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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.
[00:00:00.000] - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. Hope you're having a great week. This podcast is part of the betterpickleball. Com family of pickleball teaching. This is our podcast, and also our focus here is on the mental part, so this is our athletic pillar. It's a really important part of growth as a pickleball player or growth as a human being. That's what we do here at the podcast. I am your host, Tony Roy. If we haven't met before, I'm a senior professional pickleball player and also a master teaching professional dedicated to pickleball and to players like you who want to grow in the sport and also just as human beings. That's why we started this podcast. This week's podcast, we're going to be talking about The erne. Now, it's an improvement podcast, basically talking about growth as a player and concept of red herring. I picked The erne as an extreme red herring to focus on, and then But we're going to be talking about a lot more than just The erne. We're going to be talking about spins and some other red herring that are out there for you.
[00:01:06.200] - Speaker 1
Then in the RIF, I'm going to share with you a little bit about the podcast and where we've come so far. I have this little If you're watching it online or in the video, I'm sorry, you could see in this, next to me, there's a little podcast microphone, little thing that has the number of downloads that we've had so far and things. I'll be talking about that in the RIF. Before we jump into the podcast, I want to share the latest review that we have on the Apple podcast system. It's from Howlin' Mouse. Five stars. Thank you very much, Howlin' Mouse. I love this Pickleball Podcast because it is super informative. It's informative because Tony is so informed. We do our best to stay on top of things as much as we can. There's not a lot of fluff, just the facts. Tony Ruyge is teaching professional par excellence. I put the accent on myself because I think that's how you say it. I have confidence in his instruction. Check it out. Really We appreciate the review. There's a reason for these reviews that's beyond... It's nice to read for me as the podcast host to hear from you and to know that there's an impact that we're having.
[00:02:13.410] - Speaker 1
We appreciate that in and of itself. But the other reason we ask for ratings reviews every single podcast is because it helps us reach other players. Give it a thought in terms of your experience with the podcast, meaning there was a point in time at which you did not know this podcast existed, and then you found out about it. If you listen to it regularly, then I'm assuming that you enjoy the podcast and that it's helpful to you. There's other players out there who are just like you or maybe in a place where this podcast would help them out or they'd feel better about the game. If you share with them, that's the most direct. That's awesome. But even if you write a review, it makes it more likely that that player will be shown this podcast if they ever go into the podcast ecosystem and say, Let me see a pickleball podcast. If you have a minute, rate and review it, we really appreciate you doing that. All right, let's dive into the meat of the podcast today. This this idea of ernes and red herring. What happens if you don't know what... Let me tell you what an erne is in case you don't know what it is.
[00:03:22.440] - Speaker 1
An erne is where the player jumps over the kitchen or the non-volley zone to hit the ball. You see a lot of pros do it. They basically leap over. If you do it, you get to hit the ball earlier and closer to the net because you're hitting the ball. Basically, you're traveling above the non-volley zone, which is not a violation. You're able to smash the ball sometimes right near the net. So when it's done, when it's executed properly and the ball's hit hard and put away, it's pretty dramatic and need to witness. But that does not translate from it's an exciting shot to see to I need to add that to my game. I will tell you that there are I would say thousands, probably, hundreds for sure, but thousands of players who work on the erne, who it's not a good use of time. Now, we're always going to say this, if there's a shot, pickleball. Pickleball is a sport. Pickleball is a fun activity. If there's a shot or a thing that just tickles your fancy, makes you all elated when you hit it and you're happy about it, and that's great.
[00:04:43.680] - Speaker 1
Learn the shot, work on the shot. Another example would be one of those kickout serves or some fancy, something that just makes you happy. Then by all means, just pursue it in a fun way. Pursue the sport in a fun manner. What I'm talking about here is, does it make sense from a strategic, a fundamentally good game plan for you as a player to improve? There's a lot of shots out there, and I'm going to dive into the erne a little bit more to explain the fallacies with it. But there's a lot of shots, just like the erne, that are out there that end up being these red herring. I looked at the definition so I could read it to you. A red herring, in addition to being a dried smoke herring, is also a term that's used for a clue or piece of information that is or is intended to be misleading or distracting. When you're pursuing your objective of playing better or just becoming a more well-rounded pickleball player, there's a million things out there, maybe not a million, thousand things out there that can distract you, that can just pull you in different directions and directions that are not as productive as others.
