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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.
[00:00:05.040] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. I am your host of the weekly podcast, Tony Roig. It's a pleasure to be with you this week. It's been five years or so recording this podcast, and it still feels like I just started it. I really appreciate the opportunity to be with you week in and week out and share with you concepts for the mind. And help you navigate this amazing journey of Picaball. This week's podcast, I'm going to share with you an excerpt from the book that we just released, just published, called Pickleball Therapy: The Book. I have a copy with me right here in studio. I'm showing it to the camera. Super excited to have the book version of this, the actual print version. It's been on a computer being worked on for the last couple of years. Then you have to go through all the editing, the formatting, the cover design, all that stuff. Then finally, at the end, you have this manifestation of the ideas in the form of a book. I'm going to read to you from the book itself, not from my computer screen.
[00:01:14.960] - Tony Roig
I'm going to hold the book and just read to you some excerpts, but we're going to talk about the win-loss metric. At the end, in the RIF, I'll share with you a personal story about being body aware because I was not body aware last Friday, not body aware I'm suffering the consequences of that now. But it's the thing where you read these reports about injuries and pickleball and stuff like that. It's just crazy to me because the injury that I have is an injury that I've been having since I was 18 years old, and it manifestsests in various ways. This time, it happened to manifest on a pickleball court because I didn't properly prepare it. I'll explain more in the rift. But before that, I want to cover the excerpt in the book that has to do with winning and losing, because winning and losing Winning and Losing, because Winning and Losing is one of these metrics that we're just so steeped in. Just years and years of winning good, losing bad. It takes some time to debunk that. We spend a lot of time in the book trying to debunk that metric so that we can replace it with metrics that actually work.
[00:02:18.640] - Tony Roig
As we dive into it, as I mentioned, the book is out. The Kindle version is out as well. On Amazon, if you have Kindle Unlimited or Kindle Select, it's called Kindle Premium, whatever it is, the Kindle thing that includes some stuff in there you can read for no additional cost, other than your membership, I guess. Check out the book. It's on there as well. But I'm partial to these print versions of it. They're on Amazon. They make really good gifts. So if you need a stocking stuffer or you want to give your partner or friend a nice gift that will help them with their pickleball, Pickable Therapy, the book is no miss proposition, if you will. All right, let me dive in and read about the win-loss metric. So we're diving into the middle of a subject here, but I think it picks up pretty well here about the win-loss metric. And we're trying to debunk it as a metric. I'm going to read for a little bit here, and then we'll talk about it some more, and then I'll give you the RIF. So reading from page 96 of the book, The win-loss metric is not actionable, so why use it?
[00:03:28.000] - Tony Roig
This next statement usually perplexes as players at first. You cannot go out there to win a game. Think about it for a moment. You cannot go out there to win a game. What does I'm going to win a game even mean? What are your action items that follow from I will win the game? The answer is there are no action items. Winning is not something you can directly do. Rather, winning is something that happens. It is result. Let's contrast winning with some things you can do, areas that you have control over. One, you can aim your serves and returns of serve higher over the net, reducing net errors. Two, you can aim your returns of serve deep in the court, maximizing your positional advantage at the start of each rally. Three, you can pick a spot on the court where you want to aim your shots towards, potentially exploiting a weakness in your opponent's formation. Four, you can identify your opponent's strengths, for example, a strong back-end put-away volley, allowing you to avoid hitting too many shots there. Each of the above is within your control. Broadening this concept, you have control over the shots you hit and the strategy you choose during the game.
