Speaker 1: 0:00

Hi, I'm Shelly Maurer and I'm Cher Emrick. Welcome to Life.

Speaker 2: 0:04

Lessons from Pickleball where we engage with pickleball players from around the world about life on and off the court.

Speaker 1: 0:12

Thanks for joining us. Welcome to Life. Lessons from Pickleball everyone. We are so happy today to welcome CJ Johnson, who's helped thousands of adults not only play Better Pickleball but also rediscover joy, movement and confidence through the game.

Speaker 3: 0:32

That's right, cj and her partner, tony, you are the powerhouse duo behind Better Pickleball, an online platform dedicated to helping adults, especially those 50 and better, overcome learning barriers and stay mentally and physically engaged.

Speaker 1: 0:50

CJ, you have been coaching for what? 30 years, across multiple sports, from golf and skiing to personal training, and one thing has never changed, which is your passion for helping players unlock what's possible. And since launching the Bitter Pickleball channel in 2016, you've been empowering players through a holistic, results-based approach, and you know what it's like to want more out of your game, don't we all? And you've made it your mission to help others build the confidence and skills to find it.

Speaker 3: 1:25

Yes, with your partner, you guys have really built something truly special Not just a training platform, but a vibrant supportive community that values connection as much as technique.

Speaker 1: 1:36

We're really delighted to have you with us, CJ, and so let's start with you know first, what drew you to Pickleball, and when did you realize that it would become more than just a personal passion?

Speaker 4: 1:49

Well, first of all, ladies, thank you so much for having me here. There's nothing more fun than talking about pickleball, other than, perhaps, playing pickleball right.

Speaker 3: 1:58

Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 4: 2:01

I'm like most people. I got involved with pickleball. I had a friend who spent her winters in Vegas and she came home from Vegas I live in North Lake, tahoe and in the mountains and she came home and she said I'm starting a pickleball club and I want you to be at the courts on Tuesday dressed in your dressed in your court shoes, dressed in your court shoes. And my response was something like a pick, a white club, and that was back in 2013. But she's one of those kind of friends that you just showed up, right. It didn't matter what she was asking you to do. If she asked you to do something, you just, you just came.

Speaker 4: 2:38

And so it was my friends, bev and Doug, that got me involved in the game and I played for a couple of summers. Again, I live in the game and I played for a couple of summers. Again, I live in the mountains. I still teach skiing and ski 100 days a year, and so pickleball for me was one of those things. It was just a very fun summertime sport and about my second year into it I started. There were two things that I saw. One was I saw a lot of players getting injured.

Speaker 4: 3:04

There were two things that I saw One was I saw a lot of players getting injured and uh and and I'm a personal trainer and I I saw the habits that led to it and they not warming up, not cooling down, overuse, doing it too often, all those types of things. Uh, so I saw that first, and then the second thing I saw, and this was kind of like more of an experience I've been a coach and an athlete my whole life and it's actually I hate to say this I going on this summer.

Speaker 4: 3:33

It's really like almost 40 years that I've been. I've been coaching. I'll be 62 in a couple months.

Speaker 1: 3:36

Oh my god you're a good example of what 62 can be like. So bless your heart, be a hundred days a year.

Speaker 4: 3:51

I have a mom that shows me how she's 82 and she still skis probably about 40 or 50 days a year. Oh my gosh. But in any event, I, I, um. As an athlete, I knew how to. I I understood the framework of sports. I understood sports and I really wasn't improving at pickleball as fast as I technically should, based on my background, and I knew that part of it was just the crappy advice that we get at the courts the framework of the game. I could learn to teach the game. I had a great eye for movement, I understood coaching and those types of things, and so that set me off on kind of like two paths to understand it for myself, and then, as well as that passion, to help other players stay on the courts, and that's what led me to start the YouTube channel back in 2016.

Speaker 1: 4:42

And you do awesome clips and things and I've learned so much from you just online. I want everybody will mention how to find you and all that. But really, you're really you. You have a way of, uh, condensing information in very usable terms and then you demonstrate as well and yeah, it's a lot of fun. But now you said you were surprised that you weren't advancing as fast as you thought you would. What was interfering? What?

