[00:00:05.360] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickable improvement. It's the podcast with you in mind. My name is Tony Roig. I am the host of the weekly podcast. This week, we're doing something a little bit different because we have launched our book. The book, Pickleball Therapy, is available now. We have a team that put this together. A project like this requires a lot of folks, so Dave and Michelle were instrumental. Penny has been helping us out. Jeff has been leading the charge on this thing. I asked Jeff to pick an excerpt out of the book that he thought would be particularly helpful for you and to read it. And so this podcast is going to be a portion of the book read to you by Jeff. I think you're really going to enjoy it. If you're interested in the book itself, there can be a link in the show notes. You can also just go to betterpickleball.com and find the link there and get your early copy of the book. It just launched. You'd be one of the first players anywhere in the world to have read Pickleball Therapy. Enjoy the podcast.

[00:01:10.820] - Jeff Renshaw
Hi, I'm Jeff Renshaw. I'm a longtime Pickleball Therapy listener, a student of Tony and CJ's, and I've had the privilege of helping Tony bring his new book to life. The book is called Pickleball Therapy: The Book, and it's built around the principles Tony shares in this podcast. In the book, Tony introduces a concept concept he calls the three-lens approach. It's a way to shift our mindset based on what's happening during play. As Tony describes them, the short-lens zooms in on the details of a rally, the ball, the paddle, the movement, helping us stay locked in on the moment. The medium lens pulls back slightly, allowing us to think through what's happening in a particular game and to make real-time strategic adjustments. And the long lens gives us the wide view, helping us reconnect the bigger picture of why we play pickleball in the first place, for joy, community, personal growth, exercise, etc. If you're a regular pickleball therapy podcast listener, you know that Tony often refers to this big picture reason for showing up at the courts as a bowl of ice cream. The excerpt you're about to hear explores what happens when the short lens, which is incredibly useful while we're in a rally, gets stuck in place even after a rally is over.

[00:02:30.000] - Jeff Renshaw
Tony calls this the Short Lens Spiral. I hope you'll find this idea as useful to your game as I have. Now I'll read from the book. The Short Lens Spiral. Our short lens merits further discussion because it is this lens that you've used most until now, whether you knew it or not. It is also the short lens that can cause us the most damage. It is very important to switch out of your short lens at the conclusion of a rally to maintain your mental sharpness to improve your play. As we have explained, a properly employed short lens can help you play better pickleball as it allows you to focus on the ball and your shot. The hyper focus afforded us by the short lens, however, also comes with a risk to our play as well as to our relationship with pickleball. The negative effects of the short lens come when it is used to interpret information in the wrong frame. Let's walk through the potential downward spiral of the short one so you can clearly see how this risk plays out. Your opponent pops the ball up. It's just floating there in front of you.

[00:03:39.440] - Jeff Renshaw
The shot is a game-winning volley there for taking, if you can make it. You hit the ball cleanly with an agreeable bam off your panel, but your shot land smack into the middle of the net. Your short lens wants to do one thing. Keep replaying that one shot in your head over and over. How How could that happen? There is nothing wrong with the lens itself. That is exactly what it is designed to do. Focus on the minutia. The problem is that the short lens is stuck in place. You are seeing the shot only through the short lens of what went wrong with that one shot. How much the short lens spirals you downward will depend on how long it stays stuck. Looked at from the other side, it will depend on how long it takes you to switch out of the short In the near term, if you are still thinking about that missed volley during the next rally or series of rallies, you will have a hard time playing your best in those moments because your mind is focused on that past shot. In the longer term, you might be having lunch later that day.

[00:04:49.300] - Jeff Renshaw
The salad is amazing, but your mind keeps wandering back to that shot you missed at 10: 07. You cannot let it go. How did I miss that shot? I cost us the game, and so on. This is your short lens, and it is stuck in place even way after your pickleball session is over. As you sit there at lunch with your short lens replaying that shot over and over, your pickleball experience sours. Plus, you're missing out on the amazing salad you are eating, not to mention the camaraderie of your eating crew. All of this is because you are interpreting your entire day's pickleball experience through the wrong lens. Through this lens, our thoughts can cause us to feel like a failure or leave us with a bad taste about our pickleball experience that day. As we explored earlier, your lizard brain cannot distinguish between real pain and imagined pain. It's all the same. Replaying a misshot over and over causes your brain to relive the moment. The biggest risk is that you begin to build a negative subconscious association with pickleball, one that is inconsistent with how you really feel about the sport. Think of it like biting down on a piece of eggshell in your omelet.

[00:06:14.960] - Jeff Renshaw
If you get enough of those, and if you feel about eggshell crunches in your mouth like I do, eventually you dread taking that bite of the omelet that you would normally enjoy. All your brain can think of is When will I bite into that eggshell? A stuck short lens may lead you to develop an exaggerated idea of how bad you are as a player. We lose sight of the 30 things we did really well during a game. Instead, our short lens is fixated on the one shot that did not go our way. Continuing the above example with the missed game-winning volley, say that from an objective view, you were single-handedly responsible for your team coming back from 6: 9 down to 10: 9 up. But then you missed that one volley at the end, the game winner. Now, because you are stuck in short lens mode, you end up hyper-focused on that single shot. The work you did from being behind 6: 9 to get you that chance at a win is forgotten. Our inherent negative bias means that the short lens will stay focused on our mistakes. It is no surprise then that we can end up feeling bad about our day when we are stuck in the perspective provided by this lens.

[00:07:38.240] - Jeff Renshaw
Most often, when we doubt ourselves as players, it is because we are stuck in short lens mode. As a result, we end up placing excessive weight on our errors and are unable to see the good we did. We also lose sight of the reason we play, the long lens perspective. The good news is that as a capable and intelligent being, you can learn how to switch your lens from short to long. If you are stuck in short lens mode and you can't get a missed shot or lost game out of your mind, say to yourself, Let's think about today a little differently. What did I want from pickleball today? Did I get it? This question switches your lens from that mist volley to the big picture. It is like drawing yourself back and allowing your eyes to rest on the forest, not just the bark on a single tree. From this perspective, you know that everything is fine, and your pickleball day was in fact a good one. The even better news is that the long wins does not come with any downsides, none that really matter anyway. You can use it anytime you want without risk of causing harm to yourself.

[00:08:49.840] - Jeff Renshaw
If you are ever unsure about which lens applies in a situation, choose the long lens. You will be better served by the long lens when you miss a shot or lose a game than you would be using your short lens to obtain maximum focus. Use of the short lens at unnecessary times can chip away your emotions, confidence, and ultimately your relationship with the game. You've relied primarily on your short lens for a long time. Learning to switch to your long lens and eventually your medium lens will take some time. As with everything, give yourself time and space learning how to switch to the lens that most applies to a given situation. The excerpt I just read comes from Pickleball Therapy: The Book by Tony Roig. While much of the tone and message will sound familiar to podcast to podcast listeners. The book goes deeper, introducing ideas about the mental side of pickleball that I hadn't heard before. An electronic version of the book is available to podcast listeners now. We'll include a link telling you how to purchase that book in the show notes. Thanks for listening.

[00:10:03.580] - Tony Roig
Thank you, Jeff, for putting that together and for sharing it with us. I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. As always, if you have a minute to rate and review it, really appreciate it, and also share it with your friends, because if you enjoyed the podcast, they probably will, too. Lastly, if you want to get a copy of the book, it'll be in the show notes or go to betterpickleball.com. You can get a copy of the book for yourself or any of your friends. I hope you have a great week, and I'll see you in the next episode.