Beware of the Bears
Don’t feed the bears!
In today’s Bite Size Pickleball newsletter:
Beware of the Bears
Kitchen Rule from a 7-year-old
What’s in a 2nd Shot?
Sometimes, I am not always at the top of my game. Not often, but on occasion, during rec play, it can be hard for me to get motivated. But when someone comes along and pokes me: roar. Or, should I say: ROAR!!!!!!!
Typically, bears get poked before the game even begins. And the bears love that sh*t. El Poker, essentially, announces to the whole court: “I am going to kick that bear’s ass.” The bear might be in its cave at that point, but it definitely pricks its ears up. “Hmmm? Did that human just poke me? What’s he thinking?” And, yeah, it’s usually a dude.
I am honestly not sure what the pokers are thinking. But I think the act of “poking” goes against their game. Because, the instant they poke the bear, they’ve put pressure on themselves, not the bear. The bear remains totally nonchalant, ready to rip you to shreds at a moment’s notice. And, what I see happen is, when the game gets close, and the bear comes roaring back, the pokers get tight. Bears: 11, Pokers: Duh. Da Bears!
I will say, I am just talking about it from a rec play standpoint, which often is all in fun. However, I do see some pros try to poke the bear, and even then, it doesn’t seem to work out too well for them. Matt Wright, Julian Arnold, and a few others.
My advice is not to spend so much of your time, and energy, wanting to beat the bear so badly. Again, that makes the match ‘“personal,” and I just don’t think we play our best pickleball when we make it about a personal grudge, of any kind. I feel like we have a tendency to play our best pickleball when we focus on maxing our own potential, forgetting the bear is even there. Poke the bear, and we have a tendency to get clawed to death. R.I.P. Mr Ranger.
Kitchen Rule from a 7-year-old
I was hanging out with my niece’s son last week and we practiced a little pickleball, and made a couple of videos. I am also teaching him to how to edit, and he was actually commandeering the laptop on this short vid. I only had to show him something once and he took to it immediately. In the next newsletter I will post our more detailed video. For now, enjoy your chicken! WTF? Chicken? Watch.
WHAT’S IN A 2ND SHOT?
In this week’s podcast, I read a chapter from my book How to Play Better Pickleball. If you didn’t listen, I’ll sum up here:
Hitting a solid 2nd shot should be used to mess up your opponent’s 3rd shot. How do you do that? Deep and hard, preferably to the far right hand corner, with backspin, IF your opponent is a righty. That means they’ll have to return a ball, tailing off the court (because of the backspin), with their backhand, or run around their backhand. At which time, you will have a lot of court to work with if they’re not super agile on their feet.
Keep your 2nd shots deep. You don’t want to give your opponents a free pass to the NVZ. UNLESS, maybe they don’t move too well. Then you could do what I have recently been experimenting with: a 2nd shot drop. I like to use backspin on those too. They are nasty when they work.
If YOU aren’t too mobile, you don’t, necessarily, want to be hitting your 2nd shots with a lot of speed, because that means it is going to come back at you faster, giving you less time to get to the net. My suggestion, in this case, is to use a forehand, or backhand, chop down on the ball, lifting it into the air a little higher, and longer. The backspin, created by your chop, will give you more time to hustle up to the NVZ.
If you want to listen to the podcast on an Apple device click here. You can also listen directly on the Bite Size Pickleball website.
LASTLY…
While traveling, I took some time off from playing, and I loved it. Why? Because it gave me an opportunity to come down from the daily pickleball high, and find my grounding. I spent a lot of time in a beautiful park, hiking, and just laying around. When we play every day, we absorb a lot of intense energy. And when we don’t take the time to process it, and, specifically, let it go, it has a tendency to stick with us off the court. And I am not sure this constant “yang” energy is optimal for our overall health. A little more “yin” could do well to balance us better. However, today was my first day back, and I had a blast. Took a coma nap afterwards, but had…a…blast. Om.