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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.
[00:00:04.940] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement with a focus on your mind. I am your host of the weekly podcast, Tony Roig. It's a pleasure to be with you this week. This week, we're going to dive into what I believe I think you'll find as an interesting subject, which is focusing when you play. So giving you some tips on how to focus better and stay in the moment when you play and talk about some of what I see out there as distractions when I play. Got to play the last couple of days, been in camp the last couple of weeks. So I've seen a lot of interactions with myself and also with students on the court, and I'm seeing a lot of what's going on out there. So I'll give you some ideas in this podcast. In the RIF, I want to talk a little bit about there was just a comment about saying, Sorry when you body bag somebody. And then there's also, I posted a couple of little shorts on social media partner play. And some of the reactions to that have me thinking about how players think about each other on the pick-up of a court.
[00:01:07.160] - Tony Roig
So we'll talk about that in the RIF. Before we dive into the podcast, we have a lot of new camp dates coming up that we are adding to the website. So we have our Better Pickleball Camp, which teaches the pickleball system. A couple of days, you can on-court with CJ on the West Coast, me on the East Coast, primarily. And we're going to train you on the Picleball system. You're going to learn a lot about what glue holds our game together, the framework of our game, and learn some mechanics or some strategies, learn some athletic pillar stuff, and leave there really empowered to continue your play. We also have a super camp that's coming up at the beginning of March. It's March ninth through 12th here in Tampa Bay. It is a four-day camp, so it's a different experience. It's 18 hours, four days, so four and a half two hours per day with yours truly and a really powerful coaching team. And that is designed for intermediate to advanced players. And the idea there is you already have some foundation with you. You already know what's going on with pickle Now you want to keep going and keep growing.
[00:02:17.320] - Tony Roig
We're going to a lot more advanced concepts and things like that. Join us for our Super Camp in Tamp. I think you're really going to enjoy it. One more piece of housekeeping. As you already know, the The book is out, so if you have not gotten a copy of the book yet, I think we're reaching somewhere around, I think we're right around a thousand players that have interacted with the book, read the book, probably more, actually, once you count Kindle. But don't get left out on this. I think the book is very powerful. Read some of the reviews on Amazon, make your own decision. I think it's very good. I think it adds a lot of value, and the players who I've spoken to about it or spoken with about it share that idea, that it's just something that can really help you feel better about your engagement with the sport. All right, let me dive into this idea of, or this area of the game, which is, it's obviously we all want to play better. We all want to be more involved in the game as we play. When we're playing, it's normal, right?
[00:03:23.280] - Tony Roig
It's natural to have distractions. Some distractions are, and I'm not talking here about distractions, like somebody screaming in the middle of a point or something like that. I'm talking about just normal things that are going on, and they end up distracting us from what's happening in front of us, what's happening on the court. What I like to do is I like to think about when you're playing pickleball, there's really only one thing in the entire universe that matters. And if you looked at the title of today's podcast, you know what that is. It's the pickleball, right? That usually yellow ball, that most of the time it's yellow, sometimes pink, sometimes orange, or sometimes even green, but yellow is the most common one. Usually, it's that yellow ball that is everything. It's the focus. If you're playing pickleball, then where you are on the court depends on where the ball is. What you need to do when the ball comes over is go chase the ball, try and to the ball before you have to hit it, so you're in a good spot to hit it from. Then what do you do? Then you use your paddle to hit that ball and send it somewhere on the other side.
[00:04:38.500] - Tony Roig
And they do the same thing. Then they got to run around, chase the ball, send it back to you, you run around, chase the ball, send it back to them, back and forth. That's a beautiful It's a beautiful dance that happens, but it all happens around the pickle ball. And so anything that is not the pickle ball, that is occupying your mind, is going to, by definition, distract from your ability to do your best in that moment, in that rally, in that shot, in that movement, and everything you have to do. And a couple of areas that I see, and to me, they're like throw-ways. I mean, they're like, fairly easy to avoid, I think. But one is the score. I see players all the time. They're distracted because maybe They didn't hear the score, or they're confused on the score, or the score was called out, they believed wrong. And they're not in the moment. I have a good friend of mine who I play with Fred regularly, always worried about the score. And so I was I was listening the other day with my group, and he missed a return to serve. Just a run of the mill serve, no big deal.
[00:05:55.400] - Tony Roig
Misses the return to serve, something that he can hit 90-some % of the time without missing it. He misses it, and immediately after missing it, asks what the score was, meaning he was confirming that the score was what we had called and not something else. I know, I don't have a scanner on his brain at the time that he's trying to hit the ball, but I know that when he was hitting his return to serve, his brain was thinking about the score. So how are you going to hit the shot as well as you can if your brain is thinking about something else? And I did a video many years ago saying basically, don't insta serve. And the idea was, it's all anecdotal, but I had noticed a trend that when players called the score and then serve immediately, They seem to miss more frequently than players who call the score, paused, and then served. It's basically like one, one, one, hit the ball, miss. The premise, the idea was, Hey, I'm not really We're not sure why this happens, but maybe don't insta-serve. There's no requirement to insta-serve. So if there's a potential risk, then don't take it.
