July 15, 2025 • 22 mins
In this special episdoe I have the pleasure of interviewing Ty Woody, a sports performance coach as we explore how strengthening key areas of the body— like the legs and glutes — can elevate your pickleball game. We discuss common causes of elbow pain and how to address them effectively. Listen in as we break down practical steps to better body performance, no matter your playing level.
Show Notes: https://betterpickleball.com/1529-special-episode-keep-improving-your-body-interview-with-ty-woody
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:04):
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 thepleasure of interviewing Ty Woody.
Ty Woody is a sports performance coach whohas 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.
(00:27):
If it has to do with the body,Ty knows what he's talking about.
I had the pleasure ofinterviewing Ty previously.
The special episode came out in February.
If you want to check that out, we talkedabout warmups, we talked about some
general body conceptsand things like that.
It's a really good interview.
If you want to check that out, it'scalled Better Body, Better Pickleball.
Again, in February on the podcast.
(00:47):
In this episode, we go a little bit deeperinto different particulars about different
parts of the body and how to performour best on the pickleball court.
At the end of the podcast, I give youinformation on how to get a hold of Ty if
you would like to have some personalwork with Ty on your pickleball body.
Enjoy the interview.
(01:08):
Ty, it's always a pleasure to see you.
How are things out in Arizona for you?
Good.
We actually just had MLP herejust a few weeks ago, actually.
So it was fun getting to watchjust the high-level play.
It's amazing just how goodthese players really are.
So that was a lot of fun andstarting to heat up out here.
So that's always exciting when it's 100plus degrees for the next few months.
(01:31):
But other than that, it's been good.
It's been a lot of fun getting to justbe out here and enjoy
the weather a little bit.
I was going to joke, Ty, that don'ttake this seriously, players listening.
If you're in Arizona, youdon'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 isyou talk about the MLP.
(01:54):
And I know we talked a few minutes before.
I know you're going up to San Clemente tocheck out the PPA tomorrow or whatever.
And so it's interesting.
You see these athletes playing andthey're playing at such a high level.
They're so demanding on the body.
And it really doesn'tmatter your level of play.
It's going to be demanding on the body.
And sometimes in the videos, I getcomments from,
(02:14):
I don't know, trolls, right?
And they're just basically like, Oh, thisis a sissy sport and stuff like that.
I'm like, Okay, sure.
And you go out there and you watchElise Jones diving for balls.
You watch Tyra Blackchasing down everything.
And it's like the athleticism,it's incredible.
But, Ty, listen, I already toldthe listeners that we did a...
(02:39):
I think you did a great...I don't say we, I just asked the question.
You did a really good job in the last timewe 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 goodwith it, let's dive into
a couple of different body areas that aresuper important, obviously.
We can't cover everything in a 10 to 15minute interview, but let's do
(03:04):
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?
Yeah, absolutely.Let's do it.
All right, let's jump in.
So obviously, well, from our perspectiveas 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.
(03:24):
You're going to have thestroke in the world.
If you're standing three feet off whereyou got to be, it's not
going to make a difference.
So Everything begins with that connectionbetween your foot and the
court and getting you around.
So let's talk a little bitabout legs, if you would.
If I'm a pickleball player and I'm notreally sure what's important, maybe we can
cover it generally like that,and then we can dive in as we go.
(03:45):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think even starting there, you hitthe nail on the head
pretty much perfectly.
I mean, that's the part thatplayers have to understand, regardless
of what level or, I mean, anything.
You have to be able to get towhere you need to go, right?
If you can have the greatest shot ever,but if you can't get to where you need to
(04:05):
be to hit it, then itreally doesn't matter.
And so getting your legs strong andgetting them stable so that you can move
around and move quickly and then hold andplant 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 ofplayers is that lower body development.
(04:25):
And so you want to train everyaspect, every part of your lower body.
We're looking at your glutes.
We're looking at your hamstrings, yourquads, behind your leg
and front of your leg.We're looking at your calves.
We're looking at yourfeet and your ankles.
Everything in the body works together.
So we need to be workingon and training all of it.
(04:48):
We don't want to focus on...
I would say really common with a lot ofpeople is focusing on just on the
quads, the front part of your muscles.
And they're important.
We need them to strong and stableso we can hold ourselves and plant.
