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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.
[00:00:00.490] - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Pickable Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickable improvement. I hope you're having a great week. We just came out of a four-part series on baseline and using the baseline to best benefit ourselves when we play or best gage ourselves, I guess, when we're playing. This week, we're going to turn towards a strategy concept, something I've been working on recently, and it has to do with a question that's getting asked a lot out there, which is, is the soft game dead? Is the soft game in our rear view mirror in pickle ball, and is everything now hard game? Is everything fast and hard? We're going to explore that this week's podcast. It's really going to help you play better because part of playing better is understanding. It's feeling calm and confident when you're out there because you know what's up. You know the real deal. You know the right answers to the questions out there, and this will really help you. As an example, I just got a question on a YouTube video that's been out for a little bit on the IntuPickle channel that has to do with respect the X.
[00:01:02.010] - Speaker 1
It's one of the concepts we're known for. The comment was something about how a lot of intermediate-level pros out there are still teaching forehand in the middle. It's very confusing when you're out there and you're like, Well, I hear this and that and that. If you don't know the answer, it can feel overwhelming. I sent this person, this player, to a video that we have on forehand in the middle, because at the end of the day, what we want is we want you to know as much as we do about pickleball so that when you hear something like in the middle or the fast game. If the soft game is dead, everything's fast game now, you can go, Hold on a second there. Let's talk about it. You'll be able to speak about it intelligently and adapt your strategy to concepts that actually work, which It reminds me that this podcast is brought to you by betterpickable. Com. It's part of the Better Pickleball family because it reminded me because that's our objective at Better Pickleball. That is what we try and do inside. Everything we do inside Better Pickleball is to give you actionable content that will help you really improve your play.
[00:02:01.400] - Speaker 1
Speaking of which, we have several camps coming up. We have some spots left in New York. We have a few left in Chicago, I believe, and I know that we have a few left in Tahoe as well. If you're in the West Coast, Tahoe is going to be good for you to go to. It's right there in C It's hometown of Incline Village, New York, who doesn't want to go to New York? You got to check out the APP that weekend in Flushing Metal. It's a win-win situation. And if you come to the camp, you can even check me playing out on Thursday for the team cup event there at Flushing Meadow, and you can stick around for the weekend and watch some of the best players in the world play pickleball in a tournament setting. So if you want to check those out, go to betterpickleball. Com. We'll put a link in the show notes as well, and you can check those out if it's time for you to do a camp. Also, remember, maybe a friend here has been talking about a camp or a family member. Share the information with them. We don't do that many camps in a year, and it's a great opportunity to get on court with CJ and myself to learn really good stuff about pickleball and understand the game better.
[00:02:58.830] - Speaker 1
All right, let's Oh, I got one more thing to do, one more piece of housekeeping. I don't do this. Jennifer will yell at me. I don't want Jennifer yelling at me, so here we go. I'm going to do a shout out here. Shout out for a couple of reviews. I appreciate you all leaving reviews. It's something that... It's It's hard to express the importance of getting reviews nowadays. I don't know if you use Yelp and things like that, but I know Jill and I do, my wife and I do. If a restaurant doesn't have reviews and things like that, sometimes they don't get found. It might be the best restaurant you've ever been to. Same thing with podcasts. If a podcast doesn't have enough reviews, if the algorithm doesn't recognize it, we live in that world right now, and so that's why it's important. One thing I would ask is if you have not yet subscribed to our channel on YouTube, even if you're not an avid YouTube watcher, if you can go on there next time on YouTube and just click on Pickleball Therapy and click subscribe and hit that little notification bell. Again, it tells YouTube, Hey, people like this thing.
[00:03:55.830] - Speaker 1
Couple of reviews we got recently, one from DCA 51001 on Apple. Thanks for the information you provide. It helps me to get my head straight. Happy to do that if we can. I like to listen right before I play. It helps me have a better pickleball game. That's why these podcasts are the length that they are. And then second one was Great Resource by Saturus76. Like that name? A perfect podcast to listen to on your way out to the courts. And that's, again, why we do the length of the podcast. What we do. And thank you very much for those reviews. Again, does it help us feel better with the podcast? Of course, it does. Everybody likes to hear nice things. It's very nice to hear from you and that. But the more practical is what I mentioned, which is allowing us to reach other players who, just like you, hopefully will benefit from this podcast. All right, let's dive into the main subject of today. We do have a rift later. I have to do a bowling. You're on to stick around for that. You'll see why in a minute. All right, let's talk about, is the soft game dead?
