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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.
[00:00:00.13] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. I hope you're having a great week. This week's podcast, um, I want to cover a topic that was brought to mind the last, uh, last few days playing some pickleball, you know, some different groups, meet some people. And, uh, I think it's a really powerful part of our game, which is obviously the mind, right? The mind's always powerful, but this idea of of, uh, things that enter our mind that, that really stop us from performing our best.
[00:00:32.05] - Tony Roig
And I'm going to give you a couple of different stories. This really ties into some of the conversations we've been having over the last few years. Um, if you haven't checked it out, there's a podcast where I shared, um, I, I will find the episode number, or I'll ask the team to find the episode number, and we'll put it in the show notes for you if you want to check it out. But it's a podcast where I talk about coming back in a bronze medal match at Nationals. Um, same kind of thing, right?
[00:00:53.01] - Tony Roig
Whereas the mind is getting a little bit intense, right? And so you relieve the— you relieve the mind pressure and all of a sudden you're just playing much better pickleball. So we'll talk about that in today's podcast and the riff. I'm going to talk about evolution, right? Evolving as a person, you know, recommend that you continue to do that and just talk a little about our evolution as coaches and, and just, you know, how life is.
[00:01:16.08] - Tony Roig
So I think, I think you'll enjoy the riff as well. As we dive into the podcast, we do have some spots still available for our camp in New York City. I'm super excited about that camp end of the month. 4 indoor courts in Gotham City. It's right across from Manhattan area.
[00:01:31.20] - Tony Roig
So super cool facility, beautiful view of the river afterward if you want to walk over there. Did it last year while we were there doing some clinics. And I think you'll really enjoy the camp. It's a 2-day camp and it's a— I find it a very interesting city to visit. The food, the museums, all the things you can do.
[00:01:49.01] - Tony Roig
So check that out. You can go to betterpickleball.com, click on the little campy thing and you'll see the location. I believe there's also a couple of spots available for the Tahoe camps, which are coming up like next week. So if you're in the Tahoe area, or you're going to be there anyway, or you're nearby Reno, something like that, sign up for those couple of spots with CJ's camp in, um, in the, the camp that CJ's leading there in Incline Village, right in Lake Tahoe. Beautiful Lake Tahoe, great courts, great facility, and you'll have a great time with CJ and the other campers at that camp as well.
[00:02:18.08] - Tony Roig
So, um, all right, so let's talk first about this mental basically mental limitations, right, that we put on ourselves while we're playing. And I was reminded of this, you know, in some games, playing some games with some players who I know and some players who I met recently. And what I noticed, right, was— notice isn't the right term— what came to mind, what was highlighted for me during these matches was how impacted these players were in their performance while we were playing by noise. Now, sometimes the noise was something like the score. Sometimes it was an outcall.
[00:03:01.14] - Tony Roig
Sometimes it was a missed shot. And it's interesting to see the impact that those different inputs have on these players' performance. The other area that was really a big one that was really impacting these players' ability to perform was their own feeling about their prior performance. And what I mean by that is the pressure that they were putting on themselves during these games because of a missed shot, because of a bad decision, because of whatever. And it really did impact their play.
[00:03:37.10] - Tony Roig
Now, these are folks who can, generally speaking, hit the ball into the court at a reasonable level of play, right? This was advanced open play or advanced group play. But when their mind was distracted by something, they all of a sudden were not able to perform the way they had performed a minute ago. And this takes— already takes into account the normal ebb and flow of play, right? We're going to sometimes make, sometimes miss.
[00:04:02.17] - Tony Roig
That's natural. I'm talking about an increased chance of missing, increased chance of not performing the way you want to. Because your mind is clouded by these distractions. So again, to, to, to restate them a little more fully, one is when you have like a scoring thing. So happens all the time and pay attention to it.
[00:04:23.08] - Tony Roig
You'll see it. Basically, there'll be like the score is called out incorrectly and it's just accidental, right? Something, you know, the score is called, one number is incorrect on the score, both numbers are wrong. And what happens is the, your partner, right? Or maybe you, you'll miss a shot.
[00:04:36.16] - Tony Roig
Very next words out of your mouth or out of your partner's mouth are, wait, the score is this, right? What do you think's happening when you're hitting the shot? Your mind's distracted, right? Your mind's thinking about the score. We're, you know, like processing the score and trying to figure that out.
[00:04:51.02] - Tony Roig
You're not going to execute well, right? And I've heard this said before about calling out the score. When you call out the score, if you don't— on the serve, when you're serving, if you don't— if you call it the score and serve right away, what's happening is the same part of your brain is trying to do the scoring and then trying to hit the serve, right? So that's not a good recipe. It's gotta be the same here.
