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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.
Welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. It's a podcast with you in mind. My name is Tony Roig. I'm your host of this weekly podcast.
It's an absolute pleasure to be with you. I hope you're having a great week. This week's podcast, we're going to dive into this idea of Google knowledge versus real knowledge. I think you're going to find a very interesting way of thinking about your level of knowledge in the sport that you play, in the sport that you love, and perhaps give you a different perspective on how to pursue that knowledge and how to think about how far you've gone.
And then in the riff, I'm going to speak briefly about this idea of there being too much information out there and give you some ideas on how to drop some of that so you're not overwhelmed.
I came across this idea of Google knowledge through my perusing of the universe. Shout out to Jonny Thomson, has a channel dedicated to philosophy. He puts out these videos where he talks about different philosophical concepts. And he talked about this concept called Google knowledge, which was coined in 2016. I don't recall right now who coined that, but it was coined fairly recently.
And the idea of Google knowledge is basically it's knowledge that's kind of superficial, You only go so deep with it. And the example that Johnny gave was basically this idea that there's two folks that are discussing some sort of a scientific study, right? So you have one person who says, I have a study that says so and so, and then the other person says, I have a study that says something different.
Now, both of those studies may very well be... It may exist, right? Both the studies are there, but neither one of the two participants in the conversation have enough knowledge to go deeper into the reliability of the study, whether the study is contradicted by other studies, whether it's peer reviewed, what conditions were put inside the study itself, because sometimes those studies have a lot of assumptions and factors and things like that. And if you don't understand the beta of this or the statistical model that was used, you can't really fully appreciate the the depth of the study itself and have a deeper conversation about it. And
it got me to thinking about, how sometimes in pickleball, we have what's Google knowledge. Right? We basically... You know, players have this Google knowledge of certain parts of the game, but perhaps don't have a deeper... What I'm referring to here is real knowledge of what's going on. And I think it's...
To to frame it out for you a little bit, I'm gonna use forehand in the middle and Respect the X, which is, you know, there's there's debate going on and middle cover between forehand in the middle and Respect the X. If you follow me for any amount of time, you know that I'm a Respect the X adherent. In fact, created it back in the day. The concept of Respect the X. And forehand in the middle is a concept that I have been fighting or arguing against for years now. In fact, I wrote an article fairly recently that was published by The Kitchen and also at... In our website about the myth about forehand in the middle.
And I've even done videos on it where I've shown these are the difficulties or the deficiencies, I would say, with forehand in the middle, which are not present with Respect the X. So so you get these... But you get these conversations, right, between pickleball players about forehand in the middle and Respect the X. And I'm not suggesting this is you. I'm not suggesting this is every pickleball player out there, but I am gonna suggest that there are many pickleball players who possess a... What I'll refer to as a Google knowledge of middle cover concepts.
And their their their Google knowledge is forehand in the middle. Right? They've either seen a video about it or read something about it or somebody else said that to them, hey, forehand in the middle. You know, on the surface, sounds great. I mean, it really does. Right? At surface level, you're like, hey, forehand, strong. Forehand, hit ball. Good. Right? So, you know, you're kinda done with it. But when you think about it a little more deeply, right, when you look at, well, what about the player who has a stronger backhand? Because I'm I'm bet you a few of you listening feel better about your backhand than your forehand. Not uncommon in pickleball. And so, and there's other other reasons that I'm not gonna dive into here because, you know, that...
Then it would be a podcast about forehand in the middle. The point of the podcast is that is about this idea of how deep do you go. Right? And if you're listening to this podcast, I know that your interest in pickleball is is a deep one.
Right? And what Jonny Thomson said in his in his in his content about... Or in his explanation about Google knowledge was pick a subject that interests you, and rather than just sticking at the Google knowledge stage, consider going deeper. Consider understanding the why of the thing. And that's always been absolutely core to my coaching. It's always about the why.
You know? And I laugh about it. You know? I'm old enough now to kind of like chuckle when I get these kind of comments on some of the videos that I do, which is like less talking, more showing or something like that. I get it. Right? I understand. But that's... By talking, this is how I communicate, and this is how I explain the concept in a way that my hope is the the listener, right, the player who's interested in that topic, will walk away with a deeper understanding of that idea and get closer to real knowledge and less... And farther away, I should say, from just Google knowledge about the subject. And so I think it's just a different way of thinking about your interaction with this sport. I would submit to you again, if you're listening to this podcast, I have no doubt that real knowledge of pickleball should be your objective.