[00:07:07.180] - Tony Roig
And a player commented on the video several years later and said, There's a reason for that, which is cool to know. What The reason is because the part of your brain that is calling out the score is the same part of your brain that is then trying to hit the ball. So it's the same part of your brain that's doing the computation, calling out score, remembering the score, and then verbalizing it, and also trying to hit the ball. It makes sense that you're taking... Think of it like a chip inside of a computer. It only has so much capacity to process information. Your brain's the same. Why rob a little bit of the bandwidth, or a lot of the bandwidth, with stuff that isn't relevant to what you're doing. To me, it's the same thing here. When you're trying to hit a shot and your brain is mulling over a score line, you're not going to perform your best in that situation. You can also see it with things like being worried about where to hit the next shot, being worried about a pop-up you just hit, being worried about what your partner thinks, all these things What do they do?
[00:08:15.820] - Tony Roig
They take up bandwidth in your mind. And they take up the bandwidth, now you don't have that bandwidth available to actually perform when you're playing, to actually hit the shot. And for example, they're trying to worry about where to hit the shot. That's part of our game, right? So I I understand that there's a certain amount of that. But for instance, when we coach, we remove a lot of the unnecessary decision-making early in rallies to give you the tools that you need to basically clear shots for the first few shots so that it removes some of that unnecessary thinking, unnecessary processing in the mind so that you can then focus on better mechanics in those shots, and then leaves that free for decision-making further further down the rally, which is where you're going to need it. But the more that you are thinking about things like you just missed a shot, and you're bogged down on it, you're just like, you can't let it go. You hit a shot and you just can't free your mind from it. Sometimes it'll be stuff like, quote unquote illegal serve. You think it might be an illegal serve.
[00:09:27.560] - Tony Roig
So what's your brain doing? Your brain is like, mulling over. I wonder if that serve is illegal, and it might be illegal, and if it's illegal, and here are the rules, and here's all this stuff. Meanwhile, you're trying to hit a ball. You're trying to run through the court. You're trying to analyze where the next shot is going to be hit from, all those things. And it's going to be negatively impacted by the bandwidth that you are using for something like, I wonder if that's an illegal serve, or I wonder if they stepped in the kitchen two rallies ago, whatever it is. Those things that occupy your mind are really going to take away from the game. Instead, He said, Try and focus on the ball. Just put all of your energy into focusing on the ball. One way of trying to do that, one way of doing it, a technique that might help you, is if you try and pick up the holes on the ball. So not looking at the ball, but you're actually trying to see the little holes that are on the ball. That's a technique that comes from tennis, from the Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Galway.
[00:10:23.460] - Tony Roig
In tennis, he talks about, you're trying to pick up the seam on the tennis ball. The tennis ball has that rubber seam around it. In pickleball, you can do it, trying to pick up the holes on the ball. That'll help you focus more on the ball. It also help you pick up spins better, because if you start to learn how the ball spins different, what it happens when it bounces after different kinds of spins it has in the air, if you can pick up that spin as the ball moves through the air, it'll help you with your game. You'll also have more focus on actually making clean contact with the ball on volleys when it's windy and stuff like that. So really focusing on the ball. One way that Perhaps this will help you think about the process here. If you've ever done breathing techniques, meditative breathing techniques, you'll have someone in your ear, potentially, or you're at a yoga studio, and they'll be telling you, breathe. Actually, let's do it. Why don't we do it? Let's do a couple of them. So let's do a couple of breathing together, and we'll see what happens.
[00:11:18.360] - Tony Roig
Okay, so we're going to focus on our breathing now. We're going to take a deep breath in, and a deep breath out, or a deep exhale. Deep breath in, And exhale. On the next inhalation, I want you to really focus on the breath. All your energy on the breath, really make it a full breath. Here we go. And then on the exhalation, the same thing, really focus on all that air leaving your body. One more time. Really focus on the inhalation. And really focus on the exhalation. So you see, we stopped things for a second, and I walked you through it a little bit, and you can really focus on feeling... We could go even deeper, right? You can feel the way the breath enters your your nose and travels down into your lungs and fills your lungs and your lungs expand. You can go very detailed with it, very deep with it. But this idea of taking your mind and giving it that to focus on the breath is awesome for meditative type techniques. When you're playing pickleball, it's a similar process, but what you're doing is you're really focusing your mind on the ball, on following the ball from left to right, front to back, always focused on the ball.
