Hello, and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,
the podcast dedicated to your Pickleball improvement.
I am your host,
Tony Roig.
I am a master teaching professional,
a senior professional Pickleball player,
and the host of your weekly podcast,
Pickleball Therapy.
This podcast we try and work through the mind,
the mental part of Pickleball,
because we all know that the mental part is not just
important to our Pickleball,
but it's a really big part of what leads us to
winning and sometimes losing one route.
On the Pickleball Court this week,
we're gonna talk about a really powerful concept that it,
it, it's,
it'll seem pretty obvious when I mention it,
like, how did,
why did I think of that?
But the reality is,
you know,
we we're not born knowing these things.
So, you know,
oftentimes you hear something on the podcast,
you're gonna be like,
huh, okay,
well that seems pretty obvious.
But it's really powerful.
It's a concept that players don't value enough,
and it's one that if you start understanding it and start
bringing it into your,
into your play,
it'll really help you.
Because without it,
it's just really hard to,
to continue to improve or to make advancements or make adjustments
as you play,
make co corrections in your game.
And what we're gonna be talking about today is recognition.
It's a,
it's recognizing what's going on on the Pickleball court and has
different layers to it,
different ideas that we're gonna be exploring in today's podcast.
Before we jump into the podcast,
if you're listening to this podcast at around the time that
it, it's getting published,
we have our winmore workshop.
We're gonna be,
I believe,
when this one publishes,
we'll be right in the middle of our Winmore workshop.
So if you haven't signed up for it yet,
you still have time to join us for it,
you're really gonna enjoy the workshop.
There's a lot of really good concepts in there that'll help
you play your best Pickleball.
A lot of specifics you're gonna get,
and then you'll be able to make a decision as to
whether you,
you, you know,
this is the time for you to join us inside the
Pickleball system.
Sometimes it's your time,
sometimes you're ready,
sometimes you're not.
But if you're ready,
it's a good time to join us inside the system.
I'll put a link in the show notes so you can
join us for the workshop.
You've already signed up.
Hope you enjoying workshop number one,
and get ready,
getting ready for workshop number two.
Alright, let's talk about recognition and what we mean here.
So, when we're out there playing Pickleball,
what happens,
and this is not a criticism,
okay? If,
if you're in this group of players,
it's perfectly fine.
Again, as we say during this podcast,
there's absolutely no reason why we should come preloaded with these
concepts, preloaded with this knowledge,
preloaded with this abil these abilities before learning about them.
And this is,
if this is the first time you're hearing about it,
great, I'm glad to be able to help you with this.
But recognition basically just made means what it sounds like,
recognizing what's going out on the,
going on,
on the Pickleball court as we play in this context.
There's other types of recognition,
like recognizing what we need to improve and things like that.
That's where something like the Pickleball system helps you with that,
because rather than you having to figure it all out,
we lay it out and put it in,
in order for you.
So, you know,
okay, step one,
step two,
step three.
And that's gonna get you where you wanna go.
In the,
in this context,
what I wanna focus on is Recognizing what's going on when
you're playing Pickleball.
And what we find is we find that oftentimes when we're
coaching, we'll ask a,
a, a court of players,
you know,
so four players who are playing after the end of the
rally, we'll go onto the court to coach and we'll ask,
okay, so let's talk about what happened there.
And, and again,
not, this is not a criticism,
I wanna be clear about this not being critical of anyone,
but the reality is,
a lot of times the players have difficulty relating to us,
right? What just occurred in the prior,
in the rally they just played,
right? In other words,
who hit what shot,
where was the ball hit,
things like that,
right? And it even includes sometimes players,
you know,
having difficulty remembering that they hit a particular shot,
for example,
you know,
we'll go onto the court and we'll say,
okay, let's talk about the third shot.
So the third shot was hit by player,
so-and-So, and that player will say,
what do you mean,
I hit the third shot?
And well,
I'd say,
yeah, you hit the third shot.
And so,
and this is what happened,
and, and you hit it here.
And then the idea was,
what about trying this other shot?
If, if the,
and again,
this is gonna sound fairly obvious,
but if you,
if, if a player is,
is unable to recognize that they were the one that hit
the shot and then recognize,
you know,
much less recognize where they hit the shot,
and then try and recognize where they should have hit the
shot, it's very difficult to make corrections,
right? And,
and, and I,
again, I know it sounds very,
like, this is very obvious,
but I,
trust me,
this is a very common situation that probably is happening to
you to some,
to some degree.
