This year, we’ve gone over numerous studies that have been done on the health benefits of pickleball. It’s an excellent source of exercise, reducing the risk of various illnesses, and is a great way of building social connections, all of which are integral to one’s wellness.
Pickleball finds people at different points in their lives, sometimes when it turns out they need it the most. We had the chance to talk with Simon Lovell, the founder of Picklepreneurs, and learn how pickleball helped him through one of the most challenging times in his life.
In 2021, at the age of 44, Lovell was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré Syndrome (GBS), a rare autoimmune condition where the immune system attacks the nervous system. This left him deeply ill and unable to walk, causing him to go to the hospital for IVIG treatment. During his recovery, Lovell returned home to his family in Florida to stay with them while regaining his strength.
However, the time off wasn’t wholly restful, as Lovell struggled with mental health issues because GBS had put the rest of his life on hold. He’s highly driven in his career as a personal development coach, where he typically helps others maneuver challenging points in their life. So, to put all of that aside to focus solely on overcoming his illness took its toll on Lovell.
“When you have everything ripped away, it’s a bit of a shock to the system. There I am, for over a year with my family in Florida, just numb basically wondering what do I do with my life now. I was just sat up at the pool every day, thinking there’s nothing here; I just felt dead inside. I guess at that time, especially when you have a diagnosis, you start to give up on life a little bit.”
During the time he spent with his family in Florida, Lovell was introduced to pickleball, thus putting the sport on his radar. Following a hurricane, his family was forced to move and ended up in San Diego, where Lovell really found his love for pickleball.
His body and mind gradually strengthened through physiological therapy and meditation. While he was in the middle of a meditation at a nearby park, Lovell began to focus in on the sound of pickleballs in the distance, leading him to a fitness center with pickleball courts.
This is when Lovell really connected with the game. He sees pickleball as the catalyst for personal growth within his own life as he adapts to a much healthier lifestyle.
“There was a snowballing turning point around lifestyle, where then I was like, ‘Well, now I’m going to focus my life on having a healthy lifestyle, really all the things I’ve been putting off for so long in my life and actually start to focus on them.’ It was a big 180 for me in terms of doing that… I’ve been playing for about three months now, but am already in the stage now where I’m thinking about my player ranking and if I have what it takes to go pro.”
Pickleball has also reinspired Lovell to focus on his career once again. He draws parallels between pickleball and coaching people, as they often both strive to help and heal people.
“What I like about it is that there’s definitely a correlation to my work when it comes to personal growth and pickleball. I’m a coach, I help people to heal. I’m not a pickleball coach, but there’s definitely a strong link between the benefits of pickleball and the amount of affirmation you get when you go. People saying, ‘Great shot Simon! You’ve improved so much!” It’s like, we go back for the pickleball, but we also gravitate to where there’s love.”
Lovell has started taking clients back on, mostly men who find themselves battling through tough mental states or difficult times in their careers and personal lives. Through his coaching efforts, he often finds that loneliness and self-doubt are at the core of what keeps men from finding happiness.
In conversations with clients, Lovell points to pickleball as an excellent way for men to break out of their comfort zone and connect with one another. The stigma surrounding men’s mental health limits men from opening up and strengthening relationships, and Lovell believes that the pickleball court is the perfect place to find companionship and self-affirmation.
“I really started to notice the improvements on mental health. I definitely would say there was a massive upward trajectory with the improvement in my mental health and coming out of a spiral of depression, anxiety, and loneliness despite actually being someone in this work of helping people with those things. So now, if I’m working with a client and they’re like, “I’m bored, I don’t have friends,’ I’m like, ‘Pickleball. Go to pickleball.’ For a lot of people, it’s restarting the thing that they’ve stopped, like going to the gym. But the thing about pickleball is that it’s fresh, and not a lot of people have experienced it yet – it’s new and there’s a lack of that internal judgment.”
Now, Lovell plays pickleball about four times a week at his local open and group play and is starting to play at The Hub, one of San Deigo’s latest and greatest pickleball venues. Besides wanting to continue improving on the pickleball court, Lovell also wants to connect with people via his latest project on Instagram, @picklepreneurs. There, he posts a wide variety of entertaining pickleball content with a focus on AI-generated imagery.
He uses his creative background to create clever prompts for AI to do its thing with, and the results are hysterical. From pickleball ASMR to a movie poster about Michelle Pfeiffer’s pickleball accident, Lovell wants to curate a page of humorous content that all different types of pickleball players can relate to.
“Right now, I’m in a stage in my life where I just want to build stuff slowly, organically, and partner with people who like what I do. It’s just silly. There’s no monetization behind it; I’m just trying to have fun myself and make people smile. I really want to build a community. I think that the pickleball space has so many multiple deep niches and verticals that I think are going to open up. I was going to have it as just the AI, but that’s very hard to connect with, so now I started to bring my face more into it, and I’m just going to really show my journey and growth in pickleball.”
From being bedridden with GBS to regularly attending open play, Lovell’s journey stands out as further proof of pickleball’s magic. The sport has been life-changing for Lovell, reinvigorating his career and creating a healthier lifestyle, and he hopes he can share his experience with others so they can feel pickleball’s positive influence for themselves.
