178. BnB Loco 2, UPA-A Boulder Opal, & Enhance Turbo Armor Grit Update

All right, what's up guys?

We are back with another podcast episode.

I think this one is going to be a fun one this week.

There's a handful of paddles that people really wanted information on.

There's also just a crazy amount of, like I was checking throughout the industry.

The amount of paddles that are on the pre-order right now is actually mind blowing.

But anyways, we'll get to all that.

In the kitchen, we'll have some Q&A.

We're also going to talk about tournament experiences, which leads perfect into my question

of the week since we talked about indoor facilities recently.

I just want to know what makes a tournament enjoyable for you?

Or maybe even better yet, what makes one not enjoyable?

Maybe answer both of those.

Because I think it's probably a little different for everyone, but there's probably some universal

things that everyone kind of wants or expects from a tournament to make it a good experience.

You and I have played a lot, so I feel I could be kind of fun just to talk about that a

little bit.

For sure.

Okay.

I'm going to talk about some upcoming paddles because I feel like every year, it's always

around this time of year where everyone, which makes sense, you know, Black Friday holidays,

you want to gift paddles, whatever makes perfect sense for companies to release paddles, but

holy moly, there's so many.

So 6.0 has the Coral Pro USAP version.

I don't know exactly when that's coming, but I saw that got approved.

The Proton Series 1, V2, I believe was approved on USAP and UPA, the whole Brook fused with

Vantigrits.

We don't have that one yet, but I believe that's coming up soon.

And then this one is technically officially out now, but the radius pro five, which for

those of you who haven't been in pickleball for very long, you'll actually launched with

this shape.

And it just looks kind of like a ping pong paddle.

It's extremely round, very short handle.

It is not a paddle that I would probably recommend to most people, but for the niche demographic

of people out there who want a short handle and something really fast in the hand, that

I don't have one, but I guarantee you that as Yola's fastest paddle in the hand by a

long shot.

I wouldn't be surprised if the swing weight is under 100 on that thing.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it made him up under 105.

We've hit one.

Yeah.

We hit one at the pro five event earlier this year.

And it's just kind of fun because the sweet spots big on it and it's just really fast in

the hand.

So for any of you who want a short handle, because there's not many of them out there and

like a wide body, or you just have like a table tennis grip, that paddle is probably

about as good as it's going to get.

Pretty goofy looking, but yeah, very niche crowd for sure.

Yeah.

So those were some and then as far as the pre sales, and I might even be missing some

here, but here we're a handful gear box with the pressure X the loco, the Jade, the

Volaire command and then that a pro.

I think they're kind of redoing their thing.

I don't know if exactly on pre order, but like just feels like there's been a lot of

paddles way more than I've seen in a long time that are up for like a pre order.

Or there's like batches like I think Honolulu still doing batches of the J6 year, which

is crazy because it's been out forever.

I don't know how it could still be sold out.

I think the mark unmarked is has to do batches.

They're smaller, so that makes sense.

But yeah, just like every company seems to be on pre order right now, which praises I

get why they have to do them, but they kind of suck.

It's just like, okay, what's going to be out by the time I actually get this thing?

You know, I mean, in this industry, things move so fast.

Yeah.

So you just never know.

But okay, let's talk about one of the first things that everyone is going to be excited

to hear about.

The Loco too.

Yeah, good luck with that hybrid.

It is not.

Hey, it's standing.

It was giving me problems earlier.

So if you're watching the podcast, you'll notice, you'll notice something.

There's only two shapes on the table and a long gated and a hybrid.

I already talked about this, but we're going to flame them again.

We're going to bully them until there is a wide body on this table.

It has pretty much been confirmed at this point that there's not really any plan for

a wide body Loco, which is insane to me, but that's where we are.

So if you just want to like shoot their customer support and email and say, Hey, where's my

wide body?

Chris Olson sent me.

Be free to let them know that we want the freaking wide body.

Look, as much as I typically do not endorse the purchase or use of a wide body, it is

a little, I get why they are doing it.

I understand, but at the same time, there is an audience that do like standard shape

or wide bodies.

So yes, you got to get used to a hybrid or a long gated.

I mean, look, I like hybrid.

So I can get over it, but it's just like, man, the wide body last year was so good for

the Loco.

So I'm just really surprised that they at a minimum didn't do like a small number of them.

Yeah.

I know that I have to get a dual certified and that calls a lot of money.

Having more skews.

Yeah, shoot them in email.

Let them know.

Yeah, wide body.

Think of it this way.

Think of it this way.

You like the wide body Loco so much.

You used it for the chasing 5.0 series.

Yep.

You didn't hit 5.0.

Imagine if you used it a long gated Loco for the last event.

That must have been it.

You probably would have hit 5.0.

You know, maybe I'll try it again this year or next year, I guess, rather, and we'll

see if it works.

I think it will.

Okay.

So let's talk about the paddle.

First thing we actually have a funny story about this.

Oh my gosh.

I am going, me and I are about to leave to go to a facility to do some testing.

And as I'm leaving, I see the FedEx truck and I'm like, oh, I know the Loco's on that

truck.

So I turn right back around and I'm like, yes, we got the paddle.

And I'm feeling the bag and I'm going, there's only one paddle in this.

I was like, why is it only one?

So I open it.

It's only a hybrid in this thing.

I was like, where's the elongated?

The hybrid's not even approved yet.

I was like, why do we have this?

And then you didn't have the package at your house.

Yeah.

I looked before I left.

Wasn't there.

I just had it off to the facility.

And then as soon as we get there, we found out that it was at your place.

They just shipped you the elongated because you usually use it.

I usually use the other shapes.

But it was shipped to my old apartment address, not my new one, which thankfully he can

walk to that.

They're very close.

They're right next to the same street.

They're very close to each other.

And the numbers are similar.

So I can understand, like packages get misdelivered all the time.

Yeah.

Unfortunately, the person shipping the package just didn't know which was my current

address and shipped it to the old one.

And so because of that, I called my wife because I live close to Isaac.

It's all very close.

She just happened to have the day off.

And I was like, hey, can you run over to this building and grab this package?

We need to get some testing done on this thing.

She's like, yeah, no problem.

So she goes and the package just isn't there.

But from the time it was delivered to the time, my wife got there's probably 20 minutes.

If that.

If that.

15 to 20 minutes.

Package gone.

And there was a picture of the delivery.

We can see exactly where it was placed just completely gone.

And now the apartment is used to live in.

Not the world's greatest apartment.

There's definitely some porch pirates and sketchy things are happening at that place.

Isaac had a tail lights mashed one time.

Yeah, it wasn't the world's greatest apartment.

So the package was just gone.

And so we let bread and butter know.

And then they must have done some coordinating.

Pick about blast is another reviewer in our area.

And they hit us up and they're like, hey, he has the elongated.

He's probably not going to use it.

You guys can go grab it from him.

So we coordinated basically all that to say big shout out to Bobby from Pickleball blast.

Getting us this elongated.

We really appreciate it because it would have actually delayed things probably quite a bit

because the hybrid not being approved yet.

Like I think there's some anticipation that it won't be that long.

Like who knows maybe in a week, this is like a non-matter.

But it wouldn't really have made sense for us to put a lot of time into a paddle if it

ends up like failing and then, you know, whatever.

So, you know, really appreciate Bobby because now we have the elongated.

Yeah, it was just kind of a wild.

So it's like the package was just delivered.

How has someone already taken it?

I know.

And then I went over there after we were done hitting, tried to ring their door, nothing.

I left a note on the door with my phone number.

Never got a call.

Not surprised.

So someone out there in our area.

I was also, I was joking with a friend.

I was like, I'm a bechecking Facebook marketplace.

That big, yeah, you should give it on there.

Cause yeah, somebody out there's probably one of the first people to get a loco too.

And then porch pyro was like, oh, loco too.

A big fan heard that was paddle of the year.

Or they look at it and go, hmm, something expensive.

And they're like, what is this?

Yeah.

I thought I could ping a big ping pong paddle.

Yeah.

So anyways, we don't unfortunately, I would love to give you play thoughts.

But because this came yesterday and we were already testing other paddles, the only thing

we have done was get the grit and the spin numbers on the hybrid because we got the elongated

like after our work day.

The spin on the hybrid was very good.

It was I think 24, 45 RPM.

So that's a good upgrade from last year's loco.

And I think you and I said it last week.

In my opinion, all the loco needed, all it needed was better grit, long lasting grit

that spins well.

Yep.

Which we don't know if it lasts yet.

But if it does theoretically, if it does last longer, why change the wheel?

It does not need anything else.

I know there are some people saying like, oh, it doesn't have any new tech and it's old

stuff.

Like why it need, you know, why only just new grit?

If something works so well, why change?

If you have a three-star Michelin restaurant, change the interior and the design of it, don't

change the recipe.

Don't change the menu.

Why would you do that?

That's what got you there.

I think the only thing that I'm thinking about from last year that there's maybe two things

that if I was to add in like two cents on what could be better.

Is not even really changing the paddle.

Maybe one of them is.

One, the elongated loco, a little bit on the heavier side for specs.

I think this one came in at 120.

Okay.

So that elongated was what was the hybrid?

Do you remember?

On 12?

Okay.

So the honestly, the hybrid's fine.

And the elongated, that's a little bit lower than last year's.

I feel like they were kind of 122, 123.

But a lot of elongateds, I feel like are kind of hovering that like 116, 117 these

days.

So that could have been nice.

And anytime you do something like that, something else comes out of it.

Like it was a trade off.

It might have played worse.

So if it already played well, it's like we can give it the grit, boom we're good.

So I don't know.

My opinions that didn't need more.

And you know what?

Make different versions.

You want like an MPP loco or something?

Like go for it.

But just do this one how it was.

And the other thing I was going to say is maybe, well first of all, giving my dang wide

body, I was going to say the only thing is like maybe you could make like a flat

top hybrid since you know, everyone seems to be really enjoying this year.

But let's get the wide body before we do a flat top hybrid.

If I get a flat top hybrid of the loco before I see a wide body, I will have pitch forks.

I will be in my B costume with pitch forks in the street.

I will have signs everywhere.

Doug's going to have a B smoker at his door waiting for you.

Oh my gosh.

So the grit is interesting.

I know some people were saying that they were thinking it was going to be like the, like

Honolulu's crystal blue grit.

I would say it's not the same.

Definitely feels different than Honolulu's.

Can you grab that?

Yeah.

Honolulu off the wall there.

Let's see it.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

I don't know.

In my opinion, this feels different.

I don't think it's.

I feel like they feel kind of similar.

Sure.

Yeah.

Yeah, just texturwise.

I feel like in like friction, they feel kind of similar.

But well, I guess we'll have to see if it holds up.

I mean, let's just say it is and I'm wrong.

Yep.

Then great.

Because so far the crystal blue grit's been holding up.

So yeah, that's when I haven't really gotten to do extensive testing on yet since coming

back.

So if this is the same, well, it's like, oh, cool.

Well, now I have an idea of how the Honolulu holds up.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's what we have on the loco so far.

Really looking forward to hitting this.

I feel like it's, you know, I probably has potential to be really good again this year.

Because just durable grit.

But yeah, we'll see.

Durable grit, as we know, has had a lot of issues and we'll get to some troubles here

later.

If it holds up, potentially that is what I'll be using in the worlds.

Okay.

So we're not going to talk a lot about this battle.

I was actually planning on having us talk quite a bit about this battle this week.

That is the neonic FLX or flex line.