But at the same time, we need to spend alot of time on our glutes and on our
hamstrings because those are our gomuscles, those are our explosive muscles.
(05:11):
And for pretty much all of us, especiallyin life, we sit a lot and we live
more of a sedentary lifestyle.
And so a lot of those areasare super underdeveloped.
And so working on those hamstrings,working on those glutes and still getting
your quad work in there, too, will helpyour body be able to do
(05:33):
what you wanted to do.Because in a pickle, it doesn't...
I don't need you to lift a thousandpounds, but I need you to
be strong in your body.
You need to be able to squat and get downlow 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 theball quite fast enough, so you didn't win
(05:55):
the point or get the ball backover, or we're dinking at the net.
And if you can't get yourself down into aloaded position as you're moving back and
forth and we're dinking, eventually you'regoing to make a mistake because you didn't
get down low again to beable to get to the ball.
You go watch the pros andjust higher-level players.
That's why one of the biggest things thatstood out to me was how low they got when
(06:16):
they were hitting their drops, how lowthey got when they were hitting their
dinks and different things like that.
And in order to do that, again, it's notneeding to lift a thousand pounds, but we
have to be able to control our bodies anddo it over and over and
over and over again.
And so we need to be able to prepare ourbodies to move in
multiple planes of motion.
(06:37):
We don't just go forward, backwards.
We don't just go side to side.
We're twisting, we're turning multipledirections, and we just have to be
able to meet those demands ofwhat we're asking our body to do.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
I know from a personal experience thatwhen I'm playing my best, whether it's a
senior pro tournament or even somecompetitive rec games, I know that I'm
(06:59):
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 itjust 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 readsome things, I follow some videos.
(07:21):
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.
So the quads end up doing too much work.
If you're comfortable with this,Ty, and let me give a quick caveat.
(07:42):
I'll do the caveat.You can add to it if you wanted to.
Anything you hear on this podcast, ifyou're not sure or if you have questions,
talk to your health careprofessional before you do anything.
But subject to that and anything else youwant to add to it, Ty, is there something
that a player can doin their house or something to just
begin this glute reawakening thing?
(08:03):
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, anda lot of times you'll hear that with your
core, you'll hear that with yourglutes and things like that.
We're just getting the musclesactivated and ready to move again.
We're just getting them...
That's pretty much it in a nutshellwhenever you hear those types of things.
(08:26):
So again, like I saidearlier, we sit a lot.
We do a a lot of things that don't get ourglutes activated, so they're not ready
to fire and they're not ready to go.
So that's the whole pointof the warm up, right?
Is we're trying to get things activatedand 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 doingthings because the
(08:49):
hip and the core and stuff like thataren't doing what we want them to do.
And also it's really important to rememberwith the glutes is there's three
main movements it's that they do.
I think the most common one that alot of people know is hip extension.
And so pretty much hip extension is whenwe're just pushing our butt forward.
(09:09):
When we're down like this and we pushour hips forward to stand up like that.
That's probably the most commonmuscle movement for your butt, your
glutes that everyone thinks about.
But there's two other ones that mostpeople don't know, which
is external rotation.
So that's when my leg is here and we'regetting it to turn out to the side.
(09:30):
And then there's hip abduction, which iswhen if my leg is straight, I kick it
straight out to the side and thenbring it back to me in the center.
That's hip abduction.
So your glutes, that's thethree main things that they do.
We spend a lot of time on that hipextension, just pushing our
butts forward, which is great.
We need that to do, especiallyfor power development.
But being able to actually load into ourhips, that external rotation, being able
(09:55):
to load into that hip, and that hipabduction just can be really helpful for
our stability And so when you think aboutwarming up, we want to do
all three of those things.
And there's tons and tonsof exercises you can do.
I mean, if you even just Google hipextension movements, hip abduction, hip
external rotation, you'llfind lots of stuff.
Band work, that's a really common thingthat you can do with just even a mini band
(10:19):
that's wrapping around the anklesor wrap around the knees, right?
And just doing some glue bridges oflifting up and down while you're pushing
your knees out or laying on your side andhaving 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 justlifting our leg up and holding for 10 to
(10:40):
20 seconds or even doing lots and lots ofreps just to get blood flow We'll move in.
