Everything You Need To Know About Pickleball - How To Train, Eat, Recover, Play & Practice

My name is Ben Greenfield and on this episode of the Ben Greenfield Life podcast, from a sport, longevity and an injury prevention standpoint, I would be doing the foam rolling and deep tissue work using something like Kelly Starrett's Becoming a Supple Leopard book, technically under red light or in a sauna or something like that. And then you combine that with something like Dr. Eric Goodman's foundation training, like his true to form training. I mean, if you were to do that stuff and combine it with the kettlebell and with the calisthenic type of programming, it would be absolute game changer. The calisthenic and the plyometrics. So those are a few suggestions from the biomechanical standpoint.

Faith, family, fitness, health, performance, nutrition, longevity, ancestral living, biohacking, and a whole lot more. Welcome to the show.

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If you're not tracking your blood, then you're missing out on what you might need to actually know how to build endurance, boost energy and optimize your health and eat the right way and supplement the right way and know if you're gonna get sick or if you're not gonna get sick or if you need certain nutrients or don't need other nutrients. There's this company called InsideTracker. They not only do your blood, but your DNA and your fitness tracking data too. They identify where you're optimized and where you're not. And these scientists that work for the company, they're in aging, they're in genetics, they're in biomet. They work together to give you a daily action plan on InsideTracker with personalized guidance on the right exercise and nutrition and supplementation for your body. So when you connect it with, let's say, like your Fitbit or your Garmin, you get to unlock real time recovery pro tips after you complete your workout. So it's like having a personal trainer and a nutritionist and a blood work person, whatever you call those, all in your own pocket. And they're going to give 20% to all my listeners if you just go to InsideTracker.com Ben that's InsideTracker.com Ben. You don't need a code. Go to InsideTracker.com Ben and you're off to the bloodwork and biomarker races. Well, well, well, folks. I recently got into a new sport that I'm pretty excited about actually. It's called pickleball. Pickleball, that's right. So I come from a competitive tennis background, meaning I played tennis up through my freshman year of college and always kind of thought pickleball was kind of like the take no offense, like the gentler old person senior version of tennis that you play at the nursing home with a cheesy little wiffle ball or in a retirement community. And after picking it up, a Few months ago. Holy cow, was I ever wrong. First of all. And second of all, in the past several weeks I've started playing more. I've totally fallen in love with it. This new place opened near my house called the Pickleball Playground, where they have leagues and singles and doubles. And then like two weeks ago, I played singles for the first time in my life because I'd just at that point been just hitting around the family. And I am absolutely enamored with it now. It's like the ultimate combination of reaction time and speed and power and mental and physical chess and like everything I'm looking for in a new sport, especially as I get older and I'm tackling new categories and new things to learn. Now I know why it's, I think, the fastest growing sport in America. It's the official state sport of my own home state of Washington. And I'm like gobbling up like YouTube pickleball videos and trying to find people in the community to play with. And it turns out one of the top pickleball players in the entire world lives near my home. We're actually going to get together for dinner tomorrow night and hopefully hit the courts later on this weekend because we've recently become acquainted and his name is Tyson McGuffin. Tyson McGuffin. You may have heard of him before. If you haven't, you gotta go check out his Instagram channel or his YouTube and see what pickleball at the top level actually looks like. Like darting, weaving, cutting, sprinting through the leg, shot behind the back. Just like crazy stuff. It's like ping pong and tennis on steroids. It's like ping pong and tennis met and had a crazy baby after a night in Vegas. Tyson has a podcast too. It's called the McGuffin Show. We thought it'd be fun to kind of geek out on this new sport if you've never heard of it. I know many of my listeners actually are kind of starting to play. So we'll talk not only about Tyson's perspective on the sport and how you can get started with it with or get better at it if you're already started with it. But then also because Tyson has a podcast and he kind of wanted to open his audience up to some of the nutrition and fitness and training and supplementation and recovery concepts that I can talk about. We figured this would be a little bit of a two way chat where I get to pick his brain, he gets to pick mine. So that being said, all the Shownotes are going to be at BenGreenfieldLife.com Pickleball. That's BenGreenfieldLife.com/Pickleball. Tyson, welcome to the show, man.

Thanks for the introduction, brother. Appreciate that. Happy to be on. I know we live about an hour away and I probably should be at your house right now doing it with you, but I got, I got a full day ahead of me and as you know, I've got four kids and so anyhow, happy to be on and appreciate your time.

Yeah, don't worry about it, man. My, I already pulled the chicken for tomorrow night. We're going to do my, my wife Jess's world famous roasted chicken and we'll do some fresh made sourdough bread and we'll throw down a pretty good time. Even if we aren't doing podcasting and pickleball together, we're going to eat well together.

Sounds brilliant.

Got that going. So you're a two time US Open champion, you're a five time national champion. You got six PPA titles, a triple crown, you got the number one ranking in men's singles. I believe you're top five in men's pro doubles. You're way up there in mixed doubles as well. You're running clinics all over the country. You have all these YouTube instructional videos. Plus like you mentioned, most importantly, you have four beautiful children, you're married. And I guess the number one question that I have for you before we get into your story, just that people know what they're getting into here, is how would you describe pickleball to people? You're sitting next to somebody on a plane like, and they ask you what the heck's the wiffle thing that you're doing? What do you tell them?

I tell them that it's the best racket sport out there. It's a better version of tennis, It's a better version of ping pong. And it caters to everybody. It caters to all demographics. It's the type of sport where you can be on a family vacation and nobody has any sort of racket sport ability or maybe any athletic ability and you can hop on a pickleball court and you can maybe have your 5 year old, you can have your grandma and somebody else and you can play doubles and within five minutes everybody can have a great time. They can have a 10 ball rally and that same type of deal in tennis would take months. So what's great about pickleball is that the learning curve is very quick. It's easy to play, it's fun, you can talk a Little trash. It's good physical activity. There's this whole new community that people feel like they're a part of. It's super embracing. It's swept me off my feet. I've been on the tour for the last seven years. I met my beautiful princess on the pickleball court. I told myself I would never crap where I slept, if you know what I mean. And it just worked out. Where I met my princess, she was in my pickleball 101 class. I had moved to Coeur d', Alene, Idaho. And this is about four or five years ago. And she took my 101, she took my 102, and then I took her on a date.

A pickleball date.

Pickleball date. But no, it's a beautiful sport. We see a lot of racket sport athletes making their way over. It's a perfect sport for people that are 50 plus, that maybe play tennis or play golf. And maybe they can't play tennis anymore because they can't move on a court that's 72 by 36. Or maybe they can't play racquetball anymore because. Because their shoulders blowing out. But they can come on a pickleball court and play on a court that's 44 by 20 and have a great time, talk a little trash, hit some dinks and meet a lot of great people.

