Athletic Performance Podcast

Episode 028 - Tyler Ray on Optimal Technique for Maximizing Your Vertical Jump

• Ryan Patrick

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What if you could unlock hidden inches in your vertical jump—without months of training? That’s exactly what Tyler Ray, aka “The Jump Guy,” does every day in his lab. In this episode, I sat down with Tyler to uncover the secrets behind his unique methods, from maximizing controlled acceleration to improving approach techniques for volleyball, basketball, and more.

Tyler’s insights go beyond numbers on a force plate—he’s all about teaching athletes how to feel their jump, boost confidence, and break through plateaus. Whether you're a coach looking for actionable tips or an athlete eager to level up, this episode is packed with gems you don’t want to miss.

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M-2-peakfast:

Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm. Mhm.

Hey, what's up fam? It's coach Ryan here back with another episode of the athletic performance podcast. We've been on a little bit of a hiatus. Uh, can give you a number of excuses, but the main reason is that a lot of my attention and energy has been focused on the total coach, uh, operating system, the total coach OS, which is a mentorship group that I started to really help coaches with their speed, power and strength. And so I apologize. The podcast has fallen a little bit by the wayside, but don't worry, I have a list of professional friends and peers and potential researchers that I'm reaching out to, to bring on. Uh, to the podcast in the coming months. And so I expect we'll pick up the momentum here as things kind of settled down. So hope you're having a great holiday season, especially if you're in the U S we just passed Thanksgiving and now we're heading towards Christmas. So, um, that's a little bit of what's going on over here in my world, but today's guest, I'm really excited to introduce to you and our relationship started because one of my athletes traveled to go see him and get some work on jump technique. And this is a really tenuous area when it comes to strength and conditioning because I'm sure as you know they're just there can easily be a lot of turf wars when it comes to athletes and coaches claiming success for the the success of their you know as the success of their athletes, but at the end of the day Um, I always operate with, you know, that's, it's not about me. It's about what's best for my athlete. And while we have a lot of techniques and strategies and tools to help improve the physical outputs of our athletes. One of the things that I'm very clear about is that. I don't teach skill work. I don't teach my receivers how to run routes. I don't teach them my volleyball players, how to spike. I don't teach my baseball guys how to swing. What I do is I evaluate the kinetics and the kinematics of the movement and work on giving them the raw physical outputs. And so when it comes to, Um, an athlete, I really think about if I'm creating a player on, say, Madden, and I want to just maximize all of their stats, their speed, their strength, their power, their agility, their reaction time, those are all variables that within some, some, um, Aspect of training that I can improve but it's ultimately up to them to work with their skill and sport related coaches To maximize the potential of what that can do for them. And so, you know, I say at the end of the day I'm really just trying to give the coaches better clay to work with And so Tyler became a huge asset for one of my volleyball athletes who was having, having some trouble with her approach jump. He worked with her, he got some incredible, um, gains with her right out of the, the gate just by improving her technique. And so I knew right away that I needed to bring Tyler on and, um, let you guys hear just some of his perspectives on jump training, how he's improving jumps with his athletes, what technique he's using. Um, means for different athletes, different sports. And so we talk about some of the strategies with, you know, the approach jump with what the penultimate steps should look like. And I found this interview to be really exciting. And Tyler's got an interesting career arc himself, just, you know, going from being a professional dunker, a guy with a, you know, 48 inch vertical to actually being somebody who not only could You know demonstrate really high performance, but actually coach which is something that you just rarely rarely see so super excited I'm gonna let tyler share more in this interview about what he's done And I think it's a really great time. So if you're interested in how to maximize the power When it comes to jumping for your athletes, I think this review is or this podcast and interview is an absolute Uh, no brainer worth listening to. And after that, as always, would love for you to rate and review the podcast with five stars only. And you can reach out to me at athletic pod, excuse me, athletic performance pod at gmail. com. Uh, give me some feedback, people you'd like to see on some questions, comments, concerns you have. We'd just love to hear from you so that we can make, continue to make this a better resource for your coaching education and put you in touch with some really incredible coaches. who are doing great things out there. So hope you all have a great holiday season. Love you. Thank you for the time that you spend listening to this and without further ado, here is coach Ty.

Ryan Patrick:

It'll be pretty easy, but anyway, man, welcome to the show. I'm super excited to have you here. Um, we kind of came together because one of, one of my athletes who is into volleyball came to see you to work on some specific techniques with jumping, but, um, I don't know a lot about you. I've, you know, research your Instagram page. I love your content. But for anyone who doesn't know about you, can you kind of bring this up to speed of just your coaching journey and where you are today?

Tyler Ray:

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thanks for having me on when I found out that you had a podcast that intrigued me because I also had a podcast way back in the day. So it's nice to know that someone is open minded, especially when one of your athletes is traveling out to see another coach. That's always a bit of a worry when I have people come see me. So thanks for having me on first and foremost. Um, so yeah, I'm, I'm now in my. 21st year of being a coach slash trainer. So I started when I was like 19 years old as a traditional personal trainer. Kind of while I was in university, I went to the university of Windsor here in Ontario, Canada. So I'm just across the border from Detroit, Michigan, uh, kind of a border city. Uh, representative here. And yeah, I've worked myself up over the years through the ranks of kind of commercial gym settings. Um, doing more traditional personal training, general population and the odd athlete. So the reason I got into training athletes is myself. I was an athlete kind of my whole career. I competed for the University of Windsor as a track and field athlete. So I was a four time national champion track and field athlete with the University of Windsor. I got to compete for team Canada as a decathlete as well. And then I made my way into the world of professional dunking. And I found this on the kind of the early years of YouTube and was recruited to a professional team down in Florida to be able to kind of. Mosey around doing little halftime shows here and there for colleges, high schools, and then eventually, uh, to the NBA as well, which was really neat. So I, as an athlete, obviously had an affinity for jumping. So that was something that kind of guided me toward this, uh, end goal of being a jump specialist where I can now kind of sit in my private facility here. Ontario and have people come see me from all over that are looking for that kind of like specialist detail work. So, yeah, I mean, I started as a strength strength coach and did that for well over a decade. I still do kind of more of the, uh, accessory based lifting in the gym alongside of a lot of technical jump works. That's what I'm a little bit better known for is jump technique. I pioneered some methods well over a decade ago that have now been adopted and used kind of throughout the ranks of, uh, of, um, sport from amateur to professional level and, uh, managed to also certify just over 200 coaches kind of spread around the world, uh, in my method. So I'm still just trying to grow, um, the understanding of the importance of technique and how that applies to expressing your power at the highest levels. And I think, you know, just as well as anybody that. When you have something that is highly technical, if there are flaws, uh, inefficiencies within movement patterns, we lose a lot of energy and translation. So that's my goal. That's my job is I really just am here as an educator to help, um, you know, point the lens toward jumping and hopefully help people jump higher than they thought that they could.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah, I'm really excited about this time, because if you don't know, it seems like in America, a lot of strength coaches, you know, raise my hand on this are failed athletes. Right? So somewhere along this athletic journey, we kind of reached a stopping point. You kind of backed into this as a high level athlete in first, in many cases, some of these, uh, really elite athletes have trouble communicating or coaching or understanding the science sounds to me like you have a very broad understanding of both being a high level athlete. And so I need, I think you need to flex a little bit on. On your accolades here and how, how you can actually jump, but also learning how to communicate and coach this. So I guess the question to you is first, talk to me a little bit more about your athletic success and like your vert. Cause I think people need to hear that. And then I guess let's just start with the assessment process for you. So when an athlete comes in, what kind of things are you looking at? How are you evaluating this? What. are your priorities in terms of filling the empty buckets for these athletes?

