Ep. 316 - What If It Works Out?

Pickleball Therapy, Episode 316: What If It Works Out? Tony: Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. It's a podcast with you in mind. My name is Tony Roig. I am your host of this weekly podcast. This is another special guest episode appearance by a member of the coaching team over here at Tony Roig Pickleball, Kyleen D. Kyleen, how are you today? Kyleen: What's up, Tony? Yeah, maybe this is a new regular occurrence. Maybe not a special episode. We'll see. Tony: I don't know. I don't know. The jury's still out there. You know, we we need to see what the uh what the folks out there think. And actually, you know, if you if you do like this format, if you let us know, that's awesome. You can send us an email at support@tonyroigpickleball.com and put "Therapy" in the subject line. That way, we know what it is and it'll get routed the right way. And uh if you like Kyleen, let us know. If you don't like Kyleen, don't write in. Okay? So, we'll do it positive only. Positive or or nothing unless you feel really strongly about it, then you can write something. Kyleen: Well, especially because those emails are coming to me, so I'm going to see them. Tony: Exactly. 100%. So, uh, you might hear Kyleen's a little bit under the weather, but she said, uh, that uh, what's the content creator's name, Kyleen? Kyleen: Oh, TikTok Mima. Tony: TikTok Mima is uh, Kyleen's uh, Kyleen's inspiration, one of her inspirations in the content creation world. And, uh, a feed, a video came across Kyleen's feed today. She shared it with me. I said, "Okay, I love it. We're going to share it." But that requires Kyleen to be here. And Kyleen said, "All right, I'll pop a Sudafed and get on there." So that's what this podcast today is going to be about. Kyleen and I are going to have a conversation about this uh idea. And it's an idea of basically like picking the potential outcome. Now, if you've been listening to the podcast over the last probably three, four, five months, you know, we've been this message has been coming through, right? You know, be [inaudible] is is an interesting approach. So, we're going to play it and explore for you and then uh but before we do that, Kyleen, and I'm going to explain the riff after this. Uh I know we have some things coming up uh uh here. So, why don't you share with us what's coming up and then uh I'll explain the riff and then we'll run the video. Kyleen: Yeah, we do. So, next week, I think it's next Thursday, it's October 15th, we have our Stacking Lab live coaching call, um, which should be really a good one. The stacking stuff is always something players are really interested in. And so, you know, I just, Tony explains it really well. So, highly recommend you join us at the Stacking Lab. Um, we have our along with the Stacking Lab, you get a 7-day access to our course, Your Pickleball Coach, which is, if I may say, amazing. Uh great coaching, great platform. It's come together really nicely. And then also we got some camps coming up, Tony. Tony: Yeah, we have uh we we keep on rounding out the calendar uh for the the calendar for '26 is set in stone. The calendar for '27 is uh developing. You know, we're uh we're going to be traveling some more in '27, coming closer to you. Uh we know that, you know, a lot of times camp decisions are based on on where you are and where you can meet us. Uh, so we'll still have a lot of camps here in my home uh home court here in Tampa, Florida. Uh, but we're also going to be traveling um to different parts of the country, Atlanta, North— Kyleen: Can we announce it now that we got actually Tony's coming to my part of the country? So the the beautiful upstate New York area in the spring. Tony: Yeah. So we'll be doing some, you know, some New York camps. So be on the lookout for that. And if you're interested in a camp, you can go now to our website and check that out. And then the other thing I wanted to mention is um if you do come to the Stacking Lab, we're going to have a live coaching session on Thursday, the one Kyleen mentioned, but you also get there's going to be four additional videos inside the just the stacking module. And I've lost track. I think there's probably 80 plus or 100 lessons or something like that inside Your Pickleball Coach right now that you would have access to for the period. So, it's a great it's a great uh uh way to come in and see what's going on and learn about stacking if you want to. And one last note, if you if you're already one of our students, uh, and you know, again, I always trying to remember that thank you for, uh, for allowing us to coach you, right? The privilege to coach you. Um, put your calendar 10/21. So, the following Wednesday, if I'm doing Wednesday, we're having a uh, get-together where we're going to go over the the course, what's dropped. We have some new courses that will have dropped that week. We'll go over those. We'll bring you guys up to speed. Uh and also um share with you some ideas on how to navigate what's in there and just keep working on improving uh your experience inside Your Pickleball Coach. So uh and then uh so Kyleen and I are going to