EP 19 - Covering Fitness, Diet, and Aging with Edin Sehovic from Evidence Nutrition

Gerard (00:11): Welcome back to Spin the Racket, the recreational tennis pod covering everything from the pro tour to the everyday league player. I'm your boy G.

Spin The Racket (00:19): And I'm

Gerard (00:21): Today

Edin Sehovic (00:37): Thank you so much, I appreciate it. That was really concise but well-rounded. I can appreciate that intro.

Gerard (00:43): Trying to get all the angles here, you know?

Edin Sehovic (00:46): Dude, that was well done. You know what, you know when someone does an intro and you're like, dang, I don't even know if I would be that nice to myself. That's crazy.

Gerard (00:53): I love it, I love

Spin The Racket (00:54): you

Gerard (00:56): it. Well, we always start the podcast off with one of our favorite questions. So first off, would you rather have no serve or no forehand?

Edin Sehovic (01:09): Just to preface, both of those options suck. And what's the context? Are we playing singles or doubles?

Gerard (01:17): We've never been asked that question before.

Spin The Racket (01:18): Yeah,

Edin Sehovic (01:20): I feel like that drastically changes the situation.

Gerard (01:25): Huh. ⁓

Edin Sehovic (01:27): singles. You know what?

Gerard (01:27): Yeah. Like that.

Edin Sehovic (01:30): If it's singles, then I'm going to go no serve because Rafa once upon a time won the Roland Garros with no serve. So I'm ⁓ going to call that one out and say there's still hope, you know, if I have no serve. But with no forehand on a singles, that's going to be tough. That's going to be tough.

Gerard (01:46): Yeah. Wow. Look at Rafa catching some

Edin Sehovic (01:50): I mean, come on, let's call a spade a spade, man. He's an animal and full respect

Gerard (01:58): He did. He did. Yeah,

Edin Sehovic (02:04): Yeah, started off hot.

Spin The Racket (02:06): Yeah, it get really controversial.

Edin Sehovic (02:30): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (03:01): Yeah,

Edin Sehovic (03:06): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (03:14): Yeah. And this has been, this has been a long time coming for me specifically. I'm the one that found your content. ⁓ you know, just scrolling through social media. I'm a big like fitness advocate. mean, G is as well. He's actually a fitness coach, ⁓ coaches for MADabolic I can let him talk on, that quite a bit, but we're both into fitness. I digest a lot of fitness content and, you know, just came across your content. found it very unique, very, very great to, to see the reactions.

Edin Sehovic (03:29): Mm-hmm.

Spin The Racket (03:44): ⁓ I'm, I'm big on reaction based like content. So, you know, ⁓ I appreciate you, you know, joining us in this episode I think it was, ⁓ 2025 us open. I realized when I started following you and at some point you posted something about tennis and I was like, hold on.

Edin Sehovic (04:02): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (04:03): Does, does end play play tennis? this like, is this what's happening? And I think I saw you, uh, I think it was like an elevator peg that you took, uh, somewhere in the U S open around New York city. And I was like, dude's at the U S open. All right. This is legit. He doesn't just dabble in tennis He's involved. So, uh, that's how we found your content. Obviously, you know, from there till now, um, it's been, it's been a journey show.

Edin Sehovic (04:06): Yep.

Spin The Racket (04:29): How'd you get started with creating fitness and nutrition content?

Edin Sehovic (04:34): So, ⁓ yeah, first of all, before I get into that answer, I wanna point out one thing is that the content creates itself and so I don't want you to think about, man, we're just getting started, because at the end of the day, if you make good content, it doesn't matter how many followers you have, because this video or the next one or, you know, I'd love to hype myself up and say, yeah, this is gonna be the one where you guys explode on, but,

Spin The Racket (06:22): Get on bound.

Edin Sehovic (06:24): I all of a sudden just got like ghastly skinny. Like it was just to the point where people would look at me and be like, you could like feel that look, right? And you know, no disrespect to anyone at any weight, but at that height, I don't remember what my height was, but I remember I was in the ninth grade, 14 years old. And going into the ninth grade, I had lost like a substantial amount of weight. I think it was about 30 pounds. And so now I was about 85 pounds at 14.

