Hey!

I mentioned I'd share some news soon! And here it is: I'm starting “ThatPickleballSchool” — Online & In-Person. 

It’ll be built around this belief:

The fastest way to get better at pickleball is to improve how you think.  

Now, the logical next question is, what is ThatPickleballSchool? Well, it’s a combination of online resources & in-person instruction. 

It’s still on the ground floor, but I’m stoked because I’ve wanted to offer you even more than just the newsletter, youtube, and social media channels! 

Before you respond to this email with questions, I don’t have too many answers just yet. I’m deep in building out the curriculum and the systems for what this will become!

So I’ll share more when there's more updates to share :)

Before we keep going, welcome back to another edition of the blog. If you’re new to the blog and want to go back and check out past editions, go here!

Today’s edition has two parts: 

1. For the Pickleball Nerds – The #1 Way to Play Better Faster.

2. My Journey Playing Pro – Double Trouble: Why I'm Playing With Both Hands.

 Pop Quiz: 👇

1. How long does it take a baseball pitcher's100 mph fastball to go from pitcher's hand to catchers mitt? 
2. How long does it take a softball pitchers 70 mph fastball to go from pitcher's hand to catchers mitt?
3. How long does a kitchen - to - kitchen (off the bounce) speed up take to travel from one paddle to the other?

Don’t scroll down and cheat 😂. Give your best guess. Now, you might be thinking, why the pop quiz? Well…

Over the last week, I’ve been obsessed with these thoughts from the ‘Sports Gene’ by David Epstein. 

“The theme of Bruce Abernathy’s findings in the late 1970s is that elite athletes need less time and less visual information to know what will happen in the future, and, without knowing it, they zero in on critical visual information, just like expert chess players. Elite athletes chunk information about bodies and player arrangements the way that grandmasters do with rooks and bishops.”

“Chunking & Automation travel together on the march toward expertise. 

It is only by recognizing body cues and patterns with the rapidity of an unconscious process that Albert Pujols can determine whether he should swing at a ball when it has barely left the pitcher's hand. 

Same goes for quarterback Peyton Manning. He cannot stop in the face of blitzing linebackers and consciously sort through the defensive alignments and patterns he learned in years of practicing and studying game film. 

He has seconds to scan the field and throw. 

He is a grandmaster playing speed chess, only with linebackers and safeties in place of knights and pawns.” 

I came across these thoughts as I was writing the script for one of my youtube videos — "How to actually let out balls go in pickleball." Which will be out soon.

I had this gut feeling I was missing something, not just when it came to out balls, but pickleball in general. The ability to make split second decisions that consistently win you points isn’t an accident.

It goes back to that old line, “Everybody looks but few see.” 

If we sat down with Peyton Manning and watched a football game, we’d both be looking at the same game, but, what we’d SEE would be vastly different.

So as I said above with “ThatPickleballSchool.” It’s my belief that the fastest way to get better at pickleball is to improve how you think. 

And the more newsletters I write and videos I make, the more I realize: this is the information I truly love learning about and sharing. Because I believe this type of information (in addition to various technique tips) will help you gain the edge on your competition.

Now, I could rant for another 30 pages about split second decisions and pattern recognition, but I didn’t share the above insights to go on a rant right now. I shared to show you (and me), there’s so much more to this game than “See ball, hit ball.”

There’s a reason the good players are good. And it’s my mission to uncover those reasons and share them with you :) 

More on this topic soon as I dive deep into learning and on court experimentation.

 Playing with my left hand has been eye opening. Physically, it's made me a complete beginner again. Mentally, it’s thrust me back into a beginners mindset. 

The truth is, I think injuring my wrist was the worst thing to happen to my wrist, but the best thing for my game. 

I mean that. 

I’ve played rec games and drilled lefty for nearly two months. In fact, a few days ago, I worked with a local coach, Jim Krimball, to work on my lefty overheads.

(I’m telling you, if you could have seen what that looked like, my gosh...😂)

To make a long story longer...

I see great opportunities to use both hands when I’m back playing righty.

The biggest challenge I predict is knowing when to drop my right hand off the paddle and use my left. I predict that’ll take about 6 months before it becomes automatic. 

The question I’ve been pondering over the last few days is, where will left hand skill specifically show up in my game?

My thoughts:

1. Two handed backhand dink — This is, by far, the most useful thing getting better lefty has helped me with. I’m planning to use this more because it gives a different look and adds topspin, opposed to my normal backhand slice dink that doesn’t. In addition, now I'll be able to speed up with two hands off the bounce when I play the left side.
2. Left Side get lobbed — I’m playing left side and I get lobbed over my left shoulder. In fact, I actually did this one time before all this training in one of my tuesday night matches. I see the left hand being a real benefit here so I don’t have to hit a bad high backhand overhead.
3. Bert — When I’m playing the left, and I go to Erne in front of my partner on their side, this is called a Bert. Here’s an example. It worked out this time, but often, when I do this move, it doesn't end the point because I really only have one place to hit the ball (with my right hand) because of how my body is moving — cross court. 

   So I’ve been working on switching hands mid-run and being able to use my left hand on the jump. Again, if you saw how I’m training this, you’d chuckle. 

There’s a few more, but these are my focus right now!

With that said, I’ve started some light hitting with my right hand, and I plan to be back for the PPA in Phoenix on February 22!

Until next week,

Kyle

PS: You thought I forgot to give you the answers to the pop quiz. Nope :)

Here they are:

100 mph baseball =                   .38 seconds

70 mph softball =                       .35 seconds

Kitchen to kitchen speed up =   .26 seconds

**** .26 was my calculation with a game like pace on my off the bounce speed-up. I didn’t hit it as hard as I possibly could because I wouldn’t do that in a game. 

Fascinating information we’ll build upon in future weeks!

 PPS: If you enjoyed this blog and you want to subscribe to the newsletter, you can do that by clicking here!