Episode 48 Transcript

Host: Mark Renneson

Hey there! It’s Mark from Third Shot Sports. Welcome to another episode of Pickleball Problems.

Alright, we’re doing something a little bit different this time. For the first time ever, we’re recording video as we record –oh, there you go — I banged my own mic. 

We’re recording video as we record the podcast, and we’re doing this because we know that a lot of you really love listening to the podcast on your phones or at home, when you’re driving, when you’re doing dishes, whatever. But they’re also people who love watching video, who like seeing things on YouTube. So we’re going to try to do a little bit of both, so it might sound a little bit different. When I slip up, I’m probably not going to go back and fix it unless it’s really horrible, but we’re going to give it a try.

What Makes Bad Pickleball Lessons [0:55]

Anyway, you want to know what it is that we’re talking about today? We are talking about bad pickleball lessons. A few weeks ago, I asked the question on social media. What is it that makes a pickleball lesson horrible? What makes it so you don’t want to come back? Have you had a bad pickleball lesson? What were the details? I wanted to know about them.

And you people answered in droves. We got a lot of answers coming in about bad Pickleball lessons. I’m going to share some of those responses with you, and I’m going to give some of my own opinions as well, and we’re going to talk about all this stuff, bad pickleball lessons in just a minute. 

Sponsor: Selkirk Sport

Alright, welcome back to Pickleball Problems! I’m your host Mark Rennseon. 

Today, we are talking about bad Pickleball lessons. What makes a bad lesson? And I guess the other side of the coin is how do you avoid giving or taking those bad lessons in the future? 

So why don’t we take a look at some of the responses we had from some of the people who answered our question on social media?

Alright, our first response comes from [Darlene Friedrichs] who says, “I took a group lesson with 11 other people. Not once during the whole morning did the instructor call me by name.” 

And then she just says something nice about me. So we’re going to leave that part out. But didn’t say anything by name.

So here’s something that I talk about a lot when we work with Pickleball instructors, whether it’s through Pickleball Coaching International or something else, it is important to not use name tags. Don’t use name tags for your players. Now, why is that? That seems counter-intuitive, right? This person is complaining or mentioning – I shouldn’t say complaining — but mentioning that someone did a whole lesson, didn’t use their name. So you’d think you should use name tags, right? 

I say no. And here’s why — if I’m relying on a name tag to know what your name is. Well, then that’s fine when I’m two or three or five feet away from you. But when you’re way across the gym, when you’re on court #3 or I just said there were 12 people, court #3  and I’m on court #1, and I can’t see your name tag, well, I’m not able to communicate with you very well. I can’t warn you, Darlene, that there’s a ball rolling behind your feet. I can’t mention, “Hey Darlene, you should have that impact point a little more out front, right?” 

If I’m relying on the name tag to know who you are, then I can only really ever kind of communicate with you using this crutch of the name tag when we’re really close. And that actually, besides having like a whole professionalism aspect to it or a lack of professionalism, not knowing your customer, if you want to call them that, if you don’t want to know your student’s name. But there’s also a safety issue, right. I can’t warn you about something from a distance. So what I say to people who want to be pickleball instructors, “Hey, make a rule: No name tags.”

And now all of a sudden, the onus is on me as the instructor to learn their names. And so I might look and say, okay, Darlene. Darlene’s got dark hair, D and D, right? Darlene, dark hair. And I could even take a little note. I do this all the time with my class list, just put a little note beside it. “Oh, Hey, Joe over there, he’s got the great, new Invikta paddle from Selkirk in their fancy new 2021 colors, whatever. I can take the little notes myself and that way when I’m walking around, whether the person’s close to me or not, I know what their name is. 

And by the way, it’s always fine. They don’t expect you to remember everyone’s name like right off the bat. I’ve done this all the time, where I go up to someone say, “Hi, sorry, can you please just remind me of your name?” And then they’re happy to tell you. They would much rather that then you just ignoring using their name the whole time. So anyway, Darlene’s suggestion was that a group lesson with 12 people, a bad lesson is one where they don’t use your name. And it’s not really about the name, is it? It’s really about the sort of personal feeling that you have. You’re paying good money, you’re putting in your time. For them to not even use your name can very often feel like the instructor doesn’t really care about you that much. I think that’s what she’s getting at here.