Gerard (07:00): Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (07:21): I got it very late on in my life. Once it took about two years to kind of dial that in and get that sorted. But at that time you're starting to ask yourself the questions of do I go to school? Do I try to go pro? Do do whatever? Like you're playing so often. And at the time I was playing so often, ⁓ you know, people always like to hose me up when I show up in tennis content. They look up my ITF records like, yeah, dude, I was, I sucked. So you can feel free to look me up.

Spin The Racket (08:01): Right.

Edin Sehovic (08:13): When you're looking at it going, hmm, can I make a living doing this? Well, historically speaking, absolutely not. So, so I decided to go into something that I was interested in learning about, which was how does the food that I'm taking in? I also was keen about the fitness, which is important, but, ⁓ I decided I was more interested in like the food that I was eating and how it impacted my diabetes, which impacted my tennis, which impacted all of these things.

Gerard (08:22): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (08:39): In a way, having diabetes was very transformative because then I started a degree in dietetics, nutrition and it's a food science degree. So I got that degree, kind of gave up on tennis for a temporary period of time. I was playing very limited amounts, but still trying to stay involved where possible. It was tough. The school didn't have any tennis team or anything. So ultimately I chose my education.

Gerard (09:25): Okay.

Edin Sehovic (09:32): where I am based now. That's when I thought, you know what? I have a little bit of time. It was just before COVID actually. And I thought, maybe I'm going to give this video thing a try. I had already been dabbling with like a blog to try to just provide people free value. If they were like a client of mine, I would say, Hey, that question that you had for me. Well, I figured in case some other random person in the world had the same question, I wrote an entire blog about it. I realized throughout that, that the writing was not for me. ⁓ Like I just feel like I'm a very distracted writer.

Gerard (10:38): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (10:38): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (10:58): most of the answers that I had to give people unfortunately required taking this thing that they could have bought and they're like really excited about and they're like, is this supplement good? And then I would go, no, and here's why it would actually be like a complete and total waste of money for you. And then that was a bummer for them. And they go, damn, I can't solve all my problems with this one bottle of whatever. ⁓

Spin The Racket (11:13): Dude, yeah. Yeah, the silver bullet

Edin Sehovic (11:20): Exactly. So, so yeah, that's kind of how I got into it. And, you know, I still play tennis where I can as much as I can. I'm still affiliated with Babylon a little bit and with other brands as well. You know, I got to go to the US Open, which is super fun. I still have a few clients that play professionally, so I help them out. But as you guys know, you know, pros, it's not like it pays the bills. It is a true passion project because.

Gerard (11:51): That's right.

Spin The Racket (11:53): Yeah,

Edin Sehovic (12:23): Yeah. Are you a professional? Yeah. Yeah,

Spin The Racket (12:40): Right?

Edin Sehovic (12:51): How are you gonna say that you are a professional or an expert in this field where you can't even make a living doing it? Yeah.

Spin The Racket (12:57): Yeah, you can't live off of that. It's a tough

Edin Sehovic (13:01): By the way, there's no judgment on my part on the pros that can't make a living

Spin The Racket (13:11): Yeah, it's

Gerard (13:19): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (13:20): Yeah.

Gerard (13:21): So let's break out this tennis skill. So obviously, mentioned you started when you were five. You've played for a very long time. You said that you sucked. But anybody who starts that young has to be decent at tennis, right? mean, you build the fundamentals early on. You have some good form, I'm sure. Yeah, let's talk about your skills. Do you play a ton now? Do you play leagues or tournaments? Are you winning more than you're losing? What's it like?

Spin The Racket (13:39): I've him play. I've seen the footage.

Edin Sehovic (13:47): ⁓ I mean,

Spin The Racket (14:19): There's always a bigger fish.

Gerard (14:24): you

Edin Sehovic (14:41): play in some leagues, but typically with the players I'm playing with now, ⁓ depending on the level, like I'll be mostly winning, but I'm really out of shape. And I said that the other day in my story and it like blew up ⁓ because like, yes, I look fit, but being able to last in one set is okay. I could do that. No problem. But the moment it gets tight and I have to play two or three, forget about three. You can forget about three.

Gerard (15:11): You're like, third set a tiebreaker, please.

