[00:00:04.940] - Tony Roig
All right, welcome to the Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. This is a special episode of the podcast. I'll let you say hello in a second, Jeff, but I'm joined by Jeff Renshaw. Jeff has become a friend, probably known each other four years. You'll have to correct that, but some amount of time, longer than a year, less than 10. I know that much. I can definitely bracket it pretty successfully. And you'll understand why this episode is coming together in a second. It has to do with the book that's coming out. This is just Jeff and I having a conversation about the book, about how it impacted him, et cetera. But I want to let Jeff say hello for a minute, and then I'll come back in and maybe explain a little more what we're doing. So Jeff, say hello.

[00:00:48.860] - Jeff Renshaw
Hi, everybody. I've known Tony for two years, I think it is. It feels like four. I think you're in the right range there.

[00:00:58.600] - Tony Roig
One to 10, I guess. You're definitely right. It feels like we know each other longer because we've been... Jeff has been a student, and again, now has become a friend, but started off as coach-student relationship. I don't think we broke any rules, Jeff, by becoming friends outside of that, but I think it's fine, ethically fine. But anyway, so we become friends. And now Jeff has agreed to join our team. He's helping with various things. But the thing that's relevant to this particular episode is if you listen to the podcast, you know that we have a book coming out, and a book is a very big lift. There are a lot of moving parts, a lot of pieces. I think I'm good at some of the pieces, maybe some of the ideas and writing and things like that. I am not very good at some of the other pieces, getting it out and all the other. There's a bunch of stuff that has happened. So Jeff has agreed to join the team and help out with that. I don't want to not mention Michelle and Dave because they've been absolutely instrumental in getting the book to where we are now, and they're still helping us out with the book.

[00:02:04.210] - Tony Roig
So Dave is helping with the editing. Michelle is helping with some great ideas. But in terms of the day to day, we need to get the bio done. We need to get the things out. We need to connect with Penny who's helping us out on the publishing, all these pieces. Jeff is in charge of that. So what happened is as part of this process is the book has five... It's intro in five parts or five parts total? I don't remember. So basically, Jeff knows. Intro in five And so I asked Jeff, because here's the thing. So eventually, I got to draw a line in the sand in terms of knowledge. But I just recorded an episode today of the podcast that I would like to be in the book, and it will be in a subsequent episode or a subsequent update of the book, but we just got to get the book finished right in cross finish line. So Jeff has been reviewing the book, giving me some really good ideas in terms of parts that weren't that clear, that could be cleaned up, editing, just plain editing and also substantive editing. So what Jeff didn't know was he was writing comments on the side.

[00:03:07.640] - Tony Roig
Some of the comments are just conversational. Some comments were like, what do you think of this? I'm not sure about that. So I wanted to save the comments. So I saved them in a file. And I told Jeff we were going to have conversations. These are conversations with Jeff where we're going to explore the concepts in the book. And we'll probably do about, I don't know, 15 or 20 minutes today. We'll see where there's a good stopping point. And then we'll probably do two or three of these. But it gives you, if you like what we do, gives you a more behind the scenes view as to what we're doing. If you're watching this live, you'll see that I'm not even sitting in my studio and I'm holding the microphone in my hand because I'm just like, we're just having a conversation with Jeff.

[00:03:42.880] - Jeff Renshaw
When I read the book, I was like, am I going to learn anything different? I mean, I'm an avid podcast listener. And so I thought, am I going to learn anything different? I think the concepts are very consistent with what you talk about, but you talk about them in some different ways that made it hit home with me in different ways. So it was a good experience. It was like having my mind renewed about things that I knew conceptually, but it was I'm in a different place in my life. And you talked about some of the concepts in a new way that just hit home with me in different ways. So it was a joy to read. I look forward to everybody else having that same opportunity.

[00:04:27.240] - Tony Roig
Thank you, Jeff. Now, I'll tell you, even as the author of the book, when I go back and look at it and work through it, sometimes it lands differently. It connected dots differently. Actually, the podcast I recorded today drops on Friday. When that podcast drops, what you're going to see is it's another progression along the Sonder route. So we're taking another step in the podcast in our thinking. But the first steps are clearly laid out inside the book, right? And they're more in-depth because we can go into a little more about being the center of the universe and things like that. So, yeah, that's the hope of the book, right? Is that it'll help players with their perspective idea. All right, I'm going to read and then We're going to talk, Jeff. So there was a sentence in the book that says... Well, I'll just go and read the sentence. So the sentence was, We are the star of our pickleball show. And then Jeff wrote, The sentence It gave me a little bit of heartburn, considering something you, I think, correctly said above, we need to get away from thinking of ourselves as the center of the pickleball universe.

