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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 the podcast with you in mind. I'm your host, Tony Roig. I hope you're having a great week and enjoying a nice holiday season. This is our holiday edition of the podcast, and in this episode, we have a gift for you, which I'm gonna unveil in one second.
We're gonna unwrap it together that you're really gonna benefit from under a better understanding of the gift that you're gonna get, and also get you set up for 2024. Speaking of 2024, if you would like to learn from CJ and me during 2024, we still have some camp opportunities during 2024, and we also have our academy courses that'll be coming out in January,
February, and so on. Be on the lookout for those. If you're on the email list, you'll get notified of those. Give 'em a try. You're gonna learn a ton inside the Academy courses. And if you're ready to join us inside the Pickleball system, which you've heard a lot about, if you're listener, we have our, our spring class opening Spring 2024 class will be opening.
And so make sure that you join us for that if you're ready to really take that transformative step in your Pickleball journey. All right, let me, let me unwrap this gift, 'cause I'm excited. I wanna unwrap this gift for you and let's, we're gonna talk through it and I think it'll really help set the tone for you for 2024. The gift we have for you is you,
it's a better understanding of you and how you can accomplish everything that you want inside of Pickleball. In other words, there's a lot of power that you already have, and we're gonna explore that today, and you're gonna bring that to bear in, in, in terms of your relationship with Pickleball and deepening that relationship and continue to enjoy your relationship with Pickleball in 2024.
But let's start from, let's, let's start from a basic premise, which is this. And I was reminded of this in a comment to a video. And the comment from a viewer was in terms of understanding where we are as players. 'cause it's really important to understand where we are when we're consuming information in, in terms of our journey. And so what the viewer mentioned was that one,
that an area that's overlooked is athletic ability, is the, is the player's athletic ability. I agree in part and disagree in part, and I'll, I'll unpack that as we, as we speak today. But what I wanna start with is there, there's definitely, it, it definitely makes sense to think of ourselves as unique beings in the universe. And what I mean by that is,
in this context is each one of us comes to Pickleball with it, with our own baggage in, in a positive sense, our own experiences, our own background, our own skill sets, our own bodies, right? Some bodies move one way and some bodies move a different way. Some of us are faster. All of our are slower. Some of us have an easier time moving to the left and to the right and things like that.
We all come to it with our own, our own situation. We all come to it with our own age, right? We're not all, you know, 25. A lot of the, the newer content creators are younger and there's no criticism of them. They're, they're, You know, they're doing what's what they do at their age. What I would've done if I was,
you know, 25 years old and making a, a Pickleball video probably. But, you know, if you're viewing a 25 year old's video and you're, you know, 55, yeah, your body's not the same as theirs and your reactions aren't the same and everything else. So the, the key takeaway here and this, and in laying the foundation is to understand that,
you know, whatever it is that, that you bring to the sport, meaning your background and everything else, whether you played tennis before, whether you never played a sport in your life, it, it doesn't matter because the be one of the beautiful things about Pickleball is there's not a one size fits all. So it's not, you know, oh,
I can't do this, therefore I can't be a good Pickleball player. That is not the case. You can develop a, an amazing Pickleball game, an amazing relationship with this game, regardless of what your background is. Recently had the opportunity to interview Dylan Frazier. I'm not sure if the episode will be published before or after this episode you're listening to, but I can tell you that in that episode,
well, a couple of things that were interesting was, one is Dylan Frazier did not play tennis before Pickleball. His, his racket sports background is Pickleball. He did play other sports like baseball and things like that, but not a racket sport other than Pickleball. And he was able to transition from three, five to being one of the top pro players in the world.
Now, that's not for everybody. He's a, he's a, he's a young man. He's, I believe 21 right now. And so, you know, he, he was able to make the transition during his teenage years. It's not gonna be the same if, you know, we started playing six years ago as a 50-year-old, right? But the,
but the point of it is that even without a tennis background, he's been able to develop shots and develop understanding of strategies and implementation of those strategies when he plays to play at the highest level of Pickleball. So it doesn't matter what your background is, it's important to understand it. So let me be clear about this. It's important to understand what you're bringing to the table,
but it does, it's not gonna limit you in terms of your forward progress. And we're gonna get to forward progress in a second here and, and, and to how to apply yourself best. But I want you to first remove the obstacle of, you know what, I never played tennis, therefore I have a limitation in terms of how far I can get inside Pickleball.
'cause that is not correct. So you need to, you need to first remove the obstacle before you can continue, be free to walk forward with, with the, with yourself. And the, the, the title I was thinking about, you know, maybe the title for this, this week's podcast, if it hadn't been a holiday edition episode, would've been something like,
you know, you, you dance with the one who brung you, right? So you come to Pickleball with yourself and you have to embrace yourself as the player. In other words, as as it's the clay you have to work with, right? It's, it's what you have to work with in terms of developing yourself as a Pickleball player. And there's,
there's, the first thing is to understand. There's No limitation based on I am 65 or I never play tennis, or whatever it is, right? That's holding you back. Remove those, understand them, but remove them in terms of limitations. And, and then when I say understand them, what I mean by that is, is when you see a,
a, you know, former college tennis player teaching a stroke on YouTube, maybe evaluate whether that's the stroke that's gonna be best for you. Now, that's not to say there isn't a stroke out there that's best for you. 'cause there is one, it may just not be the stroke that the tennis player that, you know, the former college tennis player is showing you on a YouTube channel,
because that stroke may be and may not be that per that, that that content creator may have modified it for, you know, all use. But just be, be aware of that as you consume content. Now, again, I'll repeat this. It's not to say that you cannot develop a similar type of stroke. In other words, a stroke that does the job,
it just may not look exactly the same as a stroke that this particular other player is using. And that's where understanding framework is so important. You know, you, if you've listened to the podcast, you know that we talk about framework and objectives and things like that in our, in our, the way we think about Pickleball. But if we all,
if, if the framework of Pickleball is gonna be the same for you as it is for me as a senior pro player, as it is for any of the top players, as it is for the, the beginners, right? We all play the same game. The court's the same, the net's the same, the, you know, the rules are the same.
