The 2024 Paddle Awards Are Tomorrow!

The 2024 Paddle Awards Are Tomorrow!

• Watch video here

My favorite video of the year premieres live tomorrow at 7:00PM CST!

The paddle awards is a tradition I started back in 2021 and I love doing it. It’s a fun way to recap my favorite paddles from the year and we always have a blast filming and shooting the video. We give ourselves more time to work on it, so it’s always fun to take the production up a notch or two. I’ll attach some fun screenshots below.

Come hang out live!

I would love for you guys to make it to the live premiere and come hang out. Looking forward to chatting with people in the live chat.

Can you guess every winner of the 2024 paddle awards?

I created a fun little quiz ahead of the paddle awards to see if anyone can successfully guess every single winner of the 14 categories up for awards this year. 👀

If you think you can do it, take the quiz here!

Screenshots

Upcoming updates

Just like last year, I’m going to be taking some time in January to take a break from creating content and refocus for the rest of 2025.

We will have some content planned ahead of time that should go live during the month, but there won’t be any podcast episodes in January and minimal paddle reviews. Just wanted to give everyone a bit of an update so you don’t think I died. 😂

I do this in January because it is a slow season for paddle releases, but more importantly it’s a good way for me to regroup and not burn out. I have been doing this for 3 years now and it has been a grind.

Would I change any of it? No, I wouldn’t. I love my job, but just like anything, you can have too much of a good thing and it can be easy to burn out. I want to be here 5-10 years from now providing value to Pickleball, and the only way to do that is with some rest.

For the first 2 to 2.5 years of doing this I have been working 70-80 hour work weeks. Almost every hour of every day something in my life revolves around Pickleball.

That of course isn’t sustainable for the long term, so I like to use January as a way to figure out how to become more sustainable in creating Pickleball content.

Either way, the point of this isn’t to gather pity, but just to share a few thing with yous:

#1 That’s why I’m taking a break. Eventually those long hours compound and slowly burn you out.

#2 While most of you probably aren’t creating content, I do think this is a valuable lesson most Pickleball players could learn from. If you are on this newsletter, you are probably addicted to Pickleball just like me. It can be hard to want to take a break. Thoughts like this start to happen: “What if I stop improving because of a break?”, “What if people stop inviting me to that higher level group?”, “What if I miss out on something really exciting?”, “What if my friends get better than me and don’t want me in the group?”, so on and so on. Pickleball players are terrible at taking breaks, but the constant play can certainly stack up against your mental well being and especially your physically well being. In 2024 I finally started to see the impacts on my body from the constant on court time every week and the lack of proper exercise and nutrition. That’s going to be an important thing for me to focus on in 2025. Specifically rest. We would all be better off in our Pickleball journey with just a little bit more rest.

#3 Something I have been reflecting on is “How do we keep Pickleball fun for ourselves?”. I even made a sign in the studio that literally says “Keep Pickleball Fun”. While I don’t have the perfect answers for this yet, I do think it’s something everyone should consider. In the beginning everything is so fun and exciting, partially because it is new and you are improving rapidly. Once the improvement slows down, drama within groups starts creeping up, certain people don’t want to play with other people, you get frustrated when you didn’t play your best in an important group, someone at open play was a jerk, etc etc.

I think this happens to everyone who has been playing Pickleball for a bit of time. Here are some things I have done:

Play left handed games

This year me and some friends would occasionally play with our non dominant hand. All 4 of us. Everyone sucks, but it’s so much fun because everyone sucks. It reminds me of that joy we all felt when we first started playing Pickleball. It can be a fun way to shake things up. Plus, if you have a two handed backhand, this is only going to help improve it haha.

Avoid groups that suck your energy

There are definitely some Pickleball groups that are far more energy draining than they are giving. Avoid these as much as you can. We all know those groups. You leave Pickleball more frustrated than you probably should be.

Thing is, most of us have the choice to not play in those groups, and we’d all likely be better off by not participating. There’s just no reason to leave frustrated with other people.

Find different ways to improve

All of us think about the common ways to improve, but I find sometimes those can feel boring if you’ve been doing them for years. I think finding other ways to improve yourself can be a great break from Pickleball, but still benefit you.

That could be doing foot work drills off the court, weightlifting, working on your sleep, nutrition, or working on things in your game that you’ve specifically neglected for a long time.

In the late quarter of this year I started taking my sleep more seriously and it was amazing the difference it made in how I feel. Last year I was averaging 6.5 hours of sleep, and this year I am up to 8 hours. That extra 1.5 hours of sleep has made a huge difference for me. I used to be careless with my sleep (usually because of work) and now I’m becoming increasingly protective of getting the proper amount of sleep.

Trainer paddles

Trainer paddle games are really fun with a group of 4 friends just like playing lefty. You can find cheap ones on Alibaba or just buy the Franklin / Thrive trainer paddles if you don’t want to deal with Alibaba. The whiffing can be really amusing. Plus, it helps your hand eye coordination to hit the sweet spot better.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

Just like how I reflected on wanting to be able to do content for the next 5-10 years by finding a more balanced approach, I think the same thing exists playing Pickleball. Everyone is so focused on improving rapidly at all times, that they miss the large picture (myself included). If you are going to be playing for the next 5+ years, focus on where you want to be in the long run and not just the short term. Only looking at the short term can be really frustrating and lead you to spinning your wheels faster than you need to. It might suck to have a month of playing terrible in your rec games, or even bombing out of a few tournaments early in the year, but if you focus on where you want to be several years from now, I find that it makes the short term losses less painful. Ups and downs are just part of the journey. Just keep taking small steps forward, it doesn’t have to be fast.

One of my favorite quotes is: “People overestimate what they can do in 1 year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years”. This applies great to Pickleball in my opinion.

Anyways, that probably wasn’t something most of you care about, but I felt compelled to share it as those are all things I’m learning on my own journey, and I’m sure someone out there could use the same advice.

Appreciate all of you. Excited for 2025.