Alright, here’s a new one. This one is from [Mila Sersantos]. I like saying that name. These two are the worst. Again, we’re talking about bad Pickleball lessons, things that coaches do that make them bad. 

One, when my partner and I were taking lessons and our instructor basically told her she was playing great and to find a stronger partner right in front of me. I was devastated. Sorry, Mila, I didn’t mean to laugh. I’m just trying to imagine this scenario here, right? So you and your partner are playing together, you’re taking this lesson or this clinic, and the instructor says to your partner, “Wow! You’re playing really well. You’re a really good player. The best thing you can do for your game is drop your partner.”

That’s pretty brutal. Yeah, I don’t know how to respond to that. I can understand why you might not have enjoyed that. 

Let’s see the second thing she says. Mila said, “I was working on a shot in this clinic, and I aimed too close to the sideline. I know I was too close to the line, but I was working on the shot anyway. In front of the whole clinic, the coach called me out by name and told everyone not to do what I was attempting to do. There were like 80 people there. That kind of sucked.” 

So first of all, 80 people, like what kind of clinic? I don’t know how you run a clinic with 80 people. They definitely aren’t going to know all of your names at this clinic. 

Anyway, let’s put that aside. Yeah, so you go — I’m guessing it’s a dink or something like that, and you go too close to the sideline. Probably got beat around the post-shot after that or something. It happens, right? And they mentioned to everyone by name, don’t do what Mila did – yeah, that is brutal! There’s a good, I guess it’s an axiom. There’s an axiom that I like to use with our instructors, is we say, “You praise publicly and you critique privately”. 

And what that means is if I’m going to tell you did something awesome, “Hey, Mila, I love the way that you recovered back quickly after you hit that cross-court dink! Hey, I love the way you put away that high backhand smash! Hey, I love the way you got the serve to your opponent’s backhand,” whatever. When you’re praising the person, that’s a good time to call them out publicly. Look at what a good job this person did. 

But if you’re going to critique them for doing something, that’s something you should do privately, right? For exactly the reason that you said here, you don’t want to embarrass that person, right? So there are lots of things. 

Anyway, today we were talking about bad Pickleball lessons and the things that make them bad. And we’re going to talk about more of these in just a moment.

Sponsor: Jigsaw Health

Welcome back to Pickleball Problems! Today, we are talking about bad Pickleball lessons and the things that are done to make them bad, to make them crummy. Have you ever had a bad pickleball? If it’s a private lesson where the coach showed up late, whether it’s a group lesson where — I don’t know — whatever was offered wasn’t what was delivered. I don’t know. I’ve definitely seen those lessons. I hope I haven’t given too many of them myself. 

Anyway, let’s talk to Barb Patterson. So Barbara writes in, “I signed up for a morning, three-hour session with a top name pro and then was encouraged to sign up for the afternoon session as well. I was told there would be two entirely different sessions and it turned out the afternoon session was pretty much exactly the same as the morning. I won’t fall for that again, and won’t ever spend any more money on drills with that pro.” 

Yikes! That is a tough situation. So Barb shows up, big-name pro, you know, who they are. I don’t know which specific one this is, but there’s a lot of people out there offering pickleball lessons. They’re great players. They look like they’re really fun to be around. You go out, you go for your lesson, you spend that money. And before that first lesson, they say, “Oh, you know what, there’s a few spots left in the afternoon session. You should join that too. It’s going to be totally different stuff. You’re going to love it.”

And then what happens? It’s basically a repeat of session #1. I can understand, Barb, how that would be annoying. I wonder how Barb handled that afterwards? Did she talk to the pro? Was it the pro organizing the clinic? But if it was a group, sometimes you have like organizations that put on the clinics. I wonder if Barb followed up with that? 

Anyway, that’s a good point. It’s a fair thing to be frustrated by. And she says at the end, “I’m never going to spend any more money on drills with that pro.” That hurts them in the pocketbook, there you go, that’s the way to respond. 

