Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to
your pickleball improvement.
It's the podcast that focuses on your mind.
My name is Tony Roig.
I am the host of this weekly podcast.
It is a pleasure to be with you this week.
I'm excited about the subject this week.
I was reminded of it on a video that came across my personal feed, my algorithm, the
stuff that I get to see because I enjoy that stuff.
It reminded me of a really important concept which has to do with gatekeeping
our cells, gatekeeping our information.
Specifically, this creator was talking about gatekeeping information
and taking back your attention.
The content creator is in the science space, a gentleman named Hank Green, who's
a brilliant interesting concept about science, shares a lot
of just knowledge about science.
I've followed him for a number of years now.
This one caught my attention because he was talking about the algorithm and how
it basically dictates for you what it...
It replaces your agency over time.
In other words, the algorithm knows you better than you know yourself.
We make jokes about it, but that's the world we're heading into.
Amazon, for instance, supposedly knows more about what you want
than what you think you want.
His idea was to retake take your attention.
And he used the term intentionality.
And if you listen to this podcast, you know that's a subject that's near and dear
to our hearts in the better pickleball ecosystem,
of which pickleball therapy is a part.
And so that caught my attention as well.
So I'm going to talk about intentionality in a minute, but let's go through a little
bit of this idea of gatekeeping and how we can use that to best
enjoy our journey together.
And then in the RIF, I'm going to share with you an event that's coming up that
we're going to talk about information about 2025 that will help you out.
All right, let's talk first about gatekeeping our information,
what comes into our brains.
Because a lot of times when we're exposed to information in
an area that maybe we're not sure what the right answer is, like pickleball can be
sometimes, we will err on the side of letting the information in.
We'll allow the information to come in.
Sometimes it's because we're just curious, sometimes it's because we just heard it.
Sometimes it's because we hear it, but we're not really sure how
to exclude it, how to discern that it's not
necessarily correct, complete, or for us.
Those are the three elements that we look at in terms of information.
There's a couple of different areas that I think it's important to keep an eye out
One is YouTube or any social media algorithm.
Youtube is still the principal one in our space in pickleball.
Eventually, it may switch to Instagram or TikTok or something else,
but right now it's YouTube.
So it's not that YouTube is doing anything wrong, but YouTube doesn't
know you specifically.
Youtube knows that you like pickleball, and YouTube knows that you interact
with videos that are about pickleball.
The The other thing it knows is it knows that the crowd likes the video.
For instance, a common video that is very popular is serves.
We don't do a lot of serve videos in our channels because
not that serves aren't important, but we subscribe to a very fundamentally sound
way of dealing with the serve, so we're not going to try and take you in these
directions of doing all these fancy serves and things like that.
We don't have that heavy presence in the serve space, other content creators do,
and this is not a criticism of them.
They're doing what...
Everybody's playing the same game, so they're all on the same
hamster wheel, if you will.
You have YouTube feeding videos that the crowd likes, The
crowd likes serve, so YouTube feeds serve.
That means content creator gets feedback, serve is good.
So content creator creates content based on serve and so on and so forth.
Just the wheel keeps going round and round.
So What happens is it's this self-reinforcing system, right?
And it can take our eye off the ball, if you will, pun intended, I guess.
It can take away our ability to keep
ourselves focused on what really matters
in our play, what's going to actually help us with our pickle as opposed to these
areas where we're basically pulled off in directions that aren't necessarily
going to be the best for our game.
The content creator that I mentioned earlier, Hank Green, he was referring to
the idea of getting back your attention in terms of just general content
delivery, general information.
Specific to what we're working on here in terms of pickleball,
it's taking back your attention from the algorithms in the pickleball space or
being at least cognizant of the fact that because a video
was fed into your ecosystem by the algorithm does not mean that that is
something that is made for you, does not mean that it is something that is right
for you, and doesn't mean that it's something you should go pursue.
And so algorithm is a really big one because of the information
age that we live in nowadays.
So You just got to be cognizant of that.
And I haven't done a lot in AI yet, but I have been playing around with it a little
bit in Gemini and ChatGPT, and now there's deep seek.
So just trying to see what's possible, see if it can help us figure out ways to reach
players, things like that, just get ideas.
And I got to tell you something, I am not impressed by AI so far.
I tested it with several different things and just try to get information from it.
And it is wrong at a level that is surprising to me.
I asked it some specific pickleball questions, and the answers were
just way wrong.
Then when I asked AI about the answers being wrong, they would just
say, I'm sorry about that.
And And then I correct it and it would be like, okay, so it would just take...
