DUPR Brain Fitness Pickleball Performance Series Podcast

Dr. Gordon Jones
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Born from an obsession with pickleball, the DUPR Brain Fitness Series uses precision brainwave entrainment to sharpen your focus and accelerate your DUPR rating... no meditations!, just high-performance brain training delivered straight to you here. brainfitness.substack.com

  1. BrainTap Performance Partnership

    Jun 1

    BrainTap Performance Partnership

    Hello everyone — this is Dr. Gordon Jones, your Brain Fitness and Pickleball Performance Coach. This week, I want you to do something different. This isn’t a true pickleball performance session, but instead a fantastic announcement we are making today. Instead of just hearing or reading it here on Substack, I want you to experience it with the brainwave entrainment process. Today I’m going to tell you about something we’ve been building behind the scenes. So get comfortable. Sit or lie down somewhere you won’t be disturbed for the next few minutes. And put on your headphones if you have them. You don’t have to do anything. Just let me guide you as I have in the past dozen sessions. We have a new partnership. A big one. One I believe is a real step forward for how pickleball players train. I’ll share exactly who, and exactly what it means for your game, in just a few minutes. But first — I want you to understand why it matters. And the best way to understand it… is to let your own brain show you. Let’s start with your breath as we always do. Breathe in slowly through your nose… 1,2,3,4 Hold for 1,2,3,4,5,6 And let it go… 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 And hold for 1,2 Again, in slowly… 1,2,3,4 Hold for 1,2,3,4,5,6 And let it go… 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 And hold for 1,2 Good. Now, just let the breath do the work naturally. Here’s the truth I’ve come to believe more than almost anything else about this sport: Our mental game is trainable. Not “just to think positive” trainable. I mean neurologically trainable. As I have proven to you through my story, most players aren’t losing because they don’t know the shot. They lose because pressure changes the state of their brain before they ever execute it. The player who drills beautifully in the comfort of practice… doesn’t always quite show up the same way when it counts. First, they rush. Then they tighten. Then they overthink and finally everything just speeds up where they can’t catch up. We’ve been talking about this for many weeks now. Question, when I started talking about quickening; did your breath quicken also; or did your breathing stay slow and natural as before? Either way, you didn’t force it. It just happened. Those whose breathing stayed calm, that’s the whole idea behind this Brain Fitness series. The higher-level players — the calm 4.0s, 4.5s, 5.0s you’ve watched or maybe even played — they aren’t trying harder. They’re operating in a different rhythm. The game slows down for them. They see patterns earlier. They recover faster. And here’s what we’ve learned: that calmer rhythm isn’t a personality trait. It’s a brain state. Which means it can be trained. Up to now in our series, everything I’ve guided you through has used audio entrainment. Binaural beats. Isochronic tones. Layered solfeggio frequencies. And it works — that’s why you’re here, because you’ve felt it work. But audio is one sensory pathway into the brain. Another is through light and to be specific, patterned light sequences. This brings us to our announcement. While I was studying brainwave entrainment and guided visualization, I came to know Patrick Porter PhD, a neuroscientist and expert in the study and applications of how sound and light frequencies coordinated with guided visualization can change the way the brain interprets the world. Your auditory system and your visual system work together to pull your brain into the target rhythm depending on what you are working on in your life. In our case, it is for our pickleball performance, but these processes work for all parts of your life. What this gives you is three things I care about as a player and coach. The first is speed. When you’re entraining with audio alone, it takes time for the brain to settle into the target state. Eight, ten, sometimes twelve minutes before you’re really there. When you add synchronized light, that window shortens. The brain finds the rhythm faster. Why does that matter on the court? Because you don’t always have twenty minutes before a match. Sometimes you have five. A pre-match session that used to need fifteen minutes can become a sharp, focused five. Recovery between matches now becomes realistic instead of aspirational. The second is depth. I’ve talked a lot in this series about Theta — the state where skills install, where mental rehearsal actually takes root, where the patterns we want to own get encoded. Audio alone can get you there. But for some players, especially when you’re newer to this kind of training, Theta is hard to access consistently. Some days you get there. Some days you don’t quite. The combined light-and-sound entrainment