Tyler Ray:

Okay, that's good. So two part question. If I understand you correctly a little bit about my athletic history and then more so when somebody steps into the lab, kind of what are we checking off in terms of boxes? So, um, you know, as an athlete, Track and field being my basis. I was a multi sport athlete through high school. I want to make that clear. Like I loved, um, figuring out learning and trying to master new skills. That was kind of the, um, the early obsession was more so parts of sports. I got Obsessed with so basketball, it was dunking and volleyball. I just wanted to jump high and hit hard and and throw a big blocks and with track and field, the sports built around that concept that their individual events that require a lot of dedicated focus and skill sets. So, uh, skill specific technique work. As a track and field athlete, uh, as a multi event athlete, you know, it's something that I track and field. I kind of fell into. I was a little bit more focused and dedicated to basketball early in my high school career. And unfortunately, we had some teacher strikes throughout my school. And unfortunately, you know, I didn't have a lot of opportunities to play at higher levels where I went to school. There wasn't a lot around me. So I tried to reposition my focus and track and field became something that I was also a little more adept with. And uh, really liked all of the different events. And I, you know, I competed at our provincial level of high school as a thrower, a jumper and a hurdler. And that's what universities looked out for. They were like, well, you don't really specialize in any one area. So why don't we try to make you into a multi event athlete? So I was very fortunate to be pulled onto the university of Windsor that during my time, there was kind of our legacy run. So we won five national championships in a row while I was there. So we had kind of the same, The most storied history of athletes present during that time and under the tutelage of like an extremely talented track and field coach in Dennis Farrell, who has since unfortunately passed away. So I was very fortunate to be there during an important time in the history of the Windsor Lancers, which meant I got to train alongside some really impressive athletes. People that are, were much more impressive than I was at that time. Um, but I did quite well, um, national level athlete for the entire time I was there. But more importantly, it. just reaffirmed and taught me a lot about the importance of training and performance. Cause I, from high school, I was a little bit more of a natural athlete. I didn't do a lot of weight room work. In fact, I don't think I really touched many weights until I was in university. Now this was in. 2003. Um, so it was, you know, quite some time ago, well over 20 years ago. So the information surrounding strength and conditioning and performance was different. It was not as, you know, mandatory in the grand scheme of things as it is now. And it taught me that if I put a little bit of work in on my body and understanding how I move, that I could get a lot more out of it than I ever anticipated. So I actually became a little bit better of an athlete. In my opinion, after university as I transitioned into the world of dunking, because I became laser focused on trying to figure out how to get my body to jump absolutely as high as possible. Now, in my prime, my official highest test of all time. So at a national volleyball combine that was hosted at the university of Windsor, I was allowed to basically come and test alongside the volleyball athletes, which was pretty cool. So, um, became a little bit more of a showcase, but I, I touched 11 foot nine and a half, which at my height was 47 and a half inch vertical. So it quite high. Um, I'm also convinced that I've jumped higher on, on many other occasions. So I usually say like at my prime, my peak vertical was 48 inches. Now more impressive than a 48 inch vertical was that. Average vertical was quite high as well. So as a dunker and jumper every now and then I tell my athletes this right, the sun, the earth and the moon will align perfectly. We're like gravity is just a little bit different and you get that perfect jump and you touch as high as you've ever touched. And that's a cool feeling. But true vertical jump improvement is that average change, right? When your worst jumps become better than your best jumps used to be, that's really the measure of success. So it was to the point where, you know, I could get loosely warm and, you know, um, jump up and put my head pretty close to the rim. And it was just a confident, uh, empowering feeling to be a jumping based athlete that kind of stood out amongst the, um, other competitors that were around. So yeah, as a dunker, I, I really focused my attention on maximizing my vertical jump through the use obviously of progressive strength training and also understanding mechanics at a deeper level because that was coming from the world of track and field as a one foot jumper. As I transitioned to dunking, I became more of a two foot jumper largely because I was trying to dissipate more of that force. I'm a bit heavier of a jumper. So in my prime, I competed around 200 pounds, six foot one. And as a jumper, that's like would be considered to be a little bit heavier. Thankfully, you know, I body composition wise, I was in a good position, but there was some unique forces placed on the joint capsules and connective tissue. So I had to figure out how to, how to make my body a little bit more resilient to these forces, especially over long term. So that's really the focus as I get athletes into the lab to try to segue here into this assessment protocol. What I'm, what I'm trying to focus on is figuring out where the athlete's current efficiencies lie and then where those kind of low hanging fruit, um, lies for, uh, points performance that we can focus on. So in terms of testing, when I bring people in or assessments, thankfully over the years, I've developed quite an eye for. mechanics and really what we call connectedness in a jump. So just watching an athlete jump once I can typically figure out almost immediately what's going on with this jump. And it's largely feel based. So as you talked about, I'm in a unique position where I've competed very high level as a jumper, which means I've experienced and felt what a good jump is. And when I watch someone jump, that's what's happening is I'm, I'm, I've understood how to feel it kind of within myself so I can determine where about the issues are lying. So that being said, in terms of just Kate, like key KPIs and metrics, I'm taking a look at just like raw output. So vertical jump, um, Armless vertical jump, counter movement vertical jump, we're taking a look at approach jump, everything's recorded as well and specifically approach wise from the side angle so I can help to calibrate some of those relationships of body position, or sorry, of body parts to other body parts. So really like mapping center of mass and hip height relativity. And then we're looking at RSI. So I want, I want to find out kind of that elasticity quotient and then determine largely where this athlete falls on as a jump archetype. Okay, so jumpers and athletes will exist along this kind of spectrum of more elastic speed base to more contractile strength dominant. And when we can determine relatively where that athlete falls along that spectrum, we can help to point the performance. Um, lens a little bit more accurately. So someone being a bit more elastic driven, they're going to benefit a little bit more from a higher degree of more plyometric output and sprint output versus a strength based athlete who they're going to thrive under those higher loads, more time under tension. Their body really Um, prioritizes that type of stimulus, and it's not to say that we don't work on the other end of the spectrum with athletes on specific ends. It's just that I tend to bias a little bit more training toward that, um, archetype. So that's really what I'm looking at. I'm looking at some, some basic strength parameters. More so like jump specific metrics, and then a lot of it is video and really just being present with the athlete to pick up some of those nuances and then deliver some of those technical interventions from there.

