[00:00:04.750] - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. It's the only podcast dedicated to your pickleball mind. If you're new to the podcast, welcome to the podcast. We have several new listeners that have been joining us each week, and I want to give you a hearty welcome. I introduce myself. My name is Tony Roig. I am the host of this weekly podcast. I am a pickleball player, pickleball coach, and pickleball thinker, I would Today, and I've been doing this podcast for about four years, bringing helpful information about the mind that you can use while playing pickleball. But bigger picture, you can use it outside of pickleball, too, because pickleball is basically like a canvas that you get to use to expand yourself, to grow yourself. And so we use pickleball as a tool to allow us to grow in the bigger picture that is our lives. So that's how we approach the mental side of Pickleball. This podcast is a part of a bigger project called Better Pickleball. So if you're not yet on our mailing list, email list, I highly recommend you do it. It's betterpickleball. Com. Actually, you can go on there.

[00:01:14.160] - Speaker 1
I'll put a link in the notes, we have a prepare to play guide that you're welcome to download. Then you'll put your email in, we'll send you the thing, you'll be in the email list, and you'll get additional information about what we do in our coaching and helping players realize their full potential inside this sport. All right, so this week, what I want to do is I want to talk about the other side of the athletic pillar. When we think about pickleball, there are three pillars to this sport. We call them the three pillars of the pickle ball, which we developed a few years back. We have the mechanical pillar, which is how to hit the ball, strategic pillar, what shot to hit when, and the athletic pillar, which is body and mind. So the mind, super important, but it's one-a-half of the athletic pillar. There's another other part of the athletic pillar, which is the body. And I want to talk about that this week because the body definitely impacts how your mind performs, and having an understanding of that will help you navigate the mental side of pickleball, the mental side of life, and also gain the benefits of focusing on the body, of potentially fixing or improving that side of the house, if you will.

[00:02:25.230] - Speaker 1
And way to think about it is your mind isn't in a vacuum. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. In fact, not to get too far off on this topic, but if you look at the way scientists think about the body, your body really only has one purpose, which is to support your mind. Frankly, it's to feed it. That's the whole thing. So like, movement is super critical to us. We'd be able to move is our top priority because, historically, I mean, nowadays, you still have to move a little bit, I guess, to the door to get a door-dash. But particularly back in the day, you had to either walk for your food or hunt your food or go gather it, things like that. So you needed to move to get food. And so that's really the whole premise of the body. But they're intertwined, the body and the mind. And so what I want to do is talk about it in three different pieces. And then at the end, I'll give you some recommendations to either get started with your body journey or if you're already on one, maybe give you a suggestion that might spark you to add something else to it.

[00:03:26.960] - Speaker 1
So let's talk about it generally first. And I've already started that part of the conversation because you can't separate the mind from the body. It's just not possible. They're intertwined. And so when you think about that, your mind's performance will in part, be determined by your body's performance or your body's level of ability. And by ability, I just mean how healthy is your body, how conditioned is your body to support your mind. If your body is not in a great place, then your mind is not going to be in a great place. And if you want to think about it very simplistically, just think about putting something in your body that's not favorable to it. And you can just think like alcohol. And I got nothing against alcohol. I'll have a drink here. I don't mind a little sip of bourbon and things like that. But if you continue to add that to your body, you overwhelm your body, And all of a sudden your mind can't function as well. But that's because of your body, stuff you put into your body. And it works the other way as well. The better your body is in terms of vitamins and things like that, then everything's going to be tuned up and your mind is going to be better able to do the things that it needs to do.

[00:04:46.920] - Speaker 1
Personally, I've been on a journey of... I'm focusing on a couple of things. I'm focusing on strength, and I've been focusing on mobility, flexibility. So one thing that I'm almost able to do is a full squat down on your heels, heels on the floor, squat all the way down. I'm not quite there yet, but I've gone from, I would say, about two and a half inch, three inch heel lift to maybe a half inch, three quarter inch heel lift, which means that there's much more flexibility in my hips and in all that area, in all that critical area. When you think about it, When you were... Everybody who's listening to this, when you were a baby, you could do it. When you were a child, you could probably do it. Then little by little, we start losing that flexibility, that mobility. That's one thing, and the other thing is strength. But what I find is my trips to the gym to do my exercises are very good, not just for my body. They're very good for my mind, because what I know is that when I leave the gym, I always have more energy. I feel better.