Yeah, I love how you say hit some dinks. There's like this whole new terminology as I'm having to get used to, like dinks and Ernie's and even like the. The entire history of the sports. Intriguing one. One person told me it was because the people who invented it had a dog named Pickles that would run around the court and chase the balls. And I started looking into this. See, I do my research, Tyson, I do my research. Turns out that the people who invented it, one of them used to row crew. And the name of one of the boats that has a thrown together crew drawn at random from available rowers is called the pickle boat. And so they called it pickleball because they just kind of, as you just alluded to, grab a random group of ragtag folks, some of whom have played before, some who hadn't. But it's just so easy to pick up that they just throw a random amount of people on the court and play. And that's been my experience with it. Like I've been throwing paddles in my bag when I travel. I just got back from Lexington, Kentucky, I found two friends who played. We went and hit the court So I didn't have to bring all the tennis rackets and mess around with all the court reservations because the pickleball seems to always be open. And then two little wiffle balls. And you can take this anywhere. I mean, I can hit against the wall of the garage. I can get a little pop up net in my backyard. Like I was even playing pickleball on the ping pong table with my kids the other day. I just put that on Instagram, actually. And so it's one of those sports that teams are just like travel everywhere, which is awesome with minimal equipment. And again, like I said, the doubles component of it, as you were just talking about, it's pretty fun, it's pretty social. It's kind of fun to get some folks together. But dude, singles is fricking athletic. With doubles. I got into doubles because my knee was kind of hurting, especially when I'd play the space of a tennis court. When I got into pickleball, I could play doubles for hours and just have no pain anywhere. And then I started playing singles and it's a whole different ball game in a good way. Like it's just power and it's speed and it's reaction time. And so now I'm like, holy cow. I got to start to get more fit if I want to play singles and really start to get into this because I like to, you know, when I pick stuff up, I like to get pretty serious about it. But I'm curious for you, when you came into the sport, were you actually an athlete already or how did you actually get into pickleball in the first place?

Yeah. So I'm the youngest of seven. I grew up in a wrestling family. My dad was a wrestling coach for about 40 years. I broke my death heart my senior year because I had a wrestling scholarship and I had a tennis scholarship. I ended up taking a tennis scholarship.

Yeah.

Played a couple years of junior college tennis, played some pro tennis, and then came to the dark side. In about 2015, there was a gentleman at my tennis club, he was a tennis player and blew out his shoulder and couldn't play tennis anymore. And he started playing this silly game called pickleball. And I kid you not, he would show up at the club every day and bug me about this game and tell me I should go to the local YMCA and go play some pickleball with all of his old timers. So I ended up showing up at the local ymca. Typical setting or typical format that you used to see back in the day. Not so much anymore. There was three courts. Like, the first court was, you know, 3, 0, 3 5. The second court was 4, 0. And then the last court was like the highest level court. And each court had 20 or 30 people waiting. It wasn't very organized. We're playing on a gym floor and I ended up getting my butt kicked by a couple guys in their 50s and 60s, and Bill was one of them. Anyhow, pride was hurt. I thought it was some high end tennis player. I just kind of come off the tour at that time and one thing led to another. Ended up going home that night and watched every video I could on pickleball. I got educated and I came back to that YMCA and beat up on some old timers about a week later. And I would say right then and there I kind of had some passion for the sport. So I started playing a bit more. I started practicing with some guys in my area there in Yakima, Washington and started playing some tournaments. And within about eight months I played a guy that was top 10 in the world. I was able to play him pretty tight. Ended up losing in three games. And right then and there I kind of knew that pickleball was my outlet. And so I ended up going professionally and later on kind of ended up like resigning as a director of tennis. Went on the road, started teaching camps. And yeah, I've been playing professionally for the last seven years now. I own a camp business called Tyson McGuffin center for PB Camps and also have a podcast. So I'm. I'm all in. Ben.

Yeah. Hey, is there just opening the kimono a little bit? Is there much money in pickleball? Because you and I had like, kind of a private discussion going back and forth about this doctor friend of mine who wants to start an actual pickleball squad. You know, one of my friends who runs this Wild Health Positions Network, they sponsor like a baseball team and they put them through this, like, executive health screening and then they just throw a bunch of money at the team and send them around to compete. But this guy, Dr. Dawson, he's super into pickleball. He told me, dude, we're going to start the first ever pro pickleball team. We're going to throw a bunch of money into it. We're going to optimize all these players and, and like, go big and pickleball. And we told me all this. I was like, oh, it's interesting, but I actually don't even know because, like tennis, if you get to the, I think like, even the quarterfinals of Wimbledon, like, you're Getting close to a half mil as far as a paycheck. What's it like in pickleball as far as the actual money in the sport right now?

Yeah, obviously very different from tennis and golf. I mean, tennis, even if you make. Even if you make first round of a Grand Slam. So if you lose first round of a Grand Slam in tennis, whether it's, you know, WEMBY French Open, US Open or the Australian Open, you're guaranteed 40k, which is not too shabby. So if you're Inside the top 124 in rankings in tennis, you're guaranteed 40 to show up at each of those Grand Slams. Pickle is very different. So Pickle, you know, it's definitely heading the right direction. We have three different tours to a certain degree. We have the ppa, the app, and then Major League Pickleball. So there's a gentleman named Tom Dundon, he owns the Carolina Hurricanes, it's an NHL team, and was one of the early investors in topgolf. He just bought the PPA Tour, the tour that I play on, and bought it about two years ago. So recently, the last year and a half, Pickle has gotten pretty real. There is more money in the sport. Next year is my first year where I'm going full time, Pickle. I'm not going to be teaching as much. I'm still going to be doing my content and doing my stuff from. Stuff from home. But now I've. I'm doing well with, you know, brand endorsements. There's enough appearance fees and prize money coming in where now I can actually, you know, support my whole family and my four kids and do it the right way. But the last seven years, I've been grinding away. I've been teaching, you know, 20, 40 camps out of the year, doing lots of content and all the above to kind of make up for, you know, not being able to just play as an athlete. I would say 90% of the pro players right now playing pickleball, working 8 to 5.

Yeah, but, but like, let's say like the U.S. like, if you were to win the U.S. open, what would be the paycheck for something like that in pickleball?

Yep, yep. So, yeah, so if you win the US Open, you're probably guaranteed 5,000. And what makes it right now is having sponsors that match prize money. So I have anywhere from eight to 10 sponsors that all take care of me, and I have a couple of those sponsors that all match prize money. So it's not in the initial prize money, it's Obviously, you know, building your brand, making yourself marketable so you can get sponsors and then really trying to put it on those sponsors to match prize money. And that's where the big payouts are. So I would say, you know, right now the top five male and top five females probably all have anywhere from one to three matches from sponsors that all match prize money. I would assume like in the next five years with prize money growing, with the sport heading in the right direction and with prize money being much bigger, I would assume that sponsors in five years are not going to be matching prize money, if you know what I mean.

Absolutely. I know a small handful of frickin billionaires who are obsessed with pickleball, which means like going down the pipeline. I know there'll be more money and more sponsors kind of, kind of supporting the sport. So I think it's only going to go uphill because $5,000 is like for winning a national championship. That's obviously, you know, this is like kind of kind of chump change compared to peanuts. Yeah, like the popularity, the actual sport. So you know, related to that because I used to run into this in Ironman Triathlon and this was honestly one of the reasons I really didn't hardcore pursue a professional ranking in Ironman was because I looked at the number of hours and time and energy spent training and I knew I couldn't support a family doing it. But I'm just curious with something like pickleball, is training kind of like a full time job or what does a typical day of training look like for you? And we got time to delve into this because I have an audience who really loves the, the fitness, the biohacking, the recovery. So. So tell me what a typical day would look like for you. Like an optimized training day. Yep.

So I play 30 tournaments a year or 25 to 30 tournaments a year. I'm you know, on the road, I mean shoot 30 to 35 weeks out of the year.

Okay, wait, with, and with the tournament, I've, I've never ever been to a tournament or watched a tournament. I want to, I definitely want to play in a tournament someday. But you know, with tennis, you know, sometimes like two or three matches a day, two to three days in a row. What's, what's a pickleball tournament look like as far as the physical rigors?

