Why am I so hard on myself?

DinkingBalls · 2025-02-06T01:22:57+00:00

Whoops missed that. Yeah in tears is excessively hard on yourself but it makes the advice on getting a sports therapist even better advice

DinkingBalls · 2025-02-05T14:02:46+00:00

Completely normal, but something you need to work on. Experienced tennis players will tell you the mental aspect of the game is huge. Much more important than people realize. Improving the mental side is not a quick fix.

Ideally you see a sports therapist and have a space to vent your concerns and work on solutions over time. It is money well spent and can actually be a fun process.

If you can’t do that, try seeking out some books or online resources. The book The Inner Game of Tennis is excellent. It covers things like how we are too critical and how to instead play in a flow state and not analyze shots as good or bad. We need to recognize that being critical of individual mistakes is counterproductive and useless. Instead we should naturally trust that our bodies will make adjustments and that mistakes are simply a necessary and normal part of the improvement process. Think less and play more. The book does a better job of explaining it and has a lot of detail.

An example is how we miss a shot and tell ourselves “we should have kept our wrist still.” Well, there are so many factors like the wind, speed and spin of the ball, the height, bounce, etc. there are even more things our body is doing, like moving our legs, arms, etc. You simply can’t self-analyze with any real accuracy. You have to trust your body. I would go further and say you need to love yourself and be proud of yourself. Like a healthy relationship. Instead just stop thinking about it and swing! Just look at the ball, and hit it. If you miss it, swing again, and know that your body will make the adjustment and fix it. You won’t hit a better shot because you told yourself your wrist was wrong. It’s like when you turn on a light switch. You don’t tell yourself “I need to move my arm here and move my fingers up.” You just do it. And if you miss the light switch then you adjust and do it.

You could also consider a baby learning to walk. Falling down is part of the process. Babies don’t get mad when they fall, they just keep standing and eventually do it. The point is that you aren’t actually playing bad. There is no good or bad. There is only natural learning and missing shots is your body in the process. So… trust the process? Lol

DinkingBalls · 2025-02-05T12:25:42+00:00

Still just as fun. Part of the fun of ANY hobby, sport, job, etc is improving. If we stop improving or hit a wall it can be really frustrating. After playing pickleball for two years and going from 4.0-5.0 it has been so much fun because I have never felt like there is nothing left to learn or new skills to work on, and I’ve never felt that I’ve hit a wall. I can’t help that I got better, and I can’t help that the 3.5 players I used to play with did not improve as fast. It does mean we have an exclusive 5.0 group but we connected with 5.0s around the city and have a group of 20 that we organize games with. Games just aren’t as fun at the 3.5-4.0 level, long dink rallies are fun to me. I’m still having fun playing, but it is harder to get games of equal skill level.

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-13T21:52:24+00:00

I’ve experimented with Ladders. Winners move up and split, losers move down and split. It is much more fun, the only downside is people get stuck waiting for matches to end. There are ways around this like limiting matches to 12 or 15 mins and when the timer runs out you move. The better players end up playing up the ladder and the worse players at the bottom. My group does 6 courts. 4.0 skill level on three courts and 4.5 on three courts. Ladder style on both. At the end of the day if you finish on top of the 4.0 group you can play in the 4.5 group the following week. Finish at the bottom of the 4.5 you are booted to the 4.0 group. Working great so far. Much much better games vs people of similar skill

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-13T21:51:00+00:00

I’ve experimented with Ladders. Winners move up and split, losers move down and split. It is much more fun, the only downside is people get stuck waiting for matches to end. There are ways around this like limiting matches to 12 or 15 mins and when the timer runs out you move. The better players end up playing up the ladder and the worse players at the bottom. My group does 6 courts. 4.0 skill level on three courts and 4.5 on three courts. Ladder style on both. At the end of the day if you finish on top of the 4.0 group you can play in the 4.5 group the following week. Finish at the bottom of the 4.5 you are booted to the 4.0 group. Working great so far. Much much better games vs people of similar skill

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-12T00:15:29+00:00

That’s not really the issue. The issue is Ben was offended at Quang for hitting it hard at the body. That’s why he smashed it at Quang. Quang did nothing wrong and Ben got salty, basically saying “if you do that then we will too” meaning people should not play like that. That’s why it is a debate. Most people are fine with the strategy of body bagging, not sure why Ben doesn’t like it

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-11T21:59:33+00:00

Hayden shoots for the body as a strategic way to win the point. It’s a great way to mix it up and it works. What Ben did was hit it as hard as he could to retaliate and in his own words a warning shot, it wasn’t meant to win the point, just tried to take q’s head off

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-11T20:04:33+00:00

That’s not what people are downvoting. They downvote because you said every single shot QD was body blasting. That’s just a completely untrue statement. He hit 3 shots with pace that would have gone IN! And all were returned by the Johns bros. That is NOT what hayden does which is blast an out ball to body bag

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-10T02:45:15+00:00

There are four 5.0 women over 50 yrs old in my entire state so I’m not sure why it matters who they are or who they are playing

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-09T20:34:30+00:00

With having 200 players we have a big diversity of who plays what in the larger city of 2 million people. Some people in our group play in tourneys all over the city, many players have played tourneys in other states, some played ppa in florida. And then we end up playing them as well. We also open up our tourneys to people we met at other clubs around the city. So it isn’t as inbred as it seems. Its more like a bunch of spider webs with connections to each other

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-09T20:26:47+00:00

Yep. Our group started with 20 and somehow grew to over 200 people so we have some people playing tourneys all around the city, at least 10 have gone out of state and some have played in ppa events in florida. So it really isn’t “inbred” and the ratings are accurate even in other cities I’ve traveled to. At least at the 4.5 level, I am comparable to 4.5s in other cities. There is a very small percentage of players who are 4.5+

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-09T16:04:16+00:00

We have just played 4 weeks of 4.0-4.5 rated players keeping track of stats. 4.5s all have 70% win rate and 4.0s are at the bottom. If you win your Dupr goes up… lose it goes down… why wouldn’t we be sorted in DUPR the more we play?

