vote on who is favored to win in a matchup. You can see there's a tab for completed matches, a tab just for upsets. And then you can also do a thing that we were doing in a group chat for a while with the

[00:12:13] pickleball.com podcast is basically you can pick the podium and you can see everyone's different picks. There's a leaderboard. It's a little different than how we did it. When we did it, you picked an entire bracket all the way from the first round to the end. And that was pretty cool because it made... I feel like it made it... You had to pick a lot more so it was more interesting. Now you're only picking the medal rounds. A lot more thought process. I feel like kind of everyone knows.

[00:12:43] I mean, of course there's upsets. There'll always be upsets. But most of the time, we already know what teams are going to be in the medal matches. Yeah. It feels more fun to me to do it from start to finish. Maybe that's something they'll add. You know, maybe for the start here, they just... They wanted to start simple. But right now, Atlanta is going on. And actually, by the time this podcast goes live tomorrow, the picks will probably be just about closed. But anyways, it's a cool app. If you like keeping track of Pro Pickleball, actually, you can even see estimated start

[00:13:12] times, it looks like, for a lot of these matches. So yeah, check it out. I just thought it was a cool app. Saw it start popping up on Instagram. Checked it out. And I was like, hmm, well, if you're into Pro Pickleball, this would be a great way to keep tabs on things. I do wonder, though, it doesn't look like you... Oh, wait. No, maybe you can. No, no. It looks like it'll take you to the live match on YouTube as well, or wherever it is being. Yeah, this one took me to the live match. Nice. Cool.

[00:13:40] So yeah, great way to keep track of Pro Pickleball if you are a follower of that. So check it out. All right, next up. Proton's back. There's like not a lot of news on this. So basically, to my knowledge, it was basically just a tweet. And then places like The Dink covered it. And the tweet was from Connor Pardot that just said, I like Proton. Sounds like they figured out their internal issues and are back on the right track. Proton is in good standing with the PPA Tour and Major League Pickleball.

[00:14:10] Paddles will be in play next week, hoping they sell a ton of paddles. And then that was it. There was like literally nothing else after that. So it's crazy to me that it went from like Connor sending out this email that's telling like, hey, pro players, heard you're owed a lot of money. So are we. Feel free to pursue that however you see fit. By the way, can't play these paddles. It almost seemed like they were just slamming Proton in this email. And then out of nowhere, they're like, everything's good, guys. Back to normal. Don't worry about it.

[00:14:39] Reading the tweet, it's like the most like, why do I have to do this? Write this out. Like, you know, it's just. It's crazy. I have never seen. I can't think of another company that has had this much like back and forth on stuff. It's crazy. Like, I don't know. So we'll just see where it goes from here. I don't know. That's literally all the news we had. I like it didn't even seem like it made that much buzz.

[00:15:07] It was not talked about very much. Yeah. So I don't know. We'll we'll keep you guys updated if we hear more. But they're they're back on the pro tour. So I guess no one needs to worry right now. So. All right. That's what we got. Next up, two paddles. And then we'll get into this control paddle talk here. First paddle, the RPM Friction V2. This finally came. I actually bought this myself with my own money. This was not sent to us. I think I ordered this.

[00:15:36] I'd have to check when I ordered this. It was like maybe the beginning of March or something. So they had a pretty big, I guess, backlog to catch up on. But yeah, this finally showed up. Got to hit this a little bit this morning. I'll probably make a first impressions this week. That'll be on the channel. What we did this morning was just eyes can I hitting in the backyard. So not extensive play. But I can give some initial thoughts, at least compared to our RPM Friction V1 that was not or that is broken in and has been used.

[00:16:05] So my initial thoughts are that the broken in V1 definitely softer and more plush and does not hit as hard. Not like by significant amounts. It was mostly I would say like the pop felt more toned down. Yep. Which is interesting because we haven't had to talk about this in a long time because I feel like it's mostly been figured out here. But the original V1, the reason the V2 had to come out is because the original V1 didn't

[00:16:34] pass PB core and it was going to get sunset later this year. I think that's I think all the sunsets are supposed to happen in May. I'm curious how many paddles that actually happens to. I think most of the companies have figured it out by now. But anyways, yeah, so we didn't pass PB core. But then this one does pass. But in my opinion, definitely hits harder than the V1s. So I don't really understand how that works. Yeah, definitely has a different response. It's like it feels more jumpy at the net and like drives definitely felt like they had

[00:17:03] more pace than when I hit the V1. Yeah. I mean, when you're hitting when we were hitting, I don't know if I'd say it felt like a huge difference from my end, you know, receiving drives and stuff. But I would generally agree. It gives the perception of more pop. Yeah. And also and this is this is partially where I would say it probably comes down to it not being broken in yet, but definitely felt. It's stiffer to me than the V1.

[00:17:30] And, you know, Gen 3s, they a lot of them tend to soften up as you use them more. So we'll see. But that out of the box, I was like, OK, definitely stiffer felt reminded me almost like the noise and like feel not. It's not like a boomstick, but it moved it closer that direction than what the V1 was. So that's why I'm like very curious when it breaks in like this like stiff, hollow feeling

[00:17:57] that just feels like it reverberates or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, first impression of it, nothing bad. I think if it doesn't turn into the V1 in terms of like it breaks in and gets softer, if you really liked the V1 because it was softer as a Gen 3, then I don't know if you would like this as much from my initial impression. But it's not bad at all. I would agree with that. Yeah, it's not bad. I just OK.

[00:18:23] I don't really don't think either of the Friction Pros are bad, but I firmly am in the camp and believe that it is the most overhyped paddle in pickleball. Why is that? Because. Bounce. Yeah, we'll bounce. It stays up. Let's go. It's not that special. There's lots of other paddles out there just like it. It is talked about everywhere. You just hear people. Oh, my gosh, it's better than everything else out there.

[00:18:53] I love it. Nothing. There's no better Gen 3 on the market. Guys, it's not that different than other Gen 3s. There's bad Gen 3s for sure. See, but I would disagree with that. The V1 before the Pro 5, there was I don't think there was another Gen 3 that was as soft as the V1. What's another soft before the Pro 5? What's another soft Gen 3? I'd have to hit a lot. I mean, I haven't I haven't hit a ton of them recently, but they're like. I definitely wouldn't say the Canon is nearly as soft.

[00:19:21] Like if you want a as soft as possible Gen 3, then sure. Maybe it's the best option. Yeah. But I just firmly believe it's incredibly overhyped. Yeah. I mean, I'll say the V2. I thought the V1 was good. I liked the V1 probably more than I liked the Pro 5. Also, this isn't a knock on RPM and more so just any brand. We need to stop it with the whole V2 thing, man. I'm so tired. It's just so. What's the difference between that and just using a number?

[00:19:51] Well, one, it's lazy. And two, V2, version 2, just always implies better. In no shape or form would I say that this is better than the V1. So, but what would you, you're not going to call it something completely different. Come up with something better. I don't know. V2 just seems lazy. I just don't. It doesn't bother me. It's 2, 3. I mean, same thing. Pro 5, Pro 4, 3, 2, 1. I mean, they didn't really do the 1, 2, or 3.

[00:20:20] But like, I think that instead of doing V2, to me, I think they should have just done 2. Like, they're basically the same thing. Like, 2 implies version 2. But that's like the only critique I would probably give it. Sure. These little lines on the side here. I do think that is like a nice little design. Yeah, those are cool. I do like that. It's clever. I am curious to see though. You know, I mean, who knows how long all this Yola stuff is going to go on for. Obviously, RPM was named in that.

[00:20:50] So, I don't know if it's, you know, if Yola gets what they want and all these paddles stop getting imported. Hey, if you wanted one, you're probably going to want to buy it now before that happens, I guess. Yeah. But I have no idea how long or not long that's going to take. But obviously, they were named in that. So, well, better information in the first impressions. If you were taking one of the other two tournament tomorrow, which one would it be? The version 1 or version 2? I think right now it would be the version 1 because I feel like I'd be able to control

[00:21:19] it a little bit better than I could the V2 here. But I feel like hitting, you know, in the backyard like 30, 40 minutes, whatever it was, like not really enough time to know for sure. But I think for me, I wouldn't need a lot of the extra juice, you know, necessarily. What would it be for you? Probably. I'd probably take the V2. V2. It had a just much cleaner feeling response, if that makes sense.

[00:21:49] I resonated more with the feedback of the V2. The V2 felt, what is the word I would use? Almost like more solid. Like the V1 almost to me felt not like too hollow, but it felt like thinner. Yeah. Like I'd have to, I'd want to, I don't know the numbers off the top of my head, but I want to weigh them and get. Oh yeah, we should grab the stats on that. Twist weights and, you know, everything. Because I definitely think there is a bit of a variance in between the two units that we have.

[00:22:17] And I think that could play a pretty big role in what you're feeling. Yeah, I could see that. If one was heavier, it'd probably be more way more solid. If I had to guess off the top of my head, it's definitely lighter. Okay. Well, next paddle here. So we've got this Aranax paddle. I've actually never had a paddle from Aranax before. I've wants to fall over. Yeah. It's going to stand. I can just see. Yeah. Anyways. Anyways. So this, they've been around for a while. I have never tried one of their paddles.

