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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.
[00:00:00.700] - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to pickleball Improvement, specifically, your pickleball Mind. I am your host, Tony Roig. It's a pleasure to be with you this week. This week, we're going to have a three-parter, so buckle up and get ready. We got three subjects we're going to be talking about. We're going to be talking about assigning fault. The word fault is a loaded term. We're going to talk about that, but we're going to deal with that because all of us deal with that idea, right? That it's our fault, your fault, whatever. Then we're going to talk about the It's increasing our empathy, evolutionary empathy. I think you're going to like that. It's something I've been playing with in my mind, and I think it's going to help you out. Then last here, we're going to talk about staying focused. It's five kilometer at a time, world record. Behind me, if you're watching me on the YouTube channels, on the videos. My name is Tony Roig. I am your host of this weekly podcast. I have to make a note for myself because I forget to introduce myself at the beginning of the podcast.
[00:00:53.670] - Speaker 1
It's just not natural for me. But anyway, that is my name. Happy to be with you here. I am a master teaching, pickleball professional. I've been doing this full-time for about four years now, this pickleball coaching, and before that, for about two years part-time. And that's what I do, is full-time thinking about pickleball, working on pickleball. I'm getting to coach some pro pickleball now. So just everything, everything, pickleball all the time, including this podcast, to help you out. Let me do a couple of housekeeping, and then we'll jump into not Dakota's fault, which I think you'll find, hopefully, a helpful story for you as well. First, we have a therapist event coming up on September 18th. So if you're a therapist, please mark your calendar. It's 4:00 to 5:00 PM. It'll be a live recording of the podcast where you can come in and ask some questions. We'll have some conversation, and it should be a lot of fun. If you're not a therapist but want to be one, send us an email at support@betterpickleball. Com with the subject-line therapist. Even Even if you're not a therapist, you can still listen to the event live and or record it.
[00:02:05.070] - Speaker 1
So check that out. I want to let you know that our system class is enrolling at the end of September. So if you've been thinking about the pickleball system, end of September will be an opportunity to join our September class. It only happens a couple of times a year, the enrollment, because it is a class. So if that's something of interest, you put it on your calendar. And we have a three-day online workshop going on September 23rd. So if you want to learn more from CJ and me about this awesome sport of pickleball and maybe a different way of thinking about it, join us for that event. Put it on your calendar. If you're on email list, you'll get invited to it as well, but just so you're on the alert. I wanted to do a shout-out here. Actually, two shout-outs. First, Chris, thank you very much for sending me the feedback on the Apple podcast. It's about the name of the podcast. What you say makes sense. What Chris says is that the name Therapy may be off-putting to some. I could see that. I can certainly see that, and I appreciate the feedback on it.
[00:02:58.720] - Speaker 1
I'd have to think about pivoting away from the name now, but I certainly appreciate the perspective of that. I hadn't thought about that before, it being potentially off-putting. If you have a thought on that, let us know in the comments or you can send us an email as well. That one you can send to therapy@betterpickleball. Com. I don't know if you have a thought about the name of the podcast. The shoutout I wanted to share here is from Hunt, AMA FW, on June 30th on Apple podcast reviews. I think this is telling, because it is a part of the game that I think most players don't really fully appreciate the importance of. It says, God us over the hump. We did not realize how important the mental game was until we started listening to your podcast. We incorporated many of your ideas into our practice and games, and it has made a big, capital big difference. During stressful matches, we will tell each other a key podcast thought, and that immediately recenters us back to a good place. Our play has improved, and we believe your podcast was a significant reason. Thank you. It's our pleasure, my pleasure, and our pleasure to bring you these podcasts.
