April 18, 2025 • 23 mins
This episode holds a special place. It distills three foundational mental pillars—Play, Perspective, and Progress—that have resonated deeply with players around the world. These are not just abstract concepts but practical tools that will help you not only play better, but also enjoy the game more fully and consistently.
Pillar 1: Play – Embrace the Oops Bucket
Mistakes are inevitable. Even the best players miss easy shots. The question is: what do you do next? Even the best players miss shots. Every shot you miss belongs in the “Oops Bucket”, a mental space where you acknowledge the miss, accept it, and move on.
This tool frees your mind to focus on what matters—the next shot. The Oops Bucket is not about ignoring errors. It is about accepting that they are part of the game and letting them go.
Pillar 2: Perspective – The Bowl of Ice Cream
Too many players tie their experience on the court solely to winning. That is not sustainable. Think of each game as a bowl of your favorite ice cream. You already have the joy of playing—being outdoors, moving your body, engaging your mind.
Regardless of winning or losing, you’re already winning by playing the sport you love. The games you win add sprinkles and toppings, but even without them, you’ve still enjoyed a full, satisfying experience.
Pillar 3: Progress – Close the Gap, One Focus at a Time
There is a gap between where you are now and where you want to be. The only way to close that gap is by focusing on one thing at a time.
Real improvement in pickleball is not about volume—it is about intention. Resist the temptation to chase the latest YouTube tip or hot strategy.
Join us at the Better Pickleball Academy; https://betterpickleball.com/academy/
Pickleball System Class; https://betterpickleball.com/system/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,the podcast dedicated to your pickleball
improvement, specificallyyour pickleball mind.
I'm the host of thisweekly podcast, Tony Roig.
It's a pleasure to be with you this week,and I hope you're having a great
week as well wherever you are.
This week's episode is particularlyspecial because what we're going to do
(00:24):
this week is we're going tobasically condense three of our top
ideas, three of the ideas that have mostresonated with you and helped
you and other playersall around the world improve their play
and also improve theirrelationship with this game.
And we're going to address the threedifferent parts of the
mental aspects of pickleball.
(00:46):
Before we get into that, I'm going to tellyou what the three parts are, and then
we're going to dive into eachone of them more specifically.
These are condensed versions of thesetopics that we've covered in other
podcasts and over severalpodcasts in some cases.
We're going to be talking about a bowl ofice cream, which is one of our
biggest or most impactful ideas thathave been around for a long time.
(01:08):
We're going to cover the Oops Bucket.
If you heard, I banged themicrophone there for a second.
That's an Oops Bucket situation, which isa fairly new concept for us, but something
that has really resonated quickly.
It's gotten a lot of legs quickly.
And then I'm going to talk to you aboutthe pickleball Treadmill, the improvement
treadmill, and how to avoid it, becauseit's a source of a lot
(01:29):
frustration out there.
As we dive into the podcast, we have ourBetter pickleball Academy, which supports
a lot of our efforts, including being ableto bring you this content like
this is supported by our academy.
And the academy is a place where youcan go and get really good coaching.
This is not content creator stuff, andthere's nothing wrong
(01:50):
with content creation.Content creation is fantastic.
But we aren't just contentcreators at Better pickleball.
We're actually pickleball coaches,full-time coaches, certified, trained.
We study it.
And so the Better PickleballAcademy is an expression of that.
And I don't know when you're going to behearing this podcast, but in the
not-too-distant future, we have aninitiative coming out on the academy,
(02:13):
which is based on the idea that we knowthat a lot of our community,
a lot of players out there right now havea lot of uncertainty with
what's going on in the world.
And so we wanted to address that and nothave that be an impediment to improvement.
So be on the look out for that.
If you're not on our email list already,make sure you join our email list and
(02:35):
you'll get notified of it before anybodyelse, because that's part
of being our community.
All right, let's dive into the threeareas of the mental aspect of pickleball.
And I would suggest to you it's broader.
It's the three aspects of any sport, andyou can even apply it to life,
obviously, in terms of these ideas.
So when we think about the mental, as I'vebeen working on the mental game, in the
mental parts of pickleball,one thing that keeps coming up is there's
(02:59):
a lot We're going to focus on play.
And play is important.
And what I mean by play, that's like,think about the idea of giving 110 %.
Think about the idea of maintainingfocus while you're playing.
I have the tiger, all that type of stuff.
It's good stuff, and it's part of what wedo, and it's one of the three areas we're
going to cover, but that's just one of thethree areas that are relevant
(03:19):
to you as a pickleball player.
So we call that one play.
Then the other one is calledprogress or improvement.
We use progress because it has a P.
You'll see in a second,all three have a P.
It's good for alliteration.
But progress or improvement is anotherentirely distinct area of the mental side.
It's learning how to learn.
It's dealing with frustration or feelinglike you're stuck and things like that.
(03:45):
That's an improvement or progress concept,different than the concepts that
will help you while you're playing.Those are two different areas.
And the third one is my personal favorite.
I think it's the one that has the biggestreach, the broadest reach for you as a
human being, as a player, but also asa human being, which is perspective.
So you see this three P's,play, progress, and perspective.
(04:06):
And perspective is much bigger picture.
Perspective is how you view yourrelationship with the sport, how you feel
when you play, how What pickleball meansto you, all those types of
things all go into perspective.
