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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.
[00:00:00.310] - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickle improvement. I'm your host, Tony Roig. Hope you're having a great week. In this week's podcast, we are going to refresh. We're going to update and refresh our most popular concept that we've ever covered in the podcast, which is Ball of Ice Cream. We're going to tweak it a bit, reframe it a little bit, and then talk about some of the misconceptions that are out there when we let folks about Ball of Ice Cream, folks who aren't familiar with it, some of the pushback we get, and perhaps your mind is having that as well, we'll overcome that. And then I'll give you a couple of reasons why you usually want to use Ball of Ice Cream as your new mantra when you go out there and play pickleball. Then the RIFF, I want to touch on regaining focus. I had the opportunity to watch the Wimbledon Finals this last weekend, and between Carlos Algaraz and Novak Chovac. Actually, the same thing happened in the women's match. It was Rybikova, I think it's pronounced Rybikova, against Paulini. A similar thing occurred in both matches.
[00:01:05.450] - Speaker 1
So let's talk about in the RIFF, I'll mention some ideas about regaining focus and losing focus and what that means. So we'll talk about that in the RIF. This week's episode of the podcast is brought to you ad-free by the Betterpickleball Academy. The Betterpickleball Academy is here for all of your pickleball needs. If you have any questions, you have any doubts about how to play the best pickleball you've ever played, check out our courses inside the Betterpickleball Academy. You can go to Betterpickleball Academy. I'm sorry, Better Pickleball. Com, and then click on the academy. I'll put links down in the show notes for you. All right, so as I mentioned, bowl of ice cream is our most popular concept, the most popular concept that we've ever tackled or ever developed, I would say, during the pickleball therapy history, which is over 200 episodes. It has been very powerful. It resonates with players, and it gives you a really good way of balancing out the highs and lows of playing pickleball, which are going to happen no matter who you are as a player, no matter how good you get. I think players think that, If I learn this one shot, then I'm set.
[00:02:06.550] - Speaker 1
I'm here to tell you that's not how it works, because then you'll be facing different players eventually, and then you'll have the same challenges again. That's beautiful, right? It keeps us moving. Here's a way to think of a bowl of ice cream. You finish this session of play, and perhaps you feel a little down. You feel a little... We've all had them where you have a losing session, and sometimes you lose them all. You played eight games that day and you went 0-8. That can happen. Or you played in a tournament and you went two and out. There are X number of teams in a tournament that have to go out two and out. That's just the math of the tournament. After those experiences, it's natural, I think, for us to feel a little let down, feel a little bad, feel a little frustrated, maybe, with ourselves. We're not happy, that's for sure. Bowl of Ice Cream is a way of reframing how we feel after a pickleball session, because we are going to start from this premise. We're going to start from the premise that it's impossible to have a bad pickleball day. You just can't.
[00:03:16.160] - Speaker 1
It's just not possible. If you allow me to, I'm going to walk you through it. By the end, I think you'll agree with me that that's just not possible. When you play pickleball, what are you doing? Not the results, when you're playing, while you're playing the sport, what are you doing? I hope your answer is, I'm doing what I want to do. I'm engaging in an activity that I find to be stimulating physically, mentally, socially, that I find to be positive in my life. It's something that I enjoy. It's something that I love. It's something that I'm passionate about. Addicted is the word you hear in pickleball, right? Because it applies. Nothing wrong with that in pickleball. So again, let's go back to the premise, right? Why are you out there? Whether it's a tournament, whether it's your open play, you're out there because you want to be. You're out there because you're doing something that you love. And if you're doing something that you love, no matter what the results are, cannot have a bad pickleball day. It's just not a thing. And the way to think about it, the way that the bowl of ice cream helps, is think about it like this.
[00:04:24.580] - Speaker 1
Every single time that you get to step on a pickleball court, no matter what the result is, you receive a full bowl of ice cream. I'm going to dive into this a little, get into the weeds a little bit. I think it's important not to let our minds off the hook with qualifiers and things like that. First of all, your bowl of ice cream is full. It's not like you get a half a scoop if you do okay and a full scoop if you do well. No. You stepped it on the court, you battled, you played, you said hi to folks, you did your thing. You get a bowl of ice I'm going to tell you what, you don't get one, by the way, but just playing, you get a bowl of ice cream. You get a bowl of your favorite flavor. You don't have to sacrifice it either. It's not like, Oh, I really like moose tracks or hot fudge or mixed fudge ice cream or something like that. You can get that. You can get the ice cream that you like the best. You scoop it out of the tub and put it in your bowl.