[00:04:00.780] - Speaker 1
I think that's the power of... That's why at the end of the podcast, we say, Share it with your friends, because it can't be so powerful, hopefully for you and also for those you know. I appreciate you sharing your story with us. All right, it's a three-parter, but each part will be fairly succinct, I think. The first thing I wanted to talk about is assigning fault. Up here, it says not Dakota's fault. The reason for that I got to play this Saturday in a mixed group. Our friend Tyson over at Hillsbrook University put together a different group sometimes. Sometimes it's older players, younger players, a mixed thing. So Dakota is a younger player, both in terms of her time in pickleball and also just a younger person, younger human being. And she and I were paired up in our first... The first match of the day was Dakota and I playing against TC and Kyla. It was a good match. And And normally, I don't get bogged down in things like, Whose fault was this? In terms of winning or losing, it was a tight match. We ended up on the losing end of it.
[00:05:10.850] - Speaker 1
But it was interesting because I was saying to Dakota how well she was playing because I had seen her play by two months before, and she didn't really understand pickleball. She knew how to hit tennis balls, but not pickleballs. And now she's playing pickleball, and so I compliment her on a few of her shots. And then I also wanted to let her know Because we still live in a results-oriented mindset. I was a society, myself included sometimes. We still live in the results thing. I let her know. I said basically that game was on me. And what What's interesting was, Dakota responded by saying, No, I didn't play well, which objectively, and I told her this, as a coach, as an objective observer of the game, I can tell you that Dakota played very well. Did she do everything perfectly? No, because that's silly, right? Who everything perfectly? But she played very well that match. If there was a player on the team who did not play well, it was me. I was pressing, meaning I was pushing areas that didn't make sense, trying to create where there was nothing to create from. Tc and Kyla I've played a really nice match.
[00:06:17.160] - Speaker 1
So basically, Fault isn't really the thing I wanted to focus on here, the idea that we should assign Fault. But I do think that it's often we jump to, we did something wrong, whether it's in a rally, whether where it's in a game. I think that's something we need to be careful about, always thinking that it was us that was the problem, us who did something that we should have done better. Anyway, just think of that when you're playing. Again, it's not a matter of going out there with this idea that I need to sign fault. But if you slide into that, where you're... I think it's instinctive, we're instinctual, where we just sit there and go, That must have been on me. I made a mistake. One example I'll give you that's very common is a ball gets slammed, and the player who gets slammed with the ball can't react to it because it's a slam. And usually the player who got slammed is like, Oh, I should have my paddle ready, and things like that. Not the issue. The issue is the shot before. It could be three shots before, like a short return to serve that set up the whole thing sequence.
[00:07:22.300] - Speaker 1
So be careful with the fault idea in Dakota, when your fault. Not to say it was anybody's fault, but it certainly wasn't your fault. All right, let's move into the second topic, which is this concept of evolutionary empathy. This is something I'm still playing around with. It's new to me. But I'll give you the general gist of it, and then I'll tell you how to apply it to pick a ball. The idea is that prior to I'm going to get a little deeper for a second, so allow me. Prior to us as Homo sapiens, that's where we are, there was a species called Homo hydrobytis, or it got to be Hydobergenis, because it comes from a fossil they found in Heidelberg, Germany. So it's Hydobergenis, I guess, is our predecessor. So Hydobergenis and Homohydobergenis and Homo sapiens overlapped for about 100,000 years. The reason I tell you this is because evolution doesn't happen instantaneously. It's not like there's a light switch and all of a sudden everybody's like, it's something else. I also think it'd be pretty arrogant of us to think that we are the final step in this evolutionary thing. And so assuming that we are in an evolutionary world, a world that evolves, or not assuming, we are in an evolutionary world, the world that evolves, understanding that we are always in an evolutionary phase.
