Hello, and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,
the podcast dedicated to your Pickleball improvement.
My name is Tony Roig.
I am your host of this weekly podcast.
Last week we had the pleasure of having CJ Johnson on
as a guest podcast host,
hope you enjoyed her podcast about the growth mindset.
CJ has some really good ideas about the learning process and
about how we can grow,
not just as,
as athletes and,
and Pickleball players,
but as human beings.
So, if you haven't been able to check that episode out,
check that one out.
This is a special episode.
It's a special episode surrounding our upcoming workshop called the Winmore
Series. I wanted to talk about the series,
but also wanna talk about the concept of winning,
right? And how we can reconcile this desire to win with
a healthy and productive mental mindset while we engage in this
beautiful sport of Pickleball.
Before we begin the podcast,
as I just mentioned,
we have our workshop series coming up,
the Winmore series.
This is our,
we have two workshops that we put on every year.
This is the first one in 2024.
This is our spring workshop.
This is gonna be a really good workshop.
You're gonna want to join us for this workshop.
Even if you've been to one of our workshops before,
we we're always growing.
Just like we,
you know,
encourage you to grow as Pickleball players and as human beings.
CJ and I,
we don't,
we don't rest on our laurels back here and just go,
okay, we're done.
We're we,
you know,
we're, we've,
we've climbed the mountain,
right? We,
there's always another mountain to climb,
as you'll hear in a couple weeks of our regular episode.
But the,
but the,
the idea is that,
you know,
there's always something to,
to, to grow,
always somewhere to go.
And we are always working on our craft and trying to
find better ways to transmit to you or transfer to you
the knowledge about Pickleball that CJ and I each have about
this awesome sport.
So, if you want to join us for the workshop,
it's starting on March 14th,
but try and get your ticket soon.
Try and reserve receipt soon.
You know,
no reason to dilly dally on that.
I'll put a link down below in the show notes.
If you're on our email list,
you've already gotten an email from us,
and you'll get more emails from us.
So make sure you join us for this workshop series.
Let's talk a little bit about,
I wanna talk about the title.
I want to just hit that nail on the head,
right, because we did call it the win more series,
right? We're leaning into this idea of winning Pickleball games.
Now, why do we do that?
Why do we use terminology like win winning more?
We use that terminology because a lot of Pickleball players out
there have not yet had an opportunity to work with CJ
or me as their coaches,
right? To,
to listen to our perspective on Pickleball and on the,
your growth as a Pickleball player,
your approach as a Pickleball player that will give you more,
you know,
it's more constructive,
more productive way of,
of approaching not just,
you know,
the, the mechanics of the game and how you play,
but the mental part of The game.
So, you know,
and you know,
we've been at this for a while,
so we know the kind of words that Pickleball players,
you know,
that resonate with Pickleball players.
They are words like winning,
you know,
winning third shot,
you know,
strategy, winning strategy,
things like that.
Those kind of words are,
are triggers out there.
And so we use terminology like win more.
Now we do wanna win more.
Everybody wants to win more.
And I want to,
I'm gonna talk about that more in detail in a minute,
but you know what,
what I don't want you to do is to lose sight
of the idea that even though winning is our,
our objective when we play,
because that's the game that we sign up to play.
We play a game that has a score,
and we play a game where at the end of each
game, there's gonna be a team that won and a team
that lost.
You know,
we could have participated in other types of activities like Frisbee,
throwing, you know,
tossing a ball in the backyard,
kicking a ball around,
things like that.
You could go out to the big ball quarter and just,
you know,
hit a ball back and forth.
There's nothing wrong with that.
But if you play Pickleball,
the way that Pickleball is normally played,
there is score kept,
and there is in fact a winner and a loser.
So there's nothing wrong with winning,
you know,
it's, it's fine to wanna win,
but here's the thing about winning.
Winning is incidental to what we do.
Winning is a result.
You know,
you cannot go out to the Pickleball court to win a
game. That's just not a thing that you can do.
You know what,
what you,
if you wanna win more,
what you can do is you can do the things that
you do on the court,
the shots you hit,
the strategies you implement,
the decisions you make,
you make those better.
And the better that you do with those different aspects of
the game,
then the higher the chances that you're going to win the
game. But this idea that I'm going to go out there
and win the game is just not something that is,
that is doable.
For example,
you know,
next time you play,
you wanna win more.
Maybe go in,
go out there and say to yourself,
today, I'm gonna really be mindful of the net.
I'm gonna really keep the net outta play.
Or I'm gonna be really mindful of hitting balls out of
bounds. Whatever,
whatever your poison is,
right? When you play whatever is the cause of errors in
your game,
say to yourself,
I'm really gonna focus on that next time I play.
That's something you have control over,
right? Not the result,
not the incidental win or loss.
You do have control over the decisions that you make.
You know,
we have an acronym that we we're using or starting to
use. We're gonna unveil it during the workshop.
So you want come to the workshop so you can check
out the,
the new acronym that we're unveiling.
But one of the elements of that,
of that,
of that acronym is the concept of intentionality,
which we've talked about before in this podcast.
It's the idea that we are gonna be intentional with what
we do.
You know,
we're not just gonna hit balls and you know,
wherever they go,
they go,
we're gonna have some idea.
Does that mean the ball's gonna go there every time that
we aim it there?
No, of course not.
I mean,
you're a human.
I'm a human.
You know,
we're gonna,
the ball,
our shots are gonna vary,
but we have an intention,
we have an idea of what we wanna do,
and we're clear with that intentionality that we have control over.
