[00:00:00.610] - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to pickleball Improvement. Hope you're having a great week. My name is Tony Roig. I'm the host of this weekly podcast. I am a master teaching professional, which, if you don't know, it's the highest possible accreditation for a pickleball coach, certification for a pickleball coach. I've been doing this for a long time, been hosting this podcast for going on about four years now, and it's my pleasure to be able to come to you every week with some concepts to help you think through, perhaps reframe somehow we approach the game of pickleball for ourselves and enjoy it better and play it better. This week we have a two-parter. The two-parter is going to be in the RIF. I am going to talk to pickleball therapists, I-S-T-S at the end, right? If you are a pickleball therapist, you know who you are. Stick around for the RIF because I have an exciting thing to share with you that we're going to be doing coming up soon. And if you're not yet a therapist, but it sounds interesting to send us an email at therapy@betterpickleball. Com. Make sure you put the word therapist in the subject line, please.

[00:01:08.170] - Speaker 1
Therapist in the subject line that helps us navigate our emails because we get a couple of emails every week. It helps us get it to the right place to get you the right information. You can check that out and see if that's something that's helpful to you. In the main section, I'm going to be sharing with you feedback that we got from one of our students, Lynne. I'll talk to you about that more in a minute. But I think it's really helpful to It's helpful to share our stories. I think as humans, stories are important. That's how we've come down to the generations and the years is through sharing stories with each other. Very powerful. Hearing each other's stories, I think, is particularly helpful. In the past, we've done shoutouts, but this time we actually have a live testimonial, well, not live, but a recorded testimonial from Lynne that I'm going to share with you. And then there's a couple of points in there that Lynne brings out in terms of her journey that I want to talk about a little bit with you to help you through your process, right? And as a pickleball player and your growth so that you can have the same growth that Lynne has had.

[00:02:17.390] - Speaker 1
As we dive into that, this podcast is brought to you by the Better pickleball All Academy. Ad-free, as they say, right? The Better pickleball Academy. So if there's any area of the game that you have questions about or you're thinking about, check out the Better pickleball All Academy and see if there's a course in there that will help you with your game. I'll also tell you we're in August, I think right now we're in August. In about six weeks or so, we have our pickleball Ball System course opens for registration. If you haven't been familiar with it before, the system is a one-year course. So think about it like going to college, right? You can't just show up at the college building anytime you want and say, I'd like to join the class. There's a structure, there's a rollout. It's very organized, and that's how we run the pickleball Ball system. So if you're at all interested in that, be on the look out because that's coming up, coming up, coming up, coming up. All right. What I want to do is this. I'm going to share with you a clip. It'll get the audio, obviously, if you're on podcast.

[00:03:26.820] - Speaker 1
If you're on YouTube, you get to see Lynne. But I'm going to share with you Lynne's words. You'll see at the beginning, they came unsolicited. We were asking Lynne to help share with us some feedback about her training with us because we've known Lynne for several years, and we've been fortunate to be able to work with Lynne as a student of ours and try and help her with her game. She's made great strides as a pickleball player and understanding the game better. Obviously, from that, you play better and feel better about the game and everything like that. Cj was chatting with Lynne about different things, different experiences she's had and things like that. Again, you'll hear it yourself, but it's basically she was like, I got to talk about pickleball therapy because it's been important to her. Anyway, so let me shut up for a second, and I'll play Lynne's clip, and then I'll come right back.

[00:04:22.840] - Speaker 2
Another thing that I'm going to just throw this plug in here because I can't help myself. One of the most amazing things that Tony and Cee Jay provide through Better pickleball is the pickleball podcast, pickleball Therapy. It is amazing. It has had more of an impact on my game than probably anything else. I was going down a dark path where I was getting really frustrated with myself and what I was not thinking, thinking things I should be able to do that I wasn't doing. It has helped me understand where I'm at better and helped provide a game plan for how I can get past when I start going south on the mental side. Things are working out the way I expect them to or hoped they would go. It helps me to refocus. Again, understand what I'm supposed to be doing. The best part about that is not only my playing better, I'm having more fun. I was getting to a point where there were times I wasn't having fun. That's a real shame because pickleball is an amazing sport. I love it, and I don't want to lose it. And pickleball therapy, highly recommend it for everybody.

[00:05:35.670] - Speaker 1
I'd be remiss not to say something as the host of the podcast. When I hear this feedback, it's meaningful to me. I do this podcast, and I said this before, I do this podcast in part for me. I've never hidden that, that this podcast began as part of my journey through the mental process. Is. But my hope is that these words can help any pickleball player out there, any person out there, any human being out there that is open to this type of conversation, this type of content, this type of knowledge. Again, it's meaningful to hear the words from Lynne, to know that the words have had a positive impact on her, makes it worthwhile. I wrote it on the board behind me, so I'm going to lean out of the way on the YouTube. So thank you, Lynne, for just for everything, for allowing us to be a part of your journey, for listening to the podcast, and for sharing your story with us, and with everybody, with everybody listening, so that we can all take encouragement, take encouragement of knowing that even when we feel like maybe things aren't going exactly what we want them to.