And to me, perspective is amazing becauseimproving perspective in pickleball
allows you to also improve perspective inyour personal life
(04:30):
because you take those concepts thatyou're learning in pickleball
and then you apply them in life.
So we're going to covereach one of those today.
And let me give you the orderwe're going to do them in.
So first, I'm going to give you one thatyou can use for play, which
will be the Oops Bucket.
Then we're going to go into...
We'll do perspective second.
That's the bowl of ice cream, which is,again, one of
(04:52):
the concepts that we developed here at thePickleball Therapy podcast and Better
Pickleball Coaching that hasreally resonated with players.
And then lastly, we'll cover improvementor progress, and I'll give you an idea
there on how to avoid that treadmill thatexists in your learning, potentially.
All right, so let's start with play.
So the idea of the Oups Bucket is this.
(05:14):
The idea is, and if you want to listen tothe full episode on that,
I'll put it in the show notes.
I don't remember the episode number offtop of my head, but it's
basically the 85, 15 concept.
So you can go more in-depth ifthis really resonates with you.
But the idea of the Oups Bucket is thatWhen we play, remember,
this is a play concept.So when we play, we will miss shots.
(05:37):
And that is a 100 % certainty.
There is no way to get around that.
I don't care how much you practice.
I don't care how good you get.
And the reason I can say that is becausethe best players on the planet, the very
best players on the planet, miss shots.
And not just difficult shots, theymiss easy shots, right?
Shots that would be objectively easy.
(05:59):
And so if the best players on the planetwho play professionally and who train
as much as a human being can train, aregoing to miss shots,
then I would suggest that we, asnon-professional players,
I laugh because it's interesting when yougo through this process, because when you
(06:19):
articulate these things, theyjust seem so obvious, don't they?
When you just hear them outloud, when you hear them spoken.
But basically, as nonprofessional players,then if professionals are missing,
okay, we're going to miss.
But here's what happens.
So when we play, we miss, which we justagreed is going to happen 100 %, right?
Certainty, you're going to miss.
Even an easy shot, theeasiest put away in the world.
(06:40):
But we get upset at missing.
And the reason we get upset at missing, Iwould submit, is because we're
putting it in the wrong bucket.
We're not putting it in the right bucket,I should say, or in the correct bucket.
And the idea is this.
So take any shot that you want, and justthink of the next hundred of those shots.
(07:00):
And you can just think easy put away.
If you want to have a shot tothink about, serve any of those.
Out of the next hundred, howmany are you going to miss?
Now, if you say zero, that's nuts.
That's just right, because not eventhe best are going to be a zero.
And it doesn't matterwhat number you picked.
We used 85, 15 in the podcast because itgave us a nice number to use, but
(07:23):
you can use any number you want.
The number of missesis your 'oops' bucket,
and the number of makes is youryay bucket or your good bucket.
Now, realistically, you're notgoing to use the yay bucket.
You're going to be happy when you makethem, but you're not going
to put them in a bucket.
The bucket is really there for when youmiss and you're upset that you missed.
(07:46):
What you do is when you miss the shot,you know that you have an OOPS bucket.
You know the certain number ofshots go in that bucket anyway.
So when you miss a shot,you take the shot,
the miss, and you And you drop it intothat OOPS bucket, and you forget about it.
And once the OOPS bucket fills up, and ifyou're one of our system students from our
(08:08):
most recent class, you got to see thisbecause, again, this is
a new development for us.
As coaches, we grow like you grow.
And So we had this video of a bucket ofwater basically getting
poured onto a young tree.
And you can think about it that way.
When you fill up your bucket, youcan dump it out.
But every time you do thisprocess, you're growing.
That tree grows, your mind grows.
(08:29):
So So use the oops bucket when you'replaying and when you miss a shot,
which again, I believe youalready agreed, will happen.
A hundred % of the time,you're going to miss something.
Not a hundred % of your shots, but ahundred %, you're going to miss something.
When you miss that shot, rather thantrying to wrestle with it and kill
yourself over like, Oh, how did I miss?I can't believe I missed that shot.
I shouldn't have missed that shot.
(08:51):
Any of those expressions, whatever itis that's your personal flavor for that.
Nope.
Okay, cool.I got my Oops Bucket in right there.
I'm going to take that shot.
I'm going to drop it in thatOops Bucket and carry on.
You'll feel better and you'llplay better when you do that.
All right, so that's play.
I'm leaning over a little bit here becausethe computer wants to
(09:13):
pause for a second there.
Plus, I got to grab alittle sip of tea here.
I should have tea every once in a while.It's good stuff.
I was going to make coffee, butI'm probably over-caffeinated
already, so tea is better for me.
All right, so now we have...
That was play, Oups bucket.
Use What is that?
Let's move on to perspective.
So remember, perspective is thebigger area, the bigger playing field
(09:37):
where we can do a lotof work for ourselves.
And the concept that we developed is thisidea of a bowl of ice cream,
and it works like this.
Every single time that you go out toplay pickleball, you've already won.
I mean, you've already gotten great value.
And it doesn't matter what happens.
So it doesn't matter whether you winone game, 20 games, zero games.
(10:03):
It doesn't take anything away from you.
Reason?
You got to play pickleball.