So they also added a durable grit to this.

Spin numbers were looking great on it on both our hybrid and wide body.

They were actually pretty much exactly identical.

They were with like 10 RPM apart.

So I was like, that's great consistency.

And their grit numbers with the stare.

We're also very consistent.

So that's awesome to see.

But the reason we're not going to talk about it other than that, I think it will be an

interesting $100 battle when it releases is that we got the paddles and then I got an

email that was like, Hey, there's like some small stuff with the handle that needs fixing.

So we're going to fix that and then send everyone new units.

And I was like, Okay, well, even if it's, let's just say it's small, you know, right?

Like I'm sure it is small, whatever they're about to do to it.

I'm like, well, we've seen that change of paddle quite a bit before, like the black

opal.

And I was like, I'm not going to put time on a paddle that is potentially going to change.

You know, so I did want to talk about this though because durable grit, $100 battle,

awesome.

And then the FLX line is stupid light.

The elongated one away insanely light hybrid 109 crazy that the hybrids somehow heavier,

but whatever ridiculously light probably the light is elongated.

We've ever tested.

I can't talk three.

Yeah, I can't think of anything else.

I only think would be like the quanta last year.

Those were really light to what was the elongated and that though it was somewhere between like

109 and 111.

It was really light.

So yeah, when we have the final units, we will talk about this more because, you know,

everyone is waiting for that $100 durable grit, great option though I think it kind of

already exists and maybe I'll talk a little bit more about that later in this episode.

But I'm looking forward to trying this paddle because even just from the brief hits I did

do last week, it felt solid.

Obviously that was only like, you know, 20 minutes of hitting, but I think, I think this

one's got some potential.

So okay, next paddle only you can talk about because you hit it yesterday while I was

putting some more time on the Spitfire.

Yeah, you were having a great time while we were testing this paddle yesterday.

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

Go ahead.

I'll tell him.

First of all, we're talking about the 60 Boulder Opal, the UPA a rough version.

Yep.

What are they?

Is it have the name?

Is it the shark skin grit?

Yeah.

So this might just be the greatest paddle ever created apparently because I think

during our testing, I hit about half a million net cords and was absolutely destroying you.

I have never, ever.

I mean, I've drilled with Isaac so much and there's even a video last year with him using

a pick up all a paddle where he hit the net cord so many times you can find the real

somewhere on my channel.

He hit like double the amount yesterday and I swear I was about to throw my paddle.

I could not believe how many net cords you were able to hit.

It was like not just one net cord every few points.

It was like two, three net cords in a point every point.

Yeah.

Like every other point, it was insane.

I drive hands, dinks, doesn't matter what shot I was hitting.

I was so close to just taking the ball and smoking it at you.

Like just taking it, throwing it out of my hand and just hitting it because I was like,

this is insane.

I cannot believe.

Yeah, it was pretty crazy.

But to get to the actual paddle, still 14 millimeters.

The handle is still classic, 60, pretty chunky, which I'm not a huge fan of, but I can,

I don't know, I can get over it.

The shape of it is good.

So I like that.

But very, very poppy, very powerful, similar to the black opal, but I would actually say a

little bit easier to control.

Yeah, I would agree.

I would agree.

And like slightly softer.

I didn't have a original black opal to hit it next to, but from what I remember, this

feels slightly softer.

And this one, I'd really have to have one next mate to hit them side by side.

I'd almost say slightly less neck flex.

No, I would definitely say it.

So that was a huge upgrade.

In my opinion, I'm not a person who likes neck flex.

So this having less, much better.

Also the spin is definitely an upgrade from the smoother bolt of opal.

So the smoother one, I was getting around like 2000 average RPM.

And then on the new rough boulder opal, it was like 2300.

Yeah.

No, spin was, spin was great.

Head drops, you were really good.

Drops are crazy.

It's probably some of the best drops I have seen you hit.

Yeah, it was drops were nuts.

I was having a good time with drops.

Yeah.

Sweet spot is not the best.

Yeah.

Definitely suffers still kind of like the original opal.

It's almost Yola FX, like, but honestly a little better than the Yola FX.

Okay.

No, that was stock with no weight.

Do you have the specs of what it was stock?

I actually, I'll check while you talk about it.

I thought about your weight set up in Algo Laugh.

Yeah, I thought maybe we got the specs on at the other day.

One 13 swing weight, six twist weight.

Okay.

So like typical hybrid, played with the stock for a little while.

I had no issues.

Wasn't loving drives with its stock.

Like it was okay, but it wasn't a huge fan.

It wasn't, you know, impressing me or anything.

Then we got these five gram strips, really long five gram strips of tungsten weight from

Bodie Pickleball.

These are kind of cool.

Just slapped it, goes up cross pretty much the entire side of the paddle and spreads

out the weight a little bit.

And then it felt even softer and power went up.

It felt really good in hands.

Still, we didn't get swing weight on this now with this set up, but still feels very

light.

Drives felt much improved.

Still hitting that cord, so that was great.

But yeah, the sweet side was slightly improved, but still not like a loco, not like a

vessel or a spitfire.

Yeah, not a bit of a better one.

Yeah, definitely still going to have a slightly smaller sweet spot.

But if you're someone who likes to feel off center shots, then I'm sure you'll love this.

And again, we talked about this when we covered the original bolt, yeah, the original

smoother boulder opal.

But to me, unless you really like a paddle with neck flex, to me, the boulder opal is

just a better black oval.

Yeah.

Maybe it hits a little less hard, but you gain a little bit of sweet spot.

I feel like you gain also better control just because the face feels a little bit more

consistent or more predictable.

Yeah, I just, I'm still just bummed that it's a 14.

Yeah, but I think the reason they did that is they were saying the foam core that they're

using for this because it's not EPP or MPPA would apparently just be too heavy.

Two heavy.

Well, that's what Dale was telling me when the original opal, I was like, so why didn't

you make a 16?

And he said if they did, it would just be too heavy.

So, but I'm curious what is too heavy?

Yeah, right.

Like, okay, if it's a hybrid that goes up to like 122, then, okay, yeah, probably people

aren't going to want to buy that.

But if it was a hybrid that went to like 116, definitely on the heavier side.

I guess think about it though, this is a 14 at 113, that logo is a 16 at like what would

we say 112.

So maybe as a 16, that's, you know, decent bit more material for the whole core.

For sure, I mean, it would definitely go up, but I'm just curious.

So that I'm, because typically I'm not a huge fan of 14 millimeter paddles.

So this would not be my first choice.

But if you are someone who likes 14 millimeter paddles and you didn't really like the black

opal, then this one might fit what you like.

I think I actually think this is in my opinion for me a big upgrade from the black opal.

And now you have the, and again, it's the rough one is UPA only.

I don't know if they plan to also do a dual approved like there seem to be working

on with the coral pro.

But yeah, and then obviously don't really have any thoughts on how durable the shark skin

grit is right now, because we haven't gotten anywhere near far enough to know that.

But big fan of the white design design looks good.

The heat map pattern on the face is cool.

I think six zeros always had pretty well designed paddles.

So yeah, I saw that they had released a gold double black diamond to celebrate four

years as a company.

And I was like, I'm really tempted to buy that.

I was like the double black diamond half for that time period.

It was such a good.

That was your original.

I feel like I just wanted as like a shelf piece.

Center piece.

Yeah, I think that would be pretty, pretty sick.

Okay, let's talk about some accessories before we get to some more grit conversation.

I guess first thing we'll talk about is these bodie pods because we just mentioned them.

Yeah.

So I saw they posted these on Instagram.

I was also due for getting us more weight anyways.

Yep.

And so I just thought this was really interesting because a couple things.

One lately, I have been, I would say even for the last year, I've been a much bigger fan

of at least one gram per inch weighted tape or even just using the much more concentrated

weight on the slice sliders.

Half gram to me, I feel like even when I use quite a bit of it, since I'm stretching

it out over such a far area, it feels like it makes less of an impact to the paddle

than what I want to feel.

Like I think really what I'm wanting is a certain zone of the paddle to get a lot better

and so concentrating the weight achieves that versus kind of spreading it out and maybe

making most areas just a little bit better.

And so when I saw bodie had these weighted strips, I was like, well, first of all, it's

nice.

I don't have to cut anything.

That's great.

I do it's one gram five inches.

I was like, it's, these strips are almost like the exact length I've been using on a lot

of paddles lately.

I think this might actually let me hold it up.

I wish, like, I, it's funny how we've like flipped.

You used to not be a fan of more concentrated weight and used longer strips.

I always use like the three gram pods.

Yeah.

And was more concentrated.

Now we flipped.

I, you like spreading it out.

I spread it out more like I use one gram.

I like heavy paddles.

So I use one gram, print tape, but usually it's like five to eight inch strip depending

on the paddle.

So I almost wish they had longer versions of these strips that spread it out more.

Which I get most people probably aren't using that much weight.

Yeah.

So yeah, fine.

So yeah, I mean, I, we tried them on the bulldozer.

Ople, I plan to use these a lot more.

I don't have a discount code with how much you're probably trying to get that set up.

But I like this so far and they do, they have it in a bunch of weights.

So I think the other one we bought were three gram strips, which are longer than the typical

three gram pods.

So if you did want to spread it out a little bit more, you could do that.

But they have, I think it's five, three, two and a half, one and a half and one.

I might be a little off on some of those numbers, but they have like a lot of different

pods now.

So depending on how like nitpicky you wanted to get.

I, I am a big fan of these.

I like how simple it is.

They're very clean.

You don't have, it's one tiny logo.

Yep.

One logo in the center.

You don't have to cut anything.

The edges are uniform.

It makes it just so much, especially for us because novices is a very unique situation.

We're constantly waiting up tons and tons of paddles.

This just speeds things up a ton when we're out at the court trying to do different weight

setups.

Because I rip off a strip on the back and slap it on versus having to measure and cut

and make sure things are even because kind of OCD.

But yeah, this, this is great.

Yeah.

I'm a big fan of this product.

Yep.

I agree.

Definitely a fan of it.

Would highly recommend right now, buy it and you know, whichever weight, weight setup

you prefer.

And then next thing I want to talk about quick, let me just make sure, yes, it is this

ball.

So we're only going to talk about this a little bit here because we tried it yesterday

and we want to try it in some actual games before we give you guys like some in depth

thoughts on it.

But this Selkirk Q1 quiet ball is supposed to be 30% quieter than a regular ball.

And we actually bought this ourselves.

I didn't know this was out until it got mentioned to me like a couple days ago and I was

like, oh, like I have said for a long time, why are we trying to fix the paddles when

you could just fix the ball?

Now there's a lot of different trade offs with that, right?

There are some paddles like a boom stick which are just extremely loud and then you have

other paddles.

Let's take a Friday or a pro which I would say are quite a bit quiet or not a quiet

paddle.

But something like an owl never made sense to me because I'm like, you really want everyone

to buy another $200 paddle that plays quite different from everything else to solve the

quiet problem instead of fixing the ball that everyone can buy for a couple bucks.

So I was curious if this ball would play decent enough and actually be quieter because

I feel like some balls like this in the past, like some of the 3D printed balls we tried,

they're like silent.

They don't play very well.

No, those things suck.

Yeah.

So it's like a gamma hat like a foam ball which that doesn't even feel like pickleball.

I don't even think that was meant to be played with.

That was more like a wall thing.

Now this ball does have 40 holes on it but the holes are like very large.

I think this is right.

And or ball size, size hole.

Yeah.

And it'll definitely like if you press into it, it for sure compresses more than a regular

ball.

Yeah, it's a much, much softer material than like a Franklin or a lifetime.

It compresses a lot.

But now listen to this sound difference between them.

Hopefully this comes through on the microphone.

So we'll start with a spitfire and a regular ball.

It's a little bit more embarrassing my ear.

Okay, now here's the silker quiable.

I mean, to me that is like, that to my sound perception sounds like more than 30%.

It's a much less, it's a much lower pitch.

It's not as high pitch in piercing and it sounds like as if you're bouncing a rubber

bouncy ball in the paddle.

That's kind of the sound it makes.

Yesterday, we hit it very briefly.

I would say for maybe like three minutes, but then we went back to our regular paddle

testing.

To me, it's definitely different than a Franklin.

Like if your expectations, oh, it's going to play exactly like a regular pickle ball,

no, I don't think that's correct.

But I feel like if you were in an area where you had to be quieter or let's say the courts

are going to go away or you're just not allowed to play unless you have something quieter,

I feel like I would rather play with this than go by like an owl.

Yeah.

To me, it was close enough to regular pickle ball in the brief hitting that we did that

I was like, okay, that's the route I'd rather take.

I think the biggest feel thing on this ball is, I mean, pickle ball is already very low

impact.

Like when you're hitting the ball, you don't really feel it at the time, but because lifetime

ball and others are pretty rigid, I mean, you still feel a crisp shot.

But with this, it compresses so much and is so soft that sometimes just feels like

you're hitting air.

Yeah, it's, yeah, it feels like yeah.

You drive the ball, I mean, I just block, it's like, did I hit a ball?

Yeah.

It's just very soft, for sure.

So at some point, we're going to try and get some games on this thing and actually do

a little bit more testing.

Maybe our opinion changes with some deeper testing.

But if you are someone that needs a quiet ball, this might be something to consider.

I think let me go pull up the website.

I think we paid like 13 bucks for a three pack.

Yeah, 12 bucks for a three pack.

So it seems reasonable enough to me and seems like it does the job.

Like we need to test the entire house.

I'm never going to crack.

Yeah, definitely doesn't seem like a ball that'll crack.

Definitely doesn't seem like that.

What I'm curious is because it's so soft, how is it going to play when weather now is

starting to get colder?

When it's like 40 degrees and a lifetime ball is rock, it's like you don't really want

to play.

I'm curious how that will play.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

Okay.

Let's move on to two other things.

Let's move over just the bags we've been using recently.

Just because one, you're a big duffel bag lover.

So you've been double down the sell Kirk, duffel bag.

And then because we were going to talk about that, I figured I'd talk about my bag.

So I as you can just start, let's hear your elevator pitch for the duffel bag because

I am not team duffel for a pickleball bag.

Team duffel is the way to go.

I should have, it's in my car.

I should have brought it down.

It's still great.

Serious of that bag are holding up really well.

I'm still a huge fan of using a duffel bag.

Honestly, some of my favorite features are the accessory pockets, especially the one

with the magnet just making it so easy to put sunglasses, keys, wallet phone, and just

throw it in my bag without putting it into a large pocket and it falling into the

darker bits and not being able to find my stuff when I need it.

The only downsides I will get into quickly with that is the magnetic flap.

I think I mentioned this the first time.

Only has a magnet in the center, not the edges.

So when the bag doesn't have a lot of stuff in it and it bends around, the sides of the

flap kind of bend a lot and bend up.

And then it just open a little bit basically.

It's not that it's open.

Even when it closes, like the magnet is latched, the edges are just bent upwards.

Because if you bend a piece of paper and it's stuck there, it's bent up.

I wouldn't say it's damaged.

I could probably bend them back.

Just kind of annoying.

But if I want to fix that closed zipper or latch down, I'm sure we'll go back to normal.

Still a huge fan.

The magnet design on the main pocket is great.

I rarely ever have it zipped up.

Like almost never.

I just latch it with the magnets and go.

And then tons of space I can carry.

I mean, this is why I like duffels.

The main compartment opens so wide.

It's easy to take things in and out and pack.

And you can just fit so much stuff in a duffel bag.

I went on a golf trip and I packed all my stuff.

Shoes, clothes, toilet trees, everything in that duffel bag.

phenomenal.

It was great.

And just carrying one around with the sling is nice and easy.

And like a lot of times when we travel, I have a camera backpack.

Okay, well, I'm not going to carry a camera backpack and a pickable backpack at the same time.

So I can throw my camera bag on and then just throw my duffel bag over my shoulder.

I got my pickable stuff, my clothes, my cameras.

It just makes life so much easier carrying a lot of stuff around.

Yeah, that's why I'm big on the duffel bag.

And they're just so light.

They're so light.

Because it's not a ton of material.

Yeah.

That's a big reason why I like them.

I don't think you're ever going to catch me with the duffel.

I'm trying.

I gave you my sales pitch and I don't think it's going to work.

I do think there are things about duffel bags that are appealing.

But for some reason, when it comes to bringing it to a pickable court, and the funny thing

is the two bags I'm going to talk about, because I feel like I used to.

The forward ranger V2 is kind of my, I'm going to play pickable bag.

Like I'm not doing a lot of work stuff or even my tournament bag.

I love the little front paddle sleeve.

Well, let's say I actually do like that bag a lot.

If I'm going with a backpack and I don't need to carry a ton of paddles like a duffel,

that's probably my favorite backpack, the ranger V2.

And real quick, before we move on, I do just want to say one big thing.

And this is more of a personal thing.

I'm sure there are people out there who will use it.

The shoe pocket, not for me.

I don't ever use it in the duffel bag.

I don't put my shoes in there.

I just, I found it kind of annoying to get my shoes in and out of that pocket.

It's just a little tight.

And I, everyone who listens and knows me, knows that I just like to carry my shoes

separate in another separate container.

So that's probably the biggest for me downside.

Because if it was up to me, I would just remove it.

Sure.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

But yeah, that forward ranger V2 bag.

I mean, I think I've been using it for like a year now.

Still going really strong.

Not the V2 specifically.

I had the V1 last year.

Now I'm using the V2.

I think all that was really changed on the V2 was an extra water bottle pocket and then

like a laptop compartment.

It's been great.

I mean, the quick access is very nice.

I love that for my keys phone wallet.

The paddle sleeve on the front for tournaments is very nice just to get my paddle in and out

quick.

Yeah, I really have no complaints with that bag.

It's just nice.

I guess the only complaint but this kind of applies to almost every backpack unless you

do a clamshell and I really don't like clamshells is stuff at the bottom.

It's just like if you have a lot of stuff stacked on top, it's like you're really reaching

to get to the bottom.

But that's kind of a problem with most backpacks in general.

Pretty easy when you have a duffel.

Yeah, you and your duffel.

And then the second bag I want to talk about because this has kind of been the work bag

when I need to go do a lot of spin testing because it will hold all the balls that I'm

using for spin testing.

It holds my radar gun.

It holds the tripod.

It holds, I would say, it can hold probably up to about eight paddles when my main compartment

also has all the other stuff I just mentioned.

So did I even say the bag?

I don't think I said the bag.

But the friend to our bag.

It's like, you think about it.

Yeah, I know what you're going to say.

You're going to say it's kind of close to a duffel if you think about it.

You squint your eyes a little.

If it, you're not technically wrong.

You're not technically wrong.

But yeah, that bag has been great.

It just holds so much.

Like if I didn't put the radar gun and stuff in there and the tripod, I mean, you could,

I bet you could put almost 20 paddles in that bag.

Yeah, for sure.

It's just gigantic.

I bet you could.

So if you're one of those people that's like, I'm going to stuff everything in this,

like I'm living out of it, you could definitely do it with that Franklin bag.

And I don't think the price on that Franklin bag is bad.

I think after a code, it might be in the 130s, 120s.

It's not bad.

So I feel like for a big bag that is one thing.

It seems like it's held up to durability wise.

Yeah, no issues.

I mean, yeah, it's been great.

So those are some of the bags we're really liking right now.

It's one of the small bag, one's a duffel.

Probably skip the duffel, but I'm just kidding.

I know some of you out there like duffels.

Okay, let's talk about the Pila sunglasses.

So I've had a lot more time on these now.

And I just kind of wanted to give you guys an update as I start working on my review now.

So if you did not catch the first podcast where I talked about these, first of all, we'll

do a quick recap.

These are the I wear that a lot of pros are currently wearing, which is I kind of feel like

why they're they're getting attention.

Just suddenly all these pros were wearing it.

And it was kind of like, why are you wearing that?

And they have a very distinct look with their visor look.

So it's kind of hard to miss.

When I first saw these, I would classify myself as a grade A hater.

I would I literally bought these going in expecting to not be impressed.

And basically be like, these are probably not great, especially because of the price.

I spent my own money.

These were not sent to me $1,800 on two frames and six different lenses.

So I could compare all the different lenses.

And that's still not all of them, which is insane.

But yeah, I was going in expecting to be like, look, just go buy other stuff, which small

spoiler that may still kind of be the conclusion.

But what I will say is you will not complain if you buy these about performance.

There is nothing about these that I go, oh, the performance or the quality is not good.

I think it does.

It checks all the boxes in terms of that.

Like swapping the lenses very easy.

It just kind of snaps off like this if you're watching.

And then you can attach a different lens.

It's very quick to do that.

I would also say if you're if you plan to buy some of these, I would I can't remember

the name of this.

But whatever the side earpieces, I would not get the one with the like dual tip.

It's funny because I think this will be different.

Okay, I can't wait to hear your opinion on that.

But I the straight regular earpiece like regular glasses, I would take this a hundred times

over the other one.

Well, the problem is I think when I wore them with those normal earpieces, they kind of

fell off my face a little bit.

Depending on the nose piece.

Yes.

Those one, the lenses you're holding right now, that nose piece did not really fit me

very well.

The only one that fit me was the blue lenses.

Yeah.

And for some reason that nose piece is slightly different.

I keep meaning to email them and ask them why it's different.

But I would agree.

I think the blue technically fits me a little bit better.

But I don't have a huge complaint about this one.

Yeah.

The black nose piece.

So I mean, just different shaped head.

So it's it's going to be different for everyone.

But if you like, it's a weird feel.

So these like if you're just wanting normal feeling sunglasses, then the the current ear

pieces you have would be the way to go.

Yeah.

So that would be my recommendation.

I just feel like with a hat, it's too tight on my head or the hat gets in a way a little

bit and then I have to loosen the hat and it's just not how I want to wear it.

Blah, blah, blah.

But yeah.

So I've been playing indoor quite a bit and I have three main indoor lenses.

So again, we talked about this on the podcast where we first covered these.

Their naming is extremely confusing and I think I'll be able to break that down a little

bit better in the full review.

But the three that I have are the 92 C.I.L.

That is the main indoor lens that I believe all their pros wear.

Then the one I'm holding right now, which is a pink one, is the 82 C.I.R.G. and then I

cannot remember for the life of me the other model name.

But it's like the 85 C.I.W.A.

It is like the worst naming.

I couldn't make it more confusing if they tried.

The number is just how much light is supposed to be left in.

So 92 would be 92% of light.

82 is 82% of light.

So technically the ones I'm holding led in a little bit less light.

But here's what I will say.

The 85 and the 92 are both like yellow tinted lenses and for whatever reason for me, I

do not like them indoor.

Mr. Colorblind.

Our only theory is I am like partially colorblind and my main issue with certain colors is like yellow

and green.

