Chiropractic care could be the best therapy to help your pickleball game!

Pickleball is the fastest growing sport in the United States and it has been rapidly gaining popularity among the members of the 55+ communities around Myrtle Beach and its surrounding cities.

A little bit of good old history

Pickleball was born in 1965. After playing golf during the summer, Joel Pritchard, a congressman from Washington, and Bill Bell, a successful businessman, returned to Pritchard’s home on Bainbridge Island, not far from Seattle, Washington. With bored children at home, they sought to play badminton on an old badminton court but couldn’t find the proper equipment. They improvised and played with table tennis paddles and a perforated plastic ball. They began with the net at a badminton net height (60 inches high) and volleyed the ball back and forth over the net. Eventually as play progressed during the weekend, they found the ball bounced well on the asphalt surface and they would eventually lower the net to 36 inches high. The following weekend, Barney McCallum joined and began playing and the three men created the rules for pickleball. The men remembered the original purpose of creating the game was for a game the whole family could play when they were bored. 

With the rapid growth of the sport and its appeal to the 55+ community, we have seen an increase in the amount of pickleball players seeking chiropractic care in the Grand Strand. Some to get an edge over their competitors and others to help with shoulder, elbow, wrist, knee, and hip issues which have developed while getting into the sport of pickleball.

Being under chiropractic care while hitting the pickleball court a couple times per week can make a huge difference on how your rotator cuffs, elbows, wrists, knees, and hip joints perform. Due to the nature of the sport, these joints are the ones that take most of the abuse while playing pickleball. The pelvis, aka hip joints, plays a very important role in racket sports and in golf. The pelvis is made up of two sacroiliac joints that are constantly moving when twisting, bending, or walking. The more mobility these joints have, the better swing of a pickleball racket you will have. At The Chiropractic and Wellness Studio, we perform a series of orthopedic and biomechanical assessments to determine how your hip joints are moving. In a lot of cases, we find that there are fixations or misalignments of these joints. This is called an “S.I. joint subluxation”. If the doctor determines that there is an SI joint subluxation, a gentle and specific chiropractic adjustment is given to the patient. After the chiropractic adjustment is performed and alignment is restored to the area treated, usually the patient experiences an increase of stability and mobility within the hip and adjacent joints. 

When our patients feel more stable while maintaining great range of motion, they tend to perform better at sports like pickleball, tennis, and golf which require a lot of rotation from the pelvis and spinal column. To have your SI joints or any other joints that has been giving you a fit at the court, contact The Chiropractic and Wellness Studio in Surfside Beach S.C.