Pickleball Tips for Playing with Kids

Fun and Safe Pickleball Tips for Playing with Kids

Pickleball has found its way into the hearts of families due to its simple rules and look of fun. It has been described as beginner friendly for all ages. Pickleball is another reason to take the kids to the park and spend time together outdoors. It’ll give families opportunities to talk to each other without technology getting in the way.

Teaching young kids how to serve or volley a ball over a net can be difficult due to short stature and poor technical skills. Here are a few ways kids and families can play safely:

• Have the right equipment: Small, lightweight paddles can prevent injury and enable the player to learn more about the physics of the ball and the paddle.
• Goals and games: See how many times you and your kids can hit the ball back and forth without it coming down.
• Rivalry and challenges: Can you get more rally shots than your dad does against your sister?

Family time should be fun, social, and athletic. While having the option to do the three all together for both kids and adults alike, we create deeper memories with our loved ones and ensure that the family will stick together for a lifetime.

Why Pickleball is Great for Kids

Pickleball for kids is fun but also a great way to stay fit and active. Pickleball is a fun game children can learn and play no matter their skills or experience levels.

Running, jumping, and swinging a paddle to hit a ball is great for cardiovascular fitness, building strength, and conditioning, so it will enhance almost every aspect of your children’s fitness. One of the reasons so many children are overweight is that they don’t get enough exercise. If you introduce your children to pickleball, that should not be as much of a problem.

Muscle strength and volume analysis in children, anthropometric upper arm circumference tape measurement

Also, pickleball builds coordination and motor control, solving problems, you’ll need to strategize to learn where to hit the ball and then how to move on the court, and if you make it a family sport, build stronger bonds. This is also a great sport that will help your children enhance their social skills and their ability to get along and cooperate with others like peers and adults.

Essential Pickleball Tips for Teaching Kids

Teaching children to play Pickleball can be very rewarding but teaching a complex sequence of movements can be tough. The way you teach a 12-year-old to play pickleball is completely different than how you would teach a 6-year-old. With younger kids, you could focus more on the motor skill and less on the game of pickleball. Focusing on hand-eye coordination and simple motor tasks for younger kids will make your pickleball lessons enjoyable and not become a chore.

Throughout the course of your lessons, be patient and encouraging! Most likely, your child won’t pick up a pickleball paddle and start cranking forehand winners or successfully drop shots. Let your child know that progress takes time and, most importantly, to not get discouraged. Encouragement can be the driving factor for your child’s love for this game. Teach the lesson, not the game to start. Start out with a motor skill or two from a group of lessons that you would like to work on with your child.

Fun and Safe Pickleball Activities

Using fun pickleball games for kids can help build teamwork, increase specific skills, and show you how to create a safer environment.

Pickleball relay is one such game where the family is divided into teams and must complete a series of tasks such as particular service shots, volleys, dinks, or hitting into marked out areas of the court. By adding this level of competition among the family, it can help facilitate communication, teamwork, and strategy.

a little three year old boy in a blue t-shirt watches teenagers playing with a ball on an outdoor sports field, dreaming of playing sports

One modification could be using a softer/lighter ball or paddle more appropriate for children. For younger children, setting up a makeshift “smaller” court could help make them feel more included, more comfortable, and more willing to participate.

Much like all sports, there is the potential to develop accidents/incidents between players. With most pickleball games for kids, the potential to pick up a serious injury is slim because most games revolve around teamwork and pickleball doesn’t involve the same high speeds as baseball. If strategy games like Target Practice and Round the World are played, then a high endurance game of pickleball is taking part.

Pickleball Drills for Kids

Pickleball for kids should be fun as well as instructive, helping them to pick up the basic skills in an enjoyable way. An example is a game we ran called Target Practice. The aim of the game is to hit targets. You could make this be serving or volleying and try to allocate areas of the court with points or targets. This game helped improve serving consistency and direction and the children all enjoyed trying to hit the targets.

Pickleball Relay was another game that was a favorite with the kids. This was a fun, but rather hectic, change to the usual line drill. The kids would get into two lines at one end of the court and have a relay race, including elements of serving, returning, dinks, and volley. When a child made a mistake during the game, they would move back to the start and begin again. These were the same practice elements as drills that children had already been doing but packaged in a way to make it seem like a game.

Creating a Family-Friendly Pickleball Environment

If you want all your family members to experience the fun, you have to make it safe and enjoyable. You can make your fun pickleball corner in the basement, driveway, or backyard. All you need is an even surface for some random hitting and skill drills. You might even want to add a portable net but a piece of chalk works too. Once you’ve prepped a pickleball-friendly-area, you can begin with some easy drills that will help improve your game.

Families are picking up pickleball as a tool for a healthy dose of fun and friendly competition. As a family activity, the game does more than offer the benefits of physical exercise: it offers ample opportunities for fun and quality time spent with your nearest and dearest. Whether you’re 5 or 95 and whether you’re a recent high school graduate or hopping back onto the career ladder, this game is a calling card to get some fresh air and break a sweat. Make the outdoor pickleball court part of your family’s exercise routine and daily activity.