[00:06:54.920] - Speaker 1
In pickleball as in life. I recently spoke with Sarah Weis and interviewed her for the podcast. We talked about that some right now, pickleball in life. Their mirrors isn't the right term, but their reflection of each other. What we feel in one is how we're going to feel in the other and vice versa. The better we can work on our pickleball mind, the better we're going to work on our life mind, our everyday life. So thank you, Lynne, again for sharing that with us. Now, there are two areas that Lynne mentioned that I wanted to dive into a little bit more. And then I want to wrap with the message that Lynne gave at the end of her testimony, because I think that's something that we can all walk away with here. So one of the things that I noted from Lynne's story, from her sharing her story, was she said, Where I'm at, it helps me know where I'm at. What I got was managing expectations. Because she also said that it helps me keep a perspective. I expect certain things from me, but I have to acknowledge that I'm a human being. Now, Lynne didn't say this, I'm adding this to it.

[00:08:07.560] - Speaker 1
But I have to acknowledge that I'm a human being. I'm flawed, as all human beings are. When we make mistakes as players on the court, when we pick the wrong shot, anything that we do. When I played this morning, and I made some bad executions, I had some bad mechanics, I had some bad strategy sometimes as we played, that's normal. And there's not a player on the planet, even the best players on the planet, make mistakes when they play. And it's not like once in a blue moon. They make a lot of mistakes when they play. The difference is their baseline's higher, right? So their mistakes are different shades, if you will. Shades is the way of thinking about it, right? Like the shades of mistakes that a 3, 5 player makes and the shades of mistakes that a 5, 0 player makes are different. That does not mean that they're not both the same number of mistakes. Actually, there's a concept I got to flesh out some more. It was just like last week when I did that zero something, I'm thinking this through, and that makes sense. The thing is this, numerically, we're all making a ton of errors.

[00:09:18.100] - Speaker 1
That's human nature. Even Roger Federer talked about that in his Commencement feature, he talked about how he's only one 54% of the points he played. If not the best, top three, tennis player, top two of all time, male tennis player. Anyway, but it's setting expectations that are realistic for... And let me be clear about this. Setting expectations that are realistic, not for you because you can't do it. I want to be really clear about this. I don't want you to say, Oh, well, what I'm hearing is I should set my expectations low because I'm a 2.5, a 3.0, a 3.5, whatever it is. That's not what I'm saying. Let me repeat that. That is not what I am saying. What I'm saying is when you set your expectations, layer into those expectations the fact that you are a human being and the fact that even as good as you may ever get playing pickleball, the highest you may ever get playing pickle in your life, you're probably going to make the same number of mistakes you're making now. What will change is the type of mistakes. Anyway, I'll explore that more in another episode, but I want you to give some thought to that and be kind to yourself.

[00:10:42.920] - Speaker 1
One of my favorite One of my favorite frameings that CJ uses when we're in person with our students is, if I spoke to you, the way you speak to yourself would still be friends. There's really no reason why we shouldn't treat ourselves the same way we would treat our If our friend missed a shot or if our friend came to us after a bad day of pickleball and bad day in quotes, because from where I'm at right now, I don't think you could ever have a bad day in pickleball. You might lose every game, but that's not a bad day because it's still pickleball. But anyway, if your friend came to you and said, I had a bad day of pickleball, what would you say? What words would you say to them? Why not say the same words to you, to yourself? Treat yourself with the same respect and the same kindness you would treat others. And then the other thing that Lynne mentioned was, I feel myself going south, having a game plan. That's super powerful because if you wait until you're in the barrel, if you wait until you're spiraling out of control, probably too late to do anything about it.

[00:11:50.720] - Speaker 1
So you want to go in there with a game plan of what you're going to do in those situations. There are many things you can do. There There are things like tapping your paddle on the back of the fence. There are things like just resetting yourself with, Okay, what now? There are things like switching your paddle hand. Just releasing the paddle alone is going to be very powerful. There are things like focusing on the holes of the ball, right? Hyper-focusing on the ball, if you will, or ways that you can take yourself out of a potential negative spiral and bring yourself back into a more balanced approach. But I'll tell you this, one of the things that you can do is work on your perspective, work on your big picture view of pickleball and your relationship with pickleball and life and things like that. And the better that you get at that, the better you understand the perspective, then the less likely you are to tip over into that downward spiral. Game plan is super valuable. Our advice to you is try and listen to a podcast when you're on the way to the courts.

