November 14, 2025 • 20 mins
One of the most common challenges players face is mental overwhelm. I'm going to break down how too many thoughts on mechanics, strategy, and performance can short-circuit your game, drawing from real tournament experiences. Listen in and learn how to let go, breathe, and reset between rallies to bring your best self to every point using three powerful ways.
Show Notes: https://betterpickleball.com/270-reduce-mental-overwhelm-3-tips/
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:05):
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,the podcast dedicated to
your pickle improvement.
I am your host of thisweekly podcast, Tony Roig.
I hope you're doing well this week, andI'm excited to bring you this particular
episode of the podcast because we're goingto focus on avoiding mental overwhelm,
very common situation thathappens when we're playing.
(00:25):
I have a specific story fromDallas, from the World Championships.
Some fellow pickleball players,friends, students who were there.
I had some experiences being able to helpthem out a little bit during their games
and also see what the pressures are thatthey're under when they're playing,
(00:46):
pressures that we allfeel when we're playing.
Had some conversations.
They were okay with me sharing some oftheir challenges so that
we can all learn together.
So I'm excited about this.
As we dive into the podcast,a A couple of housekeeping.
One, we've just added several camps.
If you have not been to one ofour camps, you are missing out.
(01:07):
It is an amazing experience.
You can ask any formercamper, and they'll tell you.
We have camps pending rightnow in Arizona, Tampa.
Those are the two hotbedsright now of camps for us.
We have a camp in December that has afew spots available still, I believe.
Then we have several in the upcoming year.
(01:28):
Then CJ has some awesome camps inArizona if you want to go West Coast.
So we have West Coast and EastCoast camps available for you.
We also have a program that we launchedabout three or so months
ago called Direct Coaching.
I call it DCP for sure, soDirect Coaching program.
If you're interested inthat, please reach out to us.
(01:48):
You can send us an emailat coaching@betterpickable.
com and get more informationon the DCP program.
A couple of shoutouts I'dlike to share with you.
This is from Megan, MCC2.
Thank you, Megan, for leaving a comment.
Therapy for my mental game.
When I started Pinnable, I quicklydiscovered my mental game
(02:09):
was really beating me.
This podcast made an amazing difference.
I'm glad it did, Megan.
I thought I had it conquereduntil I played in a tournament.
A tournament, right?A tournament just brings up that stress.
Now I know this is an ongoing battlethat I need to regularly work on.
I listen to this podcast on the way to thecourts and when I'm walking
my dog, most every day.
(02:30):
I don't know what I'm going to do whenI've listened to all the old episodes, but
I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
Thanks for continuing to do this podcast.
I'm going to give you a quicksuggestion on that there.
My recommendation, there's no reasonyou can't listen to the podcast again.
It seems weird, right, to repeat a podcastor repeat a book, but you
(02:50):
hear something different.
There's a couple of TV seriesthat I'm particularly fond of.
I've watched one of them three or fourtimes, and it's almost like
brand new when I watch it again.
I see it differently.
I understand it differently.
I have a better understanding of howeverything works together and see
parts of it that I hadn't seen before.
So that's an option there.
(03:10):
Megan, thanks for leaving that.
The second shout out was more recent here,only a couple of weeks ago from Agamawil.
Great program, really good for themental game, and we all love ice cream.
So helpful.I think we all love ice cream.
So awesome.Thanks for that.
And if you have a minute to leave a reviewand give us a shout out in either Apple,
(03:32):
Spotify, wherever it is that youlisten to it, that's much appreciated.
All right, let's dive into thisidea of the mental overwhelm.
So as I mentioned, we just came backfrom the World Championships in Dallas.
It was A really nice eventthat PPA put together there.
About 3,700 players played amateur, andobviously the pros were there as well.
Mlp and PPA, a super exciting time.
(03:53):
Kylene from our team was there.I was there.
Jeff, also from our team, wasthere for a certain amount of it.
So it was Really, really awesome.
We got to teach a couple of...
We taught one camp in Dallas, and then dida couple of clinics there
for some of our students.So really nice experience.
So several of our students and friendswere participating at the tournament.
We had Vicky, Tracy, Jody, Karen, Sandra,Randy, and several others who were there.
(04:17):
We got to watch several matches.
But I want to share a specific story aboutTracy, and I'm going to focus
primarily on Tracy here.
Tracy is a student, but also has becomea friend, him and his wife, Jody.