helps you find that depth more reliably. The state you’ve been chasing in our sessions becomes more available, more repeatable. Which means the installation effect — the part where the work actually sticks — gets stronger. And the third is what I’ll call precision. Through Dr. Porter’s invention called the BrainTap platform, we now have access to a deep library of sessions Dr. Porter and his team have built over decades — targeted protocols for stress regulation, sleep, focus, recovery, heart rate variability training, cognitive sharpening — the foundational brain-fitness work for our whole body and our whole life, including, of course, our Pickleball performance. Layered with the pickleball-specific sessions I’ve built for the DUPR Brain Fitness Series, through BrainTap you get something we couldn’t offer before. A complete system. The general brain fitness underneath. The pickleball-specific performance training on top. Tournament tomorrow morning? Run a BrainTap sleep protocol the night before, then our new pre-match activation session in the morning. Tough loss in the first round? Run our updated recovery protocol, then our reset session, before round two. Working on your dink patience? Layer focus training with our new Dink Mind session. Each piece reinforcing the other. There’s one more thing I want to say about Dr. Porter, because credibility matters here. This isn’t a new tool that just appeared. Dr. Porter has spent more than four decades in neuroscience brainwave research. The BrainTap technology has been used by hundreds of thousands of people — clinically, in wellness practices, in performance settings — long before pickleball came calling. What we’ve done is bring that proven brain-fitness foundation… and built pickleball performance on top of it. It’s the partnership I would have wanted to exist when I started this work. And now it does. So when you put the headset on and run one of these enhanced sessions, you’re getting: The protocols I built specifically for your DUPR journey… On top of the brain-fitness foundation Dr. Porter spent a career building… Delivered through technology that uses both your ears and your eyes to guide your brain into the state you need… Faster, deeper, more reliably than anything we’ve had access to before. That’s the partnership. That’s what’s different. As we close out this session. Breathe in slowly through your nose… 1,2,3,4 Hold for 1,2,3,4,5,6 And let it go… 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8 And hold for 1,2 Let’s come all the way back now. Feel your body again. The surface under you. The room around you. Eyes open when you’re ready. Now — what you just felt as in all of this version of the brain fitness, that small drop into a deeper, quieter state… that’s a taste. That’s audio alone, guiding you. Imagine that same state, found faster, held longer, more reliably — with BrainTap added. Imagine running that before your next match. After a tough loss. The night before a tournament. That’s what’s now available to you. So here’s how you experience it. We’re opening the enhanced BrainTap DUPR Brain Fitness for Pickleball program with a two-week free trial. No commitment. No catch. You get full access to the whole BrainTap program, over 2000 sessions guided by Dr. Porter, plus the pickleball-specific performance sessions, the pre-match protocols, the recovery sessions, the skill-installation work, and prep for your best nights sleep— for fourteen days. Once you’re in the app, search for pickleball, or search for whatever else is going on in your life you’d like to get some relief from. Run them. Feel them. Decide based on your own experience whether this belongs in your pickleball training, as well as in your life in general. To start your trial, go to: https://sports.braintappartner.com/ One web address. Two weeks free. Everything included. After your trial, if you choose to stay, the program becomes part of our membership — full ongoing access to the brain-fitness library, every new session we add, every protocol Dr. Porter and I develop as the partnership keeps evolving. And if it’s not for you, you walk away with two weeks of training you didn’t have before. No harm done. Also, you still have access to the original series here on Substack. But here’s what I’ll ask you to do — and this matters. Don’t think about whether this is for you. You have felt whether this is for you over the past several weeks, when the court opened up in your mind and you have already started accelerating your love of the game through better performance. Trust that. Go to https://sports.braintappartner.com/ to start your free trial, and let the next two weeks of training show you what your real ceiling looks like when your brain isn’t getting in the way. I’m grateful you’re on this journey with me. I’m grateful that Dr. Porter and the BrainTap team chose to build this with us. And I’m grateful that the most important part of your game — the part nobody’s been training — finally has a system worthy of it. I know, I’ve experienced it myself. Remember to reset fast and play free, This is now the rhythm of your life. This is a public episode. If you would like

