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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.
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your Pickleball improvement. It's a podcast with you in mind. I'm your host of this weekly podcast, Tony Roy. Hope you're having a great week. I am recording this podcast on location. We are down at the US Open in Naples. It's the largest Pickleball event I believe in the world. Has about 5,000 registered players,
so that's a crazy number. Just to give you an idea, an average tournament and a good size tournament for one of the major tours is about 800 players, is a nice number for a tournament. And again, a big tournament. This one has 5,000, so you know, four times as many as that of, actually, that's not right math,
that's a terrible math. Six times as many almost as the, as the, the normal tournament size. So that's a big tournament. The energy here is crazy. And I'm gonna talk about a little more in the riff about the US Open experience and just kind of the, it's it, how it relates to Pickleball in generally, not just tournament play.
So to stick around for that in the main segment today, we're gonna be talking about this conversation about, you know, what's my metric, right? Did I do what I can do? And today we're gonna be talking about setting the baseline, right? What's the right baseline for me to set when I ask this question? This is part of a series that we have.
This is a three part series. If you missed last week's episode, check that one out. And then next week we're gonna talk about the benefits of using this approach. But today we're gonna dive deep into setting the baseline for ourselves. 'cause each one of us is an individual. Each one of us is different. You know, obviously we come from different places,
we have different backgrounds and things like that. Before we dive into the podcast, I do have a request of you, and this is, even if you have left a review in the past of the podcast, I'd ask you to do it again if you be so kind. One of the reasons I ask it is, is the imu. Two reasons.
One is, you know, it, it's, it's, you know, the reviews come up based on date. So let's say you gave a review like three years ago or two years ago to the podcast. That's great. We love it and thank you very much for doing that. But that review now is buried, basically. So, you know,
it's like, you know, several down, because I think we have something like 140 reviews on here. And so if you can re-review it, your review now will be at the top and players will be able to see what your experience is with the podcast. And then the other reason is because the hired that it, the podcast is reviewed, what happens is the,
the, the algorithm says this is a good podcast for someone searching for Pickleball. So if you enjoy the podcast, right, there may be players out there who haven't yet seen the podcast because they don't get it in their feed. They look for Pickleball and they get other podcasts, which is, they're fine. Nothing wrong with those podcasts, but if you think this podcast would be a benefit for them,
do that. And then the second request that came to mind is if you happen to like YouTube and you're on YouTube, if you can go to Pickleball therapy on YouTube and do the same thing there, you know, basically like a video here and there, write a comment here and there that'll let the YouTube algorithm know, Hey, this is something that players actually enjoy.
Whereas if we don't say anything, the algorithm has no idea. And then other players don't get to see it. So if you could do, that'd be great. I like to share with you a review that we got. It's from December, and this is the, the a, a player. I don't know this player. I, you know,
there's no identifying information in here, which is fine, but just to give you an idea of, of the impact that, that listening to the podcast can have on, on a player like this player who basically didn't come from any competitive sport. So excellent podcast, Tony has deepened both my understanding and appreciation of the game. Listening to this podcast has dramatically improved the mental side of my game.
I have never played a sport competitively and did not have the tools to work on my mental game, nor the understanding of how important it is thanks to Tony, I'm better prepared to deal with the frustrations and setbacks as a result. I'm having a lot more fun. And I got my ice cream today and, you know, I don't wanna get too high horsey here,
but at the end of the day, right, the reason we do this podcast, and the reason we do a lot of our coaching is for that very reason. It's to help persons, right? I don't call 'em play, but we're very careful with our languages, you know, so to help persons who may not yet see themselves as players or athletes come along this journey,
right? And enjoy this wonderful sport of Pickleball. And, and what happens is sometimes, unfortunately is players or persons will come into the sport and then never become players, right? Because maybe a few bad experiences, they don't think they can do it. Whatever the, the, the roadblock is, it's not because there's anything wrong with them. It's not because there's anything wrong with the sport.
If you're listening to this podcast, you know that, right? So the, there's nothing wrong with either end of this bargain. The problem is something in the connection that happens between the player and the game. And so a podcast like this can sometimes mean the difference between a, a player, you know, fully enjoying the sport or a player departing Pickleball.
And so that's, we, we take our job very seriously. And so your help in terms of rating review and things like that, you can play a role in helping players like this player. And I wanna thank the player for leaving that review, you know, continuing their journey. So that's, that's, that's, I'm dealt with the high, with the high horse for the soapbox on it.