And so Tracy played both in the men'sdivision on Saturday and the
women's mix division on Sunday.
(04:38):
And watching him play, he's beenplaying a couple of years now.
He's been doing a lot of work on his game.
He's very dedicated to his improvement.
And what I saw was I saw interference inhis game coming from himself, basically,
where he was defeating himself.
I saw it in some other players as well.
But I want to focus here on Tracy's storybecause, again, Tracy was fine with
(05:01):
me sharing these challenges with you.
And when I talked to Tracy about it rightafter the tournament we were chatting,
he was sharing with me howhis mind was just so busy.
He's trying to figure...
He had just so much going on up there, allhappening in real-time, all happening
while he's trying tonavigate a pickleball game.
(05:21):
And in a tournament, there's a higherstress level because
it's a tournament, right?
Whether it should be there ornot is a topic for another day.
But I understand why in the tournament, weall feel a little bit more anxious, if you
will, a little more up tight about thesituation because of what's
at stake in the tournament.
So what I wanted to do, and I told Tracy Iwould do, and I wanted to share with you
(05:44):
in this podcast is,is try and help you maybe navigate
it in a couple of different ways.
And what I came up with was threedifferent areas to talk about where you
can hopefully quiet the mind in theseareas because Each one of these
areas can sometimes take over.
So we're going to look at mechanics,strategy, and then how we use our body.
(06:07):
So the athletic pillar.
And if you know anything about ourcoaching, you know that
we use the three pillars.
So it's mechanical, strategic, andathletic that we're covering here.
So I'm going to start with mechanics here.
And in the mechanics,it's important to understand that you
cannot really do mechanicalwork in real-time, whether it's
(06:28):
a tournament or even rec play.
When I'm even in mechanical work, I'mtalking about where you're trying to
develop or learn a new shot or amodification or something,
and something you're doing.
Very difficult to do that ingame time situations.
You want to put in the workon your mechanics off-court.
(06:48):
And when I say off-court,I mean off-play-court.
You can do it on a court if you'retraining with a ball machine, a
bucket, a friend, things like that.That's fine.
But you really want to be able to do thatnot during play time, is
focussing on mechanics.
Now, you can make someadjustments on your mechanics.
And what I mean by that isit's knowing your tendencies.
(07:10):
So for example, I'll giveyou a personal example.
I have a tendency to movewhile I'm hitting reset shots.
So I'm in a transition zone.
I'm up at the non-bolly zone line.
I'm trying to just softenthe ball and reset it.
Reset, if you don't know what it means,reset is basically where
you make it neutral shots.
So I'm going to drop itinto the non-bolly zone.
The idea is to not getsmashed with the next shot.
(07:33):
What I tend to do in those situationsoften is I will start moving out of it,
whether it's moving forward, standingup, but I come out of the shot too early.
That affects the shotand I end up missing.
Now, that's repetitive.
It's not that difficult for me to identifythe source of the problem
and suggest a correction to myself, whichis to stay more set while I'm heading.
(07:54):
That's an example of something you can do.
Let's say, for example,you miss returns of serve.
It with some frequency becauseyou're running through them.
When you run through them, you miss returnto serve, then you can just remind
yourself to slow down on that.
What I see happening on mechanics isyou can miss a lot of different ways.
If it's not a pattern, if it's notsomething that's regular for you,
(08:16):
you're trying to solve for that.
So you're trying to solve for, okay, Ijust missed this shot that I'm not sure
exactly why I missed it, but let me figureout why I missed it and
let me work through that.
Your brain is going to get overwhelmedwith all of this, trying to solve that
puzzle on something that isn'tsolving solvable in the moment.
So on mechanics, one, if you're workingon your shots, do that off the game court.
Number two, if you want tospend some of your bandwidth, I should
(08:40):
say, on solving mechanical problems as youplay, focus on those that are
repetitive, that are big picture for you.
There's probably one or two that you canthink of, whether it's a volley or a
particular shot that gives you trouble.
You need to identify what the problemis before you get to the court.
So give some thought to it.
Like, I know what my is on myresets before I get to the court.
(09:02):
I'm not trying to solve for it.
I'm just trying to go,okay, I see what happened.
Now I just got to remindmyself to stay set.
Much easier,much lower bandwidth requirement to do
that than to try and work through anentire process of what's going on
with my shots in the middle of a game.
So that's on mechanical quieting the mind.
