Hello, and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to
your pickleball improvement.
It's the podcast that focuses on your pickleball mind.
I'm C. J.
Johnson, and I'm not your usual host.
Your regular host, Tony Roig, is taking the week off.
Well, actually, I wrestled the microphone away from Tony because
I wanted to dive deeper into something that he talked about in a recent episode.
Now, before I jump into that, if you're listening around Black Friday when this
episode drops, make sure that you check out the Better Pickleball Academy.
It's a self-guided library of the finest pickleball instructional
content available today.
Right now is the absolute best time to join.
You can get the details at betterpickleball.
Com/academy.
I'll put a link down in the show notes.
So if you haven't checked out Tony's November eighth podcast, the title
of it was Pickleball Mastery.
A click away.
I will include a link in the show notes.
Because in that episode, Tony shared a very powerful perspective
that he has about learning.
And it's the idea that we are forever on a journey of improvement,
that there's really no true endpoint, and that we should embrace and even
enjoy—yes, he said enjoy—the struggle.
Now, he compared learning to pickleball to solving puzzles or crosswords.
Let me just read to you exactly what he said in that episode.
But at the end of the day, it's not really about solving the crossword, right?
It's not like, Oh, I finished a crossword.
What does that mean, I finished a crossword?
The joy is in the struggle.
The joy is in looking at the clues and going, I have no idea what it is,
and then just fighting through it.
Then finally, you have that aha moment where you're like, Oh, yeah, I get it.
I see it now.
Or you work another one and you get another word and another clue and another
piece of the puzzle, and then you work through that whole puzzle.
Pickleball is the same way, and your growth as a pickleball
player is the same way.
All right, that's the end of the quote.
Now, when I first listened to that, I thought to myself, What nonsense is that?
It's not about solving the puzzle.
Of course, it's about getting the answer.
What do you mean that there's joy in the struggle, Tony?
As a professional athlete and a coach, that's all I've done for my entire life.
The idea of enjoying the struggle was completely foreign to me.
I took some time to reflect on my learning journey.
Today, I want to talk about what I discovered and that maybe a
few of you may be feeling.
I want to start with the reality of the struggle.
First of all, it is unavoidable.
And pickleball is my third sport as a professional coach and athlete.
I know that there is no shortcut to proficiency when building motor skills.
The absolute only way to master a skill is through repetition.
You've got to practice it over and over and over again.
During practice, you will inevitably face both success and failure.
But let me be honest, I do not love the struggle.
Struggle to me is frustrating and exhausting.
It's that moment like when things don't click, when progress feels just
impossibly slow.
While the struggle is necessary, and it is non-negotiable.
I realized that.
It is not something that I find joy in.
Now, what I've learned in looking at this is that for me,
Joy doesn't come from the struggle.
The joy comes from embracing the process of practice.
My love for practice started really early.
It started back when I was a young ski racer.
That was my very first sport.
I don't even remember my first time on skis.
I was always going around gates and trying to go as fast as I could.
And one One of my clearest childhood memories
was running gates and skiing to the lift as fast as I could because I knew
that I was against the clock.
That lift was going to close, and I had to get as many laps through the gates as
possible before closing time.
Now, when the lifts finally did stop running, I'd sidestep up the hill over and
over and over again until it got dark because I was determined to squeeze
out every last turn around those gates.
Now, even now, I still teach skiing.
I spend just as much time refining my techniques on beginner and intermediate
terrain as I do tackling the steep black diamond.
Why?
It's because I love that process of searching for the perfect turn,
searching for the perfect technique, building the perfect technique,
and getting the chance to feel that fleeting moment when just
everything falls right into place.
Now, I carried that same mindset that I built in skiing to my career
as a golf professional.
After long days as a new golf pro, they were 10 to 12 hour days in the golf shop.
Most people would run for the hills and go home.
I could not wait to hit the putting green.
And One of my rituals was I would chip until I hold five shots from different
spots on the putting green, or I would just simply put until the sun
disappeared and I could no longer see the putting green.
Now, this practice, these moments, they were really more than just the
repetition of building a skillset.
They were also times of quiet focus.
It really wasn't about the struggle.
It was about the stillness of just putting in the work, of being in the moment.
Now, it shouldn't come as a surprise that, like Tony, I make the choice to put my
game in the back seat and I focus on what I love, which is coaching.