You got to go out to the court and yougot to play the sport that you love.
You got to see your friends, yougot to get exercise, you
got to get out of the house.
All of the benefits, everything that comeswith pickleball, the health benefits,
everything that comes withpickleball, you got it.
(10:25):
If you didn't win a single game, frankly,if you didn't win a single point,
you still got pickleball.
You were able to pickleball.
And I like to play with it sometimes whereyou imagine a conversation
between you and a friend of yours.
And so you go see a friend of yours at,let's say you have lunch afterwards or
something, with a friendwho doesn't play pickleball.
(10:46):
And you look down.
You lost all your games, right?
So you're upset and you go to the lunchand your friend's like, wow, what's wrong?
You okay?Is everything okay at home?
Does something happenor healthy or something?
And And you're like, No, no, no.Everything's fine.
And then your friend says, What wereyou doing before you came over here?
And you're like, well, Iwas playing pickleball.
(11:09):
And your friend goes,You were playing pickle?
Yeah, I was playing pickle.
Your friend goes, That sounds amazing.
I mean, you love pickle.
And did you get to your friend?
And you're like, Yeah,I got to see my friends.
And did you get exercise?Yeah, I got exercise.
And were you at the courtsand you got to hang out?
Yeah, I got all that.
Why are you upset And you'relike, I lost all my games.
(11:33):
Loss of games?What does that mean?
Was some part of your body amputatedor did they take your money away?
No, no.
The scores, they werelike, They got 11 and I got nine.
And I got 11 and I got seven.
And your friend said, they're goinglike, you're kidding me, right?
Come on now.
What were you doing?
You just spent two hoursplaying pickleball.
(11:54):
You're having lunch withme and you're upset.
Come on.
And so that's like, it's a wayof reframing the perspective
of what happened.
You got your base of good.
And the idea of the bowl of icecream is it allows you to get that.
Plus, you can feel better when you win.
Because we also want to live in the realworld where we've been conditioned our
(12:17):
entire lives to celebrate thewins more than our losses.
It's hard to just rewire ourselvesovernight and say, Okay, an 11: 9 loss
is effectively relativelythe same as an 11-9 win.
And you can take it to another extreme.
You could say, let's say you're playing to11, but it goes into overtime,
(12:37):
where you keep going.
If you lose that game, 1917, versuswinning in 1917, It's the same basic
thing has happenedin terms of everything else that you
got other than one thing, the score.
There's other conversations we can have.
We can go deeper on score overlife and things like that.
But at the end of the day, those eventsare substantially the same because in
(13:02):
all of those events, you're doing what?
You're playing pickleball.
That sounds like my puppiesare here or barking.
But basically, you'replaying pickleball, right?
And so if you're getting the benefit ofpickleball, That's your bowl of ice cream.
So every time you play pickleball,you get a bowl of ice cream.
And it's not somecrappy ice cream you don't like.
(13:25):
It's not some flavor you don't like.
It's not a quarter bowl of ice cream.
Every time that you play pickleball,you get a full bowl of ice cream,
your favorite flavor, all the icecream that you want in that bowl.
Now, if you win,okay, now we're going to throw some
(13:45):
sprinkles on there, some fudge, some whipcream, nuts, cherry, whatever you want.
You get the toppings.
And I guess if you want to go further, themore you win, the more toppings if you
want, you can play withit however you like.
But the real key takeaway is this,is that Even if you lose all the games
that you played that day,you still got a full bowl of
(14:07):
your favorite flavor of ice creamin that exchange, in that activity.
So that's a bowl of icecream in perspective.
And I think it'll really help you thinkabout players who like it and who play
along with it, they'll communicatewith sprinkles, which is cute.
They'll basically say, I gotto play pickleball today.
I didn't get a lot ofsprinkles, but I got to play.
(14:28):
So they're telling you what the resultswere, but they still got
the bowl of ice cream.
So they're starting from thepremise of the bowl of ice cream.
And then if they win a tournament orsomething, then they'll say something
like, I got fudge, whipcream, cherry ice cream.
And that's great.Add to it.
But don't take away.
Don't take away from theexperience because of the losses.
We have a baseline that'sa full bowl of ice cream.
All right.
And then the last subject that we wantto cover is progress or improvement.
(14:51):
And so let's talk about that, because whathappens to players is that we'll get in a
run, or we'll feel like we'rejust spinning our wheels.
And the treadmill helps with that.
It's a spinning thing where we're notreally advancing, we're
just on a treadmill.You can also think about it.
Cj likes to think about it in terms of ahamster wheel, which I think is
a super good explanation as well.
Basically, you're on a wheel.
(15:12):
You're not moving, you'rejust stuck on the wheel.
And so how do weavoid getting on a treadmill or hamster
wheel or spinning our wheels inour progress, in our improvement?
And a concept that's really worked for usinside all of our coaching, camps,
pickleball system, everything that we do,academy, is this concept of
(15:35):
closing the gap.
And the way to think about it is, I'mgoing to relate the story to you that I
relate when we're at camps, which isthis idea that Let's go back a few years.
Humor me on this because I think it'lldrive the point home much better.
So let's go back into the mid-1800s, andyou're a farmer in the middle of Oklahoma.
(15:59):
And I'm assuming there was farming inOklahoma in 1800s, but
let's play with that.