If they're next to each other, I can sometimes get them a little mixed up.

But it's like very specific shades.

It's not like I look at a green pickleball paddle and I'm like, oh, it's yellow.

It's like very specific shades.

So I'm not fully colorblind.

But the yellow tint to me just makes it harder to see the ball indoors.

Like I don't feel like it is more clear off to try those because I haven't tried the

yellow ones indoors yet.

Yeah, it's not terrible.

I could play pickleball with it.

But I think if I had the choice between completely clear lenses and those, I'm taking

the completely clear lens.

Interesting.

I can not for the life of me play indoors with clear lenses.

I refuse.

Like it makes everything just look fuzzy no matter how clear it is.

Even if they don't fog, I can just tell that everything looks a little less sharp if

it's not tinted.

And that bothers me.

So what I will say is this pink one, basically the way I would describe it, if any of you

are video people out there or know anything about photo editing, this, I mean, as you would

guess, it just like magenta tints everything.

And I feel like indoors where there's a lot of like fluorescent style lights and kind

of will green cast some things.

I feel like it makes indoors look a lot more clear with these.

And even though they are a little bit darker, I personally heavily prefer this lens over

the 92 C.I.L.

I think it just looks way nicer.

The boss pops a lot to me.

I really like how it looks.

So my recommendation currently if you were trying to pick for an indoor lens would be the

82 C.I.R.G.

But if you are in a pretty dark facility, my guess is these might be a little tougher.

I personally don't think they're that dark.

Like if I put them on in here, I really don't think it gets so much darker in here that

it's harder to see.

But if you are already in a facility that was a little dark for you, then this is only

going to make that a tiny bit worse.

The other thing I will say is I have noticed, even though this has some vent holes to prevent

fogging, indoor play where I have been like pretty hot recently, I have noticed them fogging,

not like every point.

But if I'm like between points and I'm like breathing really heavy, I've noticed

them start to fog and then I have to like pull them away from my face.

And then it'll quickly dissipate and then I can push them back and I'm good.

So it hasn't bothered me during a point.

It's always after.

But I just thought I'd mention that if you're someone who like heavily fogs lenses, which

I'm normally not, then you might have some issues.

Interesting.

But yeah, mostly been good for me.

So yeah, I think my general thought right now is they are good.

You'd sure hope for the price that they're going to be good.

I have some Oakleys and I'm about to start trying some of the Brioides.

The brief testing I've done, I would not say there is such a quality gap that I would

be telling someone, these are worth an extra 250, an extra 300, maybe even 400 depending

on the model that you buy.

I think optically all the lenses from Oakley Brioide or Pila is good.

Like I haven't looked through any of them and gone.

Oh man, the optics were just, they were definitely better on that other one.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, while we're on the topic of Oakley, I've got these sunglasses which I talked

about the last time we were talking about the Pulas.

These are the Houston squared lenses, glasses, frames.

So I figured out the lenses in these ones are the Prism bronze.

Yeah.

Prism bronze lenses and they're very dark so you unfortunately cannot use them indoors.

But the color of these lenses I've said by far the best lenses for pickable.

I have ever used.

I absolutely love these lenses.

Now, if a guy we talked to who works at Oakley sends us some of these glasses and I was like

bigs down sides, these obviously aren't like athletic lenses.

The frames are a little light and I feel like they could crack if I got hit in the face.

So he sent me some more athletic design frames.

I think they're the Sutro frames and instead of these lenses I tried, he recommended the

Prism golf dark golf lenses because I was talking about how much I like how the greens

pop with these lenses and I like them quite a bit.

I think those frames are awesome.

They are very comfortable.

I forget they're on my face.

I probably still prefer the Prism bronze lenses though.

I think the golf lenses are good but just the way that these bronze lenses make the

greens pop is crazy.

Yeah.

Just three years and it is pretty insane how much it pops which would be the equivalent

for Pila would be the 26 C I E D but I feel like your the Prism bronze goes up another notch

and like really just specifically just the color green makes everything looks so saturated

and so vibrant.

It is like impossible for me to miss the ball.

It's wild in terms of like vision.

Not you can't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Of course.

The other downside is you have less tinted indoor lenses.

All of these Oakley's are pretty dark would be difficult to use them indoors.

Yeah.

Oakley mostly has like their indoor style lens would just be a clear lens.

Yep.

So I feel like the thing with Pila's while the kid is annoying that there's so many lens

options because it's kind of confusing.

The bright side is depending on whatever condition you're going to be in there's probably

a lens to fit that.

Yep.

Something like Oakley or maybe even some of the Brioches are mostly clear.

Briody does have different options but I think they're different options.

If I'm recalling correctly primarily apply to outdoor style play.

So I think Pila wins on the indoor side of options but outdoor.

The same Prism golf lenses that you're talking about I think they're good for pickleball.

I would call them pretty equivalent to the 26 C I E D and then you can get it in different

frame options where Pila is going to be only like this visor style look.

Which I've kind of gotten over that I don't really mind how it looks anymore.

I've played enough in them scene pictures of myself and while it's maybe not my preferred

frame I'm like whatever right the performance is good enough that I don't really care.

Yeah.

So it is really funny that you're now wearing these because I remember I mean the new

length the frames that got sent to me the Sutro I think I want to say that's the name

of them.

I'll have to check that.

You needed to borrow some you like we're on a trip.

It was one of the chasing five of us you forgot your sunglasses and you had to borrow

mine which was those frames.

And you were like just I think I look so silly wearing these and now you're wearing those

I know this is like even more extreme I yeah I know I don't trust me I know literally

I said it on the first spot you guys can go back a couple pods I said I was like people

are going to pay $500 to look dumb in these like that's how ridiculous I thought these

looked and then I just kind of got over it I guess.

Yeah so I think it's a they're good if you have it money to spend and you just don't

care like the people who are out there like bro 333 for a boomstick that's a steal if

you're one of those people and you got that kind of money then look yeah the peel is are

good but the just remember my customer service story was not so great with them took like

four times to get a hold of them and if you're spending this kind of cash that should never

ever ever I should never have to email you or call you that many times to get a hold of

you.

That is a like almost a deal breaker for me yeah a comedy having that bad of customer

service is kind of a killer yeah that's that's pretty insane to me also it is the

Sutro light frames okay for the Oakley's that's those are the ones I really like

gosh oh okay cool so yeah I am digging them it's just a like okay you know some of the

Oakley's that I am using or I'm about to try the Brioides when they're 200 bucks it's

like even if it's a little bit better it's like a diminishing return thing right like

let's say this is the ultimate in performance for pickable I wear let's just give it that

assumption for right now is it so much better that you'd spend an extra like 250 to $300

no so here's here's the thing the answer is no for 99% of people but let's just say that

you find a pair of lens that works for you like how I did with these bronze lenses and

it gives you a 2% edge for most people that sounds like I wouldn't pay anything for that

but if you're someone who's playing for money and playing pro 2% difference even if that's

one point a match because you can see it better at people will pay for it yeah it just comes

down to what what level are you playing at and how much does it matter to you yeah exactly

exactly so yeah that's that's some of my thoughts on the the Peelas right now will you know

have a full video on them probably hopefully within the next like couple weeks would kind of

be my goal now that I've used them quite a bit but I ended up liking them a lot more than I

thought I would yeah it's funny that you don't like the design of them because I actually kind of do

I mean I'm warming up to it now but initially I was like I just like I can't believe people are

wearing these so okay now we've kind of got through some accessories let's talk about

the topic that won't go away great so this is you know like the third podcast we're doing

about this and it's probably not going to be the last one so getting old I have been doing a

nauseating amount of work on grit stuff one I've been beating up a spitfire checking its grit

checking its spin but I'm also still having to do this for a lot of other paddles so I wanted to

walk through what the whole testing method is so that you guys have a full picture of everything

that's being done because I feel like I do a lot of work behind the scenes that I don't always

talk about because I feel like a lot of you guys listen to our pod are not there is a lot of overlap

between you guys who listen to us and also listen to John but John is like you know when you go to

John you know what you're going there for you know you're going there to get a lot of like in-depth

information and I think when you come here it's you can have some of that but also it's like a

little bit more fun so I try to keep those details out because I think most of you don't care

but I think for all this grit stuff it's important to talk about because I do so much work for this

stuff and I don't just go get like one result and then go oh yep that's the result like I guess

let's just let's just sink this company because they got one bad result like there's a lot of work

that goes into it so I want to talk about all of it so uh when I get a weird result for a paddle

my first thought is not oh there's the result let's just go publish that like that's we're good

we did we did the work we're fine as soon as I get something that feels abnormal or wrong I

immediately start going how can I prove this wrong or what other things are going to back up what

just happened so we'll kind of get to all of that but like I think it's important to understand

that I'm trying to get multiple data points to confirm or deny what's happening before I talk

about them because I think that is really important to be fair to the companies that are putting in

a lot of R and D work right like you don't just want to go like oh I hit one top spin drop and

it was bad guess it gets bad spin you don't like that's not fair right so uh my methodology when we

get the the paddle brand new the first thing that happens is we measure it with a stare at SR 160

and now the way that I measure it is I take the stare it and I move it all around the sweet spot

of the paddle where the majority of the strikes are going to be being hit I don't do the bottom

of the throat I don't do the very edges of the paddle because you're not supposed to that's not

where most of the where is going to be and now when USA P and I believe a UPA do their test for the

stare they do it one reading in six directions so it's one reading in the north direction one reading

south one reading east west diagonal right diagonal left okay so only six total readings for RZ

and RT what I do because there is some variance in paddle grit as well as the stare it itself

is I do all six of those directions but every direction it's in is 15 readings and it's not 15

readings in the same spot it's like okay here's a paddle I would put the stare it right here

right here right here here here here like I'm doing all around the sweet spot by here he's basically

it's a nine a three by three grid yeah essentially it's you know middle center like center right left

and then top bottom for all those exactly and so that's 15 readings in all those different spots

and then that's just the north direction then I do it south 15 east 15 so it is a total of 90 RZ

readings and 90 RT readings and then all of that is averaged to have a like a tighter grouping

of data because with the stare and I feel like originally when I started doing this I was doing I think

three readings in each direction so 80 data or 18 data points to average and then I was like I

think it needs to be higher and now that I've moved to 15 per I feel like the data is much tighter

and feels good in the the results I've seen so far so that stare testing alone is like 30 minutes

per paddle for one paddle we're getting like every shape of a paddle like multiple times a week with

all this new durable grit so like there's a lot of time purely just getting the stare at data right

yep that's the stare at oh and we mark which side is because you and I both hold the same

orientation which side is a forehand and which side is a backhand so it's not like we're beating

up the forehand side and then measuring the backhand side yes it's I'm always measuring the

forehand side of the paddle so there's that then for the actual spin testing I do 20 serves

that are averaged together and that again is to make the data tighter because there is human

variance here right a humans never going to be perfect and what I've also started doing recently

is taking a paddle in this case it has been a brand new elongated spitfire that has only been

used for spin testing and before I start measuring a paddle I will measure with that paddle to make

sure that I'm getting the numbers that I expect to get which is on that paddle it's in the like 25

to 2700 range and so I'll do a bunch of serves with that and once I know like okay yeah I'm getting

those results my arm is now less of the equation right because if all of a sudden I was getting

1800 2000 1900 I'd be like okay something's wrong here either the radar gun is having issues or

I'm having big issues and so I've been doing that just to eliminate variables and so far every time

