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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.
[00:00:03.000] - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. My name is Tony Roig, the host of this podcast. It's a pleasure to be with you. As you know by now, if you listen to this, and if you didn't know it, now you know, this is the podcast dedicated to your mind. This is the podcast dedicated to how you think about the sport, how you think about your relationship with the sport. The idea here is to help you navigate your experience with pickleball so that you can have the best possible experience as well as the healthiest relationship with pickleball in terms of how you play, how you view things, and how you work on your improvement journey. This podcast today, this episode today, we're going to be focusing on a couple of different things. One main topic today will be about dealing with adversity. We're focusing on the improvement journey, but it can be also while you're playing, and I'll talk about both of those as we go through and then in the RIF, I'm going to talk about how to make things more bite-size for yourself so that they're not as overwhelming.
[00:01:06.870] - Speaker 1
Before we jump into the podcast, a couple of housekeeping items. One, we had our live event for December for our academy. It was attended by over 200 players. It was a fantastic evening. We talked about trends that we're seeing coming up for 2025 and how to deal with them. It's not just the trends, but also some strategies and tips on how to best address those moving forward. We had a lively question and answer session at the end. It's just a very engaging experience. We have one coming up in January. The one in January is going to be basically like a new year, new year, a thing. It's going to be very hands-on, very specific on things you can work on, including if you're off-court. If you're off-court, you're up in the north, and it's hard to get on the court and things like that, there is a lot of stuff you can do off-court that will help your game. We're going to be talking about that in January. Be on the look out for that in your emails, and make sure you get a seat for that. It's a lot of fun. And then one other thing is that we've announced several new camp dates in 2025.
[00:02:09.680] - Speaker 1
So if you're interested in a Better Pickleball camp, go to betterpickleball.com, click on the little camps area there, and you will find that information. All right, let's dive into the main topic of this episode of the podcast, which is about what happens, how do you deal with adversity when you're working on your game or when you're playing. I'll relate a personal story, and then we'll tie it into pickleball. As you may or may not know, I've been working on reupping or refreshing a new studio, a new studio space, painting it, just getting it ready to give a better experience and just have a really nice studio to deliver our content from. In that process, in that painting process, I was painting the ceiling, doing the first coat of paint on the ceiling. I had already primed I found everything. First coat of paint going down. I noticed that the roller was pilling. That's basically where it leaves those little fuzz balls behind. I hadn't seen it that well because of the lighting in there. Then finally, I caught it. I was like, Okay, I got to change rollers. But by then, I had a bunch of pilling on the ceiling.
[00:03:21.840] - Speaker 1
Obviously, not ideal, right? I had pilling, so I got to deal with it. Now, I'm going to have to go up there and wait till it dries, and then go up there and sand it, knock it down with some... I used some microfiber and some sandpaper, knocked it down. But the real question is, is the pilling something outside the ordinary? In other words, should I expect that every time that I'm going to go do something, in this case, painting, that everything should work flawlessly? My paint should apply, no problems. I should have no problems with the rollers. I should have no problems with the paint. I should have no problems with the wall. I should have no problems with pilling in this or is it more realistic to expect that whenever I'm engaging in anything in my life, that there's a percentage chance that something is going to not work perfectly, not go exactly according to plan? And I think if you listen to this podcast, my guess is you're not a teenager. You've been around the block a few times, and you know how life is. That was objectively, right? You know that... It's not that everything's going to necessarily turn to poopy or that what can go wrong will go wrong.
[00:04:34.880] - Speaker 1
I'm not a pessimist like that, but I am a realist. What I do know is that when you're embarking on anything, you're going to have some hiccups, some speed bumps, some adversity as you do it. I want to talk about it in two different ways here, but generally, I want to go in with this idea that... I want to start from this idea that things will occur to us that are not in line with exactly what we would perhaps hope or like in a perfect world. But that in and of itself is the perfect world. In other words, it may sound a little circular at first, but follow me for a second. The perfect world that we think about includes the adversities because there's no other way. There's just no hypothetical situation where... I mean, there is a hypothetical, but there's no real-world situation where the adversity isn't baked in to whatever it is we're doing. If you're working on your improvement, on your pickle improvement, and say you're working on a shot, and you're working on the shot, and then you realize that you misunderstood something from a coach or whatever it is, or you have something baked in that you didn't realize was there and you didn't see.
[00:05:58.190] - Speaker 1
You've been working on the shot, and then all of a sudden, it dawns on you or someone points out to your coach or you'd video yourself. You're inside one of our online courses and you video yourself compared to the paradigm. You're like, Oh, I'm missing this. Or you come to one of our live events and something clicks in your head, and you're Oh, I always thought you were supposed to cover lobs like this, but now I understand it's like that. One way to look at it is negatively, meaning, Darn it. Everything would be great but for this hiccup, this pilling that I have on the paint now, right? What do I do? A healthier way to look at it, and I would submit to you a more realistic way of looking at it is, okay, that's just expected, right? That's part and parcel of what I expected when I started this process was that I was going to have these hiccups, these bumps, again, the pilling, and that they're just naturally a part of what I got into, what I I started, this improvement process. The healthy approach of looking at it is, okay, it's simply part of it.
