[00:00:04.980] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickle improvement. This is a special episode of the podcast where I'm going to be talking about trying to navigat information as you progress as a player, specifically between the idea of consistency and basics or fundamentals, and how those two concepts interplay so that you can make better decisions about your game. This is a special episode because we are in the middle of our fall clinic where we're busting miss, adding truce, and then discussing the three pills of pickle as we go into our fall pickleball system enrollment period. I wanted to address some of these concepts because of the comments that we've been getting inside of our clinic. Really good comments help us understand a lot more about what's going on out there with players and how they're viewing the game, and also the flood of information that they're subjected to, frankly, in an hourly basis now, between YouTube and the courts and everything going on with everybody telling them how to play. The reason we structure this clinic this way is because we know that there's a lot of frustration out there with all this flood of information.

[00:01:18.000] - Tony Roig
Then so we wanted to bust or dispel some myths that are holding players back, and then fill that space in with some trues, areas that players can work on, and then give them a bigger structure, that three pillars of pickleball. So let me give you... I'm going to read a couple of these comments in a second, and then I'm going to talk to you about how sometimes what we're trying to get in our game is available to you but it's going to be difficult to get it because there's confusion about this other concept, about basics and fundamentals. So Valerie wrote this in. Thank you, CJ and Tony. Very helpful, and I can already see the errors of my play and ways I can address it. That's excellent. That's part of that myth-busting. I relate to all you have pointed out and can honestly say I've had many ahas watching the first series of videos. I really appreciate the system serve and realized that as I am just coming up to 70 years of age, I was consistently told to serve a fast, low serve to get better. I tried, I practiced, I strained my arm and failed consistently.

[00:02:22.480] - Tony Roig
I wanted to quit pickleball. Finally, in a moment of sanity, I decided to just serve, and that serve was similar to the system serve you shared. I relaxed, stopped trying so hard, and amazingly, my serve was a success most of the time. Players were now complimenting me versus avoiding partnering with me. Go figure. I have hope now that I can continue to play pickleball and improve. Means a lot to me as I love the game. Hugs to you both. Val. So here what you see is you see a player who was playing a certain way, gets told by this flood of information, by this noise, No, you need a low hard serve to be good, right? So let's do that. It harms her, harms her game, and more importantly, harms her personally, physically, as you said in there. And it doesn't work. It was like whoever's advising that doesn't really understand the point of the serve. Because if you understand the point of the serve, the system serve is a much better serve. And then Val was lucky enough to at least fall into the system serve. But she's, How many are lucky enough to do that?

[00:03:24.340] - Tony Roig
That's why we wanted to share the system serve, because with anybody who wanted to attend, the clinic is It's free and online, so anybody can watch it. And so the system serve allows you to have a serve that's super effective, gets you compliments, and players want to partner with you like they do with Val. But it's because you're able to distinguish between bad information, which is this hard, low serve, who's telling you that? What are their credentials? What do they know about the game? Versus a system serve, which is being told to you by myself and CJ and the better pick-a-ball coaching team, dedicated professionals, high certifications, do this all the time, think about the game, actually care about your improvement, as opposed to just a sound bite. So that's Vals. Let me read you one more, which is Joanne. She says, Okay, you may be right. In Insistent play is holding me back. I give up too many points. Even though I have many great shots during the game, I still lose most of my games. That's a reality. That's a truth that we're actually getting ready to unveil in-depth tomorrow tomorrow during our three trues section of the clinic.

[00:04:35.140] - Tony Roig
But you can see in here, what you see is you see players struggling to figure out what's what. With Val, it was Yeah, they're telling me to serve like this. Why am I having to serve like that? Just because they're saying it is the only reason, right? And then you have Joanne having the aha moment about the idea that inconsistency is what's affecting her play. Now, most of you probably relate to that term, right? When I say inconsistency, you're like, Yeah, I need to be more consistent. Everybody would agree with that, I think. So how do you do that? How do you become more consistent? And here's where this navigating information trap comes in, which is, and there was a comment further down that talked about something like, basically, I've been struggling with consistency. I'm ready to try the more basic stuff that you're sharing, the basic stuff. The term basic, the term fundamentals. I'll tell you guys a quick funny thing. Cj and I, we love the term fundamentals. That's one of my favorite words in the dictionary in terms of what we do with our coaching. But you will never hear us use the term fundamentals with the wide public.