tee up the video. We'll talk, come back and talk about it, and then in the riff afterwards it'll be just me. I'm going to talk about 50 plus coaching because that's something that I've been doing it a long time. Um but I never really like explained why it's important to have 50 plus coaching. So we'll talk about it in the riff. So, Kyleen, if you'll hit play on that video, we'll run the video and then we'll come back and talk about it. [Video clip: TikTok Mima] But what if it works out? Honey, you spent enough time imagining how it could all go wrong. Give the other possibility a little bit of attention. What if you apply and they say, "Yes"? What if you start something at this age and you're actually good at it? What if the next chapter of your life is the one so good that you'll be so glad you stuck around for? So, I'm 64. I still have things I want to do. And I'm not going to talk myself out of every one of them before I even get started. Life has given us plenty of reasons to be cautious. I understand that. But sometimes we get so used to bracing ourselves for disappointment that we stop giving ourselves anything to look forward to. That's so sad. You can be hopeful and still have good sense. You can believe something good is coming and get up today and do your part to make that happen. You can't just wait for it to come to you. Make the call. Fill out the application. Let somebody know what you want. Let the universe know what you want. You don't have to know how the whole thing ends to take the next step. And when that little voice says, "Who do you think you are?" Tell it. A woman who's making things happen. That's who I am. [End of clip] Kyleen: All right. I love TikTok Mima. Her stuff has been coming across my feed often lately and it's just so full of positivity. So, had to share. Tony: You have a great great feed there, Kyleen, and thanks for sharing it with me and thanks for allowing me then to uh you know, you well, you made the suggestion, but allowing us to basically uh communicate it or or share it here on the platform. Um, and I think I don't know, Kyleen, how you feel about it, but like to me like you can't have enough positive messaging, right? It's like, you know, I think it's just such a good reminder. Um, and uh, and maybe let's talk a little bit about how like like when you first saw the that piece, right? How did it land for you as a person, right? Or a pickleball player or person, however you want to go with it. Kyleen: Yeah. I mean, well, I tend to overthink things and I think, you know, you mentioned like you can't be too positive, right? And I think when we start overthinking things, a lot of times all we're thinking about is the negative side of things. And what I love about TikTok Mima is that she's encouraging us to think, you know, sort of change how we're thinking about things, start thinking about the positive things as well. Like she said something which was that you don't have to know how it ends up to take the next step. And I loved that statement just by itself. Like pretend you assume it's going to be great. Why wouldn't it? Tony: Yeah. Why why why assume why assume the negative, right? Why why allow it's so easy, right, to like doubt our ability to take the next step? And and I want to tie it uh let's tie it to pickleball, right? Because I think what happens is, you know, we see this we see this more frequently than I wish we did, right? Is this self-limitation, right? This self-imposed I'm like I can't move forward. And and we talked about that maybe two weeks ago or three weeks ago, but it's this idea that I can't move forward. And I believe it comes from the conclusion that's already in the mind that that that is gonna not work. That that won't work. So I'm not even gonna try it. Um and so um Kyleen, share a little bit about like, you know, maybe some of the stories that that we come across that are the other way, right? Where the player takes like a takes a chance and then says, you know what, I took the step and look what happened. Kyleen: Well, I would say I would suggest the players are doing that every time they decide to play in a tournament. I mean, for me, tournaments are uh more of more of a mental challenge than anything else, I think, because they are scary. And so, I think anytime that any of our players, any of the players out there decide to put themselves out there and compete in that type of an arena, they're doing just that, you know. Tony: So, yeah, I would I would agree with that. And I also think um I also think like you know we have we have like we've been fortunate to be able to interact with players um uh who we've been able to coach, right, but our interactions are beyond coaching. We become friends with the players. We know them personally, right? So but it's beautiful to watch the journey of the player that says I'm not like why not take a chance. And I loved what what Mima said of like I think she said what I'm I'm 64 and I'm not going to let any like any like fake story stop me. Kyleen: Yeah, we definitely I I think that we tend to tell ourselves stories before we even before we even leave the house and head to the