Spin The Racket (15:19): Yeah,

Edin Sehovic (15:28): Yeah, I think I

Gerard (16:05): I'm curious about your playing style. So I mean, we were talking about Rafa, who you already threw under the bus here. But you got the Babylon shirt on, like, starting when you were young. Like, what's your style like? Who do you emulate?

Edin Sehovic (16:08): Hmm.

Gerard (16:21): ⁓ You

Spin The Racket (16:22): you

Edin Sehovic (16:46): I don't have the pressure of the juniors, like, my God, you know, how am going to be able to pay for the next one and this and that? It's like, relax, brother. I just need to be able to pay for the balls on the next time we come out. Like there's nothing that deep about it. So once I was able to get that pressure, which I was not able to deal with as a junior at all, like me personally, it was something I created too much for myself and then I would just freeze up. So now I feel like I can actually improve my strokes.

Gerard (16:57): Right.

Edin Sehovic (17:14): You know, I obviously want to be like Roger in terms of how early he takes cuts on the ball. Not a one handed backhand, I have a two handed backhand, you know, even my entire life, I didn't really like Djokovic's playing style until probably four or five years ago. I started to really all concede that I really started to understand why his playing style was so effective.

Gerard (17:56): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (18:08): But yeah, Rod,

Spin The Racket (18:36): Pinpoint.

Edin Sehovic (18:38): Go ahead. Pinpoint? ⁓ Yeah.

Spin The Racket (18:40): Yeah, platform versus pinpoint serve. Which one do you have?

Edin Sehovic (18:43): So I guess like I slide my foot a little bit, but you can only see it on clay. Otherwise it looks like a platform. Yeah. So. ⁓

Spin The Racket (18:53): like

Edin Sehovic (19:01): Yeah, yeah, that's that's exact same exact same, but it doesn't come all the way in. Yeah.

Spin The Racket (19:18): Didn't they come out with like the jet

Edin Sehovic (19:23): Yeah, yeah, they're really nice.

Gerard (19:34): Hmm.

Edin Sehovic (19:43): You know, not to make this all about the the babble issues, but yeah, play style. mean, I like to get up to the net when I can. I like to take advantage. I don't think even when I was a junior, I was playing at like 150 pounds. Now I'm obviously 80, 70, 80 pounds heavier than what I was when I was competing. So it it's noticeably heavier for sure. ⁓ But I still try to do my best to. Well, sorry. Use the same play style. I'm not as fast downfall shocker.

Gerard (19:59): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (20:12): ⁓

Gerard (20:21): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (20:28): Yeah, I mean I can I can relate to a lot of that ⁓ I Just just for some context I similar to you when I was 17. I personally just crashed out with tennis I you know the pressure got to me. It's like like you said at some point once you go at a high competitive level ⁓ you're losing every week and You're losing a lot more than you're winning and it's just like grinding and grinding and it's like, you

Edin Sehovic (21:22): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (21:25): But then all of a sudden I'm like 50, 60 pounds heavier than I was. And my limbs are longer. My arms are heavier. Like everything just feels different. So you're having to adjust to all of that and you're ripping the ball way different than when you were a kid. So like my play style has changed too. It's, ridiculous. Like no one would be able to like know what I played like as a junior when they see me playing now.

Edin Sehovic (21:48): Yeah, mean, no, I think you said you saw me play. Like I think the shocker would be that like I was just a clay court grinder, like standing at four feet behind the baseline. And I loved long rallies. Dude, you couldn't pay me to get into a long rally now. the heavy spin and ⁓ which is why I struggled with the backhand a little bit is like I really wanted to just have lots of time and I grew up playing a lot on clay. So ⁓ I just like to do.

Spin The Racket (21:55): Same, same.

Gerard (22:05): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (22:18): loopy spin and sit back. And I really struggled with taking the ball earlier. Now, when we I think it's just because we have less pressure, right? When you're a kid, you have even the positives that people throw you. Yeah, you lost a little bit better. You're it's not good enough. So so, you know, and I feel for a lot of kids now, man, like, especially when I see it and I go, man, like, don't compare yourself to the Carlos Alcaraz of this like.

