Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to
your pickleball improvement. Hope you're having a great week.
My name is Tony Roig. I'm the host of this weekly podcast.
This week, it's coming to you from the PPA in Atlanta.
So if you hear some background noise, pickleballs, things like that,
then you'll know what's happening. There's noises all over the place.
I wanted to bring you a podcast this week talking about two bad words.
The first one is going to be an imagined bad word, and the next one is
going to be a real bad word.
Those are in the Rift, we're going to talk about a bad word.
And what we want to talk about is we're going to talk about the imaginary or the
imagined bad word is a word that can hold you back in your game.
It's a word that if you let it detract or distract you, I should say, from
what you're going to work on, it can really hold you back as a player.
And then the second word, the real bad word, is a word that can mess with your
mind and affect your relationships with your opponents who, more often
than not, are your friends.
At the end of the podcast, if you're a therapist, stick around.
I'm going to give you an on the therapist event coming up,
I want to say next week on the 18th.
I'm losing track of weeks right now, but the 18th for the therapist event.
I'll give you an update on that, about the emails coming to you there.
All right, let's dive into the imagined word that we want to talk about.
The Imagined Word is, as I mentioned, I'm at the PPA, and I was reminded of it
during a match that I was watching yesterday.
I was standing there with a pro player who I know fairly well.
I played against him in the US Open in the Split Age, and we become friendly.
And so we're watching four players, but two players who I know well.
And they were up in the match, and they were up, I believe it was like nine,
eight, but the other team was serving, it might have been nine, seven.
The other team was serving at seven, nine, and the other team scored a point.
So I asked my friend who was standing next to me.
I said, Okay, what did you see there?
And what he said was he said, Well, I saw a good drive.
And then they came in and they did like a shake and bake and they won the
So again, I know him really well.
So I chided him and I was like, come on, you pros, you guys always
looking past the basics.
You're always getting past the fundamentals and thinking of other stuff.
And once I said that, he was like, oh, yeah, you're right.
There was a short return of serve.
And so the key there is that even at the pro level, and the match we were
watching was a pro level match.
So even at the pro level, this word fundamentals is a word that, not
to say that players here don't like that word, but fundamentals are the key, right?
Even Even at the highest level of play, the fundamentals are what often drive the
difference between the winning team and the losing team.
And what happens to us as pickleball players, as non-pro players, is that we
shy away from the word.
If you listen to the podcast a lot.
You've probably heard me say this before, that we don't use the word fundamentals in
our outward materials or marketing and things like that.
Why?
Because the minute we say the word fundamentals, What is the
pickleball player hear?
That's for a beginner. That's not for me.
That's for a beginner. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Again, at the pro level, there are issues with the fundamentals sometimes that drive
the difference between the winning and the losing.
And I'll give you an example.
What I believe to be the strongest pro team right now in terms of everything
that they do from beginning to end is Anna Leigh Waters and Catherine Parenteau.
The reason is because they are very good at every part of the game, including
the fundamentals, including everything.
They don't take a shot off.
And so they're executing everything really well, including those fundamentals.
And that is what separates them from the other teams that they play against
is their focus on the fundamentals.
Another match that I'll tell you about here that I happened to see yesterday that
reinforced what I was already going to talk about is a mixed doubles
match against two very good teams.
Team A was up nine, six. Against Team B.
Team B got a side out.
So Team B is serving at 6-9-1.
Team B, I'm sorry, Team A then missed two returns of serve in a row.
So it went from 6-9-1 to 8-9-1 because of what shot?
Missed returns of serve.
What is that? That's a fundamental, right?
That's something that they hit as pros, and you hit, and I hit.
Everybody hits returns of serve.
But that flaw in their game allowed the other team to close the gap.
And then there were three more points scored, So one more gifted point or
easy point, and then two tough points.
So out of five points at the end, three were essentially gifted or easy
points, and two were struggled, right?
So it should have been nine, eight, nine, eight side out with
them serving to close it out.
Instead, they lost the game 11, nine.
And why? Again, the word fundamentals.
That's why it's an imagine that word.
It's a word that pickleball players shy away from.
Try and avoid, try and avoid shying away from the term and try and shy away from
doing the things that are fundamentals, because at the end of the day, that
is what good pickleball is built upon.
Good pickleball, and the best pickleball you'll ever play, is built upon a
foundation of sound fundamentals.
The better your fundamentals, the better you're going to play.
So that's the imagine bad word that I wanted to talk to you about.
Look at my notes real quick.
Been a long day coaching up here. A good day.
We had two, three-game match. I guess I should give you an update.
We had two matches that Dylan played earlier today, went three games, his
singles match and his mixed doubles match.
But he pulled out the singles and he and Tyra pulled out the mixed, and we're
waiting for the men's match, which will be probably in about an hour
or so with him and J. W.
Playing their first match of this tournament since they had
a buy in the first round.
