Ep. 290 - Find Your Intensity Goldilocks Zone

[00:00:00.160] - Tony Roig Hello [00:00:05.600] - Tony Roig Welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. I hope you're having a great week. My name is Tony Roig. I'm your host of this weekly podcast bringing you tips and help helpful information to get you not just general pickleball improvement that we do that sometimes, but oftentimes we find ourselves talking about the mental aspects of pickleball, the mind, such a powerful part of our experience, our engagement with the sport. I just finished a recording of a podcast with my friend Natasha Linton and my new friend Neely Steinberg from the Real Housewives of Pickleball. [00:00:39.920] - Tony Roig We talked about a whole bunch of stuff. Highly recommend you check out that episode when it drops. But one of the things that, that I was, that they had discussed in a prior episode of their podcast was about a comment that was made by Leah Jansen, professional player, about intensity. In other words, about the idea of intensity and being too intense when you were in a practice. And so basically when something like this, where Leo was on the Pickle Pod podcast, the one by Zane Navertill and Nicola Lefty, and she was talking about, you know, players who say come on when they're in what she calls a practice session, right, which is a rec game or a non sanctioned, like a non tournament game. [00:01:22.930] - Tony Roig And, and basically it was like, you know, show me you're an amateur without telling me you're an amateur by saying, come on during a rec game. And her take was that you shouldn't, you shouldn't act like you just like won Wimbledon or something during a rec game. And so that got me thinking about this concept of intensity. So I'm going to dive into the concept of intensity in this podcast. We're going to talk about, you know, levels of intensity and how to maintain it while you're playing. [00:01:45.870] - Tony Roig So this will be, you know, this will help you while you're out there on the court. But before we dive into that, you know, I wanted to address the, the, the comment by Leia about saying, come on when you're in a rec game. And I think the, the issue there actually, actually has to do with context. You know, so Leia is a professional player. So Leia is going to, you know, the highest expression of the game for her is a championship, you know, Sunday match at the ppa, right? [00:02:17.640] - Tony Roig So that's the highest expression. And obviously any PPA tournament game would be a high expression of the game for her, for the average player, right. Wednesday morning at the local facility or at the YMCA or on the local courts, probably Going to be the highest expression of the game for us, right? And so I think, you know, I would, I would disagree with Leia on her framing of it. You know, if she's saying that, you know, as a pro player, she's not going to say, come on in a rec game. [00:02:44.080] - Tony Roig I respect that. That's perfectly fine. That's her, her right to do that. But I think, you know, as a rec player, you know, if you, if, if you're in your Wimbledon, right, you're playing in your Wimbledon and you're excited about it, I think it's perfectly fine to share that excitement with, with your emotions, right, with your, with your, with your state, with your statements, right? Come on. [00:03:03.920] - Tony Roig And things like that are perfectly fine. You know, I'll be playing, I play, you know, I play both tournaments and rec and then, you know, there's wreck times when I'm playing, you know, with my, with my group and we're having a fun time and then there's like a really nice shot and we'll, we'll hoot, holler, we'll do whatever, just having a good time, right? Enjoying the sport, enjoying this activity. So, but let's talk about intensity, right? In terms of like our playing, what is it, you know, how does it, how can we navigate that? [00:03:27.890] - Tony Roig How can we manage our intensity a little better? And intensity, right, is the idea of, of, you know, you can, you can think about it like being like a. Same as focus, right? Like intensity, focus, drive, like in, you know, being in the moment, if you will, while you're playing, being like locked in, right, in terms of what's going on on the court. And I think, you know, there's, there's. [00:03:51.470] - Tony Roig And you know what, what Leo was talking about was the expression of that intensity right through a command and things like that. That's just really like a, that's like a safety. Not a safety, but a release valve, right? Like you have the, the pressure cooker, you know, the little thing that goes on. Let's go. [00:04:06.470] - Tony