Ryan Patrick:

Very thorough. One of the, one of the, uh, caricaturization, I'm a slur in my words today that we consider that we communicate to our athletes to simplify things is that there are two ends of the spectrum. And on one end, we have our kangaroo, which is going to be your elastic fashionally driven type of athlete. And on the other end, we have our gorillas, very high force producing, but low velocity type of athletes. So kind of to this strength athlete that you attest to. One of the thoughts. That's around some of this training as well. We want to take a kangaroo who maybe doesn't have a lot of these force producing capabilities and give them some of the opposite end of the spectrum and vice versa. What you're saying and what I'm hearing you say is that perhaps there's a case to say we don't, we really need to maximize their strengths. more so than just worrying about giving them what they don't have. Is that an accurate interpretation

Tyler Ray:

to a degree? Yes. Like we, we definitely still want to expose athletes to the other end of the spectrum, just from a strictly progressive strength standpoint, like having more strength is never a weakness. However, it's the stress and stimulus to the nervous system that can really do that kind of like overarching damage to the jumping based athletes. So, you know, putting a heavy barbell on someone that's highly, narrowly driven you. will tax the nervous system to the point where they're not able to express their vertical at the highest level. So what we're doing is we're really just trying to tickle the end of the spectrum that they're on more frequently to give their nervous system what it's craving.

Ryan Patrick:

I love that. One of the things I want to build on with this conversation is it. And again, I think I'm speaking to more of the American strength coach because I, I always say I'm a recovering meathead. You know, I was brought up with building heavyweights. We had, you know, Arnold's encyclopedia was my gateway into this entire field. We had the Nebraska Cornhuskers from the nineties with the bigger, faster, stronger. And it seems so much of our strength training and our physical development ideology is based on this idea of just get stronger. And I thought early on that this was, you know, one, it was pedigree. This is kind of the legacy we've been handed from strength coaches in this industry. Two, I just thought. We don't have, we didn't have a lot of ways 10, 15 years ago to track velocity based training force plates. We're not commonplace. There were no other metrics we could track other than, well, let's just put five more pounds on the bar and see what happens. And I try to communicate to my athletes that there, there becomes this crossover point, right? Certainly a young athlete who's physically underdeveloped, who has prepubescent, they're going to benefit from basic strength training and just learning the motor unit synchronization, actually building some cross sectional areas. So they have more potential for force production. These are very basic things, but at some point prior to it, prioritizing your training towards very Low velocity types of training is not going to help you jump when, you know, the faster you jump and the higher you jump, you have a decreasing window of time with which you can actually apply force. And so if you want to become better at this, you know, we have to work on more of the RFD, more of the ballistic stuff. And so I'd love to hear your interpretation and thought process, because it sounds like you kind of found your way into this field to a certain degree, kind of after. Even after university, when you said that's when you're, you really started to take off and again, most of us come into this with a strength biased lens. But I don't think that's really the perspective that you have. And so I'd love to hear just your thought process of how you ended up here and what your perspective is on this development of strength.

Tyler Ray:

Yeah. Make something clear is like, I was exposed to, we call like traditional strength and conditioning kind of at a university level. So squat deadlift cleans, um, accessory based movements to help with solidifying joints and creating good stability. So like I've taken a lot of what I've learned from the strength conditioning world, and I still do apply that on a weekly basis here. Um, however, it was just made very evident to me, like throughout the entirety of my career, that there are just a multitude of tools that can be used to, to, um, affect change in a similar way. And. I was never tied and maybe it's like the, the, you know, my entrepreneurial spirit, not necessarily trying to compare myself, but it's like, I just, I like to march to the beat of my own drum, which means I don't tend to, like, I take in information and try to figure out what helps my situation and current system. But I try not to get intimidated by the industry, if that makes sense, where it's like, you know, the, The, you know, the, the Mike Israel tells, and the, and the guys of these like upper echelon caliber of influence would say like, this is a waste of time, just get stronger and strength is always going to help you produce more force. And there's, and there's nothing wrong with saying that, but a lot of these guys have never really experienced what it's like to, to jump at a level that I've jumped at before. And I've seen many different approaches, all puns intended to helping athletes jump quite high. Um, So when it comes to implementing training in my facility, it's just, I'm just open to figuring out specifically what this athlete thrives from. So I'm not being afraid to like sample some different stimulus to see how their nervous system responds. So I try to use some tools in the gym to get those, um, you know, test retest scenarios kind of pinned down. Utilizing, obviously we have three, force plates, but also things like, um, reaction training implements in the gym. It's a pretty quick and easy way to figure out whether or not like the, those, those channels are open and communicating quite fast is something like reaction time or, um, cognitive challenging. So when an athlete comes in, I'm going to test their nervous system when they first come in to see where they're at. And then based on that test, I'm going to determine how that day looks like specific to where their nervous system is at for the day. And that's, for me, it's just like, I'm just trying to nurture that nervous system, especially when somebody is coming in. to see me during season. They got a lot of stress and stimulus to the body on a daily weekly basis with multitude of practices and camps and tournaments. So it doesn't serve me well to pull people in and throw them under a heavy barbell necessarily. But, um, I, you know, I can expose them to some brief strength stimulus, but then really focus on things like stability. Quality movement and putting in good technical reps for their jump. And now that doesn't mean that they have to jump fully might be through some positional progressions where we're just getting them exposed to holding shapes holding positions to try to, um, create that that fluidity of communication within the body. So. Your your statement of like, I'm not really from a traditional strength background is correct and also incorrect in the same time because I did kind of come up early with trying to, you know, physically change my body and get more muscular and you know, I competed as a fitness model for about two years in my early 20s, so I did some more traditional bodybuilding. I've just played with so many different types of training myself that I've tried to pick and choose what I feel is the most appropriate for a jumping based athlete.