    13 min

  2. May 27

    How to easily get your starter DUPR Rating

    Hey everybody, it’s Dr. Gordon Jones, your Brain Fitness and Pickleball Performance Coach. Today I want to walk you through something that I think is going to help a lot of newer pickleball players, especially those of you who are starting to play more, getting into better games, thinking about leagues or tournaments, or just wanting a better idea of where your game really stands. But, this is also for those who have been playing awhile, but for some reason have not thought to track your progress through the DUPR system. We are going to talk about your DUPR starter rating and how the My DUPR Coach starter assessment can benefit you. Your access to this series is freely given, so would you consider making a contribution to our non-profit mission of spreading the benefits of pickleball to the world? Now, if you have been around pickleball for very long, you have probably heard people ask, “What’s your DUPR?” And for a lot of newer players, that can be confusing. You may know you are getting better. You may be beating some people at open play. You may be losing to others. You may have people telling you, “You’re probably a 3.0,” or “You’re playing more like a 3.5,” but you do not really know where you are. That is where this process comes in. This gives a new player a way to get a Coach-Assigned DUPR starting point so you can begin your DUPR journey with more clarity. It does not mean your rating is fixed forever. It simply gives you a starting baseline so you can understand your game, find appropriate competition, and keep improving from there. So in this video, I’m going to walk through the simple checklist you need to complete before your rating session. This checklist is for players who are preparing for a DUPR Rating Session with me. The key phrase here is Pre-DUPR. This process is designed for players who do not already have an established DUPR rating from logged matches. So let me make that really plain. If you already have a DUPR rating because you have been logging matches in the DUPR app, this is probably not the process for you. Once you have actual match results in the system, the DUPR algorithm is already working off your results. But if you are new to DUPR, you do not have a rating yet, and your doubles rating shows as NR, which means Not Rated, then you may be eligible for a Coach-Assigned DUPR. This is especially helpful for players who are ready to move beyond casual open play and begin understanding where they fit in structured play, leagues, tournaments, and skill-based groups. So before you show up for the session, we want to make sure all the setup work is done. That way, when we get on the court, we are not spending your time trying to fix apps, accounts, passwords, and login problems. We can actually focus on your pickleball. The first step is simple. You need to have a DUPR account. You can do that by downloading the DUPR app from the App Store, going to https://dupr.com on your computer, or completing the DUPR account setup inside the My DUPR Coach app when prompted. The big thing I want you to check is this. Once you are logged in, look at your Doubles Rating. If it says NR, that means Not Rated. That is what we are looking for if you are going through this starter assessment process. The Coach-Assigned Rating applies to your Doubles DUPR Rating. It does not change your singles rating. Also, and this is very important, do not create a second DUPR account if you already have one. If you already have an established DUPR rating from logged matches, do not try to start over with a new account just to get a Coach-Assigned Rating. That can create problems for you, for your account, and for the coach. So the first step is: get into DUPR, make sure you can log in, and confirm that your doubles rating is not already established. That keeps everything clean and legitimate. Now we move to the second app, which is the My DUPR Coach app. This is the app we use for the coaching side of the starter assessment process. On this slide, you will see my unique app link and the QR code. You can either scan the QR code or use the link to download the app. https://link.myjourneypickleball.com/pjr95iJWxOb This is where a lot of players get tripped up, because they think, “I already downloaded DUPR. Why do I need another app?” The answer is that the DUPR app is your main player rating account. The My DUPR Coach app is the coaching and assessment connection that allows me to evaluate your skills and submit a Coach-Assigned Rating when appropriate. So think of it this way. The DUPR app is where your rating lives. The My DUPR Coach app is where the assessment process gets organized. You need both connected properly so the rating can actually show up where it is supposed to show up. So on this slide, scan the QR code or use the link, download My DUPR Coach, and then we go to the next step. Once you have downloaded the My DUPR Coach app, it will ask you to choose whether you are a player or a coach. You want to select I am a Player. Then, when you are setting up your account, you will enter my coach code. You can see the code on the slide. My Code: 6hpu6tg That code connects you to my team inside the My DUPR Coach system. After that, go ahead and complete the account setup. Answer the registration questions, including the section about your DUPR goals. Do not rush through that part. It helps me understand what you are trying to do with your game. Are you just trying to get placed in better games? Are you trying to play your first league? Are you preparing for tournaments? Are you trying to move from recreational play into more competitive play? That information matters because the rating is not just a number. It is a starting point for your development. One little technical note. If the app gives you an “invalid name” alert, remove special characters, spaces, or periods. The name fields may only accept letters. That is not a big deal. Just clean up the entry and keep going. Once the account is fully set up, you should be taken to the dashboard home screen and guided through the app. This next step is one of those simple checks that saves a lot of headaches. You want to make sure your account is actually connected to my team. Open the My DUPR Coach app and go to your dashboard. On the right side, under DUPR Coach, you should be able to confirm that my first name is listed. If you are assigned to the wrong coach, or if something did not connect correctly, you can switch teams. Open the menu, select Find a Coach, and that will bring up the DUPR Coach Map. From there, you can search for the correct coach and select Get Your DUPR to update your team assignment. After that, close the app and reopen it. That refresh step matters. Sometimes apps do not show the update right away until you restart them. So the key point here is simple. Before your rating session, make sure you are connected to the right coach. If you show up and you are connected to the wrong person or not connected at all, we have to stop and fix that before the assessment can move forward. This slide is probably the most important technical step in the whole process. You need to link your My DUPR Coach account to your DUPR account. This is what allows your Coach-Assigned DUPR to appear properly. There are two ways to do it. The first way is from the app dashboard. You will tap the plus sign next to NR on the left side, then select Connect. The second way is through the menu. Open the menu, scroll down to DUPR, tap Connect, and then tap Connect again. From there, you will either sign in with your existing DUPR credentials or sign up if you do not already have a DUPR account. After you log in or create the account, you will grant DUPR access to complete the connection. Once that connection works, you should see a confirmation message. Then the plus sign should disappear from your dashboard, and the DUPR menu should show that it is connected. Here is the part I want everyone to hear clearly. This step is required. If your My DUPR Coach account is not linked to your DUPR account, your Coach-Assigned DUPR may not appear correctly in the My DUPR Coach app dashboard or within the DUPR system. So if you only remember one technical thing from this video, remember this. Download the apps, enter the coach code, and link the accounts. That is what makes the whole process work. Once all of that is done, now we get to the fun part. You come to your rating session. During the session, I will evaluate your pickleball skills across the areas listed under DUPR Skills inside your My DUPR Coach app. This is not just me watching one shot and guessing. The goal is to look at the key parts of your game. How do you serve? How do you return? Can you handle the transition zone? Can you dink with control? Can you recognize when to attack and when to reset? Can you keep the ball in play under pressure? Can you play with a partner? Can you make good decisions? A starter rating is not about embarrassing anybody or putting a label on you. It is about giving you a fair starting point. And for a lot of players, that is incredibly helpful, because now you have a baseline. You are no longer guessing. Once the assessment is submitted, you should receive your rating, coaching insights, and, if we record footage, possibly video feedback from gameplay. And this is where I really want players to understand the opportunity. Your DUPR number is not your identity. It is a tool. It helps you see where you are today so you can start building toward where you want to go next. After you receive your Coach-Assigned DUPR, you have a couple of different pathways. The first pathway is to start competing and logging matches. That means you can use your Coach-Assigned DUPR as your starting point and begin playing in DUPR events, leagues, tournaments, and other competitive settings. Once you start logging official matches, the DUPR algorithm begins adjusting your rating based

