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The podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. We are here to help you achieve your pickleball goals, with a focus on the mental part of your game. Our mission is to share with you a positive and more healthy way of engaging with pickleball. Together let’s forge a stronger relationship with the sport we all love. With the added benefit of playing better pickleball too. No matter what you are trying to accomplish in your pickleball journey, Pickleball Therapy is here to encourage and support you.
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your Pickleball improvement. Hope you're having a great week. I am your host, Tony Roig. This week I'm throwing you a little bit of a curve ball. We're gonna do a three parter this week. Ah, there we go. Change it up a little bit. What we're gonna do is I want to talk to you about,
we we're gonna like work to, to go deep in defining our metric, right? I think it's gonna be really helpful for you in terms of figuring out how to analyze those games that you've played or those sessions that you have. And you're sitting there, your brain is just kind of going on repeating about stuff and how do we wrestle with that and come up with a more productive way of dealing with that?
And then in the riff, I'm gonna talk to you about the three minute plank, which is something that happened this week that talks about, it's about incremental progress, right? About, you know, progress being incremental and not big, chunky kind of progress. And that's kind of progress that you're gonna see in your game and eventually it'll come together. But before we get into that,
I'm gonna share with you a story by one of our listeners and a friend of the podcast, Lou Friedman, a story that he shared with me about human relations and the Game of Pickleball. But even before that, I want to give a shout out to Sharon. Sharon shared a review on Apple Podcast that I wanna share with you all. It's, this podcast always has information I can use to improve my Pickleball game.
Glad to hear that, Sharon. It helps me with the mental, physical, and strategic parts of the game. This podcast has helped me have more confidence and really enjoy the game more. Thank you Tony and CJ for all your help. Senior Pickleball enthusiast, Sharon b Sharon. We're happy to be a part of your journey and the journey of everybody listening to this.
And it means a lot to us to help you. You know, we wanna help you obviously play better. That's good. But more than that, we want this idea of having more confidence and enjoying the game more. That's, that tugs at our heartstrings. 'cause that's really what this whole thing is about, this whole Pickleball project period and even playing Pickleball.
So that's, that's awesome sharing. Thank you for sharing with that. Sharing that with us. If you're listening to the podcast and you have a story like that, please feel free to share it on Apple or Spotify. That'd be awesome. We also also wanted to address kind of an elephant in the room. Maybe that there's a couple of reviews recently,
which are fine, you can review. Anything you wanna review is fine. We take all, all sorts of feedback. But I know some listeners have been thinking that maybe the podcast has leaned a little too much in terms of like the Pickleball system when we had our launch and things like that. Listen folks, you know, our objective is to help you with Pickleball and that includes some of our things that are not,
you know, Pickleball therapy and other things that we do. So there's other, other concepts that we have that are, that are helpful. We believe strongly in those concepts and have no problem, you know, sharing them with you. And in fact, I don't know any other way to do it than to share it with you here. And then the other things that we do.
So, you know, if, if that's not to your liking, then I guess that's okay. But that's why we do it because we earnestly believe in in the things that we share with you in this podcast and everything else that we do. So hopefully that helps address some of that. Alright, let me dive in and share with you the story that Lou Friedman showed with us.
It's a really good story and I'm just gonna read it to you. Think you're gonna like it so it starts off like this all or welcome. We have seen the sign before in the game of Pickleball. All I need to know is your name. I do not need to know anything about you except are you ready to play? I judge you, yes,
but it is on how you play the game. Not how big or small, male or female or the color of your skin, but how is your serve? How's your third shot drop? And do you have a nasty spin when we are dinking? I'm even more judgmental if you're a lefty. That's a good one, Lou. Sounds like fairness and equity to me.
How about you win or lose? We meet in the middle and give a paddle tap and say good game. We move up the court and let the next group on. We can now talk or not talk. If we talk, it can be about the game, family, career, travel or the weather. I really do not care about your politics,
religion, or sexual orientation. Yes, this is equity, this is the game of Pickleball. Next game, switch it up. New partner, new opponents. I may not know this partner, but I'm able, I'm about to get to know them. How do they do under pressure? Do they have a sense of humor one day or I hit a bad shot?
