{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Pickleball Therapy","title":"Ep. 309 - Use the Force Luke (and Leia)","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":944,"description":"Episode 309: Use the Force Luke (and Leia)\nA floater comes at you. It's just hanging there in space, waiting. Game point. Everybody on the next court has stopped to watch. You bring the paddle up, you swing, and the ball goes straight into the net.\nYou have to be kidding me.\nSo what happened? The natural response of any athlete is to go to mechanics. I mishit it. Something in my swing broke down. Something in my grip, my footwork, my paddle face.\nI'm going to suggest to you that more often than not, that miss was not mechanical. It was mental.\nAnd I don't mean mental in the way we usually mean it. I'm not talking about focus, or nerves, or staying present. I'm talking about your decisions, or the absence of them, about the shot you just hit.\nRun through three questions.\nOne. Did you have a clear idea of where you wanted the ball to cross the net? A target. A specific space over the tape. If the answer is no, or I'm not sure, then you did not hit an intentional shot. You hit an unintentional one. You swung the paddle forward, and whatever happened, happened. When the ball lands in the net, it's hard to be upset about it. Where were you sending it?\nTwo. Did you pick a spot with enough cushion? If you're aiming a quarter inch over the net, you have already baked the net into the shot. It sits inside the range of outcomes you selected. Give yourself paddle width over the net, at minimum. You'll still catch the tape once in a while. It will be much rarer.\nThree. Did you feed that information to your processing unit? Your processing unit is your brain. The decision only helps if it gets delivered before you swing.\nMiss any one of those, and the error was mental. Do all three, with real margin, and still find the net, then yes, now we can talk about mechanics. Footwork, swing, grip, something. But that's the second place to look, not the first.\nHere's where the Star Wars part comes in.\nIn the movies, the Force is telekinesis. You move an object with your mind. You don't...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/iDTey2-80na-9J2STIk9eypfXCFZMooGvju_gM84J4k/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9jYTM1/MTQzYzU5NDI0ODU5/MWNhNzRiODA0Yzlh/MmIwMS5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}