    15 min

  3. May 18

    The Pickleball Diaphragm

    The Pickleball Diaphragm Welcome to our session on Building a Strong Diaphragm for your pickleball game.. I am Dr. Gordon Jones, your brain fitness and pickleball performance coach. Your access to this series is freely given, so would you consider making a contribution to our non-profit mission of spreading the benefits of pickleball to the world? This session is going to do two things. First, in the next few minutes, you will understand more about how breathing affects your body, your brain, and your performance than most pickleball players ever learn. Then we will move into the practical work with exercises that build the muscle responsible for everything we just discussed. Find a comfortable seated position. Your back should be straight and tall, but not rigid. Your feet should be flat on the floor with your hands resting on your thighs. Your eyes can be open with a soft gaze or closed, whichever helps you stay present in your body without drifting, because we will be working. Let’s start with what most players never get told. The way you breathe is not a passive function happening in the background of your life. It is one of the most powerful regulators of your entire physiology. Every breath you take sends signals to your heart, your muscles, your brain, your blood vessels, and your digestive system. The breath is the one input you have into the autonomic nervous system, the part of your body that controls your heart rate, muscle tension, hormone release, and emotional state. You cannot directly slow your heart, but you can change your breath, and when you do, the entire system responds. This is why the way you breath matters in pickleball, and in everything else in life. When you breathe shallow and high in the chest, which most adults do under any kind of pressure, your body interprets it as a threat signal and your sympathetic nervous system activates. Adrenaline and cortisol release into the bloodstream and your heart rate climbs. Blood is pulled away from your brain’s higher reasoning centers, sending it toward the large muscles of your arms and legs in preparation for fight or flight. Your peripheral vision narrows. Your fine motor control degrades. Your sense of time speeds up, which is why everything feels so fast under pressure even when the actual ball speed has not changed. This is the breath that loses points, Not because the player ran out of skill, but because the player ran out of access to their skill. The skills are still there. The pathway to them has been narrowed by the swallow breath. Better is slow, deep breathing where the breath fills the abdomen first and then the chest, drawing air low into the belly rather than high into the chest. This breath tells your nervous system that the situation is safe enough to perform at your full capability. Your heart rate slows, the blood returns to your brain. Your peripheral vision widens. Your fine motor control sharpens. Your sense of time slows back to normal and you can think clearly. You can see the whole court. Your dinks land soft, your placement is refined and exact. Your decisions are clean. Why is this? There is a specific muscle at the center of it all. It is called the diaphragm, and it sits just beneath your lungs. It’s a dome-shaped sheet of muscle that separates your chest from your belly. When the diaphragm contracts and flattens downward, it pulls air into your lungs. When it relaxes and domes back up, it pushes air out. Every full descent of the diaphragm physically stimulates a major nerve called the vagus nerve, which is the main pathway your body uses to calm itself down. The diaphragm is literally a calming mechanism built into your body. But here is the problem most pickleball players don’t know they have. The diaphragm is a muscle. And like every other muscle in your body, it gets stronger when you train it and weaker when you don’t. For most adults, our sedentary jobs, chronic stress, decades of shallow chest breathing has made the diaphragm weak. It has difficulty descending fully. It cannot generate the pressure needed to stabilize your core during athletic movement. It cannot sustain long, slow exhales without fatigue. So when you walk onto a court and ask it to perform, it cannot. Instead, your body recruits the small muscles of your chest, neck, and shoulders to do the work of breathing, something those muscles cannot do as well as the diaphragm does. Additionally, contracting those muscles produces more complexity to your overall movements causing reduced control of your shots. The good news is for those who have been working through each of the series sessions, you’ve already started training your diaphragm. The same way your legs respond to training, or your arms respond to practicing specific pickleball shots, the diaphragm gets stronger and more reliable with progressive, consistent work. A few weeks of dedicated practice can produce measurable changes including increased lung capacity, more efficient heart-rate-variability, more productive recovery time, stability of your core, and in your ability to stay composed under pressure. Today’s session is designed to help you make that muscle strong, so that the breath does what it is built to do, not what today’s world dictates it to do. Let’s begin. Place one hand on your lower belly, just below the navel. Place the other hand on your upper chest, just below the collarbone. Take a normal breath, however you naturally breathe. Notice which hand moves more. If the chest hand moves more than the belly hand, you have been breathing high and your diaphragm has been underused. That is exactly what we are going to change. Now, deliberately, breathe so that the belly hand moves and the chest hand stays still. Inhale through your nose, and let the belly rise. Exhale through your mouth, and let the belly fall. That is the diaphragm doing its job. Feel where the movement is coming from low in the torso. Deep behind the navel. The muscle pulls down, pushing the belly outward. That is the muscle we are going to strengthen. The first quality of a strong diaphragm is full range of motion and the muscle’s ability to descend completely on each inhale. Most adults use only a fraction of their available range. We are going to expand yours. In this exercise, you will perform six breaths. Each one fills the belly completely, then empties it completely. The inhale is four seconds, full and unhurried. The exhale is six seconds, slow and controlled. Between each breath, pause for 2 seconds of stillness before the next. Hands stay on the belly and chest. The belly should move significantly. The chest should barely move at all. Begin. Inhale through the nose, 1, 2, 3, 4, fill the belly completely... Pause for 1, 2 Now exhale out the mouth completely for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, fill the belly... 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 Now exhale out the mouth completely for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, fill the belly... 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 Now exhale out the mouth completely for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, fill the belly... 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 Now exhale out the mouth completely for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Pause again for 1, 2 Two more. Continue the pattern. Belly rising fully. Belly emptying fully. The diaphragm working through its full range. Inhale, fill the belly... 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 Now exhale out the mouth completely for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, fill the belly... 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 Now exhale out the mouth completely for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Pause again for 1, 2 Now let your breath return to normal for a moment. Notice how the diaphragm feels. It may feel slightly worked or even a bit tired if this is your first time doing breathing exercises. That is the muscle responding to load. That is the training effect beginning its work. The second quality of a strong diaphragm is endurance and the ability to sustain effort across long breath cycles without fatigue. This is what allows you to maintain composure during a long rally, or to recover within seconds after one ends. You will perform eight breaths. Each one has a longer exhale than inhale, which trains the diaphragm to control its release rather than just dump the air. The inhale is four seconds. The exhale is eight seconds — twice as long. The longer exhale is where the strength is built. Resist the urge to rush it. Let the air leave slowly and steadily. Ready, begin. Inhale through the nose, 1, 2, 3, 4, fill the belly completely... Pause for 1, 2 Now exhale out the mouth completely for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 Now exhale for 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 exhale 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 exhale 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 exhale 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 exhale 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 exhale 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Pause again for 1, 2 Inhale, 1, 2, 3, 4, Pause for 1, 2 exhale 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 Pause again for 1, 2 Let your breath return to normal. Your muscle has been working under a sustained load. Do you feel the difference between this rest and the first one? There may be more warmth in the torso, more fatigue. That is the work showing in your body. The third quality of a strong diaphragm is the ability to work against resistance. We add a small amount of physical resistance to the exhale, which forces the muscle to work harder for the same output. This is the most challenging set in the session, and it produces the most strength gain. You will perform six breaths. The inhale is four seconds through the nose. The exhale is eight seconds through pursed lips as if you were exhaling through a narrow straw. The pursed-lip exhale creates back-pressu