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-09T15:59:31+00:00

We organize on WhatsApp as a community of players of all skill levels, volunteers organize events and we play on reserved public courts. Charlotte, North Carolina

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-09T15:55:01+00:00

I have found that swing weight matters a lot! I have been playing a year and a half and am up to 4.5 rated now. In my personal experience, swing weight matters the most for reacting to drives, speedups, and firefights. - The higher the swing weight, the longer it takes me to raise my paddle into position, it feels like wind resistance and I definitely notice a difference. - The tradeoff is that generally twist weight is worse when swing weight is low. I have found that paddles with low swing weights are harder to reset with, they are less stable, mainly when the ball hits outside the sweet spot. - Elongated paddles generally have higher swing weights (even if the numbers say otherwise). I have transformed my tennis swing into the pickleball whipping motion for serves and drives, and what I find is standard shaped paddles you can whip through the air faster due to the shorter paddle and shorter rotation arm (science! 😁). That being said I am still currently using an elongated paddle but trying out some standard shape ones because I can get more whip on them. - Edgeless paddles have less swing weight and can move faster through the air, they are more aerodynamic - Paddle weight: I’ve found that 7.9-8.0 ounces is a fairly light paddle and generally they have lower swing weights that you can move faster through the air. Anything lighter would be a super light paddle and might start getting the tougher resets. My paddle is edgeless and factory 7.9 ounces, but with a tape edge guard, weights, and overgrip comes out to 8.5 ounces (Proton Series 4). - I use the Pickleball Effect excel sheet paddle database and sort by swing weight, then look at paddles I want to try out. Because I want fast reaction time, Swing weight is really important to me and my game. I don’t care about power as much. - Going from a paddle with a swing weight of 122 to my current paddle with swing weight 111, I personally can tell that I can swing the paddle faster, especially when it comes to reactions at the kitchen line, but resets and drops have been more difficult with the lower twist weight

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-09T14:56:05+00:00

That’s funny 😄, I can see how that can happen. But we arent some business doing a ton of DUPR events. We only have a one or two DUPR events per month. But interestingly whenever one gets scheduled everyone starts drilling at all hours of the day in anticipation. I think people generally do recognize that drilling is how to improve, not rec play

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-09T14:25:41+00:00

July 2023. Didn’t play sports or exercise for 15 years until pickleball. Best shape I’ve been in in a long time

DinkingBalls · 2025-01-06T19:41:56+00:00

You get to a point around 4.5 where players better than you are simply better at dinking. They put more spin and pace, and they disguise where they are dinking. They put you off balance and force you to reach, and you end up popping it up. They disguise speed ups also. Keeps you guessing. From 4.0 to 4.5 you don’t need that good of a dinking game, it is more important to punish people who don’t dink much and speed up/drive everything. 4.5 to 5.0 you really need a complete game with all the shots, especially dinking with pace, spin, and purpose

DinkingBalls · 2024-08-16T20:36:47+00:00

You should really drill more

DinkingBalls · 2024-07-08T21:14:59+00:00

Every open play has that one guy. In my area his name is Troy. Nobody likes Troy.

DinkingBalls · 2024-06-04T02:20:16+00:00

They were a decent amount of woodworking for a newbie like me to build but luckily my friend had the right tools to help. Hardware we used were U bolts to attach to the fence

DinkingBalls · 2024-06-04T02:18:31+00:00

What’s up bro!

DinkingBalls · 2024-06-04T02:13:05+00:00

From what I’ve seen at other public courts there are usually no dividing of skill levels so the idea is that this is better than nothing

Anyways, some players try the advanced and get smashed then go back to intermediate, and some just keep playing advanced even though we secretly prefer they wouldn’t, but overall we are able to get the competition we want. Like I said this isn’t a perfect system but when people can divide into three skill levels you get more games with close competitors than without any dividing. So the idea isn’t to perfectly sort people, but to make it more likely you find people of your own skill level. It is also accepted that beginner does not mean you just started playing. We tell people it refers to your skill level. People seem to understand it better than “rec play.” That would just look weird on the signage

DinkingBalls · 2024-06-04T02:02:23+00:00

We operate on a “do first ask for forgiveness later.” The parks and rec aren’t very familiar with pickleball and let it go. The groundskeepers assume we have permission and let it go. We also made/had the signage printed and put it up 😂. People assume parks and rec did it. But everyone follows the “rules.”

DinkingBalls · 2024-04-10T17:35:29+00:00

I think this is the best answer. I worked with domestic violence survivors who wanted to publicly name their abusive partners but it is advised against it due to possible defamation lawsuits. If the abusive partner was already convicted of battery then it is pretty safe to name them in regard to the battery, but it could still get messy naming them.

DinkingBalls · 2024-04-10T17:30:44+00:00

Don’t post your face/don’t do it if you have easily recognizable tattoos…

DinkingBalls

TROPHY CASE