Spin The Racket (22:26): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (22:47): It's so hard. It is so hard. Like I love that they're in the sport Carlos and I got lucky enough to meet him at a Babylon event in New York. But I even said it to him like it's briefly and we only chatted briefly because he's a busy guy. But like the new generation of kids like they're not even making it onto the scene as a pro yet for the majority of them or even to university at the point where he's already winning slams. So it's like it's really tough.

Spin The Racket (22:47): Dude, yeah.

Gerard (22:56): Cool.

Spin The Racket (23:14): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (23:16): to try to explain to a kid that that feeling that you and me got at 30, he got that at like 16 and then was able to continue riding that. Like that mental switch is probably the biggest thing I think, him and Center, of course, know, no disrespect to Center. I think he's gonna be a crazy player as well. I was just for the sake of this conversation. I think they're both like, yeah, I am partial to think that Carlos will probably do better, but I am not.

Spin The Racket (23:24): Dude, yeah.

Gerard (23:30): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (23:43): gonna count Sinner out, think that guy's gonna have like 20 slams. Between the two of them, I think they're both gonna get a stupid amount of slam.

Gerard (23:47): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (23:50): Yeah. I mean, let's, let's unpack that for a moment. You said, ⁓ you said the, you know, the influence, the benchmark that these two guys are setting on the tour, right? ⁓ I think we're already seeing what happened with like the, ⁓ let's just call it the Djokovic effect, right? Where like you now have Djokovic like complete player can hit everything well. And now you see everyone like in the top 100.

Edin Sehovic (24:03): Mm-hmm.

Spin The Racket (24:18): They have like practically no weaknesses, right? Everyone is able to hit every shot well for, know, maybe statistically speaking, most of the guys have like a complete game. Like think about now how Carlos and center have been able to like, just take that and just step it one notch up. And then now it's like, you have these kids growing up thinking like, this is, this is the standard. This is how my game needs to be.

Edin Sehovic (24:22): Mm. Mm-hmm.

Spin The Racket (24:45): If I don't play like this, I'm not going to make it. It's ridiculous, right?

Edin Sehovic (24:50): Yeah, I think it's crazy how far, like I always like to talk about when I'm having the conversation around tennis with clients or whatever, I think it's really important to talk about the floor and the ceiling. So rather the ceiling and the floor. ⁓ Most players on the tour, as you said, in the top 100, they're trying to do everything right. And all of their ceiling, I'll say is similar level, right? Like they're all similar.

Spin The Racket (25:28): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (25:49): ceiling that's comparable, like there, you maybe someone is a little bit higher or whatever in terms of their peak ability. The problem I find with tennis when people start to like compare this benchmark and it is really tough in the moment to do it. But also I think it's important to take a step back when when kids are trying to process this information, kids and rec players alike is that the problem is not how high their ceiling is because everyone's always like, man, I got to take it another level, another level. No, man, like in all of my conversations with all of my pro ⁓

Gerard (26:42): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (26:47): But even in those two matches where he was his floor was like he was at the worst he's ever we've seen him play. He's still competing with the best in the world. And who knows how good, you know, maybe that other player was maybe not at their peak, but somewhere in the middle, because that's a reality. You're very rarely in tennis playing at your peak. That's some serious Nirvana to be playing at your peak for an entire match. Yeah.

Spin The Racket (27:10): Yeah, I was going to say, when does that actually happen? Most of the time, you

Edin Sehovic (27:18): Yeah.

Gerard (27:42): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (27:52): like full on swings at the back end. So I think, ⁓ yeah, I think that's kind of like the approach I have to it is like there's two things you got to improve simultaneously and the best can do it extremely well. And the rest, we just sit and watch them do it extremely well. So.

Gerard (28:08): That's

Edin Sehovic (28:20): so I do

Gerard (28:34): Mm-hmm.

Edin Sehovic (28:45): A lot of it is just, we will chat about, what does your pre-match routine look like? What is your typical pre-match meal? And I think that's my most common question whenever I make tennis related content, the tennis nerds, I'll call them, myself included, by the way, so let's not get offended. ⁓ But, you know, tennis nerds or tennis buffs will come out of the woodwork and be like, well, what's the best thing that I can eat before? What's the best thing I can eat after? What's the best thing? And I go, well, it's kind of like playing at your best.

