Anna Leigh Waters On Taking Up Space, Building Strength, & Making History
As an avid pickleball player who's logged hundreds of hours on the court—from Duke's collegiate team to LA's competitive recreational scene—I understand what makes this sport special. So when I got the chance to sit down with Anna Leigh Waters, the No. 1 pickleball player in the world, I knew I was about to learn something. Not just about pickleball, but about what it takes to be the absolute best.
And the timing? Perfect. Just days before our conversation, she'd made history in Dallas at the World Championships, securing a triple crown victory and becoming the winningest athlete in Professional Pickleball Association history with the most gold medals ever recorded.
Here's what she taught me about strength, refusing to play small, and why the secret to her dominance might surprise you.
A “funny story” that became a career
When I asked Anna Leigh to take me back to the beginning, she laughed. “I started playing pickleball when I was 10 years old. It was kind of a funny story,” she said. Her family had evacuated Florida during Hurricane Irma and landed in Pennsylvania with her grandparents. Her grandfather kept insisting they try this quirky paddle sport he played at his local community center.
Eventually, the persistence paid off. “He finally got us on the court and we were like absolutely hooked,” she said.
That momentum carried into her early teens, and by twelve, she made pickleball history as the youngest pro player the sport had ever seen.
An aggressive style that shifted the sport
The aggressive, fast-paced style Anna Leigh and her mother brought from their tennis backgrounds wasn't just different; it was controversial. "People would call us tennis players, trying to get us to slow down," she told me. There was pushback. Comments. Complaints that they were playing "too hard."
But they didn't back down. "We're both very competitive women," she explained. "We were winning. It's working. Why are we going to stop doing what's working?" She and her mother made a choice that so many women athletes have to make—listen to the noise telling them to tone it down, or trust their instincts and play their game.
They chose power. They chose aggression. They chose to take up space on the court.
"It's a competitive sport. We're playing professionally," Anna Leigh said. "We're not trying to be mean—this is just how we play the game." That distinction matters. Playing powerfully doesn't mean playing with malice. It means showing up fully, unapologetically, and refusing to diminish yourself to make others comfortable.
The result? They didn't just succeed; they revolutionized how the game is played at the highest levels. Other players started adopting their aggressive approach. The sport evolved. All because two women refused to play small.
"I feel like one reason we were the best players in the world—and I still currently am—is because we play differently than everyone else," she told me. There's a lesson there that extends far beyond pickleball: sometimes being the best means trusting yourself enough to do things your own way, even when people tell you you're doing it wrong.
Training like the strongest woman on the court
She told me strength training has become one of the most essential parts of her week, something that makes her faster, more stable, and more explosive. She works with a trainer several times per week, focusing on power movements, rotational strength, and the kind of leg work that supports constant cutting, lunging, and jumping on the court.
Mobility is another non-negotiable. She started physical therapy at 13, not just for injury recovery, but for prevention and strength building. "Physical therapy does so much more than just help with your injuries," she explained. "It helps with prevention, makes you stronger, and focuses on connecting you to your muscles." While many athletes reserve PT for when something goes wrong, Anna Leigh sees it as her foundation, attending sessions almost daily when she's home and bringing her physical therapist on tour.
“I may be one of the only pickleball athletes who is in the gym or the recovery room more than I'm actually on the court,” she explains—a reflection of how central strength is to her routine.
The takeaway
Before we wrapped, I asked a final question rooted in mindbodygreen's mission: What does strength mean to you right now?
Her answer was multidimensional. "I think as far as pickleball goes, one of the things I'm actually really trying to work on now is my actual physical strength," she said. Here was someone who's dominated her sport for years, and she was still identifying physical strength as something she wanted to develop more deeply.
She also talked about mental fortitude, family strength, standing up for women's sports, and helping young kids see themselves in pickleball. "There's strength in that as well," she said.
What became clear to me is that Anna Leigh doesn't see strength as one-dimensional. It's not just about lifting heavier or hitting harder. It's mental resilience. It's refusing to soften your game when people tell you to. It's building a support system that keeps you grounded. It's admitting you still have work to do, even when you're the best in the world.
At just 18, she's rewriting what's possible, not just in pickleball, but in how young women claim space, compete fiercely, and define strength entirely on their own terms.