I mean, there's many, many, many differentways to do it, but I think a big takeaway
here, and maybe that's something I can dois if we want and players want it, we
could do a littlevideo that I can share with you guys and
you guys can spread itout to the community.
So that's maybe something we can dothere as Well, but- That's a great idea.
(11:02):
I like that idea a lot.
But I think you're correct that I thinkif you wanted to get started with it, if
you went to YouTube and you typed inglute hip extension or glute hip abduction
or adduction, and then band, ifyou 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
(11:22):
with your health care advisor.
I think it's hard todo 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 theexercise is risky to do.
So I think that's areally good place to...
(11:42):
If you're a pickleball player, you'relistening to this,
I would say, and from a personalexperience, I will tell you, I'm doing
some stuff that you can work into.
Bulgarian squats to me arean 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 theOn the In2Pickle channel, our In2Pickle
(12:02):
channel, we actually have aplaylist of my favorite workouts, and
there's a gentleman that does thisthing called Foundation.
You may have seen this guy, Ty, buthe's not in California, actually.
But he does I can't remember his name, butit's a foundation exercise,
and it's on my list.
It's made for the back, but a lot of hisstuff is basically loading up the glutes.
(12:28):
So he put you in positions whereIt's static holding of the glutes, maybe a
little bit of movement, but it's reallyjust loading up those glutes
and reminding them how to work.
All right, so glutes is whatthey'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 ofthe body, but it can be so troublesome.
I did a clinic a couple of weeks agohere, and one of the girls there.
(12:51):
I'll tell you what happened, and thenmaybe 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 thatprofess to be that, and maybe
they are, maybe they're not.But that's not my expertise.
I know that they contendthat they are, which is fine.
I went over a couple of things that Iunderstand about weight of
paddle and things like that.
But the key here was actually ended upbeing grip size because
(13:15):
Because the way I explain it is, and Iactually happen to have a pen because I
was writing some stuffand I had my water bottle.
So I said, okay, grab this penand grab it like you would a paddle.
And it's too small.
And she could see theattention in her arm.
And then I said, grabmy water too big, right?
So you got to find that Goldilockszone for your hand with the grip.
And it was interesting.Her paddle actually was too small.
(13:38):
It wasn't a pencil, but it was too small.So I gave her...
I had a paddle that happened to have oneof those hessacores on there, the
hessacore grips, that madeit a little bit bigger.
And she played with it the wholeclinic, and she was like...
So anyway, maybe that's a good way tostart the conversation about
if you're a player and you're having anyelbow thing, maybe we can talk in general
about what happens This is, again, verygeneral, not trying to diagnose anybody,
(14:02):
but if you can touch on that, Ty.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think the biggest thing for people tounderstand is, and I see this all the
time, where a lot of players tend tofind, they seek out the bandaid solution.
And so, all right, my elbow is hurting,everything flaring up,
and I'm not happy with it.
(14:24):
So we try to find, okay,what's the quick fix I can do?
I'm wrapping my elbow or looking atdifferent remedies and things like that
for the quick bandaid solution thatdoesn't exactly
solve the overarching problem of whyis this happening in the first place?
It's just, okay, it's helping me numb thepain in the moment so that I can go play
for a few hours, which if it's tournamentday and I'm there, I have no other choice.
(14:49):
I need to compete.This is happening.
Yeah, we got to use our bandaid solution.
But long term, we need to rememberwhy these agitations and things usually
It's usually one of two of either one.
You are the muscles and the area aroundit are not properly prepared for it.
(15:11):
Meaning the demand that you're putting onthe tissue and putting on the muscles
is higher than what it can tolerate.
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'resuper sore, they weren't able
to handle that load you gave it.
So it broke down, It's supersore, it heals up, it's recovered.
(15:32):
Next time you go do that same exercise,same weight, it's a bit easier because
your body's now built up a toleranceto handle what you're asking it to do.
Sometimes it's the same exact thing herewhere we went from maybe
never doing a paddle sport in our lives ormaybe playing once a week for two hours to
all of a sudden we're playing five, six,seven days a week, two, three
(15:54):
hours at a time, maybe even more.
And now that tolerance that was built upto handle one time a week for two hours,
all of a sudden you're asking it to dosix, seven days a week, two,
three, four, five hours.
Now it's super agitated.
The tolerance that you built up is nolonger able to handle what
you're asking it to do.