And so yourgood friend, a childhood friend who lives
in Texas, is traveling through Oklahoma,heading up to Nebraska somewhere.
And so they, I I think mygeography is correct there.
If it's not, let me know.
But so theystop at your farm, and
(16:22):
they share with you this amazing newirrigation technique that's been developed
in Texas that all thefarmers down there are using.
And It's much more...
It's better than the one that you havebecause for whatever reason,
it just does a better job.
And you receive all the information.It's amazing.
Your friend spends a couple of dayswith you and then continues traveling.
(16:42):
Now, you decide that you want tohave this new irrigation technique.
And so you start implementing it.
Think about how long you have.
Remember, it's like in themid-1800s or late 1800s.
How long do you have to implement thattechnique, that new irrigation technique
before you hear about another one?
(17:03):
Probably years,at least two, three, four, five years,
something like that, that you get towork on this new irrigation technique.
And so what that allows you to do is itallows you to lock in
the new technique, the new thing that youwant, in this case for your farm,
and close that gap.
So install the new systems, do all thethings you need to do to get
(17:24):
the new irrigation technique.
Let's now fast forward to today.
In today's world,it's great to have access to information,
but there's also a dark sideto it or a downside to it.
And that isthat you get a new irrigation technique
today,and then not even tomorrow, in three
(17:45):
hours, you open up yourphone and there's bing.
Another content creator hasa new irrigation technique.
And then eight hours later, bing, andtomorrow morning, bing, you get the new
video, the new idea, thenew idea, the new idea.
So what happens is you never have timeto install the irrigation technique that
you already learned aboutand that you want to use.
(18:06):
Think about that with your pickleball.
How many videos on YouTube,Friends at the Court is giving you
advice, newsletters that you may subscribeto, Whatever it is, that
just hitting you with this andthis and this and this and this.
So what happens isinstead of closing the gap, which is where
you lock something in and then you ratchetup your game to the
(18:29):
thing that you want, to thatidea, that technique, that strategy,
that mechanical part of the game.
What happens is youbasically lock in the thing, the
mechanical idea, whatever, or thestrategic idea or the athletic idea.
And then it doesn't even last threehours there because there's another idea.
(18:50):
And then that might last aday and there's another idea.
Maybe this one holds for three or four orfive days, maybe even a couple of weeks.
But there's another idea.
What happens is if If you think about itin terms of if you want to do this, if
you're listening to it on the podcast andnot visually, think about, put your
right-hand up and say, Thisis what I want for myself.
And then take your left hand and put itunderneath that, like a foot or so,
(19:12):
12 inches, 14 inches underneath that.
So you're The left hand representsyou right now, the way you're playing.
And your right-hand, which is the oneabove it, 12, 14 inches above it,
that's where you want to beon this particular thing.
Let's just take something like the serve.
So you're having You're having troublewith your serve, or you're having trouble
with a volley, or you're havingdifficulty with a strategic concept.
(19:34):
And so you're the left hand down here.
And so you've identified thisright-hand thing up here.
And let's assume you can do that.
I'm not going to get into this podcast onhow do you know to trust it,
how do you know it's right?How do you know it's right for you?
All those sorts of things.
That's why having coaching either in thesystem or academy solves that because you
know that we're goingto give you good stuff.
(19:54):
But let's assume that that's the case,that this is really valuable for you on
the right-hand, and now you havethe The left hand is down here.
What really matters is the left hand,because the left hand is you
and how you play pickleball.
The right-hand is where you want to go andthe ideas that you want to learn
and that you want to implement.
(20:15):
If the left hand stayswhere you currently have it and never
moves up, then you're goingto continue playing that way.
You can replace the right-hand a thousandthings, 5,000 things, a million things.
That does not change Change the left hand,which is how you play.
So the idea of closing the gap isto leave the right-hand locked in.
(20:36):
Don't change it.
Put the thing in there thatyou're working on that matters.
And again, assuming that it's correctand complete and all those things.
Right for you, which is onethat's often overlooked.
And basically, lock that right-handin and then ratchet the left hand up.
Allow the left hand to moveup toward the right-hand.
And now it doesn't have to necessarilytouch it, but it should get close to
(20:59):
it before youreplace the right-hand with something
else, which then drops the left handagain, creating that 12 to 14-inch gap
that you then have to close.
And improvement in pick-able, andin anything in life, is like that.
You lock in an idea, you lock in somethingthat you want,
and then you ratchet yourself upcloser to that ideal shot, ideal
(21:23):
strategy, ideal objective that you have.
And then you replace with another oneand repeat the process.
This idea of constantly replacing theright-hand idea
or the goal that we have with a newirrigation idea, with a new shot, with a
new whatever came across YouTube or yourfriend at the courts told you,
(21:45):
will not allow you to progress.
And that's how you end up on a treadmillor hamster wheel or spinning your wheels
because you're never closing the gap onany of the one thing that you're
working, that will really help you.
And just To round this out, so youunderstand how we think about it as
coaches, how we apply this idea,is that we just launched our most
(22:08):
recent pickleball System class.
And if you look at the pickleball Systemstructure, the curriculum, it's
a very structured curriculum.
Everything in there is organizedbased on highest result.
So we prioritize it for you.
