Special Episode - Become your own Pickleball Mechanic

There's power in “seeing the story” of the game as it unfolds. Moving beyond strokes and strategies, in this podcast episode I want to challenge you as a pickleball player to deepen your awareness—recognize mechanics, anticipate play, and diagnose both strengths and flaws. Consider how much you really want to know about what’s happening under pickleball’s hood. 

Show Notes: https://betterpickleball.com/1533-become-your-own-pickleball-mechanic/ 

Episode Transcript

(00:05):
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy,the podcast dedicated to
your pickleball improvement.
It's the podcast thatfocuses on your mind.
My name is Tony Roig.I'm the host of the weekly podcast.
It's a pleasure to be with you.I hope you're doing well.
This is a special episode of the podcastwhere I want to talk about seeing the
story or seeing the game as it unfolds.
I think it's a really powerful concept,something we've been

(00:28):
talking about for the last for a couple ofyears, but several students have
given me feedback recently that made methink about this some more, and I thought
it was a timely time to do a specialepisode because of that and also
because of our upcoming clinic.
I want to give you some of the feedbackthat I'm getting and then dive into the
concepts about seeing the storyand how powerful that can be.

(00:49):
It's just a different way of engaging withthe sport of pickleball,
well beyond just hitting a pickleball.
I know if you listen to this podcast,you're already somewhat down that path.
It's rare to get a player who just wantsto go out there and knock the ball around,
who also have somelistening to this podcast.
If you do that, you're absolutely welcome,and I'm glad to have you as part of the
audience, but it's just not very common.

(01:12):
Here's some of the things that I'vebeen hearing recently from our students.
One was it's being more aware ofmechanical flaws in others' play.
Now, that's not a judgment a thing.
It's not like the playersjudging other players.
It's just noticing.
It's this idea of recognizing what'shappening mechanically
in other players' play.
That can be used both for your own growthas a player, because the better that you

(01:36):
understand mechanics,in general, just pick up all mechanics as
an observer of the game, the better you'reable to see how others interact
with the sport mechanically.
But also you can use that in your gamebecause you start to identify areas of
where players are strongerand weaker in their mechanics.

(01:57):
And then you can use that in yourdevelopment of your strategies
when you're playing.So that's very powerful.
Another one is this ideaof reading the room.
That's the way I've been explainingit lately, reading the room.
But one of the players responded that thatwas helping them basically anticipate
better by being able to read the room.
It's part of the story.

(02:17):
It's just seeing what's happening on thecourt as it's happening on the court and
being aware of what is likely to happennext because you're seeing this arc of
the story generated as you're playing.
And then the last one was understandingwhat they're doing both correctly
and incorrectly.
If you don't recognize, if you don't haverecognition as part of your

(02:41):
knowledge base or part of your skillset,it's very difficult to improve.
Because if you don't recognize when you'redoing well and not well, and also
recognize the distinction, in other words,the distinction of what matters, because
sometimes we'll recognize,Okay, I missed a shot.
But is that really what happened?
Is that really the key to the whole thing?Or not?
If it's not, then you're going to bechasing the wrong,

(03:02):
going on the wrong path.
So recognition is so powerful.
And being able to recognize both what youdo correctly, I think you should give
yourself a recognition of,Okay, I did good there.
I did, even when you miss sometimes, I didthe best I could, or I did the right shot.
I just missed a little bit like this.
But also knowing what you're doing stuffincorrectly, whether it's mechanically

(03:22):
or strategically, is so powerful.
Not just in the pragmatic sense, becausethere's a pragmatic benefit to it in terms
of being able to adjust as you go on andimprove as you go on, but also in a
holistic sense, becausewhen you recognize those pieces of it,
you're more empowered to engagewith the sport more fully.

(03:46):
In other words, your relationship isdeeper with the sport because you have a
fuller understanding of what's happeningout there, not just the
little pieces of it.So that's really cool.
And so what's common about those storiesis that the players are starting to better
see and understand thestory that is pickleball.
And let me make a statement here, okay?

(04:06):
And I do not mean this tosound crass or critical.
It's not anything like that.
It's simply an observation made by myselfas a long-time student of the game and now
full-time professional coach,which is this: Most players have no idea
what's happening on the pickleball court.

(04:28):
Not in a real sense, not in a deep, realsense know what's happening
on the pickleball court.
And again, I'm notcriticizing anybody here.
I'm not trying to be a jerk about it.
But I think that that statement isimportant because
if you, in fact, want to go deeper withthe sport, we need to start from the
premise that maybe there's more tothe sport than we're seeing right now.