Speaker 4: 5:08

Yeah, Understanding, you know, I'll give an example. Pretty much, I think, like everybody who, when they first started playing pickleball, one of the things that you were undoubtedly told is after the serve, run to the non-volley zone line as fast as you can. Okay, I think everybody was told that.

Speaker 4: 5:29

Now we weren't told do that. On the return side, go as fast as you can, but on the serve side, you don't want to do that because you're putting yourself into a position where you're going to get the ball slammed at you. Because you're putting yourself into a position where you're going to get the ball slammed at you. So, in fact, I think it was my second YouTube video on the Better Pickleball channel was just me essentially turning on a camera and complaining about the crappy advice that was happening on the pickleball courts, because it didn't take me long to realize okay, wait a second. This is working in one area. It's not working in the other. So this is something strategical and I'm not understanding what has to happen here.

Speaker 4: 6:15

So let me go dig in, because that's what I do as a athlete and a coach. I'm I'm seeking, I'm seeking understanding, and at the time I was seeking understanding for myself. And that's just one small example, but I think that happens to all of us on the pickleball courts. We get these random pieces of advice and most of the time, the people who are handing them out I know they're very well meaning, but they're just something that they heard, that they're passing along, that they think will be helpful. It's not necessarily anything that's really going to help our pickleball games in a meaningful way.

Speaker 1: 6:50

Yeah, so the term that we've been taught and I think you might've even been the one serving, stay returning run.

Speaker 4: 7:02

Yep Return and run, serve and stay.

Speaker 1: 7:04

Yeah, very good, very good. Yeah, that is a good way to remember it. Yep Return and run, serve and stay, yeah.

Speaker 3: 7:06

Very good. Yeah, that is a good way to remember it. Yeah, and so what else that was such a good tip? I want to hear more. Come on, don't stop.

Speaker 4: 7:19

You know, I think one of the things right now, that's, that's to me as I look at. If you want to say modern game, right, the game has changed some, hasn't it? With the?

Speaker 1: 7:29

paddles especially.

Speaker 4: 7:31

It's changed with the paddles. Right, it definitely there's. It's changed with the paddles in terms of power, but it really hasn't changed at most levels. It has changed for the pros, certainly, but not at most levels below the professional level. So, as an example, one of the things that I would tell you that I think there are two pieces of advice right now that I believe are really plaguing people, players. One is spins we see everybody chasing spins and, of course, know. One is spins Um, we see everybody chasing spins. And of course, the other one is power. So let me just go back and let me close that loop on power and talk about the power thing first.

Speaker 4: 8:11

You can play to a high, four or five level and not have a drive. What? Yes, you do not have to have a drive, you don't have to have it to play, to play to a very, and you can play to a very high five, four, four or five level, almost a five, oh level, without a drive. Now can you play pro pickable, even at the senior level, without a drive? You know you can't play it at the regular level. Maybe at the senior level, maybe, um, you could do it without a drive, but at the regular levels. Yeah, you don't need a drive Now. You need other skillsets. You need to be able to control. You need to be able to control the drive because the players that you're playing against are likely going to have a drive. Many of them come from you know other racket sports tennis, racquetball, things like that. So you do have to understand how to control the power right, and you're going to do that with skills like the block volley. Yeah, you know, that's the number one. That's the number one skill set that you need to be able to do to control power. But if you understand how to control power and, more importantly, how to use the non-volley zone, which is what makes our game so unique, yeah, right.

Speaker 4: 9:34

And an example I like to use is like so here, shelly, you and I are playing against each other. Okay, so the non-volley zone on my side, I term that as bad. Right, I can't, I can't step in it, I can't, that's the fit. Well, that's also one of the very first things we learn. Right Is you can't go into the kitchen. So I term the non-volley zone as bad. But here's the deal If you're on the other side of the net from me, you are my opponent. If you're on the other side of the net from me, you are my opponent. That other side of the non-volley zone, the one on your side, that's made for me, right, if I know how to use that side of the non-volley zone, because you can't step into it, it's your bad side. I gain control and I can gain control over power players by learning how to apply the non-volley song.

