Ep. 293 - Lean into the Good Voice - from the PPA Atlanta

[00:00:05.370] - Tony Roig Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. Hope you're having a great week. My name is Tony Roig. I'm your host of this weekly podcast. You're going to hear the sounds a little bit different this week. [00:00:14.670] - Tony Roig I'm at the PPA here in Atlanta doing a little bit of media, doing a little commentating. If you listen to this podcast right when it comes out, make sure you check out the bronze medal matches on Sunday because I'll be commentating all of those matches right now. I'm scheduled to commentate them and looking forward to that. Always enjoy that process. This week I'm going to talk to you about the concept of self-one, self-two from The Inner Game of Tennis, but it was presented in a pretty interesting way, I thought, by this MMA fighter, mixed martial arts fighter. [00:00:42.650] - Tony Roig I think you'll find it very interesting, interesting way to lean into your game and how you choose to engage with it. And I'm going to give you in the riff, I'll give you a little update here from Atlanta, including a match I just finished on the court right next to me here that shows, you know, kind of the back and forth of of pickleball when you're vying as best you can. Before we dive into the podcast, just a couple of quick housekeeping notes. One, we just announced a couple of additional camps this summer, and we're going to be adding more in the next couple of weeks. But right now we have a camp in New York City. [00:01:15.180] - Tony Roig I'm a huge fan of New York City in the summer. I think it's a beautiful place to visit, so much stuff to do. So we're going to be up there at the end of June. And then I think we have a camp in Tampa, maybe a week or two before that one. I don't remember the exact dates, but if you go to betterpickleball.com and check out the camps page, all the locations, join us at one of our camps. [00:01:33.590] - Tony Roig I think you'll find it to be an amazing experience for you and your pickleball. And then the second thing that I wanted to mention was if you haven't had a chance to read our book yet, Pickleball Therapy, the book, pick up a copy. It's on Amazon, Barnes Noble, and Walmart. I want to read a review from Marty. Marty Down Under down in Australia. [00:01:53.320] - Tony Roig So appreciate you leaving this review, Marty. After listening to Tony's podcast, I decided to get this book. I can honestly say that it has changed the way I approach the game of pickleball, and it has made the game much more enjoyable for me. I've been reading it a bit at a time, then trying to apply what I have learned. It's working well for me, and I would definitely recommend the book for anyone who wants to improve their pickleball experience. [00:02:13.550] - Tony Roig So if you haven't had a chance yet, maybe do as Marty suggested and take a look at the book. I think you'll really enjoy I think you really enjoy it. And what he said in here about it has made the game much more enjoyable for me. That's a big reason why I wrote the book. And I will tell you this, it's making the game more enjoyable, but you're also going to play better because the calmer your mind is, you'll actually play much better pickleball. [00:02:38.070] - Tony Roig So I think it's somewhere around, I don't remember the exact number, the publisher said that kind of stuff, but it's like somewhere between $20 and $30. So it's Pretty inexpensive when you consider it compared to like a paddle and stuff like that. So give it a check. All right, let's dive into the idea here that I wanted to talk about was self one, self two is a concept that Tim Galloway developed in The Inner Game of Tennis. The Inner Game of Tennis, if you have not read it, highly recommend it to you. [00:03:06.090] - Tony Roig And these kind of books, you can pretty much disregard the sport. So you can read The Inner Game of Tennis. There's really good books in football and basketball and baseball and other sports. That deal with the mental aspects of sport. Most, if not all, these concepts will apply, you know, to all the different sports, no matter which sport it is. [00:03:23.780] - Tony Roig Might change a little bit, like, you know, you're playing like a set, or you're playing a match, or you're playing a game, or you're playing a, you know, a half of football and things like that. But the underlying thought processes that go into sports, you know, they're pretty, pretty universal. And so this actually came from a— so The Inner Game of Tennis by Tim Galloway, he has this idea of self-one, self-two. And what he was dealing with there was this idea that you have multiple voices in your head, minimum of two, maybe more, but minimum of two voices in your head. And it's the