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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.
[00:00:00.250] - Speaker 1
Hello, and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. I'll be having a great week. My name is Tony Roig. I am the host of your weekly Pickleball Therapy podcast. I am a full-time pickleball professional. This is what I do. Think, drink, sleep, breathe, eat pickleball all day long, all night long, sometimes. And it's a pleasure to be with you during this episode of the podcast. This week, we have a couple of interesting subjects We're going to be talking in the main category, we're going to be talking about vampire pickleball. I think you're going to find it interesting. We just recorded a therapist special episode of the podcast for therapists, and I said in there that I know sometimes I come at you in these podcasts a little bit like from the side. But when I'm coming in from the side, I always have a message. I'm always going to get to something by the end of the podcast. So stick with me with this one. And then the RIF, I'm going to talk about pickleball antics. And just the place that they have in our sport.
[00:01:03.370] - Speaker 1
Before we jump into it, a couple of housekeeping things. One is not housekeeping. I like doing this. So one is a shout out that we got a review I wanted to read. I always appreciate how Tony has a way to remind me how to get the most out of the game. I appreciate the shout out, and always a pleasure to help in any way that we can in the podcast. A housekeeping item now is that if you're listening to this podcast, right when it drops on this Friday, we have a clinic on Tuesday. It's a virtual clinic, so you can come from anywhere, and it's online. I'll put a link in the show notes. You can register there. There is a cost for the clinic. It's a two and a half hour clinic. It's $47, I think. So pretty reasonable, I think, for what you get. I would say very reasonable for what you get, actually. But anyway, so it's a lot of good content. There's a button on four stairs we're going to talk about and really show you what's going on with your game, and then you can take that information and take action with it.
[00:02:08.680] - Speaker 1
At the end of the clinic, we will have a totally optional presentation on the pickleball system. You can join us for that if you care to learn more about that, because enrollment is open now for the system through the end of the month. But after that, a no-mas system in 2024. If this is the time for you, join us inside the system, and I don't know if you know this or not, but money is not an object to joining the pickleball system. If you can afford the cost of it, it's well worth it. It's worth more than the cost of it. If you can't afford it, that's okay. Just reach out to us and we'll make something work because we do not let money be an obstacle to your pickleball improvement ever. All right, I am going to jump into the podcast now in terms of the vampire. And by the way, at the end, I do have a note here. I do want to share with you one framing that one of our therapists shared with us during the special episode we recorded earlier that I think will really help you think about your game and what you're doing big picture.
[00:03:13.090] - Speaker 1
All right, what am I talking about? Ant-fire, pickleball. That fire pickleball, that sounds crazy, doesn't it? For this to make sense, I need to read something to you. And this was a post. I'm not betraying confidence in anything like that. This was a post on Facebook by a fellow coach. And I'm going to read it to you, and then your initial reaction to it, my initial reaction to it when you first look at it is like, okay, that seems like a good competitive advantage. But I think there's a way to think about it that's a little bit deeper that will show you that this is really not the way we want to think when we play. It reads like this. Free confidence is being handed out by your opponents after every point, but the only way to attain it is to pay attention. The millisecond after your opponent makes an error, take a peek at their response rather than instinctively walking back to your baseline. They'll instantly let you know what they're feeling. They'll tell you if they're pissed, about to mentally break, upset with their partner, or on the verge of quitting. Most players aren't even trying to hide their emotions from their opponents.
[00:04:14.580] - Speaker 1
It's a weird pickleball thing. After an error, it's almost expected to yell something, make an excuse for the miss, or be outwardly disappointed by your partner's play. Pay attention. Take a look at your opponent's response after they flub a dink or miss a third shot. Each time you catch them whining, complaining or blaming your tank of confidence gets a little more filled until eventually it becomes completely full and you begin taking over the match. So on its face, wow, that's interesting, right? I can look at my opponent. If my opponent is in a bad shape, then I can use that to fuel me and to give me an edge, right? And I would agree that objectively, right? If you're in a good mental place and your opponent is not in a good mental place, that's an advantage to you all day long, just like in anything in life, negotiating, conversation, whatever. If you're in a better place, they're not in a better place, you have the edge always, including on the pickleball court. The advice here is to pay attention to that. Then the key to me is this part here where it's at the end.