I've done it I've gotten exactly what I expect which no surprise that's kind of how it's been for

a couple years now but it's good to have more confirmation of what is happening then the measurements

are measured with a stalker pro 3s radar gun and if outliers happen like an extremely high

outlier or an extremely low outlier I will toss those out like let's say I've done seven serves

and I'm getting 2400 2500 2600 2650 2400 right and then suddenly I get 1600 yeah it's pretty safe

to say that I miss hit that ball or somehow the radar gun had a misread right so those get

thrown out so that again the data is like more tightly clustered if you were averaging 2100 then

suddenly you get a 2900 it's like okay I probably didn't actually just put 2900 RPM on that if I've

been averaging for the last 12 hits 2100 right so again trying to eliminate a lot of different variables

and then if I am getting in a abnormally crazy result with the radar gun which really doesn't

happen for me I will then go verify it with a slow motion camera to again confirm or deny

what is actually happening because again if you're seeing something you don't expect to happen

it's probably good that you've verified it more than one way and then the last thing which is

you know we've been hidden paddles long enough in the real world we'll often just feel if something

is really off right if it's like small right if we're talking to 100 200 RPM yeah that's probably

hard to notice when you're actually playing but if something's off by 5600 suddenly serves are going

in the net drives drops like it just you're like well this isn't what should be happening so like we

have all these different ways to verify is great going down with the stare is spin going down on the

stalker is or do is I feel like in the real world our play is actually getting worse because of this

right so those are all the kind of different ways that I feel can verify and now we're gonna talk

about what's been happening and we got the new enhanced turbos right and so I measured all three

of our new shapes for grit and spin and I noticed that spin was a little weird on a couple of them

and I also practices with this because this has happened multiple times now I think people need to

understand what is happening here let's take the vatic for example some people were having a

great experience some people were having a very bad experience we had three paddles for ourselves

that all had bad just because ours is bad doesn't mean everyone's is bad at this point the variants

I think in manufacturing is so all over the place that you very well could get a good one another

reviewer could get a good unit and we could get a bad unit right even with all three of the units we

have we're going to be talking about one here this is only one unit that we've like measured pretty

well at this point and started having issues next week we'll try and have more information for you

but I want to be clear that our other two could be fine and maybe this one is having issues but

this one was so abnormal that I thought we should talk about this now because the palliages came out

yep so we still have a little bit more homework to do I don't think people should base everything off

of this one result but the fact that the prior batch had issues and now we have another one that's

having issues that's kind of odd all right I'm going to talk you just don't want to have to gamble

that's like the downside is okay just because there are some that are good yep like do you want to

make that gamble when you're buying a new paddle are you going to get a good one are you going to

get a bad one have to deal with customer service so yeah it's that's I mean that's why we're doing

this this is going to be very boring for some of you but there's a lot of numbers I want to talk

about to again explain and show to you guys the homework was done on this yeah so we're going to

talk about some rz and rt data and for those of you who don't know rz and rt are measurements

from the stare art basically have this little thing works is it's a little device that drags a

stylus across the face of the paddle and it's going up and down based on the grit you know it hits

a peak it goes up and when it hits a valley it goes down and it's measuring the distance at like a

very very small level to get these readings so rz my understanding is that it is the

average of the entire needle drag over that area so it averaged okay there was one peak this high

then another really high then low average and it just averages all of it rt is across that entire

drag what was the biggest peak to valley that it found so rt is kind of telling you here was the

tallest peak and then rz is an average and then again it's all being averaged a bunch more by

my data so the wide body turbo had a 40.5 rz and then 64 rt the elongated turbo had a 40.4 rz

so nearly completely identical to our wide body and then a 63.9 rt which again is almost

entirely identical to our wide body and then the hybrid was 42.4 rz a tiny bit higher but not a

lot and then 63.38 rt so across rt they're almost all of the exact same when they were brand new

out of the box but even rz they're essentially identical so we know there wasn't some weird thing

with the rz and the rt with the stare when they were all new okay now I'm going to talk about some

other paddles just to show you how consistent some of the readings have been on paddles that have

been good and bad so we'll start with the vatic we all know these ones had issues when our bloom was

brand new it was 37.78 rz 56.53 rt and after 30 games it dropped to 30 rz and 44 rt which is a

20% drop for both of those numbers now let's take our spitfires because I think this is to show

that paddles that are performing well are not dropping crazy like this and thankfully both you and

I have been beating up a spitfire and we've actually been at like the same pace for the amount of

games we've been putting on it which is awesome so the spitfire this I believe was the yeah the wide

body so the one I've been hitting started at 33.1 rz and 51.2 rt when I got to 49 games I re-measured

and it dropped to 31.1 rz and then 45.2 rt then I re-measured at 67 games because it was after

a tournament and you know tournaments are pretty intense so I was like oh maybe I should see if

there was a big drop from you know pre-turnum it pretty much the exact same 31.4 rz and 46.1 rt

so from brand new it's only a 5% drop and a 9.9% drop now let's talk about your paddle at brand

new it was 34.1 rz and 53.6 rt after 50 games yours dropped to 31.6 rz and 47.2 rt which is a 7.5%

drop for rz and a basically a 12% drop for rt which now I would expect that you would have a

slightly higher drop than me because you hit harder than I do yeah so they're not the exact same

but the fact that you're a better player and hit harder I would hope that you're wearing well

maybe not hope but I would expect that you're dropping the paddle quicker but that's two paddles

two different people with very similar readings right and same thing with the vatic we saw big drops

with two different paddles so I'm saying all of this to show you multiple paddles some that perform

well some that perform worse and the post pre pre and post rz and rt readings like it's not like

I got 5% on my spitfire and I said got 20% and then you're going oh either the steering's broken

or something's wrong with the paddle like we're seeing very consistent results across all the

paddles that we're testing right now let's get to the turbo well let's let's tell the whole story

here so first of all when I was doing spin testing on the different turbos I just noticed the

results were kind of weird so again I started with the spitfire getting 25 2700 RPM okay cool we're

good to go I do the wide body first every single result was over 2000 RPM and average like 2100

and so I was like okay like maybe not elite but that's better than the old ones we had so I was like

okay they they fixed the issue then I get to the elongated and I noticed the spin is kind of weird

I think the spin was like 2084 and there was a lot more variance in some dropping below 2000 so the

wide body nothing under 2000 and then all of a sudden the elongated is like some in 2000 some under

and I'm like I'm hitting some in the net which is usually not a great sign and I was like that's

weird so I'm like okay that's been was kind of low but whatever we'll move on go to the hybrid

elite spin like everything that I feel like enhance has been advertising the hybrid nailed that it

was like 2492 RPM with not a single rating under 2300 and now again you're thinking okay so Chris your

arm is just off so I grab the spitfire again same same type of average that I'm getting so I'm like okay

something's up with the paddle but I'm like whatever let's just are testing them so yesterday I have

you hit the MPP turbo elongated how long did you hit it for 15 minutes maybe yeah because you were

switching between the original and this yep so somewhere around 15 minutes and when we were

dinking the spin was good right that's what we started with yeah no issues was getting plenty of

spin on top spin forehand uh dinks I felt I had no complaints and then then you started 10 minutes

of that because they didn't do much baseline yeah that's where I started noticing issues moved from

10 minutes of dinking just to the baseline and I'm not kidding the first five drives were in the net

could not get and this was me after or after me hitting the shark skin the shark skin opal where my

drives are great and then yeah could I was really struggling to get a half decent drive and so I was

like okay that's weird that like you know your spin suddenly started getting worse so you did that

for a little bit then I think I hit it a little bit and you know I went back and hit some drives

and I was like I just feels a little bit weird and so I was like okay I'm gonna bring this home

and I'm gonna run some more spin testing on everything just to see if something's weird

and I think I only did around 15 serves just in the backyard just as a quick confirmation oh that's

another thing I forgot to mention earlier when I do like the official spin testing it's always indoors

I might do some stuff outdoors just as like quick checks but if I'm actually going to log a

result for like final result it's always indoors to take away variables yep um so I bring this thing

outside and it's averaging like 70 actually I think I have the average right here I think out of

14 serves that I hit the spin drop to 1758 RPM and so I'm like okay that's not good let me go get the

the spitfire and the hybrid again still getting 2500 on the hybrid and the spitfire still getting 2500

plus so I'm like okay the only paddle here that dropped is the one that got used for 15 minutes

and then I was like okay let's bring it inside let's run the stare it on it stare it result was not

great uh so brand new do I have this in here okay so just as a reminder because we've set a

bajillion numbers so I'm sure everyone's forgotten and their eyes have glazed over and they're

falling asleep while they're driving right now uh the elongated turbo brand new was 40.4 RZ and

63 RT the same as like all the other pals that's a very high reading okay after that let's just

call it be generous and say 30 minutes of play between spin serves and you're testing yep it dropped

to 33.7 RZ and 54.7 RT which is a 16.5% drop in RZ and 14% drop in RT and not really intensive play

yeah it's not like we were going super hard just hitting some dinks and then some drives not like

we were playing games not like I was hitting overheads anything crazy or ripping serves like it

just wasn't really intense play versus and then think so that's 16% and 14% versus 50 games on the

spitfire for me which is 7.5% and 11% yeah that's a pretty big difference not the gigantic gap

and so like I mean once I started doing the stare and I like almost couldn't believe it because

like there's just no way right like that's insane but you know I had just checked my spitfire the

day before and that was still like I've done two readings uh for a grit on that in the last

handful of days and they were like identical uh after 49 games it was 31 RZ after when I got to

67 games after the tournament it was still 31 RZ and the RT was 45 and then 46 and that small variance

going up a little bit that's just what I would attribute to the variance of you know the stare

it or whatever but so basically it didn't change in that time frame and then you're telling me

in even less play this dropped 16% so like I know it's not the stare it I know it's not me

and then as one more final check today I went outside and I brought the slow motion camera out with

the spitfire the hybrid turbo and this elongated turbo and I didn't get a single reading

in with the slow motion camera on the elongated turbo over 2000 RPM and then the hybrid and the

spitfire were well over 2400 RPM and as a side note for anyone using slow motion cameras out there

or people who get into reviewing eventually 240 FPS is honestly not good enough anymore to

measure or spin in my opinion I think with how paddle technology has gotten and how high of

RPMs you can generate there's not enough frames at 240 to get a really precise reading in my

opinion you probably need a minimum of 500 up to 1000 would probably be the most ideal to be honest

but again another form of verification we have the radar gun we have the slow motion camera we

have the stare we have the real world play like there's I don't know what other way I could even

verify that something is wrong here yeah but something is wrong with this elongated paddle and look

it sucks I was just telling you yesterday I hate talking about this I hate being like oh yeah like

this company it didn't work again like we like the guys it enhance they're cool guys

we're not picking on anybody but like there is a problem yes it has happened to us twice now

you know very short amount of time yep and so what we're gonna do is I'm going to give our hybrid

and our wide body to some other people I know have them put some games on it I have a guy right now

that actually plays with an original MPP turbo and he's really been looking forward to this I'm

gonna have him play with it okay so small little update here the guy that I was just talking about

on the podcast I was actually able to bring him over before this podcast was going live and we were

able to get some drilling done on the wide body turbo that we were mentioning giving to him so he

drilled with it for about an hour and then for the last 30 minutes I started using it just so I

could see if the spin felt weird to me or if anything felt off and then I brought it inside to run

some stare at testing on it and the results are pretty interesting and this is why I think it's

important to understand that there may be some reviewers that have a better experience with this

paddle because what it seems to be happening at least with the units that we have is kind of like

what happened with the first batch some of them seem to be good some of them seem to be worse for

whatever reason because the if you'll under remember from just a couple minutes ago the elongated

turbo lost like 16% of its grit after you know let's be generous and say 30 minutes of hitting with it

and for the wide body turbo in hour and a half worth of hitting with very minimal breaks I think there

was maybe one one and a half breaks to pick up some balls the grit only lost 7% for RZ and 8.6%

for RT now to be fair that's still not awesome considering that the wide body spitfire after 50 and

