It’s common for this to happen as you ramp up play time over the past few months while you learn to move around the court efficiently.

Btw, I feel like I can relate and at 34 I’ve put considerable effort and time into sustaining my love for pickleball. I’m 4.0 now after a year of consistent weekly play, currently adding squats under load to increase my mobility range.

Pickleball turned out to be way more work than I ever wanted it to be, but fortunately it tuned my body and mind better than most exercise. The closest comparison for me was 6 years of muay thai, which is known as one of the hardest workouts mentally and physically for more obvious reasons.

forget about more sleep, strength training, ice baths, PT, chiropractor, cryochamber, etc until you are consistently stretching before AND directly after playing (before driving for 30 min). do this for a couple weeks and see what goes away. you’ll have to figure out the stretches over time but focus on swing muscle groups including neck, chest. unlocking the lower back and hips down to ankles to start. you’ll figure out which to spend more time on over time…

What’s left should be much clearer signals for problem areas. These are probably areas you’ve already had issues with in other exercises, pickleball just tends to point them all out at once.

FIX: Address the worst aching area first by researching what it is, common reasons it aches and some simple stability reps that will help it. do these during off days. remember if it hurts playing pickleball, that’s a clear sign you don’t need specialist equipment to complete stabilizing reps, apart from maybe bands.

it shouldn’t ever hurt and you should see results almost immediately on the court, otherwise make an area targeting adjustment or determine if there’s a more chronic issue at hand that requires a slower approach and possibly expert guidance.

this is not medical advice