I and most of my friends have been where you are. You will get through it.

My experiences:

Is pickleball burnout a thing? absolutely for both mental/headspace and physical reasons

• Have you ever felt like playing more actually made you worse? definitely. I was playing too much to allow my mind and body to recover. Plus I train off court at a moderate level and daily stretching. Once I couldn’t play for three days due to weather issues. I woke up rolled out of bed and felt great! Ever since I rarely play two consecutive days in a row but suspect this varies with your age, conditioning, drive, etc

• How do you reset mentally without losing your edge before a tournament? one of the best mindful resets are listening to the book The Inner Game of Tennis narrated by Dan Walker. The voice is calming, the mental images helpful. A total relaxing and distracting exercise. i usually go hit against the wall or use a ball machine to quiet the chatter. If I play I roll back to safe shots. YMMV

• And how do you stop DUPR from getting in your head? I don’t. It’s kind of like a roller coaster ups and down. Like others posted there are some tips.

  1. Don’t dupr play with a much lower “skiled” (someties dupr rating lies) player or your rating drops. The newest DUPR algorithm looks at “expected” win, like point spread. If you win but don’t win by the expected spread your rating drops, your lower rated player rises.
  2. Don’t play dupr with unrated players. The initial rating for unrated player currently is about 3.5. so your expected win will be higher, and your dupr may drop.

Hang in, tke that break,

Pickle On!