Ryan Patrick:

No, it's fantastic. And I'd like to transition with this into some of the stuff that you mentioned earlier, you talked about pioneering some methods. And so I guess the simplest way for you to communicate this might be just, you know, walk us through a typical session. I'm not saying we need sets and wraps or anything like that. But 1 of the things that you allude to that I think is so underappreciated are, um, The submaximal reps that really refined technique that cultivate the, um, just neural firing that we're looking for, so to speak, you know, I think so many times it can be, um, I see guys almost competing with who has the best height video, who trains the hardest iron sharpens iron and. Sometimes there's just a level of nuance. I think that gets so overlooked. That is really critical to the development of an athlete, especially when we talk about somebody who has such high outputs or is aspiring to get high outputs because there's just a cost to that. And. It, the way I like to think about it is if you don't know the cost of that, you better be ready to pay the price and for your athlete, that's not a good, good thing when they have these competing commitments that you're talking about. And so I'll circle back is, you know, what does a session look like? How are these technical reps? What are some of the methods that you really feel like you pioneered without giving us all the secret sauce, but I'd love to just, Kind of hear you expand on your philosophy.

Tyler Ray:

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's a, it's a big, it's a big one to unpack. I think we can do is we can start with the idea that jumping and, and improving someone's ability to jump is focusing on some, some larger macro concepts. And then we kind of distill them down from there. So with a jump approach specifically, cause that's typically the work I'm doing, right. Helping an athlete jump higher from a stationary standpoint is that really comes down to force production. It's very difficult. If you can, you can subtly tweak, um. You know, relationships of shoulder to hip and hip to ankle to help athletes jump a little bit higher from standing. However, people are coming to see me for, uh, the gravy, right? They, they want that, like, showpiece, that really nice, tight, fluid, uh, approach jump. And that comes down largely to, so speed management is, is number one. I think for me, what I'm always looking at is how an athlete manages their approach. Acceleration. I think it's generally understood that a good approach for a volleyball player is, uh, accelerating from slow to fast where we want that acceleration moment to happen through the point of toe off. Try to use the phrase accelerate through your jump and not to your jump. Right? I think that's what you see with volleyball players is you get this really quick, um, initiation of the approach and then we get kind of stutter steps and then we get this like Almost like a hop step into the takeoff and essentially jumping from a static position. So I'm going, okay, what is all this preceding kinetic potential doing? It's being dissipated largely through the floor and we're getting much more of just a raw jump output. So if we can show an athlete how to manage acceleration, number one, we're going to get immediately more out of their body. And we're looking for what's called our maximum controlled velocity or MCV and how we dial that in, especially in the lab. It's really just by troubleshooting an athlete has to feel what too fast feels like before they realize what fast enough is so I'm going to encourage an athlete to like, go as fast as they feel comfortable going, obviously not encouraging injury potential, but saying, listen, like, let's just let's turn your volume knob up. to 11. Let's just see what like a bit of distortion sounds like on your jump speaker, right? And what they're going to find out pretty quickly is that's not super comfortable. And I say, okay, let's do this again. Let's just back this off a little bit. And we're going to kind of like reverse engineer that controlled aspect as best as possible by having them just kind of naturally feel the calibration. And that's in itself, the most important element is this, this, this concept of feel. Okay. Jumping is feel based period. You, uh, an athlete cannot be a protractor. They have no idea how to, to find relative angles during movement. It's just impossible, but they can develop a much more natural feel to jumping by having exposure to good position and exposure to, um, you know, positive jump behaviors. So that's how I, I leveraged technique is, is number one is position. And number two is behavior. When are we, when are we initiating acceleration? Uh, why are we initiating acceleration? At what intentional level are we exhibiting that acceleration? And once we start to get a little bit more of a handle of when and why we accelerate, we can start to go to work with again, reverse engineering the jump. So typically what I'll do is I'll start an athlete from short approach and we Build out to that full approach and short approach really is just having an athlete accelerate through this crucial kind of gatekeeper stride in the jump called our penultimate stride. Okay, now, before I move further into this, you mentioned, I mentioned that I pioneered methods and I want what I had accomplished is really translating the world of track and field, which is largely rooted in technical nomenclature. very much. and pulled that into the space of two foot jumping to try to give two foot jumping a universal language to be spoken about. That's what I noticed when I did any research coming up as a coach was anything you could find on the internet about two foot jumping was written and, uh, when I deciphered it, it came out quite differently. Okay. Everything was, had its own word. Everything had its own understanding. Some people are like just, you know, less fat, more force, jump higher, done, wash your hands of it. Other people, right? So it's. I wanted to give it a bit of more of a universal understanding. And that became my, my, you know, modus operandi was like, I wanted to figure out how to create a nomenclature and an understanding of jump technique principles that could be applied and reapplied over again to a varying degree of, of ability levels. Okay. So Controlled acceleration being number one, we want to figure out if we can get an athlete comfortable number two is going to be like, how do we understand and map our hip height displacement. Okay. So, or really just change in center of mass during the approach. What we know from some studies, preliminary studies done on high jumpers is that. When our hips have a lower relative change in height, meaning that they don't do a lot of rising and falling throughout the jump, that we're able to maintain acceleration more efficiently. And when we avoid what's called late lowering, which is at the end of the jump, we get this dramatic dip in the hips, um, we're able to actually jump higher because we're not introducing a form of deceleration, right? When we get a late lowering in the end of the jump, really all that is is increased time under tension, longer ground contacts, and expenditure of a higher kinetic output. So I'm trying to figure out how to get athletes up to their maximum control velocity. at their low point, uh, relative hip height. And then applying these deliberate contacts in the right position. I think in volleyball, it was always understood that you need to get low to get high. Number one was always the phrase that I heard. And I hate that phrase because it doesn't provide nuance, right? You know, just as well as I do that. If I take an elastic driven athlete, a high, a highly neural athlete, and I tell them to squat down really low and jump, they're going to jump. couple inches off the ground because they do not produce force that way. They rely much more on connective tissue output, very dense tendons, and they want to, they want to amortize over a shorter range of motion. So get low to get high is relative to the athlete. Right. Athlete a maybe I'm athlete a I only lower, you know, relative to my hip, maybe three inches athlete be yourself, maybe much more strength dominant. You, you need and really enjoy that, uh, longer amortization period and prep prep phase. And that helps you jump your highest. So we need to provide more nuance there. And that's what I see with athletes coming in, uh, to the lab, especially from, you know, all over the places they've got this, uh, approach to jumping that was taught to them through the, through the field of volleyball. And coaches have done their best to kind of parrot what was taught to them 15, 20, 30 years ago, and they're doing their best to parrot that to the athlete. But the understanding of jumping has come a lot further. I've dedicated my entire career to understanding jumping at a higher level. So I'm here to try to encourage volleyball coaches, club owners, uh, strength conditioning. Um, practitioners that there are slightly different things to consider when we're dealing with, uh, jumping based athletes, if that makes sense. So in terms of my methods, there's two overarching macro concepts. So, uh, maximum control, velocity, helping athletes. Athletes find their appropriate speed, and then also establishing and solidifying this relative hip height and really helping an athlete understand how to progressively lower the hips through the approach so that their low point is established as we're transitioning through that penultimate stride. So it's a matter of applying those last two contacts in concert with the arms, and we're just redirecting the athlete off the ground. So we're just, yeah, higher efficiency. I love it.