[00:05:52.020] - Tony Roig
In other words, like in a widely publicized video, not because the word fundamentals isn't amazing, not because the word fundamentals isn't apt or applicable to the situation. We don't use the term fundamentals because the minute we use the term fundamentals, everybody runs away. Everybody just runs in the other direction. And that's contrary to what we want. We want to be able to connect with players. So there's this incongruity between what you want as a player, which is consistency, and you understand, consistency is key, and the natural aversion that players have to terms like basic fundamentals, things like that. And that's where I think navigating information, where you can do a better job of navigating your own information. When you get advice or suggestions from coaches like us, coaches who, again, are full-time, dedicated, have the certifications, have the training. This is what we do all day long. We study, we explain. Plus, we explain to you the why. That's the other thing. We will tell you why the system serve is better than the hard, low serve. The propone of the hard, low serve won't be able to explain that to you. The proponent of the hard, low serve is simply going to say, You got to serve hard and low.

[00:07:10.020] - Tony Roig
Hard, low, let's go. Why? Why do I have to serve hard, low? What advantage does that give me in the rally? If you understand the big picture of the rally that you're playing on the serve side? It doesn't. That's the answer. It doesn't. So you have qualified professionals like us who tell you the why. I don't care whether or whether it's thought of as basic or fundamental or whatever. It's going to work, and it's going to get the job done. Compared to just the flood of information out there at the courts or in the YouTube videos and things like that, where's that coming from? Who's that? And why are they saying it to you? Also, who's giving you the why of why you should do it that way in a way that makes sense to you? Because you're an intelligent person. Listen to our why, and you make your calls. And I will tell you this, if you want to be more consistent, simply Eplicity. The simpler your shots are, the simpler your processes are, movement, foundation, stroke mechanics, the more consistent you'll be. And there's a quote that we use all the time because it's so apt and it really strikes home.

[00:08:15.860] - Tony Roig
It's from Bruce Lee. Bruce Lee said, I fear not the fighter who has practiced 10,000 kicks one time. I fear the fighter who has practiced one kick, 10,000 10,000 times. So the difference here is instead of trying to do 10,000 different kicks and just practice them one time, so you can't really do any of them well, why not do one kick 10,000 times? So you become the absolute master of that kick. Why not have a system serve that you know is there for you? You can do it again and again and again. And it forms a foundation for a lot of your other shots in pickleball. Why not have a foundational, fundamentally sound volley technique that's going to do a lot of lifting for you when you're playing? As opposed to, I need to have a cut serve, a roll serve, a Thompson serve, a short serve, a long serve, a serve to the left, a serve to the right. Then I need to have a roll third, a flat third, a cut third, a cut dink, a roll volley. It's a nightmare, an absolute nightmare. And what ends up happening is you're becoming consistent.

[00:09:26.180] - Tony Roig
So if you want consistency, which is a rhetorical question, because I know you want consistency, consider stripping away some of the fluff, some of the window dressing in your mechanical pillar, and go to a very, quote, unquote, basic, quote, unquote, fundamental form of stroke mechanics, a footwork, and a foundation. And what you're going to see is you'll see your consistency skyrocket. And that is the incongruity that I wanted to address in this episode between what you actually want and this roadblock that you're putting up because you're thinking about things in terms of it being basic or fundamentals and that being not something you want. It is what you want because it is what will give you what you ultimately want, which is to be a more consistent and confident pickleball player. You want to be like Val, where you're so consistent that everyone's like, clamoring to play with you and switching those paddles around because they want to be on your team. If you're in the clinic and haven't had a chance to check out the content, please do so. There's a lot of really good in there, as you're seeing from these comments here.

[00:10:32.020] - Tony Roig
These are only a few. There's like 180, 190 comments in there, and you're welcome to check them out at betterpickleball.com/myths if you care to. I think there's still time to sign up for the clinic. If you happen to not have signed up for the clinic, click that button at betterpickleball. Com at the top. Sign up for the clinic, check out the materials in the clinic so you're ready to receive the three trues that are dropping tomorrow, and learn about the three pillars of Pickleball and the system enrollment this weekend. Otherwise, I will see you. If I don't see you inside the clinic, I will see you on Friday at our regular episode of Pickleball Therapy. We're going to be talking about sound mind in a sound body. You're not going to want to miss that one. Be well, and I hope to see you inside the clinic. Bye-bye.