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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.
[00:00:05.000] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to Pickleball Improvement. This is your Thanksgiving Week 2025 episode of the podcast. We're going to actually go through a thankfulness practice in this episode. I'm going to walk you through some general concepts of areas to be thankful for. I think it'll be really helpful just for you and your relationship with this beautiful sport. Then in the end, in the In the RIF, I'll share with you a couple more areas of thankfulness that apply to me personally, just to share them with you at the end of the podcast. Before we dive into the podcast, a couple of housekeeping notes. If you've been following the book at all, you know that we published the book. Everything's cool. There was a little bit of an issue with the Kindle file that was uploaded. There were just some formatting and things like that. These things are expected. If you listen to the podcast, you know it's just part of the It's part of life, part of how you do the best you can in every part of everything that we do, and sometimes these things happen. We're working through that right now.
[00:01:09.990] - Tony Roig
The print copy of the book is ready to go, but we're working through some of the Kindle pieces, and those will be hopefully sorted out in the next few days. If you did order a Kindle, we're going to solve that for you. If you got a PDF of it through the presale on the website, you're going to be getting a notification from us as soon as the Kindle is ready. We're going to be basically sending you a Kindle. If you have a minute to review the book in Amazon, it really helps us guys and girls. It's one of the challenges in our very noisy ecosystem that we live in nowadays. The Internet and all the online stuff is awesome because it allows us to have these connections that we maybe otherwise wouldn't be able to have. But But at the same time, it can be overwhelming. There's just a lot of stuff out there. One of the things that the way all these platforms are built, they're basically built on algorithms that... Some of it is interactions, some of its reviews and things like that. The other thing is the review also helps a player who maybe they don't know who we are.
[00:02:22.720] - Tony Roig
They don't have any idea about this podcast. They don't have any idea about us as coaches. So they have no way of knowing whether they should buy the book, trust the book, and things like that. So review helps. And feel free to review it however you like. Frankly, if you didn't like the book or don't like the ideas in the book, share that, too, because we don't want players to read the book if they shouldn't. So review really helps. And again, other players connect with the information. And then one other quick note of housekeeping is that we do have some spots left in our camps here in Tampa and also in Arizona. So if you want to check those out, go to betterpickleball.com and click on camps. All right, let's dive into the thankfulness practice that we're going to go through. I think it's an appropriate thing to do given that we're in the Thanksgiving time frame. I will say the first thing that I think we should be thankful for is simply be thankful for having this sport, for being able to engage with the sport of pick a ball. Think of all the benefits that it gives us, social benefits, health benefits, getting out of the house benefits, mental health benefits.
[00:03:30.000] - Tony Roig
It's just such a powerful salve, if you will, in our lives. It gives us that third space that we crave as humans, this connection with other individuals around an activity that is healthy and good for you. So just thankful for the sport, period. Just the sport itself. And as we think about the thankfulness for the sport, one thing I think that is worth considering is either someone who you knew introduced you to pickleball. That's awesome. You should thank them. Or you discovered it. Maybe you discovered it on your own. A flyer or something came across, or you asked a question about that weird sport that they were playing at the club or at the facility that you're at. But regardless of how you came across pickleball, just think about how awesome it would be to be able to introduce this sport to somebody else, to a friend of yours, a family member, even just an acquaintance. I've introduced it to folks like Uber drivers that I've been talking to about the sport. Whether they go into the sport or don't go to the sport, I can't control that. But I can't control introducing to the sport, giving them some advice about how easy it is to pick up and how many friends you meet and things like that.
[00:04:45.120] - Tony Roig
Just keep that in the front of your mind, if you can, in terms of when you interact with other folks, whether they're friends, family, or just acquaintances, or people you just come across, maybe introduce them and pick them on. Maybe in a year from now, next Thanksgiving, they'll be thinking about you and giving you thanks for introducing you, for you introducing them into this awesome sport. I think it's important to be thankful for each one of the little pieces that go into our ability to play this sport. One that I think gets overlooked a lot is facilities. I was having a conversation today. I was at the courts. I was having a conversation with one of the family members that owns the facility. Like anything, things ebb and flow, right? But this is an indoor facility here in Florida. And so now we're going into the season in Florida where it's beautiful outdoor. And so it's understandable that a player would say, You know what? I'm going to go play outdoor. We have some facilities here that don't charge anything to play outdoor. And you do have to pay to play indoor because there's costs associated with the facility.