And so a big thing to remember is you needto build up that strength in that area.
(16:14):
The forearm and your wrist can do manydifferent muscle actions and you need to
spend time getting it strongerso that it can handle.
Again, same idea, right?
You have to meet the demandsof what you're asking it to do.
So you need to spend time getting thosemuscles stronger, building up that
tolerance so that it can handle thatworkload of six, seven days a week
(16:36):
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 perfectlyunderstand this, too, Tony and C.
J.
As well, ismechanically, if you're doing something
super funky, if you're hitting a ball andyou're doing just some weird mumbo jumbo
with your wrist and your elbow and doingall these weird funky angles,
(17:00):
that's what causes problems, too.
Even if you're strengthening things up, ifyou're mechanically doing something super
awkward and hurting yourself, allthis is going to get super agitated.
I know for me as a player, personally, Iwould get elbow pain on the
inside, not on the outside.
But that would be becauseI would just do some funky.
I would just shoot my elbow really hardand stiffen it up really, really fast
(17:23):
when I was trying to block a ball.
And then I would get agitated here.
Once I became aware of what I wasdoing, okay, Why is this happening?
And paying a little bit more attention toit and not being so herky, jerky
and sudden, it cleaned it up.
And now I don't really haveany issues there anymore.
But especially out here,a lot of it can be mechanical.
That's where you need that coach, right?
(17:44):
Have someone peak and look at what you'redoing 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 tocreate my power, to generate the
force, to put a little bit spin on it?
Because a lot of people get super wristyand super sudden and they're doing
just all sorts of craziness here.
And then when you go into the paddleconversation of, why is
(18:07):
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 godown that whole rabbit hole, too.
But I would say the biggest two areas thatI tend to see is
there's a lack of tolerance.
There's no tolerance build up in here sothey can handle what
you're asking it to do.
(18:28):
And then the other part is mechanical.
Of just what are you...
I mean, I'm sure as a coach, you've seenall sorts of stuff that people do that
it's like, we're trying to get the ballover 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, threesteps back, fix our mechanics so that
we can take our five steps forward.
(18:49):
Because at the end of the day, at somepoint, 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 tornor something's going to
flare up really badly.
And especially Actually, if we're a deskjob 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'regoing to stop at some point.
And so that would be my two biggest thingsthat I would say is make sure you're
(19:13):
strengthening up the areato build up your tolerance.
Make sure you have asmart, intelligent coach that can look
at your mechanics and listen to them.
Because if you don't, you can do what youwant at the end of the day, but you're the
one that's going to besuffering for it, not us.
Yeah, exactly.
And And I saw a video, you mentionedspins, and I'm going to wrap on this, but
(19:35):
Maddie Umberg did a video on her rollvolley, which is one of the
most extreme roll volleys.
And Maddie, don't come afterme 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 thatworks for her system, right?
It doesn't break down.
And all of a sudden you gotan average player out there going like,
(19:59):
You know I saw a video and it shows methat 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 arelistening or liking what they're hearing.
Every time we speak, Ty, I love the factthat you're still growing as a coach.
(20:21):
We all do, but I hearit in your messaging.
I hear it in how you're organizingyour thoughts about everything.
Super awesome.
And you did that before, too,but it's just getting better.
And so players out there, they mightbe interested in working with you.
And I know you doonline work where you can analyze and
give them feedback and things like that.
What's the best way for someone to get ahold of you, Ty, if they want to continue
(20:43):
the conversation withyou about themselves?
Yeah.
Easiest way is to go onInstagram and go on the...
Follow the page, PickleballSports Performance.
That is whereI'm posting stuff on my story, working on
getting more content on my social media.
You could also send me an emailat ty@pickleballsportsperformance.
com.
That is another super easy way to do it.
(21:05):
Those are the two main ways that you canget a hold of me for sure, to be able to
answer, even if it's justgeneral questions on things, I'm always
happy to be able to provide informationI can to be able to help play this out.
You can probably tell from Ty's voice thathe'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 awaythere, that you're younger than both.
(21:27):
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 wetalked about this before, and I want to
make sure that you're in agreement withthis, that if a player out there enjoyed
this podcast and has a friend of theirswho might enjoy this podcast, I think we
(21:47):
agree that they should share thispodcast with one of their friends, right?
