[00:00:04.760] - Tony Roig
Hello and welcome to Pickleball Therapy, the podcast dedicated to your pickleball improvement. I am your host, Tony Roig. It's a pleasure to be with you. This special episode, I have the pleasure of interviewing Ty Woody. Ty Woody is a sports performance coach who has worked with pickleball players for several years now, all different ages, helping them get their body in the best shape to play pickleball, avoid injury, etc. If it has to do with the body, Ty knows what he's talking about. I had the pleasure of interviewing Ty previously. The special episode came out in February. If you want to check that out, we talked about warmups, we talked about some general body concepts and things like that. It's a really good interview. If you want to check that out, it's called Better Body, Better Pickleball. Again, in February on the podcast. In this episode, we go a little bit deeper into different particulars about different parts of the body and how to perform our best on the pickleball court. At the end of the podcast, I give you information on how to get a hold of Ty if you would like to have some personal work with Ty on your pickleball body.

[00:01:06.800] - Tony Roig
Enjoy the interview. Ty, it's always a pleasure to see you. How are things out in Arizona for you?

[00:01:13.320] - Ty Woody
Good. We actually just had MLP here just a few weeks ago, actually. So it was fun getting to watch just the high-level play. It's amazing just how good these players really are. So that was a lot of fun and starting to heat up out here. So that's always exciting when it's 100 plus degrees for the next few months. But other than that, it's been good. It's been a lot of fun getting to just be out here and enjoy the weather a little bit.

[00:01:37.900] - Tony Roig
I was going to joke, Ty, that don't take this seriously, players listening. If you're in Arizona, you don't need to warm up. That's not true. You still need to warm your body up. But basically, you just walk outside. I'm warm. Let's play. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And what's interesting is you talk about the MLP. And I know we talked a few minutes before. I know you're going up to San Clemente to check out the PPA tomorrow or whatever. And so it's interesting. You see these athletes playing and they're playing at such a high level. They're so demanding on the body. And it really doesn't matter your level of play. It's going to be demanding on the body. And sometimes in the videos, I get comments from, I don't know, trolls, right? And they're just basically like, Oh, this is a sissy sport and stuff like that. I'm like, Okay, sure. And you go out there and you watch Elise Jones diving for balls. You watch Tyra Black chasing down everything. And it's like the athleticism, it's incredible. But, Ty, listen, I already told the listeners that we did a... I think you did a great... I don't say we, I just asked the question.

[00:02:41.740] - Tony Roig
You did a really good job in the last time we were together talking about warmup since you That is what I did. What did you do? Did you do a lot of body things. You did it well. Good questions, I know. So you did a really good job with that, and I've already mentioned where that was. So I was thinking today, if you're good with it, let's dive into a couple of different body areas that are super important, obviously. We can't cover everything in a 10 to 15 minute interview, but let's do legs if you could with that. And then if we have some time after legs, maybe we'll talk a little bit about the elbow. And if you're good with that, I'm just going to tee it up. You're good with that?

[00:03:11.620] - Ty Woody
Yeah, absolutely. Let's do it.

[00:03:13.140] - Tony Roig
All right, let's jump in. So obviously, well, from our perspective as coaches, everything in pickleball begins with footwork, right? I mean, if you're not in the right place, I don't care how good your stroke is. You're going to have the stroke in the world. If you're standing three feet off where you got to be, it's not going to make a difference. So Everything begins with that connection between your foot and the court and getting you around. So let's talk a little bit about legs, if you would. If I'm a pickleball player and I'm not really sure what's important, maybe we can cover it generally like that, and then we can dive in as we go.