[00:12:56.730] - Speaker 1
Now, I'm going to give you a modifier here. I believe some of you will wait, based on feedback I've got, some of you will wait to listen to the podcast that drops this week until you're headed to play, say, on a Tuesday or Wednesday or next week. I'm going to tell you why I don't recommend that. Usually, when you're listening to this podcast, this particular podcast, the one we're talking right now for the first time, you're thinking about it, hopefully. Hopefully, I'm helping you have some thoughts that you haven't had before about it and things like that. Imagine you listen to this particular episode, you get to the core, it's maybe you're still thinking about what we talked about during the episode, so you're not going to be able to focus on your game. What I would recommend is Bookmark a couple of episodes that are become like mantras. Think of yoga and things like that. It's a repeat episode, right? But it's an episode that really resonated with you. It could be bowl of ice cream, it could be expectations, it could be less as more. You could have a few depending on how you're feeling that day.

[00:14:03.160] - Speaker 1
But that'd be the way that I would do it. Frankly, I hadn't thought about that until I got the feedback about waiting to listen to the podcast until I'm going to the courts, this particular podcast. It got me thinking about how that could potentially be a distraction. So consider that as an alternative. Then I'm going to close with this from Lynne's story, is that the podcast has helped her play better. That's something that I we overlook, which is when your mind is calm, when you're feeling better about everything, you are going to play better. Drilling is great. Practice is great. Studying the strategy is fantastic, but none of that's going to do you any good if your mind is cloudy, if your mind is unfocused. So this type of listening to this podcast, this mental work, will help you play better and have more fun, which is what Lynne said at the end of her story that she shared with us. Again, thank you, Lynne, for sharing your story with us. Hopefully, you got something out of that in terms of your own journey, hearing from a fellow player, and who's walking her path, and you're walking your path, and we all can share stories with each other to encourage and build each other up, and the benefits of the mental side of the game.

[00:15:28.380] - Speaker 1
I was so in the flow on talking about Lynne and her story and sharing that with you that I almost forgot to record the RIF. I'm going to do the rift now, and then I'll slide it into the podcast. You don't even know it's in We're a little editing magic. We're going to do that. But here's the thing. As you know, if you're a therapist, this is the Therapist RIF. We launched that program, I want to say it's about a year ago, so now, something like that. The idea was it's self-executing, and you commit to it yourself. If you want to do it great, we think it's really valuable commitment that you can make to yourself. It's not to us, as we've said in the therapist's materials and before. It's a commitment you make to yourself and to your friends and family and anybody else who's in pickleball that you can have a positive impact with. But I was thinking about it, and I'm like, You know what? Let's do a little therapist thing going on here. What we're going to do is we are going to a, it's like an Ask Me Anything Live podcast.

[00:16:34.830] - Speaker 1
Basically, we're going to set up a room. We're going to send you guys, if you want to come, you'll let us know. It's not time yet, so don't get, but we're going to give you a link that you'll be able to go to, and then you'll register for the event. Then what I'm going to do is I'm going to record a live podcast. I'll have a couple of subjects that I want to cover, and then ask me anything, and we'll answer questions. It will go as long as there are questions, and we're going to have a constructive conversation. We will keep going. Maybe we'll put a cap of one hour on it. We'll see. But we'll go as long as you guys want to go to. This is for you guys. I want to hear from you guys in terms of your stories, what's going on with you, how's it going in your area with other players, things that you're seeing, share about yourself and your friends and your family, and just answer any questions that I can that I'm able to answer. So that's the event. Be on the look out for that over the next two episodes or so.

[00:17:33.690] - Speaker 1
We're going to be dropping the link to register, and then you can join us for that. But I wanted to give you a heads up. I'm excited about it. I wanted to share with you as soon as I could. That's the RIF. Coming up is the AMA Live. That's the plan, and I hope you'll be able to join us. Again, if you're interested in being a therapist, you're like, What's this therapist thing Tony's talking about? Set us that email to therapy@betterpickleball. Com with the subject line They're pissed. As always, if you enjoyed the podcast, consider rating and reviewing it and share with your friends if you enjoyed the podcast, they probably will, too. If you're feeling inspired, you want to share your story about the podcast If it meant anything to you, you can send us an email at therapy@betterpickleballall. Com and put in there My Therapy Story. In the subject line, My Therapy Story, and then feel free to write anything you want to write in there. If you don't mind us sharing it, let us know in the email. If you're open to doing a video like Lynne did, let us know in the email as well, and we'll reach out to you and schedule a lot of time.

[00:18:39.660] - Speaker 1
It's a pleasure to spend this time with you this week, and have a great week, and I will see you in the next episode of pickleballal Therapy.