[00:00:04.180] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. Specifically, it's the podcast dedicated to your pickleball mind. My name is Tony Roig. I'm the host of your weekly podcast. It's a pleasure to be with you this week. This week, I'm going to be covering mental pressure with you and talking about how to deal with mental pressure. It's something that happens to a lot of us on the pickleball court, and being able to deal with it is going to definitely let us play better and also just feel better out there. Then the other thing that I'm going to be covering is in the RIF. I want to talk a little bit about one of the matches that I was watching in the PPA this weekend, PPA tournament, because I think there's an important lesson to be learned from that match in terms of how we approach our games whenever we're dealing in a competitive situation where we want to give ourselves the best chance for success. As we get into the podcast, I want to make sure that you know that we have an upcoming boot camp in March. I believe it's towards the end of March.

[00:01:04.110] - Tony Roig
It is going to be a three plus one, basically three days of training, about an hour each day, and then one day of a pre-boot camp, get together, have a conversation, get ready to go, and things like that. I think you're going to find it really helpful to your game. It's about helping you reduce the errors in your game, be more consistent by understanding better how to control your shots. So that's basically the boot camp, but it has an impact on every aspect of your game because any problems that you have with your shots will permeate your entire game. So be on the look out for that. If you're on our email list, you're going to get an email about it, probably more than one. And if you're not on our email list, what are you waiting for? Get on the email list. All right, let's dive into the main subject of today, which is dealing with mental pressure. And I was reminded of this. We're doing some camps this week and last week, it's normal.

[00:02:16.020] - Tony Roig
I mean, you're having such a hard time. Your brain has no space because there's so much pressure up there. And it reminded me of there's a quote by the famous tennis player, Billy Jean King, where she said, The good thing about pressure is that it lets you know that you care. That's a positive, right? Feel pressure means that you care about the thing. The difficulty is, though, letting pressure build up too much, right? If you have too much pressure on your brain, then you're not having fun anymore for sure, and you're not able to perform your best because there's no space. You're only so much space in your mind. And if your mind's feeling a ton of pressure, you're just not going to do as well. So I want to share with you three ways to deal with that, to deal with releasing the pressure on your mind as you go. And then the idea is to... Like a little... Like a release valve on a pressure Cooker, same a thing, so that you don't have so much pressure that you just can't deal with it anymore. So the first couple I'm going to give you are mechanical, and the last one I'm going to give you is a strategic or a decision you can make while you're playing.

[00:03:26.490] - Tony Roig
Mechanical meaning like mechanical to your body, right? Still It's not a traffic pillar because it's your body and your mind, but it's how you interact your body and your mind to basically relax so that you can focus on what's going on. So the first one is actually between rallies. Between rallies, there's nothing going on. Somebody's picking up the ball, maybe somebody's figuring out what position they got to stand in, all that type of stuff. So you have a few seconds between rallies that you can use to your advantage. And what you do there is you basically just take a pause. You just to say, okay, I'm going to take a pause here between rallies in order to allow your brain to reset. And you really want to get into a reset mode in these situations where you're basically just letting everything slow down for yourself. A couple of things you can do there is some players, for instance, tap the paddle on the back of the fence. That's like a reset motion. The second one I'm going to give you in a second relates to the first one, but another thing you can do on the first one that has with breathing.

[00:04:30.070] - Tony Roig
You can do that, too, and I'll talk about that more in a second. But another thing you can do is as simple as taking the paddle out of your playing hand. Some players, they start playing, and basically that paddle stays in that playing hand at a 10 death grip for the full match or the full game. And that's going to just ratchet everything up, or that's going to increase the pressure in your body and the pressure in your mind. So taking the paddle out of your hand is a way to just have a practice that allows me to just reset myself and bring my the pressure I'm feeling down. Again, paddle tap on the back of the net is fine. Just turning and facing back. You see some tennis players do that where they basically turn back, face the back of the fence for a second, and then come back around. It's like a reset, reset, reset, bringing you back to neutral. The second one that you can also do during breaks, but it's very specific, has to do with breathing. And what you're going to do here is there's different types of breathing techniques.

[00:05:25.050] - Tony Roig
You can do the... There's like a seal breathing technique where you basically... It's not quite holding your breath, but breathing in at a certain tempo, holding it for the same amount of time, and then breathing out at a certain tempo. So it's basically like a three or four count in, hold for a three or four count, and then release for a three or four count, and then repeat that once or twice. That's one technique. The other technique is the one that my co-head coach, C. J. Johnson, shares with all of our campers, et cetera, which is essentially the Lamaze technique, which is one big breath in, hold, and then two push out. So you basically push and push. So one big breath in. We can do it now and give you a little moment of relaxation. So it's one big breath in, and then push out a little bit, and then push out big. And the key here is the second push. The second push is where you really release everything. So let's try it again. So big breath in, then a little push, and then a big push, and then you let it go.

