[00:00:00.660] - Speaker 1
Hello and welcome to Pickable Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. Hope you're having a great week. My name is Tony Roig. I am the host of this weekly podcast. It's a pleasure to be with you. This week, we're going deep into the idea of peeling back the onion. We're going to talk about pickle as an onion because that is exactly what it is. And the onion is a great analogy/metaphore that allows us to take a look at how we to engage with this sport in different areas. We're going to explore different areas: play, improvement, yourself as an athlete and as a human being. And I think you're going to find a lot of value out of this idea of pickle being an onion. So if you're a long time listening to the podcast, you're right in there going like, I like a bowl of ice cream, but it's a different application. You'll see. So the onion, I think, is going to work well for you. Before we dive into the podcast, a couple of housekeeping notes. I've been talking the last few weeks about how pickleball therapy is but one piece of a bigger puzzle, of a bigger coaching service that we provide, which is called Better Pickleball.

[00:01:06.470] - Speaker 1
If you're already a part of the Better Pickleball community, then you know what's coming up. And so I don't need to bore you with that here because you'll get the emails and you can make decisions about that there. But if you're not on the Better Pickleball email list, make sure you join that because then you'll be notified of events coming up. We have a State of the Union around the time of this podcast. We're going to have a really nice boot Camp in March and things like that. So betterpickleball.com and subscribe to the email list. Taking a sip of water. I'll be right back. All right, I'm hydrated. We're ready to go. So let's dive into this idea of pickleball being an onion. And let's start from this premise. It is 100 % normal, 100 % natural for you and any other pickleball player to want to know it all. We want everything. We want to know everything there is to know about pickleball, and we want to know it yesterday, right? Not possible. Not possible because pickleball is a very complex sport. And it's interesting. I wrote a little piece about this recently about the idea is that at first Gosh, when you first started playing pickleball, it's just so simple, right?

[00:02:17.100] - Speaker 1
Use a little plastic ball, a little paddle, got to the court, bop, bop, bop, paid the ball around, super cool, and you're good to go. And then you play for a little while and you're like, There's more to this game. Then you play a little longer and you find out there's more, and the more you When you play, the deeper it goes, and you just keep going deeper and deeper. And really, you find out that pickleball is a very complex sport, and that's what keeps us coming back, because it's this really complex puzzle, both in terms of play as well as ourselves and how we interact with it. And it challenges us, and it keeps us young, keeps us engaged, keeps us active, keeps us doing this thing, pursuing this next step along our pickleball journey. And that's something that we should embrace and not allow to overwhelm us or get us frustrated. And thinking about pickleball like an onion is something that can help with that. Because when you think about an onion, I like to think about an onion this way. I don't know about you, but I love onions. Onions are delicious.

[00:03:15.530] - Speaker 1
Cooked, they're so powerful. You can do anything you want with them. Almost every recipe out there has onion in it. It's the Trinity, right? The onion goes into just everything. And so I had this this thing, this onion. I think it's a bachelor's, but it's a root. It's a root. And so I can use it for all these purposes, but it also can cause me to cry. So it's delicious, complex, deep, but can also lead to crying. So it's perfect for a big of all if you think about it that way. But the layers of it are really interesting because when you think about an onion, you peel back a layer and there's another layer of onion, you peel layer and it just keeps going, keeps going, keeps going, keeps going, not infinitely, but for a long time. And so when you think about your pickle ball that way, you think about it like, okay, I am currently on whatever layer I am at. I know that once I peel this layer back, I will see something else in this sport. And then I will, if I want to, keep going. I keep peeling that layer back.

[00:04:21.650] - Speaker 1
And then, oh my God, there's another layer and peel it back and there's another layer. And that's awesome because you're never going to exhaust the layers. But when you think about it that way in terms of layers, you're going to think about it. You think about yourself as being more patient. You think about yourself as being more relaxed because you know that you're working on a layer. You're not working on the onion at that stage. You're focused on a layer. And you can be patient. You work on this layer knowing that I'll get through the layer eventually. And then once I get to that layer, I'll start working on the next layer. And also allows you to focus because you get away from, I need to know everything right now. I need to know I need to know everything there's going to pick a pickleball immediately, or else something bad is going to happen or else I'm failing or whatever it is, that goes away. Because the only thing I need to worry about is what? The layer. The layer that I'm currently working on. Knowing that once I'm done with that layer, then another layer, and then I can worry about that layer then.

[00:05:19.300] - Speaker 1
And then after that, there'll be another layer and another layer and another layer. But in the meantime, I can focus on what I'm doing now because the reality is I can't get to layer number four inside the onion and Until I've mastered or I've pealed back layers one, layer two, and layer three. The first three layers before I get to layer four. So if we understand that, we sit back and say, Okay, wait a minute. This thing that I'm thinking about is layer four. Let me focus right now on layer two. Let's say I'm on layer two. I can focus on layer two, knowing that I need to get through that, to get to layer three, to get through that, then to get to layer four, and not jump ahead to layer four, which is one of the reasons why a sporadic approach to pickleball can be so frustrating. Sporadic might be the right term. I mean, basically like a shotgun, where you're just picking YouTube videos or friends at the court telling you things, things like that. That can be very frustrating because what's happening is oftentimes, let's say you get a video on YouTube that says five tips or something.