[00:22:49] But I saw that they signed Zane Navratil. They offered to send some over. So I appreciate them sending this over. And then there's a couple of models. So this one is called the KVL004. And then it has these like boomstick style weights on it-ish. You know, I don't know how much it's weight. It didn't say if I had to guess. It's probably between three and five grams. But same concept as a boomstick weight. But what caught my eye was I went to UPAA's website because Zane Ford plays with it.

[00:23:17] So I was like, okay, surely they can't use it there in the picture. The weights aren't on it. Naturally, that's to be expected. UPAA doesn't like those weights. Selkirk had the same issue. And then I went to USAP's website. And it also didn't have the weights on it in the image. And I didn't see a second model with the weight on it. So I, and it does have the stamp on it. It does say USAPB Core 0.43 approved.

[00:23:45] But I don't know if Aranax decided like, hey, we're just going to slap these on after and then sell it. Or if they did talk to USAP, there's obviously no UPAA stamp on this. So honestly, I have no idea. But I'm just going to say right now, if somehow after hearing us talk about this paddle, you are interested. If you want to be extra safe, I would just buy the model without the weight. It's also cheaper. Yeah. It is 216 for the model without the weight and like 246 for the model with the weight.

[00:24:11] So you're basically paying 30 extra bucks to have this weight on here, which you could definitely put on yourself for a cheaper price. Extra $30. So that is insane. Yeah. So that's kind of crazy. Before we even really get into how the paddle plays, I just have to say this might have one of the worst stock over grips I have ever felt in my life. It is pretty bad. It is atrociously bad. It's pretty slick.

[00:24:39] If I were to use this paddle, the very first thing I'd be doing is ripping that over grip off. Now, I will say, no. Yeah. Foam. Foam pallets. It's fine. It's such a hard paddle. It doesn't even matter. But the performance, like first, I don't really know where I would like place this paddle. The foam core design is pretty interesting. It's like if those of you have been around long enough to remember the Vatik Oni, think

[00:25:07] of a foam core Vatik Oni. So it's like there's their website's very confusing on what the foam is. They use some terms that I'm like, I've never even heard of this foam. So I don't really know what that means. I couldn't tell you exactly what it is. But there's basically three lines cut out in the center of the core. And they fill that with another foam. Then there's the main block of foam. Then there's an EVA ring around the paddle.

[00:25:35] So it's built different than what I've seen before. But I don't know that I thought it necessarily did anything crazier or better than some of the other foam paddles I've seen. I would agree with that. You can go ahead. It was interesting. So it was extremely stiff. I don't know if you felt the same, but I felt like it was a very, very stiff paddle. Not super hollow.

[00:26:01] Definitely not like Inferno or Boomstick or even Loco. Not as hollow as those. But I also wouldn't put it in the dense category. So it's not in that, you know. Like maybe more in the middle. Yeah, it's definitely more in the middle. It's not that forbidden dense and stiff corner that no one likes. I actually did like it a decent amount. The first, you know, few hits with it, I was like, I'm not sure about this. But it warmed up to me. I liked it a decent amount. It's heavy. I don't know what.

[00:26:28] Again, I wish I had grabbed the numbers on it before we started. But it feels very heavy in the hand without, you know, adding any weight to it. So Sweet Spot was good. Spin was crazy. Yeah. I mean, this is definitely one of those not legal. I mean, it's absurd. Yeah. So I don't know how that's passing, but who knows? Sure. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, it's shape was great. I'd want to play some more games with it.

[00:26:57] But resets, dinks, drops, everything felt very easy. It's just like everything else right now. Sweet Spot's solid. Power's good. Very poppy. Stiff. So if you like that stiff feeling, it's a good option. I think at $216,000 pre-tax, eh, it's a little bit expensive in my opinion. Yeah, my guess. For what it is. I don't think we have a discount code with them, but I'm sure you can find one online and, you know, that probably drops it below $200,000.

[00:27:25] It's one of those ones where it's like, I liked playing with it, similar to everything you just said. I had no gripe with it. I don't know if I thought it was as stiff as you did, but also we're playing it outside and it's like 46 degrees maybe. So, you know, that obviously plays a pretty big factor. But yeah, it's just one of those ones where I'm like, okay, a less reputable brand. The price, I don't know that it's doing anything drastically different.

[00:27:53] I wouldn't say immediately that the performance was so much better than anything else. Maybe there's a break-in period where that changes. But it was just kind of like, it did everything fine. Yeah. Just like most every other paddle does things fine. We haven't seen a Kevlar face paddle in a while. A new Kevlar face paddle in a while. Yeah, right. Yeah. It feels like something that just kind of trended out. And if you read their website, I'm pretty sure Airnox is a brand from China.

[00:28:21] There's a lot of things on the website just where the wording is kind of odd in how they phrase some things. I think I also caught a couple typos throughout the website. So, I don't really know. The only thing that I feel like right now is like lending some credibility is that Zane Ford is playing with them on the PBA Tour and they're UPA certified. But like, actually, you know, here's what I would say. If you're looking at the USAP side of things, I think there's plenty of options that compete better than this.

[00:28:50] Ones that have longer lasting grits, you know, that I'd probably recommend over this. Power 2, Spartus. If you're ever able to get the P1, I know the delays on that have been crazy. Dude. But on the UPA side, I actually feel like this would be a pretty solid paddle. It's a good option for UPA players. Yeah. Like if you had to play a qualifier, I feel like this is a pretty solid paddle. Yeah. The UPA side of paddles definitely seems like it's beefing up in terms of them just getting better overall. There's a lot more options than there was, you know, even a couple months ago.

[00:29:20] So that's probably where I'd say, but that's also a tiny group of people. Most of those people probably aren't even listening to this podcast. You know, there might be some people listening who play qualifiers, but if we have 20,000 people listening every week. Qualifiers are challenger players. Yeah. But I bet you that's less than 500 people. I definitely think the pool is growing. Of what? Qualifier people? Qualifier and just because challengers. There's so many people who are, you know, now challengers are picking up and a lot more people are going to be like, well, I might as well give it a shot.

[00:29:47] And if you're new to a challenger, you're going to need a UPA approved paddle. Yeah. So just if you are going to do that, don't buy the one with the weight because you definitely can't use the one with the weight. Yeah. But again, it's, you know, I don't really think anyone, I don't think it makes sense for people to buy the one with the weight because you're just paying $30 for like 10 grams worth of weight. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe six. You know, it's so thin. Yeah. It's really thin. And it has a cutout in it. Yeah. It's very.

[00:30:14] It's a very odd design and choice to put that on there. Interesting to me though. I'm actually surprised it took another like company this long. I figured we'd see someone copy the boomstick weight a lot sooner. Yeah. Built in, out the gate. Yeah. I'm just kind of surprised it took almost a year. Right. And see, look, my biggest gripe with the boomstick, how sharp that edge guard is. They don't, this one doesn't have it yet. They're able to put some type of clamping weight on it. Just saying. Yeah.

[00:30:43] I wonder if it's like heavily glued on this thing or what. I mean, it probably is. I tried to kind of peel it back and that thing is. It's not moving. It is not moving. It is on there. Yeah. I don't, you're definitely not removing that if you buy it. Yeah. I would just say buy it without. But first initial hitting with it. I mean, it was, it was good. It was solid. Yeah. Agreed. No, no big complaint. Okay. Let's talk about the main topic here. This is, I've, I wrote a lot for this one. I was going to say, I was scrolling through this a little bit and you wrote a novel.

[00:31:13] I actually messaged Justin from the Pickleball Pursuit podcast because I, I was like, Hey, you know, I hear you guys show up to a podcast and you have like three bullet points, maybe 15 words. And I was like, I just checked the word count on my doc and it's like over a thousand now. This one doc is more than their entire lifespan podcast combined. Honestly, I wouldn't even be surprised. I told him, I was like, dude, honestly, I'm impressed. You can do your pod with that few notes.

[00:31:42] Cause I don't think I'd be able to remember anything if I didn't take these notes. Just riffing back and forth. Yeah. So I just thought that was really funny, but okay. So last week we talked about, I proposed the question that do people really need the power paddles in 2026? And I thought a ton about this this week. I probably didn't think more about anything besides this, because then I had a tournament this weekend and I was like, fine, you know what? I'll go prove my point.

[00:32:11] I'll go play the tournament, a 5-0 tournament with a Vatic Pro Prism. And then the next day I played with the Boomstick. So we had a lot of men's was the Vatic Pro Prism and then Boomstick was mixed. And before we get into all of this, I want to say that there's, there's a lot of context behind this because I already know I posted a little short too. And there was a lot of debate back and forth, which was actually really fun to see the different opinions. But I do think context matters heavily on which paddle you want to use.

