Ep. 304 - Tap Your Flow

Ep. 304 - Tap Your Flow

PICKLEBALL THERAPY  ·  SHOW NOTES Episode 304 – Tap Your Flow  What this episode is about Flow is not something you go out and acquire. It is already in you. This week I make the case for that, and then I show you what the work for finding your flow actually is. Do you already have flow? Yes. Picture yourself waiting to return serve. The serve gets hit. What happens next is remarkable, and you do it without thinking about it: •     Your brain tracks a ball spinning through space •     It calculates where that ball will be at a moment in the future •     It moves your body to that place in space •     You hit the ball You were doing that before your first lesson. Before your first pickleball YouTube video. Nobody taught you. That is your supercomputer running software that came pre-installed. So what is the work? Removing interference. Taking away the noise. Clearing out the distractions and obstacles so that you can stop trying to think your way through the rally and start feeling the rally instead. Playing by feel more than by thought. One example of interference: trying to read paddle angles Players ask about this a lot. How can I learn to read my opponent’s paddle at contact so that I know where the ball is going? It’s a fair question. To be sure, some coaches teach it. But think about what you are actually asking yourself to do. You are moving. You are tracking the rally. And now you want to also read a paddle face at the moment of contact. There is a better way. When the ball travels to one side of the court, you start to sense where it is likely to go next. Will you get surprised? Sure. Once, maybe twice. Then your brain adjusts. That is flow doing the work instead of your conscious mind. Watch the pros. It looks like they are gliding. They always seem to be where they need to be. They are sensing the rally. Pickleball is music There is a rhythm to a rally. Learn to hear it and move with it, and you are in flow. That idea sits at the center of what we are doing in the Flow Project. The Flow Project Five weeks. Five bite-sized chunks. Focused on your mechanics. Here is why it works: you have probably already tried the frontal approach to learning pickleball. You want a better third shot drop, so you watch 87 videos and take 32 clinics on the third shot drop. Fine. Let’s come at it from a different angle. That’s what the flow project is all about. No cost. To participate: •     Go to tonyroigpickleball.com [http://tonyroigpickleball.com/] and get on the email list. The written lessons come by email, so that is the only way to receive them. •     Add tony@kjbm.tonyroigpickleball.com as a contact so the emails do not land in spam. •     Join the community at tonyroigpickleball.com [http://tonyroigpickleball.com/] for the video lessons and follow-alongs. In the riff: what Tony Roig Pickleball is about It is about you. A pickleball player who wants to grow in the sport. Period. On the question of whether the pro work I’ve been doing lately means a pivot away from amateur coaching: no. Commentating Major League Pickleball and the PPA, and coaching pro players, increases my knowledge of the game and keeps me current. I bring that back here. Not a pivot. Doubling down. Free at tonyroigpickleball.com [http://tonyroigpickleball.com/] •     Four mini courses •     The TRP Community •     The Flow Project (five weeks)

Ep. 303 - Your Next 10 Years

Interested in a pickleball camp? Visit https://www.tonyroigpickleball.com/camps Check out our new website, join our Community, and get free pickleball coaching and more at https://www.tonyroigpickleball.com/ Take a minute this week to think about your next 10 years. Not tomorrow. Not next week. Ten years out. In this episode, Tony walks through a simple exercise. Where are you now, and where do you want to be a decade from now as a pickleball player? It's a kind of audit. A way to check in on your journey and remind yourself that the path forward is still open. Here's the thing: if you want to keep learning, you will. And as long as you keep learning, you'll know more about this game every year than you did the year before. Learning and growing are not the same. Learning is acquiring the knowledge. Growing is putting it into practice. Do both over 10 years, and you will be a different player by the end. That's not a promise about becoming a pro. It's a fact about the direction of travel. Tony also shares where he's headed. Why coaching the amateur player is still his focus. Why the pro commentating and the pro coaching feed that work rather than pull him away from it. And why finances should never be the thing that keeps a player from getting good coaching. Pickleball is a canvas. The game is worth working on. But the bigger thing it's really working on is you. New free courses are live at tonyroigpickleball.com. Next week: the flow state.

Special Episode - The Next Phase: What's Tony Roig Pickleball?

A special episode. This one's a little different. I'm sharing something I've been building: Tony Roig Pickleball, the next phase of my coaching journey. In this episode, I walk you through what it is, where it came from, and what it means for you as a player. If you're a player who wants to genuinely know this sport, this is for you. Mini courses, coaching playbooks, camps, one-on-one coaching, a newsletter. All of it pointed at one thing: helping you grow. One more thing worth saying. Finances should never be an impediment to your growth as a player. If cost is standing in your way, reach out. We'll do what we can to make it work. The Pickleball Therapy podcast continues, same as always, now under the TRP umbrella. Nothing changes for you here. Come find us at tonyroigpickleball.com. Free mini courses are loaded up and waiting. Be well, Tony

The Best from our Archives Part 8 - Stop Chasing Winners and 2023 Open Notes

Thanks for joining us on Pickleball Therapy - the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. If you have not yet subscribed to the podcast ... wait what?? you haven't subscribed? ... you know what to do. If you can STOP chasing winners, you will win more. What??? Yes. When you chase winners, you make more mistakes. When you make more mistakes, you lose more points. Simple as that. Stick with the program: make less errors - and you will win more rallies (and games). One powerful way to do this is by going for less winners. Stop playing high risk pickleball and you will play better. If you like the podcast, please give it a rating. And share it with your friends. If you like it, they probably will too. Stay well, Tony

Ep. 301 - Play Copernican Pickleball

This week, Tony reads from Pickleball Therapy: The Book — specifically the opening of Part Four, "Our Place with Pickleball." The framing comes from Copernicus. For a long time, humans believed the Earth sat at the center of the universe. It made sense at the time. Then Copernicus came along and changed the picture. We do the same thing on the pickleball court. We put ourselves at the center of everything that happens out there. The miss? Must be my fault. The lost rally? I should have done something differently. Tony walks through a scenario most players will recognize: a short return of serve, an opponent who moves in and drives hard, a ball that ends up in the net. The instinct is to blame ourselves. But if you rewind the rally, the cause is usually somewhere else.