(09:22):
On strategy, on the strategic pillar, whatyou want to do is really free your mind
here as well by focusing only on theareas that really matter to you right now.
Now, what you do here is you think aboutsetting a bar for yourself
in terms of your play.
That is a bar that you want totry and surpass every rally.
(09:45):
If you are not yet 4.
0 plus player, most of this thoughtprocess is going to be on the return side.
How are you doing on the return side?
Because that's wherethe money is at for you.
So the idea here is to simplify the amountof things you're trying to solve
strategically when you're playing.
And the way to think about this is like,you don't need to know exactly the best
(10:07):
place to put everysingle shot that you hit.
Sometimes it's fine to finish a game andnot even realize you're playing a
left-handed player, if if you'renot ready for that processing yet.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Don't require or don't demand of yourselfa breakdown of the strategy or an analysis
of strategy that is beyondwhere you're at right now.
(10:29):
Because all What you're going to do isoverwhelm your mind with
too much information, too much processing.
Maybe it's helpful tothink about it this way.
We're all...
Your mind is a computer.
At the end of the day, it's a computer.
It does computational analysis at a verysophisticated level,
but it's still a computer.
So just like if you took your regularcomputer, your laptop or your phone or
(10:52):
whatever, and you overwhelmed itwith processes, it wouldn't work.
It would shut down or it wouldbasically lock up or be delayed.
You get that little...
Remember the little spinning, the circlething that happens when you're
overwhelming your WiFi, for instance?
It's the same thing here.
What you want to do is notred line your mind, not take your mind
(11:13):
into where it can't handle the processes,and it either locks up or it's delayed in
thinking, in giving you feedback on whatyou actually have to
do for your next rally.
So that's what we're trying to do here, isfree up some bandwidth from your CPU up in
your brain so that it doesn't getoverwhelmed that doesn't get overtaxed and
then just basically breaksdown and can't process anymore.
(11:35):
All right, so that'smechanical and strategic.
Let's talk about athletic now, becausewhat's interesting here is you can
actually utilize your bodyto help calm your mind.
That body-mind connection works both ways.
If your mind is tense, yourbody is going to be tense.
(11:57):
But if your body is tense, yourmind is going to be tense back.
So it's a circular thing or two-waystreet, if you want to
think about it that way.
So there's twoideas here that I want to share with you.
One is releasing the paddle betweenrallies is going to be
very helpful for you.
Releasing the paddlefrom your dominant hand.
So take the paddle out of yourdominant hand, release the hand.
(12:17):
You want to shake it out?Great.
Just that disconnect, letting youknow that the prior rally is done.
Take a break, get readyfor the next rally.
Avoid getting that carry-overfrom one rally to the other.
Another thing that youcan do is breathing.
And I'm not going to go through abreathing exercise here because I've done
in the last couple of episodes, you can goback and check that out on the
two push breathing technique.
(12:38):
Find a breathing techniquethat works for you.
You want to use a two push that we coach?Great.
We've also done the boxbreathing or four seconds, four seconds,
four seconds, four seconds,four seconds, four seconds.
That one works, too.It takes a little longer.
Find a way to use breathing.
Use the breathing that works for youto get back in the moment
(13:02):
and to quiet everything down.
And that's how you start using your bodyto interact with the mind and quiet
everything down in your mind to avoid theoverwhelm or to take you out of
those overwhelming situations.
And then think of the endof every rally is its own...
When the rally ends, close the loop.
(13:24):
The rally is over, what's next?
One thing that you can do that's verycommon that you see a lot of pros doing,
I think, is super powerful technique.
You just take your paddle to theback fence and just tap it there.
Just tap the back fence.
That basically indicates,okay, we're done with that.
What next?What's going on?
What are we going to...
You got to get ready for the next one andleave all that baggage behind you, because
(13:45):
what happens is if you leave that baggagein your brain from the last rally, the
rally before, it's going tointerfere with your current rally.
And I'll tell you examples of...
You can see examples all the timeof like, Hey, what's the score?
I have a scoring problem, whatever.
Miss the next Miss the next shot.
I'm upset because of the last out call.
Miss the next shot.Whatever.
I'm upset because I popped the ball up.
(14:06):
Miss the next shot.
You're increasing the chance that you'regoing to do that because you
have this baggage from before.
So close out the rally andget ready for the next one.