[00:05:56.500] - Speaker 1
The erne is a good example of... It's a very extreme one because I don't know how many of you who are listening have said, I need to add an erne to my game. Maybe some of you. I can suggest you, if you've had that thought, I would suggest really putting it on pause, just table it for now and really think about it, again, unless you're just super excited about it. Because I will tell you that when you watch the erne in action in pro matches, even, it's a very limited strategic value. It's exciting when it happens, but more often than not, players attempting the erne are just simply caught out of position with their partner having to cover the whole court, play 2v1. It creates a positional breakdown, and it's just not an effective shot. The erne isn't always successful, meaning it doesn't have 100% guarantee rate, even when you hit the erne. There's plenty of times that it's defended or you miss it and things like that. The amount of work that's involved in lerne the erne, that's the other factor, It's high. You're not going to start doing ernes just one day to the next.
[00:07:07.200] - Speaker 1
There's a lot of physical risk with ernes. We have a good friend of ours who blew up both her knees working on ernes. It's a high-risk move for your body that has very limited value. I don't know of any important match that was decided based on an I'm talking at the pro level, right? At the best levels. Those are the best ernies. They're the youngest and the ones that could do it the best. If you look at the players who actually earn well, there are players who do it very frequently. You can even think of like, think of Ben Jones. Does Ben Jones erne? Sure, he ernies. He's also a young man who knows how to do it. He's been doing it for a while, but he doesn't erne all the time. He ernies when the situation calls for it. Basically, he reads the situation and then, based on his read and anticipation, is able to hit an erne. There's a lot of players who, instead of doing that, just run over, run over to the erne spot, and they don't hit the erne. It's just, yeah, doesn't do anything. It actually doesn't do anything positive, does something negative for the team.
[00:08:22.160] - Speaker 1
The erne is an extreme, but there's plenty of other areas where we can get distracted, like the red herring thing. We just basically go down these paths that don't really lead to anywhere. Oftentimes, lead us backward. You may have heard me say this before, but it bears repeating. I know of many players in my circle of players who I know, in my area, who I've been friends with for years that play pickleball, who have... Some have gotten stuck, but more often than not, they have regressed as players. Regressed, okay? So they've gone backward. And these are players who work on their game. These are not just casual, like play once in a while. Lessons, drilling, the whole nine yards. And their pickle ball has gone backward. And it's gone backward because they've added elements to their games that are necessary, and they are causing them to make more mistakes in their than they would have made otherwise. It's not even like... It'd be bad enough if I just said, It's not worth it, basically. It's not going to do anything for you. Here, what I'm telling you is that there's a lot of times that these These sorts of additions that seem sound actually will regress you.
[00:09:52.250] - Speaker 1
They'll actually make you go backward, which is obviously worse. Then the example I gave you with our friend with the erne who blew up both of her knees doing something that, frankly, if she had asked me, I hope to said, Don't even go down that path. It's just not necessary. It's not significant to help your game. Again, if she wanted to do it because it just made her happy, then fine. Everybody's an adult. You do you, have fun. But if you're doing it because you're thinking, Oh, this is going to really elevate my game, it's not where the action is. Last night, I did a live game study with a saw of our students inside the Better Piggerball Academy, and we analyzed some pro play. I wanted to show in the match, I wanted to show how many shots that those players hit. We're talking about... We were watching J. W. Johnson, and it's early in the morning, J. W. Johnson and Dylan Frazier against Gabriel Tardieu and Andre Diascu. These They're two of the top three to five teams in pickleball, in all of pickleball, right? I mean, they play men's, but anyway, so they're two of the top three to five teams in all of pickleball and doubles.
