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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.
[00:00:05.430] - Tony Roig
Welcome to pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. My name is Tony Roig. I'm the host of this weekly podcast. This week, I'm recording the podcast on-site at the PPA Slam event here in Atlanta, Georgia, at Lifetime in Beach Free Corners. It's been a great week of being able to interact with a lot of players. Many of them are students. Interact with pro players who I've known over the years and I've met at this tournament. Watch a lot of pro play, watch a lot of amateur play, watch even junior pro play, and see what's going on out there. See what's working, what's not working, get caught up on everything that's happening in the sport because you're able to see how the amateurs are navigating the sport as well as how the pros are trying to figure out the best way to solve the puzzle at their level of play. And then take those lessons into our videos and our teaching and our coaching and our trainings. We have a training coming up now at the end of May, covering lobs and how to deal with lobs. So if you'd like to join us for that, Please, I'll put a link down in the show notes.
[00:01:02.280] - Tony Roig
You can go to betterpickleball.com, and there's a link there where you can find that training. And also we have the 50 plus Academy, where we're implementing strategies that are appropriate for all levels of pickleballball. In all types of pickleball, and also strategies that are specific to 50 plus play. But this is part of the work that we do as coaches is coming to events like this to see exactly what's going on out there with the sport of pickleball. And what I want to talk about in this podcast, in this episode of the podcast, It has to do with redlining. I saw a lot of it on the courts, both amateur and pro. And I'm going to focus on one example in particular. But redlining is the idea that getting too amped, getting too excited, getting too far over on one side. If you want to think about it this way, think about it like a car has a red line. Have you seen a car that has a tachometer in it that shows you revolutions per minute? They always have that red section on there. Basically, it's like a warning that says, don't red line, don't go into the red zone, at least not for an extended period of time, because you'll burn the engine up.
[00:02:07.920] - Tony Roig
As human beings, we're not dissimilar in the sense that we have a certain amount of bandwidth that we can handle, that our brains can handle. And we can red line it sometimes so we can take it into that level of stress and anxiety and pressure for short bursts at time. But staying there for a long time can't hurt us. And that's what we're going to talk about in this episode of the podcast. And then at the end, I'll give you a couple of ideas that might help you deal with that if that's something that you deal with or if you see a friend of yours that has this. And what I'm surprised at is, isn't that it happens, right? It's going to happen. What I'm surprised at is I'm getting the sense that it's actually something that players are affirmatively trying to do. In other words, it's one thing to say that it's accidental, meaning like, or just something to happen, right? So that's just how I I'm programmed, right? And so I behave that way, but that's what I'm used to. It seems to me that this is something that's being trained out there, something that's being taught.
[00:03:09.130] - Tony Roig
And what makes me think that is I've watched several junior PPA matches, and shout out to the PPA. I think it's wonderful what they're doing. They let the junior players play on the same court that the pros play on. There's two courts that the pros play on. They have Championship Court and Grandstand Court, and they had the gold medal matches of the juniors on the Grandstand Court while the time that the semifinals for the pro players are going on on the Championship Court. So that was really cool to see. But anyway, but I'm watching these junior players play and very over the top, 12-year-olds, 13-year-olds, 14-year-olds. A lot of some trash talking between them, which I didn't see anybody correcting, which is unfortunate because I think that's something that should be corrected at that age or else it gets worse. But the other thing I saw was a lot of basically, right here, right now. Let's go. We got it. Let's go. Come on, right here, right now. A lot of that talk. And again, these are children. These are teenagers and children that are basically so amped up. I mean, there's 14-year-old stroke out there waiting to happen.
[00:04:17.550] - Tony Roig
And so it leads me to believe that there's some coaching going on out there. There's some training going on out there that has this idea that you're supposed to be 120% all the time. And that's just not something that's feasible. And I'll work through that in a second with you. Just a couple of different ideas. It's a couple of scenarios so you can see how it really doesn't work to your advantage. Where it really stood out was there was a really excellent quarter final match. If you like pro pickleball, it's a really interesting match to watch between Federico Staxrude, Hayden Patrick, and J. W. Johnson, and C. J. Klinger. It's quarter finals, but it was basically finals-level match. And back and forth match, really good rallies, really good battles by everybody. They're in game three, so they've split games one and two. They're in game three. It's roughly tied. I can't remember the exact where it is. Somewhere around 6: 06-ish. And Federico Sackrutt hits a... There's a really Interesting rally. He hits a good shot, and he gets really excited about it, right? Red lines, if you will. The problem is that he stays red-lined.