Those are three techniques that you canuse to quiet the mind and also avoid the
overwhelm that is natural, and that yousee players all the time being subjected
(14:29):
to or being subject to because of the...
They're allowing too manyinputs to try and crowd the mind, whether
it's a mechanics, strategic, or sometimesjust nervousness and things like that, get
into our brain and overwhelm ourability to process as we play.
(14:52):
You're going to play much better when youhave CPU bandwidth to allow you to get to
do the job that you're trying to do,whether it's hit ball to the left, hit the
ball to the right, hit your serve, getready for a bang, let the ball go,
whatever it is you need to do, you'regoing to be much better serve when your
CPU has the bandwidth tobe able to process that.
(15:12):
All right, I want todive into the RIF now.
So this was at Nationals.
I got a question from Ryan.
Ryan is a fellow pickleball player.
I had the pleasure of playingagainst Ryan at Nationals last year.
This was in the hybrid.
Ryan is a wheelchair player.
They call it pair of pickleballand amazing athlete.
(15:36):
I mentioned Ryan, too, in a prior episode,about a year ago or so, because
I have never seen a playerin any level or standing or seated player
that served and returned better than Ryan.
His consistency on his serve andconsistency on the return,
(15:58):
amazing shots, amazing consistency,and super effective as a player.
Anyway, so I ran into Ryan at Worlds.
We started chatting, and he's doing a lotto help promote, I believe the term
they use now is adaptive pickleball.
So basically, like pick a ballfor players in wheelchairs.
(16:18):
Super awesome that he's doing that.
Anyway, so we were chattingand he asked me a question.
He says, What advice would you give to aplayer, a newer a player or a player
who's struggling to find their way.
So I didn't give him agreat answer at the time.
So we're going to get him a copy of thispodcast so that he can
hear my better answer now.
(16:38):
I was in the middle of some other thingsin my brain, and I was like, Oh, okay.
And so I fumbled around a little bit withit, but we're going to make it up now.
So there are three thingsthat I want to share here.
So number one, there is a path forward.
If you know a pickleball player who'sstruggling, a pickleball player who's
having difficulty, there is a path forwardfor that player, a path where they end
(17:01):
up playing better than they are today.
And if you want to think about it thisway, thousands of pickleball players
started playing pickleball without a clue.
They took their first step, they took thenext step, and they're now better than
they were, and still growing as players.
It's a continuous journey a thing.
And so I think the understanding thatthere is this path that the player has in
(17:23):
front of them, that they can move forwardwith their game is super powerful.
So that's number one.
Number two is you cannot learn anythingnew, pickleball or anything else, without
making mistakes, without errors andmistakes and struggles and stubborn your
toe, so to speak, andjust stuff like that.
It's just baked into the process.
It's baked into any growth situation,and pickleball is no different.
(17:46):
So mistakes are going tohappen, part of the deal.
And then the last one is that your growthas a person comes from the challenge
that this sport presents to you.
No challenge, no personal growth.
So embrace the challenge, embrace thedifficulty of becoming better
(18:07):
as a pickleball player.
And we've talked about this in a priorpodcast, but think of it like a canvas.
Think of this game as just a canvasfor yourself as a human being.
You'll get better athlet, your spatialrecognition, your vision, your movement,
as you navigate the court, your yourphysical shape, as you exercise, as you...
(18:28):
All these things.
Pickleball allows you to express themthrough this beautiful
sport called pickleball.
So that's just the lastthing I would say there.
So hopefully, Ryan,if we get to this podcast, maybe this was
a better answer for you, and you can shareit with whomever you think would
benefit from hearing of it.
Which brings us to thelast thing that we always ask on the
(18:50):
podcast, which is, well, rate and review.
But the last thing that we ask you is thatif you enjoy this podcast or if there's
something in this podcast that helped youor you think might help a friend, a friend
who's feeling challenged by the sport,please feel free to share
this podcast with them.
We do this podcast with the hope ofhelping as many pickleball
(19:11):
players as we can.
I know it's helped me over the last fiveyears being able to host this podcast,
and I hope that it has helpedyou and brought you some benefit.
Let's also allow the podcast to benefitothers who may not yet have heard
of the podcast, and that is on me.
I'll do my I'll continue to do my socialmedia posts and get it out
(19:32):
there as much as I can.
And I ask you to help me in that processas well, because remember, if it helped
you and if you found something beneficial,it'll probably help them, too.
They'll probably find somethingbeneficial in it as well.