That would take my answer, which in this case is fine because I'm
giving a good information, but who knows what's going in there?
You just have to be really cognizant of...
You have to be careful, I I'd say, of the information coming your way from any a
computer platform, whether it's YouTube or any other social media or
even AI in terms of that.
Another area that you can use this idea of gatekeeping is friends at the courts.
Because your friends at the courts, I'm sure they mean well,
the other players, they do.
They're not trying to lead you astray.
But I hear a lot of information out there when I'm on the courts, and a
lot of it's It's just wrong.
But they'll swear by it.
They'll swear that that's the way you do it.
Ask yourself, how do they know the right way to do it?
Even if, let's assume that they're playing on a court higher than your court, so
they're higher level in that facility, they probably don't really
understand the game that well.
That's just the reality of the situation.
I shouldn't say they don't understand the game well, but you got to play the odds.
The odds are that they haven't spent the time really breaking everything down the
way that, for instance, CJ and I do at Better Pickleball, where we spend
literally every day of every week doing this.
That's what allows us to then share I'm giving you information that
we know is good information.
Again, I don't want to make it sound like I'm down talking the local players.
What I want to do is help you protect yourself from potentially
bad information, because bad information then leads you astray.
That's the danger.
If it was like, what song do you like best or what movie is the best or
whatever, I mean, whatever. That's no big deal.
That's not going to impact you.
But if you hear something at your courts or get a YouTube video that feeds you some
information that is either incorrect or incorrectly stated or misunderstood or
partially understood, but not in context and things like that, it can
really mess up your game.
And one example I'll give you is this happened several years ago.
There was a player who did a video, and he referred to the neutral dink
as a dumb dink.
I know that's sometimes referred to as the dead dink, but he referred
to it as the dumb dink.
So he basically layered another next level on dead dink to dumb dink.
And so you're sitting there, you being like your average pickleball player
sitting there watching this, and you get a really good pro player
saying, Don't hit dumb dinks, right? Who wants a dumb dink?
So dink like this.
So what does that tell you?
I shouldn't do that, right?
And so why would you ever want to hit a shot that's a dumb dink?
Now, I can show you, not just tell you, I can show you footage of the same pro
player hitting the exact same shot that he called the dumb dink in the video
in his games, in his matches.
And I don't mean in demonstrations, I mean in metal matches in the pro level.
And I think I understand what he was trying
to say, but that's not what he said.
What he said was this dink is bad, but he does it.
So it doesn't...
How do you figure that out?
Unless you suss through it and you can discern that what he's saying in the video
isn't actually accurate, given the way that he actually plays and given the state
of the game and given how you should play Piggerball.
So that's what, again, folks who know the game as well as
CJ and I do and the coaches of the better Piggerball team can help you with that.
I'll talk about the event and the RIF, but whether it's coming to something like that
or coaching with us or watching our stuff, listening to our stuff,
it will help you get information that's actually more relevant, more
thought through, more curated.
We are definitely very careful of what we say because we understand that there can
be misinterpretations and things like that.
Again, in terms of your information receipt, use some gatekeeping.
If it's friends at the courts, ask yourself, why am I listening to a player
who may be at my level, even if they're a half-level higher and
things like that, they're not a pickleball professional.
A pickleball professional in the sense of being a coach.
Why am I listening to them?
If the YouTube algorithm is feeding you stuff, why am I paying so
much attention to this stuff? It's just YouTube.
Youtube's objective is, and they don't mince words about it, they'll tell you,
their objective is to get as many clicks and views on their content as they can.
They want interactivity with their content.
They're sending you stuff that they know is going to be YouTube successful.
It doesn't mean it's going to be you successful.
I thought about that. That was pretty good.
Anyway, So just gatekeep your information.
Then the other way I want you to think about it, and it's corollary to that, is
gatekeeping your journey.
So what thing is information?
And you can decide.
If you want to watch a video, 10 tips in five minutes and stuff like that, fine.
It's your time, so you do what you want with it.
But the next thing would be, I'm actually going to do some of these things that I'm
seeing on this video or heard from my friend at the court.
Now you're really doubling down on the potential harm that the potentially wrong
or incomplete or out of context or not right for you information can have.
I'll give you just a real-world example.
Names will be with health to protect the innocent.
But a friend of mine working on a shot, and so I asked, Where did
that come from, this shot? Because it was out of the blue.
It was a YouTube video.
A YouTube video came across, and so started working on that shot.
Explored it a little bit with the player about thinking about it
and things like that. The only rationale was saw a video.
And as we explored it, I think the player started to understand that maybe it's not
really that great of a shot because... Anyway, there's several reasons.
