Pickleball Therapy

Episode 308: The Definitive Guide to Out Ball Disputes Here's the situation. Score is 10-9-2. Your team is serving. You hit a volley, crisp, and it lands right on the line. A hair in or a hair out. Your opponent calls it out. You're sure it was in. What now? Most of us go straight to the challenge. That instinct makes sense. You saw what you saw, the point mattered, and nobody likes losing a game on a call they don't agree with. But before you say anything, run through a few questions. Who created the situation? You did. You hit the ball so close to the line that your friend was put in an impossible spot. Unless you believe they're cheating you, they made the best call they could in a situation you handed them. Where is this conversation going? They say out. You say you saw it in. They say they saw it out. Then what? Even if nobody escalates, the temperature on that court already changed the second you opened your mouth. Is there enough riding on it? Is this point worth spending your friendship capital on? Are you 100% sure you're right? Would you bet your life on it? I clipped a call like this recently and zoomed all the way in. I still couldn't tell you. I wouldn't bet a dollar on it. And if we want to play by the rules, the rules are clear about whose call it is. Theirs. Last one. Flip it around. They serve, you call their ball out, and they come at you about it. How does that feel? Work through those questions, and the answer shows up on its own. Move on. Don't pause. Don't look twice. Toss the ball, serve, carry on. In competitive play with a referee, an appeal is fine. That's what referees are for. An appeal is not a dispute. And here's the part that matters most. Those same filters work off the court. Is it worth the cost? Where is this going? Am I sure? How would this feel from the other side? That's a useful screen for a lot of disagreements that have nothing to do with pickleball. You're out there to play, see your friends, and have a good time. Protect that. In the riff, I take you behind the scenes on the new course we're building here at Tony Roig Pickleball. It starts from a premise I want you to sit with: you are a capable, intelligent adult, and you can learn to navigate this game yourself. My job is to transfer what I know to you. Yours is to go play. A thank you to the founding members who have joined us. This coaching, including this podcast, is possible because of you. It means a lot. Be well, Tony

Christine Hobson retired at 60. Two days later, she ran her first marathon. She has run more than 100 since. Every continent. A world record in Antarctica. And when she describes it, she does not lead with the marathons. She leads with what the first one taught her: she had been underestimating herself the whole time. That is the topic this week. We do this as humans. We try something, it does not go well, and we file it away as evidence. Enough of those and we start building a case against ourselves. I hear it constantly when I suggest pickleball to somebody. I'm too old. I'm too out of shape. I'm too late. Fill in the blank. There is a second story in the episode that lands the same point from a different angle. A woman on a date says, almost by accident, that in another universe she would be a stand-up comedian. She had never said it out loud before. Her date asks the obvious question back: why not in this universe? She gave him the list of reasons. He kept peeling them back. She became a stand-up comedian. So here is the pickleball version. You have a picture of yourself out on the court. The player who sees the game better, who puts the ball where they meant to put it, who feels good walking on. If that player is a 3.5 and you are a 2.5, there is nothing structural stopping you. Not tomorrow. Maybe not in six months. But in eighteen months, with a clear plan and a clear sense of what you are working on, absolutely. To be sure, some things really do impede you. Bad information impedes you. Bad guidance impedes you. Coming at the game from a purely technical angle, where you need to know the exact paddle angle and exactly where each toe points, impedes you, because that is not how the brain learns to play. Those are real. Everything else on your list, you put there. And to be clear, none of this is a directive. Nobody needs to reach a level. If you are happy playing exactly the way you play now, that is a fine place to be. But if there is a version of you out ahead that you actually want, do not be the one blocking the path. **The riff: two ways to handle adversity** Missing a shot is an adverse event. Small on the scale of adversity, but real inside the game. First situation. My partner and I are stacked. The return of serve comes back hard, with spin, into the far corner. He has to cover a lot of ground and hit a very difficult backhand. He catches the top of the net. Good effort, hard shot, no issue. He apologizes. I tell him there is nothing to apologize for, that it was a great return and a tough ask from that position, and that I am not upset. He apologizes again. Then he says it: I shouldn't miss that. He processed it the same way today that he processed it a few years ago. It is a loop, and it costs him something every time. Second situation. Last game of the day, court one, score somewhere in the fours, evenly matched. My focus wandered off. I do not know where it went, but it left. I missed a few shots I do not normally miss. I could have hunkered down and demanded that focus come back. But there is no switch to flip. Ebbs and flows in attention are the most natural thing in the world. They happen to full-time professional athletes in every sport. So I told my partner: pick me up, I'll be back in a few minutes. And I was. We lost that game, but we tightened it up and made it competitive down the stretch. Same category of event. Two very different relationships with it. The second one gives you a calmer mind, and a calmer mind sees the court better and hits the next ball better. That is not a soft benefit. That is the mechanism. **Extra coaching tip** Notice who your partner is apologizing to. When a player says sorry after a difficult miss, they are usually not apologizing to you. They are apologizing to the version of themselves who was supposed to make that shot. That is why reassurance from you does not land. You cannot answer an expectation you did not set. What you can do is name the difficulty of the shot out loud, once, and then move on to the next point with your own body language completely neutral. You are not arguing with their standard. You are just declining to feed it. Be well, Tony