[00:05:49.940] - Tony Roig
But don't lose sight of the fact that if you want that facility to survive, factor that into your decision making, because it's not like they can just... They don't have expenses during the winter, and they can just close up their shop and then reopen for you when it gets hot outdoor. Give that some thought as you think through your planning. Support these facilities that are there for you when you want to play pickle ball is just an important bigger picture thinking about your ability to engage with the sport. But for our thankfulness practice, it would be just being thankful for the folks who are instrumental in these facilities or these courts being built, because it's not like a magic thing where they appear, just appear out of the... Just come out of the ground and all of a sudden you have a pickleball court, someone actually has to put them in for us to be able to play this sport. So I'm thankful for that. And then I think we should be thankful for our friends, those other players who allow us to play this sport. This is a group sport. More often than that, you're probably playing doubles.
[00:06:52.140] - Tony Roig
So it's a team sport, you and a partner against two other players. And it's not something that you can do on your own. In theory, you can golf on your own. You can go out into the golf course in the afternoon and walk the golf course and play golf. There's other bowling you can do on your own. There's activities that you can do on your own. Pickleball is not one of them. And so we should be thankful for our friends and acquaintances and others who we're able to play with. I actually did a little post this morning about my Wednesday group that I play with, my good friend David here in town, organizes the group. I'm thankful to him for organizing the group. That's another mini piece of all this, who organizes your play. Maybe reach out to them and thank them for doing that. But I'm thankful to have this group that I know on Wednesdays, it's a group of some of them I've known for over 10 years now that I've known some of these players. And so it's just Really cool to be able to have all these friends to play with.
[00:07:48.600] - Tony Roig
Obviously, thankful for having our health, being able to get on the court. Even if you have limited mobility, even if you're able to play, it's a good day. I'll be thankful for that as well. Going a little deeper on being thankful for the friends that we have. It's not just that they're there to play with us. That's one way of thanking them, being thankful that they're just available. But it goes deeper than that, doesn't it, with our friends? I mean, thankful for meeting these folks, folks who I probably wouldn't have met outside of pickleball because we don't really... When you think about some of the folks that you meet through pickleball, it's not like you have other overlapping interests with them. Maybe they're in a different work field, they live in a different part of town, they have a different a group of friends, maybe they're a different religion, whatever it is. So they're in a different their own world, but you are able to overlap with them in this sport with this shared interest. And you get to meet all these new people. I find, by and large, I like pickleball players. I'm a little biased, I guess, because I love the sport.
[00:08:47.940] - Tony Roig
But I would say, yeah, I've met some people playing pickleball that I could be okay not having met. But by and large, I'm happy with the people I meet playing pickleball, whether it's at tournaments I've played, whether it's just rec play and things like that, whether it's traveling around the country. I just think it's awesome to be able to meet those people. For me, Francis, I met a retired Sheriff, has become a good friend of mine, real estate developer, tennis pro turned pickleball, IT professional, and there's so many others that I've met through the sport of pickleball that I probably would not have met but for the sport of pickleball. I'm thankful for that. Then I've I had the opportunity to meet players from all around the world. It's your choice how you engage with the sport. But there is a universe or a model in which you can meet players from anywhere, other cities, other states, other countries, if you want to. That's interesting to think about. Which leads me to the next one that I'm thankful for, and perhaps some of you as well, which is thankful for the travel opportunities that pickleball has provided.
[00:09:54.320] - Tony Roig
I know that some of you, for instance, travel to come to our or other coaches' pickleball camps. Way of interacting with your life where pickleball plays a role in how you live it. For instance, Jill and I, a few years ago, we would RV in the summers, and we would RV based on pickleball. I'm not 100% of the time, but I would say, probably good 60, 70% of the time, we were going from one tournament to another tournament or to an event or something like that. It gave us an opportunity to travel with a purpose, if you will. We were actually going there to do something. We also got to play tournaments in France and in England. Met some really nice folks over there. Saw parts of the country we probably haven't seen. I would visit a Nottingham in England and Faillance in France. It's in the Southern part of France. I don't know that I would have gone to Faillance. We're not for a pickle ball, and I would probably gone to Nottingham, were enough for a pickleball for the tournament. Just a nice way to engage with other parts of your life by having a pickle on there.
