The Show Up Fitness Podcast

Pickleball How to design a workout and get clients paying $100+

• Chris Hitchko, CEO Show Up Fitness • Season 3 • Episode 262

Share episode

Send us a text if you want to be on the Podcast & explain why!

The pickleball surge isn’t just hype—it’s a business runway for trainers who know how to assess, prevent injury, and program with purpose. We dig into a practical system you can use today: start by hiring a top local pickleball coach, learn the game from the inside, and open a direct line to the exact clients who need you most. From there, we map out how to host simple prehab clinics at clubs, set up a referral structure that actually moves people, and demonstrate value fast with hands-on solutions for nagging pain.

We go deep on what the sport demands and how to train for it. You’ll hear how to prioritize rotation, frontal plane stability, and single-leg control without wasting time on irrelevant screens. We break down energy systems for short, explosive points and show where conditioning fits. For common issues like lateral elbow pain, we explain effective soft tissue strategies, smart isometrics, and progressive loading so clients feel relief and keep progressing. You’ll learn how to package this knowledge into crisp, 60-minute sessions that build power, resilience, and confidence on the court.

To make it concrete, we outline a full three-day framework for an intermediate player: lateral plyos with controlled landings, split-stance pressing and rowing, landmine anti-rotation, med ball throws and catches, goblet squats, carries, and mobility work like hip CARs and 90-90s. Every element ties back to the sport’s demands and the client’s goals. Pair these results with a clear referral offer—real cash for real sign-ups—and you’ll grow through trust, not trends.

Ready to turn the pickleball boom into meaningful impact and steady clients? Follow, share with a coach who needs this, and leave a review with your biggest win or question from the episode.

Want to ask us a question? Email email info@showupfitness.com with the subject line PODCAST QUESTION to get your question answered live on the show!

Our Instagram: Show Up Fitness CPT

TikTok: Show Up Fitness CPT

Website: https://www.showupfitness.com/
Become a Personal Trainer Book (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/How-Become-Personal-Trainer-Successful/dp/B08WS992F8
NASM / ACE / ISSA study guide: https://www.showupfitness.com/collections/nasm