(04:51):
And in the regular episode, I'm going todive into this a little more in-depth.
But pickleball is a very complexsport, has a ton of to it.
It's okay that we don't necessarily seethem all or understand them all right now.
But I think it's helpful to know thatthere is a lot more out there for
us to learn if that's our choice.

(05:12):
We say this every time we talk about thistopic, there's no judgment on anybody.
If your choice is to play at a, let's say,on a scale of one to 10, you want to stop
at a three, and not level of play, butjust three out of 10 in terms of
knowledge, that's perfectly fine.
But what I, as a coach, hope is that youunderstand that there are more layers

(05:35):
to it if you should choose to go deeper.
Not you have to go deeper, just know thatthey're there and that
they're available to you.
You can go deeper in thegame if you so choose?
But it's a decision that youwould need to make for yourself.
So I came up with this analogy/metaphorethat I think will help explain the
difference between understanding what'sgoing on or simply engaging with the sport

(06:00):
in a more perhaps superficial manner.
Again, I'm not using these terms in anynegative connotation to them, just using
the terms as they'redefined in the dictionary.
I'm going to use the vehicle you driveto drive, Maybe there's a joke there.
I don't know.Drive the point home.
So think of your car.
Your car is made of numerous parts,but your car is more than

(06:23):
just the sum of these parts.
Your car is a storycomposed of the parts working together
to propel you to your next destination.
Now, imagine being a car mechanic who knewall the parts, but not
how they work together.
A car mechanic who did not understand thewhole story of the car, but

(06:44):
just about this pile of parts.
It's a way of thinkingabout the car differently.
One way of thinking about it is justlike, well, it's just a bunch of things.
It's an alternator and a transmission andan engine block and belts and things like
that, or axles and stuff, and that's it.
Or it's That car is an interrelationshipof all of these different pieces in a way

(07:04):
that allows the vehicle and then youinside of it to move to
different places in the universe.
If you're a mechanic that just understoodthe parts, You could be
not particularly effective.
You would know some basics, andmaybe you know these basics.
You know how to top offthe water in your radiator.
That's fine.
I have radios apart, andthe radiator needs water.

(07:26):
Or you might know, Okay,maybe my battery is going.
I need to a battery, maybeit's not something you can do.
But you don't really understand how thewhole car works together and would not, in
that situation, be able to diagnose anexample of misfiring or perhaps figuring
out why the car doesn't start beyond justa battery change, because there's
other reasons a car might not start.

(07:47):
And this would be because you're notunderstanding the full car story.
Now, fortunately for us, the mechanics inreal life do understand how a car works.
They understand how all the the pieceswork together and how they interrelate
with each other and how the whole of theseparts work together to carry
out the car's functions.
And that is what you can thinkof as the story of the car.

(08:10):
In other words, howthe car does its thing.
Now, you can think of apickleball the exact same way.
A pickle is not just a collection of shotsand strategies, just like with the car,
you had transmission and other pieces.
In a pickle, we have a third shot.
We have footwork, we have resets, we havetransition zone, we have return to serve,
we have punch volley, we have roll volley,we have all these different

(08:30):
pieces, and we have strategies.
But Picaball is not just those thingspiled them in a corner or neatly arranged
on a shelf, depending on yourlevel of organizational OCD.
Picaball is a story.
It's a collection of these shots andstrategies and their inner relationship
between them within the rules andconstruct of the game that we play.

(08:51):
That's the story of pickleball.
Now, if you don't see the whole story,then you're stuck knowing only about the
battery that fails or the water thatmight be needed to top off the radiator.
You're unable to differentiate thedance between fuel exploding in a cylinder
of a car, that energy getting down thepiston into the crankshaft and then into

(09:15):
the differential or CB jointsare called and into your wheels.
You do not appreciate the insane timing ofthe dance between the camshaft and the
crankshaft to make sure that the valves atthe top of your cylinders allow inflow and
outflow of gasses in tune withthe way the crankshaft is turning.
Not to mention all the other processesthat happen in your vehicle,

(09:38):
electric break systems, etc.
Now, whether that quick hit list of howa car works makes sense to you or not.
The point is thatwhen you press a button or put a key in
your car and it goes and you can move,it's more complex than that.
And so, like,pick a ball is the same thing.