Irene Robinson, she writes, “So many pros just talk too much. In the group clinics, you end up just standing on the court, listening and watching others for 45 minutes every hour. If people can learn Pickleball listening to someone, then we should just do Zoom webinars, right? 

So Irene is upset that there’s too much standing around and talking. I agree with you, Irene. I’ve seen it before. When we do our lessons, we try to keep it quick and to the point. You should be able to communicate whatever is you’re communicating, a technical teaching point or what the activity or the drill of game is going to look like. You should be able to do them three or four minutes, max, I think. So I understand being frustrated like that. You can stand around at your house, right? Or as you say, go watch a Zoom call. 

Alright, let’s look at another one. Tammy Zurich writes, “Too many students.” That’s what she’s upset about. That’s what makes a poor Pickleball lesson. Too many students. You’re left standing and watching others most of the time. If I were to do it again, I would do a private or semi-private lesson. I maybe had 30 seconds one-on-one training in a two-hour lesson.

Yeah, that’s a good point, Tammy. You’re sort of touching on some things similar to what Irene said. There’s not enough activity, too much standing around. So I’m wondering why you’re sitting around watching others, right? I’m trying to imagine, and Irene, touched on this too, of watching others. Like, who else are you watching, right? Are you watching because there’s not enough court space and so it’s someone else in the clinic’s turn to do whatever the drill or the activity is? Is that what you mean by watching? Or it’s like the coach is demonstrating what she thinks you should be learning or the drill that you’re working on? I don’t know but yeah it’s not very fun standing around. 

I would say — I don’t mean this to turn everyone off from group lessons, really skilled instructors, they can run very active group lessons with eight or 10 or 12 people. They’ve got to be deliberate about it. They have to have a plan. They’ve got to use good rotations. They have to not be so in love with their own voice that they talk forever. I wonder if any of you ever think that I do that here on the show. Anyway, that’s for another day. 

But good instructors are able to sort of keep the momentum going and you should at the end of a two or three-hour — two hours, she says here, feel like, “Hey, I am physically tired. I had so many touches. I had so much activity.” You should be tired after two hours of hard work. 

Okay, speaking of hard work, we do a lot of hard work here at Pickleball Problems. I’m going to take a quick break. We’re going to be back with more about what makes a bad big ball lesson in just a second.

Sponsor: Pickleball Coaching International

Welcome back to Pickleball Problems. Today we’re talking about bad pickleball lessons. What makes a horrible lesson? And we have a comment here from Leslie [Tabes-White]. 

When I’m at a tournament, if I know one of my students is playing, I always make sure to go watch them and to cheer them on. I’ve taken lessons and my instructor never showed any interest. It made me feel like it was just about the money. I always make time for my students and they have told me how much that meant to them to have me watch and support them on my own time. And then it looks like she has a few of her students in the Facebook thread who then came in and said, “Yeah, it does make me feel great when you come and watch me, Leslie.”
And that is awesome! It’s great that Leslie can to do that. She goes out of her way, spends her own time to go watch the students play — terrific! 

Now I think I haven’t responded online to Leslie. I think she makes a really interesting point about this. And I would push back a little bit here, right? With setting the expectation that your instructor spends their own free time when they’re not on the clock coming and watching. I think it’s a really nice thing to do. I’m not sure it should be an expectation. Maybe I should have refined that — if this is an instructor that I have a very sort of casual relationship with, maybe I see them, once every couple months, I go and do a lesson or I’ve gone to their clinic when they happen to be in town and then we find ourselves at the same tournament in another place, do I expect them to come and watch me? Well, I wouldn’t really expect them, and here’s why: It’s like, all of the other times that you get service in your life, let’s say you go out to a restaurant and you have a server come and bring you your delicious meal, or you go to your favorite bar or you go to your coffee shop or your Uber driver picks you up and takes you to your house or all these things where you’re paying for a service, we don’t then typically expect those service providers to then spend time with you after hours, right? So I don’t expect my Uber driver after she drops me off to then go hang out while I walk my dog, right? Or I’m doing something like — I don’t expect the server at the restaurant to write reviews of this great podcast about how much she likes it, even though she doesn’t listen to it, right? I don’t really expect that because I’ve paid them for the service that they had. If I’m going and I’m taking a pickleball lesson, that’s what I’m paying for, right? 

