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[Music] When it comes to pickleball, we understand how important fitness really is when it comes to performance. Nowadays, this game is getting so competitive at the amateur level as well as the professional level. We have to put our fitness, we have to make it a priority.
So when it comes to that, there are some functional movement patterns that I believe that all players should be able to master. You need to be proficient in these movement patterns, these strength patterns. These movement patterns are going to be a squat, a hinge, a push, a pull, and a lunge.
So going over the first one, a squat. And within all these, I don't think you need to be extremely strong in all these or be the best at them all, but I think you need to be proficient in them and you need to be able to carry your own body weight and and so on. So a squat, if I'm going to do a bodyweight squat or a goblet squat, I'm going to use a small kettlebell here. I'm going to be able to perform a squat and I'm going to be able to do it well, right? I'm gonna be able to keep my torso up, I'm going to be able to get down to at least parallel and come back up. My knees, they're staying over my toes. I'm being able to sit in my glutes, right? I'm proficient in this movement. That's my goal. I want to be proficient at it. So goblet squats, it's a foundational movement. If you can get good at goblet squats and you know, be able to squat 50, 60, 100 pounds, that's awesome. You know, if if you're starting with your body weight and you work up to 20, that's great too. But it's a good movement pattern that I believe all pickleball players, all athletes should get strong in.
Our next one will be a hinge. So a hinging movement is just a little bit different from the squat. It's more hip dominant, where a squat is a little bit of both, right? A little bit of hips and knees, but you definitely get a little bit more knee bend. When the hinge, a hinge is coming from your hips. So I'm going to do like an RDL with a kettlebell, Romanian deadlift, and I'm just going to hinge at my hips, right? I have a soft knee bend, and then I'm going to push my hips back so I get it right about below the knees, and then I'm going to come back up. You see it's driven from the hips. Kind of like at the kitchen, right? When we're at the kitchen, we're playing, we're kind of driven from our hips. We're kind of sitting in our glutes a good amount. That's what hinging is about, sitting in those hips, sitting in those glutes. It's a movement pattern that we should be able to get good at, right? We want to be able to get into our hips while not bending the knees. Kind of takes, it takes practice, right? Because a lot of times we want to bend our knees when we do those kind of RDLs. So a squat and a hinge, we want to get strong in those. Those are kind of like some lower body foundational movement patterns.
And then talking about the upper body, we want to be good at pressing, right? So squat, hinge, push. So push, kind of like a push-up, an overhead press, um, dumbbell bench press. These things we want to get good at. But I think everybody should be good at is a push-up. Whether it's a modified push-up from your knees, a normal push-up, right, on your feet in a high plank position, or if we're doing an elevated push-up, like if you're going to do a push-up off of a bench, you should be able to be proficient in this. So demonstrating a push-up, we just want to be in a good position. I want to be able to keep my core engaged. I want to be able to keep my glutes somewhat squeezed, right? I'm not kind of poking my butt up and I'm not really like letting it sag either. To maintain posture, my glutes are squeezed. I'm going to slowly lower myself down and be able to push myself up, right? My elbow is kind of going to a 45-degree angle. They're not super close and tucked, they're not bowed out like this. Staying at 45-degree angle, and then I'll be able to press myself back up. If that's too difficult, let's try it from the knees, right? Same thing. I don't want to push my butt up. Give my glutes kind of squeezed, slowly lower and come back up. We should all be able to do a push-up. If you can't, let's work to it. Do some kind of regression like modified or elevated, but be able to do a push-up. This is a proper movement pattern that we should all be good at.
Next, still in the upper body, is a row, right? A pull. So squat, hinge, push, and then pull. So being able to do rows, bent-over dumbbell or kettlebell rows, right? Being able to keep my torso in a good position as I bend over and pull this dumbbell towards my hip. I'm not pulling it towards my chest or my ribs, and I'm not like flaring or like rounding. I'm not overextended. I'm in a good posture. I'm pulling towards my hip and coming back down. Whether it's a pull-up, pull-ups are super hard. If you're good at pull-ups, congrats. They're, I mean, it's a tough one, but I think that's something we should work towards. So squat, hinge, push, like push-ups, pulls, working on our back. And then a lunge, going back to the lower body. So lunging variations, whether that's split squats, reverse lunges, lateral lunges, right? Really again, specific in that lateral plane and that frontal plane, like we're working in the kitchen, being able to proficiently do those. So a split squat, looking at this and just splitting my stance, just so that I can drop my back knee straight down, right? I want to be able to do this with body weight or some light weight at least and be proficient in it. So dropping my knees straight down and I'll come back up. I can do it in a goblet position, goblet kettlebell, drop the knee straight down and come back up, extending my front knee at the top. Once again, this isn't something we have to do with the barbell on our back with 200 pounds on our back. We just need to be proficient in it.
So squat, hinge, push, pull, and lunge. Five movement patterns that I think we need to work towards to get strong in and be proficient in to set the foundation, right? If we're thinking about getting strong and increasing your fitness, this is kind of the foundation. If you see, we see it as a pyramid, right? We're trying to lay the foundation, but that's the bottom layer of the pyramid. This is what we're trying to do. That's our foundational movements. That's what we need to build and get strong at in the beginning. Once we get stronger in those in the beginning, then we can get more advanced and go into the more advanced agility work and conditioning and things of that nature. But this, these five movement patterns, we need to be proficient in first.
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