Maybe you recognize you hit the shot,
but are you recognizing where you hit it?
Right? And this ties into intentionality.
That's a,
a, a topic for another day for another podcast.
But, you know,
we need to recognize we hit the shot.
We need to recognize where we hit the shot,
and then we need to recognize,
okay, that,
how does that compare to the shot that probably that that
made the most sense,
right? What was the better shot there so that I can
then make corrections in my game?
Another example of recognition in as you play is say you
hit a volley and you miss it,
okay? That's good information,
right? A,
you know,
you hit the volley b you know,
you missed it,
okay? Again,
nope, nope,
it's not a judgment thing,
it's just,
I need,
I wanna solve it,
right? I wanna try and not miss it next time.
That's the reason we wanna recognize,
right? It's not to beat ourselves up.
I wanna be clear about this.
It's not recognition for the sake of recognition so that I
can then,
you know,
just, just,
you know,
destroy myself mentally because of the mistake I made.
It's recognition so that I can make adjustments as I move
forward in my play that day and in my play in
general. So let's go back to the volley.
I hit a volley,
I miss it.
Okay, good.
I know I hit the volley,
I know I miss it.
Great. But I need more information than that.
I need to know,
how did I miss it,
okay? Net wide or long,
because those are likely three different causes for the mistake,
okay? Trajectory or energy is how we talk about it inside
the Pickleball system.
So it's one of those,
those elements run those components,
I should say,
of the shot.
And then I need to work backward,
right? So it was a,
a trajectory problem.
I worked backward,
I figured out is paddle angle,
is it my follow through?
What's going on,
right? Where I was,
where I made contact with the ball,
you know,
energy, okay,
what happened there?
What was it too much,
too little,
et cetera.
So recognition is a,
a key step along that process,
right? Of diagnosing and correcting shots,
diagnosing and correcting strategies,
right? Because for instance,
I hit the shot to the spot that if you hit
the, if you hit the,
the ball to a spot that it doesn't go into,
that's a strategic error,
right? Normally,
unless you,
unless you didn't intend to hit it there,
right? If you didn't intend to hit it there and it
went there,
then that's a mechanical error.
If you intended to hit it there and it wasn't the
best place to hit it,
that's a strategic error because you made a decision.
But they both start with the same.
The first step along the process of correction,
which is the process of recognition during the workshop that we're
in right now,
the Winmore series,
what we're looking at is we're looking at recognizing the source
of points that our opponents are scoring more easily than we
want them to be able to score them to,
to the,
the, to the,
the, the,
to the extreme right?
To the one extreme.
They're, they're gifted.
You know,
that's the most extreme point that our opponents get that we
don't want them to get because we are simply gifting them
the point.
But there's,
you know,
there's shades in this,
right? There's gray in here.
So there's other,
other points that aren't necessarily gifted at the outset,
right? What we call a direct error,
but they're the result of what we call an indirect error.
There's an error that occurs in a shot that manifests itself
later on,
resulting in a loss of a point.
And again,
the key here is these are points that we are,
that we can make harder for our opponents to obtain,
right? Not the idea that we're trying to keep them at
zero, right?
That's, that's silly,
that's not our objective,
but if we can make it that much harder for them
to score those points,
so we take,
we take as many gifted points off the table as we
can, and we,
we keep on raising that bar,
right? Saying,
you know what?
You used to be able to score against me with this
bar, you know,
lower bar.
Now I'm gonna raise it up a little bit,
making it harder for 'em to score those points.
That's how you start to win more games.
That's the premise of the,
of the workshop,
right? Win more.
And it's not win more in the abstract.
Like, okay,
I'm just gonna win more in an abstract sense.
No, we're,
we're going through the steps,
right? That and the,
and the way of thinking about the Pickleball,
that'll be more productive for you and will allow you to
take process,
right? To take actual concrete,
actionable steps that in the end will end up with you
winning more games.
But part of this is recognition,
right? One of the things that,
that we'll talk about,
we're talking about during this workshop has to do with return
of serve,
for instance,
returns of served.
So it's missing them.
And then if you're missing them,
figuring out why you're missing them,
and for instance,
we give you a target on your trajectory,
we give you an aim of three feet over the net.
So if you miss a return of serve and the return
of serve ends up in the net,
that tells us that you missed your trajectory on your shot.
