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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.
[00:00:04.900] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. I am Tony Roig, the host of this weekly podcast. I hope you're doing well. We're right in the middle here of the holiday season, actually getting towards the end of December. This will be our last episode of 2025. I'm going to take advantage of today's episode and give you some conversation to help you get ready for 2026. Next week, I believe Friday falls on the second of January or something like that. So we're going to take next week off. So there'll be no podcast next week, but we'll be back on the ninth with another episode. So this episode will be our year-end episode. If you miss us next week, please listen to this episode again because the idea is in this episode help you get set up for 2026. Every year, I think it's important to think about our movement forward as human beings, as pickleball players, specifically because of the topic of this podcast. But the idea is to just continue to grow, enjoy our lives, grow as humans. And that's what we're going to talk about today. Before we dive into the substance of the podcast, I do want to ask you guys for a year-end favor, if I can.
[00:01:17.880] - Tony Roig
Call it a holiday gift if you feel like that sounds good. We published the book, Pickleball Therapy. You don't have to buy the book. That's not what I'm asking. What I am asking, though, is that if you did buy the book or if you're reading the book, whatever, if you've read the book, basically, can you please leave us a review on Amazon? I know it takes a minute to do. Also, I was talking to a member of the team, and they mentioned that perhaps it seems like a little bit daunting, meaning maybe you think that you have to write something really long. You don't. You can go on there and write something very short about, I enjoyed the book or didn't enjoy the book. I mean, I've always said, whatever you feel about it, you say it. You don't have to coddle me or a candy coat. But if you read the book, share your experience with the book. Maybe there was one section in the book you liked. You can share I'm happy with that. Whatever you want to say about it. It really helps us. It helps the book gain traction. That's just the world that we live in.
[00:02:24.240] - Tony Roig
And it's something that I can't do anything about it other than ask you to do it. So I'm asking I'm going to click on the N here to see if I can get more of you to leave a review. It's not like a secret information. You can go to Amazon, you can see there's only eight reviews on there right now. And I know that there's probably 400 or 500 players who have read the book. And here's the thing. If the book sucked, write it. Give it a one star. One star, this book sucks. Fine. But please let me know what you think about. Hopefully, that's not the case. But if it is, But just let us know what you think about the book. And it could just be something like, read the book and liked it, read the book, thought it was okay, whatever. Whatever you think, give it the right number of stars that you're comfortable with, and that'll help us reach other players, also to help other players understand what the book... That the book is something worth their time or not worth their time. All right, let's dive into the substance of this year and podcast.
[00:03:26.320] - Tony Roig
What I want to talk about is I want to talk about using pickleball as a canvas. I think it's such a powerful... I mean, you know, obviously, that I'm a big proponent of pickleball. I think it's a fantastic activity. I think it's a great addition to anybody's life who's able to play pickleball. I think pickleball is available to almost anybody who cares to do it, and it can be such a positive to your life. But I think beyond that, I think we can think about pickleball the other a way as well, meaning we can use pickleball as a way to add to our lives. So like, pickleball, standing alone, right, is good. For us, it's helpful. For us, it's a It's good for us. It's helpful for us, is a positive for us. But beyond that, think about using pickleball as a way to improve you, so to improve us, right, to improve ourselves. And there's three areas that I'm going to touch on. But the idea is that basically, pickleball ends up being this canvas where we can basically use it to exercise ourselves, and not just physical exercise, that's one of them, but it's to work on ourselves, it's to paint ourselves.
[00:04:43.200] - Tony Roig
It's to experiment with different ways of approaching things that I think is really helpful. And I'll share the RIF a story that happened to me this week in playing pickleball. It was a session where, I don't know, I wasn't feeling myself, and I got I got down on myself about some of my play because this is a process for me, too, a project for me, too. So I'll share that in the RIF. But the idea is that I've been able to use pickleball, right, personally as a canvas for myself in this particular instance, dealing with how I navigate mental adversity that I'm creating for myself based on how I'm doing on the court. And again, I'll share that in the RIF. But let's go through three different areas. And I'm going to challenge you here in this podcast is to take some time and think about how you can use 2026 and your interaction with pickleball to continue to further yourself. And so I'm going to start with the easiest one, if you will, which is just your pickleball. And when you think about pickleball, you can think about pickleball in terms of a game or a sport that we play, but perhaps maybe give some thought to it being a puzzle.