Spin The Racket (29:02): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (29:15): That will happen once in a million. Let's focus more so on the every single day things that you actually do and then let's take it from there and kind of improve upon that. So that's what I look at with the athletes is like, hey, look at what we actually do on a day to day basis and let's see what we can improve upon from there. And then especially when we're talking about the pros, we have a lot more considerations there. Like usually they don't have access to a kitchen. Usually they can't like meal prep. Forget about that.

Gerard (30:13): Yeah

Spin The Racket (30:14): Yeah, sometimes they don't even know if they're like.

Edin Sehovic (30:14): So like these are very,

Spin The Racket (30:18): Yeah. No, I was going to say sometimes they don't even know when they're going to be on court, right? Like they could be on court at 9 a.m. They could be on court at 12 p.m. and you have to be ready ⁓ for either time, right? So that's another level of complexity for all this stuff. What's the most common pitfall you find in people trying to prepare for playing tennis? What are some patterns you see and maybe how do you address that?

Edin Sehovic (30:18): Sorry, go ahead.

Gerard (32:01): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (32:14): We also, not to mention you have, you know, the tennis players will tell me all the time, right? They have budget constraints. I'm like, so you're going to spend, you know, five bucks, four bucks, whatever, especially because pros, if we're talking to pros, they're just going to go to the gas station or to the tennis club, which the tennis club always has inflated prices. So then you're going to go there and you're going to buy the convenience of five, 56 bucks for this. And for what you didn't even really want to. And it was a flavor you didn't want. So it's just like, what, what are we talking about here? So ⁓ the thing that I think

Gerard (32:25): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (32:44): is like the biggest pitfall in tennis is people over complicating everything, refusing to do the basics because it's not sexy. And then wondering why off of, in my opinion, C minus effort, they think it's a lot of effort. Don't get it twisted. They think it's a lot of effort because they put a lot of thought into it. But putting a lot of thought and stress is not the same as doing the work, the groundwork. And that's commonly conflated in my experience working with

Spin The Racket (34:39): Yeah, then at that point they have to book a consultation, right? If they want specificity to the advice. Right. Right.

Edin Sehovic (34:44): I mean, like, yeah, I...

Spin The Racket (35:26): You put your money where your mouth is.

Edin Sehovic (35:29): So

Gerard (35:46): fair. That's fair. And so I mean, in that case, if you're talking to someone who is trying to be more serious about their broader health and fitness, especially as relates to tennis, and what should they be eating and exercising? Like, what do you tell someone who's just trying to get started there?

Edin Sehovic (36:04): I would start by asking fairly like general questions. For example, like how many fruits, vegetables do you eat? And then they go, oh, well, I'm doing organic this and that. And I go, okay, no, no, no, back it up. Like just answer that question. Just fruits, vegetables, period. I don't care if they're frozen. I don't care if they're canned. I don't care if they're whatever. Eliminate the buzzwords and just try to understand like how much of each thing are you consuming?

Gerard (37:56): you

Spin The Racket (38:07): killing my dreams right here. I

Edin Sehovic (38:12): Well, mean, that's it's it's

Spin The Racket (38:48): Everywhere. Everywhere.

Gerard (39:07): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (39:09): Yeah, don't get me started.

Edin Sehovic (39:10): Gatorade. It's kind of like Gatorade,

Spin The Racket (39:10): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (39:12): but I would argue that if you're using Element, regardless of brands, I have no affiliation to either. If I would say 99 % of people would be better off with a Gatorade, even the full sugar one, because the use case of an Element is usually, oh, yeah, well, I need some sodium or whatever, but a Gatorade only has like 300 milligrams of sodium.

Gerard (39:24): Really? Wow.

Spin The Racket (39:29): to gram of sodium.

Edin Sehovic (39:36): Whereas

Gerard (39:51): Right.

Edin Sehovic (40:05): You have different goals, right? So, ⁓ yeah, see, even the, can't even speak broadly because I always end up trying to like think about the individual people that I actually see, right?

Gerard (40:07): Mm-hmm. Interesting.

Spin The Racket (40:17): Yeah, the market is plagued with ⁓ a lot of competition on the electrolyte ⁓ situation. I think it's just ridiculous, right? Because most folks, you hit the nail on the head, like 95 plus percent of people are not going to be sweating enough to ⁓ need to consume electrolytes. There are still electrolytes you can get from regular food.