    23 min

  4. May 11

    Match Day Series — Post-Matches

    Post-Matches of the Day — File It and Walk Away 5-Minute Close | Dr. Gordon Jones Excellent work! The playing is done for today and you did great! However it went, whatever the scores were, whatever moments you are still carrying as you sit here right now, this session has one purpose. To help you close out this playing day completely. To file what is useful, release what is not, and walk away from the court as a whole person rather than someone still running the last match in the back of their mind. This is not a debrief. It is not a coaching session. It is a close out. A clean, honest, compassionate ending to today’s play that honors the effort and releases the residue. Find your seat, get that back straight with shoulders back and chin level. Hands in your lap, palms open, fingers relaxed. Let your eyes close. A round of breath. Long and fully complete. Let this one carry the whole day out with it. Breathe in through your nose. All the way in filling your abdomen and then your chest. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Exhale completely through your mouth. Everything you have left. 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. Feel what just released. Not just air. The accumulated tension of every point, every game, every moment of effort and competition and emotional investment that today held. You do not need to carry that into the rest of your day. You just released most of it with that one breath. Let’s do that again, Breathe in through your nose. All the way. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Exhale completely through your mouth. Everything. 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. Let your awareness settle into your body now. Not scanning for readiness or performance. Simply noticing how your body feels after a day of play. If your legs are tired, let them be tired. They worked hard and they deserve acknowledgement. If your hands are still holding some residual tension from the paddle, let them open now, fingers uncurling, palms soft. Let your shoulders drop. All the way. Let your chest release. Let your jaw unclench. Let your eyes rest softly behind their closed lids. You are done competing for today. Your body can stop performing now. It can simply rest. Before our last breath, let’s do something brief and honest with today. Think back over your play without judgment. Not looking for mistakes to fix or moments to replay. Simply letting today move through your awareness like a slow river, noticing what it carried. What are you genuinely proud of? Not necessarily a result. A moment of composure. A reset that worked. A shot you trusted. A time when you felt your training show up exactly when you needed it. Find it. Acknowledge it honestly. That moment is real and it belongs to you permanently. File it. What do you want to learn from today? Not a list of everything that went wrong. One clear lesson. The thing that, when you return to the court, you will approach differently or practice more intentionally. Note it once, without drama or self-criticism. It is information. Valuable, useful information. File it. And now, everything else, the frustrations, the missed opportunities, the points that did not go your way, the emotional moments that the chemistry of competition produced, let all of that go now with your next exhale. Breathe out. Long and complete. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Exhale completely through your mouth. Everything. 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. Now, let your breathing get back to its post matches natural, relaxed state. The day is now done. Filed where it all belongs. In the past, as information, as experience, not as weight. You showed up today. You competed. You played the game you love and you did the work that most players never do. You trained your nervous system, practiced your tools, and brought the best version of yourself available to you today onto the court. That is enough. That has always been enough. The next time you play, a slightly better version of you will walk onto the court. Because tonight, while you sleep, your other-than-conscious mind will do what it always does. It will organize everything from today. File the lessons. Strengthen the patterns that worked. Quietly prepare you for the next time. You do not need to do anything to make that happen. Just rest. Just live the rest of your day as the whole, complete, brain-fit person you are when you are not competing. Take one full breath now. In through the nose, slow and easy and out through the mouth, complete and releasing. And let your eyes open when they are ready. Today is done. It was enough. Walk away from the court knowing that. You reset fast and play free, because This is the rhythm of your life! Your access to this series is freely given, so would you consider making a contribution to our non-profit mission of spreading the benefits of pickleball to the world? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brainfitness.substack.com

    8 min

  5. May 11

    Match Day Series — Between Matches

    Between Matches — Close and Open 5-Minute Reset | Dr. Gordon Jones Alright! You just finished a match and you have another one coming up soon. What you do in the next five minutes will determine the quality of your next match more than any technical adjustment you could make. Because the greatest competitive advantage available to you right now is not a tactical change. It is the ability to close out what just happened completely, and open fresh for what is about to happen. That is exactly what we are doing right now. Find your seat or a place to lay down away from the courts. Your back is straight with your shoulders back. Whether you’re sitting or lying down, level your chin and place your hands in your lap or at your side with palms open. Now, close your eyes. Two rounds of breath for this in-between session. The first one closes out what was, the second one opens up to what will come. Breathe in through your nose. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Exhale completely. Let the last match go with this breath. 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. That match is behind you now. Win or lose, it is filed. It is done. It belongs to the past. Now the opening breath. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Out... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. The next match has not yet begun. You are in the space between. Everything is clean and neutral. Ready to be written. Bring your awareness to your feet. Feel the ground beneath them. Solid. Present. Right now. Let a steady, grounded readiness move upward through your body. Through your legs. Your core. Across your chest, open. Through your shoulders, down your arms and into your hands. Let your fingers come together in your relaxed paddle grip. Thumb and first two fingers. Loose. Flexible. Alive. You are here. The last match is behind you. The next one is ahead of you. And right now you are exactly where you need to be, in the present moment, neutral and ready. I want you to do one brief, honest thing with the match you just played. Not a full analysis. Not a replay of every mistake. Just one thing you want to carry forward and one thing you want to leave behind. That is all. What worked? Find one moment, one shot, one decision, one mental skill that showed up the way you trained it. File that. It belongs in your game permanently. What do you want to release? One frustration, one error, one moment where the chemistry of competition pulled you somewhere you did not want to go. Acknowledge it once, clearly and without drama. And now let it go with your next exhale. Breathe out. Let it go. It is filed where it belongs, as a lesson, not a burden. The next match gets a fresh player. Not a perfect player. A present one. Someone who has closed out the last match completely and arrived here, in this moment, with their full attention and full intention available for the next opponent, the next court, the next game. Your activation anchor is set. Your rhythm is yours. Your reset is ready. Your nervous system has been returned to neutral. With your shoulders back, your chin level. Your fingers together in your relaxed paddle grip. Take one full breath, in through the nose, out through the mouth. When we’re finished with this session, hydrate, move your body gently. Shake your muscles, and when the time comes, walk onto that next court the same way you walk onto every court. And open your eyes when you are ready. Close and open. That is the skill. And you just practiced it. So, reset fast and play free. This is the rhythm of your game today! Your access to this series is freely given, so would you consider making a contribution to our non-profit mission of spreading the benefits of pickleball to the world? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brainfitness.substack.com