If that's something that we can help you with, happy to do it. We have a lot of free mini courses and other materials, blogs, and other materials at tonyroigpickleball.com. You're welcome to all of those. You're welcome to all the episodes of the podcast. There's... It gotta be... If there's not 400 by now, there's three sixty or something like that. You're welcome to all of that. If you want to go further with us, then we have our online instructional platform as well as our camps, and we even have a pay what you can program, you know, with our coaching. We'll do what we can to get you into our program so that you can get the coaching benefits you.
But I'm going to submit to you, whatever you do, chase real knowledge and get away from Google knowledge and just bouncing around from one thing to the other. Go deep on it so you really start to see how the pieces of this game fit together. Because I'm gonna tell you, the more you see how the pieces fit together, the more in awe you are about how this game is actually constructed and how this game is actually played in its most pure form, in its most ideal form. So highly recommend you do that. Alright.
Then we're gonna dive right into the riff, because the riff actually ties into this idea of Google knowledge versus real knowledge. And this was... What made me think about this was... Well, there was a comment, and then... That I saw, which I'll I'll I'll share with you in a second. It's a public comment that's on one of the videos. And then and then some conversations that we've been having at Tony Roig Pickleball about the amount of information that players are receiving and and feedback and you know, back and forth that we're having. So the comment was...
And this is no criticism of the player commenting. I want to be clear about this. Right? It's a perfectly natural comment. And I appreciate this... The commenter acknowledging the... Our videos on our YouTube channel. But the comment was essentially to the effect of, you know, I've been doing this, I've been learning, right? I've been using YouTube to learn essentially, and there's a lot of stuff out there. Basically, don't listen to all this other stuff, just listen to watch these videos, meaning the videos on our channel.
Again, thanks for that. But then it was like a laundry list of, like, five other content creators in the same breath. Right? So was this... These videos plus, you know, a bunch of others. Right? And I have nothing against those content creators. I have nothing against any content creator. Right? Dude, you know, everybody's out here trying to do their best and and and good faith and and deliver the best they can.
But as I was thinking to myself, I'm like, I don't know how you would do that. Right? I don't know how you would, navigate all of those videos, all of those different ideas at the same time. You know, maybe like one from this one for three, four months, and then if you want to go to another one, okay, I guess, if you know which ones to use. You know, there's nothing technically wrong with that, but it just felt very overwhelming to me.
And then I layer on top of that your inbox. Right? And listen, we, you know, we sent the emails out. It's part of the it's part of the world we live in. Okay? So we send out every Tuesday in our... To our community. We send out a digest. We try and make it actionable. So like some of it's, you know, stories and mental things and stuff like that. Some of it's like very specific tips. Some of it's, you know, linking you to other resources that you can use. Some of it is announcing like, you know, we have new camp. Right? So that's kind of a mix in the digest. And then we'll send out, special special occasion emails, if you want to call them that. We have...
One of our policies is to be transparent on our emails. What I mean by that is, like, the subject line will say, upcoming camp or, you know, camp spots open or upcoming camps or new camps added, something like that. So if it comes into your inbox and you see the subject line says new camps, and I'm not interested in camp, then we don't want you to open the email. We're not looking for opens.
You know, we're not looking for statistics. We're trying to connect. You know, we're not doing emails where it's basically like something that sounds like, you know, you know, do you have a problem with your third shot drop? You know, and then you click the email, and it's nothing about the third shot drop. It's it's sign up for a course or something like that. You're like, you know, we we don't wanna do that.
But that said, we know that that you're probably bombarded with emails and bombarded with newsletters and bombarded with videos, shorts, not to mention all your friends giving you every single piece of advice that they're receiving, right? So it's very cumulative. And so one of the question is like, what do we do about that? Right?
How can that is that just harmless or can that negatively impact your experience? I believe it can negatively impact your experience with pickleball in a few different ways. One is it's just too much, right? It's just stressful and overwhelming. Pickleball shouldn't be that way. The other thing is that you don't really get to look at the stuff that might matter. It just gets lost in this cacophony, in this sea of stuff. And so you may lose out on some helpful things that are actually in some of them that could help you with your understanding, right, take you from Google to real knowledge, and also with your play. So I think there is a cost to allowing everything in.
And it's how the universe works because these are concepts that, like Google knowledge, the overwhelm, and then this last piece, right, all came together in the last week. Right? So maybe I was meant to to do this episode. I don't know.
But the other idea... The other story that I came across was it was a person talking about the Twilight Zone. And what they submitted was, like, the most important episode in the history of television, and this is a very thoughtful content creator, so I pay attention to this content creator when, when they speak. But it was about an episode of The Twilight Zone. Actually, it's episode number seven.
I think you can find it on YouTube. But it was about the, the man who read everything, basically. And so the premise is it's a man who just loves reading, and he reads literally everything. And there's like an apocalypse, and he's the last survivor of the human race in the apocalypse, But now he's happy because he gets to read whatever he wants now. Nobody can bother him. He can just read all day and, you know, no concerns. But then there's, a twist because, like, his reading glasses break, and so now he's... You know, it's that kind of a mess. But but rather than being the...