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the Show Up Fitness Podcast, where great personal trainers are made. We are changing the fitness industry one qualified trainer at a time with our in-person and online personal training certification. If you want to become an elite personal trainer, head on over to showufffitness.com. Also make sure to check out my book, How to Become a Successful Personal Trainer. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. Have a great day and keep showing up. How do y'all? Welcome back to the Show Up Fitness Podcast. Today we're going to teach you how to train a client who wants to get better at pickleball. It's not just a fad, it's one of the fastest growing sports. In 2022, the market was at about 1.3 billion, projected to be over 2 billion by 2028. Lifetime alone has invested between 50 to 100 million converting courts and launching programs for pickleball. It is an exploding market. And yes, I'm going to teach you how to get all into the sciencey nerdy stuff, injuries, program design, all that fun stuff. But more importantly, I want to talk about how you can take this as an opportunity to get clients, get in front of people who need your help. So let's pretend like you want to get better at working out, like your clients. What should they do? You know they need to hire a trainer. If you just got a million dollars, you want a lot of, you got one of those$10 scratchers and you want a million dollars, are you just going to start putting that money into random stocks? Or are you going to seek out a financial advisor? You have to take that mindset. You need to invest to get better. And a lot of trainers will not invest into getting clients. Sure, you can do Facebook ads, TikTok ads, whatever it may be. But if you get into the trenches and invest in hiring coaches, you're going to find yourself in front of a lot of opportunities. It's not luck, it's being at the right place at the right time. If you were to search right now on the Google machine, pickleball trainers near me, pickleball coaches, find the most expensive one. Call 10 of them, schedule an appointment. Let them know it's your first time playing pickleball. A conversation is going to come up. What do you do? I'm a trainer. That coach probably doesn't have a background in movement. They're just a coach of pickleball. Maybe they want to become a trainer. It's a great way for you to get a little commission. You refer them into the SUF CPT. They're going to learn how to optimize their programming and coaching. And you're going to get a$300 commission. Not bad. By getting a training session from a pickleball coach, you're going to learn everything about the sport and a conversation as a startup about potentially working together. Invite them to your gym, take them through a workout, show them prehab rehab stuff. Get the prehab guys app. It's an amazing tool, but you can implement those within the sessions. You make it specific to that coach. An opportunity, I guarantee you, will present itself. If it's not with that coach, it could be the director of the club or wherever you're at. Why don't I offer once a week to come in and teach the members pickleball rehab, prehab stretches to prevent injuries? We just sent out our email and the statistic that we quoted athletes are experiencing at least one injury per year, 69%. That's a lot of people who are getting nagging injuries from the sport. Put yourself into the lens of the client who's playing pickleball. This is usually what's going to happen with any type of sport as well. A coworker at work says, Hey, I just started playing pickleball. It's freaking awesome. And you're like, what the hell's pickleball? And they invite you. You go and play. You play two or three games, and you're like, huh, that was pretty fun. So what do you do? You go the next day and the next day, and you sign up for a tournament. Next thing you know, you start getting nagging elbow injuries, knee injuries, Achilles issues. It's because of tissue capacity. You're doing too much too fast. Injuries are a common part of the sport, and you can prevent and also reverse injuries when clients get them. You are now the pickleball expert. So you can put yourself in front of a bunch of people who need you because you invest into a coach. Go interview 10 trainers right now. Ask them if they play pickleball. They've probably heard of it. They've never hired a coach. Get in front of a coach. I guarantee you that coach has a lot of clients who could use your services. Barter with them. Start training that coach one or two times per week. Let them know your goals. My goal is to have 25 clients paying the same rate that you are per hour, which is 150, 200, whatever you paid for that coach. And right now you have six. You have opportunities in the morning, in the afternoon, at night, whatever your schedule allows. And that coach starts working for you. Every person they refer into your business, you give them a kickback, not five bucks or 10 bucks, like Uber says. Give them cold, hard cash. If you sign someone up for two grand, I'm going to give that coach$500 for a referral commission. You can't be frugal. When you give people cash, they're going to be like, wow, that was easy. I'll send you four more. Two grand that coach made from referring clients to you because you're helping them perform their sport better. Huge, huge opportunity to get clients by going and playing some pickleball, working with a coach, getting involved with a clinic or some type of club, be their guru when it comes to injury prevention. And if clients have injuries, you are their one-stop shop because you have a physical therapist on your team, because you're a qualified trainer. I want to hear your success stories when you start signing people up because this is a huge opportunity to build your book of business. Now, when we get into actually training someone, the assessment is the first part. Don't guess. You need to assess. You're going to take a look at their medical history, injury background, specifically for pickleball, a lot with the elbow, shoulder, knee, ankle issues. The