Tournaments are a complete grind, Ben. So tournaments. I'll play singles Thursday, so I'll usually fly in on like a Tuesday. So I'll fly in Tuesday afternoon. I'll be sure to get a session in or get a practice in here in Coeur d'. Alene. Tuesday morning, fly to Spokane airport, Tuesday afternoon, get to my hotel Tuesday night, get a good night's rest, practice Wednesday, practice Wednesday morning, probably get like an afternoon practice in as well. So do two on that Wednesday and then rock and roll Thursday through Sunday. So Thursday usually is singles, Friday is mixed doubles, Saturday is gender doubles, and then Sunday is championship Sunday. And I'll play anywhere from, let's say four to eight matches in a day. And my day usually starts around 8am and ends anywhere from 2 to 6, you know, just kind of depending on how I do. Obviously if I make a final, then I. Then I play my final on Sunday. Yeah. So when I'm home, I'm usually home for like a week or so. We do have a little four to six week break during the summer and I usually use that time to get my ass in the gym and get very aggressive with strength training, functional training, mixture of, you know, boxing, cardio. But yeah, so like an average day to me, you know, I'm waking up at 5, I usually get in my hot tub around 6, crank out all my emails and get all my social media stuff done from like 6 to 6:45, get a nice little sweat in in the hot tub. I just ordered a cold plunge as well. So once that cold plunge gets here, I'll be doing some hot and cold in the morning. I'm usually out the door by 7, practicing from 7 to 10. Directly after practice I'll go work out. I have a guy locally, his name's Craig Fisner, ex MMA guy. I'm a big UFC fan and obviously used to wrestle back in the day. So I'll go see Craig. Craig has a gym in Coeur d', Alene, it's called CDA One on one Fitness. And I usually spend about two hours with Craig. And like I mentioned, we'll do a mixture of interval training, functional training, band work, cardio boxing. But usually big thing for me is core hand speed, foot speed, and then making sure that my gas tank is up to par, right?

Yeah, yeah.

And then directly after that I will go back and do a second practice. Maybe it's from one to three. After that I'll go do my recovery. There's a place in town here in Coeur d' Alene called the Zone. I'll go do cryo, like to do IVs as well. When I do IVs, I usually do Myra cocktails. I'll do NAD every five to six weeks. And when I do NAD, I'll do 500 milligrams. I'm also the brand ambassador of Bemer. I use Beamer morning and night. It's a medical device you lay on that helps helps with blood flow and helps with mental clarity, sleep recovery, all that good stuff. I also use compression boots. I use compression boots morning and night. I'm kind of, kind of all in. So usually it's practice in the morning, workout back to practice and then get all my recovery stuff in.

Yeah. Wow. You're actually doing a lot of stuff to stay put together. It doesn't surprise me at all. But as far as like a typical weight training routine, are you doing a lot of like high rep, low resistance, high weights, more power based exercises, kettlebells, bands, or just a mix of everything?

Mixture of everything, yeah. You know, during, during, in between tournaments, high reps, low weight. If I have, you know, that little break, you know, kind of in between season that I have four to six weeks to work with, then I'll go higher weight, lower rep and try to, you know, and try to build some muscle. But you know, usually in between tournaments it's more so just trying to maintain. Right, yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. So it's pretty rigorous. And what about the diet? I just subscribed to Pickleball magazine, so I've got that, you know, I've hit the pickleball playground like I mentioned and don't really see much as far as like, you know, like you walk into CrossFit sometimes it's the fridge with the primal bars and the done for you. I don't know, quinoa bowls with salmon and all that jazz. But in pickleball, is it just kind of like old school? Kind of like tennis is where like if I walk in a tennis club, it's, it's like, you know, Gatorade power bars and like some low fat scones and then wine and beer for people to socialize with afterwards. In pickleball, is there like any type of nutrition or dietary trend right now?

I would say some of the top players are doing it right and definitely dieting the right way. For myself, I try to stay away from sugar, stay away from bread, stay away from fried food. If I could just stick to smoothies in the morning, taking my supplements, I usually do two protein shakes a day, morning and night, and then protein and veggies. That's kind of my go to. So I try to be as clean as I can. Whether it's d, dieting, practicing recovery, I try to do everything at the best of my ability, if you know what I mean.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. So. So are you. Are you doing anything like macronutrient tracking, like low carb or keto or carb loading or anything like that?

None of that yet, no. You know, once I get working with someone like yourself, I can. I can definitely start, you know, start improving in those. In those areas.

Yeah, I actually, I want to delve into that in a little bit because I think we can. We can kind of tear down your supplement nutrition routine and kind of get into asking your questions. But before we get into the nitty gritty of how to train, how to eat different supplements that might come in handy, et cetera, a few more practical questions regarding pickleball. First of all, let's say somebody wants to get into this sport. I know there's a bunch of apps that let you find a court and somebody local to play with. I know there are magazines like Pickleball Magazines. There's books out there. If somebody's listening in and they either just got started or have no clue where to start, what's the best way for somebody to get started in pickleball?

Best way to get started is you can go to usapa.com, get signed up as a member, check to see where there's courts at. So I would say first and foremost, go to usapa. That's the governing body in pickleball. They can give you lots of information and lots of resources about how to kind of get involved. There's local parks everywhere, Ben. And the great thing about pickleball is that, I mean, just like what you mentioned earlier, you can simply just show up at a park, find some people that are super embracing, whether the high level or low level, and just jump on a court. And that's the beauty of this sport, brother.

Yeah, that's what I've experienced. So you can just jump on even if you're not that great. Like, everybody seems super nice and they just welcome you right onto the court. So I did download an app recently that got recommended to me. Let me grab my phone here. I'll tell you which one it is, but it apparently lets you look for courts, look for players. Pickle Play. Pickle Play.

Yes. And Pickle Play wasn't sure if you were trying to use that as a plug or not. Well, thank you.

No, I wasn't. Are you involved with it?

Yeah. So I'm actually the brand ambassador of pickle play. Oh. Pickle Play is an app where you can find Level specific play in your area. You can find courts, you can set up leagues. There's a text, text chain in the app where you can talk to people in there. So, yes, if you want to get involved in pickleball or if you want to, you know, find courts or find people to play with, please check out Pickle Play. It is owned by a couple in Indianapolis and their names are Blake and Alex Renaud. They have a couple of kids that are very friendly with my kids and they're great people. So check out Pickle Plate today, please.

Okay, cool. I've got it downloaded. I'm going to be messing around with it later on today. And then my other question is. So I'm busy. I'm on the road a lot. A lot of times I can't even. I don't have the time to leave my house, But I got 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, or, or I'm at an Airbnb or hotel when I'm on the road and I have my paddle and I have my ball. What kind of things could you do if you couldn't get to the court that would still make you a better pickleball player? Are there certain drills that you could do in a small space or things that, even if you can't make it to the courts, can allow you to continue to evolve? This is related to. I used to get frustrated because I bow hunt, and shooting the bow is pretty important. And I just obviously can't throw my bow into a suitcase everywhere I go. But I got a tip from a guy named John Dudley about how to take your bow handle and a string and use your release and basically travel with a little bow and a string and a release just to be able to practice your release and your form while you're on the road. And I even had a downloadable track that would walk you through how to breathe. Okay, take your shot, visualize the animal, et cetera. And I could literally just practice shooting my bow in my hotel room without my bow. So kind of related to pickleball, what would be your tips if you can't make it to the court?

That's a great question, Ben. So something you can do is grab your paddle and you can do some shadow swinging. You know, you can, you can shadow swing danking technique, you can shadow swing ground strike technique, you can shadow swing volley technique. But a good way to really work on your technique is by doing some stationary shadow swings. Also, too, if you have a ball, you can really work on your paddle skills, you can work on your grips if you have a ball, you can do ups where basically your palm is facing up. You have your paddle, you put the ball on top of the paddle. You can try to get 100 of those. It's kind of like you're dribbling, but you're dribbling up in the air. Try to get 100 of those. And then also, too, if you're on the first floor of your hotel and there's nobody below you, you could also do some downs in that. In that same manner where now your palm is facing at the ball or your palm is facing towards the ground and you're dribbling, you can get 100 of those. You can also do some flip flops. But, yeah, I guess if you are by yourself and you can't get to a court, you can do some shadow swinging, which more so works on technique. Or you could do those paddle skill drills with the ball to focus on working on your grip pressure and working on your control with your paddle for.