[00:04:56.590] - Speaker 1
Okay. There's more conversation out there about the fast game, about how pickle is becoming a hard game and a faster played game and things like that. I think I'd be remiss or it It'd be silly to suggest that there isn't pace in this game. There certainly is pace in this game. There are bangers or a part of the game, and without a criticism, it's fine. You can play pickle however you want. The question is, from a strategic standpoint, is the soft game, in fact, like something in the past? What we're going to do to determine this or to figure this out is, what you've been doing is studying the best in the game. The best pick of all players in this game, to see what is it that they do to consistently win medals. They're consistently winning at the highest level. So what strategies are they using? Now, as we go through this, let's be clear. The conversation we're having here isn't a direct, like you take the words that you hear coming out of my mouth and you implement those words directly. The words I'm sharing with you are to increase your understanding of the sport at a fundamental level in your mind, in other words, at a really core level with your brain, to help you understand better what really works and what doesn't work.
[00:06:23.800] - Speaker 1
That doesn't translate directly into do this on the core, and you will Do this, just do this and you'll be amazing by itself without some other understandings. At the end, I'll talk about that a little bit more, particularly if you're already in our pickleball system, if you're listening to us and you're a system member, the system is set up to help you with your game from soup to nuts, so to speak, A to Z. So stick with the program in there. Listen to this, understand it better. You'll see how everything starts to fit better together as you have a deeper understanding of Pickleball. But this podcast is not designed to... It's not a road map podcast. It's a deeper understanding of the game podcast, this particular episode. Well, they all are. But this particular episode is strategically is a deeper understanding. I want to be clear about that in terms of before we get too far down this road on this soft game. Let's talk about the best players in the game. The two best teams in pickleball, by far, are Ben and Colin Johns, the Johns brothers, and J. W. Johnson and Dylan Frazier.
[00:07:32.360] - Speaker 1
Now, listen, just to be clear, no disrespect to any of the female teams, any of the women's teams. That is not the point of this. But objectively, the two teams I just described will beat all comers. They would beat any team that you put across from them consistently, not 100% of the time, but you would definitely bet your money on either the Johns Brothers or J. W. And Dylan right now. There's a couple of other teams that are coming up, like Diascu and Tartiere really strong. But right now, the two teams that are the best are those two. When you study those teams, what you notice is that those teams rely on a soft game approach to pickable. Now, can they hit the ball hard? Of course, they can hit the ball hard. Dylan, J. W, and Ben have competed. All four have competed in singles. Colin hasn't competed in several years in singles, but they all have reasonable singles careers in terms their work. So you know they can hit hard. They can drive the ball forehand, backhand. They can get it done hard. But when they play doubles, and they're playing against the other really good teams, the strategy that they implement is a soft game strategy.
[00:08:47.030] - Speaker 1
We refer to this strategy as Chapter One, Pickleball, and I'll explain that more in a second. But the idea is that, or what I want you to start wrapping your head around, is that these teams win, and they win a lot using primarily soft game shots, soft game strategies. Let's focus on the serve side. Let's focus on the serve side right now in terms of how they play the serve side of their game. Remember, on the serve side, you start off every rally at a disadvantage. That's how this game is constructed. That's framework. That's what we call framework inside the system and all of our teaching. You start off at a disadvantage run on the serve side, every single rally. The question is, Okay, how am I going to solve this puzzle? How am I going to play the best I can, given the fact that I am at a disadvantage? The way that these two teams do it, almost without exception, is they use the paradigm shot of a pickleball, which is the third shot. The reason that the third shot is falling out of favor some with instruction, with us, like coaches, we start to use long ding and other terminology, is because sometimes players will get fixated on the number, on the prefix third.
[00:10:06.700] - Speaker 1
That's basically like, I don't know what's a prefix, maybe a qualifier, but third shot. If I hit my third shot this way, it's not the fifth shot or the seventh shot. The reality is that the third shot continues to be... The third shot drop, continues to be the optimal shot to hit any time that you're on the serve team or the serve side, and you're at a disadvantage, meaning you're not up at the non-volley zone line. So these players use that shot consistently and pretty much exclusively while they're not at the non-volley zone. I know it was to get up there, to overcome their disadvantage. Because they understand that pickleball is won from the non-volley line. That's where rallies are won or lost if you're not there. So what they're using is they're using a soft came shot, the third shot drop or the long dink, in order to overcome that disadvantage that they face when they're playing. What they'll do is they'll work their way up from the baseline to the non-volley line, pretty much exclusively. They're not attacking. What they're not doing is they're not attacking from the transition zone, from no man's land, no person his land in the middle of the court or from the baseline.
