🐕 Priorities, Clearly — when life hurts but someone texts “wanna play pickleball?”
🎭 Fake & Bake — the disguise move that punishes middle cheaters
👀 Wait, Watch, Decide — why blindly charging the net can cost you points
🔓 Pickleball in Prison — rehab, community, and a surprisingly spicy debate
☀️ Miami Heat Pickleball — how outdoor play (sun, wind, chaos) leveled up my game

Let’s get to it!

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Who else can relate?

I can’t fully relate to the body hurting part (yet), but I absolutely relate to this:

There are days I’m staring down a 12-hour workday — deadlines everywhere — wondering how I’m going to fit it all in…

…and then someone texts me about pickleball.

Groceries? Can wait.
Dinner? Optional.
Sleep? We’ll figure that out later.

I stopped scrolling purely because of the name.

Fake and Bake instead of Shake and Bake?
Immediate curiosity click.

And once I watched it, I was like… ohhh, that’s what you call this move.

Here’s the notes for review (after you watch it, of course):

You’re in a cross-court dink battle.
Rally gets comfortable.
Predictable.
And then you notice something important…

Your opponent’s partner starts cheating middle.

They’re pinching in.
Hovering.
Just waiting to poach your next cross-court dink.

That’s your cue.

You sell the cross-court dink again — same body language, same setup —
…and at the last second, you send it down the line into the space they just abandoned.

Fake the pattern.
Bake the winner.

What I love about this one isn’t the difficulty — it’s the disguise.

It’s not about hitting harder.
It’s about seeing the court, recognizing the cheat, and breaking the pattern

File this one away.
And the next time someone starts pinching middle a little too hard…

Fake and Bake ‘em. 🍰🏓

I found a tutorial this week where Kyle talks about not automatically sprinting to the kitchen when your partner hits their third shot — and the comment section turned into a really good debate.

The core idea isn’t “don’t be aggressive.”
It’s don’t be mindless.

Because here’s the truth:
Charging the net is intimidating.

I get people to hit balls wide or dump them into the net all the time just by being aggressive and closing space. That pressure is real — and it absolutely wins points.

But (and this is where it gets interesting), blind aggression without awareness is a problem.

I hate when my partner charges the net with zero regard for what I just hit — especially when my drop or drive floats a little too high. At that point, they’ve basically volunteered to eat a counter at their feet.

And for a long time, I blamed them.

Then I had an uncomfortable realization:
That one’s on me.

If my shot was attackable, I set them up to fail.
So really, the mistake isn’t just the blind charge — it’s the combination of:

That’s how points get blown.

What I appreciate about this tutorial is that it forces you to pause — not physically, but mentally — and decide.

Sometimes the right move is:

Other times the right move is:

The takeaway isn’t “don’t charge.”
It’s charge with awareness.

Because aggressive pickleball is powerful.
But aware aggressive pickleball is deadly.

And yeah — sometimes that means blaming your partner less…
…and owning your shot selection a little more.

Wisdom over autopilot, my friends. 🏓

I saw an article on Facebook this week that stopped my scroll.

A man named Jonathan Ratcliff is being released from San Francisco County Jail next month — and among his personal belongings, he’ll be walking out with something unexpected:

A pickleball paddle.

Ratcliff still has legal hurdles ahead of him, but he plans to make pickleball a central part of his recovery and re-entry into society.

His reasoning is on point:

#truth

Pickleball isn’t just a game.
It’s community.
It’s routine.
It’s showing up somewhere that isn’t tied to old patterns, old places, or old people.

The comments on the article were… split.

Some people loved the idea — seeing pickleball as a healthy outlet, a new social circle, and a positive replacement habit.

Others were furious.

Comments like:

And I get where that frustration comes from.

But I also know this:

I was lucky.

I had good parents.
A stable home.
People who taught me values and gave me opportunities.

If I’d been born into different circumstances?
I can’t say with certainty that I wouldn’t have ended up in a very different place.

People can change.
It’s hard.
It takes new environments, new routines, and new communities.

And if pickleball can be part of that — part of breaking a cycle instead of feeding it — I’m here for it.

Our prison system isn’t great at rehabilitation.
Recidivism is real.
Doing the same thing over and over clearly isn’t working.

We just spent a week in Miami and the Florida Keys escaping the Utah winter — and yes, we packed the paddles.

We played pickleball every single day.

Here’s the funny part:
I almost never play outside.

Between owning indoor facilities (The Kitchen) and being a Picklr member, I play indoors about 99% of the time. And if I’m being honest… I used to hate outdoor pickleball.

Sun.
Heat.
Wind.
Humidity.
Too many variables I couldn’t control.

But then we played at Tamiami Park — and everything changed.

Instead of fighting the conditions, I leaned into them.

I adjusted shots based on headwinds, tailwinds, and swirling wind patterns.
I learned how to return lobs without going blind from the sun.
And as dusk hit — with no lights and no one wanting to stop — I basically developed echolocation.

And weirdly?

It made the game better.

More creative.
More tactical.
More alive.

We found an incredible pickleball community there — strong 4.5+ players, competitive but welcoming, rotating games with winners staying on (I was the only female player—i tried to do us proud).

Lance and I played for hours every day.
Instant friends.
New styles.
New problems to solve.

Playing people who don’t play like your home crowd forces growth.
Playing in conditions you can’t control forces adaptability.

And adaptability is a skill.

So if your game feels stagnant…

Play outside if you’re an indoor lifer.
Play indoors if you’re an outdoor purist.
Play people who make you uncomfortable — in the best way.

Your game will thank you.

I am slightly nervous that when we play indoors again tonight, I’m going to sail a few balls way too long without a headwind to save me.

But I’ll say this:
Lance and I set a New Year’s resolution to play more pickleball together…

And it’s already off to a raging start. 🏓☀️

If this got you thinking differently about when to charge the net — or inspired you to mix up your game — send it to someone who loves pickleball as much as you do.

If this landed in your inbox via a friend, hit subscribe so you don’t miss next week’s drop.

Until next week…
may your body never ache, your shake-and-bakes and fake-and-bakes always dominate, and your game keep evolving — no matter the conditions.

— Janelle 🏓✨

P.S. I’m headed to Vietnam for a couple of weeks on a trip with my sister. I basically have one week to convince her that we need to play pickleball every day while we’re there.

It’s going to be a hard sell — she doesn’t really like pickleball and cannot begin to understand my obsession (I know… she’s the crazy one).

Wish me luck. I’ve heard pickleball in Asia is insane, and I’m definitely going to need my fix.

Open to convincing strategies (brainwashing, hog-tying, what else ya got?).