Strength training and proper exercise are essential for improving pickleball performance and should be a regular part of training, it's part of the athletic pillar that we talk about at Better Pickleball. In this special episode we feature Ty Woody, a sports performance coach. Ty specializes in preparing pickleball players, both pros and amateurs, for optimal performance and injury prevention. He shares with us why we should take care of our bodies because, at the end of the day, we want to play...
Feb 04, 2025•23 min
How can we gatekeep information and use that to best enjoy our pickleball journey? A lot of times when we're exposed to information in an area we're not sure what the right answer is, like pickleball, we're likely to err on the side of letting the information in. This happens because we're just curious or we heard something and we're not sure how to discern that it's not correct for us. The algorithm dictates for you information (as it knows you better than you know yourself) and even well-meani...
Jan 31, 2025•19 min
What Does it Mean to Perform? How many games do you expect to win the next time you play pickleball? All of them? Most of them? Half? Extend that out: what win percentage would you be satisfied with over your pickleball playing career? Would you be happy with winning about 50% of the time? It is common to react with a “No” here. After all, why should 50% be an acceptable result. But reflect on that for a moment. If your win rate is more than 50%, what happens to the win rates of your fellow play...
Jan 24, 2025•21 min
In 2025, the rules change has a little bit of impact on the non-volley zone when the volley starts. Basically the volley included the swing of the paddle before the ball was struck. Rules change in pickleball can rob us in different ways leading to unnecessary stress, conflicts on the court or detract us from the enjoyment of the game. In this episode we also discuss how to deal with criticism and how we determine, at the first level, whether what's happening is a criticism or constructive feedb...
Jan 17, 2025•18 min
Imagine having the same stats about your game like the pros. Things like: How fast is my serve? How accurate is my forehand? Am I making more mistakes on my backhand? In this podcast episode podcast we feature Swupnil Sahai, co-founder and CEO of Swingvision. SwingVision is an app that provides such stats by offering AI-assisted game analysis. The app provides real-time stats, tracking elements like ball speed and trajectory, and generates game highlights. It includes additional features such as...
Jan 14, 2025•24 min
At the beginning of the year, we have all that enthusiasm and most of us are filled with hope, promise and a lot of excitement for the coming year. When players set resolutions or goals for the year, it's very easy to fall into the trap of trying to tackle too many things at once. In this episode we're going to talk about how to actually achieve your goals, take those New Year's resolutions that may be rambling around in your brain, and to actually achieve some(if not all) of them when it comes ...
Jan 10, 2025•18 min
Happy 2025! Let's think about our progress journey through pickleball as worth experiencing and enjoying to see the game better. Because here's the fact, there's really nowhere to arrive at and there's no magic place to get to. Embrace the infinity of your journey and try and avoid pestering yourself with the, 'Are we there yet?' question. Take a minute to imagine yourself as the player you want to be in the future. It could be a six months from now player, six years from now, however long you w...
Jan 03, 2025•20 min
Ben Johns is no longer going to play with his brother, Collin, and is looking for a partner for 2025. It's a little bit sad in the sense that they're brothers, they play together and I imagine they love pickleball. There's been a lot of opinions about who would be the best partner for Ben for 2025 and I thought it was a good time to talk about picking a perfect partner. In this episode we'll also talk about your journey, getting ready for the new year and what you want for yourself in 2025. How ...
Dec 27, 2024•24 min
Think of a perfect world as one that includes adversities because things will occur to us that are not in line with what we would hope or like. That in and of itself is the perfect world. How do you deal with adversity when you're working on your game or when you're playing? i) If you're working on your pickleball improvement, let's say you're working on your serve and you have a tendency to pull your paddle across your body (a very common mechanical flaw in players' games), understand that that...
Dec 20, 2024•20 min
You can register for the class and find the Pickleball Central link and code at BetterPickleball.com . Have a great week and we will see you this Friday for our regular episode - Pilling: It is a thing :).