[00:11:17.030] - Speaker 1
They don't drive the ball a lot from back there. You don't see them winding up and delivering haymakers from back there. What they're doing is they're calmly and methodically working their way from the From the baseline all the way to non-volley line. Then once they're at the non-volley line, then they execute a very disciplined grind approach. What I mean by that is it's all soft game, moving the ball around. Every once in a while, they'll speed it up. But For instance, even there, there's some differences. If you look at the four players I mentioned, the one who's most likely to attack from the bounce when the ball bounces is Dylan Frazier. Second would actually be Colin Johns. Ben and J. W. Hardly If ever, if ever, will speed up a ball that has bounced. So if the dink bounces, they're just going to dink it back. Now, they'll try and put pressure on you. They'll try and move it around, but they're not going to attack from the bounce normally. Now, Ben and J. W. Are both deadly if you give them, it's not even a pop-up. It's just a ball that they can do something with, primarily with their back-end.
[00:12:24.910] - Speaker 1
J. W. Does more with the fore-hand than Ben, but with the back-end, they both attack it. If the ball is around net level or a little bit under the net, they'll flick that ball, sometimes to create some pressure, some offense. But other than those situations, they are dinking and dinking and dinking. That's why some folks think that the men's pro game at the highest level is boring because it involves a lot of dinking. That's okay. You're entitled to your opinion on what you think is interesting pickle ball or not interesting pickle ball. But I will tell you that strategically, it is amazing in how it's to watch. The discipline that they have, the way they grind through their points, because a lot of times they're facing opponents who want to, in fact, they want to speed it up faster or sooner. They want to get into the situation sooner. What J. W. You Dylan, Ben, and Colin do is say, not me. I'll play for seven hours if that's what you want to do. I will grind with you for seven hours because I know that I can outwork you, forcing their opponents then to make mistakes, right?
[00:13:28.060] - Speaker 1
Try and speed balls up either into the net, out, or get counterattacked by their opponent. But big picture, if you look at the way that they play, it is what we would call Chapter One Pickable. And Chapter One Pickable is fundamentally sound Pickleball. It is pickable that utilizes a clear understanding of the way the game is built, the court we play on, the rules that we play with. And just to round it out for you, the number one most important rule in pickable in the rule book is the non- Volley zone. That is the rule that defines our sport. If there wasn't a non-volley zone, we wouldn't play pickleball the way we play it. We'd be doing something else. We may be playing this sport, but we'd be playing it totally differently. There would be no third shot drop because a third shot drop would just have the players come up to the net and smash it at you or drop it or do something. It's not possible to hit the shot that we hit in pickleball if you don't have a non-volley zone. The chapter one pickleball says, I know how this game is played.
[00:14:28.240] - Speaker 1
I know I need to be at the non-volley I understand that there's a non-volley zone on the other side. I understand the shots and strategy that I can use to get the job done for me. I'm going to implement those basically relentlessly. Like with discipline, I'm not going to vary from it. That is what those teams do. When they face another team that might be a good team, I mean, the other teams they face are very, very good teams. It's almost without a doubt that Ben and John or I'm sorry, Ben and Colin or J. W. And Dylan, they're not going to be able to get through both those teams. If you saw a tournament where you had both the John's brothers and J. W. And Dylan in the same tournament, number one and number two seeds is what they normally present as, it'd be hard to bet on anybody else. No, if you could choose one of those two teams or the field, you would take one of those two teams because they're more likely than not to win that tournament. Again, what they're doing is using a soft game, chapter one, disciplined approach to pickleball.
[00:15:36.800] - Speaker 1
What does that tell us about the state of our sport? It tells us that the state of our sport is not that the soft game is dead. In fact, the soft game is alive and well, and it's being used by the teams that know how to use it the best to win gold medal after gold medal after gold medal at the highest level of our sport. If you want to check it out visually, you can go to IntuPickle. It probably will have published by the time that this podcast airs. We have a video on the Soft Game being Dead, where I contrast two styles. I contrast J. W. And Dylan in an APP tournament against two very good players, Will Howell's I think I got that right. Wiles and Reilly to Heart, two excellent pick-up all players, excellent athletes, right? But the match ends 11:3, 11:3 in favor of J. W. And Dylan. When you watch the match and you watch the highlights that we'll share with you on the YouTube video, you'll see how The strategy that J. W. And Dylan implement and execute the Chapter One pickleball basically is just dominant in that match.
[00:16:41.020] - Speaker 1
Again, 11-3, 11-3, not a very close encounter. Again, no criticism of Reiler and Will. I mean, they're fine athletes and good players, but strategically, the J. W. And Dylan strategy is what wins out in that game. Now, I mentioned to you that I'm going to give you a caveat here. There is a caveat to this in terms of application for players, and this is why it's dangerous to hear these things just in the abstract like this, or to read something on Facebook, or an Instagram post or something. All of a sudden, you're shifting your entire strategy around this concept that you may only be seeing a piece of and not really seeing the big picture of. But for example, if you were to take this strategy and just apply it, soft game strategy, it's going to work great, but you can't control your opponents. So you can't force them to play a soft game. Your opponents will want to come hard at you. So if you're going to play a soft game, which we advise, because soft game, here's the thing, right? Hard game, if you come from tennis, you have a hard game, probably, right?