Absolutely.Spread the word.
Share the love.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 thatyou 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 seeyou on the next episode
(22:09):
that we have you on.
Love it.Thank you, Tony.
Thanks, Ty.
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 thepleasure of interviewing Ty Woody.
Ty Woody is a sports performance coach whohas 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.
(00:27):
If it has to do with the body,Ty knows what he's talking about.
I had the pleasure ofinterviewing Ty previously.
The special episode came out in February.
If you want to check that out, we talkedabout warmups, we talked about some
general body conceptsand things like that.
It's a really good interview.
If you want to check that out, it'scalled Better Body, Better Pickleball.
Again, in February on the podcast.
(00:47):
In this episode, we go a little bit deeperinto different particulars about different
parts of the body and how to performour best on the pickleball court.
At the end of the podcast, I give youinformation on how to get a hold of Ty if
you would like to have some personalwork with Ty on your pickleball body.
Enjoy the interview.
(01:08):
Ty, it's always a pleasure to see you.
How are things out in Arizona for you?
Good.
We actually just had MLP herejust a few weeks ago, actually.
So it was fun getting to watchjust the high-level play.
It's amazing just how goodthese players really are.
So that was a lot of fun andstarting to heat up out here.
So that's always exciting when it's 100plus degrees for the next few months.
(01:31):
But other than that, it's been good.
It's been a lot of fun getting to justbe out here and enjoy
the weather a little bit.
I was going to joke, Ty, that don'ttake this seriously, players listening.
If you're in Arizona, youdon'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 isyou talk about the MLP.
(01:54):
And I know we talked a few minutes before.
I know you're going up to San Clemente tocheck out the PPA tomorrow or whatever.
And so it's interesting.
You see these athletes playing andthey're playing at such a high level.
They're so demanding on the body.
And it really doesn'tmatter your level of play.
It's going to be demanding on the body.
And sometimes in the videos, I getcomments from,
(02:14):
I don't know, trolls, right?
And they're just basically like, Oh, thisis a sissy sport and stuff like that.
I'm like, Okay, sure.
And you go out there and you watchElise Jones diving for balls.
You watch Tyra Blackchasing down everything.
And it's like the athleticism,it's incredible.
But, Ty, listen, I already toldthe listeners that we did a...
(02:39):
I think you did a great...I don't say we, I just asked the question.
You did a really good job in the last timewe 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 goodwith it, let's dive into
a couple of different body areas that aresuper important, obviously.
We can't cover everything in a 10 to 15minute interview, but let's do
(03:04):
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?
Yeah, absolutely.Let's do it.
All right, let's jump in.
So obviously, well, from our perspectiveas 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.
(03:24):
You're going to have thestroke in the world.
If you're standing three feet off whereyou got to be, it's not
going to make a difference.
So Everything begins with that connectionbetween your foot and the
court and getting you around.
So let's talk a little bitabout legs, if you would.
If I'm a pickleball player and I'm notreally sure what's important, maybe we can
cover it generally like that,and then we can dive in as we go.
(03:45):
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think even starting there, you hitthe nail on the head
pretty much perfectly.
I mean, that's the part thatplayers have to understand, regardless
of what level or, I mean, anything.
You have to be able to get towhere you need to go, right?
If you can have the greatest shot ever,but if you can't get to where you need to
(04:05):
be to hit it, then itreally doesn't matter.
And so getting your legs strong andgetting them stable so that you can move
around and move quickly and then hold andplant 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 ofplayers is that lower body development.
(04:25):
And so you want to train everyaspect, every part of your lower body.
We're looking at your glutes.
We're looking at your hamstrings, yourquads, behind your leg
and front of your leg.We're looking at your calves.
We're looking at yourfeet and your ankles.
Everything in the body works together.
So we need to be workingon and training all of it.
(04:48):
We don't want to focus on...
I would say really common with a lot ofpeople is focusing on just on the
quads, the front part of your muscles.
And they're important.
We need them to strong and stableso we can hold ourselves and plant.
But at the same time, we need to spend alot of time on our glutes and on our
hamstrings because those are our gomuscles, those are our explosive muscles.
(05:11):
And for pretty much all of us, especiallyin life, we sit a lot and we live
more of a sedentary lifestyle.