[00:05:26.610] - Tony Roig
And so whether it's the next rally or a couple of rallies later, he's serving He's serving for the first time, serves it into the net. And when I say he's serving for the first time since that point, so since he got amped up. So he serves that into the net. One or two rallies later, he misses a return of serve. Critical game three, top 10 player missing shots that he shouldn't miss. Why? Because he red-lined and because he was stuck in red-lined. Like his accelerator foot was stuck down, right? And he was just revved up too high. And so it cost his performance. Now, maybe they still lose the match. I can't tell you that. But I can tell you for sure that his red-lining in that match affected his ability to perform in that situation. So what I want you... Let's work through a couple of scenarios now and let's play with it a little bit and see how it affects you. Remember, red-lining is you're just super amped. You're just like, whoa, let's go. Just really super amped up. If you think about being amped up, you have no bandwidth left. You're already at the extreme.
[00:06:29.960] - Tony Roig
So you have nowhere to go. There's no cushion. And so you can see a situation where you actually have a really nice rally. It's a fantastic rally, where it's a fantastic rally back and forth. All of a sudden, you have a great save and you do a great thing. You don't feel it, right? Because you're going, and I've seen this out here where players are going like, whoa, after a miss four shot or miss third shot or just like nothing, rallies, right? I mean, nothing's happened, but they're acting like it was like the rally of the The Millennium. So when you have the rally of the millennium, where are you going to go from there? You have no cushion. You have nowhere to go, nowhere to rev the engine that you can go to in a good situation. And perhaps more importantly, You have nowhere to go in a bad situation. Because you will face adversity on the pickleball court. The pros do for sure. You will in your matches if you're playing a level, you're going to be challenged and you're supposed to be challenged. That's what you signed up for. And so if you have If you have no bandwidth, no cushion left in your revving, if you will, because you're red-lined, how are you going to handle it when things go sideways on you, when things turn adverse?
[00:07:44.810] - Tony Roig
You can't because you got nowhere to go. And so this red-lining idea, this idea that you're going to red-line all the time, you're always going to be 110 %, is just not a sustainable way of engaging with the sport. It's not healthy for you. It's not good for you from just a psychological health standpoint. Physiologically, either to be all amped up all the time, not good for you. But the kicker is this, you're not even going to get better performance out of it. What you want to learn how to do is how to regulate that tachometer, how to regulate yourself from green to yellow to red in your emotion state. And that's a process of time. And I would suggest to you that the tip I want you to walk away from this episode with is start with recognition. And what I mean by that is notice if you're redlining. So if the other team misses a nothing shot and you're like, well, let's go. You don't like that? Probably redlining. There's no call for that in that situation. And so you're so amped up that you're releasing it in ways that objectively don't make any sense because you're treating that the same as you would the rally of the millennium.
[00:08:56.770] - Tony Roig
And that objectively makes no sense. So the first The next step would be recognition of feeling redlining all the time. And then you're going to work on some techniques, some breathing techniques. We have another episode we cover with some breathing techniques. You can Google that. Just the pickleball Therapy breathing techniques, and you can find that episode. If I can find it for you, I'll put it in the show notes, but in case it's not there, you can find it. Work on some breathing techniques between rallies. And think of the time between your rallies as a moment to let the foot off the gas, if you will. So in the rally, maybe at first it's going to be hard because you're going. And so your brain starts going, everything gets excited and you're just, let's go, let's go, let's go. And you're revving too much. Between rallies, let go of the gas. Let that gas, let that tachometer come down, let the engine unwind a little bit. Breathing techniques are a good way of doing that. Releasing the paddle from your playing hand is another technique. Sends a signal to the brain that everything is fine, and they're not in danger, everything's good.
[00:09:53.690] - Tony Roig
Those are things that you can do. But be mindful of red-lining and be mindful of If you have a significant other who plays pick-up on red lines, a good friend of yours is red lines, things like that, share this episode with them. It's a way for them to maybe come at the game a little differently, avoid that redlining that's negatively affecting them personally and also negatively affecting their There we go. We'll see you in our play. So that's this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. I hope the sound quality was good enough from the on-site location here. Remember, we have that upcoming training if you want to join us for that. We also have the 50 plus Better pickleball Academy, where we have... You get basically CJ, my myself and other amazing coaches over 50 showing you tips and strategies that are specific to 50 plus plays. If you're a 50 plus pickleball player, you love the sport, I'll put a link in the show notes where you can join us inside the academy. That's that for this week's podcast. As always, if you have a minute to rate and review it, really appreciate you doing that.
[00:10:49.450] - Tony Roig
If you think this podcast was helpful to you, share with your friends. Remember, particularly those who you think are red-lining, your husband, your wife, your sister, your brother, sister, whoever. Share this podcast with them, and maybe it'll help them and on a path away from red-lining and a more balanced approach to their play. I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you on the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. Be welcome.