[00:32:41] So let's go through some of that context and then we can talk about my opinions. So first, the ball you use matters a ton. If you play with a Franklin, you can probably use a more powerful paddle. Power paddles are a lot easier with a softer ball. And we probably live more in a bubble of using a lifetime ball. I know it's become more adopted, but I'm willing to bet you the Franklin ball is still predominantly the most popular ball on the market. Yeah. And so if you're playing with a softball, that's going to impact things, right?

[00:33:11] I think the lifetime ball being faster than the Vulcan made some of these power paddles feel harder to use than they were before. Sure. Then the temp you play in matters a lot. Honestly, that's probably one of the biggest factors. Agreed. If you play in Florida, Arizona, California, Texas, anywhere that's really hot. Yeah. You don't need a control paddle because the ball moves so slow that you can, again, probably use a more powerful paddle and very easily get away with it.

[00:33:40] Even the, we had a day recently that was 80 degrees and I was playing outside with MPP Turbo and I was like, oh yeah, it's like not so bad to use when it's 80 degrees outside. But indoors where it was, you know, I don't know, maybe 65, that MPP Turbo was a lot harder to use. And that was with a lifetime ball. So just know if you play a Franklin and you play in Florida, don't use a control paddle. Maybe. Obviously still depends, but I, I wouldn't say that you need to use a control paddle when

[00:34:10] it's that hot and the ball. Right. Right. Obviously your play style matters. Are you a banger? Are you someone who likes to place the ball? And then the other thing I'm going to say for this topic is I am strictly talking about what is better for pure performance for a player over many matches. Not what is more fun. If you want to have fun, please buy a power paddle. It's a blast. Yeah. If your only goal is to have fun and you're like, you know, I'm not here.

[00:34:39] I'm not trying to get a lot better. I'm just going out and I'm having fun. Buy your turbos, buy your boom sticks, buy your friction pro V2, buy whatever you want that is powerful. But I'm strictly talking about what would make you a better pickleball player on average for most people. That's kind of how this whole topic came up. Yep. Let's see. Okay. Couple more things. I'm also not saying that no one should use a power paddle or the power paddles are bad. I don't believe that at all. I like power paddles. I play with power paddles. So I'm not saying that.

[00:35:08] I'm just thinking as I've been watching players, I think a lot of times people overestimate their ability to actually use a power paddle and there are maybe more drawbacks that they don't realize. There's no right or wrong answer here. Okay. Look, everything I'm about to say, you could probably find a counter argument.

[00:35:33] Like one of the popular arguments I saw was, you know, pros have been saying, hey, like use the most powerful paddle you can. Like you should just start with the power paddle because it'll set you up in the long run. I think that can be true. But also I think sometimes that is assuming like, oh, hey, you want to be like optimized to be as good as humanly possible. If you wanted to take a pro from nothing, someone from nothing to pro.

[00:36:00] Yeah, maybe that's the smartest approach, but I don't think most people are going pro. And I think most people overestimate their ability. I also only think that works inside a vacuum under perfect conditions where you're assuming X player has, you know, already decent form. Because if you look at a lot of very new entry level players, like even if they are taking shorter swings because they have a power paddle, it does not mean it's a good swing.

[00:36:30] Right. Right. And then you're just creating a lot of bad habits. So I don't fully agree with the use as powerful as the paddles you can. Yep. Totally. So, yeah, like I said, all of this kind of came about because I, I'll bust it out here. The other day when I was writing a article for my website about what are the top control paddles, obviously I was going to put the Vatic Pro Prism in there. And I was like, you know what? I actually haven't hit this in a long time. I should just bust it out. Like I should make sure I still feel the way I feel about this paddle.

[00:36:58] So I went and hit it and I was like, wow, that was actually a lot of fun. Like I played really well with that paddle. And then, so it just started making me think, I was like, wow, I was hitting my drops way better. I was hitting my resets way better. I was more consistent. And then I was like, okay, drives and overheads. How many times am I actually hitting that in a game? Like how big of a portion of my game is that? And I was like, it's a pretty small portion. I don't hit as many overheads as I would think. Yeah. I should actually go count how many overheads I hit in this tournament between men's and mix. Cause I bet you it's not that many.

[00:37:28] Like, I mean, out of probably I played what? Like 13 games or something. Bet you I hit less than 20 or 30 overheads. Yeah. It's not many or, you know, extreme punch counters. Yeah. But, you know, so I don't think it was that many, but then I was just like, okay, so if that's the case, if I'm hitting more drops, more resets and more dinks, wouldn't I want a paddle that like makes me do that a little bit better rather than like, oh, well, I could have put an overhead away a little easier.

[00:37:57] I think a lot of it comes down to now, again, even with when it comes to paddle, you know, feel and style preference. It is so much matters of the player style. Like you and I are very different. I think I like power paddles now. I mean, I used to be in the all court category forever. That's all I used. Now I like power paddles because of how I hit my drops and how I like to shape the ball. I just don't like to swing.

[00:38:27] I don't like to move my hand a lot, especially if I'm like receiving a lot of pace from an overhead or something. I just want to hold the paddle there and let it do all the work. Right. So like that's the reason why I don't like to use all court or control paddles anymore. Um, I'm sure there are definitely elements of my game that would benefit from it, but I think it now comes down to more of a player style preference as well. Totally. Totally. Um, so let's, let me move on to the next part here.

[00:38:55] So, I mean, you last week you proposed a question that I had said and say, you know, saved a lot of this. I said, I leave it there and save it for the next week. Like you said, what was it exactly you said, how many players are actually losing games because Oh yeah. They can't hit the ball hard enough. They can't hit the ball hard enough. And I said no one below five Oh to five, five. And I still firmly believe that.

[00:39:20] Like, I mean, if you can't win by not hitting the ball hard, you have a lot of other problems in your game. So I was thinking about that last week too, or thinking about that a little bit this week. But could you not also say the same thing at the high level? Like, do you have to hit the ball hard in order to win? But I think it's not necessarily that they are just ripping and hitting the ball hard.

[00:39:47] It's a matter of being able to, it's lower level players are not able to harness and control that power as well as higher level players. Like pros, pros are going to be able to utilize that benefit. That might be in a lot of ways, a disadvantage for lower level players because they just can't, can't use it properly. Right. Pros are going to be able to control the ball within the lines a lot better. They're not going to be missing as wide on say dinks. Okay. You might actually pop up a dink.

[00:40:15] Obviously pros do that too, but it's far less often. Yeah. Right. But then they're gaining the benefit of, oh, you're going to speed up to me? And it's just a little counter that now has a ton of power and is a winner. Yeah. Right. That's why men's game is so slow because they're just, no one wants to speed up. Everyone's counters are so good because these power paddles are crazy. If you slowed everything down, slowed paddles back down, slowed the ball down, you'd see way crazier points. Maybe not crazier points.

[00:40:43] You'd see a lot more longer hands battles and people more willing to speed up because counters wouldn't be as deadly. Right. So I just think what to amateurs power, power can be a detriment in my opinion. To pros, it's a benefit. Yeah. I mean, I would agree. I think that pros can definitely utilize like issues within control.

[00:41:08] Like you don't see pros often just miss a dink in the net or miss a dink wide or sail a drive into the back fence. Like the consistency is just a lot higher. I think their ability to rein that in and then also use it as a benefit is a lot higher. Whereas I think at the amateur level across basically every division, in my opinion, right? Like I'm seeing same thing in some of these five O's I'm playing, you know, they're still hitting the back wall on some of these drives occasionally or even a counter.

[00:41:37] Like I think it at the highest level, they can just do things that amateurs cannot do. I think there is an argument that you could say, right? Like, okay, at lower levels, maybe people can't block as well or they can't get the ball down as well. So maybe hitting a drive at them like they're just going to pop it up and you finish. I think you can kind of argue whichever way you want. And I think that, yeah, it, uh, it just depends a lot on the player style.

[00:42:06] But like, I mean, even myself, I'll skip ahead a little bit here. Like as I was playing this tournament this weekend, played men's, which was the first thing this weekend with a control paddle. I have not. And I'm, I'm, my argument isn't even, isn't even that people should play with a full control paddle. Honestly, I would actually tell people they should probably just play with an all court paddle. Most people probably don't need a pure control paddle. Um, it's probably just a little too little. That's when it comes down to like, where, where's your location?

[00:42:35] Are you in a really hot environment? And are you playing with a really soft ball? Yeah, absolutely. But all court is suitable for pretty much anywhere all the time. Yeah. Any condition. Completely agree. Um, so when I played the prism, I'll just show my setup here. First of all, I did, uh, God, what is this? 18 grams of weight. Yeah. 18 grams. So I did six at the bottom corners here. And then I did six at the head, which I actually like never do that.

[00:43:03] Uh, but I was like, ah, it'll give me some more plow through also because the sweet spots are a little smaller on some of these control paddles. I did want to make that bigger. And this weight set up completely fixed that. Honestly, I think the sweet spot on this was probably just as good as everything I've hit recently. I did not have a single point this weekend where I went, ah, man, that's, if that sweet spot was a little bigger. Sure. I would have hit that. Um, so no issue there.

