It takes an army to support any professional athlete in their quest to achieve their respective goals.

In the case of Ben Johns, that army includes renowned physical therapist, Dr. Noe Sariban, who is widely known in the picklesphere as The Pickleball Doctor.

Sariban has been Johns' PT for over two years, traveling alongside him from tournament to tournament to help with recovery after long days on the court.

“I used to play at the pro level in pickleball and I’m also a Doctor of Physical Therapy, so I combined those things about seven years ago and formed The Pickleball Doctor,” explained Sariban. 

Sariban became a physical therapist in 2013 and quickly identified how to use his background to help pickleball's elite.

“Being a physical therapist gives me a very good understanding of human biomechanics, so that helps for motion and movement on the court, as well as hitting the ball and using the whole kinetic chamber. That’s a big advantage,” he explained.“My background in sports before my education as a physical therapist came together and helped overall in pickleball.”

Sariban first met Johns when they were competing against each other in 2017.

He told Johns to give him a call if he was ever interested in adding a PT to his camp.

Several years later, Sariban's cellphone rang... and the rest is history.

For players like Johns, who typically make deep runs in every discipline, tournament days are extremely physically demanding.

Playing singles, of course, is especially taxing.

“I think singles pickleball is more strenuous than tennis. I’m not saying that tennis is easier, but from a movement standpoint, the movements are more aggressive and the ball doesn’t bounce as much, which means you have less time to get to the ball,” explained Sariban. 

“Pickleball is closer to basketball movements than it is to tennis because of the forward, side-to-side, backpedaling, and pivot movements. They’re all more similar to basketball. The difference is that basketball does it over a longer period of time, whereas in pickleball, the singles points average I’d guess somewhere between four to eight seconds, which is a quick turnaround,” he added. 

Sariban's expertise keeps Johns at his very best on the 20x44.

Recovery work is especially critical in that endeavor.

“Recovery is not very well understood and it’s going to vary from person to person, but generally speaking you want to do some kind of cool down routine. After you’re done playing, you actually continue to do some movement to slowly bring your heart rate down and continue to have blood flow throughout your body,” shared Sariban.“If you just stop and go sit down, it’s okay, but it’s not as good as if you were to keep moving. Getting on a bike, walking, or doing your warmup routine in reverse can be a good cool down.”

Sariban provided even more insight on this particular topic.

“At tournaments, players can have weird schedules in terms of how much time they have between matches. There’s not a lot of sports where you play fully, stop for an hour or two, then go back to playing your second match that same day. As much as you can, come down slowly from playing. If you have enough time to stretch, stretch. If not, don’t because you don’t want to stretch too close to playing again,” he explained. “Stretching too close to a match is not great for what’s called power output and your muscles to perform at their best. I’d recommend that if you have more than an hour between your matches, stretch. But if it’s less, I wouldn’t recommend it.”

With that in mind, what would the best case scenario be?

“Ideally, I would do a series of movements to cool down, followed by a stretch session. But because of time constraints that doesn’t always happen. One thing is consistent, at the end of the day we usually spend somewhere between 40 minutes to an hour stretching and focusing on certain areas to address and get him ready for the next day's match,” he said.

Sariban has made a career of being Johns’ go-to guy at tournaments and coaching camps across the country, and he recently started his own podcast. 

“Combining physical therapy and pickleball has been fun because it allows me not to do the same thing all the time. It breaks everything up when I travel to tournaments with Ben, and then I coach camps. It's a great balance and so much fun,” he concluded.

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