Edin Sehovic (40:45): Hmm.

Gerard (40:52): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (41:02): It's like 2.2 to 2.4 grams.

Spin The Racket (41:11): I mean, even myself, right? Like I, I, I have pretty rigorous workouts in the morning. I come out like, you know, like the shirt got dumped in a bucket of water. go in the sauna for 15, 20 minutes and there's a lot of, there's a lot of sweating going on. Even I am like, should I take electrolytes or not? You know, am I at the level where I need them? I've been at that point where I think I've generated fatigue from not hydrating properly.

Edin Sehovic (41:25): Hmm. That's right.

Spin The Racket (41:39): And I don't mean water. mean, electrolytes being depleted with electrolytes. So I've kind of been in this situation where like how much electrolyte should I be taking on a daily basis? got a, I got one of the it's, it's, I, I like to be frugal. So I got this brand called Nutri Cost and they have an electrolyte mix that is pretty simple, but it's very low sodium. So if I want to crank up the sodium, I can just, you know, crack a little bit of like pink Himalayan salt on there.

Edin Sehovic (41:39): Probably.

Spin The Racket (42:09): And I can kind of dial it up instead of just going, hey, this is the recommended amount. it's got, OK, it's got the ratios right, but I can't control the sodium. Because it's just got a full gram.

Edin Sehovic (42:19): Yeah, yeah,

Gerard (42:43): Mm-hmm.

Edin Sehovic (42:46): you know, then the guys start taking their shirts off. You can kind of see when they take their shirts off and kind of like if you line them up, who has more salt in what? And that's a very simple test is like how much salt is left over? You know, are there? Do you typically have like lines in your hat? If you don't, then you're probably not sweating as much sodium or losing as much sodium as you think. But if you do, then you are that person that could probably benefit from some electrolytes. Again, it largely depends on

Gerard (43:13): Right.

Edin Sehovic (43:16): are you eating a lot of, you are you having Chipotle for two more meals afterwards or are you not? And you prefer to get from electrolytes and then you're eating everything, you know, clean. I don't like to use that terminology, but maybe you're cooking for yourself at home and lower sodium, right? So that's why it is. There's so many moving parts all the time and it's very dynamic. So it does become very challenging, which is mostly why I would say like, Hey, book a consult man, because I'm not trying to give you advice that

Gerard (43:20): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (43:44): sets you down a wrong path. And also, if I waste my time, ⁓ just answer this one question. Well, if I just waste my time to answer that one question, I want to make sure it's answered and not ⁓ leading you astray, which it could easily be.

Gerard (44:02): Yeah, that's cool. It's making me want to book a consult myself. I'm like, all right, this is cool.

Edin Sehovic (44:03): Ahem.

Spin The Racket (44:09): Yeah, we're always tweaking and tinkering here trying to figure out, you know, how to, how to improve, right? ⁓ we're, we're big, ⁓ fitness folk as, as I would say. So, ⁓ I mean, it kind of comes up the territory, right? Especially as you, ⁓ Gerard and I always look at it from like the recreational players perspective, like we both have nine to five jobs. We both are in our thirties. So it's like, you know, it's, it's kind of downhill from here. Like we.

Edin Sehovic (44:15): Good.

Spin The Racket (44:39): We I think that the peak like ⁓ Well, you know not not in Not well, we're all moving in the same direction, right? Like we're never gonna be like I think the peak age is like 27 years old for like a for an athlete right and like after that it kind of starts There's obviously like you're Cristiano Ronaldo. You're Novak Djokovic Tom Brady who proved that you can be 40 and you know ⁓ world class athlete, but

Edin Sehovic (44:43): Listen, speak for yourself, but okay. whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

Spin The Racket (45:08): For us mortals

Edin Sehovic (45:08): Yeah, every time I speak on this, the way, every time I speak

Spin The Racket (45:21): What are your thoughts? You're not gonna get hate here. I think our audience is pretty mild.

