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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 2
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. I'm your host of this podcast, Tony Roig. I hope you're doing well. I hope you've enjoyed a nice Thanksgiving and are in the full swing of the holiday season. I know things get hectic and crazy during this time of year, but whatever your situation is, wherever you're spending it with, however you're spending it, I hope you have a fantastic time. This is actually an interesting episode this week. Sometimes this happens in production. It looks like this episode was recorded and uploaded to our platform in 2024, but it never got published. It never got the, Let's push this out. So we're going to go back in time and release it now. I think it's a good concept about climbing mountains. I know I wrote a piece about it that had some good feedback back in the day. So I think you'll enjoy the concept here. It's about just our journeys as pickleball players. You can also apply it to anything else in your life. Before we dive into the podcast, quick update on the book. The Kindle edition of the book has been resolved so that the issues that we're having with the Kindle Upload are resolved so that Kindle is ready to rock and roll.
[00:01:15.460] - Speaker 2
If you're waiting for a Kindle, it's there. So make sure you go to Amazon and get it. If you have read the book or read the book in the future and have a minute to review it on Amazon, it's very appreciated. It's the type of thing that you can do in a few minutes, but it makes a big difference to the book and its reach out there with other players and helps other players. And then if you're interested in a camp, we have some spots available for our camps coming up in January. We scheduled a women's only camp in January. That one has several spots left. So if you're interested in a women's only camp, sign up for that one in January. If February or another month, they're better for you, or you want to go to Arizona and have C. J. Johnson coach you up, we have spots there as well. You can go to betterpickleball. Com and find that information there. Anyway, with that said, I hope you enjoy this podcast that had slipped through the cracks. I think you really like it. I will see you next time for another episode of Pickaball Therapy.
[00:02:19.260] - Tony Roig
Be well. Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickle improvement. I am your host, Tony Roig. I am a full-time pickleball coach, as well as a senior professional pickleball player. In this episode of Pickable Therapy, we're going to be focusing on the progress path, in other words, on your progress journey. So if you're into progress, pay attention to this podcast. You're going to really benefit from thinking about your improvement journey along the methodology that we're going to cover in this episode. As you know by now, if you listen to Pickleball Therapy, you know that our podcast is dedicated to the mental side of pickleball. But I wanted to take a moment here to talk about that because the mental side of pickleball doesn't limit itself to simply pickleball. You can think about using pickleball as a gym for your mind. What I mean by that is that these concepts that you learn in side of your pickleball mental journey, right, through the Pickleball Therapy podcast, will apply to your pickleball game, but they also apply well beyond your pickleball game. In other words, you'll be able to apply them in many other aspects of your life.
[00:03:28.860] - Tony Roig
So think about the pickleball court as a gym, in which you can use the gym to work on strengthening your mental perspective, your mental health, your mental approach. And then when you step out into the, quote in the real world, you can apply those same principles there. So there's a lot more benefit to spending time on the mental part of your game well beyond the four lines on the outside of the court. So well beyond the court is the benefit of your mental training. As I mentioned, today we're going to be focusing on your progress journey, on your improvement journey. And we're going to be talking about mountains and mountain climbing. So I think you're really going to like this framing of the journey of a pickleball player as they seek to improve. Before we jump into the podcast, if you're interested in improving, one of the first things that you need to think about is reducing errors in your game. If you want to play better, then reducing errors in your game is the key. Pickable is not a game about learning how to hit zingers or winners and ESPN highlight real shots. That is not how pickleball games are won and lost.
[00:04:38.800] - Tony Roig
The way they're won and lost is through errors. Error accumulation on one side or the other side is usually how the game is usually the sidey factor in a pickleball game. And so if you want to learn how to reduce the unforeseen interest in a game, check out our course inside the Pickable Academy. It'll give you some really good tips on how to reduce the unforeseen interest in a game. Think about pickleball a little bit differently and figure out how to get those pesky errors down in your game. I'll put a link down in the description, and you can join us for that class inside the academy. All right, let's jump into this idea of mountain climbing as a good analogy/metaphore for the pickleball improvement journey. So let's think about what it means to try and climb a mountain. When you face a mountain, you're standing next to a mountain, it doesn't have to be Mount Everest. It can be any an obstacle in front of you. It could be a foot hill, a shore mountain with an easy slope, an easy climb, however, may be a really steep climb like a Mount Everest. So you have those different types of mountains, right?
[00:05:40.260] - Tony Roig
But anytime we're facing a mountain, we know that we are going to be We're going to have some level of struggle, right? In other words, the mountain is going to create some... At least even a small slope will create some struggle, meaning that our heart rate will go up, we'll sweat a little more. It's going to be a little bit harder than if we were just walking on some flat terrain. So we need to be ready for a hurdle, for a challenge that will be presented to us. The extent of the challenge will depend on the type of mountain we're trying to climb. Again, some mountains, some struggled, not as great. Other mountains, a lot more struggle, a lot more preparation to be able to climb that mountain. As we move up the mountain, we expect that we're going to have some switchbacks, some back and forth. It's not going to be a straight line. We also expect that there's going to be some areas where we may have to go on a steeper climb, and some areas that'll be flat, maybe as flat as the ground that we left behind us was. So we expect different types of terrain.
[00:06:41.380] - Tony Roig
There are times in our mountain climbing journey that we're going to be going, Man, this is really hard because we're going up pretty steep incline. And now are the times that we're just walking straight, catching our breath and relaxing a little bit. And again, it's not a straight line. It's not like, Okay, I'm here, top of the mountain's there. I'm going to go straight. It's Sometimes we have to go to the left, sometimes we have to go to the right, sometimes we have to find a better way to get up. If you think about your pickable improvement, your pickable progress, it's the same. There are times along that path, and on a specific mountain, I want to be clear So on a specific mountain, let's say you're working on your third shot, right? Let's go ahead and dive into one of the harder shots for most players. The third shot dropped. There are times when you're going to be working on that shot that it's going to seem impossible. It's going to seem like, I just can't get this, right? That's when you're standing in that sheer cliff and you're trying to find another way around, or you're trying to find a path that might be easier to get up.
[00:07:39.660] - Tony Roig
There are other times that you're going to be going like, Man, I got this thing dialed in. I'm fine, right? And that's when you're walking on the straight path, and then maybe the next week, you backslide a little bit with it and you go, Okay, I still got to climb a little more, right? And then you get on a switchback and start going left and right up the mountain. The point is that it's very normal when you're trying to improve as a player, when you're trying to make progress as a pickable player, that you're going to run into different types of obstacles along the same part of your journey. In other words, you're on the same mountain, right? So you're working on the third shot drop. You're going to feel different at different times. So it's not like it's perfectly normal to say one week is harder than another week, and another week might be easier as you continue to work up that mountain. So expect that when you're going to improve, when you're going to say, You know what? I want to progress or improve in this area. First of all, expect that you're going to be challenged.
[00:08:38.510] - Tony Roig
If you're not going to be challenged, there's really no point to this. That's the point. If you're going to be challenged, improvement requires some level of challenge and effort by you, right? So you're going to be challenged. The extent of the challenge will depend on a series of factors. It'll depend on, first of all, where are you coming from, right? Are you already a well-trained mountain climber. And what I mean by that is, let's say that you came from another racket sport, tennis, racket ball, something like that. You have a lot of experience with a racket or another type of paddle in your hand. Then if you're trying to learn a mechanical shop, for instance, probably you're going to see the mountain and go, You know what? I know how to climb that type of mountain. I've climbed that type of mountain before in my prior life. Even then, even with a tennis or a similar type of background, if you're working on strategy, for instance, or the athletic pillar, which is what we're working on here with the mind, the mountain, the difference in the mountain may not be as great relative to a non-racket sports background player.
[00:09:40.740] - Tony Roig
So you come up to it and you see about the same challenge for you in that case, because strategy is strategy, right? Whether you come from tennis or you come from a non-tennis background. So expect the mountain challenge to depend on where you're coming from as well as what you're trying to accomplish. If you're trying master the more difficult parts of pickleball, for instance, the movement through the transition zone on the serve side. So when you're playing on the serve team now, your team is serving. Getting from the baseline up to the non-volley zone line on that side of the court is the hardest part of pickleball. It's harder than anything else that we do in pickleball. And so if you're trying to master that, you got to expect the mountain is going to be massive. I mean, there you're at the Mount Everest of pickleball improvement. So if If you're trying to improve in that area, understand what you're trying to overcome, what you're trying to mount, if you will, the mountain you're trying to climb. And perhaps that will help you avoid some natural frustration that happens when we don't just zip up that mountain, right?