We say, Okay, this is the highest result,and that's going to get you
a lot of work on your game.
(22:30):
So if you lock that in in the order thatit's presented, you know you're going to
get a lot of upside on your gamewith the work that you're putting in.
And you can do the same thing, or if youcan, in your game, you want to try and
think about your prioritizationof what it is you're working on.
And then close that gap is the key that Iwant to leave you with on progress here.
All right, it sounds like the puppies aregetting riled up by there, so they
(22:52):
probably need a little bit of a walk.
I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast.
As always, if you have a minute to rateand review it, really appreciate that.
And share it with your friends, becauseremember, if you enjoy this podcast and if
it helps you out,it'll probably help them out as well.
I hope you have a great week, and I'll seeyou on the next episode
of pickleball Therapy.
(23:12):
Be well.
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,the podcast dedicated to your pickleball
improvement, specificallyyour pickleball mind.
I'm the host of thisweekly podcast, Tony Roig.
It's a pleasure to be with you this week,and I hope you're having a great
week as well wherever you are.
This week's episode is particularlyspecial because what we're going to do
(00:24):
this week is we're going tobasically condense three of our top
ideas, three of the ideas that have mostresonated with you and helped
you and other playersall around the world improve their play
and also improve theirrelationship with this game.
And we're going to address the threedifferent parts of the
mental aspects of pickleball.
(00:46):
Before we get into that, I'm going to tellyou what the three parts are, and then
we're going to dive into eachone of them more specifically.
These are condensed versions of thesetopics that we've covered in other
podcasts and over severalpodcasts in some cases.
We're going to be talking about a bowl ofice cream, which is one of our
biggest or most impactful ideas thathave been around for a long time.
(01:08):
We're going to cover the Oops Bucket.
If you heard, I banged themicrophone there for a second.
That's an Oops Bucket situation, which isa fairly new concept for us, but something
that has really resonated quickly.
It's gotten a lot of legs quickly.
And then I'm going to talk to you aboutthe pickleball Treadmill, the improvement
treadmill, and how to avoid it, becauseit's a source of a lot
(01:29):
frustration out there.
As we dive into the podcast, we have ourBetter pickleball Academy, which supports
a lot of our efforts, including being ableto bring you this content like
this is supported by our academy.
And the academy is a place where youcan go and get really good coaching.
This is not content creator stuff, andthere's nothing wrong
(01:50):
with content creation.Content creation is fantastic.
But we aren't just contentcreators at Better pickleball.
We're actually pickleball coaches,full-time coaches, certified, trained.
We study it.
And so the Better PickleballAcademy is an expression of that.
And I don't know when you're going to behearing this podcast, but in the
not-too-distant future, we have aninitiative coming out on the academy,
(02:13):
which is based on the idea that we knowthat a lot of our community,
a lot of players out there right now havea lot of uncertainty with
what's going on in the world.
And so we wanted to address that and nothave that be an impediment to improvement.
So be on the look out for that.
If you're not on our email list already,make sure you join our email list and
(02:35):
you'll get notified of it before anybodyelse, because that's part
of being our community.
All right, let's dive into the threeareas of the mental aspect of pickleball.
And I would suggest to you it's broader.
It's the three aspects of any sport, andyou can even apply it to life,
obviously, in terms of these ideas.
So when we think about the mental, as I'vebeen working on the mental game, in the
mental parts of pickleball,one thing that keeps coming up is there's
(02:59):
a lot We're going to focus on play.
And play is important.
And what I mean by play, that's like,think about the idea of giving 110 %.
Think about the idea of maintainingfocus while you're playing.
I have the tiger, all that type of stuff.
It's good stuff, and it's part of what wedo, and it's one of the three areas we're
going to cover, but that's just one of thethree areas that are relevant
(03:19):
to you as a pickleball player.
So we call that one play.
Then the other one is calledprogress or improvement.
We use progress because it has a P.
You'll see in a second,all three have a P.
It's good for alliteration.
But progress or improvement is anotherentirely distinct area of the mental side.
It's learning how to learn.
It's dealing with frustration or feelinglike you're stuck and things like that.
(03:45):
That's an improvement or progress concept,different than the concepts that
will help you while you're playing.Those are two different areas.
And the third one is my personal favorite.
I think it's the one that has the biggestreach, the broadest reach for you as a
human being, as a player, but also asa human being, which is perspective.
So you see this three P's,play, progress, and perspective.
(04:06):
And perspective is much bigger picture.
Perspective is how you view yourrelationship with the sport, how you feel
when you play, how What pickleball meansto you, all those types of
things all go into perspective.
And to me, perspective is amazing becauseimproving perspective in pickleball
allows you to also improve perspective inyour personal life
(04:30):
because you take those concepts thatyou're learning in pickleball
and then you apply them in life.
So we're going to covereach one of those today.
And let me give you the orderwe're going to do them in.
So first, I'm going to give you one thatyou can use for play, which
will be the Oops Bucket.
Then we're going to go into...
We'll do perspective second.
That's the bowl of ice cream, which is,again, one of
(04:52):
the concepts that we developed here at thePickleball Therapy podcast and Better
Pickleball Coaching that hasreally resonated with players.
And then lastly, we'll cover improvementor progress, and I'll give you an idea
there on how to avoid that treadmill thatexists in your learning, potentially.