voice in your head that basically, you know, you miss that easy shot and you say, you know, how'd you miss that? [00:03:56.250] - Tony Roig And so if you think about it, you have you asking you a question. Kind of weird, right? And so when you think about the the, you know, this idea of like, if I'm asking myself, how did I miss that shot? Then what he came up with, what Tim Cowen came up with, the idea of you have a self 1 and a self 2. Self 1 is the talker, right? [00:04:16.950] - Tony Roig So that's the, the, that's the part of you that's asking the question, right? How'd you miss that? And self 2 is the doer. That's the part of you that actually does the things and hits the balls. And the better you get at understanding those two voices, the better you're going to, the better you're going to engage with sport. [00:04:32.370] - Tony Roig Actually, in our book Pickleball Therapy, we added a third self, self 3, which is your survival instinct. Just building on the knowledge of Tim Gallwey or the idea of Tim Gallwey, which I think is one of the most fascinating aspects of being a human being in general, is this idea of cumulative knowledge, cumulative growth. We basically build on others. There's that famous quote from Isaac Newton about basically what I see is because I stand on the shoulder of giants. I didn't realize he was being petty when he used that phraseology, which is pretty— a story for another day. [00:05:04.280] - Tony Roig But the idea, right, that when you come up with something, usually it's not in a vacuum, in the abstract. You came up with it because of some other idea. So we added SELF 3 in the Pickleball Therapy book, which I think is a helpful addition. But the way this MMA fighter talked about it, and he's a very successful fighter— MMA, if you're not familiar with it, is mixed martial arts, UFC, if you know that terminology. Basically, they go into the cage and they fight against each other. [00:05:28.390] - Tony Roig It's almost no-holds-barred. There are some rules, but it's, you know, you can kind of, you can kick or grab or throw or whatever you want to do. And so obviously very, it's a sport, it's an athletic endeavor. It's a stressful athletic endeavor. And what he was talking about was they were asking about his mindset, right, before he went into the ring. [00:05:47.670] - Tony Roig And he was, you know, very confident fighter. And he said, you know, I basically, I've I've already won the match before I go in, in his mind. And as he explained it, he said, okay, so I actually have two voices in my head. He said, you know, like you'd have to be almost like a crazy person not to have fear, not to have doubt about yourself. And so I have a voice in my head that says, and this is, he's a fighter, right? [00:06:11.810] - Tony Roig So a voice in my head that says, you know, you don't know how to fight, you're a fraud, you don't know what you're doing, you're, you know, you're tricking people and things like that. You suck. You're not a good fighter. And then he has a voice in his head that says to himself, I'm the best. I'm like, when I'm on my A-game, there's nobody in the world who can beat me. [00:06:35.610] - Tony Roig I've put in all the work. I've done the drills. I've done the study. I've put in the hours of my craft. And so I know that I can beat anybody in the world. [00:06:47.480] - Tony Roig And so he says, I have both voices in my head, right? Very similar to Tim Gallwey's idea. I have both voices in my head. Which one am I going to listen to? And so he chooses, this fighter chooses to listen to the confident voice. [00:07:01.470] - Tony Roig He chooses to pay attention to the voice that's supporting him, the voice that's advancing his agenda, if you will, right? His thinking. And you know, he had an additional, I thought, helpful way of framing it, which is like he said, he said, I actually think of literally turning the volume down, like if you had a stereo, turning the volume down on the voice that's the negative voice and turning the volume up all the way on the voice that's the confidence voice, on the voice that's telling me that I can do this, that I'm, you know, that I'm going to succeed. And so it's a mindset thing where you can choose which, you know, you don't, You don't lie to yourself, right? You don't say, oh no, I never doubt myself, because that's not true, right? [00:07:46.930] - Tony Roig Here at the PPA, the best players on the planet, and you know, they have doubts. They have doubts about whether they can perform or not perform at this level, particularly when facing other of the best players on the planet. So you will have doubt, right? That's natural to doubt yourself. But there's also a part of you that knows that, for instance, think about the last week or two that you