[00:17:39.030] - Speaker 1
A racquetball or something like that where you know it hit the ball hard. You might probably already come preloaded with that. If you don't come from a racquet sports background to pick a ball, it's very difficult to just pick up a hard game. That's any good, right? And so is that the right approach, or should you take the soft game approach, right? Because here's the thing, even if you came from tennis or racquetball and you don't a soft game, you're going to be toast eventually. You're going to run it. You're running into your clone, your mirror image on the other side who plays a soft game and has a hard game like you, and you can't compete. So the soft game is necessary for everybody, right? If you want to play well around a game, and it's usable in and of itself. The thing you need to add to it or make sure you have as a part of it, I should say, is you need to have a decent stress-resistant mechanism, so you need to have a decent block foley. And this is the one that's always the trickiest. You need to be able to let out balls go.
[00:18:32.350] - Speaker 1
If you can't let out balls go, you are going to be toast against fast game players because they're just going to keep hammering balls at you. As long as they clear the net, and if you're willing to hit it, makes it too easy. If you want to know more about out balls, we have a whole decision tree. We have a whole course on that. It's the Bangers course inside the Better Pigger Ball Academy. You can check that out. But basically, the idea that I wanted to communicate in this podcast to you, in this episode to you, is that the soft game is not dead. And the soft game is alive and well and is being used by those who know how to use it well to win a lot and a lot of times against teams that don't apply a soft game approach, a chapter one, pick a ball approach. So as you think about your game, don't despair. Don't say, Oh, my God, it's going fast, and I got to learn how to drive the ball, and I got to do all this stuff, because that is not the case in our sport. All right, let's go ahead and jump, dive right into the RIF.
[00:19:30.270] - Speaker 1
I already told you about the Better Pickleball Academy course. You can check that out on the Bangers. I think you're going to enjoy that. You can also be on the lookout for our... We have an amazing presentation at the upcoming summit, as well as an upcoming course with our friend, a young man, and one of the players I just mentioned, Dylan Frazier. He talks about how the soft game is, in fact, not dead, and how it's how he evolved himself from a 3-5 player, which he was when he first started, to being one of the top pro players in the game with a soft game. All right, the RIF. I just want to share with you a quick story here. I read this this morning, I believe. It was this morning. Let me read it to you. This is a post that was in a Facebook group that we have for system members. It's a closed group. If you're not a system member, you can't join this group because it's system communication. But this is really interesting talking about how the system, but how the mental approach can help your game. This is from Nancy.
[00:20:35.510] - Speaker 1
She says, I love how the TPS applies to much more than pickleball. Now, I want you to... If you're not a TPS, if you're a TPS member, great. Keep it that way. If you're not a TPS member, you can replace it with the pickable therapy concepts, because there's overlap. What we teach inside the system is the same stuff we talk about here in this part, in the mental part. Yesterday, I was bowling in the National Bowl Tournament in Reno. Started out good with a 167. I don't know. I think I might have done a 167 one time in my life, maybe. Second game went south of the 105. Seven splits. Starting the third game, instead of lamenting on my lousy luck and what I did wrong, I put that behind me and focused on the process and my breathing with each ball thrown. Ended up with a 192, which I have never scored a 192, and that's better than 167, right? So many ways to benefit from the system. Thank you, CJ and Tony. Can't wait to meet you at my camp next month. The The story is this. What I wanted to leave with you is this.
[00:21:32.840] - Speaker 1
The concepts that you learn inside the system, if you remember, or inside Pickleball therapy, a subpart of the bigger concepts, will help you with more than just pickable. I think it's helpful to think about pickleball as a part of a much bigger picture, which is you, you as a human being. And your growth inside pickleball extends to your growth outside of a pickle. So hopefully that helps you as you think about where to spend your time and how to devote your time, listening to these podcasts extend well beyond potentially winning an extra game or an extra few rallies during a pickleball session. All right, that's this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. Remember, if you can rate and review it, please do. If you're interested in any camps, check it out in the show notes. And as always, please share the podcast with your friends because you may have a friend out there who likes pickleball, but maybe they're a little bit in the weeds right now and would really benefit from the concepts inside Pickleball Therapy. I'm guessing if you listen to the podcast, you enjoy it, and they probably will, too. Have a great week, and I'll see you next time.