[00:05:07.17] - Tony Roig
I'm not a neuro— I'm not, not a neurologist, right? Or not a, not a neuroscientist, but it's gotta be like a similar or same part of the brain. And if you know, write something in the comments about it. But basically where you're, you're thinking score, right? You're trying to think through it like, wait a minute, I thought, you know, the score was this because they're on this side and who was the first server and what happened the last whatever, right?
[00:05:30.14] - Tony Roig
And you're trying to hit a ball, right? So again, anecdotal stuff from me, but I've seen it so much over the last 10 years, I feel pretty confident about what I'm saying about the impact of that. Also, the carryover effect, for sure. Carryover effect is like you have a relatively easy shot and you miss it, right? And we have a whole episode on the oops bucket about that.
[00:05:48.22] - Tony Roig
It's not that long ago, so you can find that one. It's in the last 15 or so episodes, maybe 20. Uh, but basically, you know, you don't know where to put it, right? Because you haven't worked through the oops bucket. So your, your You miss a shot and you're, you're chatting yourself about it.
[00:06:01.29] - Tony Roig
You're like, oh my God, how did I miss that shot? I shouldn't have missed that shot. Can't believe I missed that shot. Whatever. Things like that.
[00:06:08.22] - Tony Roig
What happens next? Your chance of missing the next shot has gone up. Right? So that's the carryover effect of missing one shot and it carries over into the next shot. Similar idea with outballs, right?
[00:06:22.14] - Tony Roig
There's an outcall and there's a conversation or a dispute, or you don't like the call or they don't like the call or whatever. Somebody's, you're thinking about the outcall.
[00:06:31.15] - Tony Roig
Play is going to be impacted. And then the last one, you know, that I mentioned, which is a big one and, and it applies all the time, is this constant pressure that you're putting yourself under to perform on the pickleball court. Now, these last few days when I was playing, I was playing with male players, and, uh, they just happen to be male players on all these courts, and also, um, uh, not young. Okay, so like, let's say around 50 and then over, right? So call it all 45 and over, probably mostly 50 and over, some 60 and over, some 70 and over, right?
[00:07:03.14] - Tony Roig
So these are adult persons. And I recognize that we, you know, we want to perform well, but we need to maintain perspective in terms of what we're doing here. We are at the end of the day playing a game, hitting a plastic ball with a plastic paddle on a little court, arbitrary rules, having fun with our friends, and we kind of lose sight of the bigger picture. And so I can tell you that I notice when players are feeling that kind of pressure build, right, in their own game, their game breaks down, right? The flip side is also true.
[00:07:40.06] - Tony Roig
So in these last few days of games, I had one situation in particular where I was playing with a player. I could tell that he was getting tense, right? And he's playing with me. So maybe he feels a little pressure playing with me. And so as my partner, and that's not, I'm not talking of myself, I'm just saying that's a natural thing that I've seen happen, right?
[00:07:55.20] - Tony Roig
And it happens sometimes when you're playing with a player who has YouTube videos and senior pro and whatever, and he's visiting the facility. But I was able to kind of help talk him off the cliff a little bit by just letting him know that everything's fine, right? I told him, you know, I'm just here to, you know, we're just playing some pickleball. It's a, it's a, you know, nice morning. We're having fun with friends, just hitting the ball around.
[00:08:17.15] - Tony Roig
You don't have to worry about me. I think we actually started that game down. I think it was like, I think it was 5-0, 4 or 5-0. It wasn't great. And we ended up coming back and winning like 11-8 or 11-9.
[00:08:29.14] - Tony Roig
Excuse me. But a lot of that was, you could see his play changed once he understood that I was fine, right? And I think that's something you can do as a partner to help your partner out. If you feel your partner, see your partner having a lot of pressure, your partners have said they missed a shot, they're kind of grumbling to themselves. Help them out, right?
[00:08:47.17] - Tony Roig
Tell them everything's fine. You know, don't worry about it. You don't have to worry about it. Tap their paddle. Our friend in North Carolina does this thing where like she basically takes the bad shot or the bad whatever they're feeling, right?
[00:08:58.14] - Tony Roig
So it's like basically like, you know, puts, puts her paddle out and says, hey, you know, give me, tap my paddle. And then when they tap the paddle, it's okay, I took that now, so it's mine. Let me take it. You have a good time and enjoy your day. I think it's better for them and it's also going to— they're going to play better as your teammates.