People who need to visualize that. Have you ever done a video like how to get better at pickleball without going to the pickleball courts or something like that?

I have not, but I've been asked to do that video various times. So something. I'm going to do it. Yeah, exactly.

I know it'd be popular. I know there's other pickleball, like, what did I find fun YouTube channel I did the other day called the Pickleball Kitchen, I think it was called. And that makes sense because for people listening, part of the court where you're not allowed to volley and you got to let the ball bounce and do what's called a dink. It's the kitchen, which is kind of counterintuitive to tennis where you volley at the net. In pickleball, you can't volley at the net. You got to let the ball bounce, at least if you're a certain proximity to the net. So I was watching this YouTube show called the Pickleball Kitchen. There's some good videos on there. But what I was specifically looking for was how to get better at pickleball without actually having to go to the court for the busy people who could maybe only make it out to play on a Saturday and a Sunday or something like that.

Can you tell your listeners what paddle that you're using?

Well, I know it's made by Selkirk, which is actually. Where's Selkirk based out, Aren't they? It's super close to us.

Selkirk is based in Hayden, Idaho, baby.

Yeah. Okay. And they're one of the top, from what I understand, pickleball equipment manufacturers in the world, which is great. I had no clue they even existed, but I was at the pickleball playground and somebody picked up this paddle, and they said, this is the one that you should use if you were a former tennis player. And so I picked it up and I messed around with it a little bit, and I think it was called, like a Vanguard or something like that. And then I texted you and you sent me one. I think it has your name on it, but it's made by Selkirk. What's the actual make and model? Because I love it. Compared to just the cheapo $10Amazon one I was using.

Oh, yeah. Best looking paddle in the game. It's my signature model. It's called the Invicta. It's called the Tyson McGuffin Selkirk Invicta. And it is pretty. I'll tell you what.

Why. Why does the paddle matter? Like. Like, just. We don't have to go deep into the science, because I'm sure that people could just geek out on this for hours. But. But what. What are the main things that make, like, getting a better pickleball paddle a good idea?

Well, just paddle technology in general starting to get a lot more advanced. They're starting to play with different materials, like honeycomb and carbon. Carbon's kind of like the new material. And it seems like with carbon, you get best.

And you get lots of power. Previously, in the last five years or so, it kind of seemed like paddles were either feel oriented or they were power oriented. Now with paddle technology getting more advanced, and we're having, you know, various engineers kind of play with different materials and really kind of raise the level of power and spin and all the above. But it seems like now paddle manufacturers are going the route of being able to use materials that give you best of both worlds, where you get not only power, but that you get some good feel as well.

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When I started as a levels member, I thought I understand my metabolic health pretty well. It turns out like most people, I didn't have that great of an idea about how some foods surprisingly were affecting me. Like, like steak spikes my blood sugar, cold bath decreases it. Green beans spiked my blood sugar not so much with oatmeal. It's super weird and everybody's different, which is why you really don't know. Unless you test what you read in a magazine that's going to spike or control your blood sugar is not necessarily what's accurate for you personally. So if you want to try one of these continuous glucose monitors, also known as a cgm, you go to Levels Link Ben. They got a really well researched in depth blog I recommend checking out if you're just looking to learn more about topics like metabolic health, longevity and nutrition. Very well written but Levels Link Ben is where you can actually get one of these continuous glucose monitors for yourself. 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So go to BenGreenfieldCoaching.com, select any option that works for you from a monthly phone call with me to VIP upgraded work, where I'm taking care of everything for you 24. 7. It's all there at BenGreenfieldCoaching.com See you there. Yeah, I definitely noticed something different about. I mean, I should know that knowing the tennis racket technology, but I never thought the paddle could make a big difference. But it's a cool looking paddle too. So there we go. Already pimping Tyson stuff, but it seems to work well. What happened? I think the way that we got connected was I started to play pickleball and then I wanted to kind of see, as I do with a lot of sports, I'm like, okay, what does this look like at the top level? And I was again, like I mentioned, blown away once I pulled up some Instagram and some YouTube videos and started to watch people playing pickleball at a high level. And I was like, oh, this is way more than just like a retirement community sport. Again, no offense to any senior citizens listening in. That was just my initial impression of it. And then I came across your Instagram and I think what I went to do was like, message you and I was going to ask you about it was just basically like tips or something like that. And I pulled open the Instagram message and you had messaged me at some point and I never replied because I rarely check Instagram messages at all. But you had asked me a couple of questions about training or nutrition or something like that. And so then we wound up exchanging phone numbers and we got together, we decided to do this podcast. But specifically, one of the things we wanted to get into was, of course, even though we've established, we've well established the fact that I'm not a pickleball expert or anything like that, but I am an expert in human physiology and nutrition and biomechanics and kind of how to hack any sport when it comes to optimizing the mind and the body. So I figured you probably had some questions as well. And I'd love to delve into anything you want to get into, like training, recovery, nutrition, hydration, anything like that. So let's have fun and start to geek out on some of the nitty gritties of the body mechanics when it comes to biomechanics and the body chemistry when it comes to Pickleball.

Okay, so I guess just looking at the movements and biomechanics of pickleball, what sort of training program would you put together for a top pickleball athlete?

Yeah, so it's interesting because a lot of times these days I'm recommending that people who want to stay fit for life do a combination of very super slow training, like single set exercises to exhaustion, like full body like chest press, row shoulder press, pull down, squat, deadlifts, single set to failure to exhaustion. And that's like 20 to 25 minutes, three times a week. And then do lots of walking and throw some calisthenics in here and there. And that's what a lot of people are doing now, just because it's more like the anti aging and longevity routine. But then if you pivot and you look at more of an athletic routine, there's some definite differences. So the main thing with something like pickleball is that you, you want a high amount of power and fast twitch muscle fiber capacity without necessarily excess slow twitch muscle fiber, which is why a lot of tennis players won't run any longer than a mile because I mean, case in point, I used to be able to dunk a basketball in college and now I can barely grab the rim because I switched to endurance sports like Ironman for example. And I developed a lot of slow twitch muscle. But it's not as explosive or fast or powerful as fast twitch muscle. So you almost want to avoid, get a lot of the advice about take 15,000 steps a day, hit the treadmill now and again, or the elliptical trainer and do a lot of chronic cardio or even some of this super slow training, which is technically more of the slow twitch muscle fibers, you instead want to focus on power. And I think at the top of the totem pole when it comes to power and athleticism. And the secret sauce that I wish more power based athletes, power and speed based athletes knew about would be the kettlebell. I did a Russian kettlebell training certification and then also what's called a strong first kettlebell training certification and learned a lot of the concepts behind this Russian trainer Pavel Zatzelin's ideas. When it comes to the way to train to actually build a super strong and fast and wiry and powerful and explosive body without at the same time building a lot of the muscle that you obviously got to carry around the court and you got to cool. And so I mean, if people were to google you and look at your body, I mean you've got this kind of like this fast twitch pal Almost like the way that you'd see like a power lifter, right? Like small, wiry, explosive and fast. That's the type of body and that's the type of training that a kettlebell really supports very, very well. So we're talking about everything from mobility exercises like the Turkish getup to kettlebell swings, which are the creme de la creme of power and explosive based exercises, to kettlebell overhead presses, kettlebell goblet squats, kettlebell snatches. If you were to add kettlebells to your repertoire, I guarantee that you'd be ahead of the curve when it comes to one single tool that would kind of rule them all in terms of training that I'd implement. The other thing that I would consider, and you probably already do a lot of this, would be the inclusion of just a ton of plyometrics, box jumps, lunge jumps, clap push ups, even kipping pull ups. Any of those type of really quick, powerful exercises that involve mostly calisthenic based moves. That one is another one that I'd really recommend. Now, as far as the strength training, I mean really, the kettlebell would do almost all of it for you, but throwing a little bit of powerlifting like overhead push press, deadlifts, squats, things like that into the mix would also be good. So that's number one from a training standpoint. I'd be using a lot of kettlebell. I'd be doing a lot of plyometrics, primarily using body weight or a very lightweighted vest, like a 20 pound weighted vest, for example. And if you don't have access to a kettlebell, like if you're on the road doing a lot more, kind of like barbell specific power based exercises, the strength component is covered with something like that. But then the weak links, as you know, like tennis players with their shoulders or their IT bands or their Achilles, there tend to be certain injuries that pop up over and over again. And I think that the program, if you want a done for you program that I think addresses a ton of of weak links in the average athlete. I would look up Ben Patrick's knees over toes stuff. I don't know if you've heard of him before, but he's primarily in the basketball community. But he has a book, it was one of the top selling little fitness books on Amazon for a while called ATG for Life. I think his business is called Athletic Training Group. And I've had a lot of people who I have doing strength training programs and resistance training and certain forms of high intensity interview interval Training on all their off days, they'll do that routine, which is like a 20 to 30 minute routine that's kind of done for you as far as bulletproofing the body and addressing a lot of the weak links like the external rotators, the glute medius, the rhomboids, the rotator cuff, some of the muscles that are supportive of the knee, like the vastus medialis, and then areas that don't get targeted with a lot of specificity compared to something like kettlebell training or powerlifting or something like that. So that one's called atg and that's Ben Patrick's program. And if you were to do something like kettlebells plus plyometrics plus addressing weak links on a regular basis with a program like that, I mean, those alone would be absolutely stellar for the physical training side of things. And then the other thing I'd throw in would definitely be the mobility component, the so called young muscle component. This idea that cross linking of fibers occurs especially in an aging athlete, and the best way to tackle that is if you don't have access or funding for something like regular massage therapy is a ton of work that's very similar. Have you ever seen Kelly Starrett's book Becoming a Supple Leopard?

