Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to
your pickle improvement.
I'm your host of this weekly podcast, Tony Roig.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
I'm recording this podcast on-site, so there may be some background noises from
time to time as part of this podcast.
Today, we're going to be talking about a subject that is near and dear to my heart
and near and dear to your development as a pickleball player, and that is
shifting the paradigm of how we react to adverse events when we play pickleball.
We're going to explore different levels of events, meaning from the end of the game
to the rally, all the way down to being inside of a rally,
so that we can have a better perspective on how we react to those
events and understand that we have a certain amount of control over
the way that we react, the way that we handle those events when they
occur because they will occur.
That's just part of the game that we play.
This is an extension or a development of that zero-sum concept that
I started working on with you a few weeks back in one of the podcasts where we were
dealing with how we respond to certain situations and talking about
the idea that we can move away from a zero-sum
mentality, a zero-sum approach, in terms of how we react to the
events that we are dealing with when we play a pick-a-ball.
Let's start with defining what zero sum means.
Zero sum is a way of looking at things, or it's a
reality that we deal with where One side gets something means the
other side loses something.
At the end, you have a zero sum.
The victor would have a one, the loser would have a negative one, and
when you add those two together, you end up with zero.
There's things in life that are viewed as zero sum.
An example would be like a war.
You could argue a war as negative, negative, but the idea is that
one side Wins means the other side loses.
At the end, you have a zero sum.
Pickleball, in its essence, is a zero sum activity
because pickleball is built around the concept that there's going to be one
winner and there's going to be one loser.
If you want to think about it, that's at the highest level of the game.
At the end of a match or at the end of a game, you have a team that
is declared the victor.
That team gets a plus, plus one if you want to for purposes of easy math.
Then you have a side or a team that has a loss, and that is a minus one.
Add those up, and you have a zero.
That's zero sum at the highest level of the game, which is at the game level.
It's the same at a rally, at a rally level in our sport.
At the end of a rally, we have a side that wins the rally, gets a plus.
We have a side that loses a rally, that's a minus.
Again, You end up with zero once you add those two together.
And then you can go even deeper.
You can go into the rally itself.
So during the rally, you'll have a shot that gets hit that is a
good offensive shot by one side.
So say, the stress dink out to the side or a smash shot, something like that, a
roll volley and a flick shot into your body, something like that.
That is a plus to that side.
It creates a negative to your side because now you're under stress.
Again, you add those two up and you end up with a zero.
So you can think about zero sum, the zero sum approach at different
levels of pickleball.
I'm going to walk you through how to deal with it more constructively in how
you react to those at the three different levels as we go on here.
But what we're trying to deal with is we're trying to deal with the game
from a perspective standpoint.
In other words, we're trying The reality of the situation is we
are playing a game where we will have a winner and we will have a loser
of the game, of the rally.
We will have situations during rallies where one team is in the lead, meaning
They have the advantage or they have the offensive momentum, if you will.
Then we'll have a team that does not.
That's the reality that we have to deal with.
The cool part about this is that we do not have to simply accept that
thing that is happening to us, that reality that we're experiencing.
We actually have the ability to address it or to react to it in
whichever way we choose in our minds.
We're We're going to take a detour here because I need to explore this concept
with you about how we can react to different things.
I'm going to give you one of the analogy/metaphors, and then
we're going to come back to pickle ball.
But what we need to understand is there's a distinction between the thing.
The thing is a win-loss thing.
A win and a loss.
Add those two together, you end up with zero, right?
But that's the nature of the game that we're playing.
What we want to delve into is, do we have to react to it in that way?
Do we have to simply accept That it's a win for one, a loss for the
other, good for one, bad for the other, and then that's it.
We don't have any choice over how that impacts us, or do we
have some agency here?
Can we react to it in a way that is more constructive for us, more positive for us,
and is going to allow us to feel better, play better, and also just have an overall
better experience when we're playing pickleball?
The detour here is Let's go into an analogy metaphor where
you, or a loved one or a partner of yours, drops a dish.
That's a dish that means something to you, not just one of a 20 dish, but maybe it's
a glass that means something to you, or a plate that means something to you, or a
serving dish that means something to you.