The better you get at that intentionality,
right? The better you work out that muscle muscle,
the better you get at,
at clearing the net at not letting your shots land out
of balance and things like that,
then guess what?
You'll win more games,
right? That's just an extension of the,
of the,
of the game.
And I'll tell you a quick personal story.
See, Jill and I,
we just got back from Caribbean crews,
from friends of ours.
Were celebrating b you know,
milestone birthdays.
So we,
we all decided to get on a cruise together,
and they had two Pickleball courts,
actually pretty nice,
all things consider.
And, and so the last day on the cruise,
they had a tournament.
So, you know,
we, we didn't have any schedule that morning.
So the,
the group I was with are all Pickleball players that were
like, let's go play in the tournament.
I'm like,
okay, fine.
So we went,
we played in the tournament and I played with my wife
Jill, and,
you know,
we played four games and ended up winning the tournament.
But the point of the story isn't that,
the point of the story is that a lot of the
times we were playing,
you know,
Jill and I were advanced players,
so we weren't doing anything crazy.
We weren't doing like what we would be doing if we
were playing another advanced team.
We were just keeping the ball and playing.
And oftentimes the rally ended with an error by our opponents,
just because we just put the ball back over the net
one more time.
And it didn't have to be that many times,
it wasn't like,
you know,
we had to hit the ball 7,
8, 9 times.
We'd have to hit the ball maybe three times at most
over the net,
and they would either hit it into the net or hit
it outta bounds.
It was again and again and again.
It was just put it on repeat.
So as a Pickleball player,
if you think about your game,
right, you know,
and we're gonna get to into some more detail in the,
in the,
in the workshop series and give you some more specific instructions.
But generally speaking,
right, the first step to winning more is to lose less,
is just,
you know,
reduce the number of errors that you make when you play
by implementing specific things.
I just gave you a couple of examples.
One is I'm gonna pay attention to the net,
that's great.
On other ones I wanna pay attention.
Outbounds, that's great.
You can pay attention to a particular shot that you have
difficulty with,
right? I'm really gonna focus on this shot when I play,
because if you do better with that shot,
again, by extension,
you'll will more likely to win the games.
But focus on controlling what you can control,
which in,
in, in most cases,
it's not making silly errors when we play.
One of the point I wanna make about this,
and I alluded to at the beginning of the podcast,
is that winning and losing the win-loss ratio,
right? The win-loss metric is not the end all right in
itself. It's not the end all.
And in and of itself,
it does not actually tell us anything about how we played
that day,
okay? It's just a result just incidental to,
to the situation.
Now, in fairness,
the better you play,
right? During a given session,
the higher chances of winning doesn't mean you're going to win.
It's on a guarantee you're gonna win,
but you're definitely increased the chances that you're going to win
in that particular game or in a particular session that you
are playing.
So if you wanna know more specifics about how to win
more, which I've already,
I'm, I've done a lot of foreshadowing here,
you know,
reducing errors and things like that.
We'll give you some more specifics about that.
Join us for our March 14th workshop.
Like I said,
I'll put a link down below.
We're gonna definitely show you some more specifics on how to
win more.
And if I can ask you one favor during this podcast,
it is this,
if you're a long time listener of the podcast,
if you,
if you get benefit from the podcast,
please take a little bit of extra effort in the next
week or two,
share this podcast with your friends and share their upcoming workshop
with your friends.
You know,
there are a lot of players out there who,
who have their own struggles,
right? Just like we do,
just like you do,
all Pickleball players have their journey that they're on and includes
ups and downs.
And if this podcast can help them navigate that,
that's fantastic.
And if the workshop can help them maybe see Pickleball a
little bit differently,
right? To see it from a different perspective.
Because here's the thing,
the workshop is not about the stuff that you see on
YouTube. The the click bait stuff that's all over YouTube,
right? The CJ likes refers to it as a YouTube hamster
wheel. It's a great way of thinking about it,
you know,
it's just this constantly feeding you video after video,
after video.
But at the end of the day,
the the results are,
are marginal,
right? You know,
marginally small.
They're just nominal improvements perhaps if,
if something clicks,
happens to land,
right? With the algorithm.
Whereas when a player comes into a workshop like the one
that's coming up the Winmore series,
it is very step by step,
very orderly.
It's a lot of information that you don't get from just
watching out on YouTube Blend and,
and trying to figure it out there.
So if you have a friend of yours who would benefit
from the workshop or from the podcast,
take an extra minute this next week or two and share
it with your friend or friends,
not just,
not just because I asked you to,
even though I appreciate you doing that,
but because it'll help them out,
right? If,
if we always say at the end of the podcast,
if you enjoyed the podcast,
they probably will too.
It's the same thing with the workshop.
It's the same thing with learning at a way,
in a way that is different than the YouTube algorithm way
of trying to learn how to play Pickleball.
All right?
I hope you enjoyed this week's special episode.
We have a regular episode dropping this Friday.
Like I told you,
the, the workshop begins in a couple of weeks on March
14th, we're gonna have,
it's the three,
it's three different workshops.
Workshop one,
two, and three.
And then at the end of the workshop,
you'll be able to make a decision as to whether you
would like to join us inside our,
our March Pickleball system class.
Our Pickleball system class only runs two times per year.
So if you're ready,
and this is the time for you to take a serious
step in your Pickleball development,
we will see you inside the Pickleball system.
So I'll,
you have a great rest of your week,
and I'll see you this Friday on Pickleball therapy.