[00:03:45.040] - Ty Woody
Yeah, absolutely. And I think even starting there, you hit the nail on the head pretty much perfectly. I mean, that's the part that players have to understand, regardless of what level or, I mean, anything. You have to be able to get to where you need to go, right? If you can have the greatest shot ever, but if you can't get to where you need to be to hit it, then it really doesn't matter. And so getting your legs strong and getting them stable so that you can move around and move quickly and then hold and plant and all those things, we have to train our bodies to be able to do it. And that's the missing piece for a lot of players is that lower body development. And so you want to train every aspect, every part of your lower body. We're looking at your glutes. We're looking at your hamstrings, your quads, behind your leg and front of your leg. We're looking at your calves. We're looking at your feet and your ankles. Everything in the body works together. So we need to be working on and training all of it. We don't want to focus on...

[00:04:49.640] - Ty Woody
I would say really common with a lot of people is focusing on just on the quads, the front part of your muscles. And they're important. We need them to strong and stable so we can hold ourselves and plant. But at the same time, we need to spend a lot of time on our glutes and on our hamstrings because those are our go muscles, those are our explosive muscles. And for pretty much all of us, especially in life, we sit a lot and we live more of a sedentary lifestyle. And so a lot of those areas are super underdeveloped. And so working on those hamstrings, working on those glutes and still getting your quad work in there, too, will help your body be able to do what you wanted to do. Because in a pickle, it doesn't... I don't need you to lift a thousand pounds, but I need you to be strong in your body. You need to be able to squat and get down low and move and load yourselves in many different positions, because if you can't, that's where the pop-ups happen. That's where either you didn't get to the ball quite fast enough, so you didn't win the point or get the ball back over, or we're dinking at the net.

[00:05:58.720] - Ty Woody
And if you can't get yourself down into a loaded position as you're moving back and forth and we're dinking, eventually you're going to make a mistake because you didn't get down low again to be able to get to the ball. You go watch the pros and just higher-level players. That's why one of the biggest things that stood out to me was how low they got when they were hitting their drops, how low they got when they were hitting their dinks and different things like that. And in order to do that, again, it's not needing to lift a thousand pounds, but we have to be able to control our bodies and do it over and over and over and over again. And so we need to be able to prepare our bodies to move in multiple planes of motion. We don't just go forward, backwards. We don't just go side to side. We're twisting, we're turning multiple directions, and we just have to be able to meet those demands of what we're asking our body to do.

[00:06:50.140] - Tony Roig
Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I know from a personal experience that when I'm playing my best, whether it's a senior pro tournament or even some competitive rec games, I know that I'm playing my best when I'm getting down. When I'm getting down and grooving, that's when I'm playing well. When I'm standing up and I can't... I'm reaching and it just messes up all the shots. Let's go ahead and play with the... You brought up glutes, right? I'm not an expert like you, but I read some things, I follow some videos. There's a tendency, as I understand it, for our glutes to forget how to work. They They stop working. They just don't remember to activate. That's what I understand.

[00:07:34.520] - Ty Woody
So the quads end up doing too much work.

[00:07:38.740] - Tony Roig
If you're comfortable with this, Ty, and let me give a quick caveat. I'll do the caveat. You can add to it if you wanted to. Anything you hear on this podcast, if you're not sure or if you have questions, talk to your health care professional before you do anything. But subject to that and anything else you want to add to it, Ty, is there something that a player can do in their house or something to just begin this glute reawakening thing?

[00:08:03.720] - Ty Woody
Yeah. That's the phrase that you hear a lot, like glute activation, returning on the glutes. So really, I mean, when you hear that, and a lot of times you'll hear that with your core, you'll hear that with your glutes and things like that. We're just getting the muscles activated and ready to move again. We're just getting them... That's pretty much it in a nutshell whenever you hear those types of things. So again, like I said earlier, we sit a lot. We do a a lot of things that don't get our glutes activated, so they're not ready to fire and they're not ready to go. So that's the whole point of the warm up, right? Is we're trying to get things activated and moving and ready so that they can do what we want them to do. If they're not activated, what you said, Tony, right? Other parts of our body will start doing things because the hip and the core and stuff like that aren't doing what we want them to do. And also it's really important to remember with the glutes is there's three main movements it's that they do. I think the most common one that a lot of people know is hip extension.