[00:43:26] But what I found for myself is everything that I have said so far drops were way more consistent. Honestly, I think even my drives were more consistent. I wasn't really hitting them long and I was able to place them a lot better and even bigger for me. This is a funny one. I, there was a handful of comments when I posted a reel about, you know, should you use a control paddle or not? And people were like, yeah, well, good luck winning a hands battle at four or five plus with a control paddle. Uh, okay. Let me tell you.

[00:43:55] First of all, I actually think, I actually think my hands battles for me were better with this because, and again, this is more of a stylistic thing. I just tend to swing more on my counters than I probably should. I'm not like swinging my arm as big as possible, but just a little bit more than I should. And I found that my counters were staying in more and I was able to stay in some of the firefights longer because of that. And I'm, I'll give, I'm going to give a small shout out to this guy.

[00:44:24] He even asked if it would happen or not. One of the guys I played this weekend, one of the team, actually the team that beat me the worst in men's, we lost 411. You want to know what paddles they were using? What both men's players were using? Both of them were playing with luxes. Yep. The worst team I lost to. And guess what? Also the biggest banger team I played the entire tournament. I swear. The craziest bangers are always using luxes. Dude.

[00:44:50] And his hands are not like, this is not the guy you want to start a hands battle with. So when people say things like, oh, well you, there's no way you're winning a hands battle of four or five plus. It's just a silly, silly statement. It's just not true. Yeah. Guys, you give me any, you give me a luxe. You give me, you know, the OG Franklin Ben John signature paddle. And I'll beat this guy in a hands battle any day all the time. I mean, that's just not true. I mean, he loses with a power paddle to me.

[00:45:20] But yeah, no, it was crazy. I mean, we got demolished by them and he is not struggling in hands battle. So I do think that this whole notion of like, oh, well, like you need it because all the other players have it. It's just, it's just not true. Like I, I played him in mixed. He's a demon in mixed too. Like it's crazy. So, um, but I found for myself, there were actually quite a few points, uh, especially when I could attack a ball out of the air from the mid court. Like, let's say I hit a drive and then it popped up.

[00:45:48] I find that a lot of times with power paddles, I end up over hitting that long or the inverses. I try and be a little bit more careful and then I ended up hitting it in the net. And there was a couple of points specifically this weekend where I got to swing exactly how I wanted. And the point was great. Like, you know, there might've been a ball that came back and then I finished the next one. But I was like, dude, most of the time with a power paddle, I'm losing that point when I shouldn't, you know? Well, and again, that's more of a me thing. Not everyone's going to be that way, but I just found myself.

[00:46:18] I was like, wow, I'm playing way more consistent with this than I would have expected. And even when we got to the quarterfinals, we played the team that ended up getting the gold medal, which is, I, we both know both of those guys lost 13, 15 to them, both of them, five, one dupers. And it's like, I don't think I was winning that if I had a power paddle. Yeah. Maybe I would have played worse. I don't know. You know, I felt like that match was very much a grinding dinks type of match.

[00:46:45] And I don't think a power paddle was helping me in that, you know? Yeah. There's watching, watching that match. There was no, how everyone on the court was playing. There was no element or area where it's like, yeah, you would have benefited from having a more powerful paddle. Yeah. Yeah. So I, I just think it was one of those ones where I don't, I didn't even feel like it, anything was really different. I think maybe my ceiling was a little lower, but my floor was higher. So it was just like, I don't know, the same thing I was saying earlier, like closing right

[00:47:15] back to a four seven. Yeah, exactly. And then when I played mixed, when I played with the boomstick because I wanted to get started on this long-term grit testing, uh, just so I can finally get some results on all this. And what I felt was kind of the inverse is that my floor was a lot lower, but my ceiling was higher. Like my ability to maybe rip a drive and then do something flashy right after that was certainly higher. But then also I'd like, I missed probably way more drops in mixed than I did in men's. Sure.

[00:47:45] And so it was like, okay, well, what was the trade off? Now I did get bronze and mixed. I didn't get a metal in men's, but also I think the average duper was a lot lower. Or in mixed, I would say the average duper on mixed day was a lot closer to probably four, six, four, seven. Whereas in men's it was closer to five. Oh yeah. I would agree with that. So I don't know. You can take that for what it's worth. Maybe I'm crazy and maybe I should just be playing with a boomstick. But there were a lot of times where even in hands battles, I was like, man, like I over swung on a counter again.

[00:48:14] Like, I don't know. I just think people can play with softer paddles and it would probably be fun. But I think what it is, is that those flashy, everyone remembers that flashback thing. That overhead you've crushed in the corner and they didn't even touch it. The dopamine surges through your brain. No one goes crazy when they hit a reset over the net and they're like, oh yeah. The best way that I can think of to like have people relate to what, you know, this actually

[00:48:41] is, is like, and I mean, you probably won't cause you don't really golf. But if you go in to get fit for clubs, no one ever wants to go in and get fit for a driver and be like, you hit this driver 15 yards shorter, but you actually hit it more consistent in the fairways and you're going to score better. But no one wants that. They want to be like, oh yeah, my ball speed went up. My carry distance went up. I'm hitting it 20 yards further.

[00:49:08] But now you're going to miss 70% more fairways and you're actually going to shoot much worse scores, right? No one cares. They just want to, it's flashy, right? I hate it so much faster and further, but now you're going to play a lot worse. It's the same thing. Totally. Yeah. And there, there was actually a great comment. Let me see if I can pull this up from YouTube that someone left when I talked about this. They said, I genuinely think we remember high intensity shots more.

[00:49:34] So if we lose a hand battle in overhead or a pop-up put away, it eats at us. When in reality, we lose more boring, boring points, more third shot drops, resets, placement shots, staying in the dink battle. These just aren't as exciting. And we tell ourselves a power paddle can do all the fun stuff. And if I learned to control it, I can do the rest. And the big, if there is, if you can control it. And again, I'm not trying to say no one can control them, right?

[00:50:04] Like when I played with the boomstick, I actually thought it was going to be a lot harder going from probably one of the softest paddles you can currently buy to one of the most powerful. And it wasn't nearly as big of a difficulty adjusting as I would have thought. I do think there was some things. But that was probably because we hit and test everything. And it's kind of a skill now to be able to adjust. Definitely. I do think that that played a part in it for sure. I was just anticipating it being a little worse. But I think your point and this guy's point hits the nail on the head, right?

[00:50:33] Like when you play a tournament and you miss drops, you don't really remember those. But that overhead that you like sent to the back wall or you didn't put away and the team came back and let's say you had four overheads that got to the kitchen and then beat you. You're sitting there going, dude, if I just, if I had a power paddle, this wouldn't be a problem. Right? Like imagine if paddle fittings were a thing, right? Someone, Joe Schmo off the street, little Johnny comes in.

[00:51:00] It's like, okay, here's a power paddle. You're going to rip this thing. You might only get 20% of your drives in. But when it goes in, people are going to be like, whoa, they're missing drives. You might even bag somebody from the baseline. Okay? People are going to be shocked at the power. Then you give them a prism. Like, hey, no one is going to be talking about your drives. But 80% of them are going to go on the court.

[00:51:25] You're going to hit more fifth shots into the kitchen because of your drive. You're going to have a higher percentage get into the kitchen. You're going to keep the ball in play more. You're not going to pop it up as much. But no one is going to be impressed with how hard you hit it. Ain't nobody's picking that. Nobody, little Johnny does not want that. Okay? He wants to impress people with how hard he hits his drives and overheads. Yep. Just how it is. I think people should really, you know, whether you use PB Vision or you do this manually.

[00:51:54] And honestly, I want to do this for myself. I'm going to try and take my games from this weekend and maybe even next week. I have another tournament. And I don't know if I'll use it again. I really got to get through this boomstick. But we'll see. We'll see what I end up choosing to use. But I would love to see, did my consistency actually go up? Right? Like, how many drives did I miss using the prism? And how many drives did I miss with the boomstick? Because I can tell you right now, just from memory, I definitely missed quite a few drives using the boomstick.

[00:52:22] You just, I think one of the other things too, that is very tempting with a power paddle, at least for me, is when I feel like I have the power, I'm like, oh, I should use it. So when I get a drive in the midcourt, actually, this happened a lot. One of the teams I was playing, I kept hitting a lob serve when they were unwinding because they were having a harder time getting to the kitchen when I would do that. And as they're running in and they're a little bit behind, I'm like, and the ball's in the literal middle of the court. I'm like, I need to obliterate this ball.

[00:52:49] Like, they need to feel this boomstick coming at them. And then I hit the tape, or maybe I hit it long, or whatever it is. Whereas, realistically, if I had probably just hit like a 60% drop drive, and they pop that next one up, then I'm at the net, and I put that away. That's probably way better for me. For sure. Because I could hit the ball hard. I bet you if I had the prism, I wouldn't even have thought that. Right. I probably just would have dropped it.

[00:53:15] Realistically, most of the time in games, the first one you get to hit hard should not be the winner. Not the one you should be swinging 100% at. Right? The first high one you get should always be a setup ball. Yeah. To then get an easy one. They're off balance. You know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah. Even though, yes, I do play with power paddles. I personally feel like I'd be just fine with that one. Well, that was actually going to be my next question to you.