I hope you enjoyed thisweek's episode of the podcast.
I hope you have a great week, and I willsee you next time on the next regular
(19:53):
episode of Pickleball Therapy.
Be well.
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,the podcast dedicated to
your pickle improvement.
I am your host of thisweekly podcast, Tony Roig.
I hope you're doing well this week, andI'm excited to bring you this particular
episode of the podcast because we're goingto focus on avoiding mental overwhelm,
very common situation thathappens when we're playing.
(00:25):
I have a specific story fromDallas, from the World Championships.
Some fellow pickleball players,friends, students who were there.
I had some experiences being able to helpthem out a little bit during their games
and also see what the pressures are thatthey're under when they're playing,
(00:46):
pressures that we allfeel when we're playing.
Had some conversations.
They were okay with me sharing some oftheir challenges so that
we can all learn together.
So I'm excited about this.
As we dive into the podcast,a A couple of housekeeping.
One, we've just added several camps.
If you have not been to one ofour camps, you are missing out.
(01:07):
It is an amazing experience.
You can ask any formercamper, and they'll tell you.
We have camps pending rightnow in Arizona, Tampa.
Those are the two hotbedsright now of camps for us.
We have a camp in December that has afew spots available still, I believe.
Then we have several in the upcoming year.
(01:28):
Then CJ has some awesome camps inArizona if you want to go West Coast.
So we have West Coast and EastCoast camps available for you.
We also have a program that we launchedabout three or so months
ago called Direct Coaching.
I call it DCP for sure, soDirect Coaching program.
If you're interested inthat, please reach out to us.
(01:48):
You can send us an emailat coaching@betterpickable.
com and get more informationon the DCP program.
A couple of shoutouts I'dlike to share with you.
This is from Megan, MCC2.
Thank you, Megan, for leaving a comment.
Therapy for my mental game.
When I started Pinnable, I quicklydiscovered my mental game
(02:09):
was really beating me.
This podcast made an amazing difference.
I'm glad it did, Megan.
I thought I had it conquereduntil I played in a tournament.
A tournament, right?A tournament just brings up that stress.
Now I know this is an ongoing battlethat I need to regularly work on.
I listen to this podcast on the way to thecourts and when I'm walking
my dog, most every day.
(02:30):
I don't know what I'm going to do whenI've listened to all the old episodes, but
I'll cross that bridge when I get there.
Thanks for continuing to do this podcast.
I'm going to give you a quicksuggestion on that there.
My recommendation, there's no reasonyou can't listen to the podcast again.
It seems weird, right, to repeat a podcastor repeat a book, but you
(02:50):
hear something different.
There's a couple of TV seriesthat I'm particularly fond of.
I've watched one of them three or fourtimes, and it's almost like
brand new when I watch it again.
I see it differently.
I understand it differently.
I have a better understanding of howeverything works together and see
parts of it that I hadn't seen before.
So that's an option there.
(03:10):
Megan, thanks for leaving that.
The second shout out was more recent here,only a couple of weeks ago from Agamawil.
Great program, really good for themental game, and we all love ice cream.
So helpful.I think we all love ice cream.
So awesome.Thanks for that.
And if you have a minute to leave a reviewand give us a shout out in either Apple,
(03:32):
Spotify, wherever it is that youlisten to it, that's much appreciated.
All right, let's dive into thisidea of the mental overwhelm.
So as I mentioned, we just came backfrom the World Championships in Dallas.
It was A really nice eventthat PPA put together there.
About 3,700 players played amateur, andobviously the pros were there as well.
Mlp and PPA, a super exciting time.
(03:53):
Kylene from our team was there.I was there.
Jeff, also from our team, wasthere for a certain amount of it.
So it was Really, really awesome.
We got to teach a couple of...
We taught one camp in Dallas, and then dida couple of clinics there
for some of our students.So really nice experience.
So several of our students and friendswere participating at the tournament.
We had Vicky, Tracy, Jody, Karen, Sandra,Randy, and several others who were there.
(04:17):
We got to watch several matches.
But I want to share a specific story aboutTracy, and I'm going to focus
primarily on Tracy here.
Tracy is a student, but also has becomea friend, him and his wife, Jody.
And so Tracy played both in the men'sdivision on Saturday and the
women's mix division on Sunday.
(04:38):
And watching him play, he's beenplaying a couple of years now.
He's been doing a lot of work on his game.
