The Pickleball Conundrum and How to Deploy a Jedi Practice

 

For those who may not know: in pickleball, you can only score a point when you’re the server. But here’s the catch—if your serve doesn’t land cross-court inside the correct boundary, it’s a fault. 

Translation: no point, no chance, game moves on. You sabotage your own ability to score before the rally even begins.

So you can imagine the importance of a “good” serve.

I LOVE playing this game! But lately, my conundrum has been just this...getting my serves in. Sounds small, but in doubles, when most of your serves drift out of bounds? Not great.

Enter the Jedi practice of visualization.

This isn’t new, and I can’t take credit for it—I first came across the power of mental imagery in a college sports psychology class. But here’s the magic:

If, right before serving, I pause and see the ball going exactly where I want it to go—in detail, in my mind’s eye—and then I serve? My success rate skyrockets! All of this takes less than five seconds.

The takeaway: when we’re doing something familiar, our brains love to go on autopilot. We think about other things, we drift. And when we’re not fully present, mistakes happen. (Lost keys, flubbed serves—you know the drill.) Visualization snaps me back into the moment. It’s a way of saying: I’m here. I’m focused. Let’s do this!

This is one reason I love pickleball—the way it challenges both body and mind toward a clear intention.

Have any of you struggled with focusing on the task at hand...and come up with ways to bring your mind back into focus? 

I’d love to hear about your “Jedi practice.”

Do tell!

Photo Credit: from pickleballunion dot com