Dec 16, 2024•3 min
Obstacles will naturally arise and are the reasons why you cannot reasonably say that you will not miss a single shot the next game you play. If obstacles are unavoidable and they generate the percentage, then that percentage is unavoidable by extension. This week we drive home the conversation we're having last week about 15% volley and setting reasonable expectations as we try to figure out the best way for us to approach the invariable situation where we miss a shot. If you understand what go...
Dec 13, 2024•21 min
When we're playing a match and we miss a shot, particularly one that we consider 'easy', we can get down on ourselves. Missing shots is usually the most negative feeling that we have besides losing. How do we process when we miss a shot when we play? This week I'm gonna share with you a technique of dealing with misses because they are going to occur . And it is a normal part of overall execution and strategic decision making in pickleball for us to miss shots when we play, even the easy ones. W...
Dec 06, 2024•17 min
This week we dive deeper into a recent episode by Tony on a very powerful perspective that had me reflect on my journey about learning. What I discovered about the reality of the struggle during practice is that, first of all, it's unavoidable. The absolute only way to master a skill to proficiency is through repetition where you will inevitably face both success and failure, no shortcuts. Now practice is about finding joy in the process and being fully present in that moment. There is just some...
Nov 29, 2024•15 min
A distraction pulls our attention away from the main thing that we're trying to focus on and it could either be physical or mental. For instance, if you're trying to paint something, and somebody keeps tapping your paint brush right on the end, it becomes hard to paint because you're distracted by it. Same thing happens when we play pickleball and we're trying to focus on the shot or we're trying to focus on ourselves and what we need to do better the next rally but we're distracted by a number ...
Nov 22, 2024•12 min
I got to play in one event at the USA Pickleball Nationals in Mesa, Arizona, that I'm going to be using as the centerpiece for today's conversation- How do we play better pickleball? It was a mixed doubles match where me and my partner, Ken, got to play hybrid which is one standing player and one player in a wheelchair. We were going to play Troy and Ryan in that Bronze Metal match where they won the first and second game. In the third game, we're getting hammered but we put on a run and beat th...
Nov 15, 2024•13 min
Let's talk about the concept of clicking when it comes to knowledge acquisition. How do we acquire knowledge and how do we know that we've acquired it? Sometime there's frustrations of not acquiring knowledge as quickly as we would want it to. So things may not be clicking for us and there's something that we're missing right now. i) Something as simple as listening to the podcast is a click, because you didn't do that before, and now you listen to the podcast. ii) Looking back and knowing, 'I'v...
Nov 08, 2024•14 min
On a pickleball court, there are four factors that affect the outcome of the game; us, our partner, and our two opponents. We'll use an analogy where factor A is going to be us, factor B is going to be our partner then factor C and D are our opponents-the two players across the net. The input in a pickleball game is going to be the game, the rules, the ball, the wind conditions, the court size which is standard and all the things that are happening to play a pickleball game or affecting the cour...
Nov 01, 2024•18 min
Pickleball, in its essence, is a zero-sum activity because it's built around the concept that there's going to be one winner and one loser. In a zero-sum world, our opponent's victory is our loss. Their positive is our negative. But it doesn't have to be that way. Think about your losses as simply learning opportunities so now you have a positive and a positive. Let's go into an analogy metaphor where you, or a loved one or a partner of yours, drops a dish that means something to you and it brea...
Oct 25, 2024•23 min
In this episode we're going to re-up one of our most popular and best episode. How do we customize the journey best for ourselves? Think of your journey as a customer experience and treat it that way to feel the best about yourself as a player and as your experience. We also talk about the concept of agency in outballs that applies to everything you're doing. What shot did you just hit? Where are you standing on the court? Did you play with a player who was not pleasant to you? Take some ownersh...
Oct 18, 2024•29 min
You can be successful as a pickleball player with different types of approaches, both hard and soft game strategies, and being a proponent of the soft game, doesn't mean that I'm an opponent of the hard game. Most pros have both a good soft game and a good hard game, because they'll mix the two depending on what's working in that moment and their overall strategy. The analogy/metaphore I like to think about in terms of the approach to pickleball is mixed martial arts or MMA which is a format of ...
