Pickleball Therapy | Special Episode: Be YOUR Best (Live from PPA Worlds, Part 1 of 2)
Host: Tony Roig
Cleaned transcript (typos and mishearings corrected; paragraph breaks added; grammar and cadence left as spoken)

Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. My name is Tony Roig. I'm your host of the weekly podcast. It's a pleasure to be with you. Hope you're having a great week. This week's podcast is part of a two-part series that we're recording for for you right here at Worlds at the PPA Worlds in Dallas, Texas. Uh it's an awesome event that we've been able to participate in the last few years. Uh this year's been no exception. This uh tournament is a just a tremendous event and it gives us the opportunity to speak about uh some interesting topics in terms of how we feel pressure and how pressure is context driven. And I want to talk about this sign behind me here uh that you may be able to see if you're watching the video over my left shoulder that says be the best. It's a big sign. They have a lot of places here. I think it's an awesome sign that the way the PPA is using it, but I want to pivot it and talk about it a little bit more in terms of uh how we can apply that to our games about being the best and what that means to us. So, that's what we're going to talk about during this week's podcast on Pickleball Therapy.

As we dive into the podcast, if you've never had a chance to come to a PPA event, highly recommend you do that. This event here in Dallas, Texas Worlds is an amazing event. It's 3,000 points, which is the highest number of points available in any tournament. So, at this event, you're going to see all the top pros uh in their best formations because they all want to get those points. Other tournaments have 2,000 points, 1,500, 1,000 points. Those are awesome, also great tournaments to go to. If you can make Dallas next year, highly recommend you plan it. Can't make it next year, perfectly fine. Try and find a PPA near you. Even a PPA challenger, you're going to see some really good matches there, and you'll see some pros who are playing in that event. So, definitely take advantage of these PPA events. It's just a it's a fun time to come to a place like this, see pickleball in a different way, and also get to see the best players in the game.

All right, let's talk about this idea that's behind me on that sign back there about be the best. What does it mean to be the best?

Now, I'm pretty confident that the PPA's use of that term is to be the best in the game, right? So, Ben Johns, Anna Leigh Waters, players like that, be the best in the game of pickleball. Uh, and I there's nothing wrong with that. That's perfectly fine thing to aspire to, particularly if you're a pro player, right? If you're a pro player, why not be the number one player in the world, that's, you know, your goal. That's what you want to work toward. Fantastic.

But I think terminology like this needs to be contextualized. So, if you're playing as an amateur player, which, you know, 99.99% of us out there are playing as amateur players in the day in and day out. What does it mean to be the best? What I'm going to suggest to you is that we replace one of the words and instead of trying to be the best that we try and be your best. In other words, that what you work toward is to be the best version of a pickleball player that you can be.

Now, being your best means a lot of different things, right? It can be how well you hit the ball on the court. It can mean how you behave towards your partners, towards your opponents, towards the others around you. Uh it can mean how you carry yourself toward yourself. Are you being kind to yourself? So, let's explore those different ideas in this podcast and explore what it means to be your best, to endeavor to be your best.

Let's start with maybe the the easiest one to start with, which is what does it mean to be your best in terms of how you play pickleball? Being your best pickleball self is a player who understands the game, who knows uh the shots that are most relevant, who knows the strategies are going to work, who's able to execute. Because pickleball is kind of like not kind of it's like any other puzzle you're solving whether it's a cross word puzzle, chess game, things like that. It's a puzzle that you're solving. The difference with a an activity like pickleball is it's a physically expressive uh puzzle. What I mean by that is you need to be able to manifest it physically. Like if you're playing chess and you wanted to move a piece, you wanted to move the the bishop, let's say, you pick up the bishop, you move it to a spot, you're good to go. You can even just say, you know, bishop two, queen three or something like that and you're good handled. Um, not in pickleball. In pickleball, you can't just wish a shot to go to the, you know, uh, backhand foot of the player on the left side and things like that. Just not how it is.

So, you need to be able to physically manifest your intention when you're out on the court. So, there's a physical piece to this game and also a mental piece to the game. So being your best at playing pickleball means that you're able to physically manifest the shots and strategies that you understand to be the most relevant to how you play the game. So there's two components to this game just and I'm I'm not even got to the the the body and mind. I'm just talking about execution. It's physically being able to hit shots and having a an understanding of what strategies and what shots are going to be most useful in which context. So, that's how you're going to be able to uh be your best as a pickleball player.

Now, what can you do to become your the best version of yourself? One of the things you can do is put some work in, right? What I mean by that is some study, right? Study the game, learn the game, understand how the game works, how how the pieces are put together, and then put in some practice, right? Uh players ask, our students ask, you know, frequently like, "How much should I practice?" And there's no hard and fast rule, but I can tell you that if you want to improve your mechanics the fastest, you will practice more than you play. Okay? Now, I recognize that that may take away from your play time. So, that's why there's no absolute answer because you need to do what's right for you, what what makes you feel best about the sport. But if your objective is I want to improve my mechanics immediately, if not sooner, then what you're going to do is you're going to spend most of your time practicing less of your time playing.

And frank and frankly, that's what the pros do. The pros spend the majority of their time actually drilling, not playing when they're out on the pickleball court outside of a tournament. Um, so want to improve, learn the game, study it, understand the framework, understand how the pieces of the puzzle are put together, and then put in the work to practice the game. That's how you improve the mechanics of your game.

And if you're in a place where you want to do that and you don't have a guide already, nothing that that's crystal for you in terms of how you do things, um, I highly recommend you check out our coaching program, Your Pickleball Coach. You can go to just go to yourpickleball.coach, read more about it, find out if it's the right uh act, right guide for you, right right avenue for you. Uh and we have a very clear policy on finances, which is that finances are not an obstacle. So, if you're in a place where you know what, I really want to learn the game. I'm interested in in being coached by Your Pickleball Coach, but I can't really do the fee right now. Perfectly fine. You can do a pay what you can and just put in the number and you're in the program. Now, I want to be clear. It's not a discount. So, it's not like, well, I don't feel like paying the value that the that's for the the program. Uh, it's not that kind of a thing. It's it's if you, you know, look in the mirror and you say, you know what, I want to do it, but I can't afford it. Then you put in whatever number and you're in the program cuz we are are clear about our mission about training players and finances will never be an obstacle to working with us inside Your Pickleball Coach. So, check that out.

Um, so we talked about your best in terms of how you perform on the pickleball court. Another way that you can be your best is to be your best as a person on the court. So, I'm going to explore a couple different areas there. One is how are you with your opponents? You know, are you doing things perhaps, you know, unwittingly where you're robbing your opponents of their success, of their um of their joy? Uh, an example would be, you know, you're up, you know, 9-2 against your opponents and lo and behold, they come back and and win 11-9 and you go up to your partner and say something to the effect of, you know, oh, that was on me, you know, oh, we I can't believe we lost that game or, you know, we screwed that up, something like that. Put yourself in the in the shoes of your opponents who just came back from being down 9-2 or 9-3 and were able to win that game. That's amazing from their perspective. Don't rob them of that by making it about you. So, that's an area that you can look at. How are you doing? Are are you being your best relative to your opponents?

And the one that's a big one that that's big, but there's another one's big, which is your partner, right? Uh, you know, if you if you if you have a tendency to eye roll or shrug your shoulders or or exasperate when they miss a shot or do hit a shot that you don't think is the right shot in that moment, um, probably not the best scenario for your partner. Probably not the best day for them. So, can you be better at that? Can you be your best there?

Um, first part is awareness, right? Is just being aware of how you how you react to certain things. Uh, and then doing your best to either not do it or if you do it, then apologizing to your partner or letting them know, hey, listen, I'm, you know, that was uncalled for. I shouldn't have shouldn't have done that. Um, you know, my bad. Uh, and uh, if you're not sure what you're doing, you can ask your partner. You can ask, you know, any of your partner, particularly good friends of you, you can say, "Hey, do I do anything on the court that's, you know, unbecoming?"

Because I I'll share with you a story. one of our our our friends inside our our ecosystem that we work in, one of our fellow coaches shared with us that um she was unaware that she was engaging in behavior that um that was not conducive to the partners. And um I can't remember if she asked her partner or somebody a good friend finally told her about it, but when they told her about it, she was terrified. She was like, "Oh my god, I didn't even know I was doing that." Um, and then that was her uh push to kind of fix herself to to not do that uh in the future.

So check that check yourself on that. How you doing with your partner and how you doing with your opponents and try and be your best in that arena as well.

And then the last area to be your best in is with yourself. You know, how do you treat yourself when you miss a shot? Are you beating yourself up? Are you down on yourself? Are you getting, you know, like too worked up about it? Um, you know, is that really necessary? And and a good way of thinking about it is, you know, how would you speak to me if I did that? You know, if I'm your partner and I do that, are you gonna are you gonna talk to me in a way like you're talking to yourself? And the answer is no, then why not give yourself the same gra the same grace, the same courtesy that you would extend to me or anybody else. You certainly deserve that.

Um I think it's really important not to lose sight of uh our responsibility for ourselves. In other words, making sure that we're okay. Um, I always like the uh the airplane advice on the oxygen mask. You know, I always remind people of that, which is, you know, if you if you're traveling with a small child and the oxygen mask deploy, don't put the mask on the child first. Put yours on first because we need you to be okay. Then you can help your child. Same with you, right? That that you're going to be able to do more. You're going to be able to be a good partner. You're going to be able to be a good friend. you're going to be able to support everybody else around you and be more positive of those around you if you're taking care of yourself first because if you're not taking care of yourself be harder for you to take care of others and to be that positive influence on the pickleball court. So don't lose sight of yourself.

So as you move forward, as you think about your next time you're going to play and and and and your next encounters with this awesome sport, give some thought to being your best being the best version of yourself as a player. Again, if you want if you want that for yourself, that's improvement. That's a journey that you can take for yourself. Uh but even if you decide not to improve as a player, which is there's nothing wrong with that. You can play pickleball the way you want to engage with the sport.

I think when you think about, you know, your impact on other people, your opponents and your partner, your friends on the court, I think you have a higher responsibility there. So, so take some ownership over that. And definitely take some ownership over how you treat yourself. Don't be um don't be destructive to yourself or damaging to yourself uh because that's just not why we engage the sport of pickleball and it's not going to help you in any way. It's just not not positive and and doesn't have any positive attributes at all. So um so be kind to yourself on the on this side of things on the perspective side of things.

Uh I forgot to mention earlier but let me go ahead and tell you about it. Uh I wrote a book called Pickleball Therapy: The Book. It's available on Amazon. Uh if you have Kindle Unlimited, you can just read it. it's it's included as part of that plan. If you want the paperback, there is a cost to it because they have to print it and send it to you and things like that. But um it's I think it's a really good book. The players who've read it seem to connect with it. You can look at the reviews uh on Amazon and check that out. Um, and if you have a friend of yours who's going through some tough times with pickleball, uh, I think perspective is a really interesting way of coming at it, um, you know, really approaching the game in a different, uh, angle, uh, and, uh, perhaps salvaging a relationship with a sport that can be a lifelong sport for those who, uh, play it.

So, I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Uh, I'm sorry the sounds a little bit different. I'm hoping that sound in the background isn't coming in too loud. They're announcing on center court right next to me here. Uh but uh I wanted to get this to you from location here at the PPA with the be the best sign behind me as uh it spawned the idea of this uh podcast. Um if you enjoyed the podcast, consider rating and reviewing it. Share it with your friends because if you enjoyed the podcast, they probably will too. I hope you have a great week and then look out for part two of this two-part series from right here at the PPA. Be well and I'll see you next time.