[00:04:53.600] - Tony Roig
The sum of these decisions and how well you execute them over the course of the contest will yield the result. You will either win that game or you will lose that game. No matter what, you cannot simply skip the process and, quote, win this game. That is nonsense. This is important because you want to employ metrics that are useful to you. Metrics are useful if they provide you with feedback that you can benefit from or help you determine your future actions. To be actionable, the information provided by the metric must be something that is under your control. An example of a useful metric would be deciding that the next time you play, you will target your volleys at least 6 inches above the net each time. You will use your volley metric by asking a follow-up question anytime your volley lands in the net. Did I aim my volley 6 inches above the net. If the answer is no, then your action is to focus on your intentionality when hitting volleys. If the answer is yes, then you can turn to your mechanics to see what occurred. The exact steps to correct the shot are beyond the scope of This is not a win-win.
[00:06:00.280] - Tony Roig
It's not a win-win. It's not a win-win. It's not a win-win. It's not a win-win. It's not a win-win. It's not a win-win. The point here is to know that you have control over the intentionality of the net clearance that you select for your volleys. The better you exercise your control over this part of your volley, the better your chances of hitting your volley successfully. You do not, however, have You have control over whether you will win or lose that contest. Those are simply results. As winning is not an actionable item, it's related metric, win-loss, is likewise not an actionable metric. You'll be much better served by focusing on metrics that are either actionable, like the 6 inches over the net volume metrics from above, or provide you with some other useful information. We have debunked the usefulness of wind loss as an actionable metric. Let's now see if it otherwise provides us with any useful information. The wind loss metric does not actually measure anything, so why use it? As we set forth above, a metric is a measure. For something to work as a metric, it must provide a measurement that is useful to us in some way.
[00:07:01.980] - Tony Roig
We've established that the win-loss metric is not actionable, but does it give us any information that we can use in some way? Spoiler alert. The answer is no. Win-loss does not actually measure anything in a way that is useful to us. In any event, we cannot act on the information it provides. Lastly, even if we were to believe that we could obtain useful measurement with it, in a theoretical sense, win-loss still fails in a real setting, which happens to be where we live and play pickleball. Win-loss is not a useful measurement. Take a moment with this. Win-loss tells you nothing about how well you played. You can play your best pickleball and lose every single game you played that day. Perhaps your partners were off, or you were playing against objectively higher-level opponents, or you were playing at level all the way around, but the ball just did not bounce your way a few times. Winning every game in a a day can likewise be uninformative. For example, if you are a 4. 0 player but we're playing in a beginner group, or you happen to be paired with the best players for each game that day, or you got favorable matchups each game that day.
[00:08:12.760] - Tony Roig
Whether it's winning a bunch of games or losing them, the mere act of winning or losing does not give you feedback about how you played. As a result, there is no reason to use win-loss as our measuring stick. Plus, as you now know, when If you're getting a level, you are supposed to win 50% of the time and lose 50% of the time. There is simply nothing to measure here. Even if win-loss metric provided feedback, it is not useful feedback. Assume that you're still in the win-loss tells me something camp. All right, let's go further. What decisions can you make or actions can you take based on the information provided you by the win-loss metric? Let's take a day where you lost all your games. What does losing in itself tell you to do next? Presumably, if you care about your losses, you're looking for more than just, Oh, I lost today. Boohoo. Rather, you're looking for some version of, I lost more than I wanted to today. What can I do about it? The mere knowledge that you lost provides you with zero useful information that you can use to answer, What can I do about it?
[00:09:25.360] - Tony Roig
In other words, the win-loss metric is of no use to you when you lose. Other than to tell you that you lost. That's it. Likewise, winning is of no use to you along your pickleball journey beyond you won that game or X games that day. Perhaps when you win a bunch of games, you could say, That was great. I've reached the pinnacle of all pick-up and there's nothing more to do. But you know that makes no sense, right? Even though you won a lot that day, you probably noticed how you had difficulty with a particular shot or how you could have done a bit better in some situation or another. You know that you still have more to grow. The mere fact of winning also gives us nothing to chew on so that we can continue to get better. Let's now compare the win-loss metric to a specific and actionable metric about your play. Today, I hit 25 volleys into the net over in these games is an example of a useful metric. The metric here is, how often is my volley landing in the net? The metric measures your performance in a way that provides you with feedback you can use.