[00:05:24.050] - Speaker 1
You get it. Just by playing pick a Because that's what pickleball is. Pickleball is fun. Pickleball is what we love. We're getting to do it. So we're getting a bowl of ice cream. Now, I will say, if you want to, it's You're punishing yourself, right? I mean, not to have the bowl of ice cream. But the only time I would say you can play pickle and not get a bowl of ice cream is if it's something that you need to work on in terms of your interaction with others. And what I mean by that is if you're tossing in your paddle, if you're being rude to other players, if you're just being nasty out on the court, then perhaps you don't get a bowl of ice cream. I'm going to give you that, right? But otherwise, if you go out there and play and give your best, do the best you can that day. And your best doesn't mean the best you've ever played, to be clear. Your best is, what can you do that day? You gave your best, you did the best you could, you were reasonably nice to other folks, and everything Everything's fine.
[00:06:30.430] - Speaker 1
Then you get a bowl of ice cream every single time that you play. Now, how do we differentiate winning versus not winning? Because I think it would be disingenuous. It wouldn't work if we just said it's like the participation trophy idea. Everybody gets a trophy because you came out. No. You don't get a trophy because you came out, but you get the bowl of ice cream because you came out. Now, if you win, so you have a great session, then we're going to throw some sprinkles on top of your ice cream, or we're going to throw some extra fresh hot fudge on there, or whip cream, or a cherry, or extra nuts, whatever you want. You get anything, the cookies, little crumble cookies, whatever you want on there, right? But think about it in terms of sprinkles, right? If you want to, that simplifies it a little bit. So you get sprinkles on top of the ice cream you already got. Now, if you have a losing day, you don't get sprinkles. But You got a full bowl of ice cream because you are playing the sport that you love, because you get to engage in the activity that you choose to, and to see your friends, and to sweat a little bit, hopefully, and to challenge your mind some in terms of trying to solve puzzles and all these wonderful things that pickleball does for us.
[00:07:51.720] - Speaker 1
So every single time that you get to play, you get the bowl of ice cream, and it's a concept of gratitude. It's a concept of gratitude, and it's also a concept of framing. Cream. Because if you frame it that way, then you understand that you cannot have a bad day playing pickleball, playing the sport that you love. Because just by stepping out on the course you're going to receive a full bowl of your favorite ice cream. Now, if you win, you get some sprinkles. But if you don't win, still get that full bowl. Now, let me address a couple of misconceptions that that I've heard over the last couple of years in sharing this concept. And some of this is from the very competitive players, pro players that I've chatted with, and they've been a little down, so I've explained this to them. I mentioned one earlier, which I mentioned earlier that you get a full bowl of ice cream. Because one player actually said to me, Well, I only get a bowl of ice cream if I win. In other words, I only get the ice cream if I win. That is not correct.
[00:08:58.340] - Speaker 1
In other words, you get the of ice cream regardless of the outcome. The act itself is what matters. The playing itself is what matters. That is where the ice cream comes from. That's the originator of the ice cream is the fact that you are playing this amazing sport. In fact, the player I was speaking with, it was at Nationals in Dallas last year in '23, and the player had a rough day, but an amazing player, probably top 30 player in the world in their agenda, so they basically... Amazing pickleball player, right? And just had a bad day. And the player was upset. And so I explained to the player about the bowl by the stream, and the player responded by saying, Well, I don't get a bowl. The way I played today, I don't get a bowl or something like that. And that's not how it works. And this player, just to give you context, this player is playing, again, pickleball. I don't need to repeat that over and over again, but it is. It's pickleball. It's an awesome activity at Nationals in Dallas against other awesome players competing, giving their all and doing their best, right?
[00:10:04.530] - Speaker 1
What's there not to love? What's there not to celebrate? What's there not to be grateful for? That's the bowl of ice cream. The embodiment of that is the bowl of ice cream. So you get a full bowl of ice cream, your favorite flavor. Every time you play, that's the one thing I want to be clear about. The second thing is, there's still room to celebrate wins. So we're not taking wins off the table. We're not saying, Again, participation trophy no matter what, wins don't count. Wins count. We're okay with that. That's fine. That's human nature. But let's celebrate those by adding the sprinkles, not by trying to undermine the overall value of what we receive by playing the sport in and of itself. Let me give you a couple of reasons why you should use bowl of ice cream as a mantra for yourself, why adopting it is something that makes sense for you. Number one, is it not true? Do you not enjoy playing pickleball? Do you not play pickleball as something additional, something to enrich your life, as something that gives you pleasure? Or is it only pleasurable when you win? That's the change that you need to make.