Speaker 3: 10:29

Learning that block volley and how to control it is so tricky yeah, that's, that's the trick.

Speaker 4: 10:38

Well, and here's the thing, shelly, I think that a lot of players struggle with the block volley because it is literally nothing it is. It really is I when. When I'm teaching the block volley to players, what I see players do is they try to do too much with the block volley. The block volley is simply taking our paddle like and let's say we have a good ready position. And what I mean by a good paddle ready position is my elbows a little bit in front of my body and my paddle would be, if I like, had an imaginary bullseye kind of around my tummy. It would be in front of that bullseye. So that's what my paddle is doing. And then the second and the really big piece to this is my weight is forward. My weight is on the balls of my feet. In our pickleball system, we call it the second. The really big piece to this is my weight is forward. My weight is on the balls of my feet. In our pickleball system we call it the triangles. It's a. It's a little bit more stable than just the balls of your feet.

Speaker 4: 11:32

But here, the balls of your feet is a great place to start. As older adults, we tend to get onto our heels and we tend to stand very, very tall right, without a lot of knee flex, and so we want to have this paddle out in front of us and we want to have the weight on the front part of the foot, like, think about having your shoulders leaning forward right, that I'm pushing my shoulders a little bit forward so they're over the front part of my foot. That position is important for the block volley as well, because if I'm standing very tall and if I even have my paddle in the right position and I'm absorbing pace and it knocks me backwards, it's going to open up the face of my paddle. Have my feet ready and then all I simply need to do is to turn the paddle so that it is um parallel you can think of it parallel to the nvz line, parallel to the net, perpendicular to your opponent. Whichever, I said the same thing three different ways.

Speaker 3: 12:37

Whichever, one whichever one racket.

Speaker 4: 12:40

You know, yeah, and then do nothing. It's what I see players do is they turn the paddle and then they're trying to do a punch volley against a player who is really has a lot of power. It's just turn the paddle, absorb the pace, and it takes patience to do nothing. It does doesn't?

Speaker 1: 13:01

it Takes patience and courage to do nothing. It does, doesn't? It Takes patience and courage to do nothing.

Speaker 4: 13:07

And you know, shelly, that's interesting, that's some of it is sometimes is courage can just be this I have a friend she is now 89. And so she's been playing pickleball with us for a long time, and when she first started playing she was in her early 80s and she was a little bit afraid not a little bit, that's not true.

Speaker 4: 13:28

She was afraid of having a ball hit hard at her and and and this was, you know, this was six, seven years ago, before paddles had even gotten hot. And the way we got, uh, got her out of that is we taught her the block volley and then we started hitting balls at her and we didn't start at. You know, I obviously I can control a drive. So you want to do this with somebody who can control the pace of the ball and the direction. But you start with like a 40 pace and then, when she's comfortable with that, you go to a 50, and then a 60, and then a 70, and then an 80 and just up it. Because once you have the skill set, now all you need is the confidence to go along with it.

Speaker 1: 14:13

That's really great. That's really great. And you mentioned older adults. Your Better Pickleball focuses primarily for 50 and older, right?

Speaker 4: 14:23

It does Because I think we're unique. I think not only are we unique in terms of what's happening to our bodies, our bodies are different. I've been an athlete my whole life. My body is different than it was when it was 2030, 40, even 50. My mind is different, how I think and process information, my reflexes are different, how fast I, how fast I can react. I think what's what's really different for a lot of us is our recovery is different. Right, I can still go as hard as I used to. I have to be more mindful about the things that I do in between my physical sessions. Whatever I'm doing, whether it's playing pickleball or skiing, I hated yoga. I stretched as an athlete, because that's one of the things you have to do, but I hated doing yoga. It was like oh my God, this is so slow for me Now, like yoga is a necessity for me and I will tell you, it's not like I'm a yogi who does it 45 minutes every day, kind of thing, but like 10 minutes of yoga makes my body feel better.

