[00:00:04.160] - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement, the podcast with you in mind. I am Tony Roig, your host of this podcast. It's a pleasure to be with you this week. This is a bookmark episode. So this is a special episode, bookmark style of the podcast. This episode is designed so that you can use it whenever you are getting ready to play. You want a little bit more focus, you want a little bit of framing for yourself, a little bit of perspective before you go out to play, this podcast will be here for you. So bookmark this podcast so you have it available for you. I designed this podcast specifically for play that is recreational or open play, social type of play. We're going to have another podcast. It'll be a bookmark episode for competitive play. Now, this podcast you can use for competitive play. It'll frame you out a little bit differently. It frames out a little bit more of a big picture perspective on why you're playing pickleball and things like that. But this podcast today will definitely help you get ready to play in all conditions. If you're playing a tournament, you want to check that one out, check that one out when it's available.

[00:01:16.040] - Speaker 1
Bookmark episode today. Pretty exciting stuff. We're going to go over four different areas. We're going to go over perspective part one. We're going to go over play. We're going to get you ready to play your best and deal with those situations. Then we're going to have a second perspective that we're going to hit. The second perspective is an assignment for you to do while you're playing. It's something you're going to do while you're playing. Then the fourth part of today is going to have to do with your progress or your improvement. That is designed for players who are on an improvement journey. I'll give you a heads up when we get ready to jump into that. If that's not your thing, I'll wish you a nice day on the court and you can move on. But if you're into progress, you're going to want to check that one out, listen to that one as well. We're going to dive right into this with the perspective piece. This is Perspective Part One, which is the most fundamental level that we want to look at. What I want you to think about here is, how would you describe your relationship with pickleball?

[00:02:20.640] - Speaker 1
What is it that keeps you coming back for more pickleball day in and day out? From week to week, what is it that keeps you coming back to a pickleball. Take a moment here. I want you to think about it. When you're done, I want you to write it down. If you need to pause the podcast, to take more time, pause the podcast. Write it down. This is going to be really important. It's going to be very fundamental in terms of how we continue with this. Because whatever your answer is, whether it was see my friends, get some exercise, exercise, a little bit of challenging myself, competing, or any other word, because there's no right or wrong here. That is why you, in fact, play pickleball. That is what is right for you and your relationship with pickleball. And that's what we want to start locking into our minds, the reason why we are heading to the courts to play. Now, you'll notice there is something missing there, likely, most likely. We've asked this question thousands of thousands of players, and we've gotten this answer, I think once or twice, and I'm not... No criticism if you answer this, but you don't hear this too much, which is, I want to go play pickleball because I'm trying to win, or my relationship with pickleball is that I want to go get 11 points.

[00:03:46.540] - Speaker 1
That's what gets me out the door in the morning. And let's be clear about this. Competition is not the same as winning. They're two different things. You can compete and give it your best and still be okay if you're not the winner of that game, but you want to make sure not to confuse those two, competition and winning. Now, it is fun to win. No one is going to deny that, right? Particularly, you have those hotly contested games. It is good to win, or it feels good to win. But winning is not the reason for you going to the courts. That is not why you're heading to the courts, and it's not why you came out to play. If you find yourself drifting into winning and losing, so you're out there playing and you say, I just lost a game. Now I'm starting to slide. I'm starting to feel a little bit negative about things. What you want to do is you want to remind yourself of the reason why you, in fact, came to play. So think about it like this. I came to play today Because, and then fill in the reason that you gave us earlier for your relationship with pickleball.

[00:05:06.410] - Speaker 1
Whatever your answer that you gave above or you wrote down, that's your reason. So I came to play pickleball today because, and fill it in with that. If it's helpful to you, consider writing down your reason why you play and put it on your paddle. Take it on a piece of paper, put it inside your bag, put it in your phone, whatever works for you. But have a way to remind yourself so that whenever you're feeling negative, whenever you're feeling dragged down by the winning and the losing or the results of games, you can come back to your reason to play pickleball because it is your reason, not our reason. You are the one just applied the answer. So lock it in and come back to it when necessary. All right, we're going to move on to a play principle here. The idea here is to help us navigate the play during our session here. And if It's normal to want to play well, obviously, and it's normal to want to perform well. We always want to do the best that we can in any situation. The problem sometimes is that we lose our sense of ourselves in that process sometimes during our play, and that's what we're going to try and frame out properly here for ourselves.

[00:06:18.860] - Speaker 1
Now, it is 100% certain that you will miss shots when you play today. It is also 100 % certain that you will make decisions during your play today that are less than optimal. You can think about them as bad decisions if you want to. You're going to hit some balls out of bounds, and you're probably also going to hit some balls that were going out of bounds or hitting those balls that may go out. And here's the thing. Even the pros do that. Even the best players in the game miss shots, make decisions that they wish they made differently. All of those things happen. The reason we want to know this about the 100 % certainty is that it takes away this idea that we're going to get upset if we miss a shot. In other words, it makes no sense if we expect to miss shots to then get upset when what we expected to occur occurs. It's circular, but it makes no sense because we are 100 % certain that we are going miss shots. So getting upset about it, getting steamed about it makes no sense. And we want to go into our match, into our game, preload it with that information, right?