Achilles is the big one. Movement screen. Test them. See other balances, their lateral mobility, unilateral stability, how's their rotation? It's very common in the sport. Rotational. It's a transverse point of motion. We're not going to do an overhead squat. That's not specific to the sport. Look at the requirements of the sport. And then you test them by implementing the most regressed exercise that they can handle. And then, as you know, with your SUF CPT, you start with a lower load. So you strengthen the ligaments and tendons, and then you progress on that. After about a month, you can start getting into maybe the six to eight rep range, start doing more explosive stuff because that's definitely required. Type two recruitment. It's very similar to tennis when you look at the energy demands. A lot of the phosphiocreatin, so zero to 30 seconds of fast explosive work. So we want to work our way up to that. Planes of motion, yeah, you're going to have a little bit of sagittal, but primarily rotation, which will be transverse and frontal plane stability. When I say frontal plane stability, if you stand on one leg and you do a squat, you'll notice that your knee will probably move inward, the dreaded knee valgus, you're not going to die if you have it. But that means the hip can't stabilize in the frontal plane, which is going to be the upper fibers of your glutes, the glute mead. It can't stabilize. So then you have frontal plane vulnerability. So you want to do a lot of unilateral work. Injuries that you're going to come across, picklebell elbow, as I'm going to call it, or lateral epicondylasia, which is just pain on the outside. If you touch that lateral epicondyle and it's hot, it's spicy, they probably have an overuse injury. You don't need to send them to a therapist. You can do some extensions and flexions, slow and controlled isometrics. Two or three of those will be appropriate for the correctives. Start with soft tissue. We're going to be in Sacramento the 7th and 8th of November, and then going to Dallas the 21st and 22nd. And then Lakeshore Irvine, that's the OC, December 5th and 6th. We're launching our new seminar style. We have a seminar A, which is upper body, seminar B, which is lower body. When we do the shoulder one, we're going to take a look at the elbow and introduce some techniques that you've probably never seen before. We're going to do some flossing techniques, which would be a great soft tissue mobilization to implement for clients who experience lateral elbow discomfort. Typically, the culprit is going to be the extensor carpi radialis brevis, also the extensor carpi radialis longus. Those are the two muscles. And if you work distally from the elbow, you will find a hot muscle. So then you'll do some extensions and flexions. Hold that spot for a good 30 seconds. You'll see people on TikTok and Instagram smashing the elbow on a barbell, which is fine. But I'm a big believer in that trainer engagement. Don't just be a foam roller. Be the person who they have to go to for the relief. That's why I really like the flossing technique that you wrap around the elbow and you start proximally and you go distally. It's like taping someone's foot. And then you're going to move through flexion, extension, do some supination, some pronation, slight external, internal rotation of the elbow. Do that for a good 30 to 60 seconds. And when you unwrap the floss and they start moving, you'll see it's really red because you have this perfusion of blood. And it really just cleans up that avascular area. So then they can get into the workout and they're like, holy shit, I've had elbow pain for the last three months playing pickleball, and you made it go away. Here's my black Amex. That's the value out of understanding vulnerabilities with injuries, but then implementing a plan that's going to make them better at their sport. I've been writing a lot more Substack articles. You can see me wrapping a trainer at lifetime going through the voodoo floss. So watch that and then get to one of the seminars so you can really level up your soft tissue game. That certification will blow out any certification, 100% guaranteed, because you really master movement and anatomy in the assessment process. We have our own SUF protocol that we teach, and we're going to be implementing that within the seminar schedules that we're going to be going to a lot more now. As I said earlier, the bioenergetics is primarily the phosphocreatin, about 70%, but you will have about 20% being glycolysis, which is still a carbohydrate substrate that's being utilized, and about 10% oxidative. So you need to have that conditioning, which you can implement at the end of the program, as you'll see here in a second when I get into that. Every month within the SUF CPT, we have an avatar who we will program a whole month workout for. We have pickleball Pete, big smile right here on the Substack article. And we're going to take him through a full month of workouts. I'm going to go over three with you right now. If you want the whole month, email info at showupfitness.com and I'll send that to you so you can implement it on your clients. The avatar with Pete, he's been training for the last six months. His trainer wasn't that great. So he left him, but he's still playing pickleball and he has lateral epicondylasia. We don't technically call it epicondylitis because there's not inflammation acutely. It would be, you know, doing some work over the weekend and your elbows inflamed. That's itis. Like if you sprain an ankle, you get swelling, which is the beautiful thing. You let it do its role. You have these cool cells that go down there, phagocytic cells, part of the lymphatic system that will go clean it all up. That's why you want to let the body do its process. Icing is kind of taboo, really old school. If it feels good, that's fine, but it's actually delaying the process. So you want movement, you want exercise. One of our team members, Sierra, she's been experiencing some tanninapathy within her Achilles, and she's been icing it because it feels better. That's great, but we need movement and strengthening