[00:11:19.730] - Speaker 1
It shouldn't only be pleasurable when you win, because if you play at level, and you've heard this before in another podcast, if you listen to the podcast, but if you play at level, then If you think about it, you're only really expected to win 50% of the time, i. E, you're going to lose 50% of the time. And if you're going to win and lose at a 50% rate and only be happy when you win, then you will only be happy 50% of the time. When you sit back and think about it, that makes no sense to be only happy half the time you're playing pickleball. Why not be happy all the time you're playing pickleball? Because that's how it should be, and that's how it can be. If you understand that every time you play pickleball, the act itself is the bowl of ice cream. If it's true that you play pickleball and you love this, you play pickleball because you love the sport and because you enjoy the activity, then embrace that. Embrace the activity, embrace the very act of doing it as your bowl of ice cream. So that's reason number one.
[00:12:19.260] - Speaker 1
Reason number two, actually, I'm going to give you three. Reason number two is adopting this mantra, adopting bowl of ice cream as your slogan for playing pickleball or your mantra for Plane of the Big O'Mall is, it's going to make you feel better. Because when you have those down days, and you will, down days meaning days that didn't go the way that we all hope. And listen, let's put it on the table. Nobody's upset when they win. What we're looking at here is, how do we deal with it when we lose? It's not like when you win, you need this help. You need this idea. It's like, I won. What are you worried about? This idea is for the times that you lose. It's to help you balance out those times because there's no reason to feel bad when you lose. So understanding that you got a bowl of ice cream, even if you lost every game that day, frankly, even if you lost every single point that day, should allow you to frame it in a way that will help you feel more positive about it. And it's not like you're putting... It's not a lie.
[00:13:28.720] - Speaker 1
It's not like you're covering it up with something else. It's not like everything's horrible. You're putting a facade on it, this beautiful facade, and saying, Oh, look how pretty. I put a facade on it, right? The old saying about you put lipsynced on a pig, it's still a pig, right? This is not that. This is recognizing what's actually happening. Now, as you're recognizing the fact that you did, in fact, receive value, you did, in fact, receive a positive, even if you lost every game. Merely from the fact or simply because of fact that you got to play pickleball. That's the bowl of ice cream. So you'll feel better. And the third one I'll give you is you'll play better. And this is something that, again, if you listen to the podcast, you know this theme we have, right? Which is that whenever you feel better, the athletic pillar we talk about body and mind. Athletic pillar is super important. You have mechanical pillar, how to hit the balls, strategic pillar, what shot they when, mechanical pillar, your body and mind. If your body and mind are out of whack, one of them, right? You're not going to play great pickleball.
[00:14:32.480] - Speaker 1
If you're injured, for instance, your body, let's take an easy one, right? If you're injured, it's going to be hard to play a pickleball because you can't move around the court, right? Or you can't lift your arm or something like that, right? Your mind's the same way. If your mind is cloudy, if your mind is busy, if your mind is feeling negative, right? How do you think you're going to play your best? It's not going to happen. So reframing the bowl of ice cream is true. It's not some façade that we've put up to cover up something that's otherwise bad. It's true that playing pickle is good. Two, you feel better. And three, you play better. So why not take bowl of ice cream and embrace it, adopt it as your new pickleball mantra? All right, let's dive straight into the RIF. I'll remind you again that I put the academy, the Better pickleball Academy links down in the show notes, and definitely check those out when you get a chance. But in the RIFF, I'm going to talk about focus, because this is a common theme as athletes. We lose focus from time to time.
[00:15:33.690] - Speaker 1
In both the matches this weekend in Wimbledon, when you got to the end, both of them went three sets. If you know, men's sentence usually goes five sets, so they didn't actually go to the fifth and deciding set. It was one in three sets. Alcaraz won all three sets, but they still had a moment in the third set that could have been pivotal because of Djokovitch's history of coming back. That could have gone very poorly for Carlos Alcaraz in the the third set. The women's match did go to three sets, and the third set was a pretty entertaining set. Some good play, some good back and forth. Then the same situation where we have the moment of truth. What happened, let me focus more on Carlos' match just because it's more extreme. What happens in that match is Carlos Alcaraz, the young new up-and-coming, not even up-and-coming, the young new sheriff in town, if you will, in tennis, is playing Novak Djokovitch, the old guard. Carlos wins the first two sets, Hanley 6-2, 6-2. They're in the third set, and Djokovitch is starting to play better, and it's starting to get a little bit tight.