[00:10:56.080] - Tony Roig
I think it's good to be thankful for the professional circuit, and I'm going to tell you why. I think having a professional circuit for our sport helps make our sport more, quote and quote, serious. I mean serious in a way here that it's more respected, more welcomed in some places. It allows for more expansion of the sport, more folks to interact with the sport because you have a professional tour. The other thing that's, I think, really cool, and I love this a lot being a coach, is it lets us learn from these amazing athletes. If you follow any of the other things that we do, you'll know that I often use my interactions at the pro level to develop a lot of the concepts that we use in our coaching. If it weren't for the pro circuit, we wouldn't be able to do that. I'm thankful for that, and hopefully, you're thankful for that as well. Let me share with you a few things that I'm thankful for in addition to the above. Just before I do that, I'm not trying to be exhaustive with this list. There may be other things that you're thankful for.
[00:12:13.740] - Tony Roig
I think it's good to think Take a moment to think about it. If you have a minute, why not reach out to whomever you're thankful to? Could be the facility administrator at the local county center, the YMCA club, wherever you play. Could It could be your friend that introduced you to pickleball. It could be your friends who you play with on a regular basis. It can be your friends who helped you maybe navigate the sport this last year in a way that maybe... I know that this happens where players sometimes get frustrated with the sport and decide that Maybe they're going to leave the sport and they'll have somebody talk them off the wall, if you will. There's a lot of other things you can be thankful for. Give some thought to that and perhaps take a moment and reach out to them. For me, I'm thankful for all the above. But I'm also thankful to my team here at Better Pickleball. I love what I do. I love coaching. I love being able to help pickleball players become more knowledgeable pickleball players. I love explaining the sport as best I can. The only way that I can really do that in a form that is amplified the way that we're able to is by having a team around us.
[00:13:25.420] - Tony Roig
Obviously, C. J. Johnson, my co-head coach over at Better Pickable, is instrumental in this process. I'm thankful to C. J. For all the hard work. She works harder than probably anybody that I know and is passionate about this project that we have. So thankful to C. J. I'm also thankful to everybody on the team, to Kylene, to Jennifer, to Terry, to Emily, to Dan, to Vince, to Jenny, Patty, Sid, Sarej, Mercy, Kelly, and Kele. There's two different Kellys, Jeff and Lynn. So I had to write them down because there's a bunch of them, and I don't want to forget anybody. I also, frankly, I get to work with my son Andrew. He's actually responsible for editing and publishing the episodes of the podcast each week, including this one that you're listening to right now. Really thankful to everybody on the team for what you bring to the Better Pickleball team and to helping us accomplish our mission, which is to help pick-a-ball players all over the place. And then last, but definitely not least, I'm thankful to you. I'm thankful to you as a listener to this podcast. I started this podcast in 2020, and I was clear at the beginning, I think it was 2020, but I was clear at the beginning that the podcast was for me, that the podcast was...
[00:14:39.260] - Tony Roig
I was doing this podcast to help myself along my mental journey, and I think I said it a couple of times where I'm like, I hope you listen. I hope you enjoy it, but it's really for me. So welcome to be a part of it. It's morphed since then, I think. I still do it. I still enjoy a lot. I still learn a lot myself. I'm not suggesting that I've reached some yogi pinnacle out there, and I don't need this work anymore. I do. But it's morphed into where it's a bigger part of this is the impact that it has on you as a listener. So I appreciate you trusting in the podcast and listening to the podcast. I'm also thankful to our students and anybody who wants to learn about pickleball who we're able to interact with, whether it's a player who works with us on a full-time on a semi-full-time basis through our direct coaching program, our pickleball system course, our academy courses, our camps. We love coaching. I refer them as coaching interactions. Some coaching interactions are very personal, and you get to know the players really well. Other coaching interactions are more indirect, like players who watch our YouTube videos or come in and receive a strategy guide or something like that from our website.
[00:15:56.940] - Tony Roig
Again, I'm thankful for all of those experiences with the hope that one day be able to coach as many of you as possible as closely as we can, given the constraints of being a human being. I wrote this out because I want to say it clearly, but whether we've met in person already or not yet, I consider all of you to be a part of my tribe, and I hope that you consider me to be a part of your of your tribe. This is not a New Year's episode, even though it's sounding like one, but I thought Thanksgiving was a really good time to do this. But I'm going to take this opportunity to hope that I get to meet more of you in the future than I have in the past, and perhaps even get to coach you along your pickleball journey. I hope you are enjoying an amazing Thanksgiving weekend, and I will see you on the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. Be well.