[00:11:12.550] - Speaker 1
I asked the viewers, the students who were there, to watch how many of the shots, as we watched the rallies, how many of the shots were fundamentally sound shots that were achievable by any anybody who was present, any of the students who were there. I can tell you that the vast majority of shots that these players hit are fundamentally sound shots that most of us can hit regularly without making a lot of mistakes. I actually focused in on one of the shots on Gabriel Tartiere, a young player, very exciting young player, excellent player, and very nice young man. I've had the pleasure of meeting him since the time that he was a much younger teenager playing pickleball. But anyway, but watching Gabriel Tartiere hit some volley dinks, I was able to slow those down and just frame by frame them so you could see it's a flat, very flat, simple process, a simple mechanic, where he's just reaching his paddle out, open face, making contact with the ball, and just gently pushing it to where he wants it to go. Nothing exciting, no big swings, no big follow-throughs, no big spinnies and stuff like that.
[00:12:25.090] - Speaker 1
Nice and simple. And he's one of the best players on the planet. So what That's the opposite of the red herring. Those are players who understand what it takes to win and aren't getting drawn down these side paths on like, Well, maybe I should add this exciting new thing, because this is what's going to solve my game. What they do is they focus on fundamentals. That's a word that we shy away from that word. When I say C. J. And I, we shy away from that word. In our In our materials that we write, that we publish, not because it's a fantastic word, it's a great word, and it really describes a lot. But we shy away from it because the minute we say the word fundamentals, what is it that you hear? Objectively, you hear beginner, basic. I'm past that. That couldn't be any further from the truth. Because all of us, myself included as a senior pro player, and all of the pro players who I know, senior and non-senior, focus on fundamentals. That's what we focus on. That's what makes us play the way that we play. It's not the sexy shots.
[00:13:43.830] - Speaker 1
It's not the ESPN highlight shot. That is not how these players win a lot of matches. They win a lot of matches by focusing on the fundamentals. If you haven't seen it yet, you can go to the IntuPickle channel on YouTube. It's N-I-N, the number 2 pickle altogether. I did a soft game breakdown last week on a pro match, and you can see how those teams, what they focus on is our soft game fundamentals. That's what they focus on. And mechanically, it's fundamentals. Now, once you master the fundamental, if you want to layer some other complexity on it, that's okay. And the other thing, too, on a red herring note is when you see an Anna Bright or some Analee Waters or one of these players hitting like roll dinks and stuff like that, where rolling their dink with Topsfin. Anna Bright played Division One College Tennis. She's hit Topsfin forehand since probably she was five or something. I don't know the exact answer, but my guess is she's hit him the whole life. And so, yeah, she can hit that shot because she knows the timing, she knows the exact feel, she knows the exact paddle motion, everything like that.
[00:14:51.020] - Speaker 1
Can you hit that shot? Sure. Give yourself 50,000 reps, and then, okay, maybe you'll have a consistent forehand roll dink like Anna Bright or Anna Lee or somebody like that. When you think about your shots, when you think about growth of your game, I can't stress enough, focus on the fundamentals, right? The reason I picked the erne is the title and the beginning of this podcast is because the erne, it's not that there's anything wrong technically. It's okay, it's fine. It's a legal shot. It's effective when done well. But it's so far on the other end of fundamentals, right? It's literally the opposite extreme of fundamentals. The only other thing similar would be a crazy hyper spin serve or something like that. That's way on the edges. That's where shots like the erne are. But for most of us, I would suggest to you that even things like, I need to add spins or I need to add, let's say, a two-hand and back-hand drive. Why? Why do you need a two-handed backhand drive? How often you're going to hit that shot? There's a series of factors you can consider when you're deciding whether you should be working on something.
[00:15:58.270] - Speaker 1
You can think about it in terms of Think about it in terms of how much water it carries, right? How much water does the shot or the thing that you want to work on carry, really, in a game? For instance, a good block volley carry a lot of water for you. Oh, man, that thing will be at your side all the time. You can use it all the time. A good punch volley, awesome stuff, right? Again, like a backhand cut dink, how does that improve your dink from a really consistently sound flat dink? It's not going to give you that much more benefit. It's a marginal advantage. Then look at the potential downside of it. The downside of it is how much more error does it add to your game? Then ask yourself, how long is it going to take you to learn this shot? And are you willing to put in that time? And is it taking away from something else? We've done game studies where we've shown how a failure on one shot costs a team the whole match. It was a situation, it ties back to the erne, because a situation where the player didn't have a confident punch volley, so the player was letting all the third shots bounce.