67 games still only lost about 5% of its grit on the one that I have been testing but the 7% is a

whole lot better than the 16% that are elongated saw and I didn't get to run any spin testing on it

before my friend took it he's actually going to run even more testing until next week's podcast

and then I'm going to run some tests on it and see how it performs but at least while playing with

it the spin didn't seem problematic we ended up playing some skinny singles and I focused a lot on

drives and more aggressive drops and dinks and I wasn't noticing anything that felt really abnormal

like it did on the elongated so my guess is that the spin was probably still decent enough I'd

imagine it was still over 2000 but I don't have an actual measurement to verify so popping in here

with one more update I had decided to delay the podcast upload slightly so that way I could check

on the turbo elongated one more time I was going to knock out some spin testing this morning

on the logo to elongated and I wanted to confirm if anything was funny was it me on the day was

it not me on the day you know whatever so as I was saying I started with the spitfire elongated

still confirmed that that paddle was getting over 2500 RPM before I started logging any results

then I went to the logo to elongated and that was averaging in that 23 to 2400 range no issues and

then I busted out the turbo elongated and again having a lot of issues in the full 20 serve average

I did not get a single reading over 2000 RPM in fact the average over the 20 serves was 1751

RPM which is a 16% drop from when it was brand new so again I have a paddle that I have been

consistently comparing every time I go to spin test it continues to get the same spin result

each time then I have another brand new paddle that I had never tested the logo to elongated

it's getting great spin and then the turbo elongated which has consistently been showing

wonky results in real world the stare it and in the radar gun continues to show really weird results

so at this point guys if you were planning on buying this paddle I would just hold off these were

supposed to be the fixed units that didn't have issues anymore and we're consistently seeing some

weird problems at least with our elongated unit it's going to take a little bit more time before

we see any results on our wide body and our hybrid but this to me is just not acceptable if the problem

was supposed to be completely fixed I've tested in every way that I currently have the capacity to

test a paddle in and in all of them so far this paddle just hasn't been doing well beat it up for David

yeah his is EPP oh his is the EPP oh so that'll be interesting he might not like this much yep

now what I will say is outside of the spin we were hitting this next to side by side with the

original MPP oh yeah doesn't even feel remotely close to the same paddle I know you're going to say

oh man it's kind of done no not even the same zip code if you liked the original there is a

chance that you wouldn't like how this one feels it's a lot stiffer the original is as soft as an

inferno donkey soft typical MPP feel yep this one is like boom stick level stiff if not more it is

stiff as a board and I I was not a fan yeah like it's such a drastic change that I went from I like

the feel of this paddle and would play with it to I don't think I would use this for you're

trying the original MPP versus the new one versus this one yeah yeah I definitely felt like it was

stiffer and actually to me almost even felt more dense like it did not feel nearly as hollow I

don't know that I feel similar to you that it's like boom stick stiff but like it is one where I

think if you gave someone the original and you gave someone this they would be like I they wouldn't

just immediately go oh yeah this is better if they were blacked out and you couldn't tell which was

which yeah you would think they're different paddles yeah I can see that you would not say oh yeah

these are the same yeah for sure I would agree with that so yeah it's I don't know what's going

on again maybe we're gonna test our other two units and they're going to be fine but even with

the spin being like there's two things going on here right originally it was is the spin actually

good and we're seeing like weird results where the hybrid is being really good in the 2400 range

but then the elongated was low 2000s and then had some results under 2000 but then the wide

body was pretty consistently over 2k but it still wasn't as high as the hybrid so it's like what's

going on there so there's the actual spin part but then there's the durability John will probably

have a much better picture of durability when he does his Canon test he can probably report on

that a little bit better but even for ourselves in a short amount of time we're seeing some abnormal

spin and durability issues so we will report when we have more information to tell you guys but I

wanted to bring this up because the paddle just launched I know a lot of people are really excited

for this paddle and I don't want people to get it and then have this whole like oh the spin's

not good and I guess the last thing I'll say an interesting thing about a lot of these different

paddles lately is touching this face the elongated one that is kind of dropped a lot of spin

because the RT is still so high and RT I think is a lot more of what your fingers are picking up on

like is there you know sharp tall peaks it doesn't feel bad because that number is still what was

it like in the 40s or 50s I think 50s it's still very high so it feels rough to the touch

but it's not actually getting good spin anymore so again hand touching your paddle is just not a good

proxy anymore you could still be good it could still be bad but like doing this would tell you

nothing I if I gave a random person this paddle and said hey does this still feel rough they would

tell me yes I don't mean objectively based on started is still rough just not actually getting

spin anymore yep or good spin yep so yeah that is definitely a bummer I'm curious to see what

the other reviewers find maybe some other people are going to be fine but I feel like I have verified

in every way that I can even measure myself right now and it's not what I expect yeah so okay

let's move on to the kitchen here because we're probably already at a gigalong pack and our entire

audience is asleep wake back up we got questions here in a minute okay let's go into the the tournament

experience so we've played a lot of tournaments what to you makes a tournament experience good or

bad and I think it's also important at least on your side of things maybe I think there is definitely

a difference in what the higher level people expect and what everyone else expects for a tournament

yeah 100% it's going to be way different a lot of it some of the things that matter to me

um and I'm kind of thinking I wasn't thinking about this question a minute ago so I'm gonna

take a little bit of time here depends on the venue for some of it but in terms of like how the

tournament actually runs one thing that really matters is is downtime agree tournaments that have

way too much downtime that are just running inefficiently which has been a little while since I've

been at a tournament like this agree is extremely frustrating I have been at tournaments where in

between my first and second match is over in our wait time yeah and that is more absurd yeah it's

way too long I practically need a full warm up again yeah I've lost the like unless you really

stay locked in the tournament mindset and like competitive mentality can just fade away which matters

a ton and so runtime and how it's how smoothly the tournament operates is probably up there is

number one in my opinion and then also I don't care about I know a lot of local tournaments do this

I freaking hate pool play I don't want pool play this is I think a lot of people this is the big

difference yeah I don't want a waste time like it doesn't matter to me yeah I don't even care

about the seating like if I'm in an tournament that has pool play put me at the bottom put me at

the number one seat I do not care it doesn't matter I just want to go into bracket play either single

limited elimination double elimination doesn't matter to me because I really only care about the

main draw yeah so that's that's a big one for me and I think it's important for at least for

people to have context of our local area because I think it is a little bit different than a lot of

other areas we've seen our open division tournaments pretty much never have duper entered into them

so no one's competing for duper in it yep there's usually money on the line and a lot of these people

again you know if you're playing for money you don't want to waste energy on pool play when your

only objective is I'm going to win this tournament or I'm going to lose this tournament and so

you know like you're saying double elimination single elimination is just like okay let's just

play and have it work towards progressing the bracket whereas if the brackets big enough let's say

you know you have 18 teams and that means you have three pools of six each pools playing five games

that only goes to seating like you might just be a little bit more tired by that point so and this

has been pretty universal all the high level guys here like forget pool play we don't care just

start the bracket yep that's and we all feel the same way now other things that just don't really

matter to me um I think like turns to have like snacks and fruit like bananas and other stuff I don't

really care I'm usually bringing my own snacks and food to prep and get ready I would rather the

money that's being put into that be put into having more fresh balls because I have been at some

tournaments where they're using franklin's and they're very stingy they wouldn't give us one to

warm up with we had extremely used franklin's the entire tournament that we're being used across

all divisions so the open play division was later in the week and all the balls had been

practically destroyed throughout the tournament and we had cracked one and I went to the desk and

asked hey can we get a new one and they made us verify that we did not have another ball to use

before they gave us a ball so I would rather have that money be put into being able to have more

fresh pickables for each match yeah that's way more important to me because unlike you I like to

have a brand new ball for each match don't give me this news beat in crap now I'll take it is

so wrong I'll take these ball every day so so that doesn't really matter to me and then other things

that are just it's more venue like lounging areas water stations like we've been at some tournaments

that have really poor water stations yeah you have to like travel to the other side of the venue

and you're getting a text message and now your matches on the other side or bathrooms are really

far away so that stuff obviously isn't always you know can't change that a lot of times based on

the venue so I'll give a little bit of leeway there but that's something that matters to me a lot

is being having easy access to cold water is really important I'm trying to think if there's anything

else that I can think of you you start talking I'll see if I can think of anything else yeah so I

think it depends on the type so first of all I would say my like preferred tournament format would be

a double elimination style bracket if I'm picking from top to bottom that is going to be my preferred

and then second would probably pool play and then last would probably a single elimination I think

for me I am getting to a point where pool play does not annoy me because I do like especially if

there's dooper I actually don't mind having pool play because my objective is I just I want to

get more games and to boost up my dooper right you know if you're doing double elimination you might not

get as many games so I like it when doopers on the line I've dopers not going to be on the line

that I'd rather have a double elimination and then single elimination to me is just kind of like

there really aren't any tournaments that do that to be honest they really aren't it's pretty much

just qualifiers yeah so like I guess I'm not even going to count that as a format because it's really

not relevant to like 99.9% of players but yeah it would be double elimination and then pool play

because pool play does feel like sometimes if it's a really big pool like I think I've had

pools that were seven games and it is like man by the time I get out of this I feel like I just

played a whole tournament and now I'm starting the thing that actually matters so I'm 50-50 on that

kind of just depends because I like the dooper aspect yeah for me I do like having snacks but I always

come prepared with my own stuff it's kind of just nice if I run out you know have some bananas or

something or like a granola bar I do like having that I wouldn't say it's mandatory for me I definitely

think tournaments they need to have a tech system I don't really especially if a venue's bigger

and they're announcing things they not a lot do that anymore but it's so much better to have a tech

system if the venue is not small enough to where everyone can hear it from basically wherever you

are standing yeah I was kind of just assuming that most tournaments now use a tech system because

I don't remember the last time I've been a one that didn't yeah but yeah if it doesn't that I have

been a tournament so that becomes a problem yeah especially if it's really loud and it's just hard

to hear you're like I just I didn't hear my match and you know that can be kind of frustrating

um but otherwise for me I think not overselling a tournament too depending on the venue you're at

I don't see this a lot it used to happen more with ppa's I feel like but there would just be way

too many people and divisions would be going all day long sometimes they'd be going into the evening

there'd be these massive delays and I feel like it would be so much better of an experience for the

players to have less people or capped at what you think the reasonable limit is for you to run

the tournament on time then to be like okay we got everyone in but now the tournament experience sucks

people are waiting an hour and a half between matches I bet I remember playing a 5.0 ppa with

with Will pickable and now there was a randale but even if the randale wasn't there there were so

many teams in the bracket it went on we were playing into the night yeah and I remember someone

we know who works the ppa came up to me or chatting he's like so what did you think how did like

things go today ball on I was like way too many teams I think it was 50 plus teams in one bracket

is way too many yeah yeah so I think capping can be good just to ensure a better experience like

you want enough people to where the bracket is competitive you know you know no one wants a 5 to