court. And I think you know one of the things that gets we talk about this often, but it's it's when people are struggling with like serve yips, for example, you tell yourself before you even leave the house, oh, I'm not going to I'm not going to make my serves and then that's going to ruin the whole game. But there's actually something that that I've heard. I don't remember if it maybe it was TikTok Mima, but you know we go through life and we're like, well, what's the worst that can happen? That's we hear that saying all the time. What's the worst that could happen? But what if we said what's the best that could happen? So I actually have started taking that into my personal life both on the court and at home. What's the best that could happen? Like when I'm struggling with something and mentally my head's not there and I'm like I'm probably going to play terrible today and I go out and say, well, what's the best that could happen? You know, I leave here, I played some pickleball, I hung out with my friends. I got through it, you know. Tony: Yeah, I love it. It reminds me of the of the, you know, I have the I'm pointing to it because on the video you can see it, but you know, like the bowl of ice cream behind me here, that idea of like there is a positive, right? And but to get the positive, you have to overcome the fear of the potential negative, right? And listen, I'm not suggesting that life is perfect and everything's going to be roses all the time, but why presume that it's going to be, you know, sour milk instead of fresh milk? And, you know, you can always like take a sip of it and if it's good, then you keep going, right? So, I I think like like putting yourself out there, right? Trying. Um, and I I believe that um, and I wrote a piece about this uh, I think I wrote a piece recently about this, but basically the idea is that like like you're you're only here like we have this one kind of, you know, spin around the globe, so to speak, right, on the planet. Why not? Like why not just go for the thing? Uh, and if if it's pickleball, then like like go for it, right? And that could mean, like Kyleen said, maybe playing a tournament. That's fine. It could also mean getting coaching. And listen, you don't have to get coached by us. It's fine. You can do whatever works for you. But like, if you're like, "Yeah, I wonder what would happen if I really tried." You'd be surprised. Kyleen: Yeah. I agree with that. I agree with that 100%. Yeah. Tony: So, um, all right, Kyleen. Any other message about TikTok Mima that we want to share? Kyleen: Uh, no, but I think if you're on TikTok, you should follow her because she's just got some great stuff. Tony: TikTok Mima is good. Uh, and I will tell you that um, uh, both for Kyleen and myself, there's countless stories of players believing in themselves, believing in the positive outcome, the possibility of the positive outcome, and then going after that positive outcome and having that result in their life. Um, and there's one other thing I wanted to touch on, Kyleen, based on what you said earlier about the negative versus positive. Um, and there's this like a psychology thing where basically like if you let's say that you you don't want to miss the next shot, right? And if you say to yourself, "Don't miss the return," your mind doesn't hear, you know, "Get the return in." It hears like "Miss the return." Like the "don't," it disappears or something. So all it hears is "Miss the return." And I think that can happen bigger picture too, right? Where you start believing the storyline that um that I can't um I can't uh I can't do it. I can't perform in the thing. And actually, Kyleen, you had shared, I just remembered because of the serve. You you shared a story with me earlier that um that was shared with us about a player. I think it was in a tournament too with the serve. I really like that story. Kyleen: Yeah. So, actually that came to us from Jeff, one of the members of our team. He was running a tournament in his local facility and he he was he came to our community to tell us the gold medal match, and I don't remember what the rating was, but it was either 3.0 or 3.5. The gold medal match, one of the players missed every single one of her serves, every single one, and they still won the gold medal. So, I mean, if that doesn't tell you, you know, how little what you can get through with the serve yips. You can be in a gold medal match, miss every single one of your serves, and still win the win the gold medal. Tony: Yeah. And what's interesting is like, you know, I I I don't know the player. Um, but I would have to believe that obviously not happy missing your serve. I get it, right? You know, I get it. But you can also just fold the tent, right? You're just kind of like, well, I'm missing this. So, then you just everything collapses. And everything collapses, you're definitely not winning that game, right? Or that match. And so credit to the player for like fighting through that, but also allows the possibility of like, well, what if I can miss all my serves and it still work out, right? It still comes out. And and it this also ties into a concept that we've talked about before on the podcast, which is about pickleball being messy. Pickleball is a messy game, you know, and frankly, life is messy. I mean, you know, there's like life has its bumps and its bruises, and you know, you're going to stub your toe here and you're going to do that, right? But if you're going to allow those like stubbed toes to then impair you from moving forward, then you're not going to experience the fullest life you can. And so, um, you know, I would, uh, commend everybody to, uh, stay positive as much as you can and use the framing, right, that that, uh, we've shared with you here, which is think of, like Kyleen said, what's the best that can happen? You know, what if it works out? Huh, that's interesting. Not what if it all goes to pot, right? What if it all, you know, what if it all works out in my favor? How does that feel? So, uh, Kyleen, thanks for sharing, uh, uh, TikTok Mima and then keep your eye out for, we'll keep sharing them and bringing them up. Uh, Kyleen is going to jump off because Kyleen, we got camps. We got camps to to to fill out and Kyleen's doing that. And so, uh, I'll be back in a second with the riff. Thanks for joining us, Kyleen, on today's podcast. Kyleen: A pleasure. Until next time. Thanks, Tony. Tony: I hope you enjoyed that uh message from TikTok uh Mima. I think it's such a powerful way of reframing how we engage with life in general and pickleball in particular. Uh you know, when we think what if it goes out well, right? What if it works out for me? How does that feel? What does that look like? Make decisions based on that rather than I wonder if it all goes terrible for me. So, uh hopefully you can apply that into uh your pickleball and your life in general. Um, in the riff, I wanted to talk a little about 50 plus coaching. Um, this is something that I've been doing for years. I'm 56, so I've been 50 for more than going on seven years this year. So, I'll be se[inaudible] this year. Um, and I've been uh playing pickleball for 11 years. So, about four years before I turned 50. But most of my pickleball career has been as a 50 plus player. And uh you know by extension the coaching ideas, the thoughts all come from the mind of a 50 plus player, uh and a lot of our students are 50 plus students, right? So um it's something that we haven't really um maybe put enough emphasis on in our materials, and so we're starting to fix that inside of our materials. But I wanted to spend a couple minutes talking about what does that mean to be um uh coached by a 50 plus coach um as opposed to being coached by a coach who's not 50. And I want to be clear, there's nothing technically wrong with being coached by a coach who's not 50. Okay? Not a bad thing. Just like I would say there's nothing wrong with if you're, you know, 30 being coached by a 50 50 plus coach. Um but there are some differences, right? Lived experiences, uh, life, things like that that happen when you're 50 plus and you're trying to coach players who are 50 plus, than when you're 25 and don't really get the perspective of a 50 plus uh athlete. And so, for instance, for me, you know, like, you know, I I have creaky knees just like maybe some of you do. Um, I have the back, sometimes the shoulder, uh, sometimes, uh, you know, uh, the the normal things that happen when you get older with sleeping and things like that. I have all that, right? And so my lived experiences are close, closer, I would say, to your lived experiences, whether you're 50 plus, 60 plus, 70 plus, then again, than a 20-year-old would be. Not because I've done anything wrong or not because they're bad coaches and things like that, just lived experience-wise. I also come at the game, I play the game as a 56-year-old human being, right? I'm 56 when I step out onto the court. And in the groups that I play with, sometimes I'm playing with players who are older than me, sometimes the same age as me, oftentimes younger than me. So, I need to develop approaches to the game that allow me to remain competitive regardless of the age of my opponent. So, I feel comfortable getting on the court with a 25-year-old as I am with a 50-year-old. I recognize that the 25-year-old is likely going to be able to cover the court better than a 50-year-old. They're going to be able to get to more balls. They're going to be, their body won't wear down like the 50-year-olds might, and things like that. But in terms of like the way that we're coming at the game, uh there's ways that I can I can play the game in a way that keeps me competitive with the 25-year-old. Uh win or lose, right? It's not about winning, losing. It's about being competitive, about staying out there, about doing the best that you can in that situation. And I would say that um you know normally if I'm facing a 25-year-old, I need to think about playing like a smarter form of pickleball, right? I need to do things in a certain way that are going to make it more difficult for that 25-year-old to be successful in the rally. If all I'm going to do is go out there and just, you know, bang heads with a 25-year-old, I'm going to bet that the 25-year-old probably is maybe