Pickleball injuries on the rise, doctors say

WASHINGTON ( DC News Now ) — As pickleball becomes more popular, a rise in injuries relating to the sport have risen as well.

Dr. Alex Johnson, a Bethesda-based orthopedic surgeon at Johns Hopkins, said they are seeing more patients with pickleball injuries this summer.

“Just being careful playing at a comfortable level for you is really important. So for maybe some of our seniors it’s more falls. For some of our younger athletes playing pickleball it could be tennis elbow,” he said. “Those type of injuries, a sore shoulder, tendinitis that sort of thing, could be something as simple as the way you’re holding the racket or maybe not warming up properly.”

Johnson also advises people not to go into physical activities too quickly.

“If you hurt or if you have an injury or you have pain, you’re not going to be able to do anything you enjoy doing. So you just have to go nice and slow and progressively work up to your activities. Every joint in your body, whether a shoulder, a knee-joint, has a limit of function for that point in your life and you don’t want to exceed your limit. Now you can increase that limit over time as you get stronger as you increase your endurance. So it can be something as simple as you want to get out and run,” he said. “You kind of ramp up a little bit as you go and that generally can keep us out of trouble with a lot of these conditions.”

Johnson also warned kids and teenagers about having more diversity when it comes to playing sports.

“You can try different things or sports you’re using different parts of your body and that actually keeps us out of trouble. There’s a big drive in sports medicine to encourage athletes, younger athletes, to give themselves a rest from their particular sport at least some time throughout the year,” he said. “By doing another sport or something else they enjoy, that gives it time, whether it’s a baseball player for their shoulder or elbow. It gives them time to rest and then use some of the other muscles that you may use in another sport.”

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