(10:00):
You can engage with pickleball just like Iget into it, and I turn the key, and it
turns on, and I can drive, andeverything's fine, or maybe I know the
battery, and that's fine, or maybe I knowthe radiator, that's fine, too, right?
Or do you want to know more?
Because there's a lot more going into thehood of pickleball than
you may know right now.
There's a whole story of thoseinterrelated shots and strategies,

(10:22):
preparatory, execution movements,techniques, concepts that when you put
them all together, make up the storyquality of the sport that you play.
Now, here's the question that I think is areasonable question for
you to ask yourself.
It's, how much do you want to know aboutwhat's going on under
the hood of pickleball?
How much do you want to understandhow all these things work together?

(10:44):
If you're okay with the battery leveldepth of knowledge, no judgment.
Again, as I said earlier, that's fine.
But if that's the case, if you want tostop at the battery, then don't be upset
when you can't diagnose the weird soundthat your engine is making or why it
start even though you changed the battery.
In other words, setyour expectation level.

(11:07):
That makes sense,given the amount of knowledge that you're
gaining about the whole pickleball story.
Now, if you want to know more,you can, in fact, learn it.
And I alluded to this earlier.
There is a possibilitythat you can learn it.
It's not beyond you.
Just as with a car, you're not goingto learn everything in one moment.

(11:29):
You're not going to to get everything inone moment or watching a video
about a shot or a strategy.
That is not going to do it.
And even 50 tips being piled up in acorner or arranged on the shelf are not
going to tell you thestory of a pickleball.
If you want the story, it's going to taketime, effort, and proper instruction.
But basically, you need to understandhow everything's put together.
The framework is what we refer to it as.

(11:49):
Three Pillars of a Pickable is one exampleof how that framework is organized to
help you see how the pieces work together.
Now, our coaching team, myself and ourcoaching team, We do not pretend to have a
monopoly on providing proper instruction.We don't.
But even though there are others,what we can guarantee you is that our

(12:11):
instruction is guaranteedto be proper instruction.
I can guarantee that to you.
It'll get you from where you are now,whatever level you're at
now, battery level or deeper.
And it will show you the whole story thatis the sport that you love and play,
because that is what we do here.

(12:34):
That is our job.
Every day of every week of every year,this is where we spend our time, is
putting together the story in a way thatwe can relate it to you so that you can
then learn the story and know it yourself.
Now, if you haven't had the chance to seehow we coach, then join us for our
upcoming clinic, theone I mentioned earlier.
We're going to be dispelling three myths,giving you three realities, and talking

(12:56):
about those three pillars of pickleballthat I mentioned earlier, that started to
give more structure in termsof making sense of the story.
And if you have coaches before,join us for it as well, right?
Because you're going to learnmore and go deeper in the game.
Even if you know some of these concepts,you won't know them all, and you
won't know how they interrelate.
We're always working on our game ascoaches, and we are always working not

(13:16):
only on our delivery and how we explainthings, but also on the concepts that we
explain, including in this clinic, we'regoing to be going deep on the third shot
drop and why it's not necessarily going tobe what you need right now, which is
probably a different thingthan you're out for yourself.
And the clinic is free andonline, so there's no cost.
You can join from anywhere.
There's really no reason not to come,except for a decision by you that you

(13:40):
choose not to come, whichis entirely your choice.
If you're not part of our emaillist, go to betterpickaball.
Com, join our email list.
You'll get notified of the clinic and getan invite for the upcoming
clinic, which starts on the 20th.
Whatever you decide to do,understand that there's a lot more going
on under the hood, just like you probablyunderstand about your car, that there's a

(14:00):
lot of pieces down there that you may notunderstand exactly how
they all work together.
And maybe cars aren't yourthing, and I get that, right?
But I know Pica ball is, ifyou listen to this podcast.
And if Pica ball is your thing, you canlearn what's going on under
the hood if you so choose.
Whether you choose to do that with us ordo that on your own or do it with
somebody else, that's entirely up to you.

(14:21):
But if you are passionate about the sportand you want to go deeper, know that you
can and know that you can eventually knowmore about the whole story of Pickleball,
and when you do,you're going to feel a lot stronger
about how you feel about the sport.
I hope you enjoyed this special episode ofPickleball Therapy, and it helped give you
some more framing in terms of engagingwith this awesome sport of pickleball.

(14:44):
I'll see you at the regular episode thisFriday, and I hope to see some, if not all
of you, at our upcoming clinicstarting this Saturday, September 20th.
Be well, and I'll see you then.