Oct 11, 2024•13 min
Sometimes we'll play in situations in open plays where there's really no gathering of levels. So it's basically a free-for-all. How do you keep the game fun? How do you keep playing productively with players who you've known for a long time when you, or they, get to different levels of the game? This is a common question or situation we encounter and that's what we're going to be talking about in this new format of a Walk and Talk episode. i) Work on your game and when you're playing outside lev...
Oct 04, 2024•11 min
In this special episode of Pickleball Therapy, we have a meeting with fellow pickleball therapists who share their insights and happenings from their own pickleball journeys.
Oct 01, 2024•42 min
Let's talk about ratings, one of those double-edged swords that really don't say anything about how you play. While there's definitely a place for ratings in our sport, the only reason you need the rating is if it's consistent with what you want. Always ask yourself; 1) Why do I need the rating? 2) What's the rating doing for me and what I want with the game? So if you want to play tournaments and it requires a certain type of rating, then you're going to have to comply with that requirement. Th...
Sep 27, 2024•21 min
As a pickleball player, I want to feel good and play without doing that at the expense of my opponent. Taking advantage of my opponent and paying attention to my opponent's negative feelings to expand my confidence should not be something to look forward to or to work towards. The idea that our tank of confidence will be filled by our opponent's misery, them being upset at their partner or some negative thing for our opponent is way of thinking like a vampire or a parasite. Why? Because a vampir...
Sep 20, 2024•18 min
Good pickleball, and the best pickleball you'll ever play, is built upon a foundation of sound FUNDAMENTALS. I was reminded of the 'imagined' bad word, fundamentals, during a pro level match that I was watching because as pickleball players we often shy away from that word and dismiss it as only applicable for beginners. The truth is, executing everything really well, including those fundamentals, is what separates pro players from the other teams that they play against is their focus on the fun...
Sep 13, 2024•12 min
How to learn more about our upcoming course: ThePickleballsystem.com To sign up for our Virtual Clinic: BetterPickleball.com (click at the top header) To join us for our System tour, send us an email to Support@BetterPickleball.com and put in the Subject Line: "Tell Me More" Hope to see you in class Tony
Sep 12, 2024•6 min
In this episode we talk about three subjects; assigning fault, increasing our evolutionary empathy and staying focused. I got to play in a mixed group recently where I was paired with Dakota, a younger player, both in terms of her time in pickleball and also just a younger person. It was a tight match and we ended up on the losing end of it. I complimented her on a few of her shots and let her know that the game was on me. And what was interesting is Dakota response by saying, 'No, I didn't play...
Sep 06, 2024•14 min
Have you've been dreading doing something or having a conversation for a long time? The pool is an interesting way of thinking about it where you're standing by the side of the pool trying to decide, do I get in the pool? Do I not get in the pool? One way to deal with it is to just dive into the pool. Take the plunge into the pool- quicker than 20 seconds, and everything else becomes easier and more natural. Same applies to pickleball, there a few different ways break out of stagnation and move ...
Aug 30, 2024•18 min
In this special episode of Pickleball Therapy we talk with the incomparable Sara Weiss about her pickleball journey and the idea of being an animal on the court. We also talk about how she balances between pickleball and life coaching and how that led Sarah to this amazing place where she's now playing pro-qualifiers. It's interesting to learn about how she views the interaction of pickleball and the overall life experience of players because sometimes we get really caught up in our thoughts, wh...
Aug 27, 2024•32 min
The idea of strategic fluidity (wanting to be adapt to everything) and pickleball is a fine concept that sounds great in theory. But how does that work in practice when it comes to pickleball rules and what rules to apply or not to apply? Having an idea of the rules or guidelines can help you determine the best shot in any given situation, as opposed to a purely fluid approach that requires you to factor in all of the variables in a rally before you decide how to hit every single shot that you h...
Aug 23, 2024•23 min