Ryan Patrick:

One of the, one of the things that stands out is you, you kind of touched on this, right? So we, we test counter movement jump. We look at force production, like wash our hands of this. You just need to lose, lose body fat, add, add muscle force production. Voila. You know, we're great, but you're, you're getting changes in real time within a session. You're seeing athletes improve by several inches, which Might take months of training with some of the competing commitments that they have, but you're doing it just basically unlocking what they have already worked to develop that they're not able to tap into, you know, and inside of that, one of the concepts that I'd like to talk about is this penultimate step, because I've heard many times, you know, you need this long penultimate, but at some point, Lengthening that pen ultimate is going to require a decrease in hip height. That's the only way you can lengthen that stride. And so I'm hearing you say there is. I think like most things in strength and conditioning, there's probably some inverted view, right? Too short, you're going to have decrements in performance. Too long, we're going to have decrements. So I'd like to hear you riff on what that sweet spot looks like and how you're thinking about cultivating

Tyler Ray:

that for your athletes. It's a great question. I've actually never been asked to elaborate in that fashion, which is wild to me over this time. So I appreciate the question first and foremost. This is something I get on a lot of my, my videos and content that I post, right? Individuals that see a 60 to 90 second clip that I've posted and tried to do my best to provide nuance when reality it's. near impossible. That's why the captions are there. But most people see a video and then they're immediately in the comment section and didn't read the actual information below. Uh, so penultimate stride serves two distinct purposes, right? So number one is going to be to either create or continue the acceleration of the approach. And number two is going to be, uh, establish that relative hip height, uh, lower the athlete's center of mass to that, uh, preferred low point prior to the application of those last two contacts. I think the misnomer is that the longer the better, and in reality what we're trying to do is find relative length distance and also relative hip height, um, to be able to, to be able to solidify that relative length for that athlete. So if you're much more neurally driven, you're going to have a little bit lower of a hip drop because that elastic, um, tendency sits there. So you will have what looks like a much more compact penultimate stride. You're not going to get the exaggerated, uh, aesthetic position in that mid flight where you see that almost like splits and the arms are back and it's long and low as you're saying, right? As the hips lower, The stride can lengthen the strike and lengthen if the athlete is bringing in enough relative speed and then also has the subsequent stability and strength to be able to absorb and redirect that acceleration. So a lot of times what happens is people get this information bigger, longer, penultimate. They go and try and they realize, well, I'm jumping lower. Why is that? Well, largely because that. Plant foot is getting so far in front of you that when you, um, hit the ground and start absorbing that force, it's strict deceleration. All, all we're getting is the body's kind of auto correction coming in going, no, no, no, too fast. We're going to slow you down. This is, you're not prepared for this, uh, physiologically. It's going to be helping an athlete understand where that relative distance lies for their success, which really comes down to short approach reps, which means I'm going to preset an athlete's hip height in a static position. So we'll just say it. Let's just lower the hips. Let's play. So for instance, if we're dealing with a. We have what are called plant sequences. Either an athlete is going to jump right left, or an athlete is going to jump left right. Typically a right left takeoff in volleyball is a right handed athlete based on just the mechanics of our takeoff and vice versa, left right is a left handed athlete. I mean, in some cases you do get goofy footed athletes, but typically I'll try to encourage them to transition out if they're young. I'm going to have a right left plant Lower the hip and load weight into their left foot and then what we're going to feel is this Deliberate aggressive push towards some sort of landmark Maybe it's a wall and I want to feel I want the athlete to feel like their hips are leading this movement Okay, there's a tendency in volleyball to do what's called diving Which is as we initiate the penultimate stride the head the shoulders and the chest They lean forward and we get this kind of like, um, piked position and the logic behind it from the volleyball community as I get is that, well, what it does is it puts an athlete into a position where they get more, um, hip flexion as a result, more hip extension, more power, and also it's creating a little bit more of that broad jumping effect to give some distance to the jump. Listen, I get it. However, if you put an athlete in a good position where the chest stays a little bit more upright, uh, we're driving through the hip in order to get our plant foot down and keep a bit more weight behind it. Our hips are going to be in plenty flexion and still have a lot of room and potential for extension. And what we're doing is also putting our center of mass in a position where now we can utilize the plant foot and the block foot as they're intended to be used. So I've done, uh, kind of the only case study ever done on The jump approach and force application. So we do use dual force plates and I had a sample size of eight athletes It was small but still still kind of prelim and what we looked at was relative penultimate stride distance and also we took a look at the Uh, the ground contact time of the plant foot and block foot relative to that athlete to figure out what is required at those higher ends of jumping. And what we found is that athletes that had a longer relative penultimate stride, uh, and also a less of a flexion angle from the torso to the hip were the athletes that jumped the highest. Okay, so we, it wasn't the athletes that dove forward. It wasn't the athletes that had. you know, um, short penultimate strides. It was relative length impacted output of the jump. And that's something to consider as well is that relative length can look different, meaning that the lower hipped athlete through the penultimate stride might visually look like they cover more distance because of the exaggerated position. But if you take a look at it, an elastic based athlete that has a much more compact penultimate stride, it looks like their penultimate is shorter. But in reality, what we get is an athlete bringing in a higher degree of initial approach speed. So their. Their penultimate stride has much more acceleration prioritized leading into it. And as a result, you get even relative strides. One just visually looks different. So that's, I think where the confusion lies is that if it doesn't look like the, my, my emblem that I have right with the big split stance and the arms back that for some reason that's not a long enough penultimate stride, it's relative length is, is really what we're looking for. And short approaches help to determine what that relative length looks like. And building that natural feeling comfort with it. Sorry. It's very like this talking about any one part of the jump requires kind of reverse engineering. Like, how did we get there? And then where does that go from there? So I'm trying to always stitch together, um, elements of the jump.