8 person bracket that's too small in my opinion but once you start going like 50 plus it's just like

dang man that's unless you have a ton of courts that is going to be a really long day and most places

don't have access to a ton of courts especially when you're talking about the 3 0 the 3 5 in the 4 0

divisions and all these other divisions running along side that right it's never just one division

running at a time so that that can matter a lot but yeah I feel like those are some of the the

big things for me I think if it's outdoor you know you can't control weather that's just the

the unfortunate nature of doing outdoors sometimes you're going to get an extremely windy tournament

and that's probably not going to be very fun so I do think tournaments that are indoor are generally

a little bit better but with the weather's good outside I like a good outdoor tournament for sure

I have no issue with it trying to think what else um if you like those are kind of the big ones

clear communication ahead of time you know knowing the start times what the format is going to look

like is it pool play how many teams are getting eliminated when information is unclear to me that's

just kind of frustrating yeah I would agree with that because think pool play for example whether you

hate it or you love it if you have to play you want to know are all the teams going through are all

the teams not going through you know that's a big difference in how you might approach pool play

if everyone's going through okay you can play it a little bit more laxed but if people are getting

cut you're like okay I got to try a lot harder just to make sure I don't get cut yeah for sure

so yeah it may be not as long on that as I was actually expecting but I would say those are some

of the the bigger ones for sure it's just like make sure it is running smoothly that is number one

I don't think that I've got any other big complaints or anything that I can think of that's like

important to me that's pretty much everything yeah I do think this is again very venue dependent

but having areas that are great for spectating like one of our better tournaments here that's

held at pines and paddles it's just so easy to spectate the tournament and I think that just makes

the tournament experience a lot more lively because people are willing to stay and watch if you're

looking through fences and looking through windscreens it's like no one wants to watch there's

definitely been a lot of tournaments where it gets like the finals and people are just leaving it's

empty yeah but the pines one it's almost always still going that's a good one yeah that's a good

that's probably our our best local tournament I would agree so okay let's uh breeze through some

Q&A's here Q&A so first question was some players drop duper so they can stay at lower tournament

brackets for an easier win is this okay or not see I've made this joke a ton but I've never actually

seen it happen in the real world I'm sure it does happen but how often yeah I can't I don't

personally know anyone I don't think that has done this but my opinion would be if you are doing that

one yeah it's probably unfair to the people in the bracket but also like well what's your

objective here because most of the time like a local tournament or a ppa all your getting is a little

metal it's not like you're getting money most of the time so I'm like okay cool you're a better

player and you want to go beat up on some lower level like what is fun about that I mean I could

drop my duper before worlds my partner is a 4-7 sign up for 4-5 destroy you bro I'll be

hidden up the ppa so fast I'll be like I've got proof this guy just set it on the podcast I've got

proof he did he's sandbagging but yeah I just think it's it's always silly I mean we've talked about

this in the past where people in open play they want to play up and play with better players and

like oh man so frustrating that better players won't play with me and then for tournaments they're

like yeah I want to play the lower level I don't beat up on so it's like what's the point like my

whole tournament experience if I've won or even podium podium might even be a little too early to

be honest but as soon as I've won a division I'll go up to the next one because like I want to get

better and I want to play in the point and just winning the same division over and over again if

you're winning four oh tournaments why wouldn't you just play 4-5 exactly and sure maybe you're not

winning 4-5 immediately but isn't that kind of the point you're trying to play better people

and get better at the game so I don't know I've always just thought it's kind of a I don't know why

you would want to sandbag your duper like maybe if there's money on the line but even then I'm like

dude have some pride bro like what are you doing you boosted your duper and then you just want to

drop it to win some money yeah so I mean I see in the question is saying is it okay or not okay

obviously I would say like I mean no no but like how often is this happening again at least in our

local area I don't see anyone purposely trying to drop their duper to play down everyone I know

be including lower divisions because obviously the people I play with are all open division are all

trying to move up yeah and want to play the next division up so I don't know maybe different local

areas are experiencing otherwise but I just don't see this happen totally next one would you be

better than Isaac if you didn't have to test paddles all the time I read this question let's hear

let's hear your answer I'm curious what you're gonna say I mean there's obviously only one answer

to this and the answer is a definitive heck yes I would be way better than I think if I didn't test

paddles absolutely not because I'm also testing all these paddles as well I'm hitting all the same

paddles you are but see here's the thing you had a longer period of time my job I've just basically

been my job since I got into pickball you didn't start till like 2020 like mid 2023 I was still

like a four oh back then brother I just beat you up with a z five on camera you guys can go

watch the power effects for me to see that that was pretty funny that was pretty funny so I mean

look you might say yes I'm gonna say no because I still test all kinds of paddles but hold on

while we're on this topic okay let me just tell a quick story recently what did I tell

this is last week on the pot the the skinny singles no because it hadn't happened yet that's right

okay this is a perfect example quick story time so I have a friend who loves skinny singles and we

have a really small local tournament at a local park that's run every year and the guy who runs it

likes to do a skinny singles event kind of goofy pretty fun not a ton of people sign up but they're

good players a lot of fiveos so I go I'm hanging out with my buddy that day and I go with him just

to watch I'll warm him up cheermon watching play not expecting to play it all didn't bring my bag

didn't bring any gear I'm wearing sweatpants like you're in slides I'm I mean ufo slides just

watching the tournament director goes Isaac after I warmed up my buddy we had a guy not show up

or kind of drop out do you want to play and I joke is like well I'm not really prepared I don't

have my stuff I'm playing in slides but I could and so he asked around in the bracket like do you

guys mind if Isaac jumps in and everyone's like yeah that's fine so I'm like all right I'm playing

a tournament in slides and as you go well I don't have a paddle so my buddy his girlfriend I grab her

very used extremely old boomstick from like the first batch edge guards coming off pretty much

around the entire paddle it's a wide body and has zero grit left I'm talking this thing is smoother

than a Z five first match I win 11 one second one I think I win 11 three third one who's a very good

singles player like he plays five oh singles tournaments all the time I beat him 11 one then my next

match is 11 oh unfortunately I did end up getting fourth in the tournament the guy who won I lost

to him in bracket play and then went to the third place match and then unfortunately I lost there

was just kind of running as Steven it was getting cold I could not shape the ball at all like drives

not even a point like I could not hit anything with spin so again not my paddle not shoes

still doing well so I'm sorry to see you I would not lose to you that badly and skinny singles

with you in slides I have a plan we'll go do it right now we can do it sometime we can do it

for the next pot and we can report back I'm not losing like that there's no way go get that

boomstick again just so we can make it exactly how well so my whole entire point of telling that

story is I can play with anything and my point is I'd be better than I was if I didn't do this job

it's not that question was fun that was a funny one okay what is the point in talking about a

paddle without durable grit at this point this is an interesting question because I think it's

tough right like I would agree but it's so tricky I think there are segments of the market

were durable grit really matters and I want to do a whole video about this at some point

and there's another segment of pickable players where it in my opinion borderline does not matter

I really think that between 3 0 and 3 5 that grit does not matter that much I'm not saying that

there are not people at those levels that cannot put spin on the ball there are 3 5 tennis players

or we're good tennis players and they come in and they're having a hard time adjusting to pick

able they can hit a great drive and they can shape it but there are 3 5 because of other aspects

but I really think for the mass market most of those players are not putting a lot of spin on

their shots I even recently I've played with a lot of different levels and I'm watching them play

and I'm going whether you had a smoother paddle or one that could produce 2700 RPM it wouldn't

really matter which one you're playing with now I think as you go up it can matter more right you

start getting to 4 5 you start getting to 5 0 generally hidden with a lot of top spin maybe some

slice and other different things and it does start to matter we had a small technical difficulty we

had to cut there for a second because we thought our cameras were not on they're on we're good

but the the point I'm trying to make is that at higher levels generally speaking you're going to be

putting more spin on the ball you know more like backhand flicks backhand rolls tops and drops

slice drops and it's probably going to matter more and having your paddle be consistently good

matters because if you can hit great spin one day but the next day it's gone well now you're

changing your game and it gets really difficult but even within that you and I both know some players

that are 5 0s that the way they play is just not very spin heavy and so whether you give them an

1800 RPM paddle or a 2500 RPM paddle doesn't change how they play it really just isn't going to

make a big difference maybe on a couple shots here that it's like oh yeah okay I got a little bit

more spin but the vast majority of their game is just not built around spin so I'm saying all of

that to say that yes I hope all companies move towards it and releasing a non durable grid option

today is probably going to come across lazy and probably not going to perform very well but

you like the Friday or a pro it has raw carbon fiber there's going to be a lot of people who would

really like that paddle and if you're in like the lower demographic of play like 3035 you might

love everything about that paddle and spin just might not matter that much to you yes well and I was

going to say I think all extremely valid points but also I don't know if we've really covered the

entire spectrum of field profiles with what durable grits we have yeah and so there are still

paddles that feel really good that play really good that don't have a durable grid again the or a

pro being one of them I would take that over a lot of durable grip paddles we have if I'm going to

play a competitive match yep yep so I think there's just a lot of there's simultaneously there's

an over emphasis on grit and an under emphasis on grit because for certain players it's going to be

really important it might be their number one most important thing and then I think there's other

people where they're hearing about all this durable grit and they're going okay it's really

important I really need it but then you watch them playing you're like you really actually don't

need a durable grid and that's not a bad thing that's not a knock on that player's not saying you're

bad at pickleball it's just the the stage of pickleball you are in right now it's almost a good thing

because you don't have to worry about all this nonsense ever you're on yeah use whatever you

want and it's great so I think if you know spins really important to you then sure okay but I do

think if I gave a good chunk of people like a 24 hundred RPM paddle and then gave some other people

like 1900 there's a lot of people that couldn't tell me the difference I really think that yep so

just kind of depends how in tune you are with gear and what level you're playing so all that to say

I think there is still some validity in talking about a paddle without durable grit but hopefully

you know as the year goes on just everyone will have it and there hopefully won't be issues and then

it'll all be good you know next one how to get out of your own head when playing intense competitive

matches uh this is an interesting one because I I feel like I had this uh somewhat recently but

actually I'll just tell this story so when we were playing at our house the other day we had the

the three better I was the worst player of the group it's been a while since I've played in a group

like that and for like the first game or two I just wasn't playing that well and I started like

getting in my head I was like oh man like I'm playing bad everyone's gonna be thinking about me

playing bad this is kind of embarrassing I was like I know I'm a better player than this blah blah blah blah

blah and then at some point I was like it just doesn't matter like I'm friends with all these people

no one's like yeah maybe they'll make a joke or two but like at the end of the day it doesn't

really matter and then I saw this real on Instagram the other day I think it was uh worry McElroy

or whatever he had done like a press conference he's a pro golf player and he was talking about

kind of a similar question like how do you get out of your head or when you're having a bad day like

what do you do to fix it and one of the things he was talking about was he was like he would start

thinking to himself well what's the worst that could happen okay I shank the ball and it goes over

by the water what's the worst thing that happens I have to hit another stroke and I am a good enough

player that I can probably get out of that situation it's not like anyone's gonna die yeah so I guess

it depends like what part of in your head you're thinking about but then I started thinking about that

I was like okay if I was in a tournament because I've had a lot of times where I will feel like

embarrassed while I'm playing the tournament I'm like I'm playing so bad this is embarrassing I

have friends watching like I wish I was playing better but it's like at the end of the day what's

the worst that's gonna happen your friends are probably still gonna be friends with you you'll

play another tournament it'll be fine you know so I think for me I just kind of started thinking about

like it's just not that big of a deal yeah that's yeah for sure I think that's good and I mean that

takes it to a pretty extreme on in in my head in terms of like in the middle of a match routine is

probably the biggest thing having a and this is even if you're not in your head just for

getting better at pickleball I think having a routine matters if you're having a bad streak in a

match you've lost a bunch of points first of all take a time out just take a breather slow the

momentum down reset mentally and then having a rate routine just kind of reminds your body of like

what you're about to do body's very smart your muscle memory matters so like I have some breathing

patterns and stuff I do you know like you'll see a lot of players go to the back fence like tap

defense with their paddle like small things like that just having a routine changes kind of the

mindset of your body and getting back into that competitive setting that that has been the biggest

thing for me I also think if you are getting like if you're someone who gets upset like

little burst of anger and then gone like it's over like don't let it build and get even more

frustrated I think you know like a little slap on your leg something like that and then boom you're

not mad anymore let it go I think that's that's really important yeah I think those are good

thoughts as well for sure all right next one what could be the next big advancement in paddle tech

or has it reached its limit well first of all has it reached its limit has been said multiple times

over now when gen two came out everyone thought it couldn't get better then when gen three came

out everyone thought it couldn't get better and now the same thing is happening with foam and

durable grit so I'm not even gonna make a prediction or say that we're at the limit because I'm sure

somehow it'll get better but if or when it finally does reach its limit it's like okay what could

people work on to me one of the biggest things still missing quality control things breaking like

yes quality control is an issue in every industry but it definitely feels like pickleball has a very

abnormal amount of issues that should not happen on equipment that is this expensive so once

performance is a non-issue and everyone has a great durable grit everyone knows what makes a good

power paddle control paddle whatever and that's kind of solved I hope that QC and build quality is

like the next frontier because it's crazy to me that every review feels like you have to have a

caveat of like well the edge guard came loose there's always something so that's what I hope it'll

be when it's reached its limit yeah I agree I also don't think we've really reached a limit in

performance but I do think we need to fix these small things yep agreed uh how do you know when

you're ready to come back from an injury I thought this was a good question because I just have

this happen I feel like depending on the injury there are a number of things one if it's a very minor

injury you'll probably just kind of know if you've had like a chronic issue kind of like what I had

I think it is less about knowing a single moment like oh I'm good enough to play and it's going to be

a lot of small moments where you just notice it keep getting a little bit better so let's say you're

in a lot of pain and you start doing all these exercises and you reintroduce play slowly let's

say you start with 15 minutes of just like dinking and you're like okay that felt good that didn't hurt

hey but you know an hour hurts right start with 15 minutes okay I'm good then later you try 30

minutes okay I'm still good or maybe it's a little bad thing like okay I'm gonna ease off I'm

gonna go to 20 minutes and then you keep building up and once you pass the threshold that you know

would hurt you you're like okay hey I'm doing better and then you add a little bit more time and you

keep adding time and that's kind of what I'm finding for myself right now is I am better but I'm

not perfect after the tournament this weekend I felt great actually the whole evening and then

randomly my back just got really tight and I was like oh no here we go again and the next morning I

was still tight so I took it easy and then the next day I was fine so clearly like a four or five

hour tournament is still tough for me but you know a two hour session I'm making it through those

like pretty okay these days so to me it's not a oh hey I'm fixed I'm back it's like a I'm continuing

to work on this and trying to build capacity yeah and I think that's how it would be for a lot of

people with like a chronic wrist injury tennis elbow shoulder injury knee injury I think a lot of

it depends on how bad is your injury yeah and then also like okay is this affecting you doing

something less physical than pickleball then obviously don't play like if you're doing day to

day stuff and it's bothering you then you're probably not ready to come back and play competitive

games yes but if you can go through your day to day life you know carry things pick heavy stuff up do

whatever it doesn't matter what your injury is walk around if it's any problems yep and that's fine

then yeah I probably start reintroducing you know more physical play but yeah I think you got to

got to be able to get through get through the day without paying first a grade all right last question

we'll wrap this up with thought this was fitting with the loco so I'm gonna harp on this again

because I'm not letting this go someone said is the wide body shape slowly dying

unfortunately it feels like the answer is yes to that question but I would like to make that

answer no so this is gonna be like you know it's like like uh uh like local politics it'll be like

go contact your representatives go contact all the companies you enjoy and let them know we demand

more wide by this I if one more company that makes a good paddle drops the wide body I will make it

my soul mission in pickleball you can have a really small demographic of people with really

loud voices okay uh-huh you can have all your your people your little group you know send these

emails but at the end of the day people vote with their wallet and guess what sells the best

e long gave it so here's an interesting thing on a more serious note talking about this I'm curious

what you think of this because I really feel like like look you know for let's just say for high

level people a long get is the best shape like look I'll give you that I think the high level players

they're very in tune they know what they like that's fine I'm not even gonna argue that but I really

feel like with the different shapes like look how much hybrid has increased in popularity over the

recent years for sure especially with like a flat top hybrid it doesn't look that different from

an elongated but you are getting a better sweet spot on almost all of the hybrid shapes because

they're a little bit wider and I think we're seeing a lot of players that are going you know what

I'm actually okay with a hybrid even if they liked an elongated paddle so I'm really starting to

and I think a lot of that is because it looks similar to an elongated like I really think a lot of

people's hold up with a wide body versus an elongated is how it looks because it does just look

a little bit more goofy right like there are some wide bodies that look really odd some of them look

like frying pans and I think that trips people up so part of me really wonders if let's say everyone

425 and below if for a year all they could play with was wide body and then let's just say you

could bring a long get it back I am really curious if people gave a wide body a truly fair shot

if people at the end of that would feel like oh you know what I still if the masses would still say oh

I prefer an elongated because I really feel like for 4 oh and below there are huge advantages to

a wide body yeah like the sweet spot being bigger is a big advantage in my opinion so I just I

think there's a lot of hold up on they see their friends using elongated and it is the most

popular say like well that's what I'm gonna buy because I see everyone else using it and I really

wonder if we could just do an experiment if let's just say that you you did that where everyone

had to use a wide body of course everyone's going to be able to get used to whatever you're just

going to have to change how you play right so yeah if everyone had to use a wide body people would

adjust and get used to it but you wouldn't be able to hit a lot of the same shots in my opinion I

would I have to change my play style quite a bit when I play with an elongated elongated versus a

wide body there are a lot of attacks and volleys speed ups that I would not pull the trigger on with

a wide body that I would with an elongated then I will let's think about this I would say the vast

majority of players I probably man what is I wish I had the duper stats in front of me right now but

80% in below are of the population is probably four oh and below do you think them using a wide

body versus the elongated drastically alter how they would have to play right I agree no I don't

think so I think they're just going to play their game now I agree amongst the lower level people

again that man that just sounds wrong so harsh I don't mean that in an assault insulting way yeah

right like please no one think I'm I'm trying to be rude when I say that I don't think that's

going to change how what shots they hit what they go for it really does mainly apply to realistically

50 plus yeah I just think starting with an elongated is the way to go okay but if you took

three ohs to four ohs do you think I'm curious sorry to cut you off yeah if we took someone at that

level who is not already in tune or used to a particular shape correct how much worse are they going

to play say the sweet spot yeah sweet spot smaller than elongated how much worse are they going to

play and how many more shots are they going to make unforced errors with elongated how big is

that difference going to be yeah right no I just can't say yeah right there's no I think there are

advantages for lower level people to use wide bodies especially if you haven't played for a long

time maybe your your your wrist strength isn't quite yeah built up built up or used to the weight of

an elongated paddle even though they are getting lighter yeah and it's just easier to swing a wide

body because they are lighter there are definitely advantages I just think again for maximum performance

in competitive play you just cannot argue elongated and the wallets that at all the wallets tell it

all the wallets do tell I don't know it's it's very interesting like I've it has made me wonder how

much of elongated being the most popular is due to everyone just seeing people with it and go okay

well that's what I got a buy and wide bodies looking a little funny because you know I used to also

being elongated player like for most of playing pickleball and then when the double black diamond came

out I was like oh hybrids are actually kind of sick like I really like the idea of a hybrid and then

I started dabbling with wide bodies and I was like oh I actually really like this a lot so I kind of

have the you know reverse uh journey or whatever but I don't know just makes me wonder it's like I

I think it's unfortunate how little the wide body does sell for companies because I feel like the

benefits are really understated like I almost feel like there's this feeling amongst a lot of

players that if you were playing with a wide body that people are almost like looking at you weird like

you're not using an elongated or something and I feel like that almost stigma yeah like a stigma

type of thing and I'm just like man I don't know I think it would be better for some people but look

if you're already used to one shape I'm not saying hey switch and you'll just automatically be better

yeah you know if you're used to it you know stick with whatever you like or whatever but I do think

people should you know give it a shot for sure yeah I also think a lot of wide bodies need less

tuning with weight that too yeah so for for people who don't want to mess around with that that is

that is a plus yeah um but again I just I just think hybrids are getting better sweet spots across

the board are getting better like let's take elongated I would say elongated sweet spots now

are better than wide body sweet spots of of a gen two you know right so like I think sweet spots if

you're used to a gen two wide body sweet spot and you go to in elongated foam paddle you're

probably gonna think it's even better on that right so I think sweet spots have gotten sweet spots

have gotten so much better that it's hard to say oh well the sweet spot elongated is just so bad

yeah right it's like they're not really that bad anymore yeah I just kind of feel like I guess the

other thing I'm thinking about too is I guess it kind of goes both ways I guess there's multiple

ways you could look at it if if you have a lower mobility elongated would be nice because you get

a little bit of extra reach but then my I guess counter argument would be how often at a 30 to 40 level

or even up to 4 to 5 let's say how often are you truly reaching in and you need that last half an

inch and that at that level is the reason you made the ball or didn't make the ball maybe

sometimes but like it's not like at the 5 5 level or something where you're literally

eakin out every like quarter inch you can get to hit that ball and so it feels like to me the

benefit of having more reach is maybe not huge outside of maybe the demographic of people

that have less mobility and then I'll I'll give it to you that reach probably is important yeah yeah

I mean maybe not a ton of huge advantages for for the majority of people but I think as you get

better those advantages start to make a bigger difference yeah I'm gonna have to start a campaign

start a campaign for the wide body bro look at the wall I'm gonna mission look at the wall right

now I'm seeing more elongated on this wide body wide body wide body wide body I don't know

I think your eyes just fix it and your eyes just say a wide body so I mean look let's

so sell Kirk is gonna be dropping it bread and butter is dropping it I think there's

going to be a trend in the industry here we just need yola to drop it bro there's no way they do

that to their like Annabrae no they won't they won't but it'd be hilarious I'm just I'm just

gonna put it out here now maybe maybe you know I'm being nice guy out here I'm trying to be

logical and give people reason why they might want to use a wide body maybe I got to start making

threats maybe I got to start saying if you if your company doesn't produce a wide body you're

just blocked by pickleball studio maybe shoot a video where I we I play in slides with a wide

body and you play in shoes with elongated and we see wins I'm winning with either shame if you're

in slides so okay this is probably a super long podcast if you made it this far the word of the

week is wide body thank you very much but if you made it as far we appreciate you listening and

we will catch you guys next week I'll be having good one peace