[00:05:59.380] - Tony Roig
It's like a constantly evolving puzzle that challenges you to perform certain physical activities to try and solve that puzzle in the best way you can. And if you think about just a standard rally, let's take the side of the serve. So you're serving. Think of the steps that you're trying to do to prevail in that rally. First thing is you have to mechanically execute a shot, call the serve, put it into play, and then hopefully your opponents are able to execute shot, the return of serve, and put it into play. Then you're going to execute a third shot. It could be a third shot drop, it could be a third shot drive, a third shot lob, a third shot anything, but you're going to execute some shot. When you start thinking about, Okay, well, where am I hitting the third shot? What type of shot am I hitting? Who am I hitting it to? All these types of things. Then that's solving the puzzle. That's a step in solving this puzzle. Then after you hit that shot, then you're going to move somewhere on the court or stay where you're at. You're going to do something physical in terms of your movement around the court, and so is your partner.
[00:07:01.200] - Tony Roig
And then hopefully, you're going to hit another shot, the fifth shot, and then you're going to move some more or stay where you're at or move left, move right, move forward. And then you're going to hit another shot, hopefully, maybe a dink at that point. If you're up at the non-body zone line, maybe an attack shot, maybe a volley. It could be a number of different things. And then every time you have, where are you going to hit the shot? What type of shot are you going to hit? If you're one of our students, then what type of energy and trajectory will your shot have? All those are these details of building a puzzle. I've only described one rally. That's just one rally. Then you have the next rally. Let's say you're serving again. Well, maybe the last rally, you did a certain thing and you got some information. So now you know, okay, this player likes their backhand more than their forehand. So maybe I'll stay away from their backhand and go to their forehand. And so you can add that level of complexity to your puzzle solving. Now, let me take a quick detour I don't want to bog you down with this, meaning I don't want you to think that in order to play pickleball, you need to do all of these things.
[00:08:05.380] - Tony Roig
I'm just showing you a sneak peek, if you will, of how far you can go with your thinking over time. Not saying you got to do it the next time you play, okay? Because I I don't want you to not enjoy playing because now you're trying to think of too many things, potentially. But there is a world in which you can do that. That's the world in which I live. But I've been playing for 10 years. I play at senior pro level. I do pick a ball full-time. I think a lot about it. I was studying video early today, and I studied some video yesterday in some pro matches, pros that we're working with. Anyway, but basically, that's how deep you can go in this if you choose to. No matter how deep you're going, you're still solving a puzzle. You still have a bunch of things to do in that puzzle solving. So this puzzle solving is like a game that you're playing that allows your brain, feeds your brain, right? It's like doing a crossword puzzle. I love crossword puzzles. I do them. I do Sudoku. I like doing those things for my mind.
[00:09:02.260] - Tony Roig
I'm going to sneeze in a second, so I'm apologizing. I'm not interrupting the podcast, but I will sneeze. So I'll pause in a second. Apologies for the sneezing. I'm going to guess there's another one coming behind it. I'm basically crossword puzzles, Sudoku's, those are all great. Jogging is great. All these things you can do, lifting weights, great. Pickleball is one of those things where you basically get to do all of it at the same time. You're You're doing a crossword puzzle, and here it comes. I got apologies. I don't know why. Maybe there's something in the air in the studio that I'm seeing today. But basically, you're doing both simultaneously. You're engaging in physical activity, running around, as well as mental activity, solving the puzzle, solving the strategy, figuring out what's going on in real-time. That is extremely powerful stuff. Extremely powerful for your mind, keeping your mind vibrant, you're firing those neurons out there, keeping your body well. And so you can use pickleball as this canvas to challenge yourself, to go deeper into the sport, if you so choose. And what I mean by that is understanding more about what's happening in the game as you play it.
[00:10:16.860] - Tony Roig
The challenge for you here is, can you continue to grow your knowledge of the sport? And the reason that's, I believe, important, and I want to suggest to you that you should put that on your list of ideas of how to use pickleball as a canvas for yourself in 2026, is because as you grow as a player, you're going to be able to do the things that you already do repetitively, right? So if you already know how to do steps one through four at a certain level of play, and that's all you keep doing, no harm. Okay, I want to be no harm. That's fine. Keep doing it. Enjoy it. Have a good time. But you're not challenging up here. And if you're watching the video, I'm popping my head. That's what I'm popping. I'm challenging my mind. You're not challenging it anymore. You're not testing it. You're not stressing it. And the stressing of it, the stressing of your mind, the stressing of your body is what keeps you growing, is what keeps you going. It's what avoids atrophy of the mind and of the body. So in this particular sense, what you can use pickleball for is to keep on pushing yourself, right?