Now, I think there’s a couple of caveats there. One, it could be in the interest of the instructor to spend that extra bit of time, to invest that extra time, right? There could be a few different reasons. One is, I love seeing my students play in real life. It’s one thing when they come and they tell me, “Oh yeah, Mark, I need to work on my third shot drop with my backhand. It’s terrible.” But then when I go watch them in real life, it’s like, “Oh, actually, your backhand drop is great.

It’s your forehand drop that’s inconsistent,” right? Sometimes seeing what’s happening a game situation is quite different as very useful to the instructor, right? So it could be in the instructor’s interest to do that. Not to mention Leslie, as you say, here is like, your students really appreciate it, right? The students that you had, the respondents said, “Hey, I love that you do that”  I’m not saying that’s why you go out and watch them because you want to get some sort of benefit down the line, right? You’re probably doing it because you’re a very nice person. But as an instructor, I might say, “Hey, this is a good way to buy some goodwill with my students, right? Going that extra mile as they say, so that could be it. 

Another could be, let’s say you have not just a casual relationship with this instructor, but like a long, ongoing one. You take a private lesson from them twice a week and you’ve been doing it for the last six months. Yeah, I do think in that situation, it is a reasonable to then say, “Hey, I’m playing at this tournament. If you happen to be there and you see me playing, I’d love if you came over and take a look,” right? I hope the coach sort of, for reasons of professionalism, sort of sees that that’s a good thing to do, but I think that’s more reasonable. But I wouldn’t automatically assume that just because I spent 50 bucks in a lesson with a pickleball instructor that they then are going to take time from their own life and their own free time and whatever else they could be doing to come and watch me play. That’s not really an expectation I would set. But as you pointed out, Leslie, like there’s a lot of benefits to doing that. 

Okay. Let’s look at another thing that makes a pickleball lesson. horrible. Sheila McLeod says it’s horrible when clinics include all levels from 2.0 to 3.5. It is impossible to give anyone that satisfaction. Sheila, this is a really good point. It’s very difficult to work with group of players when the levels are very uneven. And it doesn’t mean that the 2.0s aren’t really nice people or they’re fun to have at your clinics. It doesn’t mean the 3.5s are, right? But the kinds of skills – it’s not just the kinds of what skills you’re working on, right? I might try to work on the same general skill with groups at different levels, right? Let’s say — what do we want to say? Hitting a third shot drive that causes trouble for the opponents, right? That could be something that you could try to do at both the 2.5 level and 3.5 level. But the thing is the quality of the drive will be quite different at those two levels. And what happens is when you, when you really mix levels, even if you’re working on the same skill, maybe the 3.5 player hits their drives so hard compared to the 2.5, that the 2.5 can’t even get the ball back in play to continue the drill, right? So it really falls apart. In my experience, sometimes coaches do this, they sort of mixed groups largely for like financial reasons, right? Maybe their clinics aren’t totally full, and they say, “Oh man, if we open this up to other levels, we can get more people and earn more money or help cover our costs.” Maybe they have two clinics are going that are grouped by level, but they’re kind of half subscribed each, so they say, “Hey, why don’t I just combine them? Sometimes even when they just advertise them, they don’t really specify because they think, “Hey, if we cast a wider net, we’re going to get more people and then we’re going to be able to make this business run.”

But I think that’s really sort of short-term thinking, because what happens is those people who come out, they say, “Well, this wasn’t really fun,” right? The other person couldn’t get the ball in play or I wasn’t challenged, or, “Oh man, I felt like I was really bad because everyone was better than me.” So I encourage coaches out there to do a little more long-term thinking. Group your groups by level appropriately, and it’s gonna be a lot more fun for everyone and hopefully better business for you down the road because you don’t have this reputation of running really great group sessions. 

Alright, let’s move on. Paul [Baragona] writes, “I took a two-day camp with a big-name pro who pretty much just told us how he played against other pros.” And then Hilary [Merald] writes in, “Paul, I’m laughing only because it’s so sad, but true.” I was laughing as well when I first read this. I’m just mad, you take your favorite pro that you like to imagine doing this, just sort of standing there and saying, “Okay, well, here’s how I beat so-and-so. Here’s how when I was playing at whatever tournament, I defeated this person.” 