And so a lot of those areasare super underdeveloped.
And so working on those hamstrings,working on those glutes and still getting
your quad work in there, too, will helpyour body be able to do
(05:33):
what you wanted to do.Because in a pickle, it doesn't...
I don't need you to lift a thousandpounds, but I need you to
be strong in your body.
You need to be able to squat and get downlow 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 theball quite fast enough, so you didn't win
(05:55):
the point or get the ball backover, or we're dinking at the net.
And if you can't get yourself down into aloaded position as you're moving back and
forth and we're dinking, eventually you'regoing to make a mistake because you didn't
get down low again to beable to get to the ball.
You go watch the pros andjust higher-level players.
That's why one of the biggest things thatstood out to me was how low they got when
(06:16):
they were hitting their drops, how lowthey got when they were hitting their
dinks and different things like that.
And in order to do that, again, it's notneeding to lift a thousand pounds, but we
have to be able to control our bodies anddo it over and over and
over and over again.
And so we need to be able to prepare ourbodies to move in
multiple planes of motion.
(06:37):
We don't just go forward, backwards.
We don't just go side to side.
We're twisting, we're turning multipledirections, and we just have to be
able to meet those demands ofwhat we're asking our body to do.
Yeah, that makes perfect sense.
I know from a personal experience thatwhen I'm playing my best, whether it's a
senior pro tournament or even somecompetitive rec games, I know that I'm
(06:59):
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 itjust 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 readsome things, I follow some videos.
(07:21):
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.
So the quads end up doing too much work.
If you're comfortable with this,Ty, and let me give a quick caveat.
(07:42):
I'll do the caveat.You can add to it if you wanted to.
Anything you hear on this podcast, ifyou're not sure or if you have questions,
talk to your health careprofessional before you do anything.
But subject to that and anything else youwant to add to it, Ty, is there something
that a player can doin their house or something to just
begin this glute reawakening thing?
(08:03):
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, anda lot of times you'll hear that with your
core, you'll hear that with yourglutes and things like that.
We're just getting the musclesactivated and ready to move again.
We're just getting them...
That's pretty much it in a nutshellwhenever you hear those types of things.
(08:26):
So again, like I saidearlier, we sit a lot.
We do a a lot of things that don't get ourglutes activated, so they're not ready
to fire and they're not ready to go.
So that's the whole pointof the warm up, right?
Is we're trying to get things activatedand 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 doingthings because the
(08:49):
hip and the core and stuff like thataren't doing what we want them to do.
And also it's really important to rememberwith the glutes is there's three
main movements it's that they do.
I think the most common one that alot of people know is hip extension.
And so pretty much hip extension is whenwe're just pushing our butt forward.
(09:09):
When we're down like this and we pushour hips forward to stand up like that.
That's probably the most commonmuscle movement for your butt, your
glutes that everyone thinks about.
But there's two other ones that mostpeople don't know, which
is external rotation.
So that's when my leg is here and we'regetting it to turn out to the side.
(09:30):
And then there's hip abduction, which iswhen if my leg is straight, I kick it
straight out to the side and thenbring it back to me in the center.
That's hip abduction.
So your glutes, that's thethree main things that they do.
We spend a lot of time on that hipextension, just pushing our
butts forward, which is great.
We need that to do, especiallyfor power development.
But being able to actually load into ourhips, that external rotation, being able
(09:55):
to load into that hip, and that hipabduction just can be really helpful for
our stability And so when you think aboutwarming up, we want to do
all three of those things.
And there's tons and tonsof exercises you can do.
I mean, if you even just Google hipextension movements, hip abduction, hip
external rotation, you'llfind lots of stuff.
Band work, that's a really common thingthat you can do with just even a mini band
(10:19):
that's wrapping around the anklesor wrap around the knees, right?
And just doing some glue bridges oflifting up and down while you're pushing
your knees out or laying on your side andhaving 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 justlifting our leg up and holding for 10 to
(10:40):
20 seconds or even doing lots and lots ofreps just to get blood flow We'll move in.
I mean, there's many, many, many differentways to do it, but I think a big takeaway
here, and maybe that's something I can dois if we want and players want it, we
could do a littlevideo that I can share with you guys and
you guys can spread itout to the community.
So that's maybe something we can dothere as Well, but- That's a great idea.