He's very dedicated to his improvement.
And what I saw was I saw interference inhis game coming from himself, basically,
where he was defeating himself.
I saw it in some other players as well.
But I want to focus here on Tracy's storybecause, again, Tracy was fine with
(05:01):
me sharing these challenges with you.
And when I talked to Tracy about it rightafter the tournament we were chatting,
he was sharing with me howhis mind was just so busy.
He's trying to figure...
He had just so much going on up there, allhappening in real-time, all happening
while he's trying tonavigate a pickleball game.
(05:21):
And in a tournament, there's a higherstress level because
it's a tournament, right?
Whether it should be there ornot is a topic for another day.
But I understand why in the tournament, weall feel a little bit more anxious, if you
will, a little more up tight about thesituation because of what's
at stake in the tournament.
So what I wanted to do, and I told Tracy Iwould do, and I wanted to share with you
(05:44):
in this podcast is,is try and help you maybe navigate
it in a couple of different ways.
And what I came up with was threedifferent areas to talk about where you
can hopefully quiet the mind in theseareas because Each one of these
areas can sometimes take over.
So we're going to look at mechanics,strategy, and then how we use our body.
(06:07):
So the athletic pillar.
And if you know anything about ourcoaching, you know that
we use the three pillars.
So it's mechanical, strategic, andathletic that we're covering here.
So I'm going to start with mechanics here.
And in the mechanics,it's important to understand that you
cannot really do mechanicalwork in real-time, whether it's
(06:28):
a tournament or even rec play.
When I'm even in mechanical work, I'mtalking about where you're trying to
develop or learn a new shot or amodification or something,
and something you're doing.
Very difficult to do that ingame time situations.
You want to put in the workon your mechanics off-court.
(06:48):
And when I say off-court,I mean off-play-court.
You can do it on a court if you'retraining with a ball machine, a
bucket, a friend, things like that.That's fine.
But you really want to be able to do thatnot during play time, is
focussing on mechanics.
Now, you can make someadjustments on your mechanics.
And what I mean by that isit's knowing your tendencies.
(07:10):
So for example, I'll giveyou a personal example.
I have a tendency to movewhile I'm hitting reset shots.
So I'm in a transition zone.
I'm up at the non-bolly zone line.
I'm trying to just softenthe ball and reset it.
Reset, if you don't know what it means,reset is basically where
you make it neutral shots.
So I'm going to drop itinto the non-bolly zone.
The idea is to not getsmashed with the next shot.
(07:33):
What I tend to do in those situationsoften is I will start moving out of it,
whether it's moving forward, standingup, but I come out of the shot too early.
That affects the shotand I end up missing.
Now, that's repetitive.
It's not that difficult for me to identifythe source of the problem
and suggest a correction to myself, whichis to stay more set while I'm heading.
(07:54):
That's an example of something you can do.
Let's say, for example,you miss returns of serve.
It with some frequency becauseyou're running through them.
When you run through them, you miss returnto serve, then you can just remind
yourself to slow down on that.
What I see happening on mechanics isyou can miss a lot of different ways.
If it's not a pattern, if it's notsomething that's regular for you,
(08:16):
you're trying to solve for that.
So you're trying to solve for, okay, Ijust missed this shot that I'm not sure
exactly why I missed it, but let me figureout why I missed it and
let me work through that.
Your brain is going to get overwhelmedwith all of this, trying to solve that
puzzle on something that isn'tsolving solvable in the moment.
So on mechanics, one, if you're workingon your shots, do that off the game court.
Number two, if you want tospend some of your bandwidth, I should
(08:40):
say, on solving mechanical problems as youplay, focus on those that are
repetitive, that are big picture for you.
There's probably one or two that you canthink of, whether it's a volley or a
particular shot that gives you trouble.
You need to identify what the problemis before you get to the court.
So give some thought to it.
Like, I know what my is on myresets before I get to the court.
(09:02):
I'm not trying to solve for it.
I'm just trying to go,okay, I see what happened.
Now I just got to remindmyself to stay set.
Much easier,much lower bandwidth requirement to do
that than to try and work through anentire process of what's going on
with my shots in the middle of a game.
So that's on mechanical quieting the mind.
(09:22):
On strategy, on the strategic pillar, whatyou want to do is really free your mind
here as well by focusing only on theareas that really matter to you right now.
Now, what you do here is you think aboutsetting a bar for yourself
in terms of your play.