You or your loved one drops that dish, and it breaks.
It cracks. That's the reality.
That is the thing that happened.
We can't There's no sense in sugar coating the thing that happened.
The dish fell, the dish broke.
We can't change that.
Same way like when you play pickleball as we're going to get into,
you're going to lose games.
That's just the reality of how we deal with.
Back to the dish, though.
How we react to that reality is within our control.
It's 100% entirely within our ability to determine how we want to react
to the reality that the dish in the situation broke.
One option would be we can just get upset about it.
We can despair over it. Oh, my.
The dish broke. That's terrible.
I can't believe this dish is gone.
We can get upset about it.
Another option is we can acknowledge that these things happened That is simply we're
human, and it's human nature to make these sorts of mistakes and drop things.
It's just part of how we're built.
It's basically an acknowledgement, a situation where we are
being neutral about it.
We're just saying, Okay, well, it's too bad the dish broke, but
that's just part of the deal.
That's just part of being a human being navigating the Earth.
If it makes you feel better, I like thinking about this from time to
time because it helps you frame things, I think.
You're actually traveling at 67,000 miles per hour around the sun
every moment of every day.
That doesn't include your travel through the universe, doesn't include your
rotation around the axis of the Earth.
Just traveling around the sun at 67,000 miles an hour.
I think dropping a dish at 67,000 miles an hour is not that bad.
That's option two, is acknowledge your human nature and that that's
just part of the deal.
Third option is you get philosophical about it and recognize that everything
comes to an end, even the life of a prized dish.
Then fourth, you can even take it a step further.
You can go…
There's a Japanese concept called kinsugi, which is the art
of repairing broken, primarily ceramic.
I don't know, it may extend to more than ceramic, but it's primarily
in the ceramic world.
You have a dish that breaks, and in the Japanese philosophy of
kintsugi, they will repair that.
But what's interesting is the reparation is part of the process, of the philosophy,
but it's not just repairing the dish.
It's embracing the beauty of the crack.
It's the beauty of the imperfection.
It's actually going a step further and not just saying, Okay, I can fix this.
It's embracing the crack itself as a thing of beauty.
In its highest form of kinsugi, they'll put gold in the epoxy or in the resin
that they're using to fix the dish.
The crack actually ends up being embellished or ends up being highlighted.
Again, embracing the the flaw in the item as its How do we apply these sorts of
theme concepts in our pickleball game?
At the first level, remember the highest level, which is
the end of the end of the game, right?
End of the match where you're going to either win the match or lose the match.
That's just how it goes.
You can choose how you're going to react to this
reality of the win-loss, because the win-loss, we can't avoid that.
That's just play pickleball.
You're agreeing to that set of rules and that way of the
world, like the dish breaking.
How do we deal with that reality that we're facing with?
First thing is to recognize that that's up to you.
You have agency over how you decide to interpret that
piece of reality that you have to deal with, which is
the loss, because you will lose games.
We don't have to worry about how we're going to feel about winning games, because
that's never the problem.
The problem is when we lose the games is when we usually have a perspective, where
a perspective shift will help us the most.
In a zero-sum world, if we live in that world, then
our opponent's victory is our loss.
Their positive is our negative.
But does it have to be that?
Do we have to live in a world where their positive is our negative?
What if we reframe the outcome?
Here's a few different ways that we can do that.
One, and you've probably heard this before, it's It's a pretty common refrain
that instead of saying, Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose, it's, Sometimes
I win, other times I learn.
That's a really good way of thinking about it.
If you can think about your losses as simply learning opportunities, That's
going to shift it from being a negative, a loss, to a learning opportunity,
which is a positive.
Instead of having a zero-sum game, now you have a positive and a positive.
Positive for your opponents because they won, that's easy.
Positive for you because now you get to learn something.
There's a variation of that that I like to think about in addition to just the
learning part of it, which is that you can think of your loss
as a condition to your growth.
Again, it's similar, but it's a different shade than just thinking about
it as a learning experience.
It's actually more fundamental in that.
It's actually required if you're going to continue to grow as a
player and as a person, those moments of adversity, those
losses, are conditions to that.