Speaker 4: 15:32

Yeah, we need to do those sorts of things as we age.

Speaker 3: 15:36

That's what I was going to ask. You said earlier that you were seeing a lot of injuries, and so what were some of your main tips for injury prevention?

Speaker 4: 15:43

I think, a couple of things for injury. We have all been there when we are like the last ones to the court and everybody else is on the court and they're like, hey, come on, it's time to play, and we run right over and we grab a paddle out of our bag and we start to play. Always it happens, right, it happens, it happens to all of us. That's one that's really one thing that you want to avoid, and there's a couple easy ways to do. It is whenever you're going to the courts. Generally there's a walk to the courts. Most of us don't like park the car in the courts right there. We have to, for whatever reason. There's a little walk. Walk purposefully so that you start huffing and puffing a little bit, cause that's going to warm your body up.

Speaker 4: 16:25

Um, if you're a jogger, do a little jog. Um, once you get to the courts, you could move laterally. You know, just pretend, just shuffle one way laterally, kind of, um, uh, jog in place like a little fake jump rope type of thing, anything that gets you to huff and puff a little bit and then spend a few minutes doing some dynamic stretching and that's just a fancy word for saying stretching while in motion, one of the videos that's. It's been on the Better Pickleball channel forever and if you look it up it's five minutes. To Better Pickleball I show you a ton of different dynamic stretching that you can do. It's a long video. It's not five minutes long. It's designed for you to pick out the things that you want and do those in your routine, but that five minutes goes a long way. And then, if you can do that, after you play pickleball, do the same exercises but instead of doing them in motion, just hold the stretch. That's a great start.

Speaker 1: 17:33

That's terrific. What would you say are some of the common misconceptions about pickleball? That maybe newer players or people who haven't ever played or they're just starting to play. What are some of the common misconceptions that you help alleviate?

Speaker 4: 17:50

Well, I think there's two things and I think they fit together. One is that it's not a sport. Uh, the heck, it is. Um, I mean, and if you see, if you see I don't know if you saw it it just came out, uh, recently. I saw it for the first time this last weekend on a PPA tournament. A paddle tech did a commercial called uh, and they show a bunch of pro pickleball players doing it as a sport and it's like. It's kind of like the theme is yeah, right, it's not a sport. You know, here's what, and it's showing what they're doing.

Speaker 4: 18:26

So I'm going to take that one step further, especially with this audience. Is you're an athlete, and and and? When I say that to most players in our group, there are many of them that bristle. They're like I'm, I'm, I'm not an athlete. I can't be an athlete, and and and. My logic is this Okay, then what do you call someone who plays pickleball three to four days a week? That's the average that our better pickleball players play. They play for three hours at a time. They are involved in an online learning program. They listen to you know, we have a podcast as well. They listen to our podcast. They're listening to your podcast. What do you call a player? What do you call somebody who does that?

Speaker 1: 19:24

I mean.

Speaker 4: 19:25

I call them athletes. Look at yourself differently. If you think of yourself as an athlete, maybe just maybe you're going to take that five minutes and do that warmup that I just talked about, or do that cool down that I just mentioned. Or, instead of eating junk food on a day, you're going to grab some whole food, or maybe you're going to grab another bottle of water food, or maybe you're going to grab another bottle of water. Right, those? Those are all things that players of I mean players of our age, players of any age yeah, we want, we all want to play our best. Nobody wants to go out there and say, gee, I really want to play like crap today. I don't think anybody says that Right.

Speaker 3: 20:11

Now we're human beings. Right, it happens, but we don't say it. It happens.

Speaker 4: 20:14

yeah, we're human beings, right, we're human beings.

Speaker 1: 20:17

But not intentionally. Not intentionally.

Speaker 4: 20:22

But you know, sometimes we play like crap because we didn't grab that extra bottle of water.

Speaker 1: 20:25

True, true.

