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Playing Pickleball 10+ Hours A Week Is A Health Prescription
Angela Gallafent straps a 15lb liquid oxygen tank on her back in order to get enough exercise to feel normal
POCATELLO, IDAHO (JANUARY 2, 2023) - Last June, Angela Gallafent, 46, was “sitting in a hospital emergency room, dealing with an adverse reaction to the medication that is infused round-the-clock to my heart through a central intravenous line.”
While waiting for medical treatment, she was browsing a pickleball Facebook group, The Kitchen, which she had just discovered the previous day. And in particular, she scrolled on an item posted by pickleball pro and coach Dayne Gingrich, who asked a simple question: “What drives you to play?”
Gallafent had nothing better to do as she waited for treatment on that June day, so she typed out an answer on her phone. It read, in part:
“My reason? Staying alive … I can only last 15 seconds without high-flow oxygen on. With it? I tell new, concerned opponents not to let the backpack fool you. I have to make a 6-hour round trip drive almost every week to pick up liquid oxygen so I can play.
Plus, I’m on a 24-hour IV pump that dumps medication directly into my heart. At this point, I’ll be on it for life. So I play with oxygen strapped on my back and my pump strapped around the front of my waist. It’s a 30-40 minute routine for me to get my medical stuff in place so I can walk onto a court, but worth it every time.”
Then, because she is frequently exhausted, she fell asleep. By the time she had woken up in the ER from her nap, her phone had exploded with reverential replies from other pickleball players.
She had gone viral.” - (The Pickler - Pickleball Is Breath of Life for Backpack-Toting Inspirational Player)
1) How did pickleball find you? (Question 1 of 23)
I don’t remember when I first heard about pickleball, but it was before 2013. Our family learned how to play padel in Europe in 2010 and loved it. We couldn’t find anywhere to buy the equipment or play it in the United States. My guess is I may have learned about pickleball when I was trying to find out if we could play padel somewhere.
In 2013, I did my pediatrics rotation for PA school in St. George, Utah. I remember being so excited that I was selected to go there because my #1 goal, besides learning how to treat children, was to learn how to play pickleball. I had no idea who I was going to play with or where to play.
I bought a cheap wooden paddle, a couple balls, and hunted down where all the pickleball courts were on Google Maps. After driving around for a bit and talking to some locals, I learned they had drop-in play at the Little Valley Pickleball Complex so I stopped in. I played pretty frequently for the next six weeks and taught my family how to play about six months later when we went back to St. George on vacation. For the next eight years, I just played once or twice a year when we went down there.
January is National Family Fit Lifestyle Month
In April 2021, my oldest son decided to play in a tournament in the Salt Lake area so I registered with my daughter as my partner. We hadn’t played in over a year, were clueless about tournament rules and format, and laughed through our first two games as we got killed. By game three we remembered how to play and hit the ball but still lost.
Then we watched some guys stack on the next court over. We had never heard of it but thought, “Oh, cool. We’ve kinda got engineery-like brains. We can do that.” Stacked and boom. Won against the #2 seed. We had a blast that day! Pickleball had finally been “found” in the real world, in our family, and the rest is history… :-) (Pickleball Archives: Angela Gallafent Q&A)
The thing about the disease that I have which I should have said the name of it earlier in the podcast is “pulmonary arterial hypertension”. It’s very fatiguing.
My heart is trying to push against a much higher level of pressure in my lungs than the average individual. So, because of that, my heart rate is higher. So, my resting heart rate is in the 90's. It is like I'm running a slow jog all day long. I get kind of tired.
It is not uncommon for me to need a couple of naps during the day. What I will do is get up in the morning. Get ready. Go play Pickleball. Come home and rest. Take a short nap if I need to before I start the rest of my day.
Some days I feel like I'm spending too much time on the court and I have other things I need to get done. But, I have realized that if I don't play a minimum of 3 times a week I start to decompensate.
I told myself so I would not feel guilty about how much I played that it is a prescription for me. Pickleball and exercise is a prescription. I have to do it 10-12 hours a week. If I don't do it, I decompensate.
What I find interesting enough and I think this is the case with most people that do athletics. With my condition, you would think it would be a little limiting, but the more I play the more I can play.
So, last summer, when the weather was beautiful, there were Pickleball courts all over Utah county. I was playing 4 or 5, once in a while, 6 days a week. I can play 2-3 hours a day. If I play more than 3 hours, I'm wearing myself out and I have a difficult time playing the next day.
So, last summer, when the weather was beautiful, there were Pickleball courts all over Utah county. I was playing 4 or 5, once in a while, 6 days a week. I can play 2-3 hours a day. If I play more than 3 hours, I'm wearing myself out and I have a difficult time playing the next day.
The reason I can do that is because Pickleball is "start and stop". With my medical condition, I cannot do anything sustained. I could certainly not run or ride a bike or do anything exertional for more than 2 minutes straight. But, because Pickleball is start and stop, I'm able to play a point, take a break for a few seconds and the games are short. In between games, changing opponents and partners, I get a rest for a few minutes. Which is how I am able to play 2-3 hours a day.
Question: You didn't play Pickleball for one month.
What was the result of that on your body and mind?
Listen to Angela’s answer at 22:12 on the Pickleball Fire Podcast EP197
What was the result of that on your body and mind?
Listen to Angela’s answer at 22:12 on the Pickleball Fire Podcast EP197
In 2019, Angela wrote an article for Pathlight magazine, Game, Set, Hatch (PDF), a quarterly publication of the pulmonary hypertension community that outlines her education and life living with “pulmonary arterial hypertension”.
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