But basically, it's just not a shot that that player needed.
And there are other areas that were much more valuable for the player to work on.
And that's an example of gatekeeping your journey, meaning think about yourself,
think about what's going on with your game, and then
try and see if you can figure out the best thing for you to work not based on
what you heard from an outside source.
And this is where a concept called framework can really help you.
The reason framework is so powerful as a concept in pickleball is because
it allows you to now know the story.
So you know the story of pickleball, you know yourself, you know your skills, your
background, your strengths and your weaknesses.
And so now you're able to go, Okay, this is what I need, given the framework of the
game, given the objectives I'm trying to accomplish, this is what's going to help
me the most play the sport of pickleball.
So gatekeeping your journey is as important as gatekeeping your
information, perhaps even more important.
If you're letting information in, at least gatekeep the journey.
And then last concept before we get to the rip that I want to run down for a minute
or so is, don't lose sight of intentionality.
Intentionality is a very broad concept.
It has applications at the macro and the micro level.
When you think about it, let's go micro first.
Micro is I intend to warm up before I play.
What does that mean?
It means I know that if I warm up, I'm going to play better, less chance of
injury, all the benefits of warming up.
What I'm going to do is I'm going to warm up before I play.
That's an intentional life by you.
Intentionality can also go as micro as I'm intending to aim my serve along an
intended trajectory that I know, and then I basically Basically, then try
and execute on that intentionality.
It's that micro, the height of my serve is intentional.
Then you can think about it very broadly.
That could be personally for your body, things like, for instance, I need to work
on my strength, so I'm going to start doing some strength training.
That's an intentional act, right?
Getting up and going to the gym or picking up some weights or doing some body weights
at home, bodyweight exercises and things like that.
That's all intentionality.
In this context, what it means is being intentional intentional with
every part of your pickle ball.
In this case, we're talking about improvement.
We're talking about your journey of improving as a player.
So it's really being super intentional in that part of your in that part
of your pickleball relationship.
So when you see a YouTube video come through, take a moment and think about it.
Do I want to watch the video? Do I not want to watch the video?
Why am I watching the video?
And then be intentional with your decision to watch the video.
Don't just click watch because it's an easy thing to do because
YouTube put it in front of you.
So that's the concept of intentionality that I don't want you to focus on there.
And then let me share with you.
This is the RIF piece, so we're going to flow right into the RIF.
Let me share with you an event that we have coming up on February second.
We're calling it State of Play.
It's an absolutely free event.
Cj and I felt very strongly about sharing this with as many players as possible, so
we decided to make this an open event to the public.
We're going to to talk about what's going on with pickle ball in
terms of some strategies that we're hearing about that players
have questions about.
Big picture things like the hard game, soft game conversation, talk about paddle
developments and how that's going to impact play in 2025 as best we can tell.
A couple of rules things that are causing some consternation out there that we're
going to try and shine a light on.
Again, it's an open event.
There is, however, you need to get a ticket because there's only so many
seats, and we expect this to get full.
These rooms that you have only have so much bandwidth, only so much space.
We're going to provide tickets.
Anyway, you need to get a ticket for it.
It's on February 22nd, I believe that's a Saturday or Sunday.
I can't remember exactly, but it's a weekend.
We wanted to allow for as many players to be off-court.
From your information, we know that you don't play as much during these times.
So we said, Okay, let's do it when it's most accessible.
And then Anyway, so get your ticket.
I'll put a link down in the show notes, so you can just go to betterpickleball.
com, and there'll be a link on there, I'm sure, on the homepage to
get your ticket for this event.
Join CJ and me for about 45 minutes to an hour on the state of play.
We'll answer some questions if we have time for that.
Anyway, that's the event, and I hope that you guys can join us so that you can get
accurate information from pickleball professionals because this is what we do.
Try and share with you the right information to help you then make
decisions that are right for your game.
All right, that's this week's podcast.
I hope you enjoyed it.
I hope you're enjoying this series of podcasts that we started 2025 with.
If you're enjoying the podcast, consider rating and reviewing it.
As always, it just helps us reach other players.
We like hearing from you and we enjoy the feedback, but the number one reason we ask
for this is so that we can reach other players who may benefit from the podcast.
As always, if you enjoy the podcast, share it with your friends, particularly in this
case, if you have a friend who's out there on the YouTube hamster wheel or just
listens to every little thing that every player at the court shares with
them, then share this podcast with them to help them maybe get off
that hamster wheel.
And then I hope to see at least some of you during our state of
play on February 22nd.
Have a great week, and I'll see you in the next episode of Pigable Therapy.
Be.