[00:06:22.790] - Tony Roig
We go ahead and do the seal one, two. Basically, I'm going to do basically a three-count in. Once it's I'm going to hold for three, and then I'm going to release for three. Like that, it times it. And that breathing, any breathing, these two techniques or any other technique you want to use, it allows you to focus on something other than the shot I just missed, the shot my partner just missed, the thing that just happened, the score that was called wrong, the outfall that was disputed, whatever. Whatever the thing is that's causing us pressure or causing us distraction from being able to play our best. So breathing allows us to take our mind off of that, focus on the breathing and the breathing technique, and that then again resets us and slows us down. Then the third technique I'm going to share with you has to do with adopting a different approach for a moment. Let's say that in the situation I was dealing with specifically or that I was witnessing, we had to do with a player who was trying to hit third shot drops on their words, and they just weren't working.

[00:07:32.340] - Tony Roig
And that happens. That's just normal. Sometimes it's just not working. They were going deeper than the player wanted, into the net, whatever, things like that. So what I suggested to that player was the next time they were on the serve side, just drive the ball. And I'm not saying you have to drive it like crazy, hit it 10,000 miles an hour. But instead of just trying to continue to hit the same shot that's not working right now, change because what happens is this, you're trying to get this one shot down. You're like, okay, I'm going to just keep hitting the shot. You keep on squeezing and tightening and squeezing and squeezing and squeezing and just trying to get it perfect. It makes it harder. It actually makes it harder to execute the shot because you're just so hyper-focused on getting it perfect. So instead, you come off of it. You just take a break from it, do something different. The other advantage of driving the ball is that you let off some steam. You're your body relaxes because you're fully swinging your paddle. It's a little more fluid motion than trying to hit a precise third shot drop shot, which requires a little more...

[00:08:40.820] - Tony Roig
It's more scalpel-like. The other one, you're just going. And then you just relax a little bit by just letting your body go. Now, if you're going to do that, let your partner know that you're going to try something different, and that way they're on the same page. Another thing you can do that I've done in the past is, say I'm trying my and my thirds are falling short. I'm trying to be too precise. It's like, give myself more space with it. So I float them some. And even if they get a bollied or attacked, it's not a big deal. I let my partner know, Hey, listen, hang back with me for a second because I need more space on my thirds right now just to get going. Then I start hitting him higher and more widen my shot range so that I can take some pressure off trying to hit that perfect shot. Consider that when you're playing. If you're feeling a lot of stress Press on a shot or you're missing, say you're trying to hit a fancy serve, you have a complicated serve and it's not working right now or a complicated return to serve, go to a more basic form of the shot.

[00:09:40.920] - Tony Roig
Just take some pressure off what you're working on or work on the shot you regularly use because it's not working right now, rather than keep on just hitting your head against that rock of you or that wall. Those are three things you can use to release the pressure. And then before we get into the RIF, there's a quote that I like, and I'm going to paraphrase it. It's from Alan Watts. He's an American philosopher from, I believe, not I believe, from the '60s time frame. And he's a hippy philosopher guy, but I like his thinking about dancing, Lies to Dance. And he talks about basically the mistake that we make sometimes is we take things too seriously. That can happen with things that are more serious than pickleball, but even in pickleball, we sometimes take it too seriously, take the thing that's happening to heart. And just remember that life in general is a dance. That's what Alan Watts suggests. The key is just to dance the dance a little bit. But certainly, pickleball is. Pickleball is definitely... It's supposed to be a fun activity. It's supposed to be a game. Enjoy it.

[00:10:49.700] - Tony Roig
Enjoy the dance of it, both the good steps and times you step on your partner's toe, figuratively. And just remember that you're in a dance, and don't take things too seriously and let the thing flow. You're going to hit great shots and you're going to hit crappy shots. That's just part of the deal. All right, let's jump into the RIF. Before we do, I want to give a shout out to our friends at Pickleheads. One of the challenges of play these days is organizing play. It can be a pain, and also it gets complex sometimes while you're there. And what I mean by that is players want to put their paddle certain ways. Players aren't happy with their game set up and stuff like that. So Pickleheads, they've been known historically more for doing places to play. So they took over placesoplay. Org, which was a USA pickleball site for finding locations. But they've gone beyond that. Now they have some free tools that help you organize the play. And so I'll give you a quick example. Say you're doing open play and you want to take away some of the internal politics and even figuring out who's going to play with who and next match and things like that.