Do we feel good when we walk off the court? Not because we won or lost, but of how we played the game. If we got outplayed, do we honor the other team for the challenge and their great play? If we won, is it because we played well or did the other team give it away? Yes, all are welcome. 0 0 2,
let's begin. And the game of Pickleball, all I need to know is your name. So thank you Lou for sharing that with us. I think it's just a really good reminder of the general sport of Pickleball, why we play it, you know, the camaraderie that gets developed. So, you know, just a really nice perspective. All I need to know is your name and we can play some Pickleball.
That's awesome. Alright, lemme jump into this metric idea that I wanted to share with you about, about redefining our metric. But before we do, remember I said earlier about we believe in what we do in our teachings. I wanna let you know that we have several Pickleball Academy courses coming out. They're each designed to address specific parts of the game.
As an example, as I record this this evening, there's a live tournament preparation course that we're offering. It'll be too late by the time you go to this podcast to sign up for that, that live course. But we also have a recorded course that we're gonna launch. So that's just an example of like, if you play tournaments and you want some,
you know, you, if you want my 75 80 tournament worth of strategies and tips that'll help you get the most outta your tournament, join us inside the Pickleball Academy and check that out. Alright, so when I'm talking about metrics here, right? We, we always talk about metrics is ways of measuring right of that, that I should, that's what we talk about it,
that's what a metric is, right? A metric is a form of measurement, right? It's how do we measure a performance? How do we measure how we've done? And let me tell you what happened and how this kind of came to the, the top of my mind. So this last weekend I was playing at the a PP in Delray down there.
And, and on Friday I played in the Team Cup event. We played the first round, we played a gender. So we played men's, it was a good match. First game wasn't great. Me and a new partner, we had never played together before. So we were like competing for balls in the middle. Nobody's really sure what the other players gonna do.
Again, this normal things that happen with a new player, we lost that game pretty handily. Then the second game we came back from a deficit, won that one I believe 11 nine or 1210 third game. We were down at the beginning, we bought, battled back and ultimately we're able to to, to get close. And we ended up losing,
I believe it was 11 nine and a third. But that's a good match, right? Three games lose the last 1, 11 9, I mean that's just, or 11 eight, something like that. But it was, it was close. It was tough it. And so, okay, that's a good match, right? Then we play, I played him in a mixed doubles and was able to win that one.
So we, my partner, so we basically one on one for the day, right? And that's, it was a good day on the court, a fun day seeing the team and everything, right? Go home that night. I was in Miami visiting my dad 'cause it was south Florida and it just, it kept on bubbling up, right? This,
this like, like I kept on thinking about some shots that I hit in the first, in the men's match that were unsuccessful and I kept on wondering like, well, did I do the right thing there? And it did, it just, this couple of shots just kept just circling in my head, right? And I know I hit other shots that were better,
but those just hit caught popping it up, right? And I'm like, what do I do about this? Right? How do I like stop this nonsense with my head just spinning round and round? And it is not, there is a, there is a place for productive thought, right? About what happened today, right? You know, like for instance,
if you're, say you're missing a lot of backhand volleys, right? That's okay. You note you notate that, right? And you say, okay, I'm going to focus on my backhand volleys. Now I need to focus on either it's my swing, it's my, my footwork not getting to the ball, it's my body foundation, right? I'm breaking my foundation as I'm hitting whatever it is,
right? There's a cause that's causing me to miss a lot of those volleys. And that's fine, right? That's constructive, right? What I'm talking about is it's just, you know, just this, this, this like a rinse and repeat kind of thing where it's just going around and around in your head, just circling, right? It looks like a washing machine,
right? Just go round and round and around. You're like, but it's, there's no constructive to it. So how do you wrestle with that? And it got me to thinking about, about the metrics, right? And so, you know, there was something for me to learn from this, I'll call it a struggle, even though that's too heavy of a term for this.
It's just this thing right? Going on in my brain. And so what I started thinking about was how do we ask a better question, right? Or frame ourselves in a way that is correct, right? Not, not trying to trick myself or anything like that, but it's a correct question. But it's, it's a more constructive way of thinking about your performance that day.