Speaker 4: 20:26

Or because my body is aching. Because you know what I decided I wasn't gonna stretch before I went to bed last night. Some of those little conscious decisions to me as an older athlete. I used to get away with some of that stuff when I was younger. I don't get away with it anymore. If I decide not to stretch before bed generally, my body is kind of barking at me the next morning.

Speaker 1: 20:54

Or even right after.

Speaker 3: 20:56

Absolutely, Absolutely yeah absolutely so what advice? What would you say to somebody who is doesn't feel athletic and has never tried pickleball? But they really want to and they're hesitant.

Speaker 4: 21:09

Oh, I love you. You're my kind of people Cause. Here's the thing is. So I'm 62 years old, right, and when I was growing I was an athlete. Growing up, my first passion was ski racing. My mom and dad thought they, but at the time this was, I was born in 63. Girls weren't necessarily athletes at that point in time. I mean girls. Sports were happening and girls were involved in them. Um, but I had very young parents who were very athletic. My mom was skiing since she was a young girl and she's still skiing.

Speaker 4: 21:43

She's still skiing, yeah, and she's, she's still. She sucks at pickleball. Don't tell her she won't listen, she won't listen to this, but she actually she's tried it, she has definitely tried it, she, and you know, what was really funny is when she was out with friends and she was hitting the pickleball. She kind of looked at me and she said you know, if my friends want to go hit, I'll go hit with them. Okay, but so I was raised at a time where I was the exception, not the rule, and there were many of my friends who didn't get to play sports, whose parents said, no, girls don't play sports, right, and so. So I think that there's a whole group and, like I said, I'm 60.

Speaker 4: 22:33

I think the women in their 50s had a little, had it a little bit easier perhaps than I did, but the women in their 70s had it harder than I did, right, because that was really an era that girls didn't play sports.

Speaker 4: 22:48

So what I would say to them is this is this is an opportunity for you to embrace a part of yourself that maybe you've never tried, and even if you've tried it, you might not have ever nurtured it, because, like a woman in their 50s, many of them maybe try to sport as a young girl, but when they got into college and into you know, into family relationships and and having having kids and things like that you know I come from the golf because I'm a golf pro too there are a lot of women who, the minute they started having kids, they quit those things and they didn't pick them up until later on. I see the same thing happen in skiing. Right, they skied as kids, they quit when they were having kids and they're picking it up as their kids get a little older. So you've got this whole generation of generations of women who who I would say, this is such a great sport because the barrier to learning is fairly low.

Speaker 1: 23:50

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 23:51

The barrier to getting better is high, but the barrier to learning is fairly low, where someone, even with just a little bit of hand-eye coordination, can be playing a game in 45 minutes.

Speaker 1: 24:05

It's amazing, isn't it? It is, and feel successful really quickly.

Speaker 4: 24:10

Absolutely. I love seeing you know I do some women-only camps Do you. I do some confidence camps. I have to tell you, I love the way I love to see a female player come out of her shell and realize that she can do something.

Speaker 4: 24:31

That she didn't think that she could do that. She's breaking her own glass ceiling right, the ceiling that she put up, and maybe somebody else told her that along the way. Maybe she internalized whatever she heard somewhere else and brought it out on the pickleball court and maybe she comes out like you know, like my friend Diane, when she didn't have that confidence to see Diane stand up there and put that paddle up in front of one of my my drives that was coming up and successfully executing a block volley and watching her conquer her, her, her fears over getting hit with the pickleball was like damn and and again. At the time she was like 82 or 83 years old. Anybody can do it.

Speaker 1: 25:16

Wow, wow. So that kind of leads into the life lessons that you've actually learned in your life that maybe you're using on the court, or life lessons that you learned while you're playing or maybe in one of your other sports that you're using in life. What are some that you've gleaned?

Speaker 4: 25:45

are some of that you've gleaned. I wish I could remember the name of the golf professional who told me this, but it was. It was very early on when I was getting my PGA membership. Uh, you, you had to go to these business schools and you had, uh, you were tested. It was a five day long school. At the end of the week you were tested on your knowledge and the very first night you go into a room and there were about 500 other young golf pros in the room and the first subject was teaching. I was teaching golf, and the person who is giving the, the, the, the clinic, said the most important thing I'm going to tell you is this the person is always more important than the golf swing. Oh, and that's a philosophy that I have. Just it, I take out the word golf swing.