[00:07:41.860] - Speaker 1
Preload it with the idea that we are going to make mistakes or we're going to accept it. So one way to think about it is, I know something is 100 % sure, going to happen the next time I play. 100 %, guaranteed. No doubt about it. Sure is a Sun rises in the East, success in the West, I am going to make mistakes when I play. Yet when it happens, when I make that mistake, I get upset about it. It doesn't really add up, does it? It doesn't flow, it doesn't make sense. And whatever your level of play, right? All of us are going to make mistakes, and all of us are going to make those bone-headed decisions. So if we know this, we can prepare. And the way we're going to prepare is before we go out to play, we're going to prepare two two spaces, two silos, if you will, two areas where you can store the information or store the results of your shots, the information you get from the shots that you hit and what the result of that is. One of those buckets, one of those silos is going to be for positive shots.

[00:08:52.280] - Speaker 1
And I put that in quotes because there's really no such thing as positive shots and negative shots we're going to talk about in a They're just all part of the game. There are shots that you might like better and shots that you might like less, but they're all just part of the game. So giving in that connotation doesn't really help. I am going to name the silo that the positive thoughts go into, yay. Like, Yay, I like that shot. So that's one silo. The other bucket or silo is going to be where the negative shots go. And I'm going to name that silo, Oops, for those types shots. Now, what happens here is when we're playing, we are going to make both types of shots. Shots that we're going to go, Yay, and shots that we're going to go yay and shots that we're going to go Oops. Now we have a proper place to put those shots. And so when we make a mistake, whether it's we made the wrong decision or a decision we wish it were going to be made differently, or we miss a shot mechanically, hit it in the net, hit it out of bounds, something like that, then what we're going to do is we're going to just put that in the Oops category and think nothing else of it.

[00:10:03.780] - Speaker 1
It's just going to sit in the Oups category and we're going to be good to go. Basically, you miss a shot, it goes in the Oups bucket, you got it assigned, and then you carry on. What we're going to avoid is the temptation to keep fighting this shot, fighting with it, saying, How did I miss that shot? I can't believe I missed that shot. None of that matters because the shot has a place where it belongs, which is in that 'oops' bucket. That should help you with your play and not get you bogged down whenever you miss a shot because you just know where to put it. The next thing we're going to do is we are going to do some gratitude work, and this is Perspective Part 2. And this is we're going to work on our gratitude. The question I want you to ask yourself, and I'm going to give you a specific time to do this, which is going to be at the end of game one, and I'll tell you why in a second. But I want you to ask yourself this question, are you playing Are you playing pickleball? Is that what you're doing?

[00:11:02.970] - Speaker 1
No matter what the results were of game one, are you in fact playing pickleball? Seriously? You're playing pickleball? Just imagine that conversation with your friends. You're I call them up and they're like, What are you doing right now? I'm playing pickleball. What's your friend going to say? Seriously? You are playing pickleball? Stop kidding with me. Are you really no BS about it 100% playing pickleball right now? When you think about it that way, isn't it the most amazing thing that you are able in that moment to play pickleball? The sport that's awesome, the sport you love, and the sport that sometimes we lose sight of, meaning we lose the gratitude that we should have for being able to play this awesome sport, much less have gratitude for everything else around it. Our friends who are standing there, if it's a beautiful day, if you're outdoor, check out the trees. If you're indoor, take a look around you at the energy at the other courts, everybody having a good time playing pickleball. And remember that you must be, by definition, in the top 1% most fortunate people on the planet right now because you are able to play pickle.

[00:12:16.230] - Speaker 1
And I sure hope you appreciate just how fortunate you are to be able to play this sport. And the way I want you to do it is after one game. The reason I want you to do after one game is because when we get there, we have a nervous energy, we want to get it out. Play that first game. Play that first game without the pressure of doing this gratitude exercise. But after that one game is when you're going to take a moment, take a breath, look around you and see what's going on with your play, and not with your play, but just the fact that you're playing, the fact that you're playing pickleball and it's an amazing thing, have gratitude for it. If you're on a progress path, I have a fourth step that I'm going to work walk through with you now, so stick with me. Otherwise, I hope you have a fantastic day on the court and say hello to your friends for me, if you would, please. All right, if you're still listening, then you're on an improvement journey or a progress journey as we sometimes think about it.

[00:13:18.940] - Speaker 1
So progress and improvement, synonymous. You want that in your game. You want some progress. What I want you to do is I want you to focus on one thing. It's important to remember that when we're on an improvement journey, there's only so much that we can do while we're playing, and we're heading to a play session. So I want you to focus on one thing, specifically. It'll let you get the most out of it without having overwhelmed, without overwhelming yourself because there's 90 things that you want to improve on. Focus on the one thing that you really want to focus on today, and that'll help you. And we're going to get more specific. We're going to have you drill down to one particular area of that one thing that you're focusing on. Give me an example. Let's say that you're working on your punch volley, and your punch volleys, or you have your tendency to hit maybe more punch volleys into the net than you would like to. So you're focusing on a punch volley, that's the specific shot you're working on, and then drill down one more, have that one specific area on that one shot.

[00:14:27.010] - Speaker 1
It's the net. So you're particularly paying attention attention to the net, the height of the shot over the net, and how many times you're hitting the net. Try and avoid the temptation to focus on everything. Focus on one shot and one specific area of that shot, and that'll give you the most benefit while you play today. One last little tidbit here. Don't forget, you're going to go out and play some pickleball. You're going to have a good time. You're playing the sport that love. And the last thing I'm going to ask you to do is say hello to your friends for me. So go out there and say, Tony says hello to all your friends on behalf of Pickleball Therapy. Hope you have an amazing day on the courts. It's unavoidable because you're able to play pickleball. Remember to bookmark this episode. Listen to this episode whenever you need a little pick me up before you go out to play your next session of pickleball. I'll see you inside the next podcast. And as always, be well.