[00:10:45.000] - Tony Roig
We look up and we go, You know what? That's on Everest. That's going to take some time. That's going to take some planning. I might have to get some oxygen mass with me. I might need a Sherpa to help me. I got to go up this mountain, right? That's a big challenge. And And so understand the magnitude of the challenge that's before you. Let's go to the other extreme. Let's say you're just trying to figure out, You know what? I'm hitting too many serves into the net. I'm not saying it's easy, okay? I'm not trying to tell you that's an easy thing to fix for everybody because it depends on where you come from. For some, it'll be a bigger challenge. But when you compare fixing serve, just subjectively, when you compare fixing a serve into the net problem with solving the how do I get from the baseline to the non-volley zone line on the serve side, those are very different magnitudes, right? So you can expect the mountain or the hill, perhaps, that you need to climb to fix your serves into the net to be a lower and less challenging. I want to be clear, I'm not saying it's not challenging.
[00:11:44.280] - Tony Roig
I'm just relative to the other one. It is objectively less challenging. So you have an expectation of the type of mountain you're going to climb. And as you're climbing the mountain, right? Remember that there is beauty in the journey. There is beauty in the experience of climbing the mountain. In fact, that is why you climb a mountain, right? Is to have the experience of the climb and then the view from the top. Don't bypass, or don't overlook the experience of climbing the mountain. In other words, don't look ahead to, I want to get to the top and just see the view. Embrace, enjoy, breathe in the experience of climbing that mountain because that is a big part of the journey. Now, when you get to the top of the mountain, in pickleball, there's always going to be another mountain behind it. Now, you don't have to climb the next mountain. That It'll be up to you. But pickleball will always present to you another mountain that you can climb should you choose to climb it. Because pickleball always has something to teach us, and it's up to us whether we want to climb the next mountain or not.
[00:13:00.240] - Tony Roig
Again, entirely up to us. Another interesting way of thinking about this is that sometimes when we've climbed one mountain, we need to walk for a little bit of time in a plateau, right on a flat level, before we arrive at the next mountain. That is perfectly natural to climb a mountain and then plateau at the top of the mountain and have to walk to get to the next mountain before we can climb the next mountain. And there's nothing wrong with it. Enjoy the process of climbing the mountain. Enjoy the process of walking across a plateau to get to your next mountain. The keys are embracing the process and knowing that there will always be another mountain to climb. So just getting up on top of this mountain, while great, doesn't mean that you're done with your growth in the sport of pickleball for as long as you choose to do that. And I've alluded to this a little bit. I've talked about a little bit during this podcast, but I want to lean into this a little bit more. The fact that we have mountains in pickleball, the fact that there's challenges, there's things to learn and growth for us, that's why we come to pickleball.
[00:14:13.480] - Tony Roig
That's what keeps us here. If pickleball was a static, boring activity, boring meaning like it was just rote and all we had to do was just, okay, I already know how to do this. I'm going to do it over and over again. That's not the attraction of pickable. There are plenty of activities that we can do that have that experience in them, and there's nothing wrong with them. There's perfectly fine activities to calm the mind and just relax you and things like that. Great. That's not pickable. Pickable is about challenges and about solving puzzles and about growth if that's your thing. Because as long as you want to grow, it'll have growth for you. And for my money, that's one of the beauties of this sport. So embrace the process as a mountain climber. Enjoy the climb up the mountain, and keep climbing as many mountains as you choose, because they'll always be there for you. If you enjoy this week's podcast, please rate and review it, and as always, share it with your friends. I hope to see you inside a Pickup Ball Academy class, or we have our upcoming Pickup Ball System enrollment.
[00:15:11.080] - Tony Roig
You can check out our upcoming Win More Workshop series. And in that series, you will get to know more about the way that we teach. And then you can make a decision as to whether the Pickup Ball System is right for you or whether you're ready for it at this moment in your life. If you're on our email list, you'll get invited to our workshop. So if you're not on our email list, I highly recommend you check that out and join our email list. I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you next time.