[00:11:22.150] - Tony Roig
Keep curious, right? Stay curious, stay growing, stay learning. I would be remiss here if I did not point out some ways you can do that with us. And the reason I do that is because I love doing this podcast. I will continue doing this podcast, probably as long as I'm doing this, anything with pickleball. But at the same time, we also coach. Our main focus is coaching and growth for players. So for instance, if you wanted to work with us, we have online options with our academy, also the Pickleball system when that is available. That's the best program We're not there, bar none. We also have camps. Right now, we have several camps available coming up. Is it an investment? Sure, it's an investment. I understand that. But if you do want to, in fact, continue to grow and learn, it's a great way to do it. And then we also have a direct coaching program, which is the most intensive program that we've offered in terms of just continuous feedback loop and learning and going deep and deep and deep on the sport specific to you is our direct coaching program. So if you're interested in coaching, You can always send us an email at any of our email addresses and ask about our coaching opportunities, and we will provide them to you.
[00:12:36.760] - Tony Roig
But that's one way to use pickleball as a canvas for yourself to continue to challenge yourself and stress yourself with this sport. So that's one thing you can do. One way you can take advantage, I should say, of pickleball in 2026 more fully. The other two areas that I want to touch on, one has to do with the body and one has to do with the mind. This is what we refer to inside of all of our coaching as the athletic pillar, one of the three pillars of pickleball. And this is where you basically use pickle, if you will, between the activity that you love to do, the sport you go play, and the life that you lead. And I'll give you a couple of simpler ideas, and then you can go further with it if there's other areas that you want to focus on. But let's start with the body, right? That athletic pillar's body and mind. So let's start with the body. So let's say that you want to play better pickleball. One of the things that is really important to playing better pickleball is leg strength. You need leg strength. The stronger that your quads, hamstrings, and glutes are, your upper legs and your butt are, the better you're going to play pickleball.
[00:13:45.000] - Tony Roig
Okay, because you can get down more for your dinks. And I can tell you, I experienced that, and I'll share it in the RIF in a second, but I experienced that a couple of days ago when I played, or yesterday when I played, I couldn't really get down for the shots as well because I tweaked my back, as I think I mentioned a couple of weeks in the podcast. So it's just a little bit of difficulty in getting down low. Shots don't work as well, right? A lot of shots in the net. I can't get under the shots enough. A little frustration that I had. But it comes from, at least in part, and I'm not excusing it, right? But it stems from having limitations with my body. In this case, they're injury limitations, so maybe they're not as... They're less preventable. But for instance, if you can't get down to dink because you lack leg strength, that's something that you can address in 2026. One way to address your leg strength would be body weight squats. Before you do any of these suggestions, if you're not sure what you're doing, check with your health care provider.
[00:14:41.600] - Tony Roig
You can find more information on other resources. If you're inside the Biggerball system, you do have some resources in there inside the athletic pillar that will help you with working on your body. But body weight squats were great to strengthen your glutes and also your upper legs. It's going to help you dink better. But guess what else it's going to do? It's going to also help you get around better. Getting out of the chair, moving around when you have to get up and get down, having stronger legs, you're going to walk better. You're just going to feel better, right? You're probably going to Are you going to reduce chance of injury in your life? So you have this straddle, right? Between like, okay, this thing that I'm working on, which is squats, helps my pickle ball. That's my canvas that I'm really focused on. I want to dink better. So I'm going to work on my legs' strength. It also helps my life. You can also think of things like, for instance, balance. Having better balance will allow you to play better pickleball because you're able to move with more security on the court. You're able to stand with more balance as you hit your shots.
[00:15:42.840] - Tony Roig
Balance will also help you avoid falls as you get older. So these are things that have overlapped. They have real, quote unquote, real world application, real life application, as well as pickleball application. So that's a couple of examples of how you can use pickleball as your canvas. Now, notice, I didn't say Say, play pickleball, get the excess from pickleball, and that's good enough. That's great. Listen, I'm not talking that down. That's a fantastic thing that pickleball offers you is exercise. But there's more exercise available to you that will help you play better pickleball inside the canvas of the pickleball, as well as improve your life. So don't sleep on that. And then the other part is your mind. Now, I give you credit for listening. Listening to this podcast is a great way of working on your mind. You get these ideas ideas. We have conversations. We talk about bowls of ice cream. We do things like that throughout the year. And that helps you frame out better how you're going to approach the game. What you're doing there is you're listening to a podcast called Pickleball Therapy because you're using pickleball as your canvas here.