(11:02):
I like that idea a lot.
But I think you're correct that I thinkif you wanted to get started with it, if
you went to YouTube and you typed inglute hip extension or glute hip abduction
or adduction, and then band, ifyou 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
(11:22):
with your health care advisor.
I think it's hard todo 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 theexercise is risky to do.
So I think that's areally good place to...
(11:42):
If you're a pickleball player, you'relistening to this,
I would say, and from a personalexperience, I will tell you, I'm doing
some stuff that you can work into.
Bulgarian squats to me arean 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 theOn the In2Pickle channel, our In2Pickle
(12:02):
channel, we actually have aplaylist of my favorite workouts, and
there's a gentleman that does thisthing called Foundation.
You may have seen this guy, Ty, buthe's not in California, actually.
But he does I can't remember his name, butit's a foundation exercise,
and it's on my list.
It's made for the back, but a lot of hisstuff is basically loading up the glutes.
(12:28):
So he put you in positions whereIt's static holding of the glutes, maybe a
little bit of movement, but it's reallyjust loading up those glutes
and reminding them how to work.
All right, so glutes is whatthey'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 ofthe body, but it can be so troublesome.
I did a clinic a couple of weeks agohere, and one of the girls there.
(12:51):
I'll tell you what happened, and thenmaybe 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 thatprofess to be that, and maybe
they are, maybe they're not.But that's not my expertise.
I know that they contendthat they are, which is fine.
I went over a couple of things that Iunderstand about weight of
paddle and things like that.
But the key here was actually ended upbeing grip size because
(13:15):
Because the way I explain it is, and Iactually happen to have a pen because I
was writing some stuffand I had my water bottle.
So I said, okay, grab this penand grab it like you would a paddle.
And it's too small.
And she could see theattention in her arm.
And then I said, grabmy water too big, right?
So you got to find that Goldilockszone for your hand with the grip.
And it was interesting.Her paddle actually was too small.
(13:38):
It wasn't a pencil, but it was too small.So I gave her...
I had a paddle that happened to have oneof those hessacores on there, the
hessacore grips, that madeit a little bit bigger.
And she played with it the wholeclinic, and she was like...
So anyway, maybe that's a good way tostart the conversation about
if you're a player and you're having anyelbow thing, maybe we can talk in general
about what happens This is, again, verygeneral, not trying to diagnose anybody,
(14:02):
but if you can touch on that, Ty.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think the biggest thing for people tounderstand is, and I see this all the
time, where a lot of players tend tofind, they seek out the bandaid solution.
And so, all right, my elbow is hurting,everything flaring up,
and I'm not happy with it.
(14:24):
So we try to find, okay,what's the quick fix I can do?
I'm wrapping my elbow or looking atdifferent remedies and things like that
for the quick bandaid solution thatdoesn't exactly
solve the overarching problem of whyis this happening in the first place?
It's just, okay, it's helping me numb thepain in the moment so that I can go play
for a few hours, which if it's tournamentday and I'm there, I have no other choice.
(14:49):
I need to compete.This is happening.
Yeah, we got to use our bandaid solution.
But long term, we need to rememberwhy these agitations and things usually
It's usually one of two of either one.
You are the muscles and the area aroundit are not properly prepared for it.
(15:11):
Meaning the demand that you're putting onthe tissue and putting on the muscles
is higher than what it can tolerate.
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'resuper sore, they weren't able
to handle that load you gave it.
So it broke down, It's supersore, it heals up, it's recovered.
(15:32):
Next time you go do that same exercise,same weight, it's a bit easier because
your body's now built up a toleranceto handle what you're asking it to do.
Sometimes it's the same exact thing herewhere we went from maybe
never doing a paddle sport in our lives ormaybe playing once a week for two hours to
all of a sudden we're playing five, six,seven days a week, two, three
(15:54):
hours at a time, maybe even more.
And now that tolerance that was built upto handle one time a week for two hours,
all of a sudden you're asking it to dosix, seven days a week, two,
three, four, five hours.
Now it's super agitated.
The tolerance that you built up is nolonger able to handle what
you're asking it to do.
And so a big thing to remember is you needto build up that strength in that area.
(16:14):
The forearm and your wrist can do manydifferent muscle actions and you need to
spend time getting it strongerso that it can handle.