Roig The pressure. Oftentimes those commands and things like that are those types of things. But let's talk about like how we, how we sometimes intensity and being too intense actually can hamper our play. And then talk a little bit about the ebb and flow of focus, the ebb and flow of intensity while we're playing out there. So the. [00:04:24.030] - Tony Roig I want to start with this idea of redlining, okay? And it's something that I've been looking at for a while now as I study this games, I study players who do It. And like in the pro game, there's a couple of players like on the, on the women's side, Kate Fahey is, is a pretty well known for being, you know, redlining, you know, like screaming directly at their opponent, you know, like in their face kind of a thing. And then in the men's side, you know, recently, last year, it was Federico Stacksrude was doing a lot of that where he was like, you know, he wasn't yelling at his opponent, but he was letting out these huge like, almost like werewolf transforming in the middle of the night kind of howls after rallies. And what I found is. [00:05:04.940] - Tony Roig And more in Federico than on Kate, because I've studied more Federico's matches towards the end of tournaments, right when I do my breakdowns is I've noticed that like when he was doing it, you could see like a negative effect based on what would happen next. So you see like uncharacteristic misses and things like that. Shortly after the, the big outburst, the big, you know, release. My sense of that is that what was happening was it was just too much release, right? It was almost like letting out too much steam, right, from the pressure cooker, if you will, and then you don't have enough pressure left to keep focusing, to keep going. [00:05:39.490] - Tony Roig So that's something I think it's worth considering, right when you're playing out there is, you know, if you're, if you're being. If you're letting off a lot of emotion while you're playing, whether it's commands, whether it's other things like that, be mindful of, of letting too much steam out of the pressure cooker. Because just like in a pressure cooker, you actually do want pressure in there, right? You want it to, you know, finish cooking the beans or whatever you have cooking in there. And if you release too much pressure, right, then they're not going to cook, which doesn't get the job done. [00:06:09.080] - Tony Roig When you're playing pickleball, it's natural to feel pressure, right? And I think I like Billie Jean King, the tennis great quote on this, where she said, you know, pressure is a good thing because pressure lets you know that you care, right? Feeling pressure lets you know you care about the activity. So pressure itself isn't bad. Too much pressure can be bad. [00:06:28.210] - Tony Roig Letting off too much pressure can be bad. So it's finding like a nice balance of pressure like the pressure cooker and keeping that going. And I think redlining or, you know, going too far on the, you know, either, you know, letting out too much pressure or Expressing too much pressure, I think can be troubling. And likewise, you can also, you know, you can have too low, right, to, you can go too low on the, on the focus on the intensity side. And that happens, right? [00:06:54.060] - Tony Roig Sometimes what happens is you're out there, maybe, you know, you're feeling some negative energy from your partner and things like that. So that can then affect you the other way, right? The, your intensity can go too low. So, you know, what, what can you do to find this balance of intensity, right, that's going to get you through the, get you through the, the match in the best way possible. One thing would be, you know, we each need to know ourselves, okay? [00:07:20.750] - Tony Roig So for some players, you know, you're more chill. Other players, you're less chill, right? That's just your personality. That's just how you're. That how you are. [00:07:28.630] - Tony Roig And what you want to do is find the Goldilocks zone. That works for you, right? Find the, the balance of, of intensity, right, without redlining, without going too far. That allows you to then stay in the moment, you know, focus on what's going on. Focus, you know, allows your brain clarity, right, to be able to, to do the, the job out there. [00:07:48.400] - Tony Roig And again, it's going to be different for you. So I don't have, like, I, I don't have a one size fits all here in terms of like, get to intensity level number five for you. But you know, one way to think about it would be using a scale, right? So you could say, okay on a 10 would be like, I'm completely out of my mind out there, right? Intensity, you