But just so you understand the impact that, that the podcast can have and this type of thing, and again, you're a part of this podcast, right? If you're in our podcast community, you listen to the podcast regularly, a lot of you at the US Open have come up to me and said that you, you listen to the podcast, you enjoy the podcast.
And we love that. We thank you for listening to the podcast. Help us reach others just like you, who would benefit from it. Alright, let's dive into the metric. What we're talking about here is we're talking about, you know, setting a better, setting, a better framing for ourselves when we're trying to evaluate how we did during a given gain.
And I mentioned to you last time about some of the struggle I had at a tournament in terms of analyzing my play afterwards and having that constant cycle of what did I do wrong in this situation? And then finally the struggle was, was helpful to me because it helped me have achieve another sort of a breakthrough for myself. And that's what I'm sharing with you,
which is, you know, I get to, you know, what, what's the right question for me to ask when I, when I feel like that, right? When I have that, that endless cycle of, of doubting myself or questioning myself and how I played. And so the question that we're gonna be working towards is, you know, did I do what I could do?
Did I do the best I can basically, right? And that's a pretty broad question. So today we're going to dive deeper into what does that mean for you personally, right? How do we set a baseline that's adequate for each of us and or correct for each of us so that then we can ask the question relative to that baseline. Now we're gonna explore it a few different ways.
So the first thing I wanna talk about is, and I mentioned this earlier at, at, you know, in the introduction, is that each one of us is different, right? We're all in different places, okay? You know, some of us are younger, some of us are older, some of us have played a racket, sports, some of us has not.
Some of us, you know, are in, in, in, in prime physical condition for our agents. Some of us are not, right? And so each one of us has some us left hand somewhere, right-hand, right? So we each come to the game with our own characteristics, right? Our own who we are, right? And it's important when you're out there playing that you resist the temptation to compare yourself,
right? To basically like so and so plays like this and I play like that. So this is winning more than that. So I, I must compare myself to this, this being the other player, you know, that, that, that's, as you can see, right? The way I framed it, it's doesn't make a lot of sense,
right? Perhaps that player, you know, has years of competitive sports experience, perhaps that player has been drilling, and we're gonna talk about drilling a little more in a second, but perhaps that player's been drilling, you know, they drill 20 hours a week before and you didn't, right? So this comparing kind of a thing, right? It,
it, it removes your individuality, right? It removes your this is who I am, right? This is what I bring to the table in terms of my characteristics. And that, that leads to the next thing, which is this idea of, of work. Okay? And, you know, each one of us will work differently at the game,
right? In terms of how much work are you putting in, you know, are you putting in a ton of work? Are you studying the game? Are you, you know, working with an online course like ours or working with an in-person, coach? Are you studying YouTube? What are you doing? You know? And if you're studying YouTube,
are you doing it in an organized fashion? I'm not gonna get into that in detail today. We have several podcasts and, and some videos on, on the Intu Pickle channel about that as well, about, you know, the, the, some of the, the hurdles there. But anyway, whatever you're working on, are you, are you doing it right?
Are you actually putting in the work? Because if you're not right, and then you go out and play and your game is the same as it was last week, why would you expect it to be different? You know, is that, is that fair to yourself? Right? To say, you know, I should be playing, you know, professional level Pickleball,
but I don't work in my game. So those are, those are part of framing out, did I do the best I could the game itself. So that's a little bit about you, right? Your background in terms of what you brought to the game and how much you're dedicating yourself to your improvement, okay? And, and you, you need to,
you need to, or you should keep those in mind when you're looking at, you know, did I do what I could do? Did I give the best I could today based on who I am and based on the work that I've been putting into my game? You can also look at it from the other side, which is from the side of the game itself.
Okay? So when you look at the game of Pickleball, a game of Pickleball is messy. And we did a, a podcast on this before, but the idea is that, you know, even yesterday I was, you know, I, I got to play yesterday in, in, in some games in the tournament. And you know, sometimes these rallies are just weird,
right? Balls flying all over the place and, and you know, I mean, everybody's trying to do the best they can and the player misses the easy putaway, right? Or saves the shot that you're like, there's no way you got to that ball, right? That's Pickleball. I mean, that's beautiful part of our sport. So Pickleball is a messy kind of a game.