All right, so let's start with play.
So the idea of the Oups Bucket is this.
(05:14):
The idea is, and if you want to listen tothe full episode on that,
I'll put it in the show notes.
I don't remember the episode number offtop of my head, but it's
basically the 85, 15 concept.
So you can go more in-depth ifthis really resonates with you.
But the idea of the Oups Bucket is thatWhen we play, remember,
this is a play concept.So when we play, we will miss shots.
(05:37):
And that is a 100 % certainty.
There is no way to get around that.
I don't care how much you practice.
I don't care how good you get.
And the reason I can say that is becausethe best players on the planet, the very
best players on the planet, miss shots.
And not just difficult shots, theymiss easy shots, right?
Shots that would be objectively easy.
(05:59):
And so if the best players on the planetwho play professionally and who train
as much as a human being can train, aregoing to miss shots,
then I would suggest that we, asnon-professional players,
I laugh because it's interesting when yougo through this process, because when you
(06:19):
articulate these things, theyjust seem so obvious, don't they?
When you just hear them outloud, when you hear them spoken.
But basically, as nonprofessional players,then if professionals are missing,
okay, we're going to miss.
But here's what happens.
So when we play, we miss, which we justagreed is going to happen 100 %, right?
Certainty, you're going to miss.
Even an easy shot, theeasiest put away in the world.
(06:40):
But we get upset at missing.
And the reason we get upset at missing, Iwould submit, is because we're
putting it in the wrong bucket.
We're not putting it in the right bucket,I should say, or in the correct bucket.
And the idea is this.
So take any shot that you want, and justthink of the next hundred of those shots.
(07:00):
And you can just think easy put away.
If you want to have a shot tothink about, serve any of those.
Out of the next hundred, howmany are you going to miss?
Now, if you say zero, that's nuts.
That's just right, because not eventhe best are going to be a zero.
And it doesn't matterwhat number you picked.
We used 85, 15 in the podcast because itgave us a nice number to use, but
(07:23):
you can use any number you want.
The number of missesis your 'oops' bucket,
and the number of makes is youryay bucket or your good bucket.
Now, realistically, you're notgoing to use the yay bucket.
You're going to be happy when you makethem, but you're not going
to put them in a bucket.
The bucket is really there for when youmiss and you're upset that you missed.
(07:46):
What you do is when you miss the shot,you know that you have an OOPS bucket.
You know the certain number ofshots go in that bucket anyway.
So when you miss a shot,you take the shot,
the miss, and you And you drop it intothat OOPS bucket, and you forget about it.
And once the OOPS bucket fills up, and ifyou're one of our system students from our
(08:08):
most recent class, you got to see thisbecause, again, this is
a new development for us.
As coaches, we grow like you grow.
And So we had this video of a bucket ofwater basically getting
poured onto a young tree.
And you can think about it that way.
When you fill up your bucket, youcan dump it out.
But every time you do thisprocess, you're growing.
That tree grows, your mind grows.
(08:29):
So So use the oops bucket when you'replaying and when you miss a shot,
which again, I believe youalready agreed, will happen.
A hundred % of the time,you're going to miss something.
Not a hundred % of your shots, but ahundred %, you're going to miss something.
When you miss that shot, rather thantrying to wrestle with it and kill
yourself over like, Oh, how did I miss?I can't believe I missed that shot.
I shouldn't have missed that shot.
(08:51):
Any of those expressions, whatever itis that's your personal flavor for that.
Nope.
Okay, cool.I got my Oops Bucket in right there.
I'm going to take that shot.
I'm going to drop it in thatOops Bucket and carry on.
You'll feel better and you'llplay better when you do that.
All right, so that's play.
I'm leaning over a little bit here becausethe computer wants to
(09:13):
pause for a second there.
Plus, I got to grab alittle sip of tea here.
I should have tea every once in a while.It's good stuff.
I was going to make coffee, butI'm probably over-caffeinated
already, so tea is better for me.
All right, so now we have...
That was play, Oups bucket.
Use What is that?
Let's move on to perspective.
So remember, perspective is thebigger area, the bigger playing field
(09:37):
where we can do a lotof work for ourselves.
And the concept that we developed is thisidea of a bowl of ice cream,
and it works like this.
Every single time that you go out toplay pickleball, you've already won.
I mean, you've already gotten great value.
And it doesn't matter what happens.
So it doesn't matter whether you winone game, 20 games, zero games.
(10:03):
It doesn't take anything away from you.
Reason?
You got to play pickleball.
You got to go out to the court and yougot to play the sport that you love.
You got to see your friends, yougot to get exercise, you
got to get out of the house.
All of the benefits, everything that comeswith pickleball, the health benefits,
everything that comes withpickleball, you got it.
(10:25):
If you didn't win a single game, frankly,if you didn't win a single point,
you still got pickleball.
You were able to pickleball.
And I like to play with it sometimes whereyou imagine a conversation
between you and a friend of yours.
And so you go see a friend of yours at,let's say you have lunch afterwards or
something, with a friendwho doesn't play pickleball.
(10:46):
And you look down.
You lost all your games, right?
So you're upset and you go to the lunchand your friend's like, wow, what's wrong?
You okay?Is everything okay at home?
Does something happenor healthy or something?
