At the beginning of the year, we have all that enthusiasm and most of us are filled with hope, promise and a lot of excitement for the coming year. When players set resolutions or goals for the year, it's very easy to fall into the trap of trying to tackle too many things at once.

In this episode we're going to talk about how to actually achieve your goals, take those New Year's resolutions that may be rambling around in your brain, and to actually achieve some(if not all) of them when it comes to your pickleball game.

This will prevent a situation where we either don't take any action or we take very inconsistent action and by the end of January or perhaps by the end of February, most of the resolutions are by the wayside.

Start with small, consistent actions. Here's a way for you to do that;

i) Begin by taking a look at your pickleball game right now.

- Pull out a piece of paper and just draw a line down the middle. On the left side of the paper, try and do an honest assessment of where you are right now as a pickleball player. This should feature the different parts of your game.

- Do a little visioning and think of who you would like to be as a pickleball player at the end of 2025. Write that all down as well. What would you like to have?

- Then, pick out one thing on the list, that one most important thing that you're going to start closing the gap on.

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Happy 2025! Let's think about our progress journey through pickleball as worth experiencing and enjoying to see the game better. Because here's the fact, there's really nowhere to arrive at and there's no magic place to get to.

Embrace the infinity of your journey and try and avoid pestering yourself with the, 'Are we there yet?' question.

Take a minute to imagine yourself as the player you want to be in the future. It could be a six months from now player, six years from now, however long you want to do it, and however much you want to add to yourself as a player. Picture that player for a moment. What does that player look like?

Placing yourself in the future you and who you want to be or grow helps us avoid being dissatisfied with where we are now because we want something more in the future.

You are in charge of how much you want to grow as a pickleball player and the game will always have something to teach you.

Now to the soft game- it's valuable and useful as a tool when you're playing. Consider adding it into your game or working on it more. It's the central feature of our game and continues to be the most reductive form of our game.

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Ben Johns is no longer going to play with his brother, Collin, and is looking for a partner for 2025. It's a little bit sad in the sense that they're brothers, they play together and I imagine they love pickleball.

There's been a lot of opinions about who would be the best partner for Ben for 2025 and I thought it was a good time to talk about picking a perfect partner. In this episode we'll also talk about your journey, getting ready for the new year and what you want for yourself in 2025.

How do you pick a partner? What do you look for? If you play rec play, you can also use also these ideas conceptually;

i) Shared Goals. Be on the same page so you can put in the work necessary to achieve your objectives.

ii) Compatible play energy. Approach the game from an energy standpoint as you flow through different situations for better partnership.

iii) Complimentary skills. This applies more to competitive situations, although in rec you can just be aware of it. For instance if you have two players that are super hyper aggressive, attacking everything all the time, that's probably not going to be ideal. Same case applies when the two players super passive.

There's other factors you can consider in your decision making that are not strategically driven in terms of chances for success in partnership from a pickleball standpoint, but are certainly super important, such as good partnership.

The key takeaway here is doubles pickleball is a team sport, such as basketball, thus needs the performance of the individual player like being able to hit your dink, your serve, return, volleys etc.

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