[00:16:44.080] - Speaker 1
They have a couple of testy games in the middle, and then where each holds. So now you're on serve, meaning you're tied, basically, in tennis terms, right? And then Carlos Alcaraz breaks Novak Djokovitch in the ninth game. So now it's for Carlos serving. Carlos hasn't been broken all day. Pretty much match over, right? And just to give you the full scope of things, Novak doesn't even really take a break in the middle, which is very unusual. All these players at this level are professional. They're all very structured in how they do things. Novak basically goes to return, just hangs out waiting for Carlos to serve. Carlos immediately jumps out to 40 left, right? So he needs one more point, and he's the Wimbledon champion. He has three tries at 40 love. So the first time, he hits a double fall. Okay, 40, 50, not the end of the world, but okay. Second one, Novak hits a deep ball, maybe a little bit of difficulty for Carlos. Carlos misses it, fine. 40, 30. This time Carlos hits a fantastic serve, stretches Novak, Novak floats. It just lifts it up in the air. Rather than hitting an overhead or letting it bounce and Carlos comes in and just hits a running top spin, crazy, totally crazy shot, like a teenager would hit, right?
[00:18:06.590] - Speaker 1
He's only 21, but he's not a teenager. But anyway, so he misses it. And then two shots later, two points later, he lost the game. So now it's 5-5. So at that moment, you say to yourself, What's happening here? Because now you're going to have Djokovitch. Djokovitch is now going to set his heels, right? He's going to dig his heels in and go, Okay, you want to I'm coming. Carlos ends up winning the third set, 7-6, right? But what it shows is it shows how... A couple of things. One is it's easy to lose focus, okay? And Carlos is a professional athlete. He's a young man, but he's a professional athlete. This is what he does for a living. He has trainers, coaches. I'm sure he works on his mental game. So even he loses focus. And he lost focus because he wasn't in the moment anymore. He wasn't in the particular moment. He was already celebrating the wind, and he was somewhere else, and then just lost the focus. The thing he did, though, was he regained focus. He regained focus before he got away from the same wind that, probably going to mispronounce that, but Rybikova, I think, is regained focus in her match because she also had some shakes at the end of her match.
[00:19:20.220] - Speaker 1
He was able to regain focus. The tip I want to give you on regaining focus, I'm going to use staying with tennis, which is Roger Federer gave a commencement speech recently where he talked about one point at a time, basically was the message. But the way he framed it was really helpful, I think, which was basically, he says, I've won 80% of my matches, but I've only won 50% of my points. The key is, it's really at the point level that you have to stay involved and work. He said, I know that when I miss the easiest shot in the world, it's just a point. I can make the dumbest error ever. He didn't say exactly. He's Roger Federer. But it's just a point. Also, when I hit the best shot in the world, I hit an ESPN crazy good shot, that's just a point. Going back to Al Kharaz and Rubikova in the finals of Wimbledon, if they're able to compartmentalize, that's the moral of this, compartmentalize those times that their focus went away. Then by compartmentalizing that, not allowed to bleed over into the next action, that's how They were able to ride the ship, is by taking the things that they did that weren't ideal.
[00:20:36.800] - Speaker 1
In Carlos's case, was basically losing focus for an entire game where he had three chances just to close it out. Frankly, Novak didn't need much pushing at that point. He was pretty much done. Carlos needed to hit a couple of good shots, probably match over. But anyway, he loses his focus, but he doesn't let that bleed over. I think because amateurs, a lot of times, we let that bleed over. So When you're out there and you're feeling... First of all, give yourself some grace. This is going to be the podcast of grace. First, we have the gratitude of the bowl of ice cream. Now, we're giving ourselves grace with... Give yourself some grace when you lose focus. Understand that it's a perfectly normal human condition to lose focus from time to time. It's impossible to keep 100% focus all the time. I don't care how much you work at it, how much you do it, including professionals. We all lose focus, so be okay with that. And then to regain that focus is to be able to set aside the silly shots and just put your your sights on the next point. And then the next point after that, and the next point after that, until the game ends.
[00:21:51.370] - Speaker 1
So hopefully you enjoyed this podcast. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, consider sharing it with your friends. Remember that if you enjoyed this podcast, if it helped you out, it'll probably help them out. And my guess is, they'll enjoy it, too. I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you at the next episode of Pickeball Therapy. Be well.