I don’t know what to say to that. I mean, you obviously have good feedback. I think it’s okay to say this. I was once in, I’ll say a Southern locale in the United States, and I was there on a family vacation actually, and they happen to have pickleball courts. And so my wife and — she was four at the time — my four-year-old and I were over on these pickleball courts. And on these other pickleball courts was a group lesson happening with some well-known coaches. And, when we got there, we figured they were like early on in their lesson and everyone was kind of standing at the sideline listening to whichever coach was talking. And I was just playing with my daughter and kind of keeping my eye out. And like five minutes later, they’re still all standing there. And 10 minutes later, they’re still standing there. The coach is still just talking. Fifteen minutes, I look over and two people have now sat on the ground. Ten more minutes go by and people have like moved off the court and gone to sit in the patio chairs, adjacent to the court because they were under a bit of shade. And it was like 25 or 30 minutes, I’m not kidding, of this group — it was a pretty big group, it was probably 16 people, of 16 people standing there listening to this coach so much so that they actually physically walked off the court to go find shade. I just, I couldn’t believe it. Even my wife, I mean, my wife is  a very good coach in her own right for other sports, but not for Pickleball. She looked at me and she’s like, “How have those guys been standing there the whole time?” And I said, “Yes, they were.”

So I, I feel you, Paul, that’s a tough one. I don’t want to say too much more about it, but if you are spending more than a few minutes standing, listening, I don’t think that’s great and especially if the instructor is talking more about them than about you. To me, that’s a red flag. 

Speaking of red flags, uh, I’ve got something for you that is not a red flag, and that’s going to be this quick break from our friends. 

Sponsor: PicklePlay

Alright, welcome back to Pickleball Problems. Today, we’re talking about Pickleball lessons that go the wrong direction. What is it that makes a Pickleball lesson bad? We’ve talked about a whole bunch of things. They’ve involved coaches talking too much. They’ve talked about groups that were mismatched levels. We’ve talked about people who – instructors who are just like more interested in themselves than their players. We’ve talked about not feeling like you matter because your instructor doesn’t use your name. A lot of things that can make lessons go poorly. 

So we’ve got one more here that we’re going to share from social media that I’m going to add a few comments to.

So Robin Rodriguez Walther. I like saying that name too. She writes. I had an instructor, tried to change my grip after playing tennis, racquetball and Pickleball for 45 years this way with amazing success. I have an awesome back-hand and I’m not changing now – No! 

So Robin, I really appreciate that you were sort of sticking to your guns here. How do I want to put this? So there’s a lot of things in Pickleball, if we’re talking about technique. There’s a lot of things in Pickleball technique that are sort of minor changes that you can make. So for example, what’s a minor change? Making contact with the ball more out front between your body and the net, having a forward impact point. If someone has a kind of a later impact point, to have a slightly more in front impact point, that’s a change, it’ll take some time. But that’s not a really major change, right? You’re essentially doing the same thing just with a slight variation. Setting up your paddle and body earlier before the ball balances. Minor change will take some work, but not a big deal.

A grip change? I’m grabbing my paddle for those watching at home. A grip change is major surgery, right? It’s kind of like, I don’t know, if all of a sudden I asked you to tie your shoes, using a completely different method for tying the bow, right. There’s a lot of different ways you can type shoes out there. That is like major surgery. You’ve done something for so long and the muscle memory has built up so solidly that all of a sudden to do something where you’re holding the paddle in a completely different way after 45 years of doing something similar in other sports that is going to be a nightmare. And not to mention, it seems like here Robin, she says, “I have an amazing backhand. I’m not changing now.” So to me, this highlights another issue with Pickleball lessons that can kind of go off the rails is, it sounded like whatever the instructor was suggesting here, was not raelly like in consultation with you. It sounds like if he or she had asked you, “Hey, do you want to improve your backhand?” It sounds like you’re pretty happy with how your backhand is. So the fact that they’re trying to change your grip when it’s something that it’s not on your radar for something you want to do, to me is a different kind of flag. And that is it’s a problem when Pickleball instructors try to force what they want onto their students, who are also your customers if you like to think about it that way, and that’s like you’re just asking for resistance there, right? And so to me, a poor Pickleball lesson is not just when they try to change your grip after you’ve been doing something really successfully for a long time, but that you try to do it unilaterally as the instructor that you try to tell them what they have to do rather than — how else would I frame it? I might say, “Hey Robin, I’ve noticed that you use an Eastern backhand grip when you hit your knuckles really on the top of the handle, is that right? And she says, “Oh yeah, that’s right.” I say, “Oh great. Tell me wh?” 