But when I do get the chance, I love to practice pickleball.
It doesn't matter if it's drilling with with my pretty constant drilling partner,
Jeanie, whether I'm using a ball machine or I'm just simply
hitting against the wall.
If I was left to my own devices, I would lose track of time and I
would just do it for hours on end.
To me, practice isn't just about paying the price that every athlete needs to pay
to build a skillset.
It is about finding joy in the process, being fully present in that moment.
There is just something so satisfying about the rhythm of drilling and
practicing and that really quiet repetition of hitting a pickle ball.
Now, that said, if you're thinking that this means that I don't struggle,
let me set the record straight.
I struggle a a lot.
I make mistakes frequently, and sometimes I just fail over and over and over again.
But interestingly enough, that doesn't feel like a struggle.
I wouldn't describe it as burdensome.
But here's where I do struggle and where it gets really tricky for me
when things don't click on my timeline, on my perceived timeline.
And I think that's maybe what Tony meant.
For me, it's that frustration of working hard on a skill in practice and to
see it fail under the pressure of a game.
Now, in those moments, it's hard for me to remind myself
that when that skill doesn't show up in my performance, it doesn't mean I failed.
What it really means is I just I have not had enough repetitions yet.
Now, intellectually, I know that. I get it.
I also understand that results are out of my control.
That my focus needs to stay on the process.
But emotionally, that's a really different story.
For me, the impatient creeps in, and then the frustration follows.
It It takes a lot of effort to step back and to reset.
Now, what helps me to stay grounded a majority of the time
is a really simple tool that I use after every practice or play session.
I teach this tool at our camps.
I teach it inside the pickleball system.
I really teach it anywhere I can because I think it's that valuable
for us on our journey.
It's called 3, 2, 1.
I first learned this from the book, It's Sports Psychology for Dummies.
It's by Dr. Todd Kays.
It is an excellent book.
Dr. Kays has been our guest on a couple of different pickleball summits.
This exercise is a way to shift the focus back onto the process
and away from the results, and ultimately, where I feel the struggle,
where I feel the frustration.
Here's how that drill works.
When you are finished, and you're going to write this down,
old-fashioned pen and paper, The very first thing you're going to do is
write down three things that you did well that day.
Now, these three things, they do not have to be result-based.
It doesn't have to be like, Oh, I hit my punch volleys to my target
every single time today.
It could be something very simple, like, I was a good partner today.
I kept my mouth shut during open How about I kept my composure, I kept
my focus during a tough match?
So again, it doesn't have to be result-based.
Then I move on to number two.
Now, number two are two things, not that I can do better, but two things
that I learned about myself today.
This, for me, is about self-awareness.
It's really easy for me to beat myself up and to say, I coulda, I shoulda, I
woulda, I needed to hit this shot better.
But by taking on an awareness about myself, two things I learned about
myself, that helps me to bring it back to the things that I can control.
It can be as simple as maybe I notice that I play better when I take
a deep breath before serving.
Maybe I noticed that I play better when I take my paddle out of my
paddle hand between rallies.
Whatever it may be, just two things you learned about yourself that day.
Then the one is one thing that I'm going to do with
that information in the next 24 hours.
Now, for me, oftentimes this is the most important step because what it
does is it pushes me into action.
Because let's face it, most of myself included,
we just stop at the knowing part.
We don't follow through with the doing part.
That's really where the growth comes.
So three, two, one helps to keep me focused on the processes
that go into learning.
And ultimately, those are the things that I can control.
I cannot control the results.
Those are completely out of my hand.
In thinking back on that podcast, what I've learned for me
is the joy for me isn't in the struggle.
It's in the process of practice.
Struggle in building a motor skill is inevitable.
It is going to happen, but it doesn't have to define the experience.
So if you're feeling frustrated or you're stuck in your learning journey,
why not give three, two, one a try.
Go back, listen to that November eighth podcast, maybe even join us in
the Better Pickleball Academy.
But do something to take actionable steps forward.
Now, if you enjoyed this episode, how about sharing it with your pickleball
playing friends so that we can reach more pickleball players just like you?
Because as Tony likes to say, if you like it, they probably will, too.
Until next time, keep practicing, keep growing,
and most of all, enjoy the process, because ultimately, I think
that's where the joy lives.
Have fun out there.