You put a filter on your kitchen sink. You don't want debris getting into your plumbing.So here's the question a Buddhist monk asked on a podcast recently: how many of us have a filter for our mind? This week we look at filtration. Not the sink kind. The kind that decides which pickleball information gets into your head and which information gets blocked at the door. There is a lot of content out there. Some of it is wrong. Some of it is incomplete. Some of it is fine, but not for you, not right now. Without a filter, all of it goes down the drain and clogs up your thinking. Tony walks through how to build a filtration system: start with a short list of trusted sources, then strengthen the filter as your understanding of the game grows. He also flags one of the easiest filters you can use today — what to do when the coaching starts with "this is what I do." Then in the riff: "What level is this camp for?" It sounds like a reasonable question. Tony makes the case that it is actually a filter working against you. We all play the same game. Same court. Same rules. Same fundamentals. Serve, return, volleys. The player who executes those better wins. That is true at 2.5 and it is true on the pro tour, which is why Anna Leigh Waters does not sleep on her fundamentals.Don't chase magic. There is no drawer of magic shots. Mentioned in this episode: Tap Into Your Flow — free 5-week coaching series, in progress now. Get on the email list at tonyroigpickleball.com and you'll get the invite. Camp schedule is live. Not sure which camp fits? There's a "Schedule a Call" button on the camp page . It's free, and a member of the coaching team will help you sort it out.If you enjoy the podcast, please consider rating and reviewing it. It helps other players find us. And share it with a friend — if you liked it, they probably will too.

Episode 305: Ridiculously Optimistic The clip I open this one with a message from a content creator who goes by Writer's Cramp. The theme: be ridiculously optimistic about your future, aim higher than seems reasonable, and do not let other people talk you out of what you want. Worth the ninety seconds. These messages always strike me the same way. You hear them and think, well, yes, obviously. So then ask yourself the real question. Why wouldn't you live that way? What you actually control Let's be clear about the limits. You cannot control how a game turns out. You cannot directly control how the other players behave, though you have more indirect influence there than you might think, mostly through how you carry yourself. What you control completely is how you choose to interact with the events that happen to you. On the court and off it. That is not a consolation prize. That is the piece that determines your experience. On being scared There was a line in the clip about being scared being part of being alive. That one applies directly to improvement. I think of the mental side of pickleball in three parts. Perspective, which is what Pickleball Therapy: The Book covers. Play, which is the next book. And improvement, which is the third, because improving carries its own mental weight. Improvement is scary. You are leaving the thing you already do well and moving toward something you do not do well yet. That is uncomfortable by design. It is also when you feel most alive, because that is when you are growing. The story: let's just get four Last week I was playing in an eight-player group. My friend David and I partnered up for the last game against Jeff and Patrick, two good players. David had not had a great session. Before we started I told him: let's just get four points. He looked at me. Four? I was not being serious about the ceiling. But watch what it does. We score one, and we are a quarter of the way there. We score two, halfway. We get stuck at three for a while, three quarters. Then we hit four. And now think about it functionally. I have to get to four anyway. Nobody counts to eleven without passing four first. So the target was never a lowered bar. It was a real checkpoint on the way to the same destination. Once we got there I told him, let's go for six. We got six. Then we pushed it again. We won the game. Why it works Pressure comes from measuring yourself against something you do not control. The final score is not yours to control. A checkpoint on the way there is. And here is the part that makes it hold up: if we had lost that game 11-4, I still get to turn to David and say, I told you we were getting four. The metric survives the loss. The other version: time I talked a few weeks back about using time the same way. Same group, playing with Jeff, and our opponents Tyson and Scott could not miss. All credit to them, they were out of their minds. We were down 8-2 and the clock read something-25. I told Jeff, let's get to 30. On the clock, not the scoreboard. We got to 31 and I put my hands up. Victory. We lost that game. We won on our metric. If you come up with your own If you find a version of this that works for you, I want to hear it. Drop it in the comments, post it in the TRP Community under the podcast, or email me. Fair warning that my response time depends on what else is going on, but the address is open. In the riff Camp schedule is live The 2026 and early 2027 camps are posted. You have been asking, so go take a look. One principle that matters to us: if you look at a camp and the number does not work for you right now, email us and tell us what is doable. To be clear about what that is and is not. It is not a discount program. The value is there at the stated price. The signature camp includes the online course, pre-camp experiences, and the community, so there is a whole structure around the two days. What it is: a way for cost not to be the reason you don't get coached. We don't ask follow-up questions. We don't ask for a bank statement. No guarantee we can make every request work, but we will do our best. Tap Into Your Flow update The series is underway. Five weeks, one piece at a time, and it is free. Week one establishes the connection between rhythm and the sport. We have done a version of this at camps for years, where players dink with their eyes closed and hear the metronome underneath the rally. Rush it, and the sound changes. What has been interesting for me as a coach is pulling the pieces together for this series. Putting music next to pickleball footage makes it obvious in a way that talking about it never quite did. You can watch the rally move with the music. If your play feels forced, one position to the next, paddle up, paddle back, staccato, this is for you. And the name is the point. I am not teaching you to flow the way I flow. The flow is already in you. You are a human being who has made it this far on this planet. It is in there. What gets in the way is interference, most of it self-issued, our own minds handing out instructions that keep us from moving cleanly through a shot. The series includes written materials, videos, and music. You will also come away knowing more about Johann Strauss and the Blue Danube than you expected from a pickleball newsletter. Links and contacts Camps: tonyroigpickleball.com/camps Camp cost conversations: camps@tonyroigpickleball.com Email Tony: tony@tonyroigpickleball.com Tap Into Your Flow: free with the email list at tonyroigpickleball.com TRP Community: tonyroigpickleball.com