And And you're like, No, no, no.Everything's fine.
And then your friend says, What wereyou doing before you came over here?
And you're like, well, Iwas playing pickleball.
(11:09):
And your friend goes,You were playing pickle?
Yeah, I was playing pickle.
Your friend goes, That sounds amazing.
I mean, you love pickle.
And did you get to your friend?
And you're like, Yeah,I got to see my friends.
And did you get exercise?Yeah, I got exercise.
And were you at the courtsand you got to hang out?
Yeah, I got all that.
Why are you upset And you'relike, I lost all my games.
(11:33):
Loss of games?What does that mean?
Was some part of your body amputatedor did they take your money away?
No, no.
The scores, they werelike, They got 11 and I got nine.
And I got 11 and I got seven.
And your friend said, they're goinglike, you're kidding me, right?
Come on now.
What were you doing?
You just spent two hoursplaying pickleball.
(11:54):
You're having lunch withme and you're upset.
Come on.
And so that's like, it's a wayof reframing the perspective
of what happened.
You got your base of good.
And the idea of the bowl of icecream is it allows you to get that.
Plus, you can feel better when you win.
Because we also want to live in the realworld where we've been conditioned our
(12:17):
entire lives to celebrate thewins more than our losses.
It's hard to just rewire ourselvesovernight and say, Okay, an 11: 9 loss
is effectively relativelythe same as an 11-9 win.
And you can take it to another extreme.
You could say, let's say you're playing to11, but it goes into overtime,
(12:37):
where you keep going.
If you lose that game, 1917, versuswinning in 1917, It's the same basic
thing has happenedin terms of everything else that you
got other than one thing, the score.
There's other conversations we can have.
We can go deeper on score overlife and things like that.
But at the end of the day, those eventsare substantially the same because in
(13:02):
all of those events, you're doing what?
You're playing pickleball.
That sounds like my puppiesare here or barking.
But basically, you'replaying pickleball, right?
And so if you're getting the benefit ofpickleball, That's your bowl of ice cream.
So every time you play pickleball,you get a bowl of ice cream.
And it's not somecrappy ice cream you don't like.
(13:25):
It's not some flavor you don't like.
It's not a quarter bowl of ice cream.
Every time that you play pickleball,you get a full bowl of ice cream,
your favorite flavor, all the icecream that you want in that bowl.
Now, if you win,okay, now we're going to throw some
(13:45):
sprinkles on there, some fudge, some whipcream, nuts, cherry, whatever you want.
You get the toppings.
And I guess if you want to go further, themore you win, the more toppings if you
want, you can play withit however you like.
But the real key takeaway is this,is that Even if you lose all the games
that you played that day,you still got a full bowl of
(14:07):
your favorite flavor of ice creamin that exchange, in that activity.
So that's a bowl of icecream in perspective.
And I think it'll really help you thinkabout players who like it and who play
along with it, they'll communicatewith sprinkles, which is cute.
They'll basically say, I gotto play pickleball today.
I didn't get a lot ofsprinkles, but I got to play.
(14:28):
So they're telling you what the resultswere, but they still got
the bowl of ice cream.
So they're starting from thepremise of the bowl of ice cream.
And then if they win a tournament orsomething, then they'll say something
like, I got fudge, whipcream, cherry ice cream.
And that's great.Add to it.
But don't take away.
Don't take away from theexperience because of the losses.
We have a baseline that'sa full bowl of ice cream.
All right.
And then the last subject that we wantto cover is progress or improvement.
(14:51):
And so let's talk about that, because whathappens to players is that we'll get in a
run, or we'll feel like we'rejust spinning our wheels.
And the treadmill helps with that.
It's a spinning thing where we're notreally advancing, we're
just on a treadmill.You can also think about it.
Cj likes to think about it in terms of ahamster wheel, which I think is
a super good explanation as well.
Basically, you're on a wheel.
(15:12):
You're not moving, you'rejust stuck on the wheel.
And so how do weavoid getting on a treadmill or hamster
wheel or spinning our wheels inour progress, in our improvement?
And a concept that's really worked for usinside all of our coaching, camps,
pickleball system, everything that we do,academy, is this concept of
(15:35):
closing the gap.
And the way to think about it is, I'mgoing to relate the story to you that I
relate when we're at camps, which isthis idea that Let's go back a few years.
Humor me on this because I think it'lldrive the point home much better.
So let's go back into the mid-1800s, andyou're a farmer in the middle of Oklahoma.
(15:59):
And I'm assuming there was farming inOklahoma in 1800s, but
let's play with that.
And so yourgood friend, a childhood friend who lives
in Texas, is traveling through Oklahoma,heading up to Nebraska somewhere.
And so they, I I think mygeography is correct there.
If it's not, let me know.
But so theystop at your farm, and
(16:22):
they share with you this amazing newirrigation technique that's been developed
in Texas that all thefarmers down there are using.
And It's much more...
It's better than the one that you havebecause for whatever reason,
it just does a better job.
And you receive all the information.It's amazing.
Your friend spends a couple of dayswith you and then continues traveling.
(16:42):
Now, you decide that you want tohave this new irrigation technique.
And so you start implementing it.
Think about how long you have.
Remember, it's like in themid-1800s or late 1800s.
How long do you have to implement thattechnique, that new irrigation technique
before you hear about another one?