    6 min

  6. May 11

    Match Day Series — Pre-Match

    Pre-Match — Step In Ready 5-Minute Activation | Dr. Gordon Jones Hey, it’s Doc. You are about to compete and these next five minutes are going to make sure you walk onto that court as the player you have trained to be, not the player your nervous system defaults to when it is left to its own devices. So, find a seat wherever you are right now, a bench, a chair, or your car. Your back is straight and shoulders back with your chin level; hands in your lap, palms open, fingers relaxed. Now, let your eyes close. Let’s work your breath first. Two rounds so make them count. Breathe in through your nose. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Out through your mouth, completely. 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. Again. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Out... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. Your nervous system just received its first instruction. You produced the Calm you need throughout the match. This is something you produced. Bring your awareness to your feet. Feel the ground and let it be the court you’re getting ready to play on. It is solid and familiar, it is yours. Feel a readiness moving upward through your legs. Your core is engaged and centered. Now across your chest, open because your shoulders are back. Now through your arms and into your hands. Let your fingers come together in your relaxed paddle grip. Thumb and first two fingers loosely touching, flexible and alive. This is your activation anchor and your body already knows what it means. You’re saying to yourself: I have been here many times on the court and in my mind. I know how to do this. I am ready. Take thirty seconds now and find your best playing memory. A real moment when everything was working. When you were loose and free and your game expressed itself exactly as it should. Step inside that memory. Feel your feet on that court. The weight of the paddle. The sound of the ball. This is now you today. Let those fingers come together again in your relaxed paddle grip and anchor this feeling into that touch. This is yours, available by design, not by chance. [Silent a moment] You are not walking onto that court hoping it comes together. You have trained for this, your breath is practiced. Your reset is ready. Your rhythm is yours. Your identity is set. You are a brain-fit player and brain-fit players show up the same way every time. Present. Grounded. Ready to compete. With your shoulders back and chin level, take one full breath — in through the nose, out through the mouth completely. Open your eyes when you are ready. The court is waiting. So, remember, reset fast and play free. This is the rhythm of your game today! Your access to this series is freely given, so would you consider making a contribution to our non-profit mission of spreading the benefits of pickleball to the world? This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit brainfitness.substack.com