[00:06:25.910] - Speaker 1
You'll find tips in there that all the tips It could be layers you're not at yet. One tip might be layer two where you're at right now, and then two tips might be layer three, and one tip might be layer six. So you sit there and there's no differentiation. In YouTube, it's just tips. And So you sit there and you're like, Okay, I'm going to work on tip four. Well, tip four is layer six or layer four. And you're just like, That's not where you're at right now. So you're trying to tackle something that, frankly, isn't going to work because you don't the other layers peel back yet. And it's just, frankly, a waste of time if you think about it because you're on layer, trying to master layer four is on layer two. So try and think about your progress in the game as an onion as being different layers. And I think you'll find that it's much more productive for you because of the focus and because of the patience that you'll have. You can also think about it in terms of your play, and I'm going to talk about you in a second.

[00:07:28.540] - Speaker 1
But in terms of your play, you can think about it like, when I'm out playing, right now I'm focused on, let's say you're focused on your four-shot. You're on the return side. I'm focusing on my four-shot. And so that's what I'm going to spend my energy on, my bandwidth to deal with or to think about as I'm playing. That allows me to focus on that layer and not worry about the potential pop-up on shot number 23 during the rally and then I'm upset about that. It got nothing to do with anything because it's not the layer of the onion that I'm on. And I understand that there's additional layers, threat identification, weakness assessment, be able to exploit different opportunities that are presented by my opponents and all those sorts of things. All that stuff is happening on the court. It's a layer that perhaps is not yet for you. In other words, you're not at that layer yet. And there's nothing wrong with that. Just like, again, go back to the onion. The layer inside the onion, you know it's there. You can't see it because you haven't peel back the layers on the outside, but you know there's a layer on the inside.

[00:08:38.270] - Speaker 1
And so the fact that I can't yet see that layer doesn't mean it's not there, doesn't mean there's anything wrong with me, doesn't mean anything other than I still got to peel back some layers to get to that particular layer. It basically makes things not as negative for the player, for us or for you, because it's more objective. You know there's more layers inside the onion. You know you can't see them right now, but you don't need to be upset about it because there's a reason you can't see them right now is because you're still working on the layer that you're on right now, and you got to peel that one-off before you can see the other layer. While you're playing, it also gives you some comfort there. In your progress and your improvement, right, work, it gives you comfort, focus, and patience on what you're doing. When you're playing, stop worrying about things that are layers that even though you know they're there, right? I know that there's a thing there. I can't see it right now because I'm not working on that. So I don't worry about it. I worry about it when I got to worry about it.

[00:09:37.790] - Speaker 1
I keep working on the layer I'm working on now. And then think about it for yourself, okay? Last week's podcast, I talked about this podcast some, and I talked about the effect of this podcast on me personally and on other players. And that's been a process just like an onion, right? Just layer after layer after layer, both in terms of uncovering parts of the mental side of pickleball that are helpful to me and helpful to you, helpful to other listeners. That's a process over time, layer after layer after layer, and also applying it to yourself. Applying it, for me personally, to me, has been a layering process of one layer at a time, one layer at a time, until I am where I am today. And knowing that I'm not where I'm going to be in a week, in a month, and in a year, because I will continue to peel back layers of the game, peel back layers of myself and my understanding of myself, peel back layers of my understanding of life and psychology and sports and the mind and the body and all these things that work together to continue to work on improving myself, both as a pickleball player and as a human So that's this whole week's podcast.

[00:11:03.620] - Speaker 1
It was a deep podcast. We're not going to do a rift this time because that was a lot of content right there to chew on, literally, I guess, like an onion. So think about that as you work on yourself. Just consider the layers, allow the layers to be what they are so that it's not frustrating to you that you can't see layer number 32 on the inside of the onion yet because you're working on layer seven, layer eight, layer nine, whatever layer you're on right now. Focus on that, get the most out of that, and enjoy the process. Enjoy the peeling of that one layer. Just enjoy the little peeling it back a little bit of time. Maybe you see a little bit on the inside of the next layer, layer 10 is there looking at you, and you start seeing it a little bit at a time. And next thing you know, layer 9 is gone, and you're on layer 10, and you just keep going. All right, so hopefully that framing will help you out with your progress, your play, as well as your personal development. If you enjoyed the podcast, please consider rating and reviewing it.

[00:11:58.990] - Speaker 1
Let's get up to that 4. 9. Just kidding. You'll understand if you heard last week's podcast. And always share it with your friends. Remember, if you enjoy the podcast, they probably will, too. Hope you have a great week and I'll see you on the next episode. Be well.