[00:00:04.920] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to Pickleball improvement. My name is Tony Roig. This is a special episode of the podcast. As you know, if you listen to the podcast, we're getting ready for our fall clinic, and the Fall Clinic has to do with your improvement, what really matters, myths, realities, pillars, and how you can build your game around them. And so I thought, you know what? Let's do a special episode to talk about some of those concepts, and also to help you manage your own journey as a pickleball player in terms of your improvement. Because my experience in this sport as a coach, and a little bit as a player, is that one of the sources of the opposite of joy, one of the sources of frustration, of disappointment, isn't so much the game itself. It's things that we put on ourselves and our minds because we believe that we need to be playing a certain way, advancing in a certain way, but we're not. And so what I want to do here is address the cause of why it is that perhaps you're not advancing the way that you should and could and can, and also talk a little bit about you and your ability as a player.

[00:01:23.210] - Tony Roig
And I'm going to start with you as a player and then talk about what's happening, what's the obstacle here? And then I'll invite you to the clinic that we have coming up if you're interested in learning some more about this type of approach. So let's start with you first, okay? Because you are the main attraction. You're the starring actor in your own pickleball journey. This is you. What matters here is you. Specifically, in our conversation here, it's you and pickleball, but you are the center, not pickleball. And so we need to start from that premise. And it's important for you to understand that you can play pickleball as well as you choose to play pickleball. Period. Hard stop. You are a capable human being. You have done things in the past that you know you can do successfully. You've gotten to where you are now in life. You've navigated this human existence. That alone tells me that you have what it takes to play this sport very well. You also already have all the tools. You have a brain that can do things. You need that. You have a body that can do things. You need that.

[00:02:57.580] - Tony Roig
Now, listen, can your body be stronger, be more flexible? Yes, of course it can. And that's part of the journey. That's one of the pillars. Remember I mentioned the pillars a second ago? That's one of the pillars, the athletic pillar. And the same with your mind. If you have doubts, if you have insecurities, if you have it perfectly natural, no criticism. Every player has those. Even the best players in the world, the number ones, have those insecurities. Understanding that and navigating that and working on that is a part of the process as well. Part of the athletic pillar. And the very act that you're listening to this podcast is evidence that you are, in fact, doing something about the mental side of your pickleball, because that's who listens to this podcast. This is not a podcast you fall into, right? You just happen upon. If you listen to this podcast, it's for the mental side. So the mental and the body, that's what you need. Now, what's happening? Why is it that you're not playing? And this is really important. You're not playing playing up to your potential? Because inside of you, there's this amazing pickleball player just trapped inside of you, right?

[00:04:07.500] - Tony Roig
So why is that pickleball player not expressing themselves when you're on the pickleball court? The answer noise. That's it. Again, hard stop. There's so much out there, whether it's YouTube videos, players at the courts. I had a conversation today with a student who mentioned to me that... And she's She's worked with us for years and loves working with us and has grown her game through our coaching. But even a player like that is susceptible sometimes to getting this input from outside sources, because they seem so believable. They seem so confident. Maybe the player hits the ball really well because they come from another sport like tennis or racquetball, where they have really nice strokes that they can do, different than conveying to you how to do that, and different than explaining how you can unlock your game as opposed to unlock their game through your body, which doesn't It doesn't make any sense. But what happens is there's... And what she said to me, she said, It seems like everybody on the court is a pickleball pro, in quotes, where they're just offering advice. They're coaching. They're telling you what you need. You need this, add this, do this.

[00:05:13.580] - Tony Roig
You want to play better. Everybody has an opinion. And I'm not criticizing that group. They mean well. They're well intentioned. They want to help. I get that. It doesn't mean they can't help. There's a big gap between wanting to help and having the ability to help. As a contrast to that is myself, C. J. Johnson, my co-head coach at Better Pickable, and our coaching staff at Better Pickable. This is what we do. This is our job. We study this. We analyze what's going on in pickleball. We break it down. We figure out ways to explain it. We also prioritize, which is a really often overlooked piece of this, which is not just what you need, but the order that makes the most sense. We do all of that because it's our job, and we're very good at it compared to just a player at the courts who just plays every once in a while and has these ideas, which you're fine to have. But that doesn't mean they're going to work for you. And often they don't. More often they don't, I would say, than they do. And so what that does, that noise, it's keeping you back.