    5 min

  7. May 4

    Feelings Are Not Facts

    Feelings Are Not Facts — The Composed Mind Hello and welcome back. I’m Dr. Gordon Jones, your brain fitness and pickleball performance coach. Today we are going to talk about something that happens to every player on every court at every level of this game. Something so common, so universal, and so consistently misunderstood that it costs more points, more games, and more enjoyment than any technical weakness ever could. We are going to talk about emotions on the court. Not how to suppress them. Not how to pretend they are not there. Not how to be the kind of player who never feels frustration or pressure or urgency or disappointment. Those players do not exist. Every player who has ever competed at anything has felt all of those things and more. What we are going to talk about today is something more powerful and more practical than suppression. We are going to talk about understanding. Because once you understand what an emotion actually is, at the neurological level, at the chemical level, in the real biology of what is happening inside your brain and body when you feel frustrated after a missed shot or pressured at 9-9 in the third, you will never be controlled by those feelings in the same way again. That is not a promise. That is neuroscience. Your access to this series is freely given, so would you consider making a contribution to our non-profit mission of spreading the benefits of pickleball to the world? Find your seat. Back straight. Shoulders back. Chin level. Hands in your lap, palms open, fingers relaxed. Let your eyes close. Let’s begin with the breath. Slow and deliberate. The breath of a player who is about to learn something that changes everything. Breathe in slowly through your nose, filling your abdomen first, then your chest. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Exhale completely through your mouth. 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. Again. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Out... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. One more. Let this one carry you all the way in. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Out... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. Now let your breathing return to its natural rhythm and give it back over to your other-than-conscious mind. There will be moments during this session where my voice pauses. That is your time to process, to feel what we are building, and to let it settle into the deepest layers of your nervous system. When my voice returns, we continue. Be patient. Stay relaxed. Take it all in. In the background, your Brain Fitness tones are guiding you toward theta, that deep, open, receptive state where the most important learning happens at the most permanent level. Your other-than-conscious mind is listening, absorbing, and believing. Stay here. Breathe. Receive. Shift your awareness down to the balls of your feet. Feel the ground beneath them. Solid. Supportive. Present. Let a wave of easy relaxation begin there and move unhurriedly upward. Through your calves. Your knees. Your thighs. Not the readiness of a pre-match state, something quieter today. The settled, receptive openness of a player who is about to understand something important. Through your hips and your core. Your lower back releasing. Your abdomen soft and moving gently with each breath. Across your chest, open and easy. Through your shoulders, back and down. Let them drop a little further than feels necessary. And then a little further still. Through your arms. Into your hands. Let your fingers come together in your relaxed paddle grip. Thumb and first two fingers touching lightly. Loose, flexible, alive. Up through your neck, long and easy. Let your face soften completely. Your jaw loose. The muscles around your eyes at rest. Your forehead smooth. You are here. You are settled. And your mind is ready to receive something that will change the way you play this game permanently. Let me tell you what actually happens inside your brain when you feel an emotion on the court. Deep in the center of your brain lives a structure called the limbic system. This is your emotional brain. It is ancient, fast, and powerful. Its primary job is not pickleball. Its primary job is survival. It is scanning constantly for threats, for danger, for anything that signals that something is wrong and action is required immediately. The limbic system does not think. It reacts. And it reacts in the only language it knows, chemistry. When it perceives a threat, it releases a cascade of neurochemicals into your bloodstream. Cortisol. Adrenaline. The chemistry of urgency, of alarm, of fight or flight. On a pickleball court, the limbic system cannot tell the difference between a genuine physical threat and a missed third shot drop at a critical moment in a tournament match. To the limbic system, both of those situations can generate the same chemical response. A surge of cortisol that tightens your muscles. A shot of adrenaline that accelerates your heart rate and narrows your focus. A chemical cocktail that was designed for running from predators being delivered into your nervous system because you popped a dink up at 9-9. That chemical event is what you experience as emotion. The tightness in your chest. The heat in your face. The urgency that says do something, do something now. The frustration that replays the error. The anxiety that projects forward to the next point before this one has even begun. It is real. It is physical. It is happening in your body. And here is the most important thing I am going to say in this entire session. It is not a fact. It is a chemical event. And chemical events are temporary. Here is the other side of this story. And this is where your power lives. Just above your limbic system, in the front of your brain, sits your prefrontal cortex. This is your thinking brain. Your observing brain. The part of you that can step back from an experience and look at it rather than simply being inside it. The part of you that can notice an emotion, name it, evaluate it, and decide how to respond to it rather than simply reacting to its chemistry. The prefrontal cortex is the CEO of your brain. It does not move as fast as the limbic system. It cannot. Thinking takes longer than reacting. But it is more accurate. More strategic. More capable of making the decision that serves you rather than the decision that simply responds to the chemical alarm. Here is the relationship between these two systems that you need to understand. When the limbic system fires and sends its chemical cascade through your body, it does not have to take over. The prefrontal cortex has the ability to observe that chemical event, recognize it for what it is, and choose a response rather than simply executing a reaction. That ability is not automatic. It is trained. It is exactly the kind of skill that your Brain Fitness sessions have been building since Session 1. Every time you took your breath between points instead of reacting to a missed shot, you were using your prefrontal cortex to regulate your limbic system. Every time you used your reset ritual to return to neutral after an emotional moment, you were choosing the thinking brain over the reacting brain. Every time you held through the discomfort of the capacity breath rather than releasing it early, you were training the exact neural pathway that allows you to observe a feeling without being controlled by it. You have been building this skill the entire series. Today you understand what it is and why it works. Now I want to give you the three-step practice that makes this real in the middle of a match. The first step is notice it. When the limbic system fires and the chemical event begins, the first skill is simply recognizing it. Not judging it. Not fighting it. Not trying to make it stop. Just noticing it clearly. There is a feeling here. My chest is tight. My jaw is clenched. There is an urgency I can feel in my hands. Noticing an emotion without immediately reacting to it creates a gap. A small but critical space between the chemical event and your behavior. That gap is where your prefrontal cortex operates. That gap is where choice lives. And without the noticing, the gap does not exist. The chemistry flows directly into behavior without any filtering at all. The second step is name it. Once you have noticed the feeling, give it a name. Not a story. Not a judgment. A name. Frustration. Urgency. Anxiety. Disappointment. The act of naming an emotion has been shown in neuroscience research to measurably reduce its intensity. When you label an emotional state, you activate your prefrontal cortex and simultaneously reduce the activation of your limbic system. The name itself is the intervention. Not, I am so frustrated I keep making that mistake and I always mess up at this score. Just, frustration. One word. Clean and clear and without a story attached to it. The third step is let it pass. Emotions are not permanent states. They are waves. Every emotion, if you do not feed it with additional thought and story, will rise, peak, and subside on its own. The chemistry that produced it metabolizes. The wave passes. The typical emotional response, if not amplified by thinking about it, lasts somewhere between ninety seconds and three minutes. On a pickleball court, between points, you have six to eight seconds. Which means the wave is going to pass long before the next match, the next game, and certainly before the tournament is over. Your only job is not to feed it while it is rising. Notice it. Name it. Let it pass. Notice it. Name it. Let it pass. Now let’s take this into a match. Stay relaxed and follow me inside it. You are in the middle of a competitive game. The score is tight. You have been playing well and the match has been close throughout. You are at 8-9, serving, second serve, third game. You serve. The return comes back deep and heavy. You set up for a third shot drop and