That is a bar that you want totry and surpass every rally.
(09:45):
If you are not yet 4.
0 plus player, most of this thoughtprocess is going to be on the return side.
How are you doing on the return side?
Because that's wherethe money is at for you.
So the idea here is to simplify the amountof things you're trying to solve
strategically when you're playing.
And the way to think about this is like,you don't need to know exactly the best
(10:07):
place to put everysingle shot that you hit.
Sometimes it's fine to finish a game andnot even realize you're playing a
left-handed player, if if you'renot ready for that processing yet.
There's nothing wrong with that.
Don't require or don't demand of yourselfa breakdown of the strategy or an analysis
of strategy that is beyondwhere you're at right now.
(10:29):
Because all What you're going to do isoverwhelm your mind with
too much information, too much processing.
Maybe it's helpful tothink about it this way.
We're all...
Your mind is a computer.
At the end of the day, it's a computer.
It does computational analysis at a verysophisticated level,
but it's still a computer.
So just like if you took your regularcomputer, your laptop or your phone or
(10:52):
whatever, and you overwhelmed itwith processes, it wouldn't work.
It would shut down or it wouldbasically lock up or be delayed.
You get that little...
Remember the little spinning, the circlething that happens when you're
overwhelming your WiFi, for instance?
It's the same thing here.
What you want to do is notred line your mind, not take your mind
(11:13):
into where it can't handle the processes,and it either locks up or it's delayed in
thinking, in giving you feedback on whatyou actually have to
do for your next rally.
So that's what we're trying to do here, isfree up some bandwidth from your CPU up in
your brain so that it doesn't getoverwhelmed that doesn't get overtaxed and
then just basically breaksdown and can't process anymore.
(11:35):
All right, so that'smechanical and strategic.
Let's talk about athletic now, becausewhat's interesting here is you can
actually utilize your bodyto help calm your mind.
That body-mind connection works both ways.
If your mind is tense, yourbody is going to be tense.
(11:57):
But if your body is tense, yourmind is going to be tense back.
So it's a circular thing or two-waystreet, if you want to
think about it that way.
So there's twoideas here that I want to share with you.
One is releasing the paddle betweenrallies is going to be
very helpful for you.
Releasing the paddlefrom your dominant hand.
So take the paddle out of yourdominant hand, release the hand.
(12:17):
You want to shake it out?Great.
Just that disconnect, letting youknow that the prior rally is done.
Take a break, get readyfor the next rally.
Avoid getting that carry-overfrom one rally to the other.
Another thing that youcan do is breathing.
And I'm not going to go through abreathing exercise here because I've done
in the last couple of episodes, you can goback and check that out on the
two push breathing technique.
(12:38):
Find a breathing techniquethat works for you.
You want to use a two push that we coach?Great.
We've also done the boxbreathing or four seconds, four seconds,
four seconds, four seconds,four seconds, four seconds.
That one works, too.It takes a little longer.
Find a way to use breathing.
Use the breathing that works for youto get back in the moment
(13:02):
and to quiet everything down.
And that's how you start using your bodyto interact with the mind and quiet
everything down in your mind to avoid theoverwhelm or to take you out of
those overwhelming situations.
And then think of the endof every rally is its own...
When the rally ends, close the loop.
(13:24):
The rally is over, what's next?
One thing that you can do that's verycommon that you see a lot of pros doing,
I think, is super powerful technique.
You just take your paddle to theback fence and just tap it there.
Just tap the back fence.
That basically indicates,okay, we're done with that.
What next?What's going on?
What are we going to...
You got to get ready for the next one andleave all that baggage behind you, because
(13:45):
what happens is if you leave that baggagein your brain from the last rally, the
rally before, it's going tointerfere with your current rally.
And I'll tell you examples of...
You can see examples all the timeof like, Hey, what's the score?
I have a scoring problem, whatever.
Miss the next Miss the next shot.
I'm upset because of the last out call.
Miss the next shot.Whatever.
I'm upset because I popped the ball up.
(14:06):
Miss the next shot.
You're increasing the chance that you'regoing to do that because you
have this baggage from before.
So close out the rally andget ready for the next one.
Those are three techniques that you canuse to quiet the mind and also avoid the
overwhelm that is natural, and that yousee players all the time being subjected
(14:29):
to or being subject to because of the...