No.

So that book is like a bible for taking any nagging ache or pain or tight spot in the muscles and working it out with things like foam rollers, lacrosse balls, peanut shaped rollers, a lot of the vibrating muscle therapy devices that are out there, stick type of devices, even using kettlebell handles and things like that. And so typically what I'll have a lot of my athletes do is they'll get up in the morning. Because I like the idea of just priming the body at the very beginning of the day for something like this and do anywhere from 10 to 20 minute of deep tissue work. Many folks who have access to like an infrared sauna or a sauna or some type of red light therapy device, they're doing it under one of those devices or in one of those saunas so the muscles are a little bit more warm and supple. And it's kind of a great way to start off the day too, because a lot of those red lights simulate sunrise. So it's really great for your circadian rhythm too. But typically in a red light type of room or a sauna, you start the day with 10 to 20 minutes of deep tissue work where you're just hunting down on any tight spots in the body and rolling them out or doing A lot of press and release or a lot of wave and shear type of activity. And that book, Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett is just fantastic in terms of almost like a cookbook where you can hunt down anything that's tight. And so it's not the same every day because it depends on what feels most beat up for the day. But allotting 15 to 20 minutes, preferably as early in the day as possible to do a lot of the deep tissue work is a game changer, especially for longevity in the sport. And then I'll a lot of times recommend that people combine that with another program that you can also do in the morning or perhaps during the day when you have a little movement snack or time to throw in something extra. There's a guy, he's actually coming to my house in a couple weeks to take me through a training session. His name is Dr. Eric Goodman. He's worked with a bunch of executives to pro athletes, to tour de front cyclists, to a lot of people who, who tend to have back tightness or glute deactivation. And two of those are, or those two things actually hold back a lot of athletes in terms of their movement potential. So he has a program called foundation training. It's a series of very simple exercises. He even has one of his master trainers is out there in your neck of the woods. Her name is Kate Murphy. Shout out to Kate and she'll actually meet with people and take them through these training routines. But if you haven't looked into foundation training, it's kind of like self inflicted combination of breath work and isometrics and elongation of the spine and what's called decompressive breathing. In many cases folks who have disc problems or like spinal compression, they'll do this as a way to apply traction to the spine or decompress the spine. But it's fantastic as far as one of those things that more people should know about in terms of a way to get the body into a super hyper athletic state using no resistance training at all. It's just basically you and your body and there's about 10 core moves. Most of the people I recommend when they start, they take about a month until they can actually memorize all the moves. And then they'll for example, get up, do the foam rolling and go through the 10 core foundation exercises or get up, do the foam rolling and then during lunch break do the 10 core foundation exercises which typically take take about 15 to 20 minutes. But from a sport, longevity and an injury Prevention standpoint, I would be doing the foam rolling and deep tissue work using something like Kelly Starrett's Becoming a Supple Leopard book, technically under red light or in a sauna or something like that. And then you combine that with something like Dr. Eric Goodman's foundation training, his true to form training. If you were to do that stuff and combine it with the kettlebell and with the calisthenic type of programming, game changer, it would be absolute game changer, the calisthenic and the plyometrics. So those are a few suggestions from the biomechanical standpoint.

Awesome. Thank you for that. Something else that I'm looking to add to my routine in the mornings. Not only are we getting that cold plunge, but we're purchasing a sauna from Costco and that sauna has red light therapy. So I can wake up, go on my back porch, do some hot and cold, jump in the. Jump in the dry sauna with that red light and get my day going, brother.

Yeah, yeah. So I'll give you a couple tips for that. Oh, and by the way, there's one other thing that a lot of pitchers, baseball pitchers and tennis players are using these days. I've got one mounted on a squat rack in my gym and it's great for warming up, especially for shoulder work. And it works fantastically for keeping the shoulders put together. It's called crossover symmetry. You heard of it before?

No. No.