[00:53:43] Is like, what do you think would realistically be different, better, or worse about your game if you had to use, I don't know, name whatever. Let's say you had to use like a coral or something. Coral, Franklin, whatever. Yeah, like what would actually, do you think would be better or worse about your game? Better, probably dinking. Okay. More consistent. Just easier. More margin for error. Flicks, definitely. That's something I actually. Better or worse? Better.

[00:54:13] Flicks, I struggle with because I will, I can generate so much head speed with my flicks that I will accidentally add too much and hit flicks long. So, that is actually something I've been struggling with. So, flicks would be better. But then worse, obviously, I wouldn't have as much power on drives. Percentage would probably go up though. So, then, I mean, honestly, you know, yeah, it's hard to say, but you could honestly give that in favor of control or all court paddles. Then for me, definitely worse would be drops.

[00:54:43] It sounds counterintuitive, but how I like to hit my drops, anytime I've gone to a softer paddle, my drop percentage has plummeted. I just, it just doesn't work with my technique, how I like to hit drops now. Yeah. I did say that quite a few times in my comments. There are people who are like, I actually have better control with the power paddle because exactly what you're saying is they want to hit less. So, again, that's a very stylistic thing that I think you need to know about yourself.

[00:55:09] If you know you are definitively a person that's like just going to bunt the ball or you don't want to move on a reset, then yeah, a power paddle may actually be better for you or a control paddle would be more difficult for you. Whereas, you know, I'm the opposite. I just know I swing a little more and I do better with that than having to like, if I have to hold it still, I'm like, God, I don't want to, I want to move this thing. Yeah. You know? Right.

[00:55:32] Also, something that a lot of people I think don't think about maybe or get too caught up in with power paddles is counters. Everyone wants to swing as hard as possible on counters and just absolutely blow the ball away, right? When in reality, you're going to miss so many more. You take a bigger swing, you're going to miss them in the net, you're going to miss them long, wherever, right?

[00:55:57] When if even power paddle, control paddle, if you swung 50% at a counter, it does not need to be that fast. Just because it's cool to actually just rip a counter, not good for you. So I think, again, another element where control and all-court paddles for most people would be better. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I do think that they're with the power paddles. Like, you know, I played some teams this weekend that obviously had power paddles, boomstick and whatever else.

[00:56:23] And there are definitely teams where at the net, if they have like a great flick with a power paddle, if you can hit that well, like it's only enhanced, right? I mean, the team you lost to and that got gold, in my opinion, were both using all-court paddles. Yeah. Franklin, ALW. 16. The Aurelius. Oh, was it a 16? I thought it was a 12. Maybe it was a 12. I thought it was a 16. I'll have to ask him. I actually, I'll have to ask him. I can't remember. Yeah. Scratch that. It was Aurelius Franklin paddle. Might have been 12.

[00:56:53] Might have been 16. The other one was a coral. Yep. So, but again, it did, I don't think it didn't look like he had a lot of weight on it. The Aurelius. It was wrapped though. Oh, sure. Yeah. Okay. I didn't see that. But again, it's still not a crazy power paddle, even with weight on it. And he doesn't even need it. That guy is so tall. I mean, if the ball is shoulder height, I promise you it wasn't coming back. That man. He just destroys the ball. Hits the ball so hard. Yeah. It's ridiculous. Yeah. It's actually insane. But you know, he's also like 6'5 or 6'6.

[00:57:22] So of course he's going to destroy the ball. He's tall guy. He's got some length. So yeah, you know, it's just, and both of them I think have great counters. That's why we were dinking so much because I didn't want to deal with their counters. Yep. Um, but I do think that with a power paddle, you can obviously enhance it a lot, right? If, if you have the ability to control it, it is only a benefit to you to take time away from your opponent. For sure.

[00:57:47] My, I guess like argument or proposed idea is just that I wonder if people are winning more points because of that or losing more points because of it. That's what I think people should watch some of their videos and figure out like, where are your common errors? And do you think the paddle made that error more likely to happen or less likely to happen? Yeah. That is what I think the real question is. You know, I'm looking at the wall and I'm thinking if I had to use an all court or control

[00:58:17] paddle, I don't even know what I would use right now. Well, I mean, don't you think the Fakalos is more all court? Yeah. Yeah. For all court. Yeah. But if I was going with a true control paddle, the only one I can think of that I'd want to use is maybe the Franklin, but I don't shape the ball super well with it. So I don't even know. The one thing that I do think, I kind of hope this changes, but I doubt it will just because of how little control paddles sell these days.

[00:58:44] And again, I want to say this. I am not proposing that everyone has to use a control paddle. All court is what I'm really saying you should use. But the bummer is that like these control paddles aren't going to have the longer lasting grits. Right. Like, you know, if bad, it comes out with one. Are they going to put it on a prism? I doubt it. It may be kind of nice if they did. But that I think you're missing out on elements of those things like these longer lasting grits that allow you to generate more spin. So, you know, you might be a little bit more handicapped that way. All court paddles tend to not have that issue.

[00:59:14] Obviously, there's the coral, which is more all court has a longer lasting grit on it. And, you know, J2 FC plus doesn't have a longer lasting grit, but a very solid all court paddle these days. So I don't know. I think there's that area that could hold some of these paddles back where I do think it would be more in 2026 is maybe more of a definitive disadvantage. But to me, like what I was thinking when I was playing with the prism is I just had to play smarter. Right.

[00:59:41] Like sometimes if you have a boomstick or whatever power paddle you want to name, I feel like what goes at least through my mind is I could hit the speed up to this guy. I bet if I just hit this ball hard enough and go right through him and then they get out of the way and I hit it out. I'm like, well, that was stupid. Why didn't you just aim for the inside the court? It's the little devil on your shoulder whispering in your ear like you can do it. Yes. Hit that speed up. You're like at 910-2, you should totally hit this drive into his chest at the kitchen line.

[01:00:10] As hard as you possibly can. Rip it from midcourt. Yeah. Whereas with the prism, like maybe, you know, that is less of an option. So you're like, OK, what is the higher percentage shot that would actually be smart here? Like, I feel like when I was playing this weekend and if I was going to hit a speed up, I'm like, OK, I should probably like hit it at this hip. And then, you know, I'll put it away or whatever, which obviously you can do that with the power paddles, too. That's how you should think. But for me, it's like intoxicating where I'm like, I've got it. So what is something really crazy I could do with this right here? Yeah.

[01:00:40] You know, I'd also be curious to know what my drive and drop percentage was this weekend and mixed versus men's with the different paddles. You recorded them, right? Yeah. I record. I can go find all of this and maybe next week. Send it through PB Vision and see what it says. Yeah. And figure all of this out. But yeah, I don't know. I guess we can go go on through a couple other areas of this and then we can kind of wrap this segment up. But obviously, again, like I said at the beginning, I think the ball changed a lot of things.

[01:01:07] I think when the Vulcan was the ball and then, you know, we started having a lot of the juiced power paddles come out. It was like, oh, this is really nice. And then once it came to the lifetime ball, I was like, wow, suddenly these all got a little more. It feels like people dialed back a little bit. They're like, let's, you know, isn't a lifetime ball. Let's go back and power a little bit. Yeah. And so I think just depending on where you play and what ball you use makes a huge difference. If you play Colorado, thin air, cold. Yeah. You might want more of a control oriented battle.

[01:01:35] And then in Florida, where it's muggy, it's hot, the sun is murdering you. I'm not probably telling almost anyone to go buy a prism. Yeah. Right. It's just like you're probably only making your life harder out there. So ball huge makes a huge difference. And then what else? I feel like I had something else on the tournament that I maybe wanted to talk about. Oh, also the guy, the team that won mixed. It was the guy that used the Lux. Oh, really?

[01:02:05] He got gold and he used the Lux. So boom, control battle. And then, you know, with all this being said, like, you know, am I just going to switch to a prism? No. You know, I probably would realistically choose like more of an all court paddle if I really had to pick. And, you know, maybe I'll keep using things like the Spartus P1 because the grit, the spin is really addicting. Right. And I think I can probably get to the point where I can use one of those fine. But I don't know.

[01:02:36] It definitely had me just thinking I need to think smarter about how I play. And I don't know if choosing the hyper power. Also, I'm curious as how many people out there are actually like consistently playing tournaments and how many people are just playing for fun. Obviously, there's going to be more people out there just playing recreationally and just playing for fun. Totally. But I don't know. What's the split? Yeah, definitely. I guess last thing I want to say is just, you know, who could who could benefit from more power?

[01:03:05] I think there's like a group different groups of people, right? Like seniors. I know a lot of times seniors like, look, we can't keep up with some of these people. We're going to use a power paddle. That's fine. You know, if you feel like it helps. You know, anytime people say that, in what area do you mean keep up? Is it just they actually hit it harder than me and I can't hit it that hard? Okay. But does that actually mean you're losing? Sure. Right? So like what do people mean when they say I can't keep up?