[00:07:08.660] - Speaker 1
The question is, how do I deal with it? Let me give you a more specific example So let's say that you're working on your serve and you have a tendency to pull your paddle across your body. This is a very common mechanical flaw in players' games, is that they pull the paddle literally across their body. If you're right-hand, you're pulling it from right to left, left-hand, left to right. What ends up happening is, sometimes a ball will go where you want it to go, sometimes it ends up being pulled out to the same direction you're pulling your paddle. If a right-hand play, you're pulling the paddle out to your left, the ball goes to the left more often than you want. You lose control over the direction of your shot. You're working on the serve, right? You're working maybe on your toss or on your drop. You're working on your point of contact, you're working on these things, but you didn't factor follow-throughing. So you put all this work in, but follow-through is still an issue. So you then determine follow-through is an issue. One way to look at it would be to berate yourself because, Oh, my God, I can't believe I missed that, and I'm such a dummy, and whatever.
[00:08:14.080] - Speaker 1
Or or to begrudge the fact that you didn't already do it. Instead, why not look at it like, Okay, the good news is I've worked on these other parts. Now I'll hone in on the follow-through. I'm not pulling my paddle across my body like that, and I'll be in a better in terms of the overall stroke because I already have the other stuff. In my example, I had put a first coat of paint down. I already primed, prepped, cut, put a first coat of paint down. It required maybe, I want to say 30 to 45 minutes of standing and microfibering, real light sanding and microfibering to get that knocked off. And then I'm back to regular programming. I'm going to put my second code on, and everything's going to be fine. So it's just a more constructive way of doing it, not just the way you think about it, but then how you react to it. Do you You just deal with it. Just handle it and deal with it. No big deal. So that's on the pilling thing and on the improvement process. That's a more appropriate way of processing it. It's the same when you play.
[00:09:17.430] - Speaker 1
When you go out to play, you're going to have things that happen when you play that just don't go the way you want them to. They're just the nature of the piece, the nature of the game. I like to say when I play, we have these super messy rallies. Everybody's trying to do their best, but things are just messy. Think about it when you've played. The times that you've won rallies that you definitely should have lost. You're sitting there going like, I don't have any idea we won that rally. Then you have rallies that you lost that you clearly, in your mind, should have won, that put away, and you're like, Oh, my God, how did we lose that? That's pickleball. That's just how it is. When you step out onto the court understanding that you're going to have adversity and pilling, you're going to have situations that arise or things that don't go the way that you plan them to go, and understanding that's part and parcel of the game, I think it's going to help you deal with those situations better. If you checked out If you listen to the last two episodes of the podcast, the last two weeks, about the 15% and about how you process that in terms of it always being there no matter what, those concepts combined with this concept where you just understand that this is baked in.
[00:10:30.980] - Speaker 1
The pilling is just baked in to your improvement process, improvement journey as well as to your play will help you just have a better perspective and just move forward. The next time you're facing adversity on your improvement journey, things aren't going exactly the way you wanted them to go. Just understand that that hurdle, that obstacle is just part of your process. It's just baked into your process. Then that's not the end of the world. It's It's something that you're going to have to deal with in order to get to where you want to go, but that's just how it is. The other thing is allowing yourself to not lose sight of the positives of the journey itself. I think a lot of times we focus so much on the final painted room, and we lose sight of the moments that we're painting, the cutting, the rolling, the seeing it develop, trying to do your best, focusing on the cutting again, because that's a pain, but pain in the sense of it's so detailed. You got to sit there and work on it. But even the word I use, I said it's a pain. That's why we're looking at it.
[00:11:39.790] - Speaker 1
Cutting is a pain because you have to be precise. But it's also a challenge. It's like a little puzzle that you try to work on. I think working on that process for yourself of understanding the nature of your improvement journey as a whole, including the speed bumps, will allow you to have a better interaction with that part of your pickle And what that does is it elevates your entire pickleball relationship, your entire feeling about everything that you're doing with pickleball, including those times when you end up with a little bit of fuzz on your pain. All right. The RIF, I'm going to talk about breaking things down into little pieces. But before we jump into the RIF, I wanted to let you know that we have partnered with Pickleball Central as our preferred equipment provider. That means that we have a link that you can use to purchase your items from Pickleball Central, and that link then helps support our efforts, including this podcast. We also have a discount code. It applies to many items on on our site. There's some items that doesn't apply to, but it applies to many items on their site.
[00:12:47.930] - Speaker 1
The standard discount is 10%, but whatever it is, it's more than you get without it, so might as well try it. If we can get you to use a link, we'd really appreciate it. We're not trying to get you to go there and buy anything you wouldn't buy anyway, but if you're going to buy something that's pickleball related, you're going to get the best customer service, the best price, and the best experience at Pickleball Central. The best way to get the link for that is going to be to go to betterpickable.com and just simply click on resources and then go to Pickleball Central. That'll give you the most current information. I'll put a link in the show notes to betterpickable.com resources for you. All right, let's talk about breaking big things down into small pieces so that they're more manageable for us. We I did a podcast a few months ago about the... It was a rift in the podcast, about a young person who set a record for running by running small chunks without realizing how many they had run, and then they ended up with a record. There's other statements like, The thousand-mile journey begins with one step.
[00:13:53.790] - Speaker 1
Those are all really helpful. What I wanted to share with you is a personal experience, something I've doing that I think can help you if you want to work on things like weight training or even drilling, anything that has a set amount of time or distance or number. So if you're doing weight training, you're doing, I need to do 12, I need to do 10. If you're doing distance on running or time on running, things like that. What I've been doing is I've been trying to... Not trying, I actually have been doing. I've been going to the gym more recently to get some weight training in because I think it's important as we... it's important all times in life, but when you get older, your muscles start to atrophy some, your bones will get more bridal. You send a signal to the brain by doing weight training. You send a signal to the brain that says, Hey, brain, I'm not quite done with these muscles and these bones yet. If you can help me out by making them a little bit more robust, that would be helpful. The brain will react. The brain, it's an energy conservation thing.
[00:14:58.710] - Speaker 1
It's beyond the scope of what I want to talk about right now. But the idea is your brain will say, Okay, I need more. I need those bones to be stronger, and it'll divert energy to that or divert energy to your muscles to help them become stronger. Actually, while I'm talking about it, I'll recommend a book. It's called Move Your DNA. I'll look up the author while I'm finishing up here, and I'll give it to you at the end. But it's a really good book that really helps you understand these things, and it'll change your view on on how your body works. It's Move Your DNA by Katie Bowman, K-A-T-Y-B-O-W-M-A-N. Highly recommend the book to you. But what I've been doing when I'm doing my exercises is, I'll give you a specific. Today, I was working on a certain type of exercise that I wanted to do 12 of each rep. It was 12 of doing one way, 12 one way, 12 one way, no barrest between. So that's 36, So one way to do it would be to count to 36 or count to 12 in each of them, each of the different movements.
[00:16:06.120] - Speaker 1
My experience is that that can be seem daunting to the mind. Your brain is just 36. Holy moly. So You're like at 22, then you're at 23. Even saying it, you're like, Oh, my God, I don't want to do that. Instead of doing that type of counting, consider breaking it down into smaller pieces. I believe it was Muhammad Ali who said that he didn't start counting until he was fatigued, until it hurt, until he was worn out, because that's really when it matters, which is true. He would only count to two or three once he started getting tired, and then he was done. I've done that a little bit, too, but what I did today that worked really well for me was actually count it to four three times. I counted up to four, counted up to four, counted up to four. I know it was done with one exercise. Then the Six exercise, same thing, four and four and four. Counting to three or four, I think, is an interesting way of maybe breaking down any big project that you're working on for your body into smaller bite-size pieces. I haven't yet tried it with time or with distance.
[00:17:16.020] - Speaker 1
But the distance would be, again, we did a podcast that we talked about that where the gentleman, the runner, ran 5Ks. He just ran a bunch of 5Ks and then ended up, I think, running something like 35K or 40K to set a record. But he was just focusing on the 5K. He wasn't thinking about anything more than that, and it really helped him. You could do the same thing with time, where you basically run two-minute increments. Set a time for two minutes, run two minutes, then run two more, then run two more. Those are ways of thinking about your process that make them seem more manageable. The other way to think about that or to use it for your benefit would be if you haven't done something before before. I haven't really ever weight-trained, but I've thought about it. Instead of making such a big, onerous plan for yourself, I need to research everything. I need to have all my Monday, Wednesday, Friday, all mapped out before I even go to the gym or before I even start working out at home, you have to go to a gym. Maybe right when this podcast is over, consider standing up from a chair 10 times.
[00:18:24.910] - Speaker 1
That's a great exercise. Listen, if you're not sure, check with your health care provider. I got to put the There's a qualifier in here. But seriously, try and do something that is simple, but do it. That's the key. Do it. And do it in bite-sized chunks. So don't make it so big that you don't end up doing anything at all. Same thing with drilling. If you want to drill, ask your friends to meet you at the courts three minutes early, five minutes early, and just hit whatever it is you're working to hit, your volley, your dink, your serve, whatever, your return, and just hit three or four minutes of it, and you'll be like, Wow, that was really helpful. It doesn't have to be two hours of drilling. Anyway, so hopefully that helps you get into a habit of doing something or help you break it down into more bite-sized chunks. All right, that's this week's podcast. This will be the final podcast before the holidays. I'm not sure whether there'll be a podcast right after the Christmas break because of going to visit some family. So either we'll put up a best of, we'll go into the archives and find some of the best of the past and share that with you.
[00:19:32.270] - Speaker 1
But in any event, I hope you have a happy holiday. And if we don't speak before then, I will see you in 2025. Be well.