“Oh, I played racquetball. I played tennis. It really worked for me.” 

I said, “Okay, I can see that. Yeah, you have a good backhand. Hey, are you interested in talking about some of the limitations of that kind of grip? Because there’s a lot of things that work well with it but there’s also some limitations. Is that something that you’re interested in discussing? We don’t have to change anything, but we can start by just talking about it.”

And then see what she says. And if Robin is like, “Oh, well I always thought this was like a proper grip or whatever. Sure, let’s talk about the limitations, those are important for me to know. Yeah!” 

Or she might say, “No, no, no. You know what, my backhand is good. Let’s work on something else.”

And by me, sort of asking that question and inviting the dialogue, she can choose whether or not she wants to take part in it, right? And if she doesn’t want you to, then that’s fine, right? And if she does want to – great, we can go down that road. But by me, just saying, “Oh Robin, that’s the wrong backhand grip.”

Like you are setting up for a fight there. Fixing for a fight, as they say.

Alright, let’s talk about one more thing that might make your lesson horrible, I guess? I would say if it’s done in a way that’s not safe. And I think sometimes, as instructors, we focus on tactics, we focus on technique, we focus on introducing great drills or games for people to do. But one of the things that instructors don’t often get proper training in really is how do you run things in a way that’s safe, right? How do you set it up so that people are not likely to run into each other? What are the policy about balls? Like errant balls on the court, do you have to pick up every ball if it hits the net? Even if it’s way up near the net and you’re working on something from the baseline? What’s the policy for when balls are rolling behind someone? Who’s responsible for that? How does the rotation work, right? So how do you move around a court between activities so people don’t run into each other? What happens if I’m doing a down-the-line activity with my friend or my partner, and a ball goes like an inch on to the other half of the court where the person beside me is? Does it matter if I get that or not? What if they’re way off the court? Am I still? 

So those kinds of questions, I’m not saying there are hard and fast answers for all of them, but it’s really important that instructors think about these things, because if you don’t, that’s how people get hurt, right? Not to mention things like water breaks and shade breaks and all of that if you’re talking about training in places that are really hot. So I think that that could be something as if people go out and they’re kind concerned about their safety, right? Here’s a situation, “Okay, let’s play real points,” and you get some guy who comes out and just like hammers every single ball to the point where people on the court feel like actually nervous about being injured, right? So what are the rules around this? How does that get set up? And so I think that to me is an example of where lessons can stop being fun. 

Anyway, there were a lot of questions that came in here and a lot of answers that came in response to my questions, so I think we should probably do a part two at some point. And I do of course, down the road, want to talk about what makes Pickleball lessons great. Because as you know, here on the show, we’re not just fault-finders, we are success-seekers, so we’re going to highlight some of that stuff as well.

In the meantime, check out — if you’re a Pickleball instructor, if you like kind of the direction we’re going here, check out PCIPickleball.com, Pickleball Coaching International, PCIPickleball.com, you can see what we do over there. 

I’d love to know what you think about this. Do you like the format? I know if you’re listening, it sounds a bit different. It’s not quite as produced as some of our other ones, not quite as tight. If you’re watching on YouTube, put a comment below, let me know if you like this kind of approach or not. I do appreciate you listening. I hope you have a terrific rest of your day.

Check out our other episodes in the podcasts. We’re going to be coming back with more and more here in 2021. Until next time, I am Mark Renneson. Thanks for listening to Pickleball Problems.