[00:12:02.140] - Tony Roig
The app handles all that stuff, and it's very fluid. If someone gets there 30 minutes after you start it, you just put them in the rotation and the app takes over and it matches everybody based on trying to get the best match as possible and sends players out to play. You don't have to worry about the paddle stuff anymore, and it just takes a lot of pressure off the situation. It's certainly worth checking out. So if either you're currently organizing play or you're interested in setting up some groups, I would check them out, try their round-robin format, and I think you'll like the way it works. If you have any feedback for us, obviously, always send it to us at the... You can send it to us at therapy@betterpickleball. Com. And that's at pickleheads. Com, and I'll put it down in the show notes. Check it out. Good group over there trying to do their best to help us keep playing in the social format. All right, on the RIF, I want to talk just for a couple of minutes about how we approach games from a strategic standpoint, from a competitive strategic standpoint. And this is something that I've seen is a trend for...

[00:13:02.570] - Tony Roig
They're one of the best teams in the world. They're pretty much always the number two seed in their tournaments, and they're pretty much always in the finals. This is Anna Bright and Rachel Rohrbacher. The only team better than them is Anly Watters and Katherine Parenta, the number one seed and the team that wins most of the finals. It's going to be tough. It's always going to be tough. In the last episode, we talked about we shared Anna Bright's great framing after the game, and that's awesome. I love that way of looking at pickleball. If you haven't checked it out, check it out. Check out that episode. But what I noticed is what happens sometimes to Anna and Rachel is that they go off script. And that's okay sometimes, to be creative and have fun and things like that. But when you're playing and your objective is to give yourself the best chance for success, if you have a formula that's working, something that's working well, stick with it. And if you want to check it out, check out in... It was game two where Anna and Rachel were down towards the end of the game, but they're making a definite run.

[00:14:22.380] - Tony Roig
They're putting a ton of pressure on Anna Lee and Katherine. They're coming back, they're doing their thing. Everything's working. They're clicking everything. Everything is Clicking, clicking, clicking. And then I believe the score was 9-10 when this happened. So at 9-10, Anna goes for an Ernie. Ill-advised Ernie takes her out of formation, breaks the formation of the team, breaks the rhythm that they had going into that, they lose that rally, side out, and they end up losing the game. Now, obviously, I can't tell you for sure that had she not done that, they would have won. But that's not the point of this. The point of this is you want to give yourself the best chance to win in those situations when you're playing competitively. What I would suggest to you is that I can tell you that when you see players in a rhythm doing a thing that's working, and all of a sudden, inexplicably, they change that and they could do something else, it oftentimes doesn't work out for them because there's no reason to have done it. In this case, it's an ernie, but there's several other things you can do. Like throwing up a lob when everything else is working great.

[00:15:29.810] - Tony Roig
You're doing the strategy A, and then all of a sudden you throw in a lob or you do something. I'm going to try a flick attack. Again, this isn't a competitive setting. Why do that? If you want the best chance for success, if you have a formula that's working, you stick to That's how I got the formula. The flip side of it is not the flip side. The two coins are discipline on one side, creativity and being imaginative on the other side. There's nothing technically wrong with being creative, right? But if you, again, best chance for success and something's working, you want to be disciplined in that situation. And you're welcome to watch. Look it up. It's on the PPA Pickleball website. It's the finals of the Mesa Cup. There's another time that happened I don't remember right now exactly when it happened, but it was a similar a thing where they're in rhythm. You can see it. You can see that they're in rhythm, several rallies in a row, and all of a sudden, Mpz lop out of nowhere. And that was not necessary because everything was working in the other with what they were doing.

[00:16:31.650] - Tony Roig
So when you're playing, and again, I repeat again, competitive type of setting, not when you're having fun and having a good time. That's all. Do your stuff. Have a good time. But when you're playing competitively, you're playing in a league or you're playing in a tournament, you're playing in something like that, think about that. Ask yourself, if I'm in a rhythm, let me stick to the rhythm. Let me stick to the game plan and not vary from the game plan just because I feel like whatever I'm doing, because I want to do it in a competitive competitive setting. Anyway, so that's a concept for you on chances for success that I thought was timely given the tournament this past weekend. All right, that's this week's podcast. If you have a minute to rate and review the podcast, that would be awesome. I haven't checked this week, but I haven't heard from anybody in a while. It'd be nice to know you guys are still out there and enjoy the podcast. And that's one way to both A, let us know, and B, let other players know the value of the podcast and help us reach as many players as we can.

[00:17:30.540] - Tony Roig
With that said, I hope you guys have a great rest of your week and weekend, and I will see you in the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. See you.