    24 min

  8. Apr 28

    Morning Activation

    Your access to this series is freely given, so would you consider making a contribution to our non-profit mission of spreading the benefits of pickleball to the world? Morning Activation — Rise, Prime, and Play Morning Activation Session | Dr. Gordon Jones Good morning. You’re awakening to the voice of Dr. Gordon Jones, your brain fitness and pickleball performance coach. Keep your eyes closed and stay in your early morning calm state. In this moment, you are in one of the most valuable neurological states available to you all day. You may not feel that way yet. You may feel soft, slow, slightly suspended between the world of sleep and the world of waking. Hopefully, your thoughts are gentle and unhurried. If not, let’s get you back to that state as the day has not yet fully arrived with its demands and its noise. This mind state, that is quiet, open, still-warm-from-sleep, is not something to rush past. It is something to use. Because right now your brain is lingering between the delpa state of your sleep and the theta and low alpha rhythms that the morning gives you for free. And you’re doing great, because what you chose to do with the next twenty minutes will set the tone, the rhythm, and the identity of everything that follows for the rest of the day. So before the day begins, before the phone, before the news, before the noise, know that you are here. Present. Open. Ready to prime your nervous system for everything today holds. Stay where you are. If you are still in bed, stay there for now. If you have moved to a chair, let yourself settle. Let your eyes stay closed. Let your body be exactly as relaxed as it is right now. This is your morning upgrade. Let’s begin. Let’s start with the breath. But not the releasing breath of the evening sessions. This morning breath is a waking breath. It begins gently, where you are, and builds gradually into something more alive and purposeful. Follow me through it and feel the difference. Start with a soft, easy breath. Just a little fuller than your resting breath. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold gently... 2... 3. Out slowly... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Hold softly out... 1... 2. Again, a little fuller this time. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4. Out... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7. Hold out... 1... 2. Now for your full 4-6-8-2. Your rhythm. Your anchor. Your signal to your nervous system that today is intentional. In... 2... 3... 4. Hold... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6. Out... 2... 3... 4... 5... 6... 7... 8. Hold out... 1... 2. Now let your other-than-conscious mind take over your natural breathing again. Feel the difference between the first breath of this session and the last one. That progression, from soft and easy to full and deliberate, is your nervous system receiving its first instruction of the day. Not forced awake. Invited awakening. Drawn upward from rest toward readiness by your own breath, on your own terms, at your own pace. In the background, your Brain Fitness tones are beginning their morning arc. Where the evening session guided your brain downward toward delta and deep sleep, this session moves in the opposite direction. From the residue delta into the quiet theta of your natural morning state, upward through the focused clarity of alpha, and toward the energized, purposeful, ready beta state that will carry you through your day and onto your court. Your only job right now is to breathe, receive, and rise. Now bring your awareness gently into your body. Not a scan for tension or release, a scan for life. For the energy that is already present even in this quiet morning state. Start at your feet. Feel them. Not heavy and released the way they were last night, but present. Alive. The feet that will carry you through today. Whether you are playing today or simply living today, these feet are preparing to move. Let that quiet readiness be there without forcing it. Up through your calves. Your knees. The long muscles of your thighs each begin to remember their purpose. Not fully awake yet, simply coming online. Like a morning stretch that has not quite happened yet but is already as present as possibility. Through your hips and lower back, which held you through sleep, now beginning to find their daytime strength. A natural small movement here is welcome. A gentle shift. Your body finding its waking alignment. Through your abdomen and your core. Your breath moving through it more fully now with each cycle. Awake and easy. Across your chest. Feel it expand a little more with each breath. Opening. The chest of a player who is getting ready to face whatever today brings, not braced against it, but open to it. Through your shoulders. Here is where the morning invitation lives. Let your shoulders roll back gently. Just once. Feel them settle back and down into the position that says, I am here, I am ready, I am not carrying anything I do not need to carry today. Through your arms, your hands, your fingers. Loose and alive. The hands that know how to hold a paddle. The hands that have been trained through every session in this series to respond with soft precision and quiet confidence. Up through your neck, long and easy. To the crown of your head. Feel the full length of your body now. From the crown of your head to the soles of your feet. Present. Progressing. Coming alive from the inside out. This is your morning body. Not the performance body of a match day, not the released body of a recovery night. The morning body. Full of quiet potential. Ready to become the day. You are in the most receptive state you will be in all day right now. Your analytical mind has not yet fully engaged. The noise of the day has not yet arrived. The to-do lists and the notifications and the demands have not yet begun their work of fragmenting your attention. Right now, in this window, you have something rare and valuable. Complete access to your other-than-conscious mind. The part of you that runs your heartbeat and your breathing and your instincts on the court. The part of you that responds to identity and intention rather than information and instruction. This is the window we are going to use right now. And what we are going to do with it is set the story of your day before the day gets to set it for you. I want you to think about who you are. Not what you have to do today. Not what happened yesterday. Not what you are worried about or looking forward to. Who you are, as a person, as a player, as someone who has chosen to show up for this work and do something most people never do. You are someone who has trained their nervous system. Who has learned to breathe with intention. Who has built a reset ritual that works. Who knows the difference between a ceiling and a current address. Who understands that the identity leads and the results follow. Who has a mental court with skill anchors, an activation anchor, a reset word, a personal cue bank, and a come-back mind. You are a brain-fit player. And that is not a title you earned in a tournament. It is a quality you have been building in the quiet, in the sessions, in the moments when nobody was watching and you showed up anyway. Feel that for a moment. Not with arrogance. With honest acknowledgment. You have done the work. And the work has done something to you. It has made you more capable, more resilient, more present, and more reliable than the player who started this series. That player is who wakes up this morning. That player is who walks through today. Now let’s look at today specifically. I do not know what your day holds. Maybe you are playing today, a morning session at the club, an open play afternoon, a league match this evening. Maybe you are not playing today and today is a day of work and life and the ordinary demands of being a person in the world. Either way, today is a day when the brain-fit player you have become gets to show up. And how you show up in the first hours of the morning shapes how you show up for everything that follows. So let’s set your intention for today. Not a goal. Not a task. An intention. The quality of presence and engagement you want to bring to whatever today holds. Take a moment now and let a word or a short phrase arise that captures how you want to show up today. Maybe it is steady. Maybe it is present. Maybe it is open. Maybe it is strong. Maybe it is patient. Maybe it is simply alive. Whatever you think, let it come without forcing it. The right word is already there in the quiet of this morning state. Trust it. Feel it settle into your body now. Not as a thought in your head but as a felt quality in your chest, your shoulders, your feet, your hands. This is your intention for today. This is the story you are setting before the day sets it for you. If you are playing pickleball today, I want to spend a moment with you on the court. See yourself arriving at the club or the venue. The particular energy of a playing day. The familiar sounds, the squeak of court shoes, the pop of paddles, the laughter from the far court. You know this place. Your nervous system recognizes it. And today you arrive with something extra. The intentional morning behind you. The breath already practiced. The identity already set. You warm up without rush. You are calibrating, feeling today’s court, today’s light, today’s version of your game. Whatever arrives in the warm-up is information. Not judgment. Just information. The first rally begins. And you are already in your rhythm. Not because everything is perfect. Because your internal tempo was set before you left the house. Because your breath has been moving with intention since you woke up. Because the player who walked onto this court this morning set their story before the day got to set it for them. Feel the court beneath your feet now. The weight of the paddle in your hand. The relaxed paddle grip, thumb and two fingers, loose and flexible and alive. Your activation anchor is set. You are ready. If you are not playing today, I want

    23 min
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Born from an obsession with pickleball, the DUPR Brain Fitness Series uses precision brainwave entrainment to sharpen your focus and accelerate your DUPR rating... no meditations!, just high-performance brain training delivered straight to you here. brainfitness.substack.com

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