[00:05:59.200] - Speaker 1
I feel If I've been having a rough morning or something, and I go to the gym, I leave the gym. It's not that everything's roses, right? I'm not suggesting that to you, but everything is a little bit better. If we went into the gym and it was a dark shade of gray, now it's a light shade of gray, and that's better. So the exercise in your body has a direct, in the moment, positive impact. And it also is going to have some long term positive impacts for your body, injury prevention, all that type of stuff, but also for your mind, because your mind doesn't have to be worried that much about... If you're injured, your brain is processing pain information while you're trying to do other things. It's just distracting your brain. So there's a lot of benefits generally to engaging in some body work. And I'll talk at the end a little bit about that idea. Then the second component I wanted to talk about was in the particular moment. And here, what I want to focus on here are things like, hydration is a good one, or sleep is a good one. And food is also important.

[00:07:09.970] - Speaker 1
But what happens is you're out there playing, and all of a sudden, you can't focus. So our initial reaction is, why can't I focus? What's going on? I got to double down on my 110 %. I got to get in the zone, whatever, those types of things. Let's go, that stuff. But what happens if you haven't hydrated correctly. I don't care what you do in terms of getting yourself psyched or whatever. Focus is not coming. Focus is not coming because you're dehydrated. And your brain He's like, I'm dehydrated, man. I'm going to survive a motor. I got time for no volleys and dinks and whatever else you want to hit. And then if you think about a similar corollary, there would be electrolytes. Your body runs on electrolytes. And I'm not going to too far down this path. But for instance, you could die from drinking too much water. It's happened. Actually, it's not infrequent, but it happens. And the reason it happens is because you dilute the electrolytes in your bloodstream. And so your Basically, your heart stops because the nerves can't send signals anymore. That's a body function of your mind. It's the physical way in which signals are transmitted inside your body.

[00:08:27.000] - Speaker 1
And so electrolytes are important, hydration is your water. Also energy. Let's say all of a sudden you're like dragging on the court, and then afterwards you're like, Yeah, I didn't have lunch today, or whatever. I didn't have breakfast, or whatever it is. I don't know what to tell you. Your body and your mind function on energy. And if you want to look at energy consumption, Google it. Look how much your mind consumes of the calories that you intake. Now you're in the middle of a game. It's a competitive game, meaning it's challenging. You're trying to solve it. You're trying to figure stuff out. You're taxing your brain, and your brain's like, I'm sorry, but you chose not to feed me. I got nothing left in the tank. Those are particulars that you can look at in terms of your performance and understand that your lack of focus or your dragon, or I can't read the outball in time, whatever it is that's happening to you on the cord, work backward and find out, was there a part of the body that I neglected and that now I'm feeling the consequences of in my mind because those two work together.

[00:09:36.590] - Speaker 1
And then the last one I want to talk about before I give you a couple of suggestions is the expectations idea. Now, some of these you have control over. And what I mean by that is, for instance, you don't want to hydrate. That's your choice. Electrolytes, there's different types of electrolytes, so I'm not telling you which ones you should use, whether it's like something that has sugar in it, not have sugar in it, pre-bottled, whatever. But you're an intelligent human being. You have a supercomputer inside your pocket with your phone, so you can look at different ideas there. Pickle juice works really well, stuff like that. But it's your choice, whether you want to do that or not. Last week, we talked about control and agency, and you have a ton of control in the agency over this. If you're listening to a podcast, check that one out. But the third thing I want to talk about is not beating yourself up when your mind can't perform because of your body. In particular, I mean, listen, don't beat yourself up at all, anytime. But let's say you're not performing well and you think about it, you're like, You know what?

[00:10:36.190] - Speaker 1
Because this happens to me. When we do camps, I get into it. I'm coaching, I'm doing my thing, and I look in my water bottle and it's still seven eighths full. And we've been on the court for four hours in the sun. And so I'm dehydrated. And I can see it in my... Your eyes get whatever, the bottom of your eyes and all that stuff. So I know what the effects are of not hydrating. And so you want to make sure that you're hydrating. And so when you hydrate... I mean, hydrating is something you have a choice. But if you don't hydrate and you have a lack of focus, don't beat yourself up. What you want to do is just notice it. What I started doing in camps is I've been adding electrolytes to my water, not necessarily because I need the electrolytes. It's more because I want the flavor. The flavor lets me drink more. That's just my trick. So that's a trick that I use. Those are things that you can do to encourage yourself to to hydrate better and things like that. But the key here, and the third point is be realistic with yourself, be reasonable with yourself.

