Most pickleball injuries aren’t caused by a freak event. They’re caused by a belief. A reasonable-sounding, widely shared belief that leads someone to train less, play more, or ignore something that was quietly getting worse. By the time the injury arrives, the decision that produced it was made weeks earlier. Here are the eight we hear most, and what’s actually going on behind each one.

Pickleball injury advice usually arrives as a list of body parts. Shoulder, knee, ankle, elbow. That’s not how injuries happen. They happen in specific moments — identifiable, repeatable moments that recur in every session, and that you can train for once you know what they are. Here are the six that account for most of what walks into a clinic.