[00:08:49.770] - Speaker 1
Right now, there are humans who are in different places along the evolutionary scale. I think about it in terms of iPhone. You have iPhone 6, iPhone 7, iPhone 8. I think we're up to iPhone 15 now. That's natural. There's nothing... An iPhone 11 is still a fine iPhone. It's just iPhone 11. When you're on the court and you have this where the empathy comes in, when you're on the court and say you have a disagreement with somebody else, and they just see the world from a different vantage point than you, consider the fact that maybe you guys are speaking past each other a little bit because the fact that you're different versions of humans. Basically, it allows you to be more empathetic because you can just say, Okay, maybe I'm an iPhone 7 and they're an iPhone 8, or they're an iPhone 7 and I'm an iPhone 8, whatever you like better. But the idea is that it's not that you're doing anything that's intentionally bad or intentionally wrong. You're just operating within your operating module, and they're operating within their operating module. Each of us, regardless of whether you're an iPhone 7, 8, 9, 6, doesn't matter, all of us are entitled to our opinions and our ability to navigate the world.
[00:10:07.820] - Speaker 1
We don't have a right to negatively impact others. I'm not suggesting that. But we do have a right to exist in our space. Our space and time on this planet is ours. Perhaps that'll help you think about it a little bit differently when you're disagreeing with someone, whether it's on the pickleball court or not on the pickleball court. The fact that maybe you're just not in the same place as they are. I'm not trying to say that you're better than them or they're better than you. That's not the point. It's that you're just in a different place on this evolutionary process that we're on. It's an interesting way of thinking about it, I think. I'll offer that to you. Then the last area I want to cover today has to do with staying focused, staying in the moment, staying in bite-sized pieces. It's a story that I'll share with you that happened fairly recently. I don't know exactly where it happened, but it was a story that I saw about a para-athlete, visually impaired athlete, who set the world record for the marathon. Now, the curious thing is this athlete did not go out intending to set the world record or even intending to run a marathon.
[00:11:15.450] - Speaker 1
What this athlete was doing was this athlete was running in five kilometer segments to pace other runners on the... Like teammates, basically. Pacing them on five kilometer runs. The The runner had run three laps. There were three five kilometer segments, and then felt fine. So ran another three, and then ran a couple more, whatever. Kept running a little bit more at a time. Then they were almost done with what was a marathon, and they took a break to go talk to their coach because they didn't want the coach to be upset that they were running this much. So this runner went to go talk to the coach, actually sat down, and talked to the coach. In It took 30 seconds about it, and the coach said, Well, if you jog the next 5 kilometers, you have a world record marathon time, so go ahead. So the runner went out and didn't jog, but ran the next 5 kilometers and set the world record in Paralympic, I think it's Paralympic marathoning or paraathlete paramarathoning. But the point of it is this, right? That runner was not trying to run a marathon. That runner wasn't trying to set a world record, right?
[00:12:26.450] - Speaker 1
And that's sometimes, I think, the problem we run into when we play pickle ball is that we're We're looking at the end, right? We go out there, we're like, We got to win this game, or, I want to have a winning day, or things like that. That's not doable. Frankly, if you start thinking about it, it's just going to distract you from what you can actually control. And so the player... Do what this athlete did, this runner did, which is control the controllables. Focus on what you can actually do. So focus on the next rally. Focus on the next serve, next return to serve. And you can start by just focusing on one shot at a time, as I just mentioned. So you're basically like, if you're serving, that's the whole thing. That's your five kilometers. I just got to get to serve in and deep. The rest of it is fine. If I'm returning serve, I'm returning serve in and deep to my target. If you're a system member, you know where that is. But basically, I have my target, and I'm just going to go there. And as long as I do that, everything else will work out.
[00:13:27.190] - Speaker 1
Then once you get better at it, then you can keep layering next shot, next shot, next shot. And that's how you build a wonderful pickleball game, five kilometers at a time. All right, so that's this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember, we have our system and system workshop coming up. So if you want to learn more from us about this awesome sport in a way that will actually change your game, we're happy to do that for you. And as always, consider rating and reviewing the podcast. It helps us reach other players. Lastly, as always, share with your friends. Remember, if you enjoy the podcast, they probably will, too. If you bring it to them, they won't be worried about the word therapy, I don't think. But just kidding, Chris. I appreciate you for giving me the feedback on it. Have a great weekend. I'll see you at the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. Be well.