[00:16:46.180] - Tony Roig
But you're learning techniques, you're learning ideas that can help in any situation that you're in in life. So there's that straddle between pickleball and your life. I would also recommend in 2026, add a book. It can be our book. It It doesn't have to be our book. There's plenty of good books. We have several books on betterpickerball.com that we recommend. But pick a book, right? Start in the first quarter, 2026. Say, I'm going to read a book to help my mind because I'm going to play betterpickerball, but I'm also going to live better because my mind is growing. Those are three ways that you can use pickleball as a canvas in 2026, using pickleball itself as this puzzle, this very complex mental, physical puzzle that you're playing in real-time. Continue to go deeper with it. Challenge yourself. Can I Can I go deeper in my understanding of the sport? Can I go deeper in these rallies? Meaning I see more in the rally so I can play with more variables in my mind as I'm playing. That'll challenge you more. That's like doing the... I forget the days, but I think there's the Monday crossword puzzle on New York Times is, I've heard it said, the Monday New York, I think it's a Monday one.
[00:17:50.460] - Tony Roig
The Monday, you can do an ink because it's pretty simple. Then you get to the Sunday one, and that one's like, oh, my God. There's differences in terms of how much you challenge yourself with those things. Same thing as shidoku, easy, medium, or difficult. Pickleball, you can use the same way. The deeper you go into the sport, the more complex the game playing becomes and the more challenging it is to your mind. Then you can also use 2026 in pickleball for your body, to improve your body and to improve your mind. Take advantage of the New Year's stuff where we're all focused, we're all doing our thing. Kick off 2026. Well, we have an eight-week fitness challenge. I forgot to mention earlier for the body that we're doing inside Better Pickleball. I highly recommend you check that out. C. J. Johnson put that together. I know that several members of the team use it religiously every year at the beginning of the year, and it really helps them with their body. I've used it in the past as well. I can tell you that you use it and it's really going to help you with your pickleball as well as with your life.
[00:18:44.040] - Tony Roig
That's that straddle concept. So check that out. If you're on our email list, you're getting notifications of it. So just click on one of those notifications and you'll find out more about it. So take advantage of that and take advantage of this Canvas idea to use pickleball to its fullest for you as a human being and improving your travel through the universe. Now, let me jump into the RIF, and I'm going to share really briefly this thing that happened, and then we'll wrap for this episode. So playing wasn't playing the way that I want to play, right? And that happens. We've talked about it before. You go into it. You need to be able to accept that some days are going to be better than other days. I played a day before, and I played out of my mind well, and then I played, and I didn't play as well on Monday. So then I started getting down on myself a little bit while I was playing. I I actually reached out to my friends and I told them that I was... Apologies for... Because I was getting on myself. I'm not going to say anything to anybody else about their stuff, but I was on myself.
[00:19:40.300] - Tony Roig
My friends shouldn't have to deal with that when I'm just being a Debbie Downer on myself. So I reached out to them to apologize. But the good news is, A, recognition of your student, how powerful that is. So recognition was pretty quick. And then, B, I was able to get past it, move past it pretty quickly by understanding understanding that that's just a part of how life is, right? And now I'm still a work in process, just like probably everybody listened to this. If you weren't a work in process, I guess you probably wouldn't be listening to this podcast. So we're all works in process. And it allowed me to then move past that more easily than I probably could have a few years ago before I had the tools that we've worked on throughout the five years that we've been on the air on this podcast. So my plans for 2026 is to continue to do what I have been doing, which is pickleball as a canvas for myself, for my body, for my mind, as well as for my understanding of pickleball. Even though I've been doing it for a long time, doing this coaching for a long time, I still learn.
[00:20:38.900] - Tony Roig
I still have different ways of looking at things. Just today, I was coming up with a new way of slicing up a match to see what the deciding factors were inside of a pro match. Because I've said this before, and I'll continue to say it, you cannot exhaust this sport. This sport will always have something to teach you as long as you remain curious. And I hope 2026, for you, is as curious a year as ever. That's the podcast for this week. I hope you enjoyed it. If you enjoyed it, please consider sharing it with a friend. Remember, if you enjoyed the podcast, they probably will, too. I hope you have enjoyed and continue to holiday season in 2025, and I will see you all in 2026. Be well.