[00:17:12.680] - Speaker 1
So whenever this player was up at the non- Volley zone line on the return side, so they were in a position of advantage. When the third shot came towards that player, that player would back away from the line every time, every time. And that allowed the other team to come forward every time, and then ultimately, they end up losing in this match. But this player did, in fact, try to do what? To earn a few times. And so we have a player who's trying to earn, but doesn't have a good punch volley. The player did not learn the erne of that match. They were playing a gold medal match in a tournament. This player had worked on the erne. This had been a deliberate, intentional, gross decision by this player. It was costly because spending time on the erne took away from other shots. So think of what you have to give up in order to gain what you're trying to gain. And then don't shy away from fundamentals. Don't look at it and go like, Oh, It's too basic for me. I need something sexier than this. Because I'll tell you that the winning in pickleball comes from the non-sexy stuff, doing it better and better and better than you have before.
[00:18:28.350] - Speaker 1
So hopefully that helps you with your improvement journey. In the RIF, we're going to be talking about the podcast and you as a podcast listener, so stay tuned for the RIF. In the meantime, I want to mention to you that I've been talking about the live game studies that we've been doing. That's inside our Better Piggerball Academy. If you haven't checked that out, check that out. You can go to betterpiggerball. Com. I'll put it in the show notes. We have a list of courses on there. Many of the courses are basically already on there, like Unforced Errors, Partner to play. Stacking, if you want to really... If you want to add something to your game that's really helpful, stacking. And stacking is, frankly, easy peasy, mac and easy. To learn stacking is not complicated, but lerne how to apply. Like, Fostering, it's more complicated, obviously, but lerne how to do it, not that complicated. Certainly easier than the erne, and it'll give you a lot more results. We have several courses like that already up right now. We have several more courses being launched that are coming out a little bit later this year, so be on the look out for that.
[00:19:35.280] - Speaker 1
And if you want to join one of our live game studies, we'll be doing them probably at least once, one live game study every month, maybe more during a month, depending on the schedule. But live game study is just a really interesting way to interact with pickleball and to grow, because I will walk you through a match. We curate the match, specifically for some reason, like the teaching moment here or teaching concepts, and then we go through it, and it's just a really fun way of seeing the sport of pickleball. So again, check that out. I'll put the link down below. All right, let's talk podcast for a few minutes. So next to me, if you're watching this on the video, there's a little microphone-looking thing, like a '50s microphone, and it says, 250,000 downloads, Transistor, which is our hosting site, and then, Pickleball Therapy. So I wanted to let you know that our podcast has exceeded 250,000 downloads. We're above that now, but 250,000 downloads, that's significant. What I wanted to do is to thank you, as a listener to the podcast, for trusting us with your journey, trusting us with your mental side of your journey, with a no-nonsense this approach to pickleball and to your growth as a pickleball player, and as you probably already know, to your relationship with pickleball, because we know that, particularly if you're listening to a podcast like this, you're not a casual interactor with pickleball.
[00:21:17.620] - Speaker 1
This is an important part of your life as well as it should be. It's a fantastic sport, a fantastic third space in terms of our lives and our ability to interact with other friends of ours who share a passion for pickleball. But we take our role in your journey seriously, and we're happy to be a part of your journey in terms of sharing with you what knowledge that we've been able to gain from this from this board and from using this sport as a way to grow as human beings. Again, thank you very much for being a part of the Pickleball Therapy podcast and allowing me into your homes or into your ears. Each of these weeks for the past. We're going on four years now. Anyway, thank you very much for that. Wouldn't be a complete podcast if I didn't ask you to share with your friends, because if you enjoy the podcast, they probably will, too. Maybe we'll go from 250,000 downloads to 500,000 downloads. Really, the important thing here is that players have this resource available to them if it's something that will help them enjoy more extensive and richer relationship with this beautiful sport of Pickleball.
[00:22:34.770] - Speaker 1
I hope you have a great week, and I look forward to seeing you at our next podcast.