unilaterally, so single-leg calf raises, which is going to prevent it and really expedite the healing process so that tissue gets stronger so we can handle the load that you're placing onto. So let me take you through that hour workout that you would implement on pickleball peep. You start with your medical history, you eliminate red flags, he's good to go. Blood pressure is great, blood chemistry profile looks amazing. He does have that elbow issue. So you're going to start with some soft tissue, you would floss him up, and then you're going to do some extensions and flexions with a dumbbell, maybe eight to 10 repetitions, holding at the top, holding in the middle. If you find a hot spot that really irritates them, see if you can hold it isometrically for a good 15 seconds. And if the pain decreases, a lot of times that's what's going to happen, and isometrics can be beneficial in that regard. After you do a couple of the correctives, you would then get into the warm-up, checking off those 10 checkpoints of human movement for the CCA that you're going to implement. Do some arm circles, some bends, some thoracic rotations, single leg, hinge touchdowns, and then get into the workout. He's been training already. So we're going to implement jumps, lateral jumps with stabilization, six to eight reps. Then you would go into a step up with a dumbbell and then a plank. That will be your first round. You would rest and then repeat. Lateral jumps, step ups with the dumbbell, and then a plank. Get involved with that plank variation. Get into extension with the hip, abduction, give some perturbations, add the value as the trainer. The last round, stick with six to eight reps for the jumps. Go up in the load with the dumbbells for the step ups, and then you do your planks. Move into the second CCA, incline dumbbell press. I like one dumbbell for pickleball Pete. So we can really stabilize this core. Move into a split stance row, very back friendly. You can brace by putting your elbow on your other leg. Get 10 to 12 reps with those. And then move into a side plank. You would do that for three rounds. The last circuit for day one, we're going to do some bridges with some bands, 10 to 15 reps into a landmine press. And then I really like to yank the landmine back and forth. So then the client has to stabilize in that rotational plane. Really great full core, the external and internal obliques, which are really important for twisting and rotation. You would do that for three rounds. And then you can do a little cardio circuit for three to five minutes. If you want to do the ski erg, if you want to do some jump rope, do something where you're going to elevate his heart rate, and that's going to be helping with his condition for the sport. The next workout will be on a non-consecutive day, full body again, start with reverse lunges, three sets of six to eight. I don't like doing a ton of reps when it comes to lunges, even for an intermediate, 10 plus reps because it's very taxing. So that's why I like to do six to eight. Do a split stance standing press, 10 to 12, and then a split stance ball rotation where they're going to be throwing you a med ball. Do that for three rounds. We're going to do some goblet squats and push-ups with the leg abducted and then a suitcase carry. Do that for three rounds. And then the last circuit will do a single leg RDL into an Aussie pull into some agility ball catch and drops. So get like a tennis ball or maybe even a pickleball. And then you drop it and he catches it. Works with reactiveness. Anytime you have to track an object to release that cool neuropeptide, BDNF, brain derived neurotropic factor. And then you're implementing aspects from his sport into the session. They're going to enjoy that. You could even go get a racket or a paddle ball, whatever it is, and hit it back and forth between sets as an accessory. That would be a great thing to incorporate. And at the end, incorporate some cardio like you did on that first CC on day one. Audio is going to be a little different for this last couple minutes because the client just came in. So I had to come outside. So bear with me. That last workout, day three, split stance bounces on a bench. I like to do those plyometrics. So your foot would be on a bench at 90 degrees and you explode up, not like Tinkerbell, load those arms behind the body, jump up as high as you can. You would land on that same leg and you repeat for eight to 10 repetitions. Then we'll get into some chin-ups for upper body strength. If you can't do them, two to three centrics. If the elbow gets a little raw, then you may need to incorporate some soft tissues after or before, or just maybe regress into something that doesn't irritate the elbow. Let's do some hip 90-90s for the accessory. Moving into that second CCA, we have a squat with a row, into some cable wood chops, and then a med ball pass. Those explosive rotational exercises will really be great. And then I encourage you to throw it back fairly hard so he has to catch and stabilize. We'll do that for three rounds. And the last CCA, we'll do some walking lunges with dumbbells into a single arm bridge press, and then some airplanes and some standing hip flexion internal cars, some controlled articular rotations, which are great for mobility. So that's three workouts for the first week for pickleball Pete. If you want the entire workout, email info at showupfitness.com. I will send you what that month looks like. We're going to be putting out a lot more podcasts. We had some, we had some technical issues with the mic, so I had to get a new one. And as I just said, I had to move outside right now on this lovely Saturday in Santa Monica. So the audio might not be as great these last few minutes. Let us know what you think. Start getting some clients, being proactive, reaching out to coaches, paying them, get them in, train them to show them you're an amazing coach and let them get certified so they can level up their business and you'll get a little commission with them. We'll see you at the seminars. And remember, big biceps are better than small ones and keep showing up.