Whatever it takes to get you exercising, consider it

Dear Reader,

They told me not to write about pickleball ever again. They said that no one in the DigBoston demographic cares about the sport. Specifically, they promised that if I ever tried to touch the topic in these pages, they wouldn’t print it. Which is why I filed this column right before the deadline for this issue. Ha!

Of course, my cronies also let me slide because it is that time of year when we do the whole fitness thing. If not personally, at least editorially, and I implore you to read our interviews with Cakeswagg and the crew from TrillFit in Mission Hill for the perspectives of people who know what they’re talking about. In the meantime, I hope readers understand, as Dig staffers presumably do, annoyed as they may be with my constant chattering about pickleball, that I’m mainly only here to say that if I can put the dab rig down and find an activity that entertains me enough to keep returning day after day and that helps me wheeze that much less when I’m walking up stairs, then anyone can. Just ask friends who have tried to get me to get off the couch before I learned about this miniature tennis spinoff. I’m hopeless, even if the only real goal I have ever had in terms of physical prowess is to get to the third floor of a building without puking or using an elevator. Or I should say, I was hopeless. Until pickleball.

Really though, my point is simpler than Trump voters. I know it’s generally foolish to push exercise regimens on strangers, and I don’t any more expect people to grip paddles and start pickling as a result of reading this on the T than I believe they will cancel their big weekend plans to jump into a mosh pit at a show they just happened to read about in the Dig two hours before set time. Rather, I just want heads to know that the sport exists, it’s an option, and that it may be a solution for the lazy ass in your life.

With that said, in the event that you actually do want to play pickleball, or already swing out in the suburbs and are looking for more action in the metro region, I have good news for you. The same crew that was behind the pickleball pop-up at Assembly Row this past summer and fall will soon open PKL, an indoor facility slated for the old Cole-Hersee Building on Old Colony Ave and C Street in Southie. If you drop in, there’s a chance you’ll see me on one of the courts. Actually exercising, but without hating every second of it. I encourage you to join me.

CHRIS FARAONE, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF