Mailbag Episode #2 - Your Questions Answered

Pickleball Therapy Mailbag Episode #2 - Your Questions Answered Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. I hope you're having a great week. This is a special episode of our podcast. This is our mailbag episode. So, what we do here is we answer questions that are put into our community. If we have time, we answer some questions that are on the YouTube platform as well. Uh, and also maybe we get it in a, you know, Google question and things like that. But we focus first on questions inside our community. If you uh want to join our community, it's absolutely free to do so. Highly recommend that you give it a try. I saw recently Dale Voit, who's been a longtime connector with our uh content, joined the podcast or join the community, I should say, recently. So, that was super cool. You can just come in and set up a free account and uh get be a part of the conversation. Go to tonyroigpickleball.com and check out the community tab on top and it'll take you there. So, uh first thing I want to do is a shout out here. Uh, we asked for Google reviews a few weeks ago since our company is fairly young in Google. Actually, not fairly young, it is young in Google. And Max left a really nice uh uh uh comment here on the Effective Doubles Strategy. Um, so you know, "Tony, I've been following you since shortly after I started playing pickleball one and a half years ago. Thank you for supporting everyone along their pickleball journey. At 60 years old, I found a sport that provides not only competitive play, but supportive community," which I just mentioned, right? The community. And and anyway, so, "I believe my mindset towards the game and competition has been positively impacted by your podcast and book. Now I'm learning some great strategy skills. Thank you." So our pleasure to do this kind of work and to be able to bring you pickleball content that you find helpful uh and useful to your game. Uh and thank you Max for sharing your your observations u inside the Effective Doubles Strategy. All right, first set of questions has to do with bangers. So I've grouped the questions by category. So, bangers. We have a question by from Wendy um talking about an out balls video that we had inside of our course materials, and the question was uh, you know, she plays with bangers. The banger um comes at her a lot, right? So, basically she's doing a block volley on many of them, successfully blocks many of them, but eventually, "I just wear out. He does a lot of body bagging and I have a hard time getting out of the way when I know that ball is coming in hard, fast and it's going to go out. I have to be honest, I can easily get caught up in the adrenaline rush of it all. Any thoughts?" It's a It's like anything that you do. It's a process. Uh it's a learned skill, right? Um you know, frankly, it's just like driving or walking when you're a baby, cooking, anything, right? It's a learned skill. And so, uh getting out of the way of bangers is a mindset. And what you want to do is the minute you get opposite the player who's the banger, and in Wendy's situation, it's that specific player. It's you're just you're looking for situations to get out of the way of the of the shot. Um, there's a couple of players who I play with and we, you know, we we rib each other and tease each other all the time, so it's all in good good fun, but you know, we'll joke around with a couple of them. I'll be like, "Oh, I got to get my I got to get my eye protection, right, cuz I'm playing against so and so." Uh, and um, again, they take it in stride. We just messing around. But, you know who's going to come hard. So, when that player's opposite you, you're particularly tuned in to hard hit shots. And frankly, this skill applies to more than just hard hit shots. Is, you know, let's say you have a player who's very good at lobbing or a player who's very good at the outside dink or whatever, whatever the stressor is. Um, you get fine-tuned, right? You you just get ready in your mind for that situation. It's the same thing here, Wendy. Uh, and I like what you're doing, you know, about, you know, you're identifying the player, right? I think the mistake you're probably making is blocking too many balls. That'd be my guess. Again, you say you block many but eventually just wear out. Um, you're probably giving the player too much credit for the balls going in. Geometry doesn't work. And we have a full video on YouTube on how high. So, if you haven't seen that one yet, Wendy, check that one out, and appreciate the question. The next one along the same lines comes from Phyllis, uh talking about the Partner Play series being great, which I appreciate. Has a question about uh playing against high level players who slam a lot of speed ups at the net. "When I can see them coming in time, I can reset or send to other player, but have trouble knowing directionality because I use fake outs. Any help appreciated, or if I miss a lesson, just direct me there." Thanks again for the question, Phyllis. Um, so generally speaking, what I would suggest you is similar to what I mentioned about Wendy. If there's if there's attacking from up at the non-volley zone, you know, with a hard hit shot, um, when we're talking about net and below, around the net and below, I let that one go. It's probably going out. If it's a high ball coming down at you hard, that one you try and defend the best you can. Um, I like the idea of, you know, moving the ball to another player. I don't really get too caught up on fake outs, and the reason I don't is because it'll work a couple of times. Uh but eventually you get the read, right? You're like, "Okay, so this player, you know, does this thing with their body and then they send it to the other place." Usually those types of things work well when you haven't seen the player before, right? So if there's a player who constantly does something, um I'll give you an example. I I played against a a really nice uh uh uh person and and and we become friends over the years. Uh first time I played against him, uh he uh he he does a like a inside out attack. So basically he would he it looked like he was going to the middle and all of a sudden he he'd send it down the line to my backhand. And um and so he caught me a couple of times in the match, but I'll tell you by the third, fourth, fifth time, you know, I'm kind of sitting on it. So I'm kind of expecting him to do that. So then I'm just kind of like expecting it. So now I'm sit I'm lean leaning toward the side where the ball's likely to come. And after that, it wasn't as effective anymore by him. So that's something you can do there, Phyllis, is just kind of, you know, like have your little book on the players, you know, the the the metaphorical or literal book if you want. You know, basically like, you know, write down what they do and then you can be ready for it the next time. All right. Jackie has a question about uh basically this is shake and bake situation. So they're basically getting, she's getting balls driven at her. Um you know, male player very aggressive, and then um you know, she talks about, "A few times I've been able to go behind him, but usually they both close close in on me and drill the ball back at uh back at me if it's low, or slam it at my partner if I pop it up. What should I be doing differently?" So basically it's the issue of the shake and bake, right? Um and um what I would suggest to you there uh Jackie is my sense is that the problem here has to do actually with the return of serve, because the return of serves aren't deep enough. If the return of serves aren't deep enough against players like this, it's going to be an absolute nightmare of a situation for your team, for you and your team. You know, uh short return of serve, you're trying to, you know, get ready, you have an aggressive player coming in. I play against a a player here locally. I I played with him a couple days ago who's very like that, very aggressive, very powerful player. Um you know, as he as he drives and comes forward, it's, you know, you have you your your options become less, right? There's everything's squeezed in terms of space. Um you know, you obviously don't want to pop it up to him because then he puts it away. So, the key there is better returns of serve, right? It's returns of serve that are deeper, because then now, you know, they can't really crash and drive as well. Uh the other thing you can do is you can try and go behind the male player on the return of serve. So, you have to make sure you get it really far over there. But, basically, you're going to really push the the you're going to push, particularly on the crosscourt return. So, if it's diagonal from the um uh from the male player, from where he's going to be playing from, you basically jam it over to his backhand far out there and probably not going to get it as much of attack from that zone there. So, try those out. But, I would look at the return of serve as my primary uh culprit there. Uh thanks for the question though, Karen. Uh thank you for the question. Then, now we're moving from from stacking to general questions. Karen has a question about, "Will you have TRP or Tony Roig Pickleball t-shirts for sale at camp?" Um the answer is yes and no. So, we don't we don't carry shirts with us. We don't have like facility for inventory and things like that, but our shirts are available for sale. I'll put a link in the show notes. I don't can't remember exactly where it is, but or maybe you go to the website and find them, but we do have the merch for sale. So, you can buy shirts. They're just not, we don't have them physically. Um, Dennis, uh thanks for the question, Karen. Dennis has a question. "Several weeks back, Tony included some exercises for eye muscle development. Can someone show me where to find these?" That's inside our free course. So, you just go to tonyroigpickleball.com. You can check out the um the the course there on uh 50 plus players. There's a visual training in there. If you're in Your Pickleball Coach, we'll have those in there as well. But if you're not inside our program, there's some materials that are available to you free. This is one of them. You can just go to the free online course, sign up for that, and the c the um that visual training is in there. Um thanks for the question, Dennis. Uh Rob has a question about The Shots That Matter, which is another uh one of our free courses. "How do these, how do the four shots that are discussed in that one square up with your other video that says the most important four shots are the serve, return of serve, fourth shot, and third shot?" So what he's referring to is in The Shots That Matter, refer to the serve, return, the dink, block volley, and punch volley. Those are the same shots. They're just different names for the same shot. So you have the serve and the return obviously are identical namewise uh in the order. So the dink is the third shot. Third shot is nothing more than a long dink, right? And that's um sometimes, you know, gets complicated because we refer to them differently in terms of like the third shot drop, which really just a dink. The third shot, when I'm talking about them in terms of priority, I'm talking about them in the number of the shots. So, the third shot would be uh the third shot you hit. Sometimes you drop it, sometimes you drive it, right? It's still, no matter what you do, it's still the fourth most important shot in the sequence. The dink is a is a type of shot, right? Which can be used as a third shot. And then your fourth shots are your blocks and your punches. So that's how those two correlate. So thanks for the question, Rob. Um I mentioned it earlier, but I'm going to exhort you again to join the community if you have a second. Again, go to Tony Roig Pickleball. There's a community tab towards the top in the menu. Click on that. It'll take you to where you can join, absolutely free to join the conversation, get your questions answered, u and just interact with a lot of other players. There's really good conversations going in there right now. There's questions being asked. Uh there's new voices in there answering the questions. I I go in there, I read. If I see the conversation's going well, I don't need to jump into the conversation. Fantastic. Uh because you know, that means that the whole community is growing, right? And the community is able to answer their own questions. So that's really phenomenal. All right, partner play questions. So this is uh Jack left a uh question here. Oh, the question was this. "Are there shots or short phrases," I'm sorry, "or ideas for supporting a partner in rec or open play?" So this is in the Partner Play series. Like how do you how do you encourage your partner? Um, a couple of things that I would say is, uh, um, one is you can, um, you can you like tap paddles with them and remove the errors from their play. So, you know, this is, uh, our friend in North Carolina would do that, where basically she would tap paddles with someone who's feeling, struggling, right? So, she would, "Tap tap your paddle with me." So, they tap the paddle and she would say like, you know, "Okay, I've taken all the missed shots from your paddle, I put them on my paddle, so now they're mine." Uh, so just, you know, you're free of the of the misses, right? Just enjoy the the next uh next rallies. Um, another thing you can do is to bring them up is uh just talk about them as human beings, right? Um, I mean, I think sometimes we we we get bogged down in the game, like the the details of the game, you know, the the one missed shot or the whatever happened. Uh, and we forget that we're all, you know, we're usually in doubles, right? We're four, right? So, we're four human beings on a court um navigating the planet, doing our thing, right? In this case, enjoying pickleball together. So here you could look at your partner and say, you know, "It's really, it's a pleasure to see you today." You know, "I'm so happy to get to play a game with you." If it's an open play, "Oh my god, I can't believe I get a chance to play with you." You know, and if they miss a shot, you're like, "Listen, I'm still so happy to play with you. I'm not worried about that. I'm more interested in just being on the court with you." That type of thing. And you can then, you can also do it at the detail level, at the at the missed shot level. Sometimes what I'll do is like, you know, if they miss an easy ball, I'll say something like, like, "Well, you know, that's that's the one you missed. You're not going to miss all of those. Hit it again next time," right? For I um, you know, "I I'm probably going to miss one of those too, so don't worry about it." You know, something like that that kind of removes the pressure from them having missed, either in terms that they're going to get another chance and be able to to execute them, or that I'm I'm in the same boat as they are, is another way you can do it. The nice thing about this um uh Jack is that it's kind of wide open space, right? You can come up with different ideas. Um just give it some thought, like, and and one way to do it would be to put yourself in their shoes, right? So, you're you're feeling bad, because we all feel, sometimes we feel bad when we're playing. I'm assuming, you know, most of us do anyway. Uh maybe I'm projecting, but I think that's fair to say. Um but you, you know, I feel bad sometimes when I'm playing cuz I I feel like I let my partner down. Now, what could they tell me that would make me feel better? And then you use that on them. So, hopefully that helps you, Jack. Thanks for the question. Uh Charles, uh good to hear from you, Charles. So, Charles, um Charles says, uh he's talking about covering lobs. Uh, and he's talking about um, you know, he's he plays with a partner who has a prosthetic leg, uh, but moves fairly well. "He's left-handed, I'm right-handed," so they're basically stacking. Um, now there's a couple things here on on partner play, uh, Charles, that I would suggest to you. Um, I would suggest not switching on return, not stacking, not using the stack switch on the return of serve. I will tell you, and Charles said in here, he says, "We're 70 plus years old." Um I'm 56 going on 57, and I will tell you that um I do not generally switch on the return in rec games. Why don't I do it? Um because it's just not necessary. It's a rec game. You know, it's not really, you know, we don't have any money on the game, is what I always say. Like there's no money on the game. So um you can switch sometimes if you want to, but I think you can remove some pressure from your team by not switching on return. Just use the stack on the serve, and it's going to be um, it's, I do stack on serve. Not all the time, but I would say the majority of the time when I play in rec, just because it's expected and, you know, it's fine. But on on return, I'll switch sometimes if my partner wants to switch across, they could, welcome to do that. If they say if they want me to signal a switch, I'll slide over as a non-returner. But I'll always tell them when I'm returning, I'm like, you know, I'll say, I'll call a stay unless things are getting nutty and like, you know, 9-9 and we've been having trouble in that zone, then I'll maybe I'll do a switch there. So, that's an idea there, is to use more dynamic stacking. If you haven't had a chance, Charles, check that um Stacking Lab inside of your course. Uh it's pretty thorough, but there's some conversation. There's a blog in there, a written material in there that talks about dynamic versus static stacking. Take a look at that one. See see what that does. Um another question here. I don't have the name of the person who asked the question, so apologies for not thanking you for the question, but the question is, "Do you have any videos about how to practice the X?" That's Respect the X, basically. "I understand the concept and I'm a lefty playing with a righty, but actually being able to put it into practice is difficult. Do you have a drill that can reinforce the playing of the X?" Uh, that's a tough one there. We do some work at our camps with X. I'll tell you, it's one of the more challenging areas to drill. Um, what I would do if I wanted to like, you know, hyper drill the X would be you get three players. So, you, your partner, and then a a feeder or someone who will work with you on it. And then you have them go to the one side of the of the, you know, one side of the court on their side. And then, you know, dink balls to the outside and then to the middle, to the outside and to the middle. And then make sure that your partner doesn't hit those balls. Then you can go straight in middle, too. Whenever goes to the middle, that should be the diagonal player. So, you could drill it that way. And then you could have the player go to the other side and do it in the other direction. So, give that a try. Let me know how that works out for you. Thanks for the question. All right. We're going to answer a question here on stacking. So, a couple more questions, excuse me, on stacking. So Brenda has a question about the how you keep track of it, right? So the the question is basically, or the statement that I believe is a question, is, "If I understand correctly, all we needed to do was make sure we were in the correct position based on whether the score was odd or even, and then be in the correct position based on that." Um, so the idea here is that when you're trying to learn the stack, or you're in the stack, is, you know, I think players get um, it gets confusing for players sometimes because they're trying to remember all the pieces of the puzzle at one time. And you don't have to do that. All you have to do is, if you're serving, it's, am I serving? Are you serving, right? As my partner. And then where are you supposed to be? And it's just based on, forget about stacking, just normal. Where are you supposed to go based on either you're serving or I'm serving? Then pause, and then make a decision about where the other player goes. So you you isolate it to just knowing where the server has to go. Same with the returner. Like, are you returning, am I returning, and which side are we on, you know, for the return. That's it. Once you figure that out, then you can go into the stack. Um but, you know, if you've been playing for a while, you know that, you know, the even server, you know, serves here, the odd server serves, you know, serves there on the odd, things like that. So you know where to position yourself on serve and return uh just for those two players, and then you figure out the stack. So yes, Brenda, that's how you would do it. Um Joe, and thanks for the question. So Joe asked a question about um, you know, he's learning how to stack, right? And the question is whether you're, if you're on the wrong side, right? And you and the rally begins, what happens, right? Is it a fault? Is there a penalty? Um and I want to thank uh, I say this correctly, Aiken, South, I think it's Aiken, South Carolina, Aiken Pickleball Club put together a nice little summary of it. So I'm going to go ahead and share that with you. It's really interesting though. Um, and I know this is a, this has been a struggle in terms of the rules, in terms of figuring out like what should be a fault, right? Where like fault where there's a penalty, whether it's a point or a side out, or it should just be a replay, or it should, who calls it, all that can be complicated sometimes. So here what they've done is they basically made the the rule is now basically there's no fault, right? So there's um, you know, and and this is, this was changed I think like a year, a year and a half ago, something like that. But basically like if if there's an incorrect server returner, um it's not a fault. So if you catch it in the middle of it, then then it would be a replay. So you basically, someone say, "Whoa, whoa, you're in the wrong spot," that's a replay. Now there's an interesting twist that I'll share with you in a second, but that's the idea. So if you're in the wrong spot and someone says, "Whoa, whoa, we shouldn't have played, you know, we shouldn't be playing this rally," in the middle of it, then you just start again. Um if, however, the rally ends, then it's concluded. So meaning the point or the side out has happened already. So that's not, you're not going to unwind that. You're just going to keep that, whatever that is. Then the next rally you get into your