(17:03):
Probably years,at least two, three, four, five years,
something like that, that you get towork on this new irrigation technique.
And so what that allows you to do is itallows you to lock in
the new technique, the new thing that youwant, in this case for your farm,
and close that gap.
So install the new systems, do all thethings you need to do to get
(17:24):
the new irrigation technique.
Let's now fast forward to today.
In today's world,it's great to have access to information,
but there's also a dark sideto it or a downside to it.
And that isthat you get a new irrigation technique
today,and then not even tomorrow, in three
(17:45):
hours, you open up yourphone and there's bing.
Another content creator hasa new irrigation technique.
And then eight hours later, bing, andtomorrow morning, bing, you get the new
video, the new idea, thenew idea, the new idea.
So what happens is you never have timeto install the irrigation technique that
you already learned aboutand that you want to use.
(18:06):
Think about that with your pickleball.
How many videos on YouTube,Friends at the Court is giving you
advice, newsletters that you may subscribeto, Whatever it is, that
just hitting you with this andthis and this and this and this.
So what happens isinstead of closing the gap, which is where
you lock something in and then you ratchetup your game to the
(18:29):
thing that you want, to thatidea, that technique, that strategy,
that mechanical part of the game.
What happens is youbasically lock in the thing, the
mechanical idea, whatever, or thestrategic idea or the athletic idea.
And then it doesn't even last threehours there because there's another idea.
(18:50):
And then that might last aday and there's another idea.
Maybe this one holds for three or four orfive days, maybe even a couple of weeks.
But there's another idea.
What happens is if If you think about itin terms of if you want to do this, if
you're listening to it on the podcast andnot visually, think about, put your
right-hand up and say, Thisis what I want for myself.
And then take your left hand and put itunderneath that, like a foot or so,
(19:12):
12 inches, 14 inches underneath that.
So you're The left hand representsyou right now, the way you're playing.
And your right-hand, which is the oneabove it, 12, 14 inches above it,
that's where you want to beon this particular thing.
Let's just take something like the serve.
So you're having You're having troublewith your serve, or you're having trouble
with a volley, or you're havingdifficulty with a strategic concept.
(19:34):
And so you're the left hand down here.
And so you've identified thisright-hand thing up here.
And let's assume you can do that.
I'm not going to get into this podcast onhow do you know to trust it,
how do you know it's right?How do you know it's right for you?
All those sorts of things.
That's why having coaching either in thesystem or academy solves that because you
know that we're goingto give you good stuff.
(19:54):
But let's assume that that's the case,that this is really valuable for you on
the right-hand, and now you havethe The left hand is down here.
What really matters is the left hand,because the left hand is you
and how you play pickleball.
The right-hand is where you want to go andthe ideas that you want to learn
and that you want to implement.
(20:15):
If the left hand stayswhere you currently have it and never
moves up, then you're goingto continue playing that way.
You can replace the right-hand a thousandthings, 5,000 things, a million things.
That does not change Change the left hand,which is how you play.
So the idea of closing the gap isto leave the right-hand locked in.
(20:36):
Don't change it.
Put the thing in there thatyou're working on that matters.
And again, assuming that it's correctand complete and all those things.
Right for you, which is onethat's often overlooked.
And basically, lock that right-handin and then ratchet the left hand up.
Allow the left hand to moveup toward the right-hand.
And now it doesn't have to necessarilytouch it, but it should get close to
(20:59):
it before youreplace the right-hand with something
else, which then drops the left handagain, creating that 12 to 14-inch gap
that you then have to close.
And improvement in pick-able, andin anything in life, is like that.
You lock in an idea, you lock in somethingthat you want,
and then you ratchet yourself upcloser to that ideal shot, ideal
(21:23):
strategy, ideal objective that you have.
And then you replace with another oneand repeat the process.
This idea of constantly replacing theright-hand idea
or the goal that we have with a newirrigation idea, with a new shot, with a
new whatever came across YouTube or yourfriend at the courts told you,
(21:45):
will not allow you to progress.
And that's how you end up on a treadmillor hamster wheel or spinning your wheels
because you're never closing the gap onany of the one thing that you're
working, that will really help you.
And just To round this out, so youunderstand how we think about it as
coaches, how we apply this idea,is that we just launched our most
(22:08):
recent pickleball System class.
And if you look at the pickleball Systemstructure, the curriculum, it's
a very structured curriculum.
Everything in there is organizedbased on highest result.
So we prioritize it for you.
We say, Okay, this is the highest result,and that's going to get you
a lot of work on your game.
(22:30):
So if you lock that in in the order thatit's presented, you know you're going to
get a lot of upside on your gamewith the work that you're putting in.
And you can do the same thing, or if youcan, in your game, you want to try and
think about your prioritizationof what it is you're working on.
And then close that gap is the key that Iwant to leave you with on progress here.
All right, it sounds like the puppies aregetting riled up by there, so they
(22:52):
probably need a little bit of a walk.
I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast.
As always, if you have a minute to rateand review it, really appreciate that.
And share it with your friends, becauseremember, if you enjoy this podcast and if
it helps you out,it'll probably help them out as well.
I hope you have a great week, and I'll seeyou on the next episode
of pickleball Therapy.
(23:12):
Be well.
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