[00:12:44.820] - Tony Roig
And And if you get good at it, it almost becomes its own form. And not almost, it becomes its own form of meditation. It becomes its own form of Zen, if you will, where you achieve this Zen-like state. And all you're doing is, basically, it's you in the ball, dancing in the universe throughout the rally and throughout the game. And it's just a really interesting way of coming at the sport, allowing you to reach a different level, if you will, in terms of your conscience and your connection to the sport. But also you're going to play better. You're going to play way better because your bandwidth is all focused on the most important thing in pickleball, which is the pickle. Now, when I say most important thing, obviously, here I'm talking about from a functional standpoint, trying to perform your best, not from a most important big picture. Most important big picture is you as a player. And if you've read the book, I'm going to go into the book a little bit here to tell you this is where the three lenses are helpful. The long lens, the big lens, the most important thing in pickleball is you, you and your relationship with the sport and enjoying it and just that back and forth, the social, the fun, the exercise, all those pieces.
[00:13:51.720] - Tony Roig
At the short lens level, that's when you're hyper-focused on the next thing you have to do. That's when the ball is the is the most important thing. So hopefully, if you read the book, or maybe it'll encourage you to read the book, those three lenses can really help you. And that's a really good way of thinking about how you determine what's most important based on the lens that you're applying in the moment. So hopefully, that'll help you focus better when you are playing the next time, or this time, if you're heading out there today. Actually, this would be a pretty good bookmark episode for you. If you're having difficulty focusing when you're playing, you can bookmark podcast episodes. It depends on the platform. But these are like a little... What do you call those things? The Bookmark? A bookmark. No, bookmark has a little... It looks like a bookmark. You click on that thing and it'll bookmark it for you so that you're ready to go the next time. You can listen to it again. All right, a couple of quick riffs, and then we'll wrap the episode. Number one is about this idea of saying sorry when you body bag somebody.
[00:14:51.240] - Tony Roig
If you don't know, body bagging is just when you hit somebody with a ball. There was a conversation, young pros, and a podcast conversation. And one of the pros, Zane, was saying, If you're trying to body bag somebody, you shouldn't say you're sorry because it's an intentional act. And if it's an intentional act, you shouldn't apologize for it. If you don't want to body bag them, don't try to body bag them. I agree with Zane 100 %, right? If it's an intentional act. But I'm going to caveat it, or modify it a little bit. If you're aiming, if you're trying to hit an aggressive shot, not intending to body bag, and you hit the player, I don't have any problem with apologizing. I think it's fine to apologize. It's I think you probably should apologize. Now, if you're actually trying to hit the player, there's probably no reason to say, Sorry, then. But try not to hit players. That's a pro thing. They like to do that stuff. I think pros sometimes just get bored. They're so good at the game, right? So sometimes they're just like, All right, I'm going to make it more interesting for myself, and I'm going to try and hit you, and you try and hit me.
[00:15:49.230] - Tony Roig
So if everybody's okay with it, that's, I guess, life. And then the other thing I wanted to touch on is I did a post on what's in, what's out, 2026, like Partner Edition with three parts. One of them was basically turning towards the center and establishing contact with your partner, connecting with your partner so that your partner doesn't potentially misinterpret your behavior, even if you don't mean anything, misinterpret it as you're upset with them or you're feeling down about it. And I got two comments, both males. Maybe this is relevant or not. I think they were males, based on the names and the voice of the writing. But one was basically, Parody, I hope. And And then the other one was basically, people need to just focus on the next shot and don't worry about their partner. Basically, get over it. The partner shouldn't be so sensitive, the partner who's misinterpreting. It's unfortunate, right? From my From my perspective, that these two folks, from my perspective, have a limited approach to interacting with other human beings. The two concepts that come to mind here. One is Sonder, which is in the book, and I've talked about before in the podcast.
[00:17:04.600] - Tony Roig
And then the other one is just empathy. You don't have to go as far as empathy just to have Sonder. Sonder is a step under empathy. I think it's still great. They're both great. They both have their place. But I don't know, just not appreciating the fact that your partner might receive information from you. And also not understanding, I guess, that nonverbal communication is really like, I don't remember the exact number, but something like 70 or 80% of all communication between human beings is actually nonverbal, much more valuable than verbal, or not valuable, much more impactful, I should say, in how we receive things is nonverbal. What we were talking about there was a nonverbal act, which is turning away from your partner after a rally, and then they might interpret it as a shoulder drop or an eye roll or whatever, which is all nonverbal, and not understanding the power of that, and then jumping at this like, Well, people got to toughen up, and all that stuff. It's unfortunate. Maybe one day, they'll come across this podcast and open up their minds to a different way of thinking. But I do recommend that for us, those of us who are a part of this podcast and listen to this podcast to never forget empathy, never forget Sonder as part of our experience with Pickable and allowing others to enjoy the sport and have as good a time as possible in the sport that they choose to play as well.
[00:18:30.640] - Tony Roig
All right, that's this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a minute to rate and review the podcast, fantastic, or the book, that'd be great, too. And as always, if you enjoyed this podcast and you think there's a friend of yours who maybe they're having trouble focusing or one of these other topics is of interest to them, please consider sharing this podcast with them. It's the most powerful way that we have to reach other players is from players who know other players because then it's vetted. So consider sharing with your friends because if you enjoy the podcast, they probably will, too. I hope you have a great week, and I will see you next time on Pickleball Therapy. Be well.