[00:05:39.580] - Tony Roig
I feel like the sentence puts us back at the center. I feel like the rest of the paragraph stands up just fine without the sentence, just my gut reaction. So I'm going to give you, Jeff, I'll give you my two-cent response to the comment, and then we can have a conversation about it and see where it goes. So first of all, I think you're absolutely correct in the sense that they're does appear. They appear to be conflicting concepts, right? So one concept is you're the star of the show. The other concept is that you're not the center of the pickleball universe. Actually, I flushed that out a little bit better in the episode that, not better than the book, but a little bit better than we might right now in the podcast that's dropping on Friday. And so the way to think about it is, the way I think about it anyway, is for you, Jeff, the last time you played pickleball, You are the star of that show, right? And you're the star of what you're doing right now, right? For yourself. I'm the star of my little show. You're the star of your little show.

[00:06:38.440] - Tony Roig
Right now, our Venn diagram, we're overlapping. So we're starring in a joint show right now. But I'm assuming, well, I know we have a meeting with a therapist in a little bit, so we'll be together again. But after that, you're going to go do the things that you like doing. I'll go do the things that I like doing. And so in that sense, we are the star of our own show, and we that are absolutely relevant to our experience in pickleball. The other concept is one of basically not allowing our stardom to override or out shine the other pieces that are important inside the pickleball universe in which we live. And so I think those two concepts can live in harmony. But anyway, so that's my thinking about it. But I'm happy to have, what do you about it?

[00:07:30.640] - Jeff Renshaw
I think that sentence that you just read came from part one of the book, if I'm remembering correctly.

[00:07:41.320] - Tony Roig
Probably. This is in chronological order, so it would have been Which is a section about understanding ourselves, right?

[00:07:49.260] - Jeff Renshaw
And when you're understanding yourself, yes, you are at the center of the universe. And so my gut reaction was what you read. But I think by the time you come to the end of the book and you realize, you flush this out, that we're not the only player in this play. There's interactions with other people on the court, and you get into all that. By the time I finish the book, the heartburn that I referenced is resolved for all the reasons that you mentioned.

[00:08:19.500] - Tony Roig
But I do think, Jeff, that it's a very natural reaction, your reaction. And what I mean by that is that's what makes it, I I think challenging sometimes because we're trying to balance the importance of ourselves, which we are important. I mean, because you can go super deep on this if you want to. And basically, without Jeff, the universe is irrelevant to Jeff. I mean, it's not relevant to you. I mean, not relevant without you to you. But it is still going to continue even after you and I are gone. The universe will still be here in theory, anyway. But there's this apparent dichotomy between... And it's like everything matters, nothing matters, but it's about us as people. So to us, we're the most important part of the story, but things will go on without us anyway. So it's this weird, I think, conflict, right? And I think that managing that conflict, I think, first of all, I do think that it takes a little bit of thinking and time, right? And the second thing is I think it can help a player navigate things more constructively, potentially.

[00:09:37.620] - Jeff Renshaw
Yeah. And I know that you're a friend and fan of Peter Scale's work. And where he talks about honoring the game and your opponents and yourself. And I think what I hear you saying is that, yeah, you can be the center of your own universe, but part of being the center of that universe is acting in a way that honors the other parts of the game, which includes your partner and your opponents.

[00:10:08.100] - Tony Roig
Yeah. And I think I agree with you on Coach Kael is a mentor, and I credit him with getting me on this path. And it really... He's probably a big reason why I started to think about the mental part of the sport, not just pick-able, but sport in those three spheres that we've talked about, perspective, play, progress. And part of the reason was because I was trying to... I had read Peter Scale's book, I had read Timothy Galway's book, Josh Watzkind or Watzkind's book. And each one had something different to teach about our relationship with the sport. And to me, it felt very... It felt too reductive or too simplistic just to put all of our eggs in the mama mentality, 110 %, get in the zone, part of the mental game or part of the mental understanding, which is part of it. That's that play part, right? But if you look at Coach Pete's book, Coach Pete's book is more perspective than play. He has play stuff in there, right? There's not going to be a perfect line. But most of his stuff and the stuff that most impacted me was the perspective stuff.

[00:11:19.560] - Tony Roig
And then Josh Wetskins' progress. Anyway, so yeah, I agree. And if you haven't read Coach Pete's book, I know you have Jeff, but out there listening. If you haven't read Coach Pete's book, it's at betterpickupall. Com. Com. You just click on resources. You'll see a bunch of training books on there. And Coach Kael's book is a top book. All right, Jeff, I'm going to move on to the next one. If that's all right.

[00:11:39.420] - Jeff Renshaw
Can I ask you a question? Can I ask you a question first? And you don't have to go. You can go in there as much as you want.