And then you need to figure out,
okay, was that because I didn't think about it?
I didn't visualize,
which is another technique that,
that we go over with you in this workshop that CJ's
gonna really go into in the workshop and help you out
with, you know,
did I do that for myself or did I just hit
it wherever it went and it went?
And, but if it goes into the net,
I, I recognize going to the topic of today's podcast,
I recognize that the error that I recognize,
the, the nature of the error,
right? The shot that was hit and the type of error
that it was trajectory going into the net,
that's a really important step.
And without that step,
what I would suggest to you submit to you,
I should say,
is that it is going to be,
if not impossible,
then practically impossible to fix it,
right? To improve,
to continue along a,
a positive pathway towards improving our play,
towards improving our play during a session,
right? During a specific session,
diagnosing and correcting a real time,
as we say,
or on our overall journey,
right? If we don't recognize that this is an area that
we need to work on,
then we're not gonna work on it.
You know,
a good example here on recognition in terms of big picture
is making it to the non-bio line,
right? As a return,
you know,
you're not making it there,
okay? No.
Gotta fix that,
can't fix that.
Very hard to fix everything else,
right? That's,
that's, you know,
that, that's why we do it step by step.
It's like,
you know,
you want,
we can't jump to step eight if you haven't finished step
four yet.
And so,
you know,
that's an example of an area where,
where players oftentimes also lack of recognition.
You know,
they'll tell us,
you know,
they'll say to us,
but I am making it up that I buy online.
And we're standing there literally watching them saying,
no, you're not making it up there.
And so that lack of recognition,
again, no criticism,
but that lack of recognition is an impediment,
right? To continuing to,
well, first of all,
it's a fixing it on the moment,
in the moment on the fly,
right, to fixing it right there.
But bigger picture,
it's an impediment to big picture improvement in your plate to,
to, it's a roadblock along your journey.
And so this recognition component is something,
or recognition concept,
recognition skill,
I should say this recognition skill,
it's something that you can work on,
right? It's something that you can improve and you can build
on. The key is start with one shot.
You know,
we recommend in the workshop,
start with the return of serve.
It's a really good return of serve is such a good
shot to allow you to work on a ton of different
skills and,
and techniques that'll,
that'll bleed over into other,
other shots and other parts of your game.
Because what you can do is you can take the return
of serve and just notice how many times are you missing
it. If you're missing it,
how often are you missing it?
If you're still making it,
but you're hitting 'em short,
how often is that happening?
Start to work on recognizing those flaws in your game,
because then those are the flaws that if you can fix
them, we'll do the most lifting to help you elevate your
game, advance your play,
you know,
play better.
And ultimately,
at the end of the day,
you will in fact win more games.
So, I hope you're enjoying the workshop.
I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast,
obviously, but I hope you enjoyed the workshop as well.
Again, if you haven't joined it yet,
you still have some time to do it.
If you're listening to us near the time that it's goes,
that it becomes public,
if you're listening to it later on in this,
you know,
sometime later in the year or in another year,
check us out.
You can go,
always go to the Pickleball system.com
and find out when the next class opens and find out
what's going on in there and see if it's the right
step for you.
You know,
we always,
we're, we're we,
the, the program has been very successful with the players who
have taken it.
The testimonials are consistently solid,
and the players who put in the work do in fact
find transformational improvement in their Pickleball.
So I hope you'll,
it, you'll find it at some point in your journey to
join us inside the Pickleball system.
It's a,
it's just a,
it's, it's unlike anything else available out there in Pickleball.
I don't know about other sports.
Maybe there's something out there in other sports that's like it,
but I can tell you in Pickleball,
there's nothing out there that's even remotely close to the Pickleball
system. In any event,
hope you enjoyed this week's podcast.
As always,
if you enjoyed the podcast,
please rate and review it and share it with your friends.
Remember, if you enjoy the podcast,
they probably will too.
One last note on friends,
if you have a friend out there who is keen on
improvement, they want to improve their Pickleball game,
share the workshop with 'em,
right? Maybe they haven't heard about it yet,
maybe it just hasn't come across their feed.
You can be that lifeline that lets 'em come into the
workshop and learn more about Pickleball,
about the framework,
about the objectives,
strategies, and shots that'll help them play their best Pickleball.
As always,
I hope you have a great week.
I'll see you inside the workshop.
If not,
I'll see you and next week's podcast.