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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.
[00:00:00.240] - Speaker 1
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. I am a professional pickleball coach as well as a senior professional pickleball player. It's my pleasure to be able to come with you, to be with you each week, I should say, and share with you some concepts that will help you with your pickleball mind, with your mind as it relates to the game of pickleball. Hopefully, helping you enjoy pickleball more and play better pickleball. That's a part of this that players, I think, sometimes overlook, is the importance of not just feeling better, but also playing better because of your mental approach to the game of pickleball. What I'm going What we're going to do this week is we're going to talk about two different areas. We're going to talk about this is a progress episode, improvement episode, meaning we're going to be talking about different parts of thinking through the improvement part of your pickleball. If you've listened to a prior podcast where you may have heard us talk about the three spheres, this is one of the spheres, right?
[00:01:06.830] - Speaker 1
And it's important to keep them in their own areas because they're different. They're different considerations, different mental challenges I should say, that you have to deal with when you're dealing with improvement. And that's what we're going to be talking about in this week's podcast. Specifically, we're talking about iteration in two contexts in terms of your improvement and also in terms of you as a player. And then in the I'm going to be talking to you about the concept of Sonder, but specific to you again in terms of your improvement journey. Those are going to be awesome topics that we're going to be covering in this week's podcast. Speaking of improvement and getting better, this week's podcast is brought to you by the pickleball System. Ad-free, I should say, by the pickleball System. Pickleball System is part of the Better pickleball Academy. We're going to be opening a new class here in about six weeks or so. So you're going make sure that you are on our email list. You'll get notified of the upcoming system. If you're ready to take that really big forward movement in your game, then you're going to want to join the pickleball System.
[00:02:13.840] - Speaker 1
It's the only course of its kind available anywhere in the world. There are other courses out there, but they are not even remotely similar to the pickleball system in terms of their breadth and depth. All right, let's dive into this week's main topic. This week's main topic is the word iteration. The word iteration is defined as the repetition of a process or utterance. There's two different ways that I want to approach it. One has to do with the repetition in order to progressively get better. Let me read to you the next, the subdefinition of it that relates to that. Repetition of a mathematical or computational procedure applied to the result of a previous application, typically as a means of obtaining successively closer approximations to the solution of a problem. So the way to think about it there is that when you're working on a part of your game that you're trying to get better at, you're trying to get closer to the solution to the problem, you need to engage in iterations. You need to process it again and again and again. You can also think about it in terms of repetition. Repetition is another way of thinking about it, but iterations, I think, a little bit deeper because it brings in this idea of not just repeating for the sake of repeating.
[00:03:28.890] - Speaker 1
That's one possibility. You just say, I just repeat. We're not repeating. We're iterating. I think that's the right way of using it. Because we want to get closer to the solution. We want to make forward progress through these repetitions that we're doing. So it's Repetitions towards a goal of getting closer to the problem. Anyway, if you're watching this on YouTube, you'll see behind me on the board, I've written iteration. I've drawn my awesome paddle with ball, and then a circle with three arrows going around. That's the process of iteration when you're working on your game. And let's take a specific example. Let's talk about you're working on your block volley. If you're working on your block volley, you're going to want to engage in some Iteration of the block volley if you want to, in fact, get better at that particular shot. A mistake that players make commonly is they believe that by playing alone, they're going to be able to improve that shot. In the abstract, in the big picture, are you getting better when you play? Maybe, or yes, you can, I should say. It's possible. But is it going to give you the type of improvement that you want?
[00:04:41.960] - Speaker 1
The answer is probably not. If you you're going to improve a particular shot, let's say you're having trouble with bangers in your block volley, you're going to want to put in some practice. Now, you don't need to practice like the pros do, or you don't need to put in hours and hours and hours of practice. But if you went out and had somebody you balls for five minutes or 10 minutes before you start playing, you're going to block better that day, right? And you're going to see more rapid improvement in the shop. Because the reality is that when you're playing, you just don't There's not enough repetitions. There's not enough volume. And also the timing of it is wrong because you don't get one after the other, right? You can make it one block, and then might not be another minute to get another block, and then maybe you don't get another block for five minutes, right? It's It's just the nature of the beast. And there's other considerations, right? You're feeling the stress of the score or whatever's going on. Try and get some practice in if you can. Again, it doesn't have to be hours and hours and hours, but that iteration repetition is going to help you improve faster and better than not having it.
[00:05:54.010] - Speaker 1
And then the second aspect to this word that I wanted to talk about, and I'll read you the subdefinition that applies here, is a new version of a piece of computer hardware or software. So it's a new iteration, a new iteration of the thing. Here, what I want to talk about is I want to talk about you. If you're watching this on YouTube, you see behind me, I have three little players there, three person stick figures with arrows between them. Those are different iterations of you as a pickleball player. And the way to think about it that way is that as you move forward through time, and by the way, the one circular, the one with practice, because we can think about it that way, that was linear because that's how we experience time, which is a conversation for another episode, or maybe even another podcast completely, the way we experience time. But we experience time, literally. So the idea is that I think what we do as players sometimes is we get hung up on... Let's say you came into one of these episodes, and you heard it one time. Let's say it was any episode.
[00:06:58.200] - Speaker 1
Just pick an episode, share it. And you heard the episode eight months ago. You listened to an episode. And that's cool. I appreciate you listening to the episode. But the reality is that the person sitting here today, you, sitting here today, you are not the same person that you were eight months ago. So if you today were to play that same episode again, you would hear a completely different episode. Some of it you may go like, God, that sounds familiar. But some of you be like, What? Wait a minute. He said, What? Because I didn't I understand that eight months ago. And it's the same with your improvement, meaning your general improvement, not just your mental improvement. And what I mean by that is this. And players ask us this. It's a fair question. We get asked all the time, so it's no criticism anybody asking the question. But players who are inside our pickleball system, for instance, it's a one-year course. At the end of the year, we say, if you'd like to keep going, there's a much reduced... It's like a maintenance fee, basically. You pay for the software, and it's like that.
[00:07:57.720] - Speaker 1
It just keeps things going. But it's basically, you want to keep going, you can keep going inside the course. A common question is, well, is the course different? See, that's only part of the question, because the other part of the question is, Aren't you different? In other words, you as a player from what you were 12 months ago? And what ends up happening invariably is players will come back in for a second year, third year, even a fourth year sometimes. As long as they want to keep learning, the system will have something to teach them. But they'll come back in the a second year or a third year, and they'll watch the exact same video. And there's more than one. There's 170 videos, I think, last count. But they'll watch one of the videos that they watched nine months ago. Totally different experience, totally different player, totally different interaction with the content, and totally different step they're taking now, even though it's the same exact video from nine months ago. And that's an interesting part of Iteration that I think would serve us well to keep in mind, which is that as we move forward, we will be in a different place each time.
[00:09:07.560] - Speaker 1
And another way that might help you get your arms around this is, it's obviously easier to do if I'm I'm not really with you explaining it to you, but I'll walk you through it. Let's say you're standing anywhere in the world, but you're standing next to a wall. You know that on the other side of the wall, there's a field. But you can't see it right now because there's this wall next to you. And in that field, there's a tree. But you can't see the tree right now because you're standing next to the wall. So what do you do? You want to see a tree? You start walking forward. You walk and you walk, and you walk. Maybe it takes you this hypothetical, maybe it takes you a week. Maybe it takes you an hour. Maybe it takes you a year to get to the edge of the wall. Once you get to the end of the wall, you turn to your left. Maybe I said that because I'm left-handed, so I favor the left. So you turn to your left, and you get to see the field and the tree. That's the same with a lot of concepts in pickleball.
[00:10:08.420] - Speaker 1
What happens is the concept is there. The concept hasn't changed over this year, or month or however long. You're just not ready for it. And it's not that you did anything wrong. It's not that you're lacking or any word that's a negative that you got to think about, that you would say, That's That's why I don't get it. That's not the case. It's just that you're not ready for it yet. You just need to keep walking until you get to the end of the wall, can turn left and see the tree. It's the same exact thing. What happens is there's these different iterations of us as we move forward in life. I am not the same person I was last year, much less the same person I was five years ago. That's why these concepts of you can't teach the old dog new tricks. They're just nonsense. They just don't make any sense. As long as you're still alive, you're listening to this podcast, I don't know if they're listening to the podcast other than on the mortal Earth, right? But I'm assuming I'm speaking, you're listening to this, you're alive and you're on Earth.
[00:11:11.090] - Speaker 1
Then as long as you're here, you can continue to grow, you can continue to evolve, you can continue to develop in any way you want, including in pickleball. And so as you move forward, you'll continue to have these different iterations of yourself. And that's beautiful, because the next iteration of you, an iteration And iterations could go micro and go an iteration every minute in theory, right? But if you want to take a more scale that you can process better, pick a month or six months or a year even, and just say, Okay, and Am I the same player that I was a year ago? And the answer is no. It's not possible to be the same player for a number of reasons, right? And so you understand that you're going to be evolving over time, these different iterations of you. And so your name, two 2.0, your name, 3.0, your name, 4.0, whatever, as you keep going. And I'm not talking about levels of play. I'm just talking about versions like software. You, 6.1, 6.2, 6.3, as you just continue to iterate and understand that each time you iterate, you're going to be in a different place, meaning the information that you may have already received in the past will land differently now, and there's going to be nuggets in there that will still help you with your game.
[00:12:22.770] - Speaker 1
And I like the question that they asked in the usage example and the definition is, what is the use of this constant iteration of the same things. The beautiful thing is that in the improvement side or in the getting better on the block foley side, the beauty is that it's getting you closer to the block foley that you want for yourself. In your personal space, in the you space, the beauty of it is that you continue to grow as a human being, and you continue to grow as long as you choose to and remain in your mortal coil. So hopefully that concept of iteration resonated with you, and will help you both improve specific things like block volleys and others, and will also help you better understand your growth, your evolution through a pickleball and whatever else you choose to apply this concept of iteration to. In the Rift, we're going to talk about Sonder, the idea of Sonder. And then we are going to I'm going to talk to you about that and how it means to use it for yourself and to get what you want and how you want to go and do your thing.
[00:13:42.190] - Speaker 1
Before we jump into the RIF, again, remember that this week's podcast is brought to you by the pickleball System and the Better pickleball Academy. The pickleball System is a subset of the Better pickleball Academy, meaning it's our most comprehensive course inside the Better pickleball Academy, but we have a ton of other content available inside the Better pickleball Academy. It's very extensive and intending to help you move forward with your game. So check it out if you're ready to go deep into any subject. All right, let's dive into the RIF. Sonder. The definition of Sonder is the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as real. I think that's a super cool word, a super cool idea, not just to put words to it and to make it concrete. But what I wanted to talk about is we're going to look at it a few different ways. One way we're going to look at it is this idea that if each of us has basically a life as vivid and complex as the other, so we're all living our own life, doing our thing, then it's okay for your friends, your other players at the core, things like that, to play pickleball in a way that is different, and maybe, I'm going to say suboptimal, and I'm saying that like it is an objective perspective, not criticizing.
[00:15:14.270] - Speaker 1
So not trying to make it seem like it's a negative that they play that way. Suboptimal meaning like there's a more optimal way to play objectively, right? But they choose not to do so. An example would be not coming to the non-visal line on the return of serve. That's one of the most fundamentally sound strategies in pickleball, there's not a lot of room to argue about it. In general, there's one or two exceptions, but in terms of... They apply to your partner not coming in, meaning they're not going up, so then you go back. But that's an exception to everything anyway. But in terms of optimal strategy, getting up to the nonvisal line. But when you go out to the courts, you'll see a lot of players that aren't getting up there and not getting up there effectively, and whatever, and things like that, right? And that's okay. Meaning, they're entitled to play pick-up all the way they choose to play pick-up. Now, that said, what I wanted to talk about is, I'm still trying to wrestle with this a little bit as I talk to you, but what happens sometimes is players, they don't play optimally, but it's not because they don't want to.