Okay, so you can you get them on Amazon. They're this set of bands that come with a little placard that walk you through about 8 to 10 different shoulder based exercises from, you know, horizontal flexion to extension to internal and external rotation. Any athlete who's in a shoulder sport should definitely grab those and mess around with them. You could just use them as like the warmup, meaning, you know, if you're going to warm up for a kettlebell routine, you hit the Airdyne bike for five minutes, you hop off, you do like the series of crossover symmetries exercises. Those crossover bands also travel really well. You can use them as a warmup for a match or game. That's another one that I forgot to mention that I would definitely consider throwing in the mix for the heat and the cold component. A lot of athletes I think get a little bit nervous about this idea that's getting thrown about right now. I don't know if you've heard it before, Tyson, about how cold because it shuts down inflammation and does such a good job doing so that it could inhibit your gains or inhibit your adaptations to training, or inhibit the production of mitochondria or something like that. The thing is that that is true if you do a long cold soak after workout, but most of the studies that show that occurring, we're talking like 10 plus minutes in pretty cold water or some pretty hefty cryotherapy sessions at a really, really cold temperature. If you're doing a longer cold sit for recovery, like 10 plus minutes in an ice bath or in a cold pool, which of course I know is a. It's a pain in the butt and a real drag for a lot of people to sit in the cold for that long, but it's fantastic for recovery. The fact is though, it's so good at quelling inflammation that you would want to space the longer cold exposure by preferably 4 plus hours from any workout that you do. Meaning if you're doing a lot of your training in the morning, you would do your cold soak, say in the evening before dinner, which is a great time to do it anyways because it makes you super insulin sensitive and you can have all your carbs. For example, if you show up early tomorrow and we decide we're going to punish half, half a loaf of my wife's bread, we'll just go jump in the cold pool for 5, 10 minutes and get nice and chilly before dinner. Which is actually a great way to not only avoid the meat sweats, but also be able to stay super duper carb sensitive. That being said, though, the shorter cold soaks post workout, they're fantastic at decreasing the body's core temperature and allowing you to recover a little bit better without necessarily quelling the inflammation. It's also fantastic, and this is a great hack. During the hot summer workouts or the warmer months, you actually get in the cold before you go and start your workout and you get this huge rush, only for like two or three minutes you get in there, but you get this huge rush of adrenaline and epinephrine and this drive to train and like this really, really reduced rating of perceived exertion during your training by getting cold before you actually get in and train. I learned this from a guy named Brad Kearns who wrote an article about it on my website about how he'd use cold before he'd go sprints. He's a top masters track and field athlete, so there's something interesting about getting in the cold before you actually go work out as well for a brief cold exposure and then you save the longer cold soaks for later on in the day, preferably. And then if you're doing the cold after the workout, yeah, you do it, but not for a long period of time. Now back to the sauna. This whole idea of hot, cold contrast is a game changer for recovery. And I think the two best ways to do it, I'll throw three at you. A couple that you could use, or one that you could use on the road, and then two that you can use at home. So the first one is very, very simple. Gold standard for the use of that sauna, like the one you're getting from Costco, is you go about 25 to 45 minutes in the heat and then you finish with three to five minutes in the cold. That routine gives you a ton of the recovery adaptations. The insulin sensitization, the nervous system system recovery, the conversion of, not that you have a ton of fat, they'll help to convert white adipose tissue into metabolically active brown fat. And that's a very, very simple routine. It's just the sauna sit plus the cold. You don't have to go back and forth and back and forth. You just do the sauna plus the cold. 25 to 45 minutes in the sauna and then 3 to 5 minutes in the cold. And that would be something you could do at home. So I do that routine three to four times a week. And I'm addicted to it. I did it this morning. I mean, you just feel on top of the world. And that's provided you could still do your main training session later on in the day. Or this would be on a recovery day, for example. On recovery days, I always have a whole, what I call a parasympathetic menu for my athletes where they've got option for sauna, option for cold, option for a longer foam rolling session or even a massage, options for working in that core foundation training. Some different stretches, stretching routines, some different yoga routines. Even the use of breathwork apps, like one of my favorites is called Othership for really great breathwork routine. So it's like the recovery days. Some of the people I work with, literally people who are training for competition or a pro athlete or someone who has a lot of time on their hands, they're doing sometimes on a recovery day, two hours of what some people might perceive as training. Even though it's all just recovery based activities like sauna and cold, cold and foam roller and massage and recovery boots and breath work. And so by the end of the day, even on recovery day, there's a ton that you can do to amplify recovery. But anyways, when you're on the road, you aren't going to have your sauna with you or your cold plunge. And so there's two things on the road or at home that can work really, really well for getting that same hot, cold contrast recovery benefit. One, and this is what I do when I'm traveling. I got access to nothing. But a shower is 20 seconds cold, 10 seconds hot, 10 times through. It's a five minute routine. I learned it from this. He was actually a former NASA engineer who was in Wired magazine and had connected with Tim Ferriss on using cold for fat loss. And he had some people he was training literally burn almost 10 pounds of fat in a month just by doing this hot, cold, contrast shower once in the morning and once in the evening. But it turns out it's fantastic for recovery as well. And it's very, very simple. In the morning, in your hotel room or in the evening post training, you go cold for 20 seconds, hot for 10 seconds, 10 times through. It's a total of five minutes. And the amount of blood flow and recovery and removal of metabolic waste products from muscle is fantastic when you do something like that. The other one is more of an immersive routine, but this would be one to do on a recovery day. And I'll do this typically two or three times a month for recovery. And it works, works so well. And sometimes I'll do it with friends. We'll just be chatting and socializing while we do this. And again, if we have time, I could take you through this one tomorrow because I got a hot tub right next to my cold pool, but it's five minutes hot, five minutes cold, four minutes hot, four minutes cold. Three, three, two, two, one, one. And that's using typically a hot tub and a cold pool. You could technically do it with a sauna and a cold pool, but the immersion works better just jumping from one body of water to the other. And then for people who have a ton of time, you can actually ladder back up, up and do once you hit 1, 1, then go 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 4, 5, 5. I mean, you feel like a new human being after that type of hot, cold contrast. So those are just a few examples of what you could do as far as the heat and the cold.

Love it. Okay. I've been told that with me using Beamer for the last four years, it's really like increased my blood flow and then with that comes a lot of sweating. And so something I've been struggling with honestly is like, I Just sweat like a machine. And there's just sheets and sheets of sweat that come off of me. And you know, when, when I' Vegas, Palm Springs, west coast, when it's dry, you know, it's like an 8 or a 9 shirt type of day. When I'm east coast and it's hot and humid. I mean, literally, I'm just. I'm like suffering out there. I'm going through 15 to 20 shirts. Generally, like halfway throughout the day, I'm kind of crampy. I start cramping in my abs and it leads to my full body. I'm the brand ambassador of this company called Salt Stick. So I take electrolytes through them and take their salt caps. But I've gone into full body cramps a couple times. Definitely not fun. There's been some people that have seen me. It hurting pretty badly during some matches. But something that I dealt with two weeks ago, it was brutal. So I was in Dallas. It was hotter than hell on that Saturday. It was like 95 degrees with 90% humidity. Anyhow, I played six or seven matches that day. Didn't even play singles. I played mixed doubles and then I was supposed to play in a men's doubles final that night. I could tell throughout the day, like any time. I don't know. It's funny, there's like certain days where I can tell I'm going to cramp early, but I'll start feeling like my gas tank does not feel endless. It feels like I'm kind of hitting a wall. Like early in the day. It's almost like a heat stroke comes on where I start seeing particles in the air. Like my vision gets blurry. Like the back of my neck starts getting like a little tingly. Anyhow, that given day, I ended up going into full body cramps and couldn't play my finals match and had to go back to my hotel. Got a mobile IV nurse to come over and give me an iv. I ended up getting pretty nauseous as well. Anyhow, I was in full body cramps and I was dying, I guess. Is there anything you could suggest that would help with my cramping?