You know, it's not, there is no perfect game. There is no perfect, like, perfectly executed game. I've also had the opportunity to watch some of the top players in the sport competing in finals, for instance. And this final in particular was you two of the top senior pro players. So Altoff Merchant and David Wein Buck paired up with two of the top pros,
the younger pros, Andre Di Askew and Dylan Frazier, right? These are four of the best players on the on planet earth playing in the gold medal match in the mixed, it's called mixed split age, or sorry, split age, not mixed, split age, pro division. And messy, messy, like, you know, I mean, some, some points you go,
wow. And you, it's crazy good, but a lot of the points are just messy points. And so if Pickleball is messy, right? And, and you're looking, but your baseline, right? Going back to the baseline, your baseline is the perfect rally, the perfect, you know, the perfect point, the perfect shot, the perfect sequence.
That's not fair, right? You're, you're, you're, you're creating a gap in your own mind, a gap that you cannot close because you're looking for the perfect sequence, right? I need to hit the perfectly here and then has gotta go here, and then I gotta go there. And then whatever your sequence is that you're looking for in your mind,
but the game itself is, is, you know, it's like, it's like a controlled chaos on a court. And so, you know, understanding that, right? And we've gone from us now as players to the game and understanding the realities of the game will help us set a better baseline. And then one other thing I wanted to focus on in terms of,
that's a pun there, you'll see it in a second. So one other thing we can focus on here is, you know, the reality of performing during a game, okay? So the reality of performing during a game is, and we're gonna look at it a couple different ways. One is, you are gonna hit awful shots during a game. Just terrible shots that you're like,
how did I miss that? Or why did I hit the ball there? One's mechanical, one's strategic, but you know, you, you're basically, you're gonna hit shots that you're like, I can't believe I did that. You're also gonna hit shots that you're gonna be like, wow, that was awesome, right? Yeah, that felt perfect. I hit,
I laid that in great, you know, I hit the ball exactly where I needed to hit it. Everything, right? So you're gonna have both ends of the spectrum and you're gonna have a bunch of shots in the middle that are neither like the best shot you ever hit or the worst shot. You, they're just in the middle there. So you're gonna have a variety of shots in a game.
Keep that in mind. I add to that, the fact that during a game, your performance, right? Not your performance or your focus, going back to focus, right? Is going to ebb and flow, right? You're gonna have moments of clarity and you're gonna have moments of fog in your mind. And the, you know, certainly during a session,
during a week during, that's just, that's how we're constructed as human beings. I wish there was a way to like, you know, like a switch that we could just turn on, I guess and just stay focused. But then what would we turn it off? Right? Wouldn't make any sense. 'cause we'd always want focus, right? That's not how we're constructed.
We're constructed in, in a kind of a a, you're watching this on, on YouTube, you're seeing kinda like a parable, right? Up and down, up and down, up and down. I think that's a parable. Anyway, so that's, that's how we're constructed where we have highs and lows on focus. So when you're asking yourself, right,
how did I do you know, did I do everything I could do? Did I play my best? You need to look at yourself in terms of who you are, right? What you bring to the game, the work you've put in, right? The more work you put in, you can expect more from yourself. That's okay, right? Don't expect perfection,
right? But you can expect a little bit more if you haven't put any work in, you know, okay, then maybe don't expect so much and not a criticism, okay, it's accurate. Just let's live in the real world. So look at those factors about yourself. Understand that the game is a messy game, right? And that the game is a little bit,
it's a little chaotic, right? And then understand that your performance during a game and during a session and during a week et cetera, your performance is gonna go up and down, right? That's normal. And your focus is also gonna go up and down and using those characteristics, right? Putting those characteristics together will help you develop your baseline metric. In other words,
your metric for yourself so that when a match ends, win, lose or draw the match, right? Or the game. You can ask yourself, okay, did I do what I could do? Not, did I win? Not did I play the most amazing Pickleball anybody's ever seen on planet Earth? None of those questions that don't make any sense.
You ask yourself, did I do what I could do? And let's, let's take a specific example. Let's say that for instance, you're recovering from, I'm gonna add two things here. You're recovering from a shoulder injury, three things, shoulder injury. You are, you know, you're have a lot of lot on the mind, right? Some family things going on or whatever.
So there's just a lot of things going on in your life right now and you're playing in that match. You're playing against players who have been drilling, you know, for the last six months nonstop. And you just haven't had time to do it and you lose the game. 11 two, okay? You're probably not gonna feel great about losing that game 11 two,
I understand that, right? I mean that's human nature, right? Our, that's our initial reaction, right? And let me digress for a second here 'cause I just heard this, the, the other day, two days ago. So I, it's not in the script, but, but both are in the in outline. But basically there's this idea in,
in Buddhism that I'm gonna look into a little more for some future podcasts. But this idea of like levels of pain, if you wanna call it levels of discomfort. And so the initial reaction, right, the initial hit you get is we lost 11 two, I don't feel good about myself. That's okay. Even in Buddhism as I understand it, that's okay.
