Pickleball Injuries and Pain

Pickleball Elbow Part 2: Should I Play or Should I Go?

July 03, 2026

How do we decide if our pain mellow is enough to be deemed safe to play with, or when it's time to talk to a doctor? This is where most end up making a blind decision, which makes this crucial step no more than a roll of the dice. We're gearing you up with a simple, DIY pain assessment tool to help mitigate this decision, along with the new recovery routine that you'll need to keep your pickleball sessions on the calendar. 

No Room For Guesswork

When it comes time to decide between playing through the pain or playing it safe, most of us end up right in the middle of a classic mental clash between ego and logic. Once ego gets involved, the risk of making a hasty, miscalculated decision runs high. Using this next tool will help you differentiate between pain that's safe to play with, and pain that should be further assessed by a medical professional:

The Preparatory Zone (Pain Levels 1 through 4)

If your pain rating lands at a level four or lower, AND that soreness fully clears up within one hour of finishing your session, then you're good to play.....with some heavily recommended adjustments, that is. More on that in a minute.

The Performance Zone (Pain Levels 5 through 10)

If your pain rating lands at a level five or higher, lingers through your rest days, OR noticeably increases from session to session, then it's time to consult with a medical professional rather than forcing another doubles match. Pushing through this threshold is exactly how a manageable tendon strain can and will turn into long-term tissue degeneration or structural tear, that will leave you sidelined much longer than you'd like.

Regardless of which side we landed on in the previous exercise, one thing holds true to both cases: passive waiting doesn't fix a tendon, and ignoring it only extends your timeline. Rebuilding tissue takes an active, daily strategy. If you don't want pickleball elbow dictating when and how you play, then take your power back, by implementing the following procedures into a regular routine:

Step 1: Controlled Mechanical Loading

To get your tendons to rebuild their tensile strength, you have to introduce progressive, controlled stress. Daily stretching of the wrist extensors lengthens tendons that are trapped under chronic tension. Extend your arm straight out with your palm facing down, use your other hand to gently pull your fingers down toward the floor until you feel a clean stretch across the top of your forearm, and hold it for thirty seconds. Repeat this three times.

Once your acute pain begins to ease up, it is time to start incorporating eccentric wrist curls with a light weight or resistance band. Slow, deliberate eccentric loading stimulates collagen synthesis and forces those new tendon fibers to align in a strong, parallel structure built to absorb court impact. Perform three sets of fifteen repetitions at a slow tempo, three times per week. The focus here's entirely on controlled resistance under tension, not speed or high volume.

Step 2: The Secret Weapon

Surface-level treatments completely fall short because they cannot reach the actual tendon architecture. Your extensor tendons sit deep below multiple skin layers, and standard topical creams just sit on top of the skin masking the surface sensation.

Because tendons are naturally dense and avascular, meaning they receive very low baseline blood flow compared to muscles, standard topicals fail to stimulate deep tissue healing, leaving a massive gap in the traditional recovery process.

The Missing, Mandatory Link: We need a vehicle engineered for deep, sub-surface penetration to actually break through that barrier and wake the tissue up.

The Solution: Paddle Pro™ Organic Recovery Balm. Its trans-dermal delivery system drives a full-spectrum hemp base, paired with organic camphor, menthol crystals, and peppermint oil, straight through the skin barrier to engage the target tissue directly. It acts as a vascular key, forcing localized circulation and cellular recovery right where those micro-tears are trying to heal.

The daily cellular waste produced during play needs to be actively addressed, not periodically iced and ignored. To optimize your cellular recovery, follow this 3-step application protocol with Paddle Pro™ Organic Recovery Balm: Apply 5 to 10 minutes before play, again within an hour of finishing, and once more before bed. Following this system will keep the inflammatory load from compounding between sessions. For a full, in-depth breakdown on the application timing and technique for this 3-step protocol, see Feeling Better, Getting Better, and Knowing the Difference.

Moving Forward

You now have your daily exercises locked in, you've got the topical secret weapon providing a massive boost to the process, and you know exactly how to manage the play-vs-rest boundary line. You've officially transitioned into an active-recovery athlete.

But it actually doesn't stop there. In Part 1 of this series, we touched on why pickleball elbow has such a strong correlation to the sport itself, calling out a few in-game dynamics that support this injury directly. Next, we'll be breaking down paddle core physics, grip adjustments, the mechanics of the kinetic chain, and the final building blocks you need to complete your all-out counter-attack assault against pickleball elbow.

← Back to Part 1    Proceed to Part 3 →

— Andy Dobric  |  July 03, 2026