They're allowing too manyinputs to try and crowd the mind, whether
it's a mechanics, strategic, or sometimesjust nervousness and things like that, get
into our brain and overwhelm ourability to process as we play.
(14:52):
You're going to play much better when youhave CPU bandwidth to allow you to get to
do the job that you're trying to do,whether it's hit ball to the left, hit the
ball to the right, hit your serve, getready for a bang, let the ball go,
whatever it is you need to do, you'regoing to be much better serve when your
CPU has the bandwidth tobe able to process that.
(15:12):
All right, I want todive into the RIF now.
So this was at Nationals.
I got a question from Ryan.
Ryan is a fellow pickleball player.
I had the pleasure of playingagainst Ryan at Nationals last year.
This was in the hybrid.
Ryan is a wheelchair player.
They call it pair of pickleballand amazing athlete.
(15:36):
I mentioned Ryan, too, in a prior episode,about a year ago or so, because
I have never seen a playerin any level or standing or seated player
that served and returned better than Ryan.
His consistency on his serve andconsistency on the return,
(15:58):
amazing shots, amazing consistency,and super effective as a player.
Anyway, so I ran into Ryan at Worlds.
We started chatting, and he's doing a lotto help promote, I believe the term
they use now is adaptive pickleball.
So basically, like pick a ballfor players in wheelchairs.
(16:18):
Super awesome that he's doing that.
Anyway, so we were chattingand he asked me a question.
He says, What advice would you give to aplayer, a newer a player or a player
who's struggling to find their way.
So I didn't give him agreat answer at the time.
So we're going to get him a copy of thispodcast so that he can
hear my better answer now.
(16:38):
I was in the middle of some other thingsin my brain, and I was like, Oh, okay.
And so I fumbled around a little bit withit, but we're going to make it up now.
So there are three thingsthat I want to share here.
So number one, there is a path forward.
If you know a pickleball player who'sstruggling, a pickleball player who's
having difficulty, there is a path forwardfor that player, a path where they end
(17:01):
up playing better than they are today.
And if you want to think about it thisway, thousands of pickleball players
started playing pickleball without a clue.
They took their first step, they took thenext step, and they're now better than
they were, and still growing as players.
It's a continuous journey a thing.
And so I think the understanding thatthere is this path that the player has in
(17:23):
front of them, that they can move forwardwith their game is super powerful.
So that's number one.
Number two is you cannot learn anythingnew, pickleball or anything else, without
making mistakes, without errors andmistakes and struggles and stubborn your
toe, so to speak, andjust stuff like that.
It's just baked into the process.
It's baked into any growth situation,and pickleball is no different.
(17:46):
So mistakes are going tohappen, part of the deal.
And then the last one is that your growthas a person comes from the challenge
that this sport presents to you.
No challenge, no personal growth.
So embrace the challenge, embrace thedifficulty of becoming better
(18:07):
as a pickleball player.
And we've talked about this in a priorpodcast, but think of it like a canvas.
Think of this game as just a canvasfor yourself as a human being.
You'll get better athlet, your spatialrecognition, your vision, your movement,
as you navigate the court, your yourphysical shape, as you exercise, as you...
(18:28):
All these things.
Pickleball allows you to express themthrough this beautiful
sport called pickleball.
So that's just the lastthing I would say there.
So hopefully, Ryan,if we get to this podcast, maybe this was
a better answer for you, and you can shareit with whomever you think would
benefit from hearing of it.
Which brings us to thelast thing that we always ask on the
(18:50):
podcast, which is, well, rate and review.
But the last thing that we ask you is thatif you enjoy this podcast or if there's
something in this podcast that helped youor you think might help a friend, a friend
who's feeling challenged by the sport,please feel free to share
this podcast with them.
We do this podcast with the hope ofhelping as many pickleball
(19:11):
players as we can.
I know it's helped me over the last fiveyears being able to host this podcast,
and I hope that it has helpedyou and brought you some benefit.
Let's also allow the podcast to benefitothers who may not yet have heard
of the podcast, and that is on me.
I'll do my I'll continue to do my socialmedia posts and get it out
(19:32):
there as much as I can.
And I ask you to help me in that processas well, because remember, if it helped
you and if you found something beneficial,it'll probably help them, too.
They'll probably find somethingbeneficial in it as well.
I hope you enjoyed thisweek's episode of the podcast.
I hope you have a great week, and I willsee you next time on the next regular
(19:53):
episode of Pickleball Therapy.
Be well.
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