Earning Your Ease + Vision in Pickleball

Generally, if you’re reading this, you, like me, are a pickleball fanatic. You consume pro content, coaching tutorials, and even my errant ramblings because you live, breathe, and LOVE pickleball. And, since you love it, you probably want to get better. But what, truly, is really holding you back from getting better?

In the last few weeks I’ve done more coaching than I ever have and have had my horizons and worldview regarding all things pickleball challenged and expanded in so many ways. I feel like I’m learning as much from my new students as they are from me. I’m breaking things down in ways I never have, codifying years of intuition into bite-sized, repeatable steps and processes, but one thing just doesn’t seem to be codifiable - the sense of ease and relaxation and flow that everyone is after out there.

Everyone, both in my program and not, asks questions like “how do the pros make it look so easy?”, “how did you know X was going to happen?”, “how do you not panic?”, etc. And of course, I don’t have all the answers. No one does, and no one ever will. I largely do struggle with the same things you do, just in a different or more niche way.

But in regards to the sense of ease you’re after, the sense of flow, the sense of trust in your game and your shots… I’ve recently come to the realization that if that is something you want, it’s something you have to earn. You cannot cheat time, you cannot cheat effort, and you cannot cheat the sense of confidence that comes from having done something thousands of times.

I believe that’s the saying, or something to that effect. It’s always funny to me when people come to clinics and seem to get bored of the basic drills I (or pretty much anyone coaching) assign. You have to learn to love the grind, the repetition, and the constant struggle that comes with bettering a skill or learning something altogether new. I am known to struggle with anger on occasion in practice (I’m working on this and have made major progress!), but one thing no one can say about me is that I’m not a hard worker.

The place where “ease” is most lacking at the amateur level is in the transition zone, or anything related to getting to the kitchen line. If this is you… congrats! You have something to work on that is both easy to isolate in drilling and incredibly, incredibly important that will have a HUGE and IMMEDIATE impact on your game. Earn the ease in that zone, and you’ll find yourself too good for your current group of players very quickly. I wrote a piece on panic a long time ago when I first started this newsletter, and it remains just as much the enemy then as it is now.

There’s something so amazing and freeing about going into a tournament being able to trust yourself, the work you’ve put in, and the process you are currently in the middle of rather than being firmly tied to a result. If there’s a particular area of your game where you are lacking ease, I hope I’ve motivated you to go out there and really work on it, and to be patient with it! I plan on writing more and more about the mental side of the game in the next few weeks during my break. The X’s and O’s are important, but nothing is really more important than what goes on between your ears😊

If you’ve been watching Anna Leigh and I as of late, you’ve seen us sporting some sexy looking glasses. You can use the code “ABRIGHT20” for 20% off on top of the current promotion (so 40% off as the discounts stack‼️).

Besides being sexy, the glasses are really, really freaking good. I won’t pretend to be a complete expert on them or to know all of the science, but when I say these are the absolute, tippity tippy top of the line, I mean it. Their technology is so optically perfect that when they outfitted drag racers with them, they reacted so much faster that their glasses were BANNED in drag racing. And drag racing is (to my admittedly very surface level understanding) all about reaction time. As is our beloved sport, pickleball. Plus, they dominate shooting. Like pretty much every single Olympian CHOOSES to use them. Legit is an understatement.

Since using Pilla’s glasses (I use this kit - 26CIED, 62CIED, and 92CIL), I’ve felt faster, sharper, and also less tired at the end of the day. My eyes are firing as they should through changing conditions, and as someone who definitely doesn’t sleep as much as they should (I can’t help it, I try😭), this is really important to me and a benefit I didn’t even know existed. Of course, they also function as eye protection (which is so! important), but unlike any other glasses I’ve tried- these aren’t just eye protection, and referring to them solely as such would be doing them a disservice. They are a technological masterpiece and genuinely make me better on court.

I won’t claim they will raise you half a DUPR point or whatever, but if you’re curious about eyewear I’d recommend checking them out. So many people have been asking me about them I figured I would just outright tell you guys! Use ABRIGHT20 for 20% off. If you follow my vlogs, you know they have a bunch of other cool products that use color to manipulate mood, and I LOVE those too, but I won’t get into that here. Some things are just meant for the vlog😂😂 (So make sure you’re SUBSCRIBED!)

Xo your internet bestie, Anna😘❤️

PS - let me know what you’d like me to write about in the coming weeks!!!