Pickleball Therapy

It can be important for us to know that we are walking forward along our path. This week we share with you some thoughts about this process. We also share with you how to frame out the battle out on the court - the struggle is real :). This is a Vault Episode. You can join us inside the System here. Sign up here to get our weekly emails . You can find our mental book recommendations here. If you l...

Happy 2023. We are going to get right back into the swing of things. First: are you protecting your pickleball journey? You have agency over what you allow to come into your journey - use the agency. We give you some tips to help you keep the barbarians at the gate (good book if you are looking for one). In the riff we discuss achievability. Perhaps you have objectives that you want to achieve in...

Last episode of 2023. Checking ourselves to get ready for 2023 and learning a technique that will help us get where we want to go. If you are ready for more, join us for the 3-part course and when you are really really serious, we will see you inside the System. Have a happy new year. Here is our 2023 blog post with the worksheets you can use to improve your game: https://wearepickleball.com/whats...

In this week's episode, we re-share with you Episode 91 to help you have the tools you need to make 2023 your best pickleball year yet. If you want to really do the work, you are going to want to get our downloadable worksheets. There is some work to be done in there, but it will help you with your game for sure. If you are on our mail list you already got a link to the article and worksheets. If...

2022 is almost in the books. what does 2023 have in store for you as a pickleball player? More importantly, as a curious player who wants to see how well you can play this game. In this week's episode, we give you some tools to look backward and forward. But if you want to really do the work, you are going to want to get our downloadable worksheets. There is some work to be done in there, but it w...

In this week's podcast I share some of myself with you. More specifically, some of my pickleball journey. From first hitting a pickleball through the medal stand in Senior Mixed Pro at this last weekend's PPA tournament in Orlando. I share it with you so that you know two things: 1. You can achieve whatever your goal is in pickleball and 2. As long as you remain curious, there is always more to le...

This week we share Mark's story with you. Hear how pickleball impacted Mark for the better. It is always helpful to hear from other players like us. In the riff, I share with you how I break down a match video to find trends and see what strategies work and which ones do not. If you have a story you want to share with us, send it to us at Coaching@WeArePickleball.com. Please let us know that we ha...

Oftentimes when we lose a game we feel like we failed. The same is true when we win: we feel like we succeeded. This, however, wrongly conflates  success/failure with winning/losing. Here is the thing, though, you can fail completely and still win and you can 100% succeed and still lose. Think of a pro match at the highest level. All players are highly skilled and can hit all the shots, so to spea...

Confidence is “a feeling of self-assurance arising from one’s appreciation of one’s own abilities or qualities.” Two parts then that we need to feel confident on the pickleball court: (a) ability and (b) appreciation of this ability. The result: feeling of self-assurance. You know what destroys our confidence? Doubt. More specifically, doubt in our ability. Doubt can originate from one of two plac...

Focus will ebb and flow when you play pickleball. It is the most natural of things. But there are things you can do to improve your focus, particularly in those crucial moments: the pivot points of a game. In this episode we give you several tips you can use to improve your focus - while giving you the proper framing: focus will come and  focus will go. It is part of any athlete's experience. In t...

The best is when the lessons from the top pro players are things that can help us in our games and also things that are achievable by us - not matter our level. I had the opportunity to speak with two of the two senior pros in pickleball at the recent APP tournament in Hilton Head, SC. Scott Crandal and Jose Derisi had come back to win the gold medal in the men's senior pro division the day before...

Sometimes we lose sight of the bowl of ice cream that we have in front of us. We did not get sprinkles, or fudge, or whipped cream in our ice cream. Does that make the bowl of ice cream any less delicious? Reframing our relationship with pickleball can help us not only feel better about our games. It can make the difference in how we play on the court. Keeping a healthy mind is your most powerful...

Join us at ThePickleballSystem.com. Want to play your best? You want to keep your eye on the ball. Step 1 - what is going to give you the biggest benefit (bang for your buck)? Step 2- stay on the area identified in Step 1 as long as necessary. In the riff, we talk about a trick you can use to stay on track: time. Check out Episode 109 of Pickleball Therapy – the Podcast dedicated to Your Picklebal...