Ryan Patrick:

No, I mean, my, my bias is always towards sprint speed, right? And I tell guys, you know, if you change, let's say projection angle. So the angle of your body relative to the ground with Excel, with, you know, your initial acceleration, there are so many other factors that have to change, right? The cycling of your lens, the distance you're going to cover, like you can't talk about it in isolation. And sometimes I think people try to do that and it really, uh, creates more confusion than clarity. And one of the things I think is interesting that you pointed out was this. This idea of the trunk angle, right? Because if I'm watching somebody on force plates, which we use to measure and they have excessive trunk flexion, I'm, I'm dubbing that somewhat of an inefficient breaking strategy that they're not able to decelerate their mass down, or it's a, a way for them to create more downforce so that they have a longer time to push. So the fact that it becomes Okay. Or even ideal in an approach jump to me is kind of, uh, maybe the volleyball coaches don't know about this or, I mean, am I, am I wrong here? Am I off base?

Tyler Ray:

I think it's just a slight misunderstanding of what that trunk angle represents. So I think to a volleyball coach for, uh, more flexion and forward leaning of the trunk equals a little bit more. A little bit more hip extension power and then also relative distance or broad jumping real estate that they're covering. However, if you apply those last two contacts appropriately, you can most definitely still maintain a more upright trunk posture and cover as much if not more distance with more relative height displacement. So that's kind of where i've come in to say listen, like i'm not trying to Say what you've done is wrong. I'm saying hey, maybe there's another route that could help your athletes thrive at an even higher level and that's Unfortunately, the reality we live in is that training? So strength coaches volleyball coaches the community of athletics There's a lot of ego unfortunately here from from the coaches side of things where as you're saying Maybe the coaches are are we'll call them quote unquote failed athletes in their time and they're really trying to like validate themselves and their work in that they're going to stick their heels in real hard and try not to move for anybody and then also show success in their field. When in reality, it's not about us at all. Okay. It's just not about us. Like, yeah, like we get to do something really fun and cool and explore our own passions, but the medium we work with is a human being, another human being that we're trying to affect change in. So if we can point the intention, I think in the right way, hopefully it helps to Dissolve a little bit of the ego attached to it, and we can get more out of our career, more out of our legacy and more importantly, more to the athlete.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah, um, I want to build on this because I think the dunking thing is super fascinating to me. We spent a lot of this conversation talking about. The volleyball athlete, the approach jump, how does this or what's consistent with this philosophy when we talk about a basketball athlete or somebody who's dunking? One of the things you mentioned, um, I guess I would be a goofy stance if it came to volleyball, but I was a right handed athlete in basketball. I was used to jumping and planting my left foot for layups, right? That was my preferred side. Um, so I just love to hear about some of the differences as well as some of the consistencies

Tyler Ray:

from sport to sport. Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. So number one, the methods principles remain the same no matter how you apply them. Um, Really what we're doing is trying to create an environment where athletes can develop a deeper, more relative feel to their jump and those are going to help no matter what type of athlete you are. The difference from say the volleyball court to the basketball court is that with a basketball athlete, I'm going to train all the different Plant variations with a basketball athlete, meaning that all the reps we do on a right left approach. We're going to do as a left right approach. We're going to do as a left foot take off. We're going to do as a right foot take off because the game demands that the game demands dynamic execution of jumping from multiple angles off multiple limbs, finishing with multiple hands. So it makes no sense for me to try to train their jump in this like vacuum of one solid plant style. Um, we're also going to likely try to put some shiftings, um, Some shifting parameters on their drills in the gym as well. Maybe there's an obstacle in the way, maybe they're coming off of a screen and then having to implement that approach right away. Really what it does is it gives athletes more confidence to get through gaps and spaces and create their approach on the fly so that when they get through that gap, they're immediately able to take off and get quite high into the air. So, In terms of basketball to volleyball, not a lot of changes aside from we're going to expose them to a bit more, uh, a bit more variation of approach takeoff just based on the game that they're playing. I'd love to hear if you feel like there's any differences between a two foot versus a single foot takeoff. That's a good question as well. So the, again, the principles are the same. Visually, they look quite different, okay? So in a one foot jump. Like a two foot jump, maximum control velocity, find the speed that you can tolerate. Number two, hip height displacement, the penultimate step in the one foot jump and the penultimate step or stride in the two foot jump, they happen at the same time. The second last contact of a two foot jump is called your plant foot. The second last contact of a one foot jump is called your plant foot. The last contact of a two foot is your block foot. The takeoff foot of a one foot athlete is your block foot. The block foot and two foot is a redirection or braking mechanism. In one foot, it's a redirection or braking mechanism. So all of the points of performance are the same. Visually, they look a little bit different. There are two different styles of jumping. In one foot, we have a power contractile or strength based jumper, lower relative hip height. Um, The free leg or the leg that is driving through our knee drive in a contractile based jumper. You're going to get more of what's called a toe drag or a sweep. You might actually hear that athlete taking off like a squeak on their free leg. That's okay. That's also a method of, of regulating acceleration as well. And then you have a speed based jumper. Speed based jumpers, more tall, more neural, more elastic. Typically when they take off, uh, they cycle their free leg. We call like a butt kick and that's because they're trying to keep up and accelerate through takeoff. So in terms of two foot to one foot, everything meshes quite beautifully. It's just visually they look a little bit different. Love it, man.

Ryan Patrick:

You're very well versed on this, obviously. It's kind of all my focus,

Tyler Ray:

man.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah. Happy to hear you're using force plates. Um, I don't know which ones you use in America. It's really kind of down between Hawken dynamics and vault, at least at the consumer level, um, barring research, what, when you're testing your jumps, I know you did some approach jumps and I'd love to maybe talk to you off air about how you actually standardize some of these penultimate steps on the force plates. Cause I find that super fascinating, but what. You know, we get this dashboard of metrics can be overwhelming to a lot of coaches. I think they're even for the people who I find have a lot of competency with data collection and creating all these algorithms and charts that sometimes the data just sits there. So what are maybe just a handful or even two or three metrics that you find really valuable to make some informed training related decisions for your athletes?