What you need to then do is protect yourself behind that initial negative reaction, right? Of the 11 two. And this is where having this question comes in where you can say, okay, did I do what I could do? Okay, shoulder injury, family, I've been working on my game, they've been working on their game, they're playing amazing.
This all makes sense. There's nothing wrong. I did the best I could do against opponents who are clearly playing at a better level than I'm right now. And that's perfectly fine. Okay? So that way you protect yourself from this next layer of pain, if you wanna call it that in terms of your process. So think through this baseline, you know,
if you may have to go back and listen to the podcast again, that's fantastic. You know, nothing wrong with that. You know, write these down, do it for yourself, and then set a baseline that's proper for yourself in terms of did I do what I could do, did I do the best that I can? And then next, I'm gonna go into the riff in a second.
So don't leave me yet in the riff, I'll talk about the open for a minute. But next week we'll talk about the benefits of doing this, right? Some of the pitfalls you're gonna avoid, and I've already alluded to some of those here, but we'll go to more in depth and tie it altogether next week. Alright? In the rif we are going to talk about the US Open and just some of the,
the incidentals of the US Open. I think you'll find it interesting as we dive into the rif. I think I mentioned this last time, but you know, we have our friends at total Pickleball have been kind enough to provide us with what's called an affiliate link and a code. What that does is it allows if you purchase something through total Pickleball through their website using our link and our code,
then what happens is whatever you purchase, they kick back an affiliate commission to us. It's very, everybody does it, right? So it's very common. And the reason we, we ask you to consider doing that if you're purchasing something is because it helps support this podcast and the other content that we provide for free online and YouTube, et cetera. So if you could do that,
I'll put it down in the description and we would appreciate you doing that at total Pickleball. Your price won't change and everything else will be the same, but it helps support our cost. Alright, diving into the riff, the US Open is going on this week, as I mentioned at the beginning, it's pretty sure it's the largest tournament in the world.
I believe it's even larger than Nationals was last year. But in any event, it's a great event. I mean the energy here is insane and things like that. The, you know, the, the plays very high level. I mean, you see all sorts of levels, but it's everybody's playing in their level at the highest level of the world,
right? So the three fives there are really strong three fives, et cetera, et cetera. But what I wanted to talk about was more the camaraderie that you see at an event like the US Open. A lot of the players there aren't playing in the tournament. You know, they're coming to, to watch to, to feel the energy to walk around.
You get to see a lot of players from all over the country, Franklin over the world and just, it's, you know, the, the spirit of Pickleball is, is an amazing thing in terms of not just the play out on the court, it's about the bigger community right's, about the bigger feeling, about the bigger connection that we all make.
And the US Open is no exception to that. It's just great to see all these players, fans, everybody walking around, smiling, bumping fish, shaking hands, congratulating each other. You do see some heads hanging low when, when players lose, they don't have the metric that we talked about in my opinion, but that's okay. It's a process,
right? For all of us. But we, you know, but they're still out there. They're doing their thing, they're doing their best. But you know, the big picture, it's a positive, right? You see a positive, you see a great comradery and it's been a pleasure for CJ and I and our team to be able to be here at the US Open and to again,
you know, say hello to folks to shake hands and it's just a, it's an amazing experience. I would say if you ever have the opportunity to come to Naples for a US Open, highly recommend it to you. I'd also recommend you be know if you're closer to like an A PP tour event. The A PP tour runs fantastic events. The play is,
again, you're gonna be amazed at the play, you're gonna see out there on the core and they're very player friendly and, and fan friendly and things like that. So if you see an A PP, you can go to the a PP tour online and check out their schedule and find an event. It's just worth going, you know, if you're a Pickleball player,
just to kind of, if you've never been to one just to see it, you don't have to play in the tournament to go. You can go check it out. Alright? So that's this week's podcast. We're gonna be at the open the rest of this week and then next week should be back in studio to give you the final installment in this series on setting your benchmark For yourself on did you do the best you can.
As I asked at the beginning, if you get a chance to rate and review the podcast, please do. And as always, share with your friends. If you enjoyed the podcast, they probably will too. Have a great week and I'll see you next time.