Swim Sauna Pickleball

Yes — I think your new routine is quite good, especially because you are treating the activity before pickleball as preparation rather than trying to make it a second hard workout.

The pattern you have now is:

• Sunday: walking through the tree grove → tennis serve practice → pickleball

• Monday: 5:30 AM swim → sauna → 7 AM pickleball

• Tuesday (today): gym + sauna or swim + sauna → pickleball

What the new routine is doing physically

The important change is that you’re getting movement, mobility, and an aerobic warm-up before your explosive court activity.

The Sunday walk is particularly nice: it gets your hips, ankles and back moving without much fatigue. Then serving gives your shoulder/torso a tennis-specific warm-up before pickleball.

The Monday swim is different. Swimming gives you a whole-body aerobic stimulus with very little impact, and then pickleball supplies the high-impact, acceleration/deceleration work. So you’re combining:

low-impact aerobic conditioning → heat exposure → high-intensity court exercise.

That’s a pretty sophisticated combination.

For today, I’d choose the swim + sauna

Given that you swam yesterday morning and then played pickleball, I would not make today a substantial gym workout before pickleball.

I’d do something like:

5:30 AM

• 30–45 min easy/moderate swimming

• 10–20 min sauna

• hydrate

• 7 AM pickleball

Keep the swim comfortably aerobic rather than a hard swim workout.

Why? Your pickleball itself is already providing the neuromuscular training that matters most today: rapid movement, lateral acceleration, balance, reaction, short bursts and repeated changes of direction.

A gym session immediately beforehand could make your legs and connective tissues somewhat fatigued before you ask them to do that.

Where I’d put the gym

I’d use the gym on a day when pickleball isn’t immediately afterward, or make it a very light strength/mobility session before pickleball.

For you, strength training remains important because swimming and pickleball don’t provide enough progressive resistance for maintaining/building muscle as you get older. But the timing matters.

Think of the three activities as having different jobs:

Activity

Main benefit

Walking

Recovery, circulation, aerobic base

Swimming

Aerobic conditioning with low joint loading

Gym

Muscle/strength preservation

Pickleball

Speed, agility, balance, coordination

Sauna

Heat stress/relaxation; not a substitute for exercise

So I wouldn’t replace your gym work with swimming permanently. I’d alternate them.

One thing I’d watch

Because you’re doing sauna → pickleball, hydration becomes more important. Sauna immediately before a vigorous court session can leave you somewhat dehydrated even if you don’t feel thirsty. I’d make sure you replace fluids before pickleball rather than regarding the sauna simply as additional recovery.

And I particularly like the tree-grove walk in this routine. That’s almost a perfect low-stress morning activity: walking, outdoor light, varied terrain, then sport.

Overall, I’d characterize your new routine as:

prepare → activate → play, rather than work out hard → play.

For your current goal of getting leaner while preserving/building muscle and maintaining tennis/pickleball performance, that’s probably the better direction.