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

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

Episode 300. Hard to believe. What are the mosquitoes in your pickleball? Your opponent's shot that trickles over the net. The unlucky bounce. The gust of wind. The wrong call. The lead you watched slip away. Each one is just part of the game, and each one can derail you if you let it. If you can identify your mosquitoes before they show up, you'll be ready when they do. And the better you get at it on the pickleball court, the better you get at it in life. Show Notes:

In this episode, I explore two important ideas that can help you build a healthier and more productive relationship with pickleball. The first is why your pickleball journey belongs to you and how recognizing your own agency can help you navigate challenges, setbacks, and social dynamics on the court. Then we examine why so many players get distracted by so-called "magic bullets" and why lasting improvement comes from focusing on fundamentals rather than shortcuts. Show Notes:

Let's explore this mental performance concept I call the “I Care Beam”—the idea that the significance we assign to pickleball experiences is entirely within our control. By consciously focusing our attention on the aspects of the game that bring us joy, growth, friendship, and health, we can reduce the emotional weight of mistakes and losses. Listen to the full episode for a fresh way to engage with pickleball and protect your enjoyment of the sport. Show Notes:

In this special episode, Tony sits down with Neely Sullivan and Natasha Linton, the co-hosts of the Real Housewives of Pickleball podcast, for a conversation on how they each came to pickleball, what Neely and Natasha took away from their recent interview with Anna Bright (especially her use of the word "conscious"), and why focusing on one or two things per rec session is more useful than trying to fix everything at once. Listen in for these and more on peaks and valleys, and Tony's reframe of what a "valley" really is. Show Notes:

The better your body feels, the better you play. And the better you live. In this episode we discuss the idea of nutritious movement (the same way you need a variety of foods, you need a variety of ways your body moves and loads), and why walking outside does more for you than almost anything else you can do. Rediscover movement patterns you may have lost because there is no shame in needing to relearn how to jump, or walk, or anything else your body used to do without thinking. Show Notes:

In this special episode, I sit down with Nick Dawson at Rally House in Carlsbad, California, to talk about the other side of the house. The side most of us never see. You will hear how Nick went from a backyard court during Covid to an 11-court club, why the permitting took 11 months and not the 5 he expected, and what it actually takes to turn an empty warehouse into a place a community calls home. Here's the thing: if we don't have facilities, we don't play. The courts, the lights, the air conditioning, all of it costs money to build and to run. So when you make decisions about where to play, it's worth keeping that in mind. Show Notes: 1539-special-episode-rallying-at-the-rally-house-with-nick-dawson

A healthier and more productive way to measure progress on the pickleball court is to evaluate growth through points earned, rallies extended, and resilience shown under pressure. If you’ve ever felt discouraged by results that don’t reflect your effort or improvement, this episode offers a mindset shift that can transform how you approach your development as a player. Show Notes:

Pickleball strengthens far more than your game —it is a pathway toward a stronger body, a sharper mind, and a fuller life. In this episode, we draw on reflections at the PPA Tour and a powerful article on pickleball and Parkinson’s disease to examine the connection between movement, balance, cognitive growth, and emotional well-being because pickleball is more than just better shots. Show Notes: ‎

In this episode, we explore the powerful mental framework of “self-one” and “self-two” so you, as a pickleball player, can become more intentional about which internal voice you choose to follow. Drawing from both classic sports psychology and real-world competition, we highlight how leaning into the supportive voice—rather than the critical one—can transform performance and enjoyment on the court. Listen in to learn how to strengthen your mental game and stay engaged, even in tough matches. Show Notes: