370: RYAN DEGALE- More Golf, Less Pain. Can You Fix Your Back?

0:00:04 – Jeff Pelizzaro
The 18STRONG Podcast, episode Number 270 with Ryan DeGale from Golf Body. Thanks out guys. Welcome back to the 18STRONG Podcast, where we’re here to help you build a stronger game, because we believe every golfer deserves to play better, longer, and this episode with Ryan DeGale from Golf Body is exactly about that Playing golf for as long as you possibly can. Ryan is the owner and founder of Golf Body down in Miami and he is an orthopedic spine specialist. His background is in strength and conditioning, but over the past 17 years has really become an expert in the spine, especially working with golfers. So I like to think of this as being a bit of a master class for especially those golfers that are out there, like yourself, possibly like myself, that have struggled with some back pain in the past and finding ways to really help yourself to eliminate your back pain and really to give you a more optimal and optimistic outlook on what the possibilities are for you to play pain free golf in the future. Ryan is an expert at really breaking down the anatomy and the physiology of what’s going on between the fascia, the muscle, the ligaments. He’s got a great Instagram channel where he really dives in and shows different exercises for these different types of exercises and for spine health in general. So you’re really going to enjoy this episode with Ryan DeGale.

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Ryan DeGale, welcome to the 18strong podcast. Thanks for having me. Yeah, man, this will be fun. We’ve had a couple of conversations, we’ve tried to do this before and had a couple of technical difficulties, so this is going to be fun to finally dig in and get to chat a little bit more. I think that this is going to be a masterclass on the back, which is what a lot of our golfers need. I think I’ve learned myself, even as a physical therapist, just watching a lot of your content, your Instagram and just kind of learning about what you do. I’ve learned a ton, and so today, what I would love to do is make this very practical for the golfers listening on, what are some of the things that they can do, how can they understand Maybe they’re back a little bit better and the things that they need to do to help prepare themselves. So, first of all, welcome back to the show.

0:03:08 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, awesome, so it’s good to get it in. Got a little bit of practice before, so looking forward to digging deeper into it and maybe just touch on a few subjects that maybe we didn’t touch before. Maybe there’s some things I left out, that I could do better this time.

0:03:21 – Jeff Pelizzaro
No, all good man, yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about your history, though, because you start out in the strength training world, but you are a spine specialist and you’ve gone deep and you’ve learned from some of the best in the world regarding spinal health, and now you especially work with a lot of golfers too. So this is a perfect lineup for what our people need.

0:03:43 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, so I’ve been a strength coach for 17 years. I’ve been orthopedic specialist for 12. I felt like you know if you can make the biggest difference? You know I wanted to. I love niche, right, I’m very nerdy with that kind of stuff and I kind of got put onto this, this kind of Givolié rabbit bowl where it just literally just never ends. These courses are so awesome and so practical and so useful that you can retake the same course, even the most basic ones, 30 times and learn something new every time.

The you know G was a former orthopedic surgeon who studied anatomy. You know, he was tired of cadaver so just became a surgeon so he could study living anatomy, because living anatomy is living, is different than you know with like formaldehyde and all of the dead body stuff you know. So. And then he developed a series of an entire program, not just the algohm method, to prevent surgeries. And his, from his words as a surgeon, he says that 3% of all back surgeries are necessary.

And so you know, you know it depends, right? So we’ll say like maybe non-contact, like disperneations, or you could have like I don’t want to get too technical, but maybe this shifting forward or backwards. They call it a retrolyzed thesis or a spondylized thesis, and you know there’s a lot of things that we can do for ourselves where we can. You know it’s a self-responsibility thing. And he says favorite quote is you are your own best therapist, and so I really love that, and so that’s pretty much what I teach. I basically teach people to not be codependent so we can get them strong and fit in those bombs. Yeah.

0:05:09 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Love it, love it. So when you say that and when Guy says that you know 3% of back issues are, you know, really necessarily need surgery, what are some of the things that you see people going in for where you’re just like man if I had, if I was able to get my hands on this person. What are some of the diagnoses or what are some of the issues that people go in for that really you feel like man if I only had some time with them.

0:05:34 – Ryan Degale
A few millimeters of space or the disverteation at L5S1, you know they when they have symptoms like very heavy symptoms. But you know everything with the tissues in the body there’s really not that much room. So if you create a little bit of lubrication and a little bit of space in the right area and able to, you know, restructure the pelvis, create a little more flexibility, the ribcage, and so they’re able to play golf, because you know when you most players, after they hit a golf shot, that’s when they have back pain. So you need space to decelerate the golf club. You don’t get to the top and you drop in pain. It’s mostly after the ball and so just kind of reconditioning things. You know it’s.

It’s difficult because you know, you know the the medical industry is really governed by insurance these days where you have to code. A lot of the programs are coded, you know, and it’s difficult for the doctors and therapists where they’re kind of at the mercy of the insurance companies of how to treat and this stuff. And so why a lot of people have better um with private practice or cash. Not everybody can afford it. But you know I’m trying to bring small awareness to that and you know it does not have to be fancy, it just has to be right and it has to be consistent.

0:06:39 – Jeff Pelizzaro
And what would you say is kind of the primary driver of that pain. That is most typical. Obviously, there’s a lot of different things that can go on with the back, but you’ve got these golfers you said a lot of times. You see that they have pain as they’re finishing their swing, they’re getting through contact. What are the typical structures, what are the typical issues that are causing that? Or, and you know, back wise, hip wise, shoulder wise, and what are some of the things that you feel like most guys or girls could prevent this if they had a little bit more knowledge of what they needed to do.

0:07:09 – Ryan Degale
I think, just really a specific warm up. Because you know, like, if you look at professional sports, you see, like you know Steph Curry, he’s, you know, doing some drills on the basketball court. You see, you know, when I’m writing a program for somebody who does this game for a living, you know they’re at the gym 30 to 45 minutes prepping the tissues, getting their nervous system activated. You know, warming up the ligaments correctly and doing all these kind of things in the lower back that are specific to what golfers need. You know, maybe a few pelvic till, some spinal translations, some rolling on, roll this mind, because everybody’s so afraid of fletching. But you know, fletching we have to in sport. You know that there is a lot of our flexor chain being used and so we need to prep the body in that way where everybody’s afraid of doing extensions and flexing. But you know we have to train it in a controlled environment so that we can go out there and not have to think about it. And with the Aldo method it’s basically a French acronym for creating space in a joint segment and so you know, you can use your own body way to decompress your spine in different segments of the spine after your rounds, which is fundamental, and then you go to sleep and then the tissues will heal at that length and you’ll be able to slowly but surely rehydrate this, the body. If you give it enough the great environment, with the right tools, it can regenerate.