know, it's too much like I'm, I'm gonna get crushed under the amount of pressure that I'm feeling right now. [00:08:10.150] - Tony Roig And then, you know, a one would be like, I don't. I could care less about what happens right now. I would say for most of us, if you can get to like 6 to 7 intensity, right, and keep it there the whole time, you're gonna be good. That's where like, you know, these outbursts of like, come on and stuff like that can potentially be detrimental. I'm not saying not to do it, right? [00:08:32.070] - Tony Roig But say like, you're. Say you're trying to stay within a 6 or 7, right? And you're like, right at a 7 or 7.1 and you say, come on, or a big high five to your partner or a chest bump or something like that, probably gonna stay around there. If you're around a 6 to 7 and all of a sudden you're like screaming like a crazy person out there and letting go. Everything. [00:08:48.270] - Tony Roig What happens is you go from a six to seven, maybe you're down to a three next time, right? Because you release so much energy. And one way to think about this piece that might help you is think about, like, when you finish the game. So you have a game that's a pressure game, right? So you're in one of these pressure games and it's just. [00:09:02.540] - Tony Roig You're feeling all the tension and then the game ends, right? There's a cathartic release, right? It's very natural. You have this cathartic release that happens after the cathartic release. You're not going to be able to perform like you did two minutes ago while you were in the middle of the tense match. [00:09:16.940] - Tony Roig There's a really interesting story that happened to tennis player Brad Gilbert. He wrote, I think it's called winning Ugly. And, you know, he was a top tennis player back in the day, but he, you know, he was very good player, but he never really got to the ranks of like a McEnroe or Connors. He was just like, right underneath that level of, of notoriety and success. But there was a match where he was playing Jimmy Connors. [00:09:39.160] - Tony Roig I think it might have been in the Open, but he played Jimmy Connors and he hadn't been Jimmy Connors. And so Jimmy Connors hits on match point, hits an overhead. It goes. It's long or out of bounds, I don't know, it's longer. Why? [00:09:49.600] - Tony Roig But it's out, called out. Jimmy comes up. I'm sorry, Brad comes up to the net to shake Jimmy's hands, you know, and basically when. When it. When the ball is out, called out, Brad releases everything. [00:10:02.050] - Tony Roig It's just all out, right? And Jimmy decides to challenge the call with the ref. This is back before all the videos and stuff like that. And the way Brad tells the story, after like three or four minutes, the ref overrules the call and calls it in. And what Brad said right in, in his. [00:10:18.540] - Tony Roig In his description of what happened was he was toast. Like, he was done. He had already released all of that energy, all of that intensity, all of that pressure right inside the pressure cooker was gone. He'd opened the lid, basically, and so now he just didn't have anything left to give. And then Jimmy ended up beating him in that match. [00:10:36.060] - Tony Roig But the. The idea here is, is, you know, you. You want to monitor your intensity and you want to get it around that, you know, 6 to 7 range for yourself and then do your best to keep it in that 6, 7 range, avoiding like, you know, excessive outbursts and also avoiding, I would submit, avoiding artificial bump ups. So an artificial bump up to me, and we see this a lot in the pro games when we're at the tournaments watching matches is you'll see the team go back to serve, right? And the two players, they're trying to pump each other up. [00:11:07.140] - Tony Roig So they're like, let's go. You know, it's go time now, now, now's our time. Let's go. Let's go. You know, all the time. [00:11:13.470] - Tony Roig And they just do it, they do it incessantly, right? Let's go. Oh, let's go now. Let's go. Here's the thing. [00:11:20.670] - Tony Roig If you use that all the time, guess what? It loses its, its meaning, right? It loses its, its power. It's, it's its impact. So if you want to use those kind of things, like, okay, let's go, or let's hunker down, let's focus. [00:11:35.390] - Tony Roig Use them sparingly, right? Use them when appropriate. Pick, you know, pull them out of your pocket and, and apply them. Use the card, if you will, when it makes sense to do so and when you really need it. If you use it all the time, then you, what are you going to use when you actually need something? [00:11:51.030] - Tony Roig Because if you're