One way to think about it, it's like that kintsugi, Japanese philosophy I mentioned
to you earlier about how you view the cracks in the dish.
You view the losses as as positives because they are the things
that will make you grow stronger as a player.
Again, you take a negative, which is a loss, and turn it into a positive, which
is the understanding that this is a condition to your growth.
Another way of looking at it is to celebrate your opponent's success.
Opponents, most times your opponents are your friends.
I think it's helpful to reframe them from simply opponents, like your adversaries in
a game, which they are, but they're also your friends, bigger picture.
If you think about your friends having success, and you can be happy for them and
their success, then you turn your situation into a positive.
Because for your friends to be able to enjoy that win, you needed to have lost.
If you don't lose, they can't win.
So understanding that their victory is conditioned upon your
defeat allows you to then celebrate their victory, turning the potentially negative
loss into a positive, which is a celebration of your opponent's win.
Then the last one is similar to the idea about how when you drop the
dish, it's just human nature.
It's just part of the deal.
To understanding that loss is just a natural outcome.
It's just you have this 50% expectation.
If you're playing a level, you're going to win some and lose some.
50/50 is a pretty reasonable expectation.
At least In that situation, you go from a negative to a neutral.
Perhaps you don't view that as positive, and that's okay, but you've
removed the negativity from it.
You just say, Okay, that's just part of the deal that I've signed up to play or
that I've signed up for when I signed up to play cycle ball, is that I will win
some and I will lose some, and this loss is just part of that.
Even if you make yours neutral, you're no longer in a zero-sum situation.
You're in a net positive situation for the game as a whole because
yours is not negative.
Yours is neutral, theirs is positive, so you're in a positive situation net.
What you're able to do is you're able to use a reframing of
your loss, of your Well, let's not quote it because it is a loss from a purely
real-world standpoint.
You get to reframe your loss as a either neutral or positive.
What you're doing is you're removing it from a zero sum situation or
you're eliminating the zero sum nature of it and transforming it into
a net positive situation.
It can be more positive.
The more positive is for you, your experience as the loser of that game, the
more net positive the total is.
But even if you're able just to go to zero, make yours neutral, it's still a net
positive situation for everyone, including yourself.
Now, let's bring that same thinking down to a rally.
Because it's one thing to think about it at the end of the game,
and that's very helpful.
But it's also helpful to have this way of thinking during a match, during a game.
The more you can do it during each rally or at the end of each rally, then So as I
just say, the more you can do it during the game,
during the game at the end of each rally, the better off you'll be because you won't
have those spikes and dips that happen during the game, right?
At the end of rallies.
So One way to think about it, again, is you can learn from it
when you lose the rally.
And learn from it here is a little more micro, right?
So learn from it means, let's say you hit a ball,
you tried to attack your opponent's backhand, and your opponent was able to
counter it successfully, ending the rally in their favor.
The learning there is to say, Okay, maybe I don't want to attack that spot because
that spot looks like it's pretty good right now.
Maybe I attacked the other spot.
You make strategic adjustments based on the loss of the rally.
That's the instantaneous learning that you can have.
But instead of just sitting there going like, Oh, we lost the rally.
That's terrible.
You take that moment and you learn from what happened.
Another example of learning would be like an unforced error.
You missed a serve.
Obviously, nothing Nobody did anything for you to miss a serve.
That's just on your paddle, and that's okay.
That happens.
You learn from it and you say, Okay, what happened?
If you're a system member, you understand energy and trajectory, you
follow that thinking and you figure out, Okay, this is what happened.
Then next time, you're It's good to do better.
But you take the moment to learn rather than just simply ruing the missed shot.
The second way you can address in a rally is this acknowledgement of normal human
part of the process, the dish again.
You are going to miss shots.
You're a human being.
You can practice all day long.
You can practice more than the pros do or as much as the pros do, you will
still miss shots because guess what? The pros miss shots.
Everybody miss a shot.
When you miss a shot, you simply go, Okay, I missed a shot.
Part of the normal process as a human being and not beat yourself up about it,
definitely way better than just hammering yourself over missing a shot at the end.