[00:09:05.160] - Ty Woody
And so pretty much hip extension is when we're just pushing our butt forward. When we're down like this and we push our hips forward to stand up like that. That's probably the most common muscle movement for your butt, your glutes that everyone thinks about. But there's two other ones that most people don't know, which is external rotation. So that's when my leg is here and we're getting it to turn out to the side. And then there's hip abduction, which is when if my leg is straight, I kick it straight out to the side and then bring it back to me in the center. That's hip abduction. So your glutes, that's the three main things that they do. We spend a lot of time on that hip extension, just pushing our butts forward, which is great. We need that to do, especially for power development. But being able to actually load into our hips, that external rotation, being able to load into that hip, and that hip abduction just can be really helpful for our stability And so when you think about warming up, we want to do all three of those things. And there's tons and tons of exercises you can do.

[00:10:08.300] - Ty Woody
I mean, if you even just Google hip extension movements, hip abduction, hip external rotation, you'll find lots of stuff. Band work, that's a really common thing that you can do with just even a mini band that's wrapping around the ankles or wrap around the knees, right? And just doing some glue bridges of lifting up and down while you're pushing your knees out or laying on your side and having that band on and lifting that leg up down. That's another super easy one to do. And doing holds, right? It can be doing reps where we're just lifting our leg up and holding for 10 to 20 seconds or even doing lots and lots of reps just to get blood flow We'll move in. I mean, there's many, many, many different ways to do it, but I think a big takeaway here, and maybe that's something I can do is if we want and players want it, we could do a little video that I can share with you guys and you guys can spread it out to the community. So that's maybe something we can do there as Well, but- That's a great idea.

[00:11:02.120] - Tony Roig
I like that idea a lot. But I think you're correct that I think if you wanted to get started with it, if you went to YouTube and you typed in glute hip extension or glute hip abduction or adduction, and then band, if you wanted to add a band to it. There's a lot of content out there. It's almost like, again, with the caveat, if you're not sure, check with your health care advisor. I think it's hard to do something wrong there if you're just laying on your side, just lifting your leg. You can still injure yourself. I understand that. But it's not necessarily because the exercise is risky to do. So I think that's a really good place to... If you're a pickleball player, you're listening to this, I would say, and from a personal experience, I will tell you, I'm doing some stuff that you can work into. Bulgarian squats to me are an amazing way to just... It gets that glue just going on. I'm like, Oh, my God, what's going on? And I will say this on the On the In2Pickle channel, our In2Pickle channel, we actually have a playlist of my favorite workouts, and there's a gentleman that does this thing called Foundation.

[00:12:11.220] - Tony Roig
You may have seen this guy, Ty, but he's not in California, actually. But he does I can't remember his name, but it's a foundation exercise, and it's on my list. It's made for the back, but a lot of his stuff is basically loading up the glutes. So he put you in positions where It's static holding of the glutes, maybe a little bit of movement, but it's really just loading up those glutes and reminding them how to work. All right, so glutes is what they're going to do there. Let's pivot if we can, Ty, to... Let's talk a little bit about elbow. I know it's a very specific part of the body, but it can be so troublesome. I did a clinic a couple of weeks ago here, and one of the girls there. I'll tell you what happened, and then maybe we can start the conversation there. What happened there was she was asking me, Are there any paddles that are made for elbow? Which, of course, there are some that profess to be that, and maybe they are, maybe they're not. But that's not my expertise. I know that they contend that they are, which is fine.