Rather than the moral of the story being something like, be careful what you wish for, right, because then, like, the glasses break, it was more about the the gentleman who was the reader was not discerning in what he read. So that was really the the underlying message.
He basically read everything, and he read everything just to distract him from, his regular life. Right? He couldn't work. He couldn't deal with his family. Couldn't... Because he would just read any... Anything. He'd pick up any part of a newspaper. He'd read any any book. It didn't matter whether the book was a good book or bad... Whatever. Didn't matter. He would read it.
And the content creator in this context was talking about social media, really. He was talking about how, like, you know, we'll... We're basically just open to consuming anything that comes through our phone, anything that comes through our television set, things like that, and we need to be more discerning about that.
I'm gonna make the same suggestion to you, specific now to pickleball, right, to become more discerning about what you let into your world regarding the sport that you love. Because, again, too much will overwhelm you, it'll flood everything out, and you won't be able to focus on anything. So you really can't see kind of any kind of benefits going from Google to real knowledge or from even improvements in your play. And so how do you, how do you make these decisions? How do you discern? Right?
Well, let me give you a big picture. I'll give you a big picture. I'll give you a short, long term and short term. Long term would be you're going to move from Google knowledge to real knowledge, right? So you'll do what you can to move closer to real knowledge, as close to it as you can. The idea being the more... The closer you are to real knowledge of the sport, the more you move away from Google knowledge, then the better you're able to discern. Not interested. Not for me. Not applicable.
Right? You can make those decisions yourself, which I will tell you, like, personally, I can make those decisions. I can see the information. I can see that's not really applicable to this player. That doesn't... Oh, that one works. That's pretty good. You know, let's do that one. Things like that, right? So you can do that too. You just have to move, you know, farther away from Google knowledge, closer to real knowledge.
And that's the long term goal. In the short term, I would say to you, you're just going to have to trust, and you're going to have to trust the coaches who you wanna trust. Now I will make the case that you can trust us at Tony Roig Pickleball. I've been doing this for a long time.
I'm very thoughtful about the way that I go about it. I'm not saying I'm always right. I'm not saying I know everything. Okay? So let's not get confused about this. But I am going to tell you that I'm always very thoughtful in how I try and put together the information for you. I'm very thoughtful in what I believe will actually help, right? What's relevant, what's not relevant. I'm always going to try and make it so that it's something that'll be meaningful and actionable for you. Right? So all of that goes into the thinking before anything comes out the door here at Tony Roig Pickleball, whether it's the digest, whether it's a video, whether it's a podcast, all of it.
So it's going to be thought out and it's going to be considered and it's going to have you as its primary objective, meaning like your full development, your full experience as a pickleball player. So I would make the case that we are a reasonable one to trust.
You may want to pick a different content creator, and that's okay, or a different coach, and that's okay. That's your choice. It's your journey, right? But what I would suggest is that you find a source that you trust and trust that source while you're working through this knowledge, you know, work of yours. Right? While you're while you're moving away from Google into real. And then the other thing I would do is I would either eliminate or significantly reduce the other inputs.
Okay? Just... You gotta whittle it down some. Otherwise, the overwhelm is there. Right? So I'm gonna challenge you, you know, maybe in the next week or ten days, unsubscribe from one email list, unfollow one YouTube channel or one social media follower, or when you see the videos, if you're on there, just scroll past them.
Don't watch them because they're going to just then occupy your mind in a way that's not constructive for you. Okay? Now, if you choose to unfollow us at Tony Roig Pickleball, no hard feelings. It's perfectly fine. We'll be here even when you're ready in the future and you want to come back. We're going to be here. We're doing what we're doing. We know we believe in what we're doing. We're passionate what we're doing. So and we're happy to be here. But if you choose us, okay, you know, that that's that that'll be your decision, and it's perfectly fine.
But just whittle down, right, who your who your voices are that are helping you with pickleball because too many voices, you can't hear any of them. Right? So whittle that down. Let's move from Google to real more and more, and then you'll be able to to better discern in the future on specifics.
Like, I'll take this tip from them and this tip from them, and I'll build my own toolbox. So here always to try and provide you the best information that we can about the sport that we all love and help you grow in this amazing activity that we call pickleball.
So I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. If you have a minute to rate and review it, please consider doing so. Also, share it with a friend, particularly a friend of yours who may be struggling with this idea of too much information, too much overwhelm, they just feel like it's too much coming at them. This episode might help them navigate that and whittle down what's happening so that they can then focus on themselves and their pickleball experience.
I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you on the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. Be well.