5 Mental Mistakes Destroying Your Game

I was playing two of the best players in the world we were the 53 seed they were the 11 seed they won game one we won game two and then we were up 6-1 in game three playing Matt Wright and Lucy kovalova all of a sudden they made a Run 2 six then 36 then 4 six all the way up until they got to 86 they went on a 70 run because we started to make mental mistakes and by the end of this video you're going to learn the five mental mistakes that are destroying your

game back to the match at 86 they hit a lob over my head bad idea then I went up I smashed the ball winner come on ref said football I said what he said yes I said my dad's filming can we check the footage and so ref said no we can't do that it it looks kind of like it kind of look like a footfall but it wasn't a footfall I swear doesn't matter okay at 96 though something changed something in my brain flipped back and all of a sudden that footfall got me off of

the emotional roller coaster which is mistake number one how's that handwriting mom sick which is one of the most common mistakes in pickleball we've all experienced it you miss a shot and then you're frustrated about that Miss and then you walk back to the Baseline and you're still frustrated then you miss a serve that's two mistakes and all a sudden they get aide out you miss the return and one mistakes turns into two until it turns into a series of mistakes that compound over time that makes you want to quit the game so we've all

been there but there's a way to overcome it in what that footfall it it got me angry and it flipped my mind out of it it actually reminded me of the three things that you're going to learn right now number one is your breath so what happens in tournaments is we get nervous and when we're nervous we we physically get tight we hold the paddle tighter than we've ever held it um all of our muscles start to tighten up and because of that we don't have the touch we don't have the feel and we start

missing a lot more than usual and so in moments where you feel stress remember to breathe this book I love this book I recommend it the inner game of tennis there's a great line inside of it and it says when the mind is fastened to the rhythm of breathing it tends to become absorbed and calm whether onor off the court I know of no better way to begin to deal with anxiety than to place the mind on one's breathing process and anxiety is fear about what may happen in the future and it occurs only when

the mind is imagining what the future may bring so in that match as we were losing I wasn't breathing and in that match when we were losing I was starting to think well we were up 61 we should win but now we're down 96 oh no instead when that footfall happened it it jolted me into some anger but then it reminded me to start my breathing process again here's the second thing a physical trigger it's really easy to get ahead of yourself or think about the past and one thing you can do is come up

with something physical whether I know some that literally pinch themselves or will pull on a finger or my buddy Tyler likes to put his hand here and go as a physical movement that will reenter you into the now so as you're watching this and thinking about your own game and when you feel stressed coming up with something that can remind you to be calm breathe and come back to the now is a must if you're going to overcome those tough moments and then here's the third one some type of short Mantra I was a basketball

player growing up I loved Coach K and Coach K used to always talk about next play if something bad happened in the past you can't change it and so he would use that term next play next play next play and then the players would tell their teammates the same thing when something bad happened but just as a reminder to keep myself focused so I can overcome where our minds typically go which is forward backward into the stands and almost anywhere but here and I mentioned earlier we were down 96 against this top team and the

match wasn't over yet here's what happened next tell you at the end of the video here's mistake number two not knowing your targets so many players will go on court and they don't really know where hitting the ball or why and so they tend to opt for and not on purpose but they just do the hit and hope method where they hit it they hope it's the right spot if it's not they lose the point they don't necessarily know why the really good players have specific Targets in their mind for multiple scenarios you're going to

learn right now three specific targets that will help you when you go out and play tomorrow because when you start to develop these targets and even know them in advance you start to go on court more confident for what you're going to do in three very specific scenarios your third shots your safe spots in your shoot attack spots I forgot what I was gonna say I got my guy off camera there so the first one we're talking about is your third shot and you want to know what your targets are when you're on your third

shot so as a reminder right this person's going to serve the ball this person's going to return the ball and then this one right here is your third shot this is the decision that we're actually talking about there's three ways that you think about who to Target or where to Target on the court during your third shot the first one is hitting at the player who's on the move so if the ball gets served to this player and this player hits the ball back now this player is going to move toward the kitchen line to

get to their most optimal position if the return doesn't actually come very deep like let's say that the return only comes boom to right here well there's a very good chance that this person is standing somewhere right here they're still in the midcourt area which means that they're probably going to be moving up to the court so wherever the third shot goes between these two people right here one of their targets should be at this player on the Move okay so they hit it here they can hit it at them and often that's going to

lead to a mistake because a player who's hitting the ball on the move is often a player who's going to make a mistake the second specific Target you can aim for is the weaker player so let's just say for the sake of this that this is the stronger player and this right here is the weaker player so as we said the serve is going to go to this player the return's going to come back and then this player's coming in on the Move now May maybe you don't want to go with the person on the

move because maybe their moving voles are actually pretty good maybe this player right here is actually pretty weak and so instead of taking your third shot at this player maybe you go at this player again because there's a better chance that they make some type of error or give you some type of pop-up there's no one size fits all of this game so some people might tell you always hit to the player on the move it's a good strategy but it's not the only strategy hitting to the weaker player is also a good strategy on