Speaker 4: 26:28

The person is always more important than fill in the blank, fill in the blank whatever it is, and whether it's it because as whether, whether I'm coaching skiing, which I still actively coach skiing, I do. Yeah, I, I, I, I still teach, I still teach skiing. I haven't taught golf in a few years. I haven't taught golf since the pandemic pickleball has really consumed my time, um, but to me it's always instilling confidence. No one I teach skiing to at this point in time in my career is going on to be a professional skier.

Speaker 4: 27:09

Um um, we do coach some some, some pros as part of better pickleball, but the majority of of of players that we are coaching are are advanced beginners to intermediate. Intermediate players. Yes, we we do have some four, fives, five O's and, like I said, some pros, but the bulk of the play are intermediate players who really and beginning to intermediate players, who really love the game and to me it's helping them to gain the skillset that they need to have to love the game even more.

Speaker 3: 27:51

And how do you? How do you do this online?

Speaker 4: 27:55

We do, we do. We do a lot of it online and and so I think it goes with everything we do online. So, when I do a YouTube video, I really do a YouTube video, just in terms of like, if the two of you are standing on the court right next to me and try and break it down in that particular language, I try, um, when I script out my videos, I go through the thought process is if I was coaching a person, if I was coaching someone in person, what is it that I'm going to go through with them and what am I? How am I going to break down the information in a way that's digestible for them? That's the very first. That's the very first thing.

Speaker 4: 28:33

I do, no matter whether it's like online or in one of our courses. Now, in one of our courses, we get the luxury of going deeper, so we get the luxury on YouTube, and our attention span is just getting shorter and shorter and shorter. And players just, unfortunately and I'm going to go off on just a tiny tangent Players are like tell it to me now, I want it now. Well, here's the thing I can tell you. This, as an athlete, is I can give you a tip right now, but if you don't understand why I want you to do that, which is what most tips are.

Speaker 4: 29:13

If you don't understand why I want you to do that, the next tip that somebody gives you is going to replace the tip that I just gave you.

Speaker 1: 29:21

Wow.

Speaker 4: 29:22

And the tip that I just gave you because of my background is the one that's going to change your game. It's the one that's really going to help you, yeah, so so inside our online communities, we get the chance to go deeper with that information. We get the chance to do in-person coaching, so we do coachings on Zoom, and when I say in-person coachings, I mean Zoom coaching. So we do Zoom group coachings. We do breakout sessions online, like right now. I have a small group book club that I'm running online. It's a confidence building camp. So we have all these different variety of ways to communicate the message and and you don't have to be that's like the great misnomer you do not have to be on a court to get the pickable information you need to help your game. That can be transmitted online.

Speaker 1: 30:25

Yeah, okay, yeah for sure. In fact, what do you have coming up that you'd like our audience to know about?

Speaker 4: 30:34

Well, so we, we love to, like I said, we love to coach online. We also do some a little bit of coaching on per, in person. So, um, we've got, as you can tell, I have, I have a, I have a passion for all players, but I also have a passion for our, our lady athletes, cause I think the things that we experience are different and and and just and, and.

Speaker 4: 30:59

We have a different lens, we have a different way of communicating and, having been a coach in multiple sports and having coached mixed groups versus having coached female-only groups, it's just different. Quick side story I coached a bunch of girl Scouts. This is like way, way back years and years and years ago, right, it was a group of like a hundred girl Scouts that I was part of, part of coaching on a weekly basis and these girls were, you know, like between ages, like they were past brownies, so they were like nine to 12 or somewhere in there. And so one day we'd gotten rain just before we went out to hit golf balls, and I turn around and I look and here's like three girls braiding each other's hair, there's girls that are washing the golf balls in the puddles, there are some girls who are hitting balls. You would never see that in a group of mixed boys and girls.

Speaker 4: 32:06

You'd never see that. Here were these girls out there having a blast walking away and maybe they never hit a golf ball.