Edin Sehovic (45:25): Like

Spin The Racket (46:51): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (47:19): anybody can say whatever they want, but now he can't play the full calendar. He can't play the full calendar because you can't be away from home. Your wife's going to kill you. That's stressful, right? Like think about that level of stress. so that, and that immediately, like with each one of these factors, it's like diminishing your ability to play your top level just because for that brief moment or for that hour of your day, you were not able to like dial it in. And then on top of that, it's like when you get to the point that they're at,

Spin The Racket (47:29): Right.

Edin Sehovic (47:47): Hey, you're the goat. You're undisputed on paper, you're the goat. Why continue? Then the creep of doubt and then that's where the desire part, you know, it starts to fade the desire. Like, do I still wanna do this? Like, I'm gonna finish this match. I'm gonna play two weeks. I'm gonna be in Australia. His family didn't come along. And so then you're like two weeks away from the family.

Spin The Racket (47:58): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (48:11): which they do in, he's probably 20 weeks of the year, I think, right now. So 20 weeks of the year, you're away from your family, you're missing moments, that's guilt, that's time that you could have spent on your craft and now you can't because you're feeling the guilt. And then you have to pay all these people a tremendous amount just to fill that gap so that you can still somewhat compete at the highest level. And do you want to, look, even when you have everyone replace all of these things, for Novak to stay as lean as he does, he has to be really dialed in with his nutrition.

Spin The Racket (48:45): Sacrifice is there somewhere. Yeah. Yeah.

Gerard (48:53): Thank you.

Edin Sehovic (49:08): I think Novak could keep playing. mean, he's proving me right. Every time he steps on the court, he's proving me right. And I bring this up every time because he is in his 40s. And even Roger, mean, pending injury. And injury just removes that desire, right? Like, you're like, what's the point of playing if I have to go through recovery? I have to start up again and build my knee up and do whatever. And so that's when things get tough because you're pushing, they're always.

Spin The Racket (49:28): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (49:35): At all points, these athletes are always walking that fine line of, I training hard enough or am I injured? They cross that line right away and injury. So I think that's where, I think the peak performance of an athlete could be up until their 60s, but it's not likely to happen past their 40s because life happens, their priorities shift. And I think that's the best way to summarize that.

Spin The Racket (49:42): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (50:01): I'm open to other, yeah, I'm open to conversation. Yeah.

Spin The Racket (50:28): talked about like the, it's an analogy, obviously, the, the, the four burner law, right? Think if you have a stove, you have four burners, you have work, you have health, you have family and you have friends. You can't, you can't like essentially turn all the burners up at once. The moment you turn one up, you have to put away the other, right? And it's like, it's balancing these sacrifices where obviously you to start having kids and all that.

Edin Sehovic (50:51): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (50:56): And this goes mainly to the rest of the population, non-pro, is everyone starts having kids. The health maybe takes a little hit because you have a baby. Your sleep pattern starts getting disrupted and all that stuff. then when do you get back to it? Do you get back to it when they turn five and they can go to bed on their own? Or do you never get back to it?

Edin Sehovic (51:00): Yeah.

Gerard (51:19): you

Edin Sehovic (51:19): Yeah, yeah, it's the classic idea of ⁓ there's always a trade off to everything, good or bad. There's always a trade off to everything. You know, if you put on all four burners to that analogy, it pops a fuse and you know it'll pop a fuse. So you want to make sure that it's constantly not like fully all the way up. ⁓ Yeah, there's always a trade off and that's kind of the theme of even, you if you think about the advice that I give to players.

Gerard (52:06): Mm-hmm.

Edin Sehovic (52:16): ⁓ Stan that one time, like that one famous time he had an espresso brought out to him on court, like, and it was at like 5 p.m., right? Like he was just tired. And so you have to do the trade off. Like, if you look at the winnings, you're like, yeah, it's worth it. Absolutely. So for us mere mortals, we're like, yeah, it'd be nice to make 50 bands in an afternoon. So yeah, I'll take that espresso.

Gerard (52:22): Yeah.

Spin The Racket (52:41): I feel like we've been, we've been covering everything that we had, we had here just going, you know, in different directions. ⁓ we let's focus a little bit on like people that, ⁓ may, maybe looking to try this sport, right? They're, you know, adults. Cause it's, it's tough, right? I just saw a pose that it's like, yeah, it's fun to.

Gerard (52:41): wrap this up?

