Everybody who has registered in a troop should now have access to the Practice Atlas.
If you haven’t yet received access, reply to this email and we’ll add you. (If you're not yet in a troop but want to explore the Atlas, just reply to this email.)
For those who have already opened their Atlas…now what?
Join us for a live Q+A on Tuesday, May 12 at 7pm.
Mariko and Shawn will lead you through the different levels of the Practice Atlas, answering questions as they go.
If you can’t make it for this Zoom tutorial, a video will be posted in the Help section of your Atlas.
Some of you will remember when this was just blank squares on a piece of paper. The original idea comes from Japanese track coach Takashi Harada, who showed his athletes how to take an ambitious long-term goal and break it down into its component parts.
Most players currently experience pickleball in fragments — a golden tip here, a clinic there, a drill session that drifts into a bunch of games that blur together. We improve in pieces. We also plateau in pieces.
“Everyone is already doing the work. But there’s something missing—and it’s not passion, or volume, or love. It’s the intention and the focus on the simple things. The idea of building a new skill, a new strategy, a new sequence where I “float” on the court — that type of practice culture is what I’m searching for. You read stories about Serena or Rafa or Steph Curry — these elite professional athletes — it’s not just about hitting 10,000 balls. They understand something much larger about practice.”
The Practice Atlas is a way to see and connect every level of your pickleball experience.
At the centre is your North Star — the big, slightly uncomfortable thing you’re moving toward. The version of your game that still feels out of reach. Around it are eight Anchors that shape: how you compete, how you practice, how your body moves, how your “style” is expressed, how you think, how you connect with others on court.
And around those eight Anchors are what we’re calling Books.
It’s overwhelming to contemplate all of these Books and Anchors and Layers at the same time.
So where do you start?
Start somewhere — anywhere — that matters to you. Click an interesting Book. Follow your curiosity. Adjust some sliders. Fill in some of the blanks with some sincere words. Don’t overthink it. You could begin with the Book of Resets (aka Cloudmaker). This is where you’ll find your first assignment.
Or you could explore the library of drills and add your favourites into an outline for your troop’s next session. Share that session outline with other members of your troop. Study the drills before you arrive. Visualize yourself doing the drills. Take turns recording a few minutes of that session on video with your phone. And then look for your next assignment later this week — about analyzing that video.
This is not meant to be completed all at once. It’s meant to be returned to.
If you want to get deeper into it, we’ll be on Zoom tomorrow night.
Zoom Invite: Tuesday, May 12 at 7pm.