So everything's the same, right? Play the same ball, similar paddles, right? So it's all the same. The, the, the, the what's different is how we may approach it. Meaning if we have an understanding of the framework and we understand our objectives, the exact strategies and shots that we use, right? Or may change based on the skillset that we bring into the game,
but it doesn't limit our performance because we're all playing the same game. So in those, the framework is constant. What changes are the strategies and shots that we use based on our unique, unique set of, of circumstances unique? What makes us a unique being, right? So understand that, that you, you, you, you need to recognize who you are,
right? Everything about you embrace that. Don't, don't fight it. Don't say, well, I'm limited because of X because that is incorrect. And then say to yourself, okay, if I have an understanding of how the game is played, and I know that I can perform, and I'm gonna get into, into your, your positive performance in a second a little more.
But if I know I can per I have understanding I can perform, there's no limitation and I understand framework, then okay, there's a, there's a forward path for me as a Pickleball player to do whatever I want with the game to get, to go as far as I want with this, with this beautiful game. So, which now that we've removed the obstacle,
let's talk a little bit about how we can, how we can think about Our ability to progress as Pickleball players. And what I want you to understand here is no matter what your background is, no matter, you know, your history or anything like that, you are a capable human being. You have done things in your life, whatever that may be,
whether it's in the home, at a workplace as a hobby, prior activities, professions, anything you've done right, going to school, whatever it is, you have accomplished things in your life, right? And so what that tells me and should tell you is that you are a capable human being. You can, you have done a lot of things in your life and probably done a lot of things very well in your life.
Pickleball is absolutely no different than those things other than it's, it's just a new puzzle to solve, right? It's a new, new challenge to overcome, but it's no different in terms of your ability to overcome those challenges and to make advancements if that's what you want to do as a Pickleball player. And what I think what happens is players sometimes can get frustrated and feel stuck by a combination of,
you know, I don't have the right background, right? As a, I'm not, like I said, I didn't play tennis or something like that, right? Plus, I, I'm just not getting this and feel a little get despondent, right? Or feel frustrated by the process. But if you step back from it, right? This is what I hope will be the,
the gift to you in this episode. If you step back from it and really say to yourself, okay, first of all, you know, Tony told me that I don't need to have a particular background in order to succeed as a Pickleball player. And I can give you more examples than Dylan Frazier, Mary Kozak, excellent player with nationals medals at nationals at 4.5.
You know, there's a lot of players who I've played with who are now, are there more, are there a lot of tennis players too? Sure, there are a lot of tennis players. I'm one of them, you know, where a lot of tennis players have transitioned from tennis to Pickleball. It's a natural, natural transition for us. But there's a lot of non tennis players who are also very good Pickleball players.
So start from the premise that no matter what your background is, no matter what your age is, no matter what your situation is, you can be a very good Pickleball player. Okay? So you embrace that and then you step, you, you stay in that step back position where you're kind of taking a big lens at yourself and you say to yourself,
you know what? I have done these things well in my life. I have succeeded here or there in my life, whatever it is that, that fits the bill for you, right? I know that I'm capable. I can navigate a day. I, you know, I've, I I I know how to get up in the morning, put on my shoes,
you know, get out the door, get food, feed myself. I mean, all the things that you need to do to stay alive so you know how to navigate life. Pickleball iss no different. What you need is, you need the relevant information, right? In order to continue to grow as a Pickleball player. Now you can, you can find that you can do your own,
you know, self, self-awareness journey. And there's nothing wrong with that, right? You can think about the game, you can do what CJ and I have done. You know, we, we, we did not know Pickleball before. I think CJ started in Pickleball around 2016 or so. I started, or 2015 or something like that. I started around at the same time,
didn't know anything about Pickleball before then. And I've been on this journey to learn this sport and to really get into it. And I spent countless hours studying the game and, and game tapes and things like that. There's nothing stopping you from doing the same thing. You can also opt to learn something from CJ and from me through our courses. You know,
that's another way to learn. But if you want to, right? The key takeaway here is you can, you're a capable human being with a supercomputer up between your ears, able to play an amazing game of Pickleball. If that is something that you want to do, and I hope that you take away from this podcast is that you are your gift.
In other words, you are the best thing that happened to you in general, right? But specific to Pickleball in terms of your relationship with Pickleball, because it is you who are able to do wonderful things on the Pickleball Court if you want to. And if you set your mind to it, it's available to you in 2024 and beyond. So that is our holiday episode of Pickleball Therapy.
I hope that you have a better understanding of not just the fact that there are no limitations, but that you are able to do great things on and off the Pickleball Court. I hope you continue to have a wonderful holiday season. As always, if you have a minute, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast. And during the holiday season, it's a great time to gift Pickleball Therapy to a friend of yours who may benefit from this podcast.
So remember to share with your friends, because if you enjoy the podcast, they probably will too. Again, have a great holiday season and we'll see you in the next episode.