Pickle Balance

Pace Yourself.

Strength and balance coaching for pickleball players who are new to athleticism. Train sustainably, move better, and stay on the court — no matter where you're starting from.

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The Story Behind "Pace Yourself"

At 24 weeks pregnant, a COVID infection turned catastrophic. I was hospitalized twice, then given a stark choice: stay and face certain death for both me and my baby, or be intubated and transferred with only a 15% chance of survival. I chose to fight, made peace with the odds, and asked everyone I knew to pray. I spent 9 days in a coma. An experimental treatment — approved specifically for pregnant women, and only in Florida, during my coma — turned the tide. I woke up to a body that had wasted away: unable to lift my head, my arms, or my legs.

Coming off the ventilator was its own trauma. Learning to breathe unassisted felt violent. In a moment of collapse and doubt, I heard four words that reframed everything: “Pace yourself, girl.” That phrase carried me from lifting a heel half an inch off a hospital bed, to relearning to walk in physical therapy, to carrying my newborn daughter around the house doing modified leg lifts — to eventually discovering pickleball at Christmas 2022.

Pickleball wasn't the start of my recovery. It's where recovery became joy. And it's why Pickle Balance exists: to help people move and get stronger at whatever pace is actually theirs.

“Some days all you can do is not give up, and that is enough. Even if you only make an inch of progress today, over time you will look back and see how far you've come.”

The Method: See, Repeat, Compete

Every weakness in a player's game traces back to one of three root causes — strength, technique, or mental/pressure. This is a repeatable process to diagnose and fix it.

1

See

Play live points and observe where exactly your game breaks down. We test hypotheses — knee bend, contact point, timing — to find whether it's strength, technique, or a mental block.

2

Repeat

Build corrective muscle memory through a drill progression: static reps first, then a moving ball, then live points — so the new movement survives contact with real play.

3

Compete

Put the corrected skill back into pressured, competitive play to confirm it holds under real conditions — not just in a quiet drill.

Who Pickle Balance Is For

Most students are adults in their 50s and 60s, often discovering movement and competition for the first time as adults — rediscovering the fun of playing when you were a kid, but as an adult. The throughline isn't age, it's being new to athleticism.

Sarah

Loved the game but had no athletic background and didn't know where to start. Hip weakness was affecting her footwork — fixed with targeted hip strengthening. She calls it “life changing.”

Hahn

Fun-loving but stuck, dealing with knee and shoulder pain. The fix was positioning and mechanics, not more painkillers — his knee pain noticeably improved within five minutes of the right work.

Cat

Pickleball was her first sport, ever. Her timing was off — arriving at the ball too early or too late. Leg and hip strength work is closing the gap so she can cover the court with confidence.

Classes

Pickle Balance currently runs as group classes at Pictona, sized 3–16 students. Sessions run as either a 15-minute strength warm-up folded into other skills classes, or a standalone 1-hour class that cycles through movements twice so you feel your strength improve within the session.

  • Group class: $25 / student
  • 1:1 sessions: available for focused, personal-training-style work — reach out for current availability and rate
See Current Class Schedule

Class times and locations are being expanded — get in touch for the current schedule or to be notified as new sessions open up.

Get In Touch

Questions about classes, 1:1 coaching, or whether Pickle Balance is right for you? Send a message and I'll get back to you.

Prefer email? Reach out directly at katymsavage@gmail.com.