proper positions, right? So the idea is you correct it after the fact, but the effect of that rally stands. Now what's interesting is if you call for, if you stop the rally, right? So you're like, "Whoa, whoa, whoa. You're in the wrong position." And it turns out they're not in the wrong position. Now that is a fault. Which is very interesting, right? So like it's not a fault to serve for or return from the wrong side, but if you stop it and you're wrong, now that's a fault. And that goes to my, my thinking on this is basically never stop a rally. Just play, I just say play the rally out, you know. Um even on the score, you know, it's the same thing with a score. Like if you stop the rally and it's wrong, it's the right score even though you stop the rally, that's a fault. So just play it out, you know. And I would tell you from my perspective, um bigger picture I would say is, I like, these are the kind of things that I'm happy to answer these questions, but I'll tell you that in my thinking and my play, we don't um, we don't just replay it or or don't worry about it, you know, we just move on with life. But I understand that there's situations where the rules become more more important. But thank you uh for the question, uh uh Joe. All right, so we got a couple of mechanics questions here, which one is from Steve, Stephen. Um, "If I want to add some power energy to my serve, it seems like a 4 foot high over the net will put the ball out of the court. Seems like there must be a balance between the two aspects of the trajectory." Uh, Stephen, you're correct. Obviously, you know, like anything, right? If I if I go higher, you know, and hit it harder, it's going to go further. Uh, but that's actually, does that, to me, militates in favor of the higher target over the net, right? Because what you're acknowledging, or what your question acknowledges I should say, is that I can get it as deep with less energy, which is awesome. Um so yes, you you wouldn't need to modulate. The only thing I would correct here, Stephen, is you're saying there must be a balance between the two aspects of the trajectory. I would suggest there's basically, it's trajectory and energy. The two aspects would, or two components, would be energy and trajectory, and every shot that you hit, including the serve, would balance the two. Actually, curiously, uh, yesterday, we're in the middle of camp right now, and yesterday this very question was asked by one of the campers, which is, I showed the height over the net and the camper was like, "Well, the ball's going to go out." I said, "Yeah, have you hit it as hard as you're hitting the low one?" Probably. Um, so then we have the same conversation. So, this is a very common kind of question that arises. But the beautiful thing is, as a player, you get to modulate your trajectory, height, target, right, over the net, and your energy to get whatever kind of shot you want. You want to drop it in the non-volley zone? Do you want it to go deep? Do you want it to go in the middle of the court? Whatever you want, based on energy and trajectory. But thank thank you for the question. Um, all right, Fred. Uh, question here was, um, uh, this had, this was really interesting because it has, was a question about foot, about court positioning and footwork. And this was, "I reflect, I reflexively face my opponent when on defense rather than facing square to the net. Is the footwork pattern a disadvantage?" What he's talking about here is, so you, let's assume that you're on the right side of the court. Okay? Okay, so you're playing on the right side, and the ball is diagonal from you. Okay, so the ball, and let's assume you're on the serve side. You're in the transition zone or at the baseline, and the ball is is diagonal from you, meaning it's in front of your partner, right? Directly in front of your partner on the other side of the net. Question is, which way do you stand? The way you should stand is you should face the ball. So you should be at an, if you took the ball and made a line to yourself, you would want your body to be 90 degrees to that line, right? Facing the ball. What players sometimes do is they face the net, right? So they're facing the net, which is not where the ball is. The ball's not in front of you in the net. The ball is diagonal from you. So you want to be on the diagonal. If the ball is directly opposite you, right? Then yes, then facing the net happens to coincide with facing the ball. But it's not really about facing the net. It's always about facing the ball, is the key. So uh so Fred, you would be um 100% correct. Facing the ball with your body, that's what you want to do. So So that's the mailbag episode. Uh again, come into the community if you're not in there already. As always, it's a pleasure to be able to come on here and answer your questions. Love what I do with this coaching project that we have, and I love sharing information about the sport of pickleball. If you have questions, please put them in the community. It's helpful to us. If you want to, you can put "mailbag episode" on there. You know, it really helps uh the team go in there and go like, "Mailbag episode," and drop it into the mailbag episode. And then this is a an episode that runs whenever the the mailbag fills up. So, it might be 3 days from now, it might be a month from now, depending on the questions that come in. Uh, as soon as the bag gets, you know, pretty full, then we come on here and answer the questions. So, a pleasure to be with you. Uh, make sure you tune in this Friday for our next regular episode of Pickleball Therapy. And until then, be well.