[00:10:26.100] - Tony Roig
You can work on your volley trajectory to reduce net errors in your game. Hence, Once this metric has value, it informs a decision to focus on the mechanics of your volleys. When you pivot from useless to useful metrics, you gain an additional advantage. Focusing on process-driven metrics, for example, keeping your volleys out of the net, allows you to gain the improved results you're looking for. The better each part of your game becomes, the better your overall results will be. The win-loss metric fails in the real world. When you play pickleball, do you think you should win every single game that you play? Actually, no reason to stop there. Why not expect to win every single rally when you play? Take it one step further. Let's never miss another shot ever again. It's patently silly when we put it this way. You can see how completely unrealistic this way of thinking is. Yet when we play, we often fall into a fantasy world of believing that we should have won that game or that one or that one. We extend this idea that we should have won to everything that happens. When we lose a rally, the first question we ask ourselves is, What did we do wrong?
[00:11:35.280] - Tony Roig
When we lose a game we sometimes resort to, we should have won that game. This thinking is, at a minimum, unproductive. Often, however, this thinking can become damaging. In the short term, we are unable to concentrate on the next rally because we are ruminating on the past. Longer term, this thinking chips away at our confidence as it causes us to hyper focus on the negative, on the loss. To avoid these harms, we will need to exit the fantasy land thinking that we should win because, well, we should win. As we discussed previously in this book, when we play at level, we expect 50% wins and 50% losses. If you need a If you're on at level, reread those sections. You'll get more out of what comes next. This 50/50 proposition is the real world that we inhabit. Because this is the case, then you should, over time, be about equal in wins and losses. Ten wins will be balanced out with 10 losses and so on. If our long-term reality is 50% each of winning and losing, then how does a win-loss metric help us? After all, we expect to be winning and losing the same number of games.
[00:12:42.860] - Tony Roig
I cannot stress this enough. If you are playing at level, it means that the other team has a chance, 50% of exactly that level, of beating you. If the other team has no chance of winning, then consider perhaps that you are not playing at level as there is no challenge to you. If you set a framework for yourself where winning is good and losing is bad, then you unnecessarily stack the mental deck against yourself. At level, you will lose 50% of the time. Using win loss as your metric will leave You are disappointed about 50% of the time. And there is no reason to do this to yourself. When you use the win-loss metric, you are setting up a mental framework that is of no use to you and is going to leave you disappointed half the time. A lose-lose proposition, if you will allow the pun. The win-loss metric falls apart under scrutiny. Real-world dynamics of 50-50 at level render the metric useless. It is time for you to discard this irrelevant metric once and for all. The book then continues to have some conversation about the next section. I'll just read the title of it.
[00:13:53.200] - Tony Roig
Okay, but what can be the harm in using the win-loss metric? Because that's where we end up sometimes. Well, okay, I hear what you're saying, but it can't be that bad to use. I put in here why you shouldn't use it. And then I give you the decision to discard the metric, the win-loss metric, and select a metric that is right for you, your personal metric, because there is one, and it's outlined in the book. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that little excerpt from the book. That was, I don't know, about four or five pages from the book. You can see that it's thick. I mean, there's a lot of stuff in there. There's some interesting concepts in there that I think will help you reframe some of how you come at the game, including debunking this win-loss metric that can be just so damaging to us in terms of how we feel and is of no use to you in terms of your improvement as a player and even how you're going to perform that day. So if you want to read the whole book, again, it's on Amazon. I think you'll really enjoy adding it to your journey.
[00:14:58.880] - Tony Roig
All right, here's the RIF. So let me tell you what happened, and then I'll backtrack. So I'm playing on Friday with my friends. We were in our second game, halfway into our second game. And I was feeling fine. I was feeling fantastic in my body. My mind was feeling great. We were joking around, having a good time. So a ball gets it past me for a winner down the right side. I was in the transition zone. I couldn't have gotten to the ball. It was a really well-hit ball out wide. But I'm standing in the transition zone, and I kid you not, all I did was basically think about looking at the ball. So I may have turned my torso like a millimeter to the right. Turned it a little bit like that. Bam. Back went out. Lower back. I felt it. It was like, snap. Now, this is part of knowing your body. I know my body. I know my back. I've had this back since I've been 18. So what is that? 38 years now that I've had this back situation that flares It's up from time to time. When is it going to flare up?
[00:16:03.240] - Tony Roig
I don't know. Side note here. I mean, this injury that happened to me was not because of a pickle. I want to be clear about that because a pickleball gets this... Someone gets injured on a pickleball court. It's a pickleball injury. They're not all pickle injuries because you got injured on a pick-up-all court. This was an injury that was preventable by me, or at least may not preventable 100%, but I could have reduced the chances of it happening. I'll tell you how I could have done in a second, so you can do the same. But step number one is knowing yourself. I know that I have a back that is prone to having a spasm in it if things get tight in my body, and things get tight in my body when I'm in the car. I've been in the car, I've been traveling a lot, train ride to Miami, in the car this week or last week right before I was playing. So what happens is when, it probably happens to you, too, but I'll tell you what happens to me, when I get in the car, my hamstrings They get tight, right? They get shortened.
[00:17:03.380] - Tony Roig
My glutes get tight, so glutes hamstrings are all tight. So it starts to pull my hip in weird ways. And then something silly, like just a little bit of a movement to one side, jerky, it'll shoot off my back. So knowing myself and the shape of my body, right? And what happens to it, knowing what I had been doing right before pickleball for the last week or so, and knowing what I could have done would have been, A, to have stretched that out, not just the day of pickleball, right? It would have been to stretch it out the day before, knowing I had a pickleball tomorrow. I probably should have done a 30-minute stretch, just stretch out the ham string, stretch out the glutes, gotten everything nice and loose, knowing that I'm going to be able to go to a pickleball tomorrow. Instead, what did I do? I did what most of us do. I got to the courts right at play time. My group was waiting. They're there. So we'll get on the court, hit a few balls, start start playing. I was surprised that happened a game and a half in because my body was warmed up by then.
[00:18:04.920] - Tony Roig
But what it shows me and you is that my body wasn't pliable enough. I didn't have enough flexibility. And so that's why I got injured. So what I would recommend to you is be mindful of yourself and your body. You know your body. You know what ails you. Is it a plantar fasciitis? Is it your elbow? Is it your knee? Is it your legs? Be your back, like in my case, your shoulder, whatever it is. And give that some extra love during the week. And particularly, if you haven't been sedentary for a while, you haven't used it for a while, and then you're going to go out and play. Maybe the day before, a couple of days before, start getting it ready. Warm it up. Give it some lubrication if it's a joint. Give it some flexibility of its muscles that are shortened or tight, like in my situation, to reduce your chance of injury. So hopefully, you're smarter about it than I was last week. I wanted to share the story with you. Just as a cautionary tale that happened to me. All right, so that's this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed the podcast.
[00:19:06.740] - Tony Roig
As always, if you have a minute to rate and review the podcast wherever you listen to it, that helps us reach other players. And consider sharing this podcast with your friends, particularly if you have a friend who's all hung up on that win-loss metric and just can't seem to shake it and thinks it's a worthwhile metric. There's several other reasons why it should be discarded, but I think the case made in this podcast episode should be enough for several players to be able to start working their way away from the win-loss metric as their guide for how they played. I hope you have a great week. I will see you at the next episode of Pickable Therapy. I'll be at the PPA up in Dayton Beach next week. So if you're up there, please say hello. I will probably record the podcast on site, see what happens and what triggers something interesting. If nothing interesting gets triggered, we're going to do it about the Pickleball campus, which I think you really like. Have a great week, and I'll see you in the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. Be well.