[00:16:30.100] - Speaker 1
What I mean by that is it's not their sondra, if you will. It's not a true manifestation of their life that they want to live. They're not doing something, whether it's not getting down to the line or whatever else. Because of artificial hurdles holding them back. What made me think about this for this podcast, and this is why it's the RIF, is I put out a video on the IntuPickle channel that had to do with why are you really getting slammed when you're working your way up to the non-body zone line. And a couple of the comments were basically useless video, nothing to see here. And the principle that was in the video, it's a really powerful concept. It's super powerful. It's recognition. We have it in our strive acronym that we use. It might arguably be the most powerful tool that you can use is the most important, because basically, recognition undergirds everything. If you don't recognize, how are you going to do? You got to recognize first. So it's that powerful. And in this context, what it means in the getting slam is that players aren't taking a minute to recognize what's happening on the court, the conditions that's on the court right now.
[00:17:58.010] - Speaker 1
So they're putting the body in a bad position, and the result is they're getting slamd with the pickleball. So the advice is, work on your recognition. Now, are there other pieces to effectively moving forward without getting slamd? Yes, of course. Yeah, right? I almost said, like the homer says it like, Duh. I mean, yes, there's a lot of other pieces. But recognition is super powerful and super critical. And so the comments were basically that were saying like, Nothing to see here. Really, What they reveal is a misapprehension of the importance of the concept being taught. And this is where I think sometimes as players, we need to be... Humble might be the right word, or open might be a better way of looking at it. Open and humble, right? Just open to ideas that at first glance may seem like nothing burgers, right? Why are you telling me this? When they're being expressed by a person who, at least you have reason to believe, has more knowledge on the subject than you do, right? It would be like going to a doctor and the doctor explaining something to you about your body, and you're immediately saying, What are you telling me that for?
[00:19:24.730] - Speaker 1
But the doctor is clearly trying to communicate something to you that the doctor feels is valuable and It's helpful, right? So same here, right? When you hear something that may be contrarian or maybe at first blush, it sounds like, Why are you telling me this? Reflect on it some, ask questions, things like that, as opposed to jumping to, This is not going to help me, because if it wasn't going to help you, I wouldn't be sharing it with you. That's the premise I want you to start from. And coming back to Sonder, here's the thing I want you to leave with. If a player is playing the way they're playing because that's how they want to play and they're okay with that, no problem. Sonder. No criticism, no judgment, not even a suggestion, an advice or anything like that. The player is happy doing what they're doing, that's fine. If, however, you're a player who wants a different way of playing, wants a richer, and I say richer not because the other one's less, but you want a ritual, you want a deeper understanding of the game, you want a deeper feeling when you play pickleball, then be aware of both the information you're receiving, so having agency with that we talked about in prior episodes.
[00:20:46.400] - Speaker 1
But also be aware that sometimes when it comes from a coach who knows what they're talking about, that even though it may seem weird at first what you're hearing, there's a reason why that coach is sharing that with All right. We went deep there on the rift, but I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Nonetheless, I may drop a special episode. I'll be at the PPA up in Kansas City, apparently the center of Pickleball this week, with the MLP, PPA, and the National Pickleball League, the Senior Pro Tour, a Senior Pro Team Tour up there this week, and Pick-a-Con. I got everything. It's Pick-a-Ball, everything happening up there this week. I'll probably drop a special episode, so look out for that. And as always, if you have time, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast. It helps us reach other players just like you who may benefit from it. And lastly, but not leastly, share with your friends, because remember, if you enjoy the podcast, they probably will, too. Hope you have a great week, and I will see you at the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. Be well.