[00:11:45.060] - Tony Roig
This is a conversation, Jeff. You can do anything you want.

[00:11:48.480] - Jeff Renshaw
I think I know some of the answer, and people that read your book will find out more. But when and why did you start down the the mental aspect of pickleball rabbit hole? I know that you had an amateur tennis career before this, but it was really when you got into pickleball, I think, that you started down this path?

[00:12:17.960] - Tony Roig
Yeah, you're 100. Yes, you are correct on all counts. I played tennis before. I played tennis when I was a little kid. I played competitively USTA team league when I was older. Never played college or anything like that. I gave it up in high school because I was a teenager. But basically, so what got me into it? I don't know that I can pinpoint something other than the only thing I can think of is interaction with Coach Pete because of the coaching work we were doing. Frankly, I can't even really remember. I may have to reach out to Coach Pete and Martha. I think Martha introduces to Coach Pete. Martha is a student of ours, and Coach Pete is her husband. And And she obviously is a big fan of his work because it's good work and also it's her husband. So we were turned on to Coach Pete, and then that started me. I think that's where I started thinking about it. I don't think, Jeff, that I had a major a health center like that. I mean, I will tell you that before my reaction, I didn't have as good of a mindset when I engage with any sport, tennis or pickleball, as I do now.

[00:13:29.640] - Tony Roig
And so I know that in 2020, I started the podcast, and at the very first episode of the podcast, I welcomed anybody to follow along with the journey, but I made it clear that it was for me because I wanted to do it and I wanted to learn more. But what I can tell you is it is probably the most, not probably, it is the most profound positive impact on my life out of pickleball. Friends, I mean, I've met some great friends, and I don't want to... Maybe it's the same. Friends and stuff like that, right? But other than that, from a technical standpoint is what I guess what I'm trying to say. I'm not trying to discount the friend side. That's probably more important. And also the traveling and all that stuff. But from a learning, from my growth as a human being, right? I mean, third shot drop. Okay, great. Drives. Okay, great. Volley's whatever. Good. But mental growth, next level. I mean, it's like, and it helps you with so much other stuff where you can just... And how about you, Jeff? I mean, what was your... I don't know, come to...

[00:14:39.760] - Tony Roig
I don't want to say come to Jesus, but come to like, I need a wake up call that I'm going to do this, or are we always doing this stuff?

[00:14:45.820] - Jeff Renshaw
Yeah. So I've been a fan of... There's an author named Ryan Holladay who's written several books on stoicism. And then I started playing pickleball, and I was looking for good pickleball the pickleball coaching, and I happened upon the things that you and C. J. Do. And I really like the the the pickleball coaching just in terms of the Foss approach. I like understanding the framework of something and then how other pieces of the puzzle fit into that frame. So I like how you talk about the whys of things. So anyway, in starting to learn about what you do, I found the podcast. And what I found out by listening the podcast is that there's a whole lot of consistencies between the things you talk about the podcast and a lot of the things that I've read and learned about stoicism. So I was having a lot of the things that I thought before, reinforced and learning how to apply them in this area that I was learning about, which was pickleball at the time. And I think so that was my introduction to you and why I gravitated to that part of what you offer as a company.

[00:16:05.320] - Jeff Renshaw
And that was the beginning. But what I think that I also am getting out of this mental journey is, yeah, it does help me a lot in my outside of pickleball life. But I also think that it gives me a competitive edge in pickleball, right? Because if I'm playing somebody who is equally skilled But I know some of these concepts, like I'm not going to freak out when they make what I think is a bad line call and they are going to freak out in a spiral, then these two people who are equally matched, all of a sudden I feel like I've got the edge, right? So, yeah, it helps me to feel better and it helps me to play better. But it also helps me, I think, to win more, actually, because maybe I've learned some things that other equally skilled players haven't learned yet.

[00:17:03.740] - Tony Roig
I agree with that. I think there's definitely a pragmatic side to this work, right? You and I have talked about this before. Just the feel better alone is enough to do it. Just the fact you're going to feel better should be like, you're getting all the food you can eat. You're getting everything. You're getting the whole shebang. But on top of that, you get like, you play better because your mind is clear. And yes, it will give you an edge against opponents who don't have the same mental capacity. And if you look at, what's the pros? When I watch pros, a lot of the losses that I'm seeing these days by Federico, by Hayden, by amazing athletes. It's all in their head. Christian Alshon, he's gotten better. But still, you look at it, a lot of it's just Lea Janssen, amazing athlete, sometimes has difficulty navigating. And these players all would benefit are benefiting because they are doing work. I'm not trying to take it away. I know Lea is doing some work, and that's great. And I've seen it. You can see it because you can see the progress of her mental journey. But the more that you have, the more that you're saddled with mental stuff, the less you can perform.