your third shot so the third one is targeting backhands so let's assume that both of these players are righties so that would be this player's backhand and as this player moves in right this little zone right here would be this player's back hand so those are two of the targets that you could hit on a drop or a drive now the best thing that could happen is maybe you get two of these things or all three you get the person on the move you get the weaker player and you get the backhand often times let's

actually flip this right here this is what's going to happen you're going to get a player they serve the ball here the return comes here now this player is on the Move coming in they're the weaker player the player on the move and let's say you want to go with their backhand well it's the trifecta boom that right there is thinking the game and that's how you often get players to make mistakes so instead of going into matches with no targets that's a mental ER that will destroy your game it really will it will not

help you win by knowing your targets you stay calm and purposeful in tough situations so mental mistake number three is poor shot selection a lot of players don't even realize that the choices they make on what shots they hit are one of the main reason that they're losing matches that's a mental err too often we think of shots as good shots or bad shots but really there's a scale of poor shot selection over here to really good shot selection over here and what players don't realize is that they're losing a lot of points games and

matches because of their shot selection what the really good players do is they take disciplined shot choices over and over at the biggest moments that really help them win so we're going to share with you and simplify a shot selection scale that you can revert back to that can also give you some language for what a bad shot is and what a good shot is so we're going to use a scale of 1 to 10 what do you think a 10 on the shot selection scale is there is no 10 all right there's no 10

is a joke have you ever had a lab that was up there was so juicy you're like everybody get out of my way I'm going to crush this ball Ball's right there you're like no boom net shoot we all have all right there's no 10 on the shot selection scale because what's the line there's no shot you're going to make it perfectly every time so we can cross off 10 let's go to nine what is a nine let me tell you I I forgot you guys are behind the screen right now so a nine is

a big Advantage shot okay so what's a big Advantage shot if we look over at the screen often times you have you know two players back you have two players up at the kitchen they're clearly in a advantageous Court position and let's just say the ball flies up they crush it right it's the one that you're going to make about 90% of the time all right what's a seven if you're wondering why there's no eights you can go to the comments and ask there a seven is a small advantage is a small Advantage shot so

there's there's really three ways I look at a seven shot it's one where you have you're in a slightly favorable position so let's say you have two people at the kitchen you have some people off you're probably hitting sevens there the ball's maybe not way above the net but it's at around maybe a foot above the net you don't want to crush it for a nine cuz it's not a nine but you want to spin it to keep them back the second part of this is maybe your opponent's a little off balance right so maybe

they're coming in in transition maybe they are at the kitchen line and you hit some type of dink it's an aggressive dink that gets them off balance and then they Pop the ball up to around say net height which would be the third one you attack that ball because you have a good opportunity to create a nine which would be a big Advantage situation and if you want to go even deeper on all this this is something we go super in-depth on inside of that pickle ball school it's called the advantage scale so you can

go to that pick a ball school.com inside we have classroom with on demand uh exclusive videos we have a growing library of content there's community of like-minded people all trying to accomplish the same thing which is one be around other people who are obsessed with the game and two improve and get to the next level um or just get as good as they possibly can and then three is ongoing training from me and our team that are going to help answer your specific questions so you can improve so that pickall school.com is where you can

check that out so five is neutral and this is a a 5050 shot and so let's say that all four players are at the kitchen line and you guys are just dinking back and forth but nobody has a clear dink or anything that they can do something with but then all of a sudden you have a lowball that's sitting below the height of the net and you decide to speed it up you might win it you might not depending on your skill level and the skill level of your opponents and so really it's a 50/50

opportunity and if I go back to that match I was telling you about earlier in game one we got blasted it was like 112 and in that game we actually took quite a few fives that led to us not playing very well in game one in game two we made an adjustment and we were just shooting for for sevens Time After Time and Again sevens lead to nines and so when we played that style in game two we crushed them and then game three as you know we were down 96 until I'll get back to

that in a second let's keep going so what's a three a three is a disadvantaged attack and this is the type of shot that might work three out of 10 times honestly it may be less I'll give you a good example of a three one of the most common one ones is it's just an off-balance attack so let's say we got some players in this zone right here and all of a sudden ball gets hit over here this player is running way off balance to hit this ball they're in no position to do anything special

but they try to do something special by you know what I'm talking about it's that like home run shot that's really risky but it sometimes works and when it works everybody goes absolutely nuts and it makes you emotionally feel like I want that feeling again stop hitting that shot if you want to win okay that's what a three is now how does this all play out at different levels very differently right so early on I see a lot of players at the 3540 level hitting lots of Threes And so you might say how do I

improve the moment that you eliminate threes from your game you start to win more points As you move up levels you actually end up playing more fives in general because the players you're playing against start to neutralize your shots you hit a great seven well they bring it back and now we're back into a five scenario or maybe you even get to a nine and you have a big puta away that 90% ball you tried to put that ball away all of a sudden they did something crazy they dropped it back into the kitchen and

they both got back up up to a neutral position so earlier in your pickle ball Journey you're actually going to get a lot of nines right off the bat you just hang around for two or three shots they're going to pop the ball up it's going to be a nine as you start to play better and better players you have to earn your nines and you have to opt for sevens as much as you possibly can because very often last thing I'll say I'm getting fired up right now we try to go from a neutral