played. [00:08:09.000] - Tony Roig Doesn't mean you don't have to have played perfectly every time, every rally, every game, right? But I'm guessing that if you look over the next 2 weeks, maybe last month, you've had some good games. You've hit some nice shots. You've made some good decisions, right? You've won some games that maybe you weren't sure you could have won, right? [00:08:24.420] - Tony Roig You probably have lost some games too that you weren't sure you should have lost, but all of that's happened. And so you can and should know that you're a competent pickleball player, that you can go out on the pickleball court, right? And you can navigate a pickleball game, hitting the shots that you need to hit and not making them all, but hitting the shots that you need to hit in order to enjoy a nice pickleball game, in order to be a productive part of the pickleball environment that you're in. And so knowing that, right, you can choose to say, you know what, I know that. That's one voice. [00:08:58.210] - Tony Roig And then I have another voice that says, man, you're no good. You don't know what you're doing. You're a terrible pickleball player. So you have these two voices that are competing in your head. Maybe consider turning the volume down, literally, like with your hand, just turn the volume down of the voice that's the negative, right? [00:09:14.660] - Tony Roig Of the Negative Nelly voice. And instead, turn the volume up on the voice, not instead, but and turn the volume up, I should say. And instead, listen to, turn the volume up and listen to the voice that is the positive voice. The one that says, You know what, I do remember that game that we played against so-and-so and so-and-so where I played pretty darn well, or that shot that I hit, or that, you know, contest that was really well battled and things like that. I know I can play this game. [00:09:38.490] - Tony Roig And so you're leaning into that voice and you're moving away or turning down the voice that is the negative. And that's your choice, right? Which voice to listen to. There's a similar story that reminded me of And I don't remember all the details of it, but basically it works like this a little bit. It's an old American Indian story, Native American story, that talks about like two wolves, right? [00:10:03.930] - Tony Roig So you have like, you have the positive wolf in your life and the negative wolf in your life, right? Working in your mind, vying for each other. And the idea is that the, you know, in the battle between these two wolves, the positive and the negative wolf, You want to try to feed the positive wolf. You want to try and focus on really feeding the side of you that is the positive side of you, the one that is supporting you, the one that's giving you strength. And the idea is to starve or diminish the power of the wolf that is the negative wolf, right? [00:10:39.710] - Tony Roig So that in the battle between those two wolves, the more positive wolf has more strength, right? And can prevail more frequently. Is you can't kill these wolves, right? You can't get rid of them. You can't get rid of the negative, right? [00:10:51.960] - Tony Roig It's just part of— it's baked into how we are, who we are. But you can feed one and, and diminish the other one within your, uh, within— that's within your control. So you can handle that. So that's another way of maybe framing it for you. The key here is the level of control that you have in terms of the voice that you choose to, um, that you choose to listen to and then choose to increase. [00:11:14.150] - Tony Roig So Hopefully that helps you with your processes, right? And with your approach. And if you're ever feeling a little bit down about your pickleball, maybe, you know, think about those voices and turn that little knob down so that you can hear the other voice. All right. Let me give you a little bit of a couple of stories here from the PPA that I think you'll find interesting. [00:11:33.780] - Tony Roig One was yesterday I got to watch some players who I know playing on center court and mixed doubles against the number one seed, Ben Johns and Ali Waters. And it was, I think it was like 11-1, 11-1. It was a fairly quick match. It was a beatdown. It was pretty decisive. [00:11:50.450] - Tony Roig And what made me think about, made me think about how even though these players, right, who I was, I was cheering on are amazing players. They're just amazing athletes, tremendous football players, right? They would go to pretty much any facility anywhere in this country or in the world and be dominant, right, in those facilities. Yet when they get on court with you know, Ben Johns, Danaley Waters, it's just, it's that they look like they don't know how to play pickleball because of the difference in