[00:09:13.26] - Tony Roig
So it's going to be better for you in terms of your performance. And then if you're struggling with that, right, if you're struggling with this carryover with the ideas, the oops bucket's a really good one for, for the, um, uh, for missing a shot, right? What to do with it, because you need a place to put it. And then, you know, like score, out balls, things like that, you know, that's another process. I'm, I'm confident in our 300 episodes we have some episodes on that.
[00:09:35.14] - Tony Roig
I don't have the bandwidth this week to find those for you, but if you Google Pickleball Therapy and then out calls Pickleball Therapy, and score calls, things like that. You can find some episodes to help you with that, but that's a process and you have control over it. You have control over how much you allow these distractions, this, you know, noise to impact how you're playing because it's occupying your mind. Your mind is too busy. Your mind has too much stuff going on and you're not going to be able to perform your best.
[00:10:02.12] - Tony Roig
So release the mind and you're going to, you're definitely going to play better and you're going to feel better too. So. Hopefully that helps you out in terms of dealing with your own mental load while you're playing. Free up more mental bandwidth, more mental load for pickleball, and less on these distractions, because the distractions are not why you came to the court. You didn't come to the court to figure out the correct score.
[00:10:23.21] - Tony Roig
You didn't come to the court to figure out that every call is perfect. You didn't come to the court to beat yourself up when you miss a shot. You didn't come to the court to feel pressure, feel bad when you're playing. Let's leave all that as far off the court as we can, and when it creeps into our mind, have the tools available to, uh, to deal with that. And if you want you know, uh, read a really— I think it's a really good book on perspective in pickleball.
[00:10:44.19] - Tony Roig
The Pickleball Therapy book is available to you on Amazon, um, Barnes Noble, and Walmart. Available on all those. So check that out. Um, all right, let me give you a little bit of story on the riff, and then we'll wrap this week's episode. So what I want to talk about on the riff is this idea of constantly evolving, right?
[00:11:00.07] - Tony Roig
I think, um, it's, uh, life is, um, life presents its challenges. Life has its, um, Ups, downs, lefts, rights is just the way life is. I think what's important as humans, right, is to embrace the journey, right? Embrace the path, embrace the experiences that life really is at the end of the day all about, and to evolve, right? To grow, to adapt, to always seek to grow.
[00:11:28.10] - Tony Roig
And I already said grow, but improve yourself, right? Like, you know, aspire to be the best version of yourself, even if it's like this theoretical Platonic ideal up in the sky, right? You know, Plato had this idea that, like, he maybe took it to an extreme, but his idea was kind of like, you know, there is no— like, the chairs on Earth are like manifestations of this perfect chair that exists somewhere else in heaven, if you want to think about it that way, but somewhere up in the ether. And so as humans, we aspire to reach this level of perfection in everything, and we never can, but it's there. But the idea is interesting, right?
[00:12:04.14] - Tony Roig
This idea that there's like an idealized version of yourself as a human being, as a pickleball player, you know, as a parent, sibling, you know, child, whatever, whatever area in life, you know, all these different roles that we play, right? There's this idealized version of yourself and we always strive to, to, to get there. And so, you know, that includes coaches, right? You know, I know CJ works on her coaching a lot and her evolution as a coach and her growth as a coach. I work on my evolution as a coach.
[00:12:37.08] - Tony Roig
Um, you know, our team members work on their evolution inside the company. You know, we're always trying to like figure out the best ways doing things. The podcast has been an evolution. So I encourage you as, as, uh, pickleball players, right? Because you're listening to the podcast if you're a pickleball player.
[00:12:50.25] - Tony Roig
But also, let's step back a second and just as human beings, embrace it, right? Embrace the journey of yourself as a player and enjoy your experiences in this wonderful sport. And always look to become the best version of yourself within the sport. And then if you can, take those lessons that you've learned within the sport and apply them outside the sport so you can continue to evolve there as well. So positive growth, you know, forward evolution, I think is an important, important, maybe, maybe not be the right way of framing, is a laudable or desirable way of framing ourselves and our experience.
[00:13:27.16] - Tony Roig
Because not to be a downer at the end of the podcast, but we're all heading to the same place. And so why not always do our best to aspire to be the best version of ourselves while we're here and while we're able to do that? So kind of heavy at the end, but that's how we do sometimes here at Pickleball Therapy as we roll through the ideas that, that we're talking about. So Um, I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Uh, if you did, uh, as always, please consider rating and reviewing it if you have a minute and share it with your friends.
[00:13:58.20] - Tony Roig
Remember, if you enjoyed the podcast, you— if you enjoyed the podcast, they probably will too. I hope you have a great week and I'll see you next time on the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. Be well.