You're in a rally and you miss a shot that perhaps you shouldn't have
missed, like an unforester error again.
Then the last one is when your opponents overpower you or when
your opponents play a really good rally, celebrate their rally.
They hit a really good shot and you're just like, Wow, That
was a really good shot.
Rather than getting bogged down and, Oh, my God, we lost the rally and what could
we have done, and everything else like that, just look across the net, tap your
paddle, clap with your paddle if you want to, or just give them a nod.
Make it about them.
Make it about celebrating what they did successfully, because your opponents
hopefully will, from time to time, hit shots that you're just like,
Wow, that's a really nice shot.
Hopefully, you will also, from time to time, hit shots that
are really nice shots.
Imagine a game in which you are celebrating their good shots and
they're celebrating your good shots.
It's a much better experience, much more positive, and also just more constructive.
Because the flip side, being upset about losing the rally, even
though your opponents hit a good shot, doesn't add anything to the equation.
It's not a good thing for you.
It's not going to be pleasant for your opponents, and it's just
not helpful in any respect.
So consider that as another option for the rally.
I was wondering when the motorcycle was going to come, and there it comes.
There's a lot of motorcycles in this area, but we haven't heard too many so far.
All right, within the rally itself.
This is also helpful if you want to apply it within the rally.
This is you're in the middle of a rally situation.
Your opponent puts you in a tough spot rather than despairing over it,
you think to yourself, Nice shot.
Now I got to get myself out of this mess.
So that's just the way you can apply it during the rally.
And obviously during the rally is going to be, some time from now, Don't
try and do that right away.
You can start working on the low hanging fruit, which is at the end of the game for
sure, there's no more pressure at the end.
Once the game has ended, there's no more pressure at the end of the game.
You can take a moment to yourself, reflect on on the game.
Maybe note down, you can have a notation of these options that I gave you
earlier, which are looking at the...
I'll get my notes so that I don't forget all of them here.
One is you can notate if you like the fact that you're learning instead
of losing, that's helpful.
If you understand that loss is a condition proceeding to your growth,
that's helpful as well.
If you want to celebrate your friends, just celebrate them for winning and
understand that your loss is a part of that process.
Without your loss, they can't win, that's good, too.
Excuse me.
Or if you want to just make a note that loss is a natural outcome of the game.
I mean, that's just part of what you signed up for.
Any of those will work.
The idea is to get yourself out of the, Oh, my God, we lost the game.
How terrible. I'm a bad player.
Whatever. However it is that you usually...
If you usually negatively react to losses, then this will help you
get out of that routine of negatively reacting to losses,
and you can use any of those for that purpose.
Then the next step in your process would be at the end of rallies.
There's different ways to deal with that.
One way you see some of the pros use, and some players use it.
They'll take their paddle, tap it on the fence.
That way, they take the bad shot or whatever happened off the
paddle, put it on the fence. You can turn around, take a deep breath.
You can ask yourself, like some players say, What now?
What next? Okay.
Some neutral type of term.
If you want to get better at it at the end of the rallies, then, like I said, you can
either learn from it, so make a strategic adjustment if appropriate.
If it's an unforced type of error, then either make an adjustment on that.
I always learn from that if you can, if you know how to do that.
If you don't know how to do that, then acknowledging that you're a human are
going to make mistakes will work fine.
If it's just a good shot, your opponent's hit, how about celebrating that good shot
by them and then maybe getting used to nodding at them, saying nice shot,
giving them a paddle clap, whatever works for you, are ways that you can learn how
to shift away from the negativity of losing a rally,
negativity of losing a game, living in this zero-sum world that we
sometimes find ourselves in, and taking control over how you react to
adverse consequences in rallies or games when you're playing pickle ball.
Because what you'll find when you reframe that experience, the experience is
what it is, the loss is what it is.
But when you reframe how you experience that, how you interact
with that experience, which you have control over, it'll improve how you react,
which is really important, and also how you feel about the sport of pickleball.
I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast.
As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, consider rating and reviewing it
and sharing with your friends, because if you enjoyed the podcast,
they probably will, too.
I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you in the next episode of
Pickleball Therapy.
Be well.