And you know, we've talked before many times about, you know, winning and losing, not being a good metric and it's still not a good metric. And you know, the other one is, you know, like why do you play? Did you go there to see your friends and things like that? That's, that's a good one. That's great.
And that's a good way of, you know, re bringing the framing back, right? Bringing yourself back to a more centered thought process. But I wanna offer you another one, and we're gonna explore it today. I'm gonna set it up for you as I've already started, and then the next two episodes. So we're gonna do three episodes on this.
The next two episodes, we're gonna dive into it more in depth. The next episode we're gonna talk about setting the baseline. And this is gonna be critical to this process. And then in the, in the last, the third one, right? The, the second one after this one, we're gonna talk about the benefits of, of using this process,
right? Avoiding some of these pitfalls that, that occur because we don't use it. But what, what we're gonna start working on is asking ourselves the question that that is, you know, did I, did I do what I could do? In other words, did I do the best that I could in that situation? And that's gonna be, that's from a performance standpoint,
that's going to, we're gonna use that to center ourselves right into like, and to, it's kinda like a gravitational pull right? To gravity, pull our thoughts so that we don't get lost in a sea of what ifs. And all this sort of, not sort of, it is nonsense, all this nonsense at the end of the day. So we're gonna explore this question of,
you know, did I do what I could do that in that game? And if the answer is yes, you move on, again, you can notate con, you know, constructive notations are fine about volleys and things that you can work on your game, that's fine. But in terms of your overall thinking about the game you're gonna be out with,
did I do the best that I could do? And when we set the baseline correctly, ask the question and understand the benefits of it. I think you're gonna see how this question and this process is going to take us to a more centered and balanced reaction to our game results. So I look forward to, I'm happy to share my personal struggles with you like I just did about,
you know, just the brain going nutty sometimes, and then the benefits that come from that struggle, right? Again, using the term pretty expansively, but you know, the, the, the, the thinking about it helps bubble these things up to the surface. These ideas about how can we deal with them, such as the question that we're gonna be exploring today,
that we've explored today that we're gonna explore in the next two episodes. So hopefully you join me for that. So in the riff, we're gonna talk about the three minute plank. Before we dive into the riff, I know that a lot of areas of the country are starting to fall out, I guess, and get back into Pickleball. And so one thing that's important is,
is when you get back on the court, you know, do a equipment check. And I would suggest to you the most important piece of equipment that you own is actually not your paddle, it's your shoes. Because your shoes basically start the whole chain right from the court to your body. And it can have impact on your knees, your ankles, et hips,
et cetera. So make sure you check your shoes, make sure that they're in in good shape. Sometimes the rubber will harden, you know, if it's been left out in the cold and stuff like that, it can harden a lot. You don't want to have the, the rubber too hard. You also wanna be too soft, right? Too mushy.
So check it, make sure you're comfortable with the shoe. If you're looking for shoes, highly recommend you check out our friends at Tyro Pickleball, they've been our, our shoe partners for a number of years now, and they, they only do Pickleball, right? That's our whole deal. So check 'em out, use the code BP 10 at checkout,
it gets you a discount and also helps self support the podcast and the other content efforts that we have. So check that out. All right, let's dive into the riff. Let's talk about this three minute plank. So what happened was, and it's about incremental progress and you'll see how it applies to you and the Pickleball and anything else that you're doing that's incremental as most things in life are in terms of improvement.
But anyway, so we, I was, I've been taking boxing since roughly the beginning of the year, since the end of January. So about eight weeks of, of doing some boxing. And in that boxing training, it's a lot of abdominal work. And so I went on Monday and Coach Ron was, was teaching it. And coach Ron's the,
he's the patriarch of the, of this location, clear Clearwater Boxing Academy here in Clearwater. He's 77 and can still do 12 pull-ups. So you can imagine he's in decent shape and he's been doing boxing his whole life. So he's old school on his, how he does stuff. So everything in boxing is three minutes. 'cause that's how long around is.