I’ve seen it, you know. I’ve seen it in imaging studies, working with people with severe scoliosis when they were basically given a ticket of paying for the rest of their life. It’s just a management system. There’s no cures, it’s just a management system. How can I manage? You know the way I feel every day with the two of us, the tools I have, and I think that gives people a lot more empowerment than just being the sort of victim thing which is unfortunate, with the surgeries, pills and injections. And you know it’s destroyed a lot of lives and that’s really the truth.

0:08:52 – Jeff Pelizzaro
So I’m sure that a lot of people listening, myself included, are thinking man, this is very refreshing to hear that you know it’s not a death sentence when you start to have back pain in your 30s or 40s or 50s. And I think a lot of people just kind of assume that either I’m on my way to getting surgery at some point down the line, or I’m going to have to give up golf, or I’m going to have to start to restrict some of my activities.

0:09:17 – Ryan Degale
We are not giving out golf for our Never right, that’s it.

0:09:20 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Forever. You play it until you keep swinging forever. But so, regarding like the looking at the X-rays, the MRIs, the films, so you’ve actually seen changes in the disc space and the different tissues after going through some of this maintenance stuff.

0:09:38 – Ryan Degale
Yeah with my clients, and G puts up slides with a lot of cases. We’ve seen cases of some of the most well-known athletes in the world. You know he’s kind of like the guy who works in the shadows and nobody knows about. He is so paranoid about quality control, which I really love him for. I mean there is some, you know, like Bryce Turner from LDA USA.

You know that he’s the best LDA teacher in America. I mean he’s worked with Kansas City Chiefs, to the LA Dodgers, to any professional hockey, baseball, you name it, and so including pro golfers, and you know you just have to be really careful because you know precision is key when you’re like in the LDA world there’s five levels, he’s creating six, but even at level four there’s only, like you know, there’s only like probably a hundred of us in the world and so there’s only four of us in the state of Florida, and so you know the supply and demand is not really there. It’s kind of mostly. You mostly find these techniques referrals. We don’t. We’re not like Morgan and Morgan Hubbubboards, and you know all this other stuff going on you know what I mean.

So I know for a fact that you know guys like Woods and Cantley, and you know a lot of these other guys, have used this method. I mean, cantley had the ticket of yeah, he had a misdiagnosed disfracture and you know. You know there’s a lot of different tools but you know, sometimes I think it’s becoming a lot more popular and so you got to be a little bit careful because essentially, what you’re trying to do, you’re trying to create an anchor and then you’re trying to, with different angles of the way you position your limbs, you’re creating forces that oppose that anchor and it takes somebody the lot of experience. It’s not as simple as just kind of downloading a video and doing it right the first time. It takes. It’s a skill that you have to develop and you, quite frankly, can’t afford not to have it. I mean, I suffered from back pain.

My background is track and field. I did mixed martial arts type boxing, brazilian Jiu Jitsu and that kind of stuff. When I took a break from golf I played. I started at 11, played golf every day for probably 10 years, got burns out, you know, did the martial arts thing, came back to golf and you know I’ve been, you know, enjoying it ever since, but you know, these are a lot of things that we need to take responsibility for and you know, and just not you know it takes a lot of the fear away, in my opinion, when you have a tool that you’re like okay, I feel this. I haven’t understanding what it is, and that’s kind of what ELDOA practitioners, and so our practice shares, teach people how to do.

0:12:12 – Jeff Pelizzaro
So can you describe for for all of us, especially kind of the in lay person’s terms as much as possible, what’s actually happening when you’re doing some of these ELDOA techniques and why is it so effective in helping to produce the space, helping to decompress? So that’s a really great question.

0:12:32 – Ryan Degale
So everybody’s seen the inverted tables, right? Yep, so you hang upside down and your ligament system is just hanging upside down and you’re creating space that way. Well, what happens like when you go like this? Then gravity takes over and then you’re like a slinky. You go back to me, decompress, you get temporarily they look pretty bulky to me. They’re not something you just carry in a suitcase, right. Right, say, if you’re with your boys and you’re playing scene Andrews and the links up over there and turmeric and all that, and you start having backman, you have your, you know, upside down inverted table, you don’t.

So the ELDOA method is so, without getting too technical, it reconditions so ligaments connect bone to bone, tendons connect muscle to bone, flashes like Saranrat for our body. That creates a structure and it has intelligence and it communicates with our brain of what’s going on as far as length and tension and all this kind of stuff is extremely intelligent. And what the ELDOA gives you an opportunity to train all these systems to support that disc in gravity. Right, so you’re going to war with your tissues for a minute and so you’re actually stretching those tissues, stretching, stretching and you’re creating end range of motion with all this stuff. And then when you stop the posture and you can tensely do this, that structure is way stronger than it used to be, and so you’re able to do things and create space and fold that space and create circulation to get that disk to where it needs to be. And that’s what the difference is.

0:13:58 – Jeff Pelizzaro
So it’s almost like you’re creating a space, like an inversion table would create it, but you’re forcefully doing it and while you’re doing it, you’re teaching your body how to support those structures, how to kind of you know. Watching some of your videos online, it’s interesting to see how many little muscles are all around the spine. I think most of us don’t really visualize that when we think of our backs, that there’s so many little muscles, ligaments, tendons, everything that connects all of these different pieces of the back, and so you’re helping to train all of those different pieces to basically support it, almost like a bridge, like a structure hanging from guide wires.

0:14:36 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, yeah for sure, and the great thing is is that the specificity of it. Now, the inverted table is one exercise, right, there’s 120 plus L-doll postures, and so like there’s L-doll postures for the TMJ. I mean, believe it or not, the skull moves. There’s biomechanics of the skull that have two L-doll postures for which are too technical. I’m not that smart. I use the ones for the SI joint in the spine mostly for golf. The ones for the hips are really important. A lot of people have hip pain, a lot of hip replacements and stuff like that.

0:15:08 – Jeff Pelizzaro
You mentioned the fascia and how basically elusive it is, but how important it is. It’s around everything in our body pretty much. How important is being able to understand its role in not just our body but our posture, our athletic ability, even from the standpoint of swinging faster or moving better. How much does the fascia and how much are we just now starting to learn about how important it is? Because it seems like before it just kind of used to be thought of as almost like a throwaway tissue or like just the saran wrap that holds us together.

0:15:39 – Ryan Degale
I mean I can’t say the bare to myself. I think Europe is far ahead of America when it comes to studying the connective tissue. The people who are the best tissue specialists are in Germany and France and so they haven’t forgotten about it. It’s mostly a little bit more towards the American side. The standard of care in America is a lot different paradigm than it is in Europe. It’s not that great in Europe either, but it’s not very pharmaceutical driven as much. It’s not very surgery driven as much. It’s not as much as much as things like this. They don’t make billions and billions of dollars from pain medication. It’s not mostly an American thing. I mean it’s.

Sometimes people get addicted to pain meds from back issues and that causes a whole other set of issues. The throwaway tissue yeah for sure, that’s what Guy says. He says that a lot of the American scientists they basically threw it away and then studied organ systems and everything that we’re talking about. But it’s there for a reason and it’s almost like it helps disperse energy through the body. It gives us our structure.

We don’t have structure without fascia and so you know how these guys can jump off of buildings with parkour and all that kind of stuff and energy is dispersed correctly and movement disperses energy. Energy is never destroyed, it just changes its form. And so you know, you know, being elastic in the golf swing, having a good energy absorber and having normalization to that fascia and training it in its maximal length will train the nervous system so you’re less likely to have like tears with ligaments and all this kind of stuff. So you’re training that body to almost get ready for being overstretched and having intelligence and having intelligence so you don’t have sprains of lower back issues and that kind of stuff.

0:17:26 – Jeff Pelizzaro
So are there specific techniques that you use? I mean, obviously we’ve been talking about the aldoes and kind of these one-minute longer postural type situations. But what about for that explosive reactive stuff, for that like the X factor that you are talking about in your Instagram series and that whole stretch and contract, and how do we train the tissue for that? Or even a situation this will ring with a lot of people that we just saw, like in the Super Bowl when that football player was running off the sideline to go into the game and tour as a Achilles. I assume he tours Achilles.

0:17:58 – Ryan Degale
Crazy. Yeah, he did tour as Achilles. I was like, yeah, look at that left leg. I mean, we were just talking about that. And so bridges have cable to sway energy and so in good engineering, everything moves. The earth moves, so you have to sway energy and that’s how our tissues work. As far as that is concerned, I think it’s Hydration definitely plays a role into that sort of stuff, and also a lot of Gee teaches a lot of proprioception and neurological techniques, because ligaments are intelligent, they’re constantly communicating with the brain of like, okay, you’ve heard of the Golgi tendons and stuff like that.

And so there’s ways to create awareness and some of the major ligaments in the hip for better where it is, because a lot of the times most people work on the hardware and don’t upgrade the software. I could have a computer that’s very powerful, but if I don’t have software to tell it what to do, then it’s going to be inefficient. And so with golfers, for instance, if you have issues with trail elbow stuff, there are certain ways to create awareness in the glenicumeral joint or the AC joint, or making sure that you have enough awareness in certain parts of the elbow Because, like takeaway, and then you have a lot of these different arm structures that players are plagued with and this and that, and it can be just kind of a case by case basis and that has kind of a general statement for that. So you know it goes in cycles. So you want to take what somebody needs in the first cycle, say, if they’re extremely tight, they don’t have any. You know they don’t have good motor pathways. You want to, you know, regulate that. And then you go into a lot more reinforcement and reinforcement is so important to stabilize the joint.

If you lengthen you must strengthen right, and so most people, you know, have no mobility. They strengthen and then they go on speed. And then I just put up a story of a 76 year old guy who I took through a program, put him on a stack system. That guy gained over 10 miles an hour at club head speed. Dude, that’s incredible. Like he’s, at 76 years old, swinging between 96 to 104. Whoa, and he started at 89 to 92, I think he said and so, but he’s a general. You know, you put in the work. We barely used any weights. When you get elastic and your brain knows what to do and how to move, it makes the golf instructors job so much easier Because you know these guys have bodies that don’t move in front of them. Then they have to try and make a golf swing out of that, so it’s challenging for them.

0:20:35 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, if you could go a little bit further into that idea of you know many of us just kind of strengthen, then we try to throw a speed onto it. But you also said if you do end up lengthening, you got to strengthen. Why is that so important, aside from just going and trying to get that extra range of motion or go get more flexible, which is what 90% of the golfers out there think is I just need a bigger turn, I need to stretch more.

0:20:58 – Ryan Degale
Power is nothing without control, and so adding stability and you know if you have if you don’t have enough stability for the body, especially in the spine area, then you’re more subject to ligament tears. You know where they overstretch and there’s not enough stability to support the joint correctly. And so I’ve had people who have programs where we do 80% stretching, 20% reinforcement and you have a little bit of awareness in there. And then I have people that are opposite. I’ve had, like there’s certain golfers who are female, who are hyper elastic, where we do 80% reinforcement, 20%. I didn’t even have them do one stretch, maybe one or two for a certain, maybe some of the internal rotators of the hip and stuff like that. But you know they’re doing, they’re being stabilized because that’s why they have pain. We’re the same guy who has a symptom where he needs to do the opposite program.

0:21:47 – Jeff Pelizzaro
And when you say reinforcement, what exactly do you mean by reinforcement exercises?

0:21:51 – Ryan Degale
Just strength training you know like, for instance, it depends where their weak areas are, but a lot of the time the proximal hamstrings are weak when you have, you know, your sit bones, where the hamstrings originated.

And then there’s two that goes into the on the meadow part of the knee, one to the outside of the knee, and so do I want to reinforce. Is this person’s knee unstable? There are certain ways to reinforce the fibers that are a little closer to the knee or the pelvis, where the pelvis has weird things going on, where either it’s still too far forward or it has these sort of motions called torsions that cause issues. Most people think they have a leg length discrepancy, where one leg is a little longer than the other, but it’s actually a pelvis issue that you need to address. That’s pushing one side forward and the other one is back, and so you know, and then they start having like issues with plants or fascia, and you know their motion and their gall swing have done balance. Because you know if you have a lot of weight on one side compared to the other, you can cut some prompts.

0:22:47 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, many times, whatever the area is that they’re having the problem with or the pain in, isn’t necessarily what is really causing that pain.

0:22:56 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, sure, it’s a structural balance thing. I think structural balance like paramount with 80% of. I have about an 80% success rate with people with orthopedic problems, mostly back injuries. They’re low hanging fruit. For me, back injuries is very, very like if they didn’t get hit by a bus or fall over from a you know a two-story building or something. I’m like you got a really good chance. You could be feeling good, and so I just like the easy cases and then I’ll have more complex cases. I had a client from a guy from Canada who had 20 surgeries and so like he’s playing golf pain free. Why can’t you?

0:23:30 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, wow. So what about the golfers that either have back pain or maybe the ones that don’t have back pain? Maybe this is an even better question. As far as, like a maintenance thing, kind of a preventative maintenance thing, what are one, two, maybe three things that you would recommend Like, hey, these are some, like you said, low hanging fruit things that you can do to maybe prevent it or, you know, help to really almost eliminate or reduce your chances of having back pain with golf.

0:23:59 – Ryan Degale
I have to realize that there is a world outside of the Florida weather and there’s a lot of people out in the North. You know that it gets cold in the morning and stuff like that, and so, like I always put, I like to put the seat warmers on and that kind of gets things. You know, something very simple like that is really huge. You don’t need, like you know, sure, we can get into micro for specifics, but you know, if you go and you start, you know if there’s a gym or anything like that, or you can get on the stationary bike for a few minutes just to get circulation and heat. Most people use ice, which is a big mistake. You want to get circulation and you want to move that water and blood around to create anti-inflammatory properties to that area. And so the seat warmers definitely. You know getting on the bike and stuff like that.

And you know I don’t want to be biased and say learn L-dope postures, but you know, at least have an idea. I’m sure Bryce has a few YouTube videos up that. Only look at Bryce Turner if you must, okay, because there are some things in there that G is not happy about, but Bryce is the man with that stuff. I got to be a little careful because we signed NDAs. You know it’s up to be a little bit. You know I can, you know, do stuff like this, but demonstrating it he gets a little crazy about that.

0:25:17 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, and, like you said, that’s the quality control piece. Right, that’s somebody who has really mastered their craft and doesn’t want to kind of bastardize by just people throwing up YouTube videos, and so definitely we’ll link up to Bryce’s, I guess, youtube channel if he has it. And I know that, like Dan Hellman did a course through TPI, that I know a lot of the TPI specialists. If you’re a coach you can go look at that stuff as well. You know you’re good friends with Dan and highly recommend working with Dan as well.

0:25:49 – Ryan Degale
What about? Yeah, dan’s awesome, he’s actually who put me on to these methods.

0:25:54 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I took a golf bomb.

0:25:56 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, I took a golf bomb mechanic course with him, you know, 12 years ago, and I asked him, you know, do I take the red pill or the blue pill? And he told me the red was G stuff, and so that’s what I did.

0:26:06 – Jeff Pelizzaro
So what about when you find somebody that and you mentioned like some scoliosis, or you have somebody that and I’m kind of speaking about myself you know, you look at somebody, you look at their posture. Maybe on their films, their MRI, their X-rays, you see that their spine spinal curves are maybe not ideal. Are there ways to change that stuff and what are kind of the techniques as far as like, obviously we’ve talked about some of the LDO postures, but what about even just like static stretching or static positioning? You know we’ve seen some of these different things on Instagram where you’re laying over the top of these different devices. Do any of those things work? Or how do we go about kind of changing some of that structural positioning?

0:26:49 – Ryan Degale
You know we’re a little bit more in the school of thought with active versus passive techniques, and so you know not being reliant on, maybe, a machine or anything like that. You know, I just took a scoliosis masterclass with Guy last year and I learned a lot of new things that I didn’t know before. But you know, in a nutshell, you’re gonna wanna be a little bit more into reinforcement, because scoliosis is a rotational disorder. Do you have a C-curve or do you have a functional S-curve? How bad is it? Does it affect your breathing, cause the diaphragm attaches to the spine, are you?

You know, I just had a woman come to me today with lumbar scoliosis and there’s very little spacing on one side of the desk compared to the other. And so you know, ldo postures are awesome for sure, but reinforcement is something you’re gonna more so wanna focus on versus just doing a lot of stretching, because sometimes areas are tight for a reason, and so what you wanna try and do is to try and focus on hey, if I’m really weak on one side, or if you look at somebody with scoliosis, they have substantial more muscle mass on one side. That’s buying for the other, and you wanna try and build up, you know, just without getting too technical, a little bit more symmetry.

0:27:59 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Gotcha, the last time you and I had a chance to talk, we discussed a little bit about global posture stretching, mild facial stretching, ldo stretching. What’s kind of the differentiation between some of those and how does that apply for some of the stuff we’ve been talking about?

0:28:17 – Ryan Degale
So, um, mild facial stretching is putting a chain of connective tissue under tension with a specific area. So if I want to isolate, you know the biceps from auris bicarbon, you know hamstring muscle, I’m going to do certain things. I’m gonna put a lot of other areas under tension, including the eyes are important with that, but that’s more specific right Now. If I want a global posture stretch, we’re for, say, the thoracolumbar fascia, which is like the connected tissue from the middle despite to the lower back, which is great for my X-Factor series then that’s putting a figure eight of global connected tissue under tension to support the body more in a dynamic manner, in my opinion.

0:29:01 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Well, you mentioned the eyes. Why are the eyes so important in some of these?

0:29:04 – Ryan Degale
So the eyes connect to the skin and the brain, called the dura mater, which is the fascia of the brain. So the brain is encapsulated by the dura mater. The dura mater has a connection to C0, which has a link to C1. And so if you want maximal fascial tension, the eyes have to be looking low, the crown head has to be pushing to the ceiling and that puts all the ligament system under tension all the way down to the lower back. For a healthy spine to be healthy, it has to be healthy from C0 to S1. It just has to. And because it’s, you know, remember the bridge, the cables on the bridge, how it sways energy. It’s that’s called tensegrity, right, and so that’s how it structures this first energy. And our body is no different.

0:29:50 – Jeff Pelizzaro
So what’s, what’s one of the well, you mentioned, the guy that you’ve been working with that has, you know, has had major surgeries. I’m just wondering what’s, what are some of the more serious cases that you’ve dealt with and what were some of the things that you had to work on them with? You know people love hearing stories, stories that they resonate with as far as the pain they’ve been through and getting back out on the golf course.

0:30:10 – Ryan Degale
You know, mostly guys. You know I want to be called the grave digger so because I dig those careers out of the dirt when they think you’re dead. You know, and so you know cases where professional golfers you’re like my career is over, I can’t do this anymore. I went to X and Y and tried this and that and got the surgery and it’s. I’m never the first person people go to.

I’m normally, you know, people say they’re the trainer for the PGA tour or like the, or the stars or the celebrities. I’m like the desperate person trainer, you know, because you know what I do is not necessarily flamboyant and but it does have a purpose where he teaches you how to be a master of internal forces, where you can pretty much pinpoint where you need to create space and I’ve helped players, you know, get very fast in a short amount of time with minimal to no risk, because there’s a risk with anything. You know. I just feel like, if you must in golf I like train light, move fast.

Um, olympic weightlifting I’m look, I know how to Olympic weight lift. I’m actually a CrossFit too, god you know like. I worked at a CrossFit gym my early part of my career and I think there’s a lot of good boxes out there too, but like I think people overdo heavy and explosive. You know I don’t mind med ball throws. I think the stack system is superior. I’d prefer to work on flexibility, neurological control and strength, like in a safe way, and then you hit the stack up and then you got a no risk. You know what have you seen and they’re moving well.

0:31:42 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, what have you seen with, like some heavy lifting, heavy deadlifts? Have you seen any issues with what that does to the spine itself or other tissues that really have steered you away from that stuff?

0:31:55 – Ryan Degale
You know, I assume everybody has scoliosis. So unless you have somebody who has unless I like to get x-rays of every person I train just have a global view. Now I have done Deak teaches something called a gravity squat and there’s variations that somewhat look like a front squat. You know there are some variations that look like a suitcase deadlift, but you’re doing certain things with the pelvis and certain techniques with the eyes and the crown, the head, that put global tension and then you’re just working the lower body and the lower back. So again, it’s the small details that make something that looks almost identical, different and over periods of time that will compound.

0:32:35 – Jeff Pelizzaro
When you look at it, golfers, and you know how they stand over the ball. Looking at posture, do you feel like there is kind of a? Is there somebody that you look at and you say like that tour pro has kind of the quote unquote ideal posture.

0:32:49 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, sure, I think the most important thing is the gravity line. It’s basic, where our brain thinks where we are in space. So you can take, like in front of the earlobe, in front of the. If you have a side view, where you have the earlobe you have the greater Turkana, where the hip bone is, and then in front of the ankle, they call it the lateral malleolite or the mid foot.

And you know a lot of people that I see their palaces are out of order and a lot of their weight shift is on their toes and so in their golf swings this makes a lot of motion from feel of the toe. You can see this. I have a pressure tracer right there. So you know we can actually test for that as well. And you know, you know there’s I hate to use the stair-tip thing like early extension, but you know that’s a cause and effect thing. So you know you can be a golf pro and you have your students. You can’t figure out why they’re having these issues with their pelvis-body motion and it could be because of structural problem, not nothing to do with what you’re saying. You know, and that’s why I, like you know, very good acquaintances with Jim McClain, chris Comon, rick Smith and you know I learned from those guys of how they look at the golf swing with. There’s just so much experience and expertise there and the guys at the top they always collaborate and I’m certainly in the collaboration mode.

0:34:11 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, that’s got to be cool being able to coordinate with those guys. I know you said you’ve worked with players that work with those guys. How much interaction do you have as far as, like when, let’s say, you’re working with somebody that Jim or Chris or one of those guys is working with and they’re working on something specific in their golf swing? How much collaboration is there between you and them as far as the physical and what’s going on with the body?

0:34:37 – Ryan Degale
It really depends. You know the PGH tour players are. You know it really depends, right, and so there are certain layers. You know I’ve only really you know it’s a pretty political thing, right, and so, like with PGH tour players, it can be challenging because there’s so many different layers of MDs and physical therapists and trainers and stuff like that. Then they’re on the range every week and there’s people in the area, and so it can be challenging that way.

But I mostly take a I’d step back and take a more consulting role with that. Hey, that may be a great idea and you know, this is maybe the routine before, this is a routine after. Hey, maybe they should reinforce their hamstrings a little bit. Maybe they should start working the fibers for the obliques. The obliques are huge because they terminate into the pelvis and the front of the pelvis manages the mechanics for the sacrum bone, and so you know more of a more in that net light. And I don’t like traveling, you know, and so like. This is why I built the studio. I got, you know, I got a golf course across the street. I can go coach from my Sim Room. You know I’d work 70% remote, and then I have an app where you know I download, you know the videos they need to do and that kind of stuff and more of a consultant.

0:35:57 – Jeff Pelizzaro
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What are things that you think most golfers should be doing in their training sessions, in their workouts, that you kind of feel like it’s being missed by, and let’s talk a little bit more like not the professional golfers that have a team around them, but let’s talk about the guys that are going out there playing with their club. They’re competitive guys, maybe wanting to go win a club championship, but they’re kind of doing some of this.

Have a bunch of those guys, yeah, so like what are the big things that they’re missing when they go to the gym, or maybe after the round, or before the round, I think?

0:37:32 – Ryan Degale
in 10, I don’t think like exercises. They all do something, but what time is it and what is it for and where is it in a program? Because exercise or just exercise until you build up programs and systems and then there’s execution behind that and so, like you know, the greatest program with somebody who doesn’t have the intent or the consistency will be out formed by somebody at the media occurred to not so great program with great attitude and consistency, and so it depends. It has to be like a blend between those two. But to answer your question, I feel like I think the assessment process maybe maybe there’s. I like specific, like I can’t think too generally, but I, like you know, I’d probably say a little bit more paramount on mobility and stuff like that. I’m taking less risk with certain things that they’re doing.

I’m not a huge fan of long distance cardio whatsoever for golf. I think it just completely wrecks your knees, creates plantar fasciitis and, you know, breeze hip replacements. But sometimes you need to give those guys a look, you know, put them on some interval training, get things going, because you know they’re not on. The PGA tour ended on Nita. There’s, there’s a cardiac component to that is super healthy and so you know, you blind it up Me. I work out five days a week and I don’t only train for golf, you know, I like, I like movement. I push the sled around for sure. But what I necessarily have, you know, somebody who has, you know, it just depends on this case, right? Yeah, yeah, totally.

0:38:58 – Jeff Pelizzaro
And I think that that’s kind of where a lot of our listeners fall. That’s where I personally fall too much like yourself, like you know, getting in and trying to do some sort of training or working out or exercise almost most days, whether that even just be going for long walks or so. Everything is not about golf, and you and I have talked about the importance of longevity and just itself.

0:39:20 – Ryan Degale
Right, but, but knowing that there’s a come out is incredibly important, but we don’t want it to slow you down like in your golf. If you want to, you know, like how to guy I just signed up yesterday from upstate New York. He’s a plus three, he’s 40 years old, works on Wall Street and he’s a club champion at Quaker Ridge. And he’s like Brian, I don’t care about looking good, I know if I eat well, I just want to hit these high nasty bombs and beat these young kids’ asses. I was like, okay, let’s rock. All right, let’s do that. Yeah, let’s do it. And then I have.

And then I have, you know, another guy who’s just like look, I want to look pretty. You know, I don’t really think that. You know, I don’t really feel great about myself. I want to, I want to. You know, get some of my, you know. And the great thing is that most of these posture and balances you need a hell of a lot of ab work. So you know, nature doesn’t fall as advertised. Normally. If you have strong abs, you know it will show and things like that.

0:40:12 – Jeff Pelizzaro
So, yeah, let’s talk a little bit just about the quote unquote core. Right, we hear how important the core is and you’re mentioning the strengthening of the abs. What are some of the ways that you have found to be most effective to really train and stabilize and reinforce, as the word you’ve used so many times reinforce? Our core and how do you define the core?

0:40:37 – Ryan Degale
Multiple layers, different fascial directions, breathing techniques and many kinds. But you know I like so, Guy, you know we know ab exercise for almost anything you can think of. I mean he’s, he even created a GI series dude. There’s ab techniques that create pumping through each segment of the colon to the precise area, corners, everything you think of, right, they? I mean we talked about the diaphragm only for 30 hours, you know, and so I consider the diaphragm a part of the core. I consider the spinal reactors with the logisomus, ilicastellus and transverse banalis, all layers of the core, especially the internal bleaks.

I think you get both bank your buck from working the obliques man, because you know they have, they connect ribcage, pelvis, sternum, you name it, they all have. You know it’s all a piece and there’s different layers to all this kind of stuff. And so I mean we know how to. I mean whether I think he spent three days only on the TVA. I mean you know what I mean.

So I think the abs are very misunderstood and I used to be a part of this school of thought where I felt like if I deadlifted, squatted and I was doing all the different things that will include the abs and then I’d work on my abs and like shit, these guys are weak. What’s going on? You know I can deadlift. I’ve deadlifted. You know, when I was doing mixed martial arts I’d deadlifted 485 with no bells or strap, maybe 165 pounds. I was really strong, but I was just like I can’t even do like roll and unroll general sit-ups for like 40, 50 reps. You know what’s that all about, right? And so there’s something. If you look at Pascal’s Law, it’s basically the. You know, when we’re talking about remember, I think, did you bring out Mackenzie, or is that another interview?

0:42:27 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I didn’t, but no, I didn’t but go ahead.

0:42:30 – Ryan Degale
Okay, so you have many kinds of herniations. You can herniate a disc, you know, in the front of the disc, the side posterior, and there’s a sub-sacrifice to that, and so, like you know, the school of thought is that if you do inflection all the time, then that can herniate a disc with the posterior part, which you know you could also like. For instance, if I put you know, pascal’s Law is the physics of water and how water works, and we have to understand this, because most of our bodies made of water and the spacing between the discs are, you know, it’s a synovial fluid, right? And so we need to train our abs to be complete to do certain things. Because, look look at golf swing, right, you have, you know you’re in this position, right? You’re right here, it’s been fletching and you’re doing a lot. There’s a lot of fletching going on right here and you know, with these different torsions, and so I think we need to train those abs, especially in the flexor chain, carefully, understand who’s in front of you, but we need to reintroduce that.

I think you know these sort of studies were done in 1973 on six college students and it was never refuted any of the research because we asked about this during abs class because we have a ton of physios in there, so naturally they’re going to ask like, hey, this is what’s the deal. And so you know, to answer your question, they’re the obliques, they’re the biggest bank for your buck. I don’t really use a ton of cable machines. I have. I have, like the uh, the K box a little bit that I use for, you know, the eccentric training or deceleration training, but I think we get a, you know, just getting very, you know, straight in the abs with your body weight and then going to the golf course and because we don’t need to do too many things that look like a golfing in the gym. From my experience, so what?

0:44:13 – Jeff Pelizzaro
what do some of those strengthening exercises for your oblique? Not that we’re going to be doing demonstrations, but I mean we’re talking like, uh, some side planks and rotation and planking positions just to get people a little bit of an idea. Planks man?

0:44:26 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, I think I think anybody even with back pain if they’re back pains below five on a scale of one, it’s had for symptoms they can make sure they tuck their pelvis and they’re pushing away. And there’s so many things you can do with a plank. That is really awesome because the ground is a movable. So if I want to factor progression, I don’t like planks that last more than 30 seconds. That means you’re not pushing hard enough, right? So you’re pushing away. That means you get all the rib cage and the serratus muscles that attach to the scapula. You can take your elbows, you can bring them into the floor. That activates the upper abs and then you’ve got a pelvic tilt.

That, um, actually my ebook all has this. I just wrote an ebook oh sweet, staying the game. It’s called staying the game, um, how to gain confidence and speed coming back from a back injury and I have some some stuff in there and so when you tuck underneath you get a lot of the lower ab fibers and so, like that’s complete, you’re not doing anything crazy. There’s not a lot of you know, and you know if you have back being in play safe that way, that’s totally cool.

0:45:23 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I feel like the big takeaway from a lot of what you’re you’re educating us on is really the intention of it, right, the like it doesn’t. You don’t have to lift a bunch of weight. You can do. I mean, all of this, most of this is is just simply body weight and getting in a position. Yeah, but understanding what the intention is, where you’re trying to feel it, where you’re trying to push and move and and pull, and it’s those little connections from the brain to those muscles, tendons, ligaments, that really are going to make the most benefit and make the difference.

0:45:53 – Ryan Degale
And it’s something somebody can do. Like what’s the number one complaint? It’s time. It doesn’t require like a ton of time. I just like I’ve had people be like I did 40 minutes of homework today. I’m like why you sound inefficient. Like how much rest are you taking in between? I told you do four things with the minute rest in between for three to four sets. How’d that take you 40 minutes, you know? Do you feel like you can do that for 20 years every day? No, so like why are you doing it like that? Now, if you’re on the LPJ or PJ, it’s why I’m like you better frigging, do that, because it’s your job. You have a multimillion dollar spine but for you know Jack and Jill, you know account and an attorney, they, you know what. What. That’s not sustainable. Yeah, yeah, you can.

Efficiency efficiency dude.

0:46:36 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, you could do these things sitting at your desk and then eat lunch and then get back to your desk and you know 30 minutes, whatever it is. It’s great that you said that.

0:46:43 – Ryan Degale
I have a guy who runs a fun over in Michigan. He’s like a plus one. He plays in state tournaments and stuff he’s doing. You know rotator cuff stretches in his office because that’s when he has most of his time. He walked around his thing. Of course he has his putter and you know he’s there straight. You know it is yeah. So it doesn’t have to be structured per se, it just has to be consistent.

0:47:05 – Jeff Pelizzaro
All right, Last thing before we jump into our our final questions here Foam rolling. You know, we’ve talked about fascia, we’ve talked about the tissue. What about all these self-mile fascial tools and things like that? Okay, I don’t like them.

0:47:21 – Ryan Degale
And this is this is just my opinion. I’ve been approached by probably five or six companies a month, three Instagram to promote their products and I was like I’m sorry, I don’t use it in my practice, like it would not come off genuine If I’m, if I’m collaborating with a product or a person and stuff, I believe what they do and you know, I just can’t associate myself. So one thing Gied noticed right, with connected tissue. And there’s also a lot of other good literature, um, a few books over here. If I could just like a hold them up for maybe some of the physios or retrainers out there we want to, you know, take a deep dive into anatomy and so pressure, very sensitive to pressure.

Um, because the connected tissue like this is this is why I’m amazing massage therapist is so important to be careful of who you know works on your, on your tissues. Right, because pressure changes, listening to the body, that takes a lot of time and experience to to um, you know, acquire and so, like, most people have no understanding of the direction of the fascia and which you need to pump. Right, because everything is like a lymphatic system. Right, most people destroy their TFL and their IT band anyways and then they crush their quads. I’ve seen across the genes. They use a PVC pipes and all this crazy stuff. And so, like, fascia wants to be hydrated and it wants to have length and freedom, and that’s what it needs.

And so this is why, in my opinion, the GPS, the ELDOA and the myofascial stretching are superior, because you’re using your own tissues and there’s global pressure throughout the entire chain when you’re in a posture where you don’t, where you don’t create inflammation and that’s not an opinion. I mean, dan did a great presentation at the T uh, we’re a golfing and summit on why he doesn’t like foam rollers either. So that that’s maybe I’m biased, but, um, you know, I I really trust and he’s a lot smarter than me and he’s a lot smarter than Dan.

0:49:16 – Jeff Pelizzaro
So, yeah, Well, that’s, that’s why we have individuals like you on here, because you guys have so much depth of knowledge and Dan and some of the other people that have come on and, and you know the, the video that, um, I think Guy has about the tissue and fascia, uh, for me that really kind of showed how you know how sensitive that tissue is. Um, I don’t even know if you remember the, the name of the video, or or you know the video that I’m referencing, but, um, I think it was maybe Dan that had turned me on to and it actually looked like under the surface of the skin, at the, the tissue that was yeah, yeah, John George.

0:49:51 – Ryan Degale
I think John George sorry, that’s a chef Um, I’ll have to check the author. Yeah, I mean, I think I have maybe around 1200 hours of of it, uh, with Guy. I’ve spent about 1200 hours with him, so, um, he’s, uh, he’s awesome. And then there’s some other. You know, like Bryce is great for El Doa. Um, you know, and these are tools that are so fundamental to helping your clients. I mean, geez, you know, you can really make a difference in somebody’s quality of life with this stuff, and, uh, it does make a huge difference.

0:50:23 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Did you want to go grab those books that, uh, that you mentioned? Yeah, we’ll. We’ll pop them up on the screen. Yeah, and there’s a view of um, uh, this couple.

0:50:30 – Ryan Degale
I really like Nectar’s for other stuff, you know, because I’m a picture boy, yeah, and uh, grey’s Anatomy 1908 edition is a little bit too old English for me, but uh, here’s one of them. All right, this is probably the one that you’re talking about.

0:50:43 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Okay, Yep Architecture of human living fascia.

0:50:46 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, and so it basically goes through the structures and you know how, how delicate things are. I mean, hopefully people don’t have a. You know, there’s a lot of anatomy in there, yeah.

0:50:55 – Jeff Pelizzaro
This, this is for all the coaches and medical professionals.

0:50:58 – Ryan Degale
On, on and so you and and so you know also with this, you know, go through different fascial slings and relationships and stuff like that, and I think is you know, if you want to do things at a very high level, is that okay? If I show a dead body, yeah For sure, right? So stuff like that. You need to know where the direction of fibers are and you know when you become a structure of dispersion correctly, you’re more less than likely to have these major problems.