Yeah, absolutely. I got a few ideas. So, first of all, it's actually pretty rare that cramping is due to a loss of electrolytes and dehydration during the actual match or during the actual play. As a matter of fact, if you look at professional marathoning, the majority of athletes who log the fastest marathon times when they cross the finish line, they're actually the most dehydrated of the bunch and have lost the most body weight. Whereas the people who wind up in the medical tents are typically the ones at the back who are drinking too much water and Gatorade and develop something called hyponatremia. Yet there's this myth that's pervasive, that's not really helped out too much by folks like the Gatorade Sports Science Institute and in sports drinks manufacturers, that the number one cause for cramping is a loss of hydration electrolytes that needs to be replaced during competition. The fact is, it's usually the things that you've done leading up to competition that put you into a state where you're going to be more prone to cramping. And there's a few different things to bear in mind. First of all, the number one reason that folks cramp is due to what's called an alpha motor neuron reflex. The alpha motor neuron reflex. It's a protective mechanism. It's basically, let me put it this way. You see reports of a mom lifting a burning car up in the air to save her baby, who's underneath it. I don't know if any of that's true, but sometimes folks can engage in feats of superhuman strength, and the reason for that is because their alpha motor neuron reflux becomes inhibited. And that muscle protective mechanism that would technically keep the muscle from tearing itself after it's exerted itself too much goes away. Now, that's a good mechanism because obviously, if we could just lift cars and throw around logs all day, we would be sore. We would have rhabdomyolysis, we'd have muscle fiber breakdown. We'd be getting injured a lot. Very strong creatures, pound for pound compared to humans, like gorillas and monkeys, for example, they don't have as much of that reflex as much of that inhibitory reflex. So they have what might be considered almost superhuman strength, like the average chimpanzee. But what they don't tell you is those type of primates also tend to tear muscle fibers, rip muscles off of joints, cramp, and get all sorts of. Or, I'm sorry, don't cramp. They basically damage the muscles, and that's due to the lack of that reflex. Whereas in humans, we have this protective mechanism called a cramp, where the muscle will seize and cramp up before you get to the point where you can actually tear it or damage it. And the reason that that protective mechanism kicks in most often is because folks are asking their bodies to do something in competition or in racing or in match play that they haven't asked their bodies to do in training. Now, even though that's the number one cause for cramps, like not being physically prepared from a training standpoint for what it is your body's about to experience, that's actually a very rare reason for cramping amongst the pro athlete population like you, because you obviously train your butt off. It's not like you're one of those people who's like, jumping into a marathon with very little training and trying to run 26 miles and then cramping because your muscles are trying to protect themselves, because you're asking them to do something that they haven't had to do in training. However, I just want to make sure that folks know that the physical preparedness and the lack of physical preparedness is typically the reason that you would cramp during an event. And that just means you ask your body during training to engage in some efforts that are similar to what it's going to experience during competition. That's back to why I recommend the powerlifting and the kettlebells and the plyometrics and the explosive training for somebody like you or anybody who wants to get good at this sport. So let's shove that aside for a second, because let's just say you're training properly and it's not because you have a poor training training program. Well, a few of the other reasons for cramping would. First of all, top of the totem pole is a magnesium deficiency that's built up for weeks or months leading up to competition. Most athletes don't take enough magnesium. It's the number one electrolyte or mineral that's responsible for cramping during sports. And that's an easy fix. You keep a bottle of transdermal magnesium or topical rub on magnesium by your bed stand at night when you travel, when you're at home.

And you just.

Just rub that into as many muscles as you can, particularly focusing on the ones that tend to cramp most often. And that gets absorbed very well. It goes straight into the muscle. And you combine that with some type of oral magnesium supplementation. Now, for the transdermal, there's some great, I think two of the better companies out there. One's called Symbiotica. It's spelled with a K. Symbiotica. They do a really good transdermal spray on magnesium. Another company called Ancient Minerals, they have a really, really good transdermal magnesium lotion. And you can just apply that right before you go to bed. You could technically Apply it pre competition. But the problem is it's a little bit of a muscle relaxant. So I would instead do it before bed. And then I think one of the better forms of magnesium out there right now is by a company called Bioptimizers. They have one called Magnesium Breakthrough. And you can take about anywhere from three to six of those capsules before you go to bed at night. The nice side effects is they're also a little bit of a stool softener, so you can go to the bathroom easier in the morning. But magnesium would be one big one to focus on that in addition to a lot of the trace minerals that the average sports drinks. And I think you're supplemented by some electrolyte companies, right?

Correct. Salt stick is the main one.

Okay. Yeah. So salt stick is good. I mean, that's a full spectrum mineral supplement, so you're probably getting what you need from that. I think that top of the totem pole for minerals is something called Quinton. Q U I N T O n. You could probably throw in a little bit more of that, like, in your morning glass of water. And you should be doing, like, a giant mason glass of water every morning when you get up anyways. But I do that giant mason glass of water in the morning. I put a few things in it. I put hydrogen tablets in it because those are a selective antioxidant that are just fantastic for quelling inflammation and allowing you to recover a lot more quickly. I get them from a website called Water and Wellness. So I'll do three of the hydrogen tablets. I'll do one packet of this Quinton, which is these. It tastes like super intense seawater, but you'll know as soon as you taste it. Like, oh, there's salt and then there's salts. This literally tastes like I'm drinking seawater. But it'll build up your minerals so you can continue to use the salt stick, especially during competition. But I would supplement that with some of this Quinton in the morning in that giant mason glass of water. So you have hydrogen, you have Quinton. And then the other thing that I throw in there is this adrenal cocktail, because a lot of people, especially athletes who are training a lot people who are stressed out, your adrenal glands on top of each kidney, they burn through a lot of minerals and a lot of vitamin C when you're stressed out. So this adrenal cocktail, it's like a powder. It's made by a company called Jigsaw Health, and you just put a giant heaping scoop of that powder in your giant morning glass of water with some Quinton and some hydrogen, and that's like the go to tonic that you drink in the morning and combined with the magnesium spray and the magnesium at night. So you're literally for weeks and weeks leading up to every competition, topping off the mineral and the hydration and the magnesium levels to the point where you're at far less risk for cramping during the actual event. Now, a few other things related to cramping. One would be, and this is super interesting, it's kind of funny, there's companies out there now like selling pickle juice for cramping or selling what they call hot shots for cramping. They're super spicy or super bitter or sour compounds that people, despite pickle juice obviously being pennies on the dollar, just pour some extra pickle juice from the container in your fridge into a little bottle and drink some of that when you get a cramp. People are now profiting heavily off that phenomenon that shows that pickle juice actually does reduce cramping. There's some of these pickleball shots. It's crazy. It'd be great though, for the sport of pickleball. Obviously there's some cross branding there for or a company who has a good idea like the pickleball, pickle juice or whatever. The interesting thing is that when you have the pickle juice, you don't even have to swallow it for the cramp to go away. You just taste something super salty, or let's say those salt sticks, if they're capsules, you can break them open and just taste them in your mouth. And that super salty taste is what actually sends a signal straight to the brain before the stuff can even get absorbed into the bloodstream that causes a inhibition of that alpha motor neuron reflex that caused the cramping. So the reason I'm telling you this is that let's say you do everything I told you, but you got a super long match, super hot day and you develop a cramp. The way to get rid of it within like 10 seconds is you grab the saltiest, bitterest, most sour thing you can find. Again, a lot of people use pickle juice. A lot of people, rather than swallowing the electrolyte capsules, will literally like rip them open and dump them into their mouth and the cramp goes away due to that kind of like mouth puckering, super salty taste that fills your mouth mouth. It's this really interesting phenomenon. It's the same reason that like athletes who are bonking, if they literally Just like taste glucose in their mouth, it gives this surge of energy. So it's really, really an interesting phenomenon. So what you do is you get some pickle juice or you get your electrolyte tablets, and if you do cramp, you just put as much of it in your mouth as possible. And that super salty taste can reverse the cramp. The other two things I would consider, one would be what I already mentioned, that foam rolling, like the cross linking between muscle fibers, these adhesions between muscle fibers, that's a huge reason for that reflex to kick in. So the more you can keep those fibers aligned with regular foam rolling, regular lacrosse ball work, regular deep tissue work, the better. Even the use of these percussive massage guns that you could use before a match, that's actually super related to cramping. And then finally, the last thing I wanted to mention, related to kind of like the heat issue, which goes hand in hand with cramping. Is there something that a lot of people like? Like, they've shown that when your body temperature is cooler, when it's at night and you're sleeping, you sleep a lot better. And so a lot of sleep supplements now are putting something called glycine into their sleep supplements. Now, glycine is really interesting because it actually lowers the body's core temperature naturally. It's an amino acid that's found in muscle tissue, and supplementing with it can increase energy. But typically, a dosage of 550-1000mg of glycine naturally brings the body's temperature down. So you could technically supplement with glycine about an hour before your match. Like 500 to 1,000 milligrams of glycine. It's a natural way to cool the body's core temperature. So you should also consider that in addition to the minerals, that morning cocktail that I mentioned, the topical magnesium and the nighttime oral magnesium, the foam rolling and the taste of the pickle juice, and then the last little thing I want to throw in there, this one kind of flies under the radar. But there's a company called Fast Vitamin IVs. It's run by a doctor who's been on my show before, Dr. Craig Conover, and he actually makes these IVs. They're small push IVs that technically you're not supposed to do yourself. But nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Once you figure out how to give your. It's a push IV. It takes 60 seconds. Once you figure out how to give yourself these IVs, I literally just use a vein in my right arm and give myself one once or twice a week. It's like a Myers cocktail, but it's got a ton of these electrolytes and amino acids. And compared to paying 150 bucks going and sitting in a chair for an hour, et cetera, I'll throw an IV in a little mini sandwich cooler in my bag with a little butterfly needle. And when I travel somewhere, like international travel, and I want to feel really good afterwards, if I'm jet lagged or whatever, I'll just give myself one of these IVs. And again, proceed with caution, people. If you're listening in. You don't want to practice medicine without a license. But. But it's actually not that hard to give yourself one of these push IVs. And this company called Fast Vitamin IVs can literally send them to your house. You could travel with them on ice. And that can be a game changer too in the cramping and the electrolyte department.