[00:13:06.820] - Tony Roig
I went over a couple of things that I understand about weight of paddle and things like that. But the key here was actually ended up being grip size because Because the way I explain it is, and I actually happen to have a pen because I was writing some stuff and I had my water bottle. So I said, okay, grab this pen and grab it like you would a paddle. And it's too small. And she could see the attention in her arm. And then I said, grab my water too big, right? So you got to find that Goldilocks zone for your hand with the grip. And it was interesting. Her paddle actually was too small. It wasn't a pencil, but it was too small. So I gave her... I had a paddle that happened to have one of those hessacores on there, the hessacore grips, that made it a little bit bigger. And she played with it the whole clinic, and she was like... So anyway, maybe that's a good way to start the conversation about if you're a player and you're having any elbow thing, maybe we can talk in general about what happens This is, again, very general, not trying to diagnose anybody, but if you can touch on that, Ty.

[00:14:04.960] - Ty Woody
Yeah, absolutely. So I think the biggest thing for people to understand is, and I see this all the time, where a lot of players tend to find, they seek out the bandaid solution. And so, all right, my elbow is hurting, everything flaring up, and I'm not happy with it. So we try to find, okay, what's the quick fix I can do? I'm wrapping my elbow or looking at different remedies and things like that for the quick bandaid solution that doesn't exactly solve the overarching problem of why is this happening in the first place? It's just, okay, it's helping me numb the pain in the moment so that I can go play for a few hours, which if it's tournament day and I'm there, I have no other choice. I need to compete. This is happening. Yeah, we got to use our bandaid solution. But long term, we need to remember why these agitations and things usually It's usually one of two of either one. You are the muscles and the area around it are not properly prepared for it. Meaning the demand that you're putting on the tissue and putting on the muscles is higher than what it can tolerate.

[00:15:19.000] - Ty Woody
So there's a tolerance issue. It's not built up. It's like a muscle is weak. If my quads are super blown up and they're super sore, they weren't able to handle that load you gave it. So it broke down, It's super sore, it heals up, it's recovered. Next time you go do that same exercise, same weight, it's a bit easier because your body's now built up a tolerance to handle what you're asking it to do. Sometimes it's the same exact thing here where we went from maybe never doing a paddle sport in our lives or maybe playing once a week for two hours to all of a sudden we're playing five, six, seven days a week, two, three hours at a time, maybe even more. And now that tolerance that was built up to handle one time a week for two hours, all of a sudden you're asking it to do six, seven days a week, two, three, four, five hours. Now it's super agitated. The tolerance that you built up is no longer able to handle what you're asking it to do. And so a big thing to remember is you need to build up that strength in that area.

[00:16:14.900] - Ty Woody
The forearm and your wrist can do many different muscle actions and you need to spend time getting it stronger so that it can handle. Again, same idea, right? You have to meet the demands of what you're asking it to do. So you need to spend time getting those muscles stronger, building up that tolerance so that it can handle that workload of six, seven days a week and different things like that. So that's the first lane. The other lane is your mechanics, right? And I'm sure as a coach, you perfectly understand this, too, Tony and C. J. As well, is mechanically, if you're doing something super funky, if you're hitting a ball and you're doing just some weird mumbo jumbo with your wrist and your elbow and doing all these weird funky angles, that's what causes problems, too. Even if you're strengthening things up, if you're mechanically doing something super awkward and hurting yourself, all this is going to get super agitated. I know for me as a player, personally, I would get elbow pain on the inside, not on the outside. But that would be because I would just do some funky. I would just shoot my elbow really hard and stiffen it up really, really fast when I was trying to block a ball.

[00:17:25.220] - Ty Woody
And then I would get agitated here. Once I became aware of what I was doing, okay, Why is this happening? And paying a little bit more attention to it and not being so herky, jerky and sudden, it cleaned it up. And now I don't really have any issues there anymore. But especially out here, a lot of it can be mechanical. That's where you need that coach, right? Have someone peak and look at what you're doing to make sure, okay, am I being efficient? Am I doing what I need to do? Am I using the proper parts of my body to create my power, to generate the force, to put a little bit spin on it? Because a lot of people get super wristy and super sudden and they're doing just all sorts of craziness here. And then when you go into the paddle conversation of, why is your paddle that heavy? It has no business being that heavy. It doesn't need to be that heavy. And then you go in to paddle, thickness of your paddle grip and looking at all those things, you can go down that whole rabbit hole, too. But I would say the biggest two areas that I tend to see is there's a lack of tolerance.