Spin The Racket (53:03): it's fun to go skiing, learning skiing where you're 30. I just met a few new people. ⁓ I met two paramedics and one doctor. So, ⁓ I kind of used that and I was like, shoot, that's kind of how tennis is, right? You feel like you've just kind of, you go into, into it as an adult and it's like, you know, for, for people that are listening and they've never played tennis, like it can't be a very intimidating sport. What would be kind of a general, why would you tell somebody that's thinking about trying tennis for the first time?

Edin Sehovic (53:11): Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Gerard (54:06): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (54:32): and work your way up. think those are a fantastic way to kind of get yourself into the sport. Hey, I just want to hit a forehand over. Cool. Got it. Hey, I just want to hit a backhand over. Hey, I just want to have a rally and kind of set these milestones along the way so you can feel like you're winning all the time. Because as we already discussed in plenty of detail, it can feel like you're losing all the time in tennis. ⁓ And so, yeah, try to eliminate that perfectionist mindset, because if you have that, tennis is not the sport for you.

Gerard (56:04): to.

Spin The Racket (56:05): You mentioned ⁓ at the beginning of the podcast that you're big on community. ⁓ That is something in, I mean, this is just live here. That is something that, you know, Gerard and I are trying to do with this podcast is obviously create a recreational player community, give access to, you know, as many people as we can and just offer as much value as possible.

Edin Sehovic (56:13): Hmm.

Spin The Racket (56:34): ⁓ Whether it's like we're based in Atlanta, so we're going to start with just creating some sort of local guide for people. Like I moved here three years ago. I didn't know where to play or where to go. were the good courts where people met up? Who to find at my level? What advice would you give us just thinking about starting a community ourselves?

Edin Sehovic (56:50): Yeah.

Gerard (1:00:14): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (1:00:37): Because if I give you the value and you don't receive it, then it was a waste of time. So, you know, forgive me for drowning you out, but you know, then after that, I realized it's like, okay, well, there's still people that don't watch this on mute or that will see me talking and see the words going and then they'll put the volume up because they just instinctively think it's important enough and they want to hear it. Well, now in order to make it more engaging, anytime I pan in or pan out or switch the screen or something pops up, I have a sound effect on there.

Gerard (1:00:37): Yeah.

Edin Sehovic (1:01:05): It seems very, it is extremely tedious on the editing side. It makes my videos go from a two hour edit to a three, three and a half hour edit for a one minute video. But people stay engaged. You know, I've gotten comments about it, like, hey, it scratches an itch in my brain. I'm like, good, I'm glad. Think about that one person that commented, think about how many like 30 people didn't even realize it scratches an itch in their brain.

Spin The Racket (1:02:31): Yeah, thank you.

Gerard (1:02:45): Sure. That's great advice.

Spin The Racket (1:02:46): We sure

Gerard (1:02:57): Yeah, yeah, also makeup mask, yeah. We'll mix doubles.

Edin Sehovic (1:03:00): Nice. Good. Good man.

Spin The Racket (1:03:12): I guess I don't play a lot. don't know what a lot is. That's what I'm saying. mean, at this age, I feel like that's great. So, ⁓ Ed, we're going to give you the floor for one minute. ⁓ Where can people find you? What are you working on right now? What's coming up next? And any message you want to leave this spin the racket audience with.

Edin Sehovic (1:03:14): Well, I don't know what the standard is to be quite honest with you. I feel like if I get two in a week, I'm like, damn, I'm doing well. know? Yeah. Dude, yeah.

Gerard (1:03:21): Yeah, agreed.

Edin Sehovic (1:03:37): So you can follow me at Evidence Nutrition on all platforms. I will be coming out with a lot more tennis content this year. I'm partnering with Babylon USA to bring a lot more tennis and nutrition content together. So you can follow Babylon USA as well if you want to see some more of me, but specific to tennis. ⁓ And otherwise, I just want people to live a happy and healthy life. So reduce their stress.

Gerard (1:04:23): I love it.

Spin The Racket (1:04:25): Awesome, all right, with that, thank you so much, Aiden, for being part of the episode. ⁓ Yeah, I'm Lou.

Edin Sehovic (1:04:32): No worries, thank you for having me guys.

Gerard (1:04:36): And I'm G. Keep on spinning.