Cool, cool. Love all that. And I'll definitely implement some of that new stuff.

Yeah. Well, man, I know we're already running up against time a little bit. I feel like we kind of scratch the surface on everything that we could do to get you fully optimized. And this might be the first of, of many discussions that we have. But man, I don't know how to bring this thing to a close. But all I have to say is if people are listening in, Pickleball is amazing. You should try it and you should follow Tyson. And again, I'll link to all his stuff@BenGreenfieldLife.com pickleball where you can leave your own questions and comments and feedback and use that Pickle Play match app that we mentioned to find a match, find a court, et cetera. But Tyson, what else would you throw in there?

Yeah, I would say, Ben, thanks again for having me on. Appreciate the time. You're a complete beast when it comes to health and wellness and all the above in that space. Look forward to spending some time tomorrow. Look forward to our families meeting tomorrow and building a relationship. And look forward to kicking your ass on the pickleball court whenever that is. Wink, wink.

Yeah, I am too. I know I'm probably going to tear something and cramp and be super sore if I ever actually do get a chance to play it. So you have to have a little mercy forcing on me.

Yeah, I would say for all the listeners out there, I mean, pickleball literally has changed my life and there's so many cool people that are coming in the sport. There's high end celebrities that are buying teams, there's billionaires that are buying tours. It's super embracing. And so I just can't, can't say enough about it. You guys are maybe a racket sport athlete or not a racket sport athlete, and you're looking to get involved in something. Pickle works for all ages, works for all demographics. It's a super fun sport. And as what Ben mentioned earlier, it's a fast growing sport in North America. So get your ass out there, play some pickle, go to your local courts. There's a lot of tennis clubs nationwide too, that are embracing pickleball. There's a lot of tennis directors that are bringing pickleball programming into their tennis clubs. Yeah, just a fun time to be in the sport. And thanks again for having me on, Ben.

Yeah, I'm super stoked to open up this sport to my audience, selfishly enough. Hopefully it just gives me a few extra people to hit with when I'm traveling around the country. And if you guys get a chance to also, and this is on my bucket list, or at least my to do item list, jump into one of Tyson's clinics because I'm sure that will vastly accelerate the learning curve and get you involved in the sport even faster. So I'll link to Tyson, his Instagram channel, his YouTube channel, his website, everything else in the show notes, along with his podcast, the. What's it called? Tyson the McGuffin Show.

Yeah, the podcast is called the McGuffin Show Camp Business called Tyson McGuffin, Senator P.B. camps. And I like to say after taking one of my camps, you can get McGuffin. So. So if you guys are looking to get MacGuffin, get over to my website, Tysonmacguffin.com not only do I love performing, I truly enjoy working with people, teaching and seeing people's games go full circle in a matter of these two day camps that I put on. So thanks again, Ben.

Sweet. You got to make the shirt if you didn't yet already get MacGuffin. All right, folks.

Of course, I've made it.

Okay. I was gonna say good. I'll have to get one then. Greenforlife.com pickleball. It's where the show notes are. Leave your questions, your comments, your feedback over there. Until next time, I'm Ben Greenfield, along with the great pickleball master, Tyson McGuffin, signing out from BenGreenfieldLife.com have an amazing week. All right, this is cool, but you want to pay Attention, because it's coming up right around the Corner on Friday, December 2nd. You're going to get a chance to join me and some really powerful healing physicians down in Sarasota, Florida. This is a live event. It goes from 8am to 5pm I'll be there. My friend and a brilliant former podcast guest, the Doctor Strange of Medicine, Dr. John Laurence, is going to be there. HBOT USA. Dr. Jason and Melissa Saunas are going to be there with their hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Brian Richards of saunaspace, Harry Paul, one of John's friends, who I recently met, who's also an amazing healer for an event that's super unique. It's all based around the elements Earth, Earth, fire, air and water, with a ton of treatments and technologies and modalities and very unique biohacks that you're gonna get exposed to during the entire event. Basically what I mean by that is when it comes to air, you're gonna learn about hyperbaric oxygen and ozone and air filtration. Everything you need to know to upgrade your air when it comes to Earth. Pulsed electromagnetic field therapy, Earthing, grounding, a host of other ways that you can use the power of the planet to enhance your health, your sleep, your recovery, your muscle gain, your fat loss, a lot more water. You'll learn about proper water filtration, how to upgrade your water, hydrogenated water, structured water, basically soup to nuts. Everything you need to know about water and how to apply it in your home, in your office and your life. And then finally, fire is a fun one. Lots of cryotherapy, a little bit of ice too. Breath work, inner fire practices, a ton of stuff when it comes to introducing the other element of fire into your life. So this event is super unique. John and I have been working on it behind the scenes and it has come together amazingly. There's even a VIP experience. If you sign up for the VIP experience, you could come two days early or stay a few days after the event. And basically you will get all the medical protocols customized by Dr. John and his staff. If you claim one of those 10 VIP spots that'll include like IV methylene blue laser treatments, John's really unique Bliss release, which is basically an endonasal adjustment, which is essentially like a chiropractic adjustment through your nose for your entire skull, which if you've had TBI or concussion or allergies or things like that in the past, it totally reboots that entire system. There's going to also be ozone treatments, Meyers IV cocktails, Exosome treatments, IV laser access to a CVAC machine, and John's entire facility is going to be at your best. And call if you got one of the VIP tickets. And then we're also probably going to have a little bit of a party later on in the evening after this event. The whole thing is going to be a pinch. Me, I'm dreaming full on cutting edge of biohacking experience and I'm just now letting the world know about it. So spots are going to fill up pretty fast. Space is limited, but if you want to get in now, here's how you go to BenGreenfieldLife.com Elements event that's BenGreenfieldLife.com Elements-event it's in Sarasota, Florida. Again, it's all day Friday, December 2nd. I would come in early and stay after if you just want to try out all the crazy modalities there. You know, I don't know how fast those VIP tickets are going to sell out, but either way this thing is going to be absolutely amazing. I just can't wait. Like I'm pinching myself. I can't wait to be on the plane to head down there and do this. So check it out. BenGreenfieldLife Elements event and I'll see you there. I hope.

More than ever these days, people like you and me need a fresh, entertaining, well informed and often outside the box approach to discovering the health and happiness and hope that we all crave. So I hope I've been able to do that for you on this episode today. And if you liked it, or if you love what I'm up to, then please leave me a review on your preferred podcast listening channel, wherever that might be, and just find the Ben Greenfield Life episode. Say something nice. Thanks so much. Means a lot.