Life Lessons From Pickleball: Getting to The Kitchen

The many things we learn about life from the recommendation to "get to the kitchen"

Photo by Frankie Lopez on Unsplash

“You mean I don’t have to run around the whole court like a crazy person?”

My student—let’s call him Chad—and I were fifteen minutes into a private “getting into pickleball” clinic. He had actually played before, so I was largely letting his questions drive the session. I was also asking him to explain his understanding of “why” we do certain things in the game, and distinguish between Actual Rules and Things You Want to Do For Your Benefit. 

In the teaching and onboarding of pickleball beginners, there’s a lot of pointing and telling: “You’re up” or “Stay back with me” or “Now we switch” or “No, you’re a ‘2’,” and not a lot of explaining why. Or there can be too much explaining and telling, and not a whole lot of seeking to understand the beginner’s current understanding or questions. 

So, as Chad and I were talking through and simulating a typical four-person game, I asked him to explain to me why the score was what it was, why he was now a ‘2’, why it is to his advantage to stay back after the serve, that sort of thing. In the middle of one of our chats about how a point might have played out in a real game, he suddenly stopped me.

“Do you mean to tell me that I don’t have to cover the entire court? I only have to cover my side?” 

I answered that, yes, he is primarily responsible for his side while very much functioning as a team with his partner.  He started laughing about his earlier pickleball performance with a Meetup group. It turns out that he was running around his entire side of the court with great athleticism and very little control, feeling responsible for everything happening on his side of the court. “They probably thought I was nuts,” he said with a sheepish grin.

There is some wisdom in acting as if every ball is your ball. You’ll pay more attention to the game, read every ball, and be ready for every ball which makes you available for strategic “poaching.” But doubles pickleball is absolutely a team sport.

Chad’s example was extreme in that he felt responsible for both halves of his side of the court. But nearly all beginners (myself very much included as I was getting into the game) make a similar mistake by hanging back in the middle-to-back of the court in “no man’s land.” This feels like a wise, strategic decision which will allow them to see and get to all the balls better while “protecting the baseline.”

Why not hang back?

While there are scenarios where a player and partner ought to take their time getting to the kitchen, it’s a general best practice to get up to the non-volley zone quickly. And there are some pretty cool life lessons from this practice. But first, why get to the kitchen instead of staying back?

1. At the non-volley zone is where the game is meant to be played. We didn’t design the game, our friends on Bainbridge Island did. And even though the game as evolved over the nearly 60 years it’s been around, it’s not our job to change the rules or operating strategies.

2. You’re in an offensive position at the kitchen and can be more strategic about the game. You can do so much more—and have so much more fun—than the high schoolers referenced in last week’s article when you come in close. These particularly kids only knew to whack the ball back and forth from a distance.

3. The further from the net you are, the more likely you are to make mistakes, and you remain in the defensive position. Yes, in most games of pickleball you will need to temporarily get back to return lobs. Or you may take a big step back to buy reaction time, but the goal is always to get back to the kitchen.

What we learn about life:

Work with life, not against it

The game of life has its own rules we are simply better off following. I write a lot about intentional living and intentional money, and no matter how much we chafe against things like budgeting, we are simply happier when we do things like live within our means. Gravity is a reality—better work with than against it. We all get 24 hours in a day and how we spend those hours has an effect on our life quality. Telling the truth is much easier than trying to keep track of lies. It’s in your best interest to not take the life of another person or steal stuff. We didn’t make the rules and operating principles, but are sure happier when we play by them.

Take the pressure off yourself

In life as in pickleball, it’s easy to feel like the only way to win is to be able to anticipate or control everything. Or—much more happily—we can remember that it’s not our job to control everything. We literally cannot anticipate from a safe distance everything that might happen.

It’s way more fun to step up to opportunities, give up a bunch of our perceived control, and really invest in this game of life. Hanging back makes the game harder.

Trust yourself and your reactions

As in pickleball, we often hang back because we don’t trust ourselves to react quickly. We fear that in an unfamiliar situation we won’t know what to do, so we avoid unfamiliar situations or getting too close to risk.

Improv has taught me that we spend way too much of our time censoring the best parts of ourselves, and activities like pickleball help us stop overthinking our way through life. When we give the natural reflexes of our bodies and brains a chance—and invest the time to hone our reflexes—what happens is pretty cool.

Sometimes we need to step back

When our opponents paddles are up and we know a hard hit is coming, it’s smart to take a big step back. In doing so we buy reaction time.

And in life, sometimes we also need to take a step back and reassess, regather our strength, and marshal our resources. But the goal is always to get back in the offensive position of the game of life, effecting change and not just having life happen to us.

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If you also think in analogies and have an additional life lesson to share about this, we’d all love to hear. Feel free to share in comments.

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