[00:05:19.330] - Speaker 1
Each time you catch them whining, complaining, or blaming each other, your tank of confidence gets a little more filled until eventually it becomes completely full, and you begin taking over the match. So the premise here is that our confidence, our tank of confidence, the way it's used here, will be filled by what? By our opponent's misery, by our opponents being pissed or upset at their partner or wanting to quit, whatever it is, some negative thing for our opponents. That is how we are then going to gain confidence and fill up our tank, according to this, right? I would suggest to you that that way of thinking is like a vampire, right? Because a vampire or a parasite, if you like Parasite better. It's a similar concept, meaning my confidence, my tank, my strength comes from your weakness. So the more that you falter, the stronger I am. And I believe that that's a very short-sided way of thinking about the game, and not a healthy one for anybody, not just for your opponents, but for you either. Here's the thing, right? So as a pickleball player, I want to feel good, and I want to play as well as I can, right?
[00:06:38.500] - Speaker 1
But to do that at the expense of my opponent, or taking advantage of the expense of my opponent, should not be something that I am looking for, should not be something that I am working toward, meaning I'm going to be paying attention to my opponent's negative feelings, and therefore, expand my confidence based on that. It is healthier and more alongside it, I would suggest, to build your confidence based on you. Build your confidence internally. Because here's the thing, right? If you're going to build anything on external considerations, then you're always going to be subject to whatever those external considerations are, whatever the fluctuations of that are. So if you use the same thinking, right? So let's just take this and play this out a little differently. So you are going to gain confidence and fill your tank based on your opponent's weakness. What are you going to do when your opponent looks super confident? Your opponent looks like, They're sure they're going to win. What am I going to do now? Now my tank gets depleted, right? Using the same logic. Because if my tank gets full when they're weak, then it gets empty when they're strong, I guess.
[00:07:56.530] - Speaker 1
And so that's the limitation, right? The short-side in this limitation of this thinking. And bigger picture to me, the thing is, I don't want to live in a world where my success is built upon or relies on your failure. Now, that's different than winning and losing, right? Because I can play my best and feel good. You can play your best and feel good, and I can still win, or you can still win, right? Without taking away from the other person. This idea that I'm going to be on the lookout, right? Paying attention or looking out specifically for these little nuggets of confidence boosting from my opponent is, again, it's not healthy for you. Frankly, it creates a really negative playing environment. And the RIF is going to tie into this. It talks about antics, right? Because if that's the case, right? And I'll go ahead and I'll give you a little bit of a spoiler, foreshadow the RIF. If that's the case, if If my strength comes from your weakness, then why would I not then take... Do anything I could to make you weak as my opponent, right? To get under your skin, right?
[00:09:12.420] - Speaker 1
To negatively affect you. Because then that gives me more confidence, and then I can win. And just like the vampire needs the blood of another human, or not another human, of a human, the vampire needs the blood of a human, or the parasite needs the sustenance of its host. Is that what we want to do? Is that how we want to approach pickleball? I would submit no. And I would submit, even if I'm not going to agree that this gives you an advantage, meaning like, when I say gives you an advantage that your attention to it and filling your tank is going to give you an advantage. Let me lay this out a little better because I'm messing this part up a little bit. What I I'm going to look at it this way. If your opponents are, in fact, in a bad place, I said this earlier, you already have an advantage. If you're in a good place and your opponents are in a bad place, the advantage is already there. You're already going to get the benefit if you want to look at it that way. I'm putting it in air quotes. If you're watching this, you'll see it on YouTube, but air quotes.
[00:10:19.860] - Speaker 1
You already have the benefit of it. Why add to it? Why feed off of it? That's really the idea. Filling your tank is feeding off of the other thing. Why pay attention to it and feed off of it in a way that is going to make you focus on the negative of your opponent? If the benefits are the benefit's there, and it is what it is. If your opponent can't focus on the shot, can't think a strategy because whatever is going on in their situation, you already get the benefit because you're getting the less than optimal play by them because they're not in a good place mentally. But then to add on top of it, I'm going to now, like My position is going to get emboldened by your weakness. It's just not something that I think is a good way to think about pick a ball. Frankly, I would suggest to you, rather than paying attention for the purpose suggested in that piece, right? Pay attention so you can fill your tank. Why don't you pay attention for the purpose of helping your friend out? Because I'm going to bet that if it's not nine, it's eight, probably nine, actually, out of 10 times, that's your friend over there, right?