Speaker 4: 32:14

They only braided hair. But they're walking away, going. Oh my God, that golf lesson was fantastic. That's how many female players I would say not not every female player, you cannot, you cannot put a blanket on it, but I would say that's how the majority of female players can relate to Pickleball. And so, um, one of the things that that I do is I've got some women's only camps. Those are some of our in person. Those are some of our in person things I told you we've got right now we've got a book club.

Speaker 4: 32:48

That book club has already started, but as I get to winter, I am going to do a confidence building book club so that we can really look at what's going on inside of these brains of ours and turn those into confidence, because that's work that has to be done off the court.

Speaker 4: 33:03

You're not going to do that on the court. And then the other thing is is we have different. We have an online academy that has a variety of different player tracks, like we have currently out there. We have a player track for players over 50. But we're going to work the last half of the year on you heard it here first we're going to work the last half of the year on doing a women's academy.

Speaker 1: 33:26

We got the scoop.

Speaker 4: 33:28

You got the scoop, thank you, and I will tell you this. You know what? It's also my passion. But I have to say, my business partner, tony I mean, he is so supportive over what we do for women and he is just like well, what can we do, cj, can we do a female track? When we first started doing camps together, he's like what if we did a women's only camp? I think he was the one who actually suggested it, because my big question is well, can I do a women's only camp with you?

Speaker 4: 34:01

I mean, how are women going to see that? And they're fine with Tony being there, he fits right in I mean the only thing we don't make him wear a skirt. I've threatened to do that a couple of times, but he's just not having it He'll do about anything but he's not having, he's not having that he's not having that piece. So that's what we got coming up.

Speaker 1: 34:21

Yeah, that is exciting. So how can people find you?

Speaker 4: 34:25

You can find us at better pickleballcom. Um. We have a ton of uh free resources for you to come and see who Tony and I are and how we coach and how we can communicate. That's probably the best way to see us, cause we do have some of our YouTube. As I said, we have the Pickleball Therapy Podcast. You know, you've got, you've had. Tony on before he's writing a book. He's got a book coming out towards the end on the mental game, towards the end of the year, this year.

Speaker 4: 34:54

So you can get all that information about everything we're doing, including all of our online courses, over at betterpickleballcom all of our online courses over at better pickleballcom.

Speaker 1: 35:03

Better pickleballcom. Cj, you are such a delight. I can just see why everybody I mean we love your videos too, and and I can see why women in particular in your women's gathering and all would just you're like a. You're a light in the world. So thank you very much for my gosh. Your athletic background is just kind of blowing me away all the different sports that you do. And now I love that you are so focused on pickleball, because that helps us and we're better players for it. So thank you very much for being on our show. Really appreciate it, thank you.

Speaker 3: 35:40

Thank you for being such a role model. Really appreciate it. Thank you, ladies. Thank you for being such a role model. That's what's really incredible to me is like CJ can do it, then I can do it, I can work and we can all you know we can. You're just a great role model. Thank you.

Speaker 4: 35:53

Oh, thank you. If I can do it, anybody can do it, I know, or at least you can teach us how to do it.

Speaker 1: 36:02

Well, thank you and thank you all. Yeah, definitely check out betterpickleballcom and the YouTube and the podcasts and all that they do. Really, it changes your lives, it's changed ours and we really appreciate everything that CJ and Tony are doing and we love that you're with us today and share this episode with anybody who you think might be wanting to get their game better and have fun in the process. So thank you all and we'll see you for a new conversation next week. Bye-bye.

Speaker 2: 36:36

Bye. If you love our podcast, we'd be so grateful if you'd take a few seconds to follow or subscribe to Life Lessons from Pickleball. This ensures you'll never miss an episode and helps us continue these wonderful conversations.

Speaker 1: 36:50

On Apple Podcasts, spotify or wherever you listen, go to the show page and tap the follow button in the top right corner, and on YouTube, click the subscribe button under any of the episodes.

Speaker 2: 37:03

Thanks, so much Hope to see you on the court.