So we start off the day with, okay, we're gonna do a plank for three minutes. I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, okay, fine, I, you know, I'll do what I gotta do, but I'll, you know, I'm not my brain. I'm saying I, I know I can do a minute, maybe a minute and a half,
but I'm probably gonna have to knee down, you know, at some point. So we start the plank, he starts the clock, and, and I, we start the plank and I did a couple of things. I stayed in the plank, but I did a couple things to kind of, because I was getting kind of bored with it. So I got up on my hands,
I did some shoulder taps. I, you know, I kept on going from elbows to hands, things like that, some shoulder presses, things like that. But all in the plank. And then eventually the buzzer sounded right? So I was three minutes, so did a three minute plank, which was cool accomplishment for me, right? Cool thing.
But it made me think about how I got there, right? How I got to the three minute plank and the way I got there was with all the abdominal work that I've been doing over the last few months, right? And so that's the way that everything is in life. And what happens is you, you know, like if you're, if you're trying to improve as a Pickleball player,
you know, maybe you're working on, on some strategy, maybe you're working on some mechanics and, and maybe you're working on your, well, you're definitely working on your mind to be listening to this podcast, right? So you're doing all this work and maybe you're not seeing anything. You're out there and you're like, man, I just feels the same.
Everything feels the same. What I want you to know is that it's not the same, right? Even if you don't see it at that particular moment, those incremental changes are going to be impacting your play. And there's a caveat I'm going to mention in a second, but, but about, about the incremental progress, but basically is if you're doing the things correctly,
right? Little things, eventually those things will coalesce and come together and you'll see the three minute plank. You'll see the big thing that, that is like your, your signal, right? Oh, okay, this is working. Our, our friend DJ Howard shared with us a, a a way of thinking about it a a couple years ago during the summit,
which was that, you know, if you take a big rock, right? And you strike it with a, just a regular hammer, a house hammer, right? You start striking it, it doesn't look like anything's happening, right? You just striking it and hitting it and it nothing's going on. But what happens is eventually right, it might be the hundred strike,
might be the thousand strike, the rock just crumbles. It just breaks apart because of all the micro fis fissures, right? Of micro cracks that you've made in the rock by hitting it with a hammer. It's the same with us, right? These little things that you do listening to this podcast episode, right? Maybe this episode or maybe the last one,
or the one before, you know, triggered something in your mind. And so now you're looking at it differently and that process starts to work on you, right? Maybe you've been working on your forehand dink, right? And it's, you're still regressing sometimes right to the, the other shot, but the new shot is starting to take hold and eventually all these things come together and the rock just cracks,
right? Or you do the three minute plank and that's what incremental progress is all about, right? And that's how you have lasting progress in your game, even though you're not seeing, you may not be seeing it in the particular moment that it's occurring. The caveat that I wanna share with you is that you have, it has to be correct. And what I mean by that is that the incremental work you're doing has to be fundamentally correct.
If you're doing incremental work that's fundamentally flawed or fundamentally incorrect, that is not going to improve you, right? So like in my case, you know, it's kind of hard to mess up abdominal work, but you know, we were doing like the lower abdomen with leg lifts, the upper abdomen with some crunches and things like that. So at the end of the day,
it all comes together to give me the core band, right? That's necessary to hold a plank for three minutes. So as you work on your game, just be mindful of the inputs that you have in your process. But if you have the good inputs in your process and are putting in the work little by little, little by little, you'll eventually have that three minute plank at the end.
So that's this week's podcast. Hope you enjoyed it. I hope you can join us the next couple of weeks as we dive deeper into this concept of, of asking the right question, right? Did I do the best that I can? Did I do what I did? I do what I could do, right? Did I leave it out there in the way that I could in that situation?
And I think you'll really enjoy that process. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate and review it like Sharon did. It really helps us Reach other players. We like reading about it as well. But the bigger picture is that it helps other players who at some point, maybe like you did not know about Pickleball therapy, but now they do because of your review.
They saw your review or they saw the rating and it helped push it up in the, in the algorithm so that they're able to see the podcast earlier along their journey. And as always, consider sharing it with your friends. Remember, if you enjoy the podcast, I'm gonna bet they probably will too. I'll be, have a great week and we'll see you during next week's podcast,
which will come to you from the US Open. So see you then.