[00:06:24.120] - Tony Roig
Because the secret, when you put the first and second piece together, we're talking about, which is you and and where you're going to go in the game is that the problem is not you. The problem is the noise is interfering with your ability to play awesome pickleball, because that also and pickle ball, it's there. It's just trapped inside of you. And the more noise you have, the more trapped it is, the more bound it is inside of you because it just can't play the game. And I'll give you guys a quick example as to how we coach as different than others. So every one of us is going to play the game a little bit differently. You're going to hit the ball a certain way. I'm going to hit the ball a certain way. And that's okay. The key is that you understand how the shot is generated, the interaction between your body, your footwork, the stroke mechanic, the ball, the positioning, all of these pieces. That you understand what goes into the shot. And then you understand what you're trying to accomplish with your shot. So what is understanding the mechanics of how you do it?

[00:07:36.780] - Tony Roig
The other one is understanding the result that you're looking for. I want a shot to look like this because that makes sense in the situation. I put those two things together, and now I develop the shot that's right for me. You develop the shot that's right for you, which is very different than me trying to get you to hit the ball exactly exactly the same way that I hit the ball, which is my experience with pickleball, not your experience with pickleball. So rather than having others try and imprint on you the way that they approach the game of pickleball, why not you learn how the things work inside pickleball? What makes sense to do? And then you find this pickleball self of yours. And when I say find, it's more like unlock, it's discover. They're already inside of you. You just have to connect with them. You need to know what you need to know in order for that player to be able to manifest itself on the pickleball court. Because that player is there. And I can point you to hundreds, probably thousands by now of players who we've worked with who've had that experience, where they have released a player that was already inside of them because they got rid of the noise and they had clarity.

[00:09:05.140] - Tony Roig
And that's the last piece I want to leave you with in this message, which is that for you to play your best pickleball, for you to manifest your pickleball self, It's all about clarity. You need clarity in the information that you receive about this sport. You need to have clarity about how the sport is constructed, what goes into this sport. You need clarity on how you navigate the pickleball court in your footwork, in your foundation, in your stroke mechanics, all of which is covered in those three pillars. You need clarity on the best strategies, the strategies that actually work, not outlier strategies that work one out of 100 times. No. Strategies that work 80, 85 % of the time. That's how you play really good pickleball. And once you start understanding those pieces, once you understand those parts of the game of pickleball, you start seeing this bigger picture, and you start understanding how everything comes together. And so what we've done inside our coaching is we've developed tools like the three pillars of pickleball. The three pillars of pickleball gives you clarity because you have the mechanical pillar, which is how to hit the shots, the strategic pillar, which is what shot to hit when, and the athletic pillar, which I've referenced earlier, which is that body-mind connection, which is almost never talked about in terms of your development as a pickleball player.

[00:10:28.740] - Tony Roig
But it really holds you back if you don't have that pillar. And the way to think about it, and what this helps you with your clarity is, you need all three. If you want to, in fact, manifest your best pickleball self, you need to know how to hit the shots, what shot to hit when, and your body and mind need to be in optimal shape in order to do the job that you want for yourself. And so that clarity is what we try and provide inside of our coaching, not just try. We do provide inside our coaching. And again, hundreds or thousands of players who have relied on that methodology strategy to unleash the player inside of them. So here's the invite. The invite is we have our fall clinic. We do it every year. There's always well-attendent clinic. It's the amount of information in there that you're going to receive to really help you understand the game is going to really start to change, chip away at some of this noise that's out there and holding you back, and start giving you some more clarity. Start showing you a different way of coming at pickleball.

[00:11:29.100] - Tony Roig
And I think you're going to start feeling different when you receive the information in the clinic, when you hear the information and the way it's explained and how the pieces all work together. You're going to have, at a minimum, one aha moment, if not two or three, that you go, Oh, I didn't know that. And I see That makes sense, given my understanding. And then you start building off of that to gain that clarity and unleash yourself. I'll put a link in the show notes. You can also go to betterpickupall. Com. If you're on an email list, you'll get emails that have special invitations for you with some special materials and things like that. But go down to the show notes, and there'll be a link in there where you can get access to the clinic. It's absolutely free. It's online. So the only reason not to come to the clinic is because you make a decision that you choose not to come to the clinic, which is 100 % your right to do. But I want you to know that whatever you decide, there is an amazing pickleball player inside of you. I encourage you to find a way to let that player out.

[00:12:31.460] - Tony Roig
And if we can help you with our coaching a better pickleball and the pickleball system, that's what we love to do. So the link is below. I hope you enjoyed the podcast, and I hope to see at least some of you at our upcoming clinic. Be well.