just saying let's go all the time, then what's the let's go for when you really, really, really want to? Let's go, right? So consider that idea, right, of not over utilizing tools that are intended to, to prop up your intensity. One thing that we teach in our coaching is in our camps and things like that is like, you know, return to serve position is absolutely critical right where you're standing to return surf. Being in a, in a, in a ready body position is important, right, in every rally. [00:12:19.720] - Tony Roig But then the idea is when you get into like a rally, that is particularly important, right? Particularly meaningful. It's like 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 8, whatever, something like that. Somebody's like, okay, we got to get this one. What I tell students is to crouch down a little bit more. [00:12:36.340] - Tony Roig So wherever you're standing, you basically come down like an inch or inch and a half more, right? That alerts your mind that, wait a minute, okay, there's something happening, right, that I need to pay more attention to. And that gets you ready to, you know, like the, the, the alert is up, right? So the, the, everything's, you know, the red lights are flashing. You got to pay attention now. [00:12:57.630] - Tony Roig It's super effective, works very well. But it wouldn't work well if you did it all the time. So if you basically squatted down an extra inch and a half every rally, now that becomes your new baseline, your new normal level of intensity, right? And so now you're gonna have to lower three hitches, right? Or whatever. [00:13:11.790] - Tony Roig So. So it's a kind of these techniques of let's go, or hey, you know, let's. Let's hunker down now. So that kind of thing. Use those sparingly to get you to that. [00:13:21.390] - Tony Roig Again, six to seven, I think is a good range to think of in terms of intensity. And then the last thing I want to leave you with on this is understand that your intensity or your focus is going to ebb and flow. There's no way that you can operate at 100. Max Focus, Max intensity for an entire. For an entire session. [00:13:38.250] - Tony Roig It's just not a thing, you know? And to expect that of yourself then just puts too much stress on you, right? Too much negative stress, too much, like, worrying about it, like, well, how come I'm, like, not at 100% all the time? All, you know, just not. Not doable. [00:13:52.180] - Tony Roig Guys, even. Even the. Even the pros, right? Pro players at every sport, they have ebbs and flows in their focus. They're trying to do is maintain that six to seven, right? [00:14:01.940] - Tony Roig They understand that they might dip a little bit, they might pop up a little bit, right? But if I can kind of keep it in that operating range, that works best for me, that Goldilocks intensity level, that's going to be the best for me and my performance. But I do understand that there are times that, like, I was playing just yesterday and, you know, like, there was a serve and I had, for some reason, I had looked at something right before the serve was hit, like off to the. On the. In the. [00:14:24.810] - Tony Roig In the distance, right? And we're into a facility. I. I saw something. Kamai, right? Whatever it was, kamai. [00:14:30.090] - Tony Roig And then I looked down, ready to return serve. And I missed the return of serve because I was still thinking about the thing that I had looked at, right? I'm not going to beat myself about that. Not gonna be like, oh, my God, how did I do that? I can't believe I did that. [00:14:40.290] - Tony Roig And whatever, it's just. It's okay. It's life part of the deal. No big deal. And then you just come back to, what's the next rally? [00:14:46.610] - Tony Roig Let's get going, you know, let's keep working within the 6 to 7 range and keep your intensity around there. The better you are at avoiding, again, the super highs and the super lows, the better you're going to play. Understanding that you will have some movement up and down in that in that process. So hopefully this helps you next time you play. You know, regulating your intensity, regulating your focus, keeping it within a band. [00:15:08.610] - Tony Roig That works. If you have a really exciting rally and you want to let it out, don't listen to any of us to stop you from doing that. Enjoy the game like it's your wibble done and have fun when you're out there. So hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. If you enjoyed it, please consider rating and reviewing it wherever you listen to podcasts. [00:15:25.300] - Tony Roig And as always, have a great week and I will see you next time on Pickleball Therapy. Be well.