Tyler Ray:

It's a great question. I'll be honest with you. So I don't have force plates in my lab. I've had access to force plates before. I have, I have a jump mat in my lab right now. So I'm just, I'm just getting, I'm just getting flight relative flight time. So for me, when I'm taking, uh, those initial metrics, like I'm, I'm using, Number one is vertical displacement just as a kind of foundational benchmark. So something that I can kind of test retest on the fly, um, RSI. And then we're looking for like singular ground contact metrics from a fixed box site so that I can go apples to apples, athlete to athlete. So I'm looking at a 12 inch deficit and I want to just see across a sample of 10 efforts, what that looks like. kind of average contact time looks like. So I'm not taking a ton of, to be honest with you, I'm not taking a ton of metrics on, on the mat. It's for me, it's a testing, an in session testing, um, piece of equipment so that I can kind of like make a change, send them back on there and I can map out their nervous system as well. It's kind of to see like relative drop off in terms of their output. Um, when I had access to it to do our case study, this was down in Utah and quite a few years ago now. We had a dual setup. I don't know the software they were using to be perfectly honest with you. I could get you that information if you're interested in it. Um, but what we had to do is we had to actually set up the force plates differently to be able to get that information. Typically they're set up beside each other, one for each foot. So we had like individual limb feedback. I did like, we had rotated them so that they were staggered one in front of the other so that we could get plant foot block foot now. The surface area when we went horizontal with them changed quite a bit right obviously when you go linear You got a lot more surface area to deal with so there was a there was a kind of there was a layer a placement Requirement for the plant and block which means on some of the efforts some of these athletes that maybe have a bit of a lower Hip height their block foot is a bit further in front. They were missing that second end Missing that second force plate. So we actually had to get them to like land on the first four force plate a bit earlier. So it was actually a bit challenging to get all the measurements. We had to have them jump a ton and I appreciate all of you. If you're watching who was doing that for us, but, um, The, the information we were looking for there was really just, we were looking for some validation or at least maybe it was just to, you know, say we were doing things completely wrong in that the. function of the plant foot and the function of the block foot were what we, you know, always assume they were, which is that our plant is, is a much higher concentric, um, contributor to the jump experiences, a lot less eccentric loading than the block foot. And we were trying to find out like the varying degrees of differential between the two, like how much more eccentric force is the block experiencing than the planet. I mean, significant, it was like 3. I can't remember the exact metric. It's in, it's in the actual report, which I can send over to you as well, but it's significant and change. Um, and, and that's what we were finding was like these like higher end jumpers, their eccentric force output was just at a, at a huge degree higher than the relative, um, athlete that was a little bit more of an amateur jumper. So yeah, to be sorry, tangent for you there, brother. Um, um, I want more exposure to force plates. However, exposure to force plates to be able to map approach output is tough because you're confined by the physical implement itself and how it can be applied. So I, I, I guess what I'm getting at is we're still kind of looking for like a perfect way to. assess and fully map the jump. And I mean, maybe it's mocap, maybe it's some sort of combination of, of three dimensional mapping of the jump. Uh, there's some great work being done by a buddy of mine, Sam, um, who is currently, uh, trying to, he's writing his dissertation on, on jump mechanics and he's doing a ton of work. We've, I've been able to, uh, be a resource as part of his PhD committee, which is kind of fun. So we're, yeah, we're just really still exploring the nuances of jumping. My focus. 99 percent of the time is on how can I communicate jumping at a higher level? How can I teach it to the masses? I'd love to sit there and nerd out on my own about it, but like this is I think why I actually personally shifted out of maybe the more traditional strength and conditioning landscape is that I don't personally find as much enjoyment in getting into the weeds of metrics. Like I want someone to understand them. I want someone to help me like decipher what it means at its deepest levels. But more importantly is like, well, what can I learn about how to teach it better from that information? That's really my concern. I'm an educator by trade. I came out of university and I was a teacher for three years first while I was personal training on the side and then figured I. Like, my passion is teaching, and the, and the medium I'm most passionate about is athletics and athletes, so it just kind of made sense to marry the two together. So I think my career has been much more about elevating my, my educational abilities and my communication abilities to a higher and higher level so that I can affect change across a broader domain.

Ryan Patrick:

No, that makes perfect sense. I think at the end of the day, as coaches, we are educators, because if we're not educating our athletes, they're not really going to make the desire changes,

Tyler Ray:

correct?

Ryan Patrick:

On top of that, it's not every athlete is not just we're not playing like the money ball game here, right? They're not just a set of numbers. They're human, they have nuance, they have experience, they have things that we have to appeal to, to get them to actually get the kind of outputs that we want. So I am, I am in full agreement with you on this. I just, I think it's something that often gets overlooked, right? Because I mean, I'm probably like you, I love to nerd out. I read the, I love reading the research. I love, you know, trying to solve this puzzle in whatever unique way I can, but at the end of the day. I have to simplify this and kind of go back to an athlete and be able to express what they, they ultimately need to accomplish. Yeah. That's the

Tyler Ray:

art, man. That's the, that's, that's what coaching is. It's an art form is like, how, how sharp is your sword when it comes to being able to translate all the, the nuance and the metrics. Cause athletes could care less about that shit. Like they don't care. And I remember early in my career, I was so geeked to be able to like parrot the information I had. And I think that's like a, a young trainer mentality is I just want people to know how smart I am. I was like, cool man. Like it's good that you're smart and you should have that confidence and you should always be looking to improve your understanding of your craft. What we're doing is we're translating that. Into real life conversation, we're trying to affect change and improve confidence. We're trying to improve empowerment within an athlete. And that's the real magic that goes on in the lab. And the biggest changes I'll find, yeah, I can play around with speed and position, but most often it's getting an athlete out of their own way. It's that they might have been conditioned over years of different coaches telling them that Like you likely won't be someone that jumps very high or a female athlete for that matter. It's, you know, it's the boys that jumped the highest and they get this, they get this notion in their mind that there's really no need to work on their jump beyond just, Hey, I get some strength work in and then I can just go play volleyball. I try my best to get them out of their own way and say, listen, like you are, you are already more capable than you realize. And it's like, you got to give them that one little glimpse into it. And that's where the positions and behaviors might do that. They give them a glimpse into their potential. And then as soon as I have that little fracture in that athlete that they're like, Oh crap, like they, their eyes get wide and they start smiling. I know I've got them, I've got them. I can, now I can go to work with this athlete. Okay. It's going to be just building and building and building. I want someone leaving my lab feeling infinitely powerful. about their own potential. That's it. And that's a huge win for me, whether they've jumped a half inch higher, whether they've jumped four inches higher, whether they've jumped the exact same, that athlete's going to have one thing that is completely intangible, which is just a, just a burning desire to keep improving and realizing that they're worth it.

Ryan Patrick:

My default stance is you haven't reached your potential yet, and I want you to consider the possibility of what it would look like for you to double down on you and actually achieve something amazing.