[00:11:29.980] - Speaker 1
And yes, you're playing a game that has an opponent in quotes again, and you're trying to win, they're trying to win. But not at the expense of them as a human being and you as a human being. So I'm going to suggest to you, pay attention to that, but pay attention to it from the standpoint of, what can I do to help my friend out? What can I do to get my friend out of their funk? As opposed to, how can I use my friend's misery, my friend's feeling bad, to gain more power points or something, strength points on my side, and improve my confidence tank or whatever that is. Frankly, this happens to me sometimes. The more I talk about it, the more I think about it, the worse I think that this post is in terms of It's something that we should be aware of, and we should have our defenses up against this nonsense, and this negativity, and the idea of using negativity to build ourselves up. Why don't we focus on working on ourselves internally, making ourselves as strong as we can as human beings, as we make our way through the planet and through our life, and allow others to do the same, and encourage them, and maybe consider building them up rather than knocking them down as an approach.
[00:12:55.970] - Speaker 1
All right. A little emotional on that one there, because the more I think about it, the the more pissed off I get about the idea of building ourselves up on someone else's misfortune, or someone else's ill feelings. I'm going to dive into the Because let me finish all the negative, and then I'll go positive at the end with this idea that Helen shared with us. The other thing I wanted to talk about, it's related to this. I was at the PPA this last week, and I got to watch a lot of different matches, mixed men's, women's, some singles. And there are a lot of, obviously, amazing pickleball players out there. They're all professionals, and they're all at the top of the game. And they're all trying as hard as they can, and they're all playing as hard as they can. But if there's one thing that I think sometimes happens at pro and at rec is antics. And by antics, I mean saying things or doing things that are specifically designed to upset your opponent. So it's one thing, if you need to pump yourself up and whatever, that's on you. Do what you got to do.
[00:14:16.830] - Speaker 1
Fine. But when you have to do something that is intended to undermine your opponent, undermine their mindset, undermine their ability to play, and I'm not talking about hitting a shot to a spot on the court that they can't handle. That's playing the game. I'm talking about when you're going outside the game and you're making nasty comments, or another example that made me think about it was a player who does a type of a serve technique that is intended to get in their opponent's heads, right? Just the act, not the shot, right? Again, the way they hit the shot, fine, right? If it works and it's legal to hit it. But if it's like, I'm going to do this before, not because I need to do it for myself or not because I need it to execute the shot, simply because I want to get into your head. I'm 50 something, 55 this year, I guess. We left a middle school playground a long time ago, if you listen to this podcast. And so let's not go back there when we go to step out on the pickleball court in the negative way. Positive way is fine.
[00:15:27.170] - Speaker 1
Be a kid, have fun. But the negative way of bullying others, or acting in ways that are actually intended. The purpose of the thing is to cause angst or stress on your opponent. Let's move away from that, please. Here's what I'm going to tell you. If you see somebody doing that when you're playing in a rec game, stop playing. Just leave. Leave the court. You don't have to leave the whole place. You don't have to play with that player. And it's the concept of agency, where you have a player that's just doing something. Why? It's pickable. Enjoy it. Play it, play it, play it to have fun, and play it to do the best that you can, and to continue growing. All right. Enough of that. Let's go to a positive here. This was suggested by Helen, which I thought was a really interesting way of thinking about it, and it's like a self-check that she does once a week. And what she does is she checks herself, and her question she asked herself is, How did I contribute to my pickleball community How did I contribute to my pickleball community this week? What I like about that framing is it's very broad.
[00:16:36.790] - Speaker 1
So you can play with it however you want. You can look at it in terms of... She gave some examples, setting nets up. That's fine. Playing with some players, maybe beginner players. And again, I say this with quotes, but playing with players who are under your level, right? That's good for your community, right? I think sharing this podcast with a friend of yours who's in need. We talked about it earlier, right? You're playing with a friend of yours. You can tell your friend is super stressed. They're having a hard time dealing with a misshot or a pop-up or whatever it is. Share this podcast. I'm assuming you're more than 15 minutes into this episode, so you must think this podcast has some value, some relevance to you. Share it with your friend. Those are the types of things that you can do to contribute to your pickleball community. And I think it's a really helpful way to think big picture about not just how playing pickleball, but your relationship with this awesome sport, because it's not just about you, it's not just about me as players, and it's not just about the little yellow ball.
[00:17:38.650] - Speaker 1
It's about the community, it's about growth, and it's about everybody being able to saunder to have their own experience inside the sport of pickleball. So I hope you enjoyed. I enjoyed it. I guess I could say, I enjoyed this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed it, too. And I hope to see some of you at the clinic. Again, the link will be in the show notes if you care to join us for that. And lastly, as always, if you enjoyed the podcast, consider sharing with your friends. If you enjoyed the podcast, they probably will, too. I hope you have a great week. Look for the special episode of the podcast, dropping sometime next week. And I will see you at the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. Be well.