a little bit stronger, a little bit quicker, their eyes are quicker and things like that. Um, so just butting heads with them, you know, doesn't really work that well. Similar to the idea of like when you're facing a banger, you know, you look across and they're physically more imposing than you just as a body, right? Their body's bigger. Hard to say, well, let me just bang with the banger. Same thing when you're playing a younger player. So, there's some strategies that you can use uh that um that just keep you more competitive regardless of the of the um of the opposition. And one area, for instance, would be court positioning, right? So part of it is smarter play, and a lot of that has to do with using the non-volley zone, moving the ball around, not giving them an easy attack ball. Uh using out balls, right? Really important. And then your court positioning, right? If you're in a better court positioning where you can you can, you know, cover more of the relevant part of the court and leave more of the irrelevant part of the court, or less relevant, I should say, less relevant part of the court open, you're going to be better off than if you're squeezing over to the less relevant part of the court and leaving the the more valuable part of the court open for attack. And that's just court positioning that you can do no matter your age, 50, 60, 70. You can learn those things. So these are the types of coaching ideas, right, that as a 56-year-old coach I can bring to the table. And I also think it's a bigger picture perspective, again based on lived years, where I can communicate in a way that um I communicate my years of experience just on the planet and also in sport to help another player who's 50 plus appreciate the same uh level of of of view, right, of life and of the game that would be, you know, not the same as if I was coaching a 20-year-old. And I have coached some pro players who are younger than me, and sometimes that's some of the the challenge, right? Because I I have a a longer view of life, right? Been here longer. Um they don't have that view, and so it's sometimes difficult for them to see some of the the conversation. And the flip side is also true, right? A 25 or, you know, 26, 27-year-old coach isn't going to be able to communicate a long view just because they haven't been there yet. So those are just some of the differences, some of the ideas, and you're going to hear more of that in our coaching at Tony Roig Pickleball. Um you know, uh the camps, everything that we do, we're adding some additional pieces to the 50 plus uh part of our coaching uh that are very specific, very tailored to 50 plus play. Um you know, the game itself is going to be the game, right? I mean, we all have to return serve. It's not like if we're 50 plus we don't return serve, right? The rules all apply the same. The game's going to be the same. And I'm actually going to talk about that uh in next week's episode. This idea of there being one game, and I think you're going to find that pretty interesting, uh hopefully very interesting. Uh so this idea of there being one game that we all play, no matter age, no matter level, no matter any background, it's all the same game. But there are some tweaks that we can make particularly as 50 plus players. So be on the lookout for that in our coaching, at our camps, inside the course, uh and also just in our uh general communication to you. Um because uh our objective as coaches is to try and do our best to help you experience the game in the fullest way possible. So I hope you enjoyed this week's podcast. Keep applying that positive perspective. Keep working on different ways of doing it. Uh, and that's one of the reasons I I try and bring you different, maybe different um gradations or different uh angles to a similar concept. Because for some of you, maybe the, you know, like like what Kyleen said earlier about, you know, what's the best that can happen, maybe that triggered it for you, right? Maybe what, you know, Mima said about about what what if everything goes well, how does that look, maybe that triggered it for you. So how, whatever angle comes at you or works for you, use that angle. The idea is to uh try and work to being more posit positive and being more willing to grow and continue to um experience this beautiful sport as well as this awesome time that we have on uh planet Earth. So, before I wrap this week's episode, I forgot to remind you about the Stacking Lab. The Stacking Lab is coming up right now. If you want to join the Stacking Lab, go to tonyroigpickleball.com. At the very top of the page, there'll be a link. You can check out that link and join me for the Stacking Lab. If you enjoyed the podcast, please consider giving it a rating and review. Uh, and uh, if you know a player who might benefit from a more positive um perspective on their growth and their experience, uh, please share a version of this episode, or not a version, but share this episode with them. Uh, because if you enjoyed the podcast, they probably will too. I hope you have a great week and I'll see you next time on the next episode of Pickleball Therapy. Be well.