Again, same idea, right?
You have to meet the demandsof what you're asking it to do.
So you need to spend time getting thosemuscles stronger, building up that
tolerance so that it can handle thatworkload of six, seven days a week
(16:36):
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 perfectlyunderstand this, too, Tony and C.
J.
As well, ismechanically, if you're doing something
super funky, if you're hitting a ball andyou're doing just some weird mumbo jumbo
with your wrist and your elbow and doingall these weird funky angles,
(17:00):
that's what causes problems, too.
Even if you're strengthening things up, ifyou're mechanically doing something super
awkward and hurting yourself, allthis is going to get super agitated.
I know for me as a player, personally, Iwould get elbow pain on the
inside, not on the outside.
But that would be becauseI would just do some funky.
I would just shoot my elbow really hardand stiffen it up really, really fast
(17:23):
when I was trying to block a ball.
And then I would get agitated here.
Once I became aware of what I wasdoing, okay, Why is this happening?
And paying a little bit more attention toit and not being so herky, jerky
and sudden, it cleaned it up.
And now I don't really haveany issues there anymore.
But especially out here,a lot of it can be mechanical.
That's where you need that coach, right?
(17:44):
Have someone peak and look at what you'redoing 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 tocreate my power, to generate the
force, to put a little bit spin on it?
Because a lot of people get super wristyand super sudden and they're doing
just all sorts of craziness here.
And then when you go into the paddleconversation of, why is
(18:07):
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 godown that whole rabbit hole, too.
But I would say the biggest two areas thatI tend to see is
there's a lack of tolerance.
There's no tolerance build up in here sothey can handle what
you're asking it to do.
(18:28):
And then the other part is mechanical.
Of just what are you...
I mean, I'm sure as a coach, you've seenall sorts of stuff that people do that
it's like, we're trying to get the ballover 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, threesteps back, fix our mechanics so that
we can take our five steps forward.
(18:49):
Because at the end of the day, at somepoint, 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 tornor something's going to
flare up really badly.
And especially Actually, if we're a deskjob 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'regoing to stop at some point.
And so that would be my two biggest thingsthat I would say is make sure you're
(19:13):
strengthening up the areato build up your tolerance.
Make sure you have asmart, intelligent coach that can look
at your mechanics and listen to them.
Because if you don't, you can do what youwant at the end of the day, but you're the
one that's going to besuffering for it, not us.
Yeah, exactly.
And And I saw a video, you mentionedspins, and I'm going to wrap on this, but
(19:35):
Maddie Umberg did a video on her rollvolley, which is one of the
most extreme roll volleys.
And Maddie, don't come afterme 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 thatworks for her system, right?
It doesn't break down.
And all of a sudden you gotan average player out there going like,
(19:59):
You know I saw a video and it shows methat 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 arelistening or liking what they're hearing.
Every time we speak, Ty, I love the factthat you're still growing as a coach.
(20:21):
We all do, but I hearit in your messaging.
I hear it in how you're organizingyour thoughts about everything.
Super awesome.
And you did that before, too,but it's just getting better.
And so players out there, they mightbe interested in working with you.
And I know you doonline work where you can analyze and
give them feedback and things like that.
What's the best way for someone to get ahold of you, Ty, if they want to continue
(20:43):
the conversation withyou about themselves?
Yeah.
Easiest way is to go onInstagram and go on the...
Follow the page, PickleballSports Performance.
That is whereI'm posting stuff on my story, working on
getting more content on my social media.
You could also send me an emailat ty@pickleballsportsperformance.
com.
That is another super easy way to do it.
(21:05):
Those are the two main ways that you canget a hold of me for sure, to be able to
answer, even if it's justgeneral questions on things, I'm always
happy to be able to provide informationI can to be able to help play this out.
You can probably tell from Ty's voice thathe'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 awaythere, that you're younger than both.
(21:27):
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 wetalked about this before, and I want to
make sure that you're in agreement withthis, that if a player out there enjoyed
this podcast and has a friend of theirswho might enjoy this podcast, I think we
(21:47):
agree that they should share thispodcast with one of their friends, right?
Absolutely.Spread the word.
Share the love.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 thatyou 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 seeyou on the next episode
(22:09):
that we have you on.
Love it.Thank you, Tony.
Thanks, Ty.
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