[00:11:37.790] - Speaker 1
When you have a drop in focus, if it's because you didn't hydrate, just make a note of it, and then next time, try and hydrate better. But there are going to be times that you're going to have difficulties with your seeing the ball, reacting in time, making the right decisions. And it can be something like, I didn't sleep well last night. It's not that I didn't sleep because I chose to. I just couldn't sleep well. I didn't have control over that. Okay, then that's who you are today. That's okay. I had food poisoning or something, whatever. I'm like, I'm coming back from the flu or whatever it is. Don't expect your mind to be at 100 % when you have your body not at 100 %. So expectation is really important. Don't beat yourself up and try and find the right cause of it. If it's something you have control over, don't beat yourself up. Note it, fix it, next time. If it's something you don't have control over, then okay, I'm doing the best I can under the circumstances and everything is copacetic. All right, here's a couple of ideas here for you. If you haven't started any workout thing before you do anything, if you're not sure, check with your medical provider.

[00:12:39.840] - Speaker 1
Just don't hurt yourself doing these things. But I would always recommend starting out very light with this process. For instance, I'll go to the gym almost every day. I try and find some time. Sometimes I just go for 20 minutes. I only have 20 minutes that day. I'll do the 20 minutes. I'm doing my 20 minutes if I can. Sometimes I'll be in I can go for 45 minutes. Sometimes I can go for 20 and I end up with 40, whatever. But don't let perfection be the enemy here, where if I can't assign three hours to my workout today, I'm not going to do it. Okay, why not do five minutes if that's all you have? So some things you can do is working on the body, on your strength of your body is super simple. Again, check yourself before you do these things, make sure you're comfortable doing them. Something as simple as just getting in and out of a chair 10 times, slowly and in control, right? Stand up, sit down, sit down 10 times under control. You're going to feel it probably in your legs if you haven't worked out in a while.

[00:13:36.630] - Speaker 1
Another one that is a full body workout, believe it or not, is you just lay down on the floor completely on your back, and then slowly, you stand up slowly under control, and then you get back down again, and then you get back up and do that 10 times, and you might be out of breath. That happens, too. So the strengthening, you can do all sorts of things. Recommend starting, I think legs are a really good place to start. They're a huge muscle group. They do a lot of work for you, and you get a lot of benefit from that. The other thing you can do is, if you want to do cardio, for instance, if you want to work on your cardio, walking, folks, amazing. It's low impact on the body. It's what your body is designed to do. It's what we started this whole conversation with. Movement to find food, walking. Walking is super good for you. Then the other thing you can do is you can do some light stretching, just a little bit, little by little. You don't do anything crazy. There's a ton of stuff on YouTube. I'm not going to belabor this point because there's a million videos out there on YouTube that'll explain them to you and help you out with them.

[00:14:40.540] - Speaker 1
But you can do some stretching of your legs, of your hips, of your shoulders. Particularly, if you have an area that's particularly troubling you, look at it and see if a stretching will help it, maybe some strengthening will help it. I will tell you this, and this is not medical advice, so I'm not a doctor, but I will tell you that my My personal experience and anecdotally from others who I know, plus I think you can make a common sense correlation here, is that when I've experienced either shoulder or arm issues, like elbow, forearm, shoulder issues, with Then what I can do, some strength training has helped me because what it's done is allow my body to then rebuild that area and to make it a little bit stronger, a little more resilient, a little less likely to feel the pain and get injured again. So Those are some areas you can start in. If you're already doing some of them, maybe add something else. So let's say you already walk every day. Kudos. That's awesome. Keep doing it. And maybe add a little bit of strength training at the end of it once your body's warmed up.

[00:15:40.950] - Speaker 1
If you're already doing a little bit of strength training, maybe add a little bit of cardio in there, or add some flexibility and mobility. There's all sorts of programs you can use out there. If you're not sure what to do and you want to get started, Taiji is actually really good, too. Taiji is amazing. Qigong is amazing. Our friendly Holden has a whole program on Qigong that's available. So it's really good stuff. But if you're not really sure what to do, you want to get started, if you go to the In2Pickle YouTube channel, there's a playlist called Tone. I'll put a link in the show notes, but it's like Tony's Favorite Work or something like that. And there's just some stuff, and there's some hip opener stuff. There's some mobility stuff. There's Tai qi's in there. I'll see if I can find something from Lee, and I'll put it in there. Anyway, so that'll get you down the road. But definitely remember that your body is a part of your mind. It's not separate from your mind. And so if you want to improve your mind, don't sleep, or do sleep on your body, actually.

[00:16:39.130] - Speaker 1
Sleep a lot, but don't sleep on the body in terms of a concept. All right, that's this week's podcast. I hope you enjoyed it. If you have a minute to rate and review it, really appreciate it. And as always, consider sharing with your friends. If you are benefited from this podcast, my guess is they might. Hope you have a great week, and I'll see you in the next episode of Fingalball Therapy. Be well..