THE FACTS:
Click here to see the spreadsheet I used to track the games.
- It took 137 days to play 1,004 games
- Game 1 was played on January 2nd
- Game 1,000 was played on September 6th
- I averaged 7.3 games per day of playing pickleball
- I had 837 wins
- I had 167 losses
- My winning percentage came out to 83.4%
- I played in 10 different states
- 15 games were the most I played in a day which happened on May 9 in Peoria, IL
- 3 games were the least amount I played in a day and that happened on three occasions
- I went through four pairs of shoes
- I went through four paddles
- I played 78 of the 137 days at LifeTime Allen
- I played over 70% of the games alongside my wife, Amanda. That’s 700+ games played together – we never argued once 😉
- We typically played in the evening, 7:30 PM was a good start time for us (after bedtime for our children)
THE STORY:
I like a good fitness challenge.
In 2021, I rowed 1,000,000 meters.
In 2022, my wife and I had our second child.
In 2023, I went on a quest to play 1,000 pickleball games.
I will spare you the speech on why pickleball is the fastest growing sport and how the median age has dropped to under 35 years old. Instead, you simply need to know that pickleball is just plain fun!
My wife and I were having so much fun playing pickleball we decided to launch a pickleball training app called, Pickle Better to address the greatest threat to pickleball = pickleball injuries!
I couldn’t think of a better way to gather data and market feedback then play alongside fellow pickleball enthusiasts.
At the beginning of 2023, I joined as many “open plays” that I could find so I could talk to an array of pickleball players to find out how they were dealing with nagging pickleball injuries.
I was shocked to learn that a majority of pickleball players don’t have a warm-up routine, a cooldown routine, or a simple strength program to follow outside of the court.
My wife and I decided to bring a solution to the pickleball community by launching PickleBetter.com which provides pickleball players easy-to follow pickleball warm-ups, pickleball cooldowns and pickleball strength exercises – straight to their phone!
Here’s to playing better pickleball while reducing your risk of injury at the same time!
We hope you will join us on the court soon, too!