[00:18:24.280] - Ty Woody
There's no tolerance build up in here so they can handle what you're asking it to do. And then the other part is mechanical. Of just what are you... I mean, I'm sure as a coach, you've seen all sorts of stuff that people do that it's like, we're trying to get the ball over the net and put spin on the ball and do what we need to do. And like, yeah, that's great. But at what cost here? Sometimes we need to take those two, three steps back, fix our mechanics so that we can take our five steps forward. Because at the end of the day, at some point, your body is going to tell you we're going to stop. We're going to take a break here. Either something's going to just get torn or something's going to flare up really badly. And especially Actually, if we're a desk job worker or you do things with your hands a lot, eventually, it's all going to agitate and be super, super mad at you, and you're going to stop at some point. And so that would be my two biggest things that I would say is make sure you're strengthening up the area to build up your tolerance.

[00:19:16.060] - Ty Woody
Make sure you have a smart, intelligent coach that can look at your mechanics and listen to them. Because if you don't, you can do what you want at the end of the day, but you're the one that's going to be suffering for it, not us.

[00:19:28.820] - Tony Roig
Yeah, exactly. And And I saw a video, you mentioned spins, and I'm going to wrap on this, but Maddie Umberg did a video on her roll volley, which is one of the most extreme roll volleys. And Maddie, don't come after me because I love your volley. But it's like, that's Maddie. Maddie can do it. Maddie has been doing it so long. Maddie has developed the tolerances. Maddie has got a technique that works for her system, right? It doesn't break down. And all of a sudden you got an average player out there going like, You know I saw a video and it shows me that I'm going to start my paddle here and I'm going to bring it all the way up here. You're out of your mind. Whatever. That to me is like... And so it happens. But Ty, I know that some players are listening or liking what they're hearing. Every time we speak, Ty, I love the fact that you're still growing as a coach. We all do, but I hear it in your messaging. I hear it in how you're organizing your thoughts about everything. Super awesome. And you did that before, too, but it's just getting better.

[00:20:32.020] - Tony Roig
And so players out there, they might be interested in working with you. And I know you do online work where you can analyze and give them feedback and things like that. What's the best way for someone to get a hold of you, Ty, if they want to continue the conversation with you about themselves?

[00:20:46.060] - Ty Woody
Yeah. Easiest way is to go on Instagram and go on the... Follow the page, Pickleball Sports Performance. That is where I'm posting stuff on my story, working on getting more content on my social media. You could also send me an email at ty@pickleballsportsperformance.com. That is another super easy way to do it. Those are the two main ways that you can get a hold of me for sure, to be able to answer, even if it's just general questions on things, I'm always happy to be able to provide information I can to be able to help play this out.

[00:21:15.440] - Tony Roig
You can probably tell from Ty's voice that he's younger than our average listener and myself. But then as soon as you go, you can follow me on Instagram. Then that's the that give away there, that you're younger than both. So I'll put all the links down below, email and Instagram, and you can connect with Ty, and Ty can help you out. And Ty, before I let you go, I know we talked about this before, and I want to make sure that you're in agreement with this, that if a player out there enjoyed this podcast and has a friend of theirs who might enjoy this podcast, I think we agree that they should share this podcast with one of their friends, right?

[00:21:51.240] - Ty Woody
Absolutely. Spread the word. Share the love.

[00:21:54.920] - Tony Roig
100 %. Ty, it's always a pleasure to see you, chat with you, see what's going on in your life, and appreciate all the input that you give us about our bodies and playing our bespickable. Good luck in San Clemente. Have fun out there. Say hi to everybody for me, and we'll see you on the next episode that we have you on.

[00:22:11.040] - Ty Woody
Love it. Thank you, Tony. Thanks, Ty.