the level. So one, one thing that I think you can take away from that is that, you know, sometimes we feel that way. [00:12:19.690] - Tony Roig Sometimes we feel like we're outclassed in a match, outclassed in a game, and that can happen to us. Don't despair, right? Don't despair because even the players that outclassed you in that match, there are other players, whether in your community or nearby or in the state, who can outclass those players. And you keep it, you just keep going up, right? And there's always going to be another team that is, um, that is better than the team that you're thinking about, right? [00:12:46.990] - Tony Roig Um, and, uh, the only exception would be Ben and Anna Lee, right, in mixed doubles in this case, you know. So unless they're number one in the world, there's probably another team out there that can outclass them. And so, so it's the thing of not getting too bent out of shape because I understand that the team that beat you is also a team that has another team that can beat them and so on and so forth. And so it's just part of the, part of the deal. Getting a little windy out here right now. [00:13:11.950] - Tony Roig Hopefully this umbrella holds. All right, the other story I want to share with you happened just right here. It's a singles match. Young, young man, J.W. Johnson, was playing against Jack Sock, who's a veteran tennis player. [00:13:24.760] - Tony Roig You know, he was on the professional tour. If you follow tennis at all, you remember the name Jack Sock. And now he plays pickleball and he's a tremendous singles player because he has such a powerful forehand. His forehand is one of the best in the game. And so they, the JW won the first game. [00:13:42.120] - Tony Roig I think it was 11-7. And then they were, he was down 10-7 in game 2 to Jack, tied it at 10. Jack was able to pull that one out 12-10. Then when I looked over, by the time I looked over, it was the third game and it was Jack was up 6-0. In game 3, and that's when they take a timeout and switch in tournament play. [00:13:59.760] - Tony Roig So basically, JW had won game 1, Jack had won game 2, 12-10, and they were in game 3 on the switch with Jack up 6-0. So I looked at it, I go, wow, that's kind of, you know, game, set, match, right? It looks like it. Next thing you know, JW made a little bit of a run, got to 3, sided Jack out again, etc. Then it was 7-6 Jack, and then JW ended up winning that one again. [00:14:24.420] - Tony Roig I think it might have been 11-7 actually. In game 3. So just, you know, the key here is don't give up, you know, don't lay down. You know, when you look at that kind of scoreline, you say, wow, you know, you had a chance to win it in 2, you lost game 2, now you're down 6-0 in game 3. Pickleball is a messy game. [00:14:43.010] - Tony Roig You just got to stick with it, right? And maybe you'll still lose that match, right? I mean, you know, I would say I'd rather be up 6-0 than down 6-0 in those situations. But What JW showed there was a tremendous amount of heart and battle against a very, very, um, uh, very mature player, a very, uh, uh, competitive, uh, player, uh, who wasn't going to give him an inch. And so for JW to come back and, and win that game 3, I think is super, uh, encouraging for him and super, uh, uh, just really awesome. [00:15:11.980] - Tony Roig So as a player yourself, I recommend that you, uh, uh, just don't lay down. I mean, I see it too often where Players will get down in a game and they'll just lay down and you can tell the match is, the game is over, right? You just watch the body language and it's just, meh, this game's over. Don't do that. Even if you lose, lose your way, lose the best you can. [00:15:30.630] - Tony Roig So anyway, I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast here from the PPA Atlanta. Next week I'll be back in studio. I'm looking forward to going out to San Diego. I think we still have a spot or two left. I should have said at the beginning, I think we still have about one or two spots left in San Diego if you're interested. [00:15:42.940] - Tony Roig One grad camp and a couple of regular camp out there. If you want to check that out. To come to grad camp, you need to be either camp alumni or have been in TPS for a little bit so that you kind of already have some of the knowledge. For regular camp, we welcome you. Regular camp, no conditions to join us at regular camp in San Diego and then in New York and Tampa. [00:16:02.740] - Tony Roig So hope to see you guys at one of the camps if you can make it. Have a great week. And if you haven't been able to rate and review the podcast, please do. And as always, Please share with your friends because remember, if you enjoyed this podcast, they probably will too. Be well, and I'll see you next time.