position to a nine in one shot and that right there is one of the biggest mental mist mes that can destroy your game here's the next one not using timeouts strategically you're in the middle of the match you're on autopilot things are moving fast and point after Point's going by and you have no clue what's going on you turn to your partner you kind of look at each other like I don't know what to change and before you know it the entire match is already over then you tap paddles you grab your bag you're sitting

over there talking with your partner and you're like what happens I have no clue this mental mistake of not using your timeout strategically is one that if you flip right away can help you win more matches so how do you do it you use them strategically all right and so here's what you should do in those moments at the beginning of matches if it goes you get down 3 0 or you're sitting at 22 for multiple sideouts use a timeout because what it does is it allows you to stop think and assess and then once

you do those three things you can start to think a little bit more coherently and actually make what everybody always says to make which is adjustments in-game adjustments is one of the hardest things you can make but the moment you take a time out especially early in a game if you're playing somebody that you don't know very well you allow your brain time to rest your brain to become conscious again and to get out of this blackout mode now what should you actually talk about when you and your team are over here in the timeout

now I'd recommend two things number one what's working and what's not www n all right what's working and what's not and that's a really hard thing to come up with in the middle of a match because points are going every 10 seconds and for you to have a conversation like hey what's working and what's not well before you come up with an answer the is going to call the score you're going to have 10 seconds and then you're not even going to be able to communicate any type of adjustment and a final thing is it's

like if you notice something's working make sure you leave the time out very aligned with your partner to keep doing one thing that is working then on the flip side if something's not working like hey we thought we were going to come in and we were going to drive a bunch of balls because we thought aggression was going to work but then it's not working so when you're in this timeout what's not working you can leave with one thing that you should stop doing stop driving the ball stop taking threes on the shot selection scale

so you can actually make a change that can have an impact so here's the second thing you can talk about encouragement it's not groundbreaking but just saying one or two positive things to your partner hey you've been crushing it out there hey keep dinking to that player they can't hang with you those type of things will just lift up your partner and you got to remember everyone's stressed out at tournaments so the moment you go over poor body language you're angry in a Timeout your partner feels it they play off it and then they don't

play better because of how you are acting encouragement can really flip the script of a match or even flip the script of how your partner is playing and one final thing the moment you start to encourage your partner you actually take your thoughts off yourself and when we play Bad what are we typically doing we're thinking internally or we're thinking about the past right or we're thinking about the future we're not staying in the now and so telling your partner one specific thing what's working what's not hey you're doing this well brings you right back

to the now and takes you off of number one which is the emotional roller coaster here's the next one late game hero mode I'm just going to write down hero mode right here and by the way if you think you're really smart in pickle ball and you're like hey I think I know so much and you want to take the pickle ball IQ test and just see how much you know you can go to the link in the description take the test nobody gets 10 out of 10 I dare you to try you know what

this is this is at the end of the game all right you get over here and you're at like 107 okay and you guys are both right here you're feeling good you're like we're about to close this thing out so the point starts and all of a sudden you get the ball boom ball comes here ball comes here and this person right here decides that they're going to take some type of crazy game-winning fadeaway shot that's going to work and they're going to go off the court and everyone's going to pick them up and start

cheering but you know what typically happens and come closer you miss that shot and you know what happens after that they get the side out and then they score three points it's 1010 and they score two more points it's 1210 and all a sudden you just had a great opportunity to win the match but because you didn't have discipline in that moment and you wanted to take the highrisk shot that you haven't hit one time in the entire match you lose so when you're in those moments number one you still got to play to win

right but you have to remember they're nervous on the other side so if you go for a third shot drive and they block it back you don't need to hit some crazy fif shot drive just get to the kitchen dink a few balls they're most likely just going to give you the match cuz what I've experienced in my own matches is I often just give them the side outs they don't actually win those points but the moment you get more disciplined which is exactly what happens at the end of that match with Matt Wright and

Lucy kovalova let me take you back there real quick at 96 remember that footfall got me angry and it locked me back in to the three things that I was doing my breath my physical movement and my Mantra next play right now all of a sudden they actually scored the very next point they got up 106 and then on 106 I decided my partner Christa hits a return I was going to go for a Bert so I jumped across the kitchen line I hit the ball crosscourt Lucy hit it with her backand she sent it

just wide side out then we got the ball back and we were just disciplined and locked in and we came back [Music] 710 then 810 then 910 then 101 until finally after a few more back and forths we got to match point at 1211 we got to the kitchen Chris is dinking crosscourt with Lucy all of a sudden after two or three dinks Lucy decides to speed up a backhand right at my chest bad decision I crushed the counter right back in front of me they missed the ball into the net I turned over to

Christa I gave her a big hug and we won for us what was our biggest mixed doubles win of our career and it wasn't because we're so much more talented than them they're one of the best teams in the world but it's because because we've played in so many matches where we fell prey to five mental mistakes that destroyed our game that in those moments we did some of these things but also we were able to avoid these five things so I got one of the biggest wins of my career because of this not what

was going on with my strokes and you can have some of those same wins and some of those same moments in your journey if you start to avoid some of these mental mistakes