One quick note as we move on to the real bad word, which also
occurred here at the PPA.
These tournaments are always great sources of inspiration for these
podcast topics because you see it in real life.
I see what's really happening out there, and then we can talk about it in here and
learn from what's happening at the tournament.
A couple of quick notes.
One is that we have an upcoming virtual clinic.
There is no easier way to interact with CJ and myself and the BP coach the Better
pickleball Coaching team to really help you improve your play.
I'll put a link in the show notes.
You can also just go to betterpickleball. Com.
It's the easiest way to access our stuff all the time.
And you'll see the clinic on there.
It's $47 So it's a no brainer. Two and a half hours.
You come in, learn some really good stuff.
And at the end, we have an optional presentation about the pickleball system.
And that's the other thing I wanted to mention in the housekeeping, is that if
you follow us, you know that we have our flagship course, the biggest course
that we offer is the pickleball system.
And it opens two times per year.
This is our September opening, so it'll be our last opening in 2024.
So if you're ready to take this leap in your game, then make sure
you check that out as well. And you go to pickleballsystem.
Com to check that out, but just go to Better pickleball.
All the links are in there.
All right, let's talk about a real bad word, and I heard this one
during the tournament as well.
The real bad word occurred during a singles match that I was
watching today, earlier today.
And at the end of one At the end of the second game, player A had won
the match, the game, I'm sorry.
Player B had won the first game, and then player A had won the second game.
And the game ends, and then player B, I think it was, the
loser of the second game, I hear him say, he's walking by his
opponent and the ref and everything.
And I hear him just say, you're to himself.
You're a piece of poop or S-H-I-T.
That's what he says.
So you're a piece of that.
And that's a real bad word.
And that's why it's a real bad word.
But here's the problem with that, right?
First of all, it's bad for his psyche, bad for player B's psyche.
But I'm going to take it a step further for you because I want you to understand
how your actions, how your conduct, and start thinking about how your behavior
affects those around you.
So the minute that player B says, you're a piece of poop, right, to himself,
what he's doing is he is denying player A the ability to enjoy
the victory of the winning game 2.
So game 2 now becomes about player B, and player B being a piece of poop,
not about player A battling, not about player A having lost
the first game and then keeping it going and really digging in deep and
fighting because he had to fight. It wasn't like player B gave him the game.
Player A had to hit some really nice shots.
And so this idea that I'm a piece of poop at the end of the game
is a idyllic, right?
It It demeans, it diminishes player A's accomplishment.
So think about that in your game.
If you have that attitude at the end of a tough game, if you make a statement like
that, if you behave that way, just put yourself in the shoes of your opponents.
Put yourself... Have some empathy, right?
Think about it through their eyes.
And most of the time whenever you're playing rec at your facility,
I'm going to guess that you're playing against your friends, right?
A lot of these times.
So what you're doing is you're telling your friends, it's not about you.
It's not about what you did. It's not about the great shots you had.
It's all about me.
It's all about what I did wrong.
And I made the mistake.
I didn't do well. I didn't play well.
And it's just something that I think you should to reach out for because
it's not beneficial to you.
It doesn't do anything for you if you think about it, right?
It doesn't help you in any way.
And it definitely doesn't help your opponents who, again, are your friends.
So that's the second bad word that I wanted to talk about,
which is the real one.
One last note before we sign off for this week, which is if you're a therapist,
confirmed therapist, meaning that you've let me know that you're into being a
therapist right now, by my last count, there's around, I want to say around
50 or so therapists We have that event.
We're going to do the live podcast with the therapist.
So what I want you to do is you're going to get an email from us
that'll send you a link.
Please let us know you're coming by replying to and saying, I'll be there
or if you can't be, that's okay, dude.
Just let us know you can't be there.
We just want to make sure you got the email.
And then if you're a therapist and don't get anything from us, let's say today,
this is going to drop on Friday.
So if you haven't got anything by Sunday, actually, if you haven't got anything by
Friday, it's fine because we'll send the email out before If you haven't got
anything by the time you hear this podcast, send us an email.
Please send an email to support@betterpickleball.
Com. Put therapist live in the subject line.
Again, support@betterpickleball. Com.
Put therapist live in the subject line, let us know that you're a therapist and
you have not received the invitation, and we will reply to that with an
invitation to the live event.
If you're not a therapist, fret not.
We will capture the live podcast and then publish it as a special episode so you can
hear what the back and forth was, what the questions were.
But as a therapist, you get to join live and ask questions and have a conversation
about this wonderful sport of pickleball.
All right, that's it for this week's podcast.
I got to get ready for our next match.
I hope you're having a great week so far, and I hope you have a great week
between now and our next time together.
In the meantime, if you have a minute to share this with your friends, that's the
most powerful compliment and help you can friends.
And I would suggest you, you're also helping your friends, because if you enjoy
the podcast, my bet is they probably will, too.
I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you at the next episode of
Takeabal Therapy.
Be well.