One of the best aspects of pickleball is open play. As a social sport, we get to play with pickleball players from all sorts of backgrounds and walks of life. While this is usually great, there are times when playing with "random" pickleball partners drawn from a stack of paddles can prove challenging. In this week's episode we answer a question (and it is one we hear fairly regularly) about playi...

Heading out to the Pickleball courts? Get yourself ready to play your best out there and to fully enjoy the day. In this special episode we help you get ready. Focusing on what it is important and preparing to ignore the noise out there will improve our chances out there. Think of this podcast as a checklist to get you ready for the day. If you enjoy the podcast, in addition to sharing it, make su...

When we think of winning as getting to 11 first and losing as when our opponents get to 11 before we do, we rob ourselves of the benefits that can come from score losing a game. The only way we grow as pickleball players is when we are pushed to do so - this often means losing in terms of the score in a game or match. Take advantage of these growth opportunities by focusing on what you can do to i...

As you learn more, it is important to accurately understand what you are hearing out there – including from us. Oftentimes we find that tips or instruction are misapplied or misunderstood by players. This not only undermines the potential benefit of the instruction. It can result in a negative impact by the misunderstood or misapplied instruction. It is critical that you properly understand what y...

All pickleball players have received advice about how to play the game, particularly when we were beginner pickleball players. Some of the advice is good: how to score a pickleball game, where to stand when your partner is returning serve (hopefully at the Non-Volley Line), etc. But there is also some bad (as well as at least not always applicable advice): forehand takes the middle, do not cross t...

None of us has unlimited time in our days, and certainly not unlimited time to work on our pickleball games. If we want to play our best pickleball, we must prioritize the areas of our game that are most important; those that will give us the biggest bang for our buck. For example, the third shot drop. Is it an important pickleball shot? Of course it is. But not always. For many players, the third...

Getting coached at the courts can be a tricky proposition. Sometimes the advice you are getting is correct: scoring, 2-bounce rule, and similar usually do not present a problem. But oftentimes the advice is wrong: rush to the NVZ on the 3rd shot, have to wait for the ball to bounce to step into the kitchen (non-volley zone), and forehand in the middle are much-repeated erroneous maxims. What do yo...

I was reminded this week about how negativity can affect the way we interpret information that is otherwise aiming to be helpful. It can also affect your mind when you are trying to play your best pickleball. Two things can happen: 1 - you are focusing on the negatives rather than the positives - if instead you change your focus on the positives you will allow them to crowd out the negatives and 2...

Dr. Peter Scales will change your relationship with pickleball - for the better. In this, our 100th Episode of Pickleball Therapy, we bring you a "greatest hits" of the several interviews we published with him early on in the podcast's life: Episodes 9, 10, 12, 14 and 15. If you have not had the pleasure of learning from Dr. Scaled before now, get ready. You can check out the full episodes by scro...

If you want to improve as a pickleball player, it helps to know what is important - what you should focus on. This will avoid you from exerting efforts on aspects of the game that will probably not generate the same results. In this episode of the Pickleball Therapy podcast we will give you what you need to work on (spoiler alert - it is actually the easier side of the game). Focus on this side of...

Save/tag this Episode and put it on after your day on the courts. Sometimes we have a good day out on the courts. Sometimes a not so good day. Perspective will help you maintain a balanced view of how your day went. In this episode we give you some tips to decompress from the day. Give it a listen and improve your perspective. You will feel better about the day, no matter what. Plus we give you so...

Save/tag this Episode and put it on when you are on your way to play. When you go out to play, avoid beating yourself up out there. Second guessing yourself, thinking you have failed, wondering what others are thinking, and similar feelings can wreck your day and also have a negative impact on how you play the rest of the day. In this week's episode we give you 5 Tips you can use to avoid beating...