[01:03:35] And in what way does keeping up benefit you in a way where you're going to win more? Sure. Right. I don't know. Like I hear that thrown around a lot and I just don't think that, you know, again, I think everything we just said applies to seniors as well. You know, seniors are going to pop up power paddles more. Right. But I wonder, I'd be curious to know, like, I'd have to really think through this.

[01:04:02] I think it's one of those things where at, obviously, as you get older, your ability to generate power is just lower, right? For sure. Like you, you generate all the power in the world that you need. Whereas someone 60 years old, it's probably going to be a lot harder for them to do that. So depending on like who they're playing, maybe some extra juice would help. Actually, I was at Lifetime the other day and there's this court of women playing probably in their 60s or so. And I, you know, I'm always looking at everyone's paddles just out of curiosity.

[01:04:32] Like, oh, what are people using? And I looked over at one and I was like, this lady's using the diadem. Hush. No, not the hush. The vice. The vice. The vice. And I was like, oh, I got to see how this pans out. And so like I watch a couple points. And then the very next point, she drives a ball. It pops up and she just rips it into the stomach of this other lady. And everyone else is playing with like, I don't know, a Friday, you know, the original one

[01:05:00] and then like a few other just pretty basic paddles. And I was like, man, this is not a fair fight for this lady. But see, like even there, right there. Yeah. Whether she had a prism or the vice in that instance, if it plays out exactly how I'm imagining it, it would not have mattered. Sure. Right? High ball, easy forehang and a rip it. Yeah. Would have been the same result. Maybe you wouldn't have got the pop up without it, you know.

[01:05:25] And that I think that's kind of my point on all this is you may get more of those things. You may get more of those pop ups. But is it higher than the other mistakes you might make with that paddle? Right. That'd be my question. I didn't obviously watch the rest of the games. Maybe she she got beat pretty bad when they started dinking or something. But, you know, I could see seniors. If you're a smaller woman, maybe it's harder to generate power. Maybe you want a power paddle. Right. I hear that from a lot of different people. If you're someone who has a very aggressive style.

[01:05:55] And you just want to crush counters and hit drives. Yeah. Maybe a power paddle is fine for you as well. You know, if that's your style, I wouldn't try to tell you to take away your superpower. Yeah. Obviously, it's not my superpower. So maybe it doesn't it doesn't matter for me. And then the last one is just players who want the paddles to do all the work for them on resets like you. Yeah. You know, I think those are some groups of people that use a power paddle at the end of the day. And then my point is not to tell any of you what you should or shouldn't use.

[01:06:25] My point is just think about it. If you own an old control paddle, maybe go out, play a handful of games with it. See what you think. Maybe you play better. Maybe you play worse. I don't know. It's all very player dependent. But for me, it was a pretty interesting experiment. Honestly, this next weekend, if it wasn't for the fact that I have all these grit tests to catch up on, I'd probably try that prism again. But with the limited court time I have and how many paddles to do these grit tests on, I'm like, dude, I need to wrap this up. There's a lot to get through. And I'm like, man, I don't know.

[01:06:52] This weekend, I might get 15 games total. Then I'd be 30% of the way through the boomstick. I'm like, boomstick probably wouldn't be my first choice this weekend. But not because it's bad, but I don't know. The prism would be fun to keep experimenting with. It'd be nice if I could just play eight days a week, 28 hours a day. All right. Actually, before, okay, we're moving to the kitchen. But before we get into the topic you have written in the kitchen, I'm just curious.

[01:07:21] We asked the question of the week at the beginning. What's everyone's most hated paddle? What's your most hated paddle? What in the time? I mean, I can think way back to a paddle you truly hated. Okay. But I'm curious what you are. What comes to your mind? The first ones that immediately come to mind, Franklin STK, Adidas Metal Bone. Yep. I feel like that neither of those are the one that you're thinking of, though. Classics. Those are classics. But those are not the one.

[01:07:51] It's not one of the one. Not the one I'm thinking of. I mean, you hated this thing. You made a review on it. The waves? No, not the waves. Not anything in the last two years. Oh, man. Gearbox CX-11? That's the one. Ding, ding, ding. Yeah, Gearbox CX-11 was pretty rough. You hated that paddle. Like, objective... Man, I don't even know if I'd say objectively. CX-11 might have been worse. I'm trying to think. There's not many...

[01:08:21] What's a paddle that I really hated in recent times? Why can't I think of something that I dislike? Because they're all good. Because, yeah, everything is, like, fine. The GX-2. Not the power. Oh, okay. Just the GX-2. Oh, sure you didn't. Yeah. I hate that thing. Dude, I'd swing and I'm like, I don't know where the ball's going. Did I hit a ball? Yeah. I swung and hit air. Yeah, no vibration. Like, yeah, I really, really didn't like that paddle.

[01:08:51] I know there's more. Yeah. That was crazy. Yeah. So, that's probably what I'd say. I mean, it's... Yeah, one of those. I don't know if I could really pick a number one. Because it's like... I mean, number one's gotta be the metal bone. The original metal bone. I mean, dude. That thing sucked. I mean, yeah, it was bad. But I don't know. I feel like if I lined them all up and you were like, you gotta play with one of these,

[01:09:18] like, what one would I actually want to avoid the most, you know? I mean, if you gave me the option between the original metal bone or the STK, I actually think I'm taking the STK. I'm not even kidding. Like, okay, I might not be able to spin the ball well, but it's at least gonna have a better sweet spot. It's gonna have... Better feel. A better twist weight. You know, better feel. Like, I can hit the ball flat. Yeah. You know? I don't need to shape the ball. Yeah.

[01:09:46] It'd be nice, but I actually think I'd take the STK. Yeah. Well, something in that realm is probably where I'd go. Yeah. But okay. Moving on. Let's do it. Let's do the kitchen here. So I'm gonna preface this again with I'm not an expert in this. I'm not gonna claim to be. But I feel like I've had to learn so much about this over the last year. And a lot of times when this gets brought up, people are always saying, oh, you should do a video about this or you should talk about what you do. I just want everyone to know. You should go find advice from someone who actually knows what they're talking about.

[01:10:16] And I will give you some resources for that, which would be Connor Derrickson or that pickleball trainer. He does he trains a lot of pro pickleball players and does content on YouTube and Instagram. So check him out if you're looking for some information. Also, a lot of tennis workouts do apply very well to pickleball because, you know, it's a lot of very similar things. And then also, if you are currently in pain and you have not been able to get out of pain, I would recommend you go see a physical therapist. We've both done that. I've benefited a lot from it.

[01:10:46] I've learned a lot from a physical therapist. So if you've been in pain a lot, I would start with a physical therapist. But if you're in a pretty good spot, tennis workouts and Connor Derrickson are great places just to get some general information about learning to be fit. And the reason I think this topic is so difficult or confusing is, first of all, health and wellness stuff, dude. First of all, it feels like the advice changes all the time. It does.

[01:11:10] You'll see a headline that's like eating one egg is the equivalent of smoking a pack of cigarettes. And then the next week, they're like, actually, you know what? But eggs make you live 20 years longer. And you're like, which is it? The amount of like either misinformation or just flip flopping back and forth. Like he's like, oh, man, white rice bad for you. Brown rice so much better. Now it's like, oh, no, no, no. You don't want brown rice. That's not so good for you. You want to eat white rice. It's like, dude, make up your mind. What are we doing here?

[01:11:37] Like, I definitely think people get sick and tired of the health, wellness, food industry. It's just so who knows anymore. It's so overwhelming that I think at some point you just go, fine, I'm not going to do anything then. If I can't have like if I don't actually know what I'm supposed to be doing, then I'll just go back to doing nothing. Yep. And I think in the long run, that is especially if you're playing pickleball, I think that will prove to be bad for you. Not necessarily in terms of diet, but I think in terms of getting more fit, I think it will

[01:12:07] you're either going to pay now by going to the gym or you're going to pay later by being in pain and then either stopping playing pickleball or you're going to go to the gym anyways. Yeah. So choose when you want to pay, but you're going to pay. Yep. And I have learned that I'm paying now. Um, you know, obviously I've talked about my back pain in the past and I'm healing up my hip or whatever, which is pretty fine for the most part, but you know, still working through it. And so I have just learned after playing the sport for five years that you will pay at some point.

[01:12:36] So choose when you want to pay because it's going to happen. Yeah. Uh, especially if you're younger, you're like, you know what? I don't need it. That's what I thought too. Then I got a little older. If you're, if anyone older is listening to this right now, you're like, yeah, I could have told you that. It's the, it's the cycle. Every younger person hears it from someone older and it's like, yeah, right. Right. Buddy. Yeah. Like, I, I mean, I remember I used to play ultimate Frisbee and I would show up, uh, to these pickup games and not stretch at all. I'd just start running and all these old people like, you're not going to stretch. Like you're going to pay for this eventually. And I was like, whatever.

[01:13:05] I was like, whatever old guy, it doesn't matter. Now I'm like, ah man, they were right. Now you are that old guy. I am that old guy. Okay. So anyways, uh, I saw this great quote while just, you know, I browse a lot of like more health stuff, um, trying to get more fit, whatever. And I saw this great quote on a tennis subreddit. It was, you don't play tennis to get fit. You get fit to play tennis. Yeah. And I think the same exact thing applies to pickleball. When you get into it, you're like, easy.

[01:13:34] The court's not that big. It's doubles. I'm not moving that much. I don't got to cover that much court. And then you start playing two hours a day for two days a week, then three days a week, four days a week, five days a week. Some people are playing multiple hours, seven days a week. Yeah. That will 100% catch up with your body if you don't take care of it. I definitely think though that, I mean, there are people who play pickleball and have lost tons of weight from it and it's helped them get fit. Yes. Right. But then at that point you got to do other things, right?

[01:14:02] Otherwise any type of extremely repetitive motion on your body without other excess training is going to have extreme wear and tear. Yes. Right. I've seen that with my shoulder, your hip, your back, other problems, knees, you know? So I think pickleball can help you get fit, right? I don't think it's like you have to get fit before you play pickleball, right? That wasn't my point. Yeah. That's not what we're trying to say, right?

[01:14:29] But if you are someone who plays a lot, plays high intensity games, you should be doing some other type of training, especially if you're taking pickleball serious, right? You should be doing some other type of training to preserve, not just like enhance performance, but preserve your body. Yes. Right? Right. Like there is so much wear and tear on joints, your feet, your skin, like just everything on your body in pickleball. And yeah.

[01:14:57] And I'm glad you said that because my point wasn't to say like, oh, if you're out of shape, you need to go to the gym before you can play pickleball. No, that's not even close. Not even close to what I was trying to say. The sentiment more from that was I think a lot of people like, oh, I will get stronger by playing pickleball. But at some point you will probably if you're playing a lot, this is, you know, if you're playing once or twice a week, I'd say you're fine, you know, but if you are playing a lot and very consistently at some point, you are going to wear on your tendons, you are going to wear on your joints.

[01:15:25] And at some point your play will probably exceed your body's ability to keep up, which is, you know, what both you and I have seen in varying capacity is like, okay, the way I'm playing now, my body is not strong enough to maintain that for a really long time or many days a week. And so you have to play less than. That's the thing. Most people don't give their body the proper amount of time to recover from pickleball.

[01:15:52] Like even though pickleball doesn't quite feel like going to the gym, lifting, exercising, it's not the same type of soreness. People who play five, six days a week, just day after day after day, just giving your body no time to rest and recover. Yeah. Recovery is definitely very important as well. Pickleball. And it's tough, right? I mean, we've all experienced this. Pickleball is like one of the most addicting things you could experience. So it's when you tell someone like, hey, would you rather go have fun with a bunch of

[01:16:19] your friends and play pickleball or would you rather sit and stretch at home? Yeah. Well, there's just so many elements of pickleball that are enjoyable, right? Like there's the social aspect, which, you know, not everyone, a lot of people enjoy, right? Then you've got the competitive aspect. You get to compete in something, which is a lot of fun. The improvement, you know, you're learning, you're getting to, you know, be outside and do like, there's just so many elements of pickleball that are enjoyable and addicting. You just don't want to stop. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:16:48] And that's, that's why I think I'm, I feel very passionate talking about this because I have experienced the flip side where, you know, when I was at some of my worst a year ago, maybe two years ago, it was, it was such a damper on my mood to have to limit my pickleball because of being in pain. I'm watching all my friends go out. I'm watching them all have a good time or hearing about them having a good time. And I'm sitting at home going like, well, if I wasn't hurt right now, I'd go play.

[01:17:17] So this, this, even if you're just taking the performance side out of this, I'd even say my point isn't even really about performance. Like, oh, Hey, you can hit your drive or your flick harder. It's more like, Hey, you get to go out and keep having fun with all your friends and playing the sport you like to play. That's like more the, you don't have to deal with the FOMO. Exactly. So, uh, one of the things I want to say when it comes to going to the gym is a don't think you need when people hear like, Oh, I got to go to the gym. I don't think you need to be this like gym bro, gym rat. Like bro, I'm going six days a week to the gym.

[01:17:47] Now I can't play pickleball and it's Eden. I got to go two hours every time I go to the gym. No, I think you can go to, you know, maybe three days a week would be ideal. But like if you'd had less time two days a week, probably a great place to start better than nothing. Right. And I also think if you don't have a gym membership, I think there's a lot of stuff you can do at home that would be good for pickleball and you can do it pretty cheap buying stretch bands.

[01:18:13] And I feel like PT taught me a lot about this is I would think like, Oh man, what are these stupid little bands going to do? This isn't a workout. Like whenever I think of like, Oh, I got to get strong. I'm like, Oh, squats, deadlift, bench, whatever. And then when I go to PT and they're like, okay, so we're going to tie this tiny little band that's like five pounds of the weight and you're going to move it up and down like this. And I'm like, what is this going to do? And then 10 reps in, I'm like, Oh, this is so hard. You've got some small muscles in your body that do not get used on a day-to-day basis. Okay.

[01:18:42] You activate those muscles. You feel weak. Exactly. Yes. And those, a lot of times those small supporting muscles are end up being the problem muscles and pickball. Something that gets injured or hurt, you know, uh, like the glute medius for me was part of my back pain. Um, and so I just think a lot of stuff can be done at home. You could probably spend, you know, anywhere between less than $50, maybe up to a hundred dollars, get some basic stuff that would help you out at home, but you can do a lot of body weight stuff, um, that would help you out.

[01:19:09] Um, so a few things here. Uh, well, I guess I'll, I'll go over this quick kind of went out of order. I was just gonna say, why do most people get hurt? One, they play five days a week, two, three hours a day. There's no stretching. There's no warmup, bad sleep, bad diet. I mean, all these things start compounding, right? And I think that's one of the things that makes health really tricky is you don't pay for it immediately. If you eat McDonald's one day, you don't really pay for it. If you eat it two days, you don't really pay for it. You eat it a couple months in a row. Yeah.

[01:19:39] You might start paying for it. Same thing with, Oh, I didn't stretch today. Yeah. You might not pay for it the first day, but you keep doing that over and over and eventually you pay the price. Yeah. Um, and I think that's what makes health so tricky is like other things, right? If you spend too much money out of your bank account right away. Yeah. You feel that immediately. Oh, I can't pay my bills. What happens with health doesn't pay for maybe five, 10, I mean, maybe less than that years later, right? It can be a long time before you really pay the price.

[01:20:05] Um, so I just think people get hurt because they don't take some of those things, um, more seriously. But in terms of workouts, I think there's like a few key areas, but not limited to that you should work on one, your core. And, and core does not necessarily mean like just getting like a six pack abs. This is something I had to learn. Like your core is a lot more than just that. And in fact, a lot of the exercises I have learned about for building your core are not the things you typically think about when building like abs, right?

[01:20:34] Like you're thinking sit-ups, you're thinking crunches, you're thinking like these like ball twists or, you know, like B sit-ups, whatever you think and all these things that are the stereotypical gym abs. Like almost every core exercise I do is not even related to that. Yeah. It's things like planks, bird dogs, side planks. Um, God, what are some of the other ones? Oh, in the gym, I think it's called a pale off press where basically you pull a cable straight out to your side.

[01:21:03] And it kind of looks like you're just like going from your chest out. It looked, the first time I ever saw this exercise, I literally thought it was the stupidest thing ever. I was like, why would you do this? It can't be doing anything for you. And then everything I read about core though, like, yeah, you should probably do this. Um, things with cable twists, like those are some ideas of core workouts, but your core is a very important part of one generating power in pickleball, but also keeping the rest of your body stable, like your back muscles.

[01:21:32] So they don't have to work as hard your spine. Like you don't want those small muscles compensating because your core is weak. Yep. And my core was weak for a long time. Uh, I should actually have you try some of the, there's like the pale off pressing that I do in the gym. I'm curious what weight you can do. Cause certainly you can probably do quite a bit more than me. But I'm curious how much more weight. I'm trying to think of what I've trying to think. I probably know the exercise, but I just haven't heard it called that. That's it's literally, you just like, imagine you pull a cable, like the cables right here

[01:22:01] and you pull it out. So it's right here, but it's all that. Yeah. You just go like that. Yep. Okay. That's yes. I just didn't know. I didn't know it was called that. What, like, what weight are you doing? I think I'm like maybe just below 40 pounds right now. Like when I'm starting to cap out maybe around like six reps or something. Interesting. I know I've done that like with free weights without a cable, like with just dumbbells. I'm not, I can't remember. I don't know if you'd get the same benefit. It's a different exercise. It's not the same.

[01:22:28] It's not like a stabilizing, uh, we'll have to go to the gym sometime and we can try it. Yeah, I'm curious. Um, and then, uh, other muscles would be glute. You want to do a lot of single leg stuff, shoulder and forearm. And I realize even as I'm saying all of this is probably like, oh wow, that's a lot to start learning about. I think you should just like pick a small area and just work on it for a while. Something maybe you struggle with.

[01:22:51] Also one thing specific to pickleball that I think most people don't exercise enough is quads. Just legs in general. People don't. Well, men especially. Well, yeah, definitely a man especially, but like I've always found it funny. My favorite thing to do, obviously I'm not impressing anybody with my upper body. Okay. I look, I look ridiculous, but my lower body is something I've always enjoyed working out. That is the one thing that I, I'm proud. I got strong legs.

[01:23:21] I got strong quads. Okay. And it has paid off because in pickleball, when you're in a half squat for, you know, over and over and over again, all the whole point. But quads need to be worked out. Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So yeah, legs should definitely be something and you know, whether you know, I think you can do squats, but so much in pickleball is single leg, right? Think when you're lunging for a dink or you're even running up to the kitchen and you need to lunge to like get a ball that fell in the kitchen.

[01:23:49] Like so much is pushing off of one leg or the other that training single leg workouts, I think is a big benefit. Whether you're going to do something like RDLs or Bulgarian split squats, like those are great places to start. Even recently, I've been doing some stuff on like a Bosu ball where I literally just balance on one leg just to like train my hip stabilizer muscles and make those a little bit stronger. But things that are single legged would definitely be helpful for pickleball. For sure.

[01:24:19] Glute. I imagine that most Americans probably have pretty weak glute medius. That was what was weak for me. It's just a small muscle in the glute. And I did this test when I went to PT. Maybe I can try it. We can try and find a picture to put up. But basically, imagine you just laid on your side like you are flush on your side, legs sticking straight out. You take your top leg, you stick it up and then you swing it behind your body and you

[01:24:44] just have someone at your foot like press down on it and you have to resist their ability to push down on you with your leg behind you. Dude, my leg went straight to the floor, straight to the floor. And I looked at my PT and I was like, am I supposed to be able to like do that? And he's like, yes, yes, you are. And I went and tested everyone I knew after that. I remember you were like, Isaac, get over here. Yeah, I was like, get on the floor. Like do this right now. And every, you know, a lot of people, some would fail, some would pass. I think it just depends on the type of job you have. If you have a...

[01:25:14] You're sitting a lot. Yeah, you probably have pretty weak glute medius. So anyways, working on your glute muscles is good. Currently, my glute medius is good. I fixed a lot of that with different banded exercises, putting a band around my knees and then doing like lateral walks. That engages that a lot. If you just look up glute medius workouts, you can find tons of different banded stuff about it. Now I'm working on just my glute max muscles because I think those are kind of weak.

[01:25:40] So hip thrust type stuff in the gym with machines has been helpful for me to work on that. And then currently, I'm not really doing a lot for my shoulders and forearms. Those haven't been problem areas for me. So they're not a high priority, but it is an area I do want to start working on because obviously shoulder very important. You don't want to tear a rotator cuff or even forearms. It would help a lot with like flicks or tennis elbow. Yep. Tons of people get tennis elbow. Forearm stuff would be great for that. Rice bucket. Yeah, right. Put your hand in a rice bucket. So easy. Yeah. I mean, that's what? 10 bucks maybe.

[01:26:10] If not. Yeah. That rice is pretty cheap to put in a bucket. So those are just some starting areas to work out. I know that's not a very exhaustive list, but if you look at someone like Connor Derrickson, he has lots of workouts where you can visually see all of these things. And again, it's more of a starting area just for you to kind of get familiar with it. My goal is not to be like, oh, I'm going to teach you how to get fit because I mean, you can look at me. I'm in reasonable shape, but I'm not a gym bro, you know?

[01:26:38] But yeah, I just think everyone should start working on it because you will. Please. It's not fun to be hurt. For sure. Not fun to be hurt. Last couple of things I want to go over. Stretching. So there's different types of stretching and a lot of people aren't as familiar with this. If before you play, you want to do dynamic stretching, which is more like you're actually moving while you stretch instead of just like instead of touching your toes and holding it for 30 seconds. You want to do something where you're actually moving consistently.

[01:27:08] So for example, you could do lunges up and down the court. You could lunge onto one leg, lunge onto the next leg moving forward. You don't want to do static stretching. Everything I have read about that is bad for you before you play. You do want to do that after you play though. You want to hold your stretches so your muscles don't get tight. And that has made a big difference afterward. When I'm done, a lot of times if I'm doing dynamic stuff, it's with my bands. Put it around my legs, do some lateral walks up and down the court.

[01:27:35] Sometimes I'll just jog a couple laps around the court. It doesn't have to be fast, but just get the body warm and flowing. Yeah. Is very helpful before you play. Same thing with shoulder. I'll just take a band, stretch it, go behind my back forward. I'll change my grip, do the same thing. That gets my shoulder warmed up. And shoulders have given me pretty much zero grief throughout a pickleball. Must be nice. Yeah, we got it flipped. You got the upper body, I got the lower body. Together we have one good body and one really bad body.

[01:28:05] Yeah. Seriously. But yeah, look up different dynamic warm-up exercises. If you look it up for pickleball or tennis, you'll find some great stuff out there. And then post-match, usually for me, again, my problem areas are my calf, my hip flexor, and my hamstring. So those are what I try and stretch. For my calf, I'll just find a wall and put my heel on the ground and my toes on the wall and just push in. Stretch it out. Hamstrings, just try and touch my toes. Keep my back very straight.

[01:28:32] A lot of times people will round their back, and I try and keep mine straight when I do it. And then hip flexors, there's couch stretch, like kneeling on the ground and just stretching out your hip flexor. You can find different exercises online. But those are some great places to start. And then the last thing I'll say here. Some things that have been very helpful for me in terms of purchases I have made. In fact, the first one I'm going to talk about is probably the number one purchase I have made for my health ever. Not everyone's going to need it, but it was great for me.

[01:29:02] A walking pad. I would buy this. If that thing ever breaks, I promise you I will order a new one the day it breaks. Best thing I ever bought. I have not missed, and this is my goal for the year. I don't know if I've talked about this at all. I am trying not to miss one day of 10,000 steps. And so far, I have not missed a single day of 10,000 steps. I think I'm averaging 17,000 steps a day this year so far. Dang. And that is because of this walking pad. I put it under my desk. I have a standing desk.

[01:29:32] And I just walk while I work. And I'll take a break. I'll go walk outside. Like, I've just made walking more of a part of my life. And I think that is one of the things I've learned about a lot of this health stuff is like, sometimes people are like, okay, I'm going to try and get fit. By summer. Then they stop working out in the summer. Or, you know, I'm going to fix my tennis elbow. Oh, I fixed it. Go back to what I'm doing. Oh, it came back again. Some of these things, you just have to make it like a part of your day-to-day life so it stops happening. And walking is one of the things I did for myself. Actually, I'm going to pull this up really quick.

[01:30:02] I want to see what stat I'm at right now. My walking app tells me how many steps I have walked on my pad. I'm at almost 600 miles on that walking pad. I could have walked to almost Kansas and halfway back on that walking pad. That's crazy to think. That's kind of wild. That's actually nuts. Walking pads are not cheap. There are cheap ones, but I just saw a lot of really bad reviews about them. If you're going to buy one, I would recommend you do a lot of research

[01:30:31] because there are different things that vary between them. Mine is from a company called Walking Pad, and it was the Model C2. Don't have a discount code. Not affiliated, but it's been awesome. I mean, 600 miles, that kind of speaks for itself. Working well. Yeah. And then last two things for me, stretch bands. Again, I keep them in my bag. Helps me warm up. Helps me cool down. And then a massage gun. Massage gun, I wouldn't say it's like a high-tier purchase, but I do like it for my calves just to kind of loosen those up a little bit.

[01:31:01] I don't really use it anywhere besides my calves. Sure. So I wouldn't make that a high priority recommendation because those are kind of expensive, but I have enjoyed the one that I've had, which I think was like a birthday gift or something. Yeah. Yeah. So that's all I got about health and fitness. There's a lot out there, but you just do a little research. It's overwhelming, but... At a minimum, start with a dynamic warm up. If you wanted my tip for the week... If you don't warm up, definitely warm up before you play.

[01:31:30] Show up five, ten minutes before your friends get to the court. Learn to do a dynamic warm up. In the long run, it will be very good for you. For sure. And that's an easy place you can start. There's not a lot of conflicting information about, oh, how many sets? How much weight should I lift? I'm like, is it different for a guy or a girl? Yeah, just do something. Like, I think we can all agree that moving your body to get ready to warm up would be good for you no matter what. And similar thing with like lifting weights, right? Like, I think we can all agree that lifting some weights

[01:31:59] is probably better than lifting no weights. A hundred percent. Even if you don't know exactly what you're doing, it's better to learn and not have the pain in the future. So, I don't know. What's our word this week? It's got to be control. Control? Oh, duh. Control. Control. See, I thought about that one earlier. Okay, good. I'm glad you did because we've been off on that lately. Yep. All right. If you made it this far on the podcast, leave control down in the comments somehow. But otherwise, guys, thanks for listening. And we'll catch you next week. Peace.