[00:18:16.760] - Tony Roig
And by extension, the less, the lower your chances of winning that game, all things being equal, right? So that's cool. All right. Yeah, and I agree with you. I think this stoicism, a lot of what we talk about is very similar to a lot of what's taught in the stoic principles. There's some of the stuff is Buddhist, some of the stuff is stoic, some of the stuff, whatever, a mishmash of ideas. And to me, given my background, my prior life and my work and everything like that, and just the way that I am, If there's a logical connection between things or if you can logically flow it, I'm all in. If it doesn't logically flow, I don't want to talk about it. If it logically flows, count me in. All right, Jeff, we're going to hit one more thing and then we're going to wrap because we got a meeting coming up. So we're going to talk about pop-ups for a second. So you wrote this, and when I was doing these early ones, I wasn't always capturing the language, but I know it had to do with basically how there's such a negative reaction to pop-ups, right?

[00:19:11.780] - Tony Roig
And so you wrote, This is interesting. We do seem to react more negatively to pop-ups than, say, a drop shot into the net or an outball. Strange that we do that, considering that pop-ups extend rallies, but balls in the net are out of bounds, end them. I guess there's a certain sense of embarrassment that comes with eating plastic. And I would agree with you that I think, and we talked about this in a podcast, I think it was either three or four podcasts ago. And this is for me personally, this is a developing concept in my mind that I'm continuing to refine. But I think a lot of times when we have these outsized negative feelings, they flow from insecurity. They flow from embarrassment, insecurity. And Jeff, you and I have talked about this before, and we just in our cans, pop-ups are part of the game. They're just part of pickleball. It's like any shot. And half the game is I'm trying to get Jeff to pop the ball up, Jeff is trying to get me to pop the ball up. The pros pop the balls up. Pop-ups are not a bad thing. They're just something that happens in the game.

[00:20:12.440] - Tony Roig
But you're absolutely correct. There's an outsized negative feeling about a pop-up relative to, even Jeff, I would even say missing a return to serve. I don't think players get as upset with missing a return to serve as they do with hitting a pop-up. And missing a return to serve, I don't know, it's It's like 80 degrees worse than popping the ball up.

[00:20:34.220] - Jeff Renshaw
Yeah, I think I stopped worrying about popping the ball up, probably in the last six months. I've only been playing for about two years. And man, once I stopped worrying about pop-ups, one, I don't pop it up as much anymore. But two, you live to fight another day with a pop-up, but not with some of those other shots, the ones that we've talked about.

[00:20:57.740] - Tony Roig
The net's interesting, because the argument for hitting low, right? These feelings drive wrong strategy because the feeling that I don't want to pop it up and me or my partner gets smashed and I get embarrassed, then forces us. And I put forces in quotes here because it's not forcing you to do anything. But in our mind, it forces us to risk the net hit super low. And so we're not embarrassed when our ball goes into the net. So we're missing a ton more shots than we should otherwise because we're we're picking the wrong metric or the wrong strategy and the wrong shot selection because of some mental baggage that we have with pop-up. All right, Jeff, I think that's it for conversation number one. I got to tell you, I want to give you a heads up here. So we're not even a third away down page one of six. So we'll keep doing these. And as long as Jeff wants to do them, I'm always happy to talk basketball in the mind, and we'll push them out, and it gives you guys a behind the scenes look at how the sausage is made, so to speak, and you get to see what's going on.

[00:22:10.200] - Tony Roig
We'll update you on the book as we do these. In the meantime, if you're listening to this and you're like, I love the book, I'm interested in the book, I think we're going to come up, and I don't think we have it ready, Jeff, but I just want to foreshadow it. We will have a pre-order thing and stuff like that. So we're going to do, I guess, a soft launch first, where if you listen to the podcast and you want to get a look in the book, we'll have a digital version of it, and then you'll be able to order that, pre-order and whatever. So we'll be updating you on that throughout this process. So be on the lookout for special episodes with Jeff about the upcoming book. And Jeff, anything else before we wrap?

[00:22:46.620] - Jeff Renshaw
No, I'm good. But thanks for having me. This is fun. I look forward to the next one.

[00:22:51.720] - Tony Roig
A hundred %. So we'll set it up and we'll keep updating you guys on the book, like I said. And this is interesting behind the scenes conversation. You get to see how we think and how we approach the book. So thanks, Jeff, for your time on this. We'll see you on our next special episode or on the regular episode that comes out on Friday.

[00:23:12.880] - Jeff Renshaw
So long, everybody.