Tyler Ray:

Yeah,

Ryan Patrick:

and I would say, like, even if you're not, you don't reach the level of success, right? Because there's so many things that go into sporting success, not just if it was as easy as who had the highest physical outputs. It would be a really clear path to how we develop, but you can learn so much about yourself by really just going after it, and you'll realize that in probably several domains of life, You just have so much more to available to you. Um, if you're willing to do the work so

Tyler Ray:

much more, man, so much more. It sounds like that you're doing great stuff over there as well, right? I really appreciate that. It's nice to know. Like I get caught in this, in this private bubble over here where, you know, I, I try to put my blinders on to a lot of the industry at times because I, it's, it's, it is a lot of noise and there's a lot of great stuff out there, but it's really, really rewarding to find out. To, to know that there's just other people out there doing really, really great work and have that same kind of underlying logic, which is you're just trying to affect change in the human being and trying to help them be a little bit better. Because you know, 90, 95, 96 percent of these athletes that we see, they'll play sports in high school and then they'll, then they'll be done and then they'll go off to their life and you hope that maybe just maybe one moment in one of your sessions is giving, has given them an extra tool that they can take to do that with. Thanks. And that's the end of the day, what we're looking to do. I keep

Ryan Patrick:

my circle small for that reason. I try not to pay too much attention to what's going on. Cause it's just, it can be disheartening, but that's the nature of social media. So I want to, we've been going almost an hour here. I want to wrap up with just a few quick fire questions. And, um, so first off. What's the sickest dunk you've ever had?

Tyler Ray:

Oh, I mean, like just technically the sickest dunk or like my, my most, my best memory of a dunk is like, I've hit some dunks in practice sessions. Yeah. I mean like a practice session, best dunk I've ever hit. Um, I think off the backboard behind the back, what for me was like a really, really cool dunk. It was super hard with the timing. I never hit it in a contest because it was so challenging. Um, but I hit that in practice and that was yeah, fully timing based, really quick hand movement. The finish is really fun. Um, in competition, my, my best, my favorite moment from a competition would have been, uh, I, I dunked in a, the world dunk contest in Moscow, Russia in 2012. So I went across, I was brought over as one of, at the time, 12 dunkers that were considered to be some of the better ones kind of floating around in the world, which is pretty fun. And it was a half court stadium dedicated directly to three on three basketballs. This was part of the world three on three FIBA world three and three basketball championships. So there was a Stadium built around a half court. There was a jumbotron, there's crane cameras, they have an intro for you. They bring you out. It felt like I was walking out like to like, you know, the warmups for like an NBA game, but on a half court was kind of cool and dunking in front of like five, 6, 000 people that had that type of energy was just, was wild. And my, my memory was, I went up for my very first like practice dunk attempt. And my legs gave out my nerves had kicked up so bad that like I lost all feeling in my legs and I remember trying to jump and they just kind of buckled like a newborn giraffe. Like I just like someone pushed the button and just collapsed me and I remember thinking oh shit and I eventually hit a couple really nice dunks in front of the crowd. But in terms of like career moments that was such a like what am I doing? How did I end up here moment that it just resonates with me. And I think. Hold on here. Hold on. I got it. There you go. So this picture I have behind me is from, this is in Russia. You can see the crowd in behind there. Actually, I back it up. There you go. It's just a cool picture. Anyway, that's me in Moscow. That sticks out for me as like an experience I'll never forget, but sick dunk wise. Yeah. Off the backboard, behind the back, I could jump in over people's heads, put them between the legs, like off the glass between the legs, a lot of like just jump. My big thing was jump really high. Dunk really hard. Like I was trying to break my hand every time I dunked. That's awesome. NBA, NBA jam vibes with the, yeah, yeah. It's the shoes. It's the shoes. Okay.

Ryan Patrick:

So what's

Tyler Ray:

your training

Ryan Patrick:

look like these days? How many times a week are you dunking?

Tyler Ray:

Well, so I just turned 40. Um, I don't right behind you, man. Yeah, I, I, I can still dunk. I don't do it a lot. anymore. I, I suffered a pretty devastating career ending injury back when I was about 30 years old, low back. I landed off a warmup dunk in, uh, in, uh, Venice beach, uh, for an ESPN event. And I, I ended up having, um, some fractures in my vertebrae and some disc issues. And, and it just, I retired because I couldn't walk well for about eight months and it took my training completely out of the equation. So that was an unfortunate end of my career. However, I've worked myself up over the last decade to be able to Be a little bit more pain free, but the back still poses an issue when it comes to high velocity output. So I try to save my jump reps for demos for athletes so that I can, you know, it's, it's my, it's my livelihood. Uh, my training is much more general fitness based movement. I probably work out three times a week myself right now. And it's, it's quite mobility, stability driven, um, a little bit of progressive strength training, but nothing crazy. I'm not really pushing the envelope anymore, man. I'll be honest with you. Like, that's not my focus anymore. I want to remain healthy. Thankfully, I, you know, I think I'll always kind of look athletic, which is probably good for the brand. But, uh, in terms of my own general health, it's just trying to make sure that I'm doing. More things that are good for me than not. Excuse me. So what's, what's up next for coach Ty? Yeah, I'm about to drop my brand new six week jump technique program. It's called flight school. It's going to be dropping Black Friday week. So I haven't given the date yet, but that's coming very soon. This is something that can be implemented at home. Uh, body weight and bands only. And it's a progressive three phase, uh, program over the course of six weeks. So I'm super excited about it to go along with a few other products I have. I do have a master class for like coaches and athletes that are looking to like understand things at a deeper level. But once this is done, uh, I'm going to be starting to build out my a new coach platform. So a platform for coaches that are looking to have resources, support, and then also a certification that goes along with that as well. So that's going to be probably the 2025 focus is creating a system that can be implemented at a club level. That

Ryan Patrick:

sounds amazing, man. I can't wait for that. And, uh, for those who don't know about you, where can they find out more about you?

Tyler Ray:

Yeah. Come hang out with me at on Instagram at jump guy tie. So jump guy tie, pretty easy. It all rhymes. Uh, and I'm on Tik TOK jump guy, Tyler. Apparently there's a jump guy tie out there. I don't know where you're at. If you're at hit me up. I just would love the name. That'd be great. Uh, and I have a YouTube channel as well, which is youtube. com slash At jump guy, Ty, and on my YouTube channel, I have a mix of things, long form coaching content. So miked up coaching, uh, from year from across the years, I have a reactions and critiques. I try to find stuff that's fun on the, on YouTube and give my, you know, my two cents about it. YouTube's like an outlet for me like I like to have fun and be creative on YouTube So other than that you can contact me through my social media platforms If you're interested in trying to come see me in my jump lab here I have people that come see me from all over the world. So happy to work with anybody who is interested in improving

Ryan Patrick:

All right, man. Well, I appreciate your time. Just hang on here so we can finish the upload and I'll get this out soon so we can let people know about your, your new products dropping next week.

Tyler Ray:

I appreciate that, man. Thanks again for having me.

Ryan Patrick:

Yeah. Beauty.