0:51:26 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Awesome. Well, so that that last text that you just showed is that where you get some of the images that you’re putting on your Instagram as a recently.

0:51:34 – Ryan Degale
No, I don’t that’s from, that’s from Jason. He’s a sports Cairo from. I just took a a Pelus Balm Mechanics course. I’ve taken that course six or seven times because again, I’m still have another 28 to go before everything is clear.

0:51:50 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Awesome, and so, yeah, I mean so for those of you listening, go check out Ryan’s Instagram, which is it’s golf underscore and underscore body, right, Ryan? Yeah, Go check that out. He does some amazing videos. He gets very detailed on some of the anatomy and then goes and shows a lot of different exercises. He’s doing a great series right now on the X factor, so by all means go check that out. Is that the best place for them to go and kind of follow what you’re doing?

0:52:17 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, I’m starting to bring up my Facebook presence. You know there’s a lot of golfers on Facebook, especially with older guys. You know that have been transitioned to the Instagram over there. Yeah, so the first five part series is 15, 15 videos in which you know we’re the first five. I’m showing you stretches, correct, freedom. We’re going to create freedom because the X factor is essentially the, the measurement between how far the pelvis turns backwards and how far your rib case can turn over that pelvis.

Okay, and so the the more explosive players like Gordon Sargent and Roy Mac around these guys, they have just the most amazing difference between those two. So the average player has a 42 degree X factor. So if your hips turn 48 degrees and your hips and your shoulders turn 90, that means you have 42. Roy has over 63. Wow, so he’s getting like probably 105 to 10 degrees of shoulder turn with X, whatever that is, you know, minus the X factor, minus what his hip turn is.

And so this acts like a coil. And so when good players, they start turning their pelvis towards the target, even sometimes before they finish their back, this act, this creates a stretch. So you actually have more of a stretch with the X factor that way, and if you can’t do that in a controlled environment and not free tissues, I just never understood how you could do that with 120 miles an hour, or even a hundred miles an hour, for that matter. So the next five videos would be five neurologic goal things. Now we have all this extra space, we can now focus on major areas of the hip that our brain needs to learn how to use. And then, of course, we got the reinforcement at strength of the last five. Hey, how do I have all this Now that I don’t hurt myself, now that I have to be strong to for golf?

0:54:00 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Perfect, and so that’s a. You said a 15 video, 15 video sequence that’ll be coming out.

0:54:07 – Ryan Degale
Yep, I, I, I’m on a video for right now. I filmed 10 already, so I just needed to do the reinforcement section. Awesome.

0:54:15 – Jeff Pelizzaro
All right, my man, let’s uh, let’s finish up with our end of the segment questions which you know. Or first one, caddy Shack or happy Gilmore.

0:54:23 – Ryan Degale
Caddy Shack. He’s been a member of Grand Oaks, so where are they filmed it? That’s right. That’s right. I forgot you had.

0:54:27 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, I mean.

0:54:28 – Ryan Degale
Ronnie Dainterfield man, I mean I don’t know how like that guy’s an absolute legend, you know. I mean there I there’s more quotes from that movie than certainly more than Gilmore, for sure, right.

0:54:40 – Jeff Pelizzaro
I would. There’s. There’s quite a few from Gilmore, but I I personally quote Caddy Shack almost every day. Yeah, yeah.

0:54:46 – Ryan Degale
They could yeah, exactly, all right, what’s?

0:54:48 – Jeff Pelizzaro
your walkup song. If you can pick a walkup song to the first T.

0:54:53 – Ryan Degale
Oh man, that’s a really good question. You know I’ve I may. I may not look like a fighter, but my walkup song, uh, in my I have had five mixed martial arts fights. Um was 50 cent mini mince.

0:55:08 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Nice.

0:55:10 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, I’ll like 50.

0:55:12 – Jeff Pelizzaro
All right, Is there a book that you would recommend to the 18STRONG crew, and this could be. This could be fitness golf. This could be anything in life that you, it has meant a lot to you, or that you tend to give out as a gift to people.

0:55:25 – Ryan Degale
Well, I think that’s the most, uh, difficult question because I love to read. You know, I thought one of the most interesting books that nobody talks about is nutrition and physical degeneration by Weston A Price, who is a um, who was a dentist and a and a medical um, a nutrition researcher in the 1920s, in which his research is buried because the American medical association didn’t like what they’re, what they funded, what the results were. Back in those days, most people had crowding at the teeth where they had narrow jaws and deviated septums, and you’ll notice this. This actually is conducive to processed foods, processed sugar. They had issues with tuberculosis back then and stuff like that, and they’re way more healthy back in those days than now.

Right, I mean, we’re so lucky we have modern medicine, because there would be people dropping like flies out there, because now more than ever we need to self educate men. It’s hard to trust sources these days because it’s funded like Hoffman. Larouche funded the first dietary program in colleges to teach dietitians how to sell processed food from the food guy pyramid. Because if you like the food guy pyramid, then you look like a pyramid and then you become diabetic and then they get you a medication and then you can’t sleep and then you get a medication, and then you’re backers because you’re overweight and then you get a medication and that’s called an annuity for life. I mean good business for them, not so much for the public right, I was a clinical nutritionist for 10 years around medical labs. I decided to focus only on orthopedics because I wanted to be the best I possibly could and I enjoyed orthopedics more.

0:57:02 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Great suggestion. Definitely have to check that out.

0:57:05 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, there’s plenty of tea like pitchers, and this is important because our dental health is closely related to our biochemistry in our body. So if you’re getting cavities or something seriously wrong with your body, chemistry, biochemistry. So he would compare a primadize diet to modernized diets and the difference was with whole foods and animal fats and proteins. So this all this low fat propaganda, all this like villainizing saturated fats, get into soy, get into vegetable oil, all that is just marketing to get you, it’s to scare you into buying their products. And that’s the truth. And most people know this now. But they didn’t even know this 10 years ago. Like I had a lot of backlash with the girl like are you serious? My doctor told me you’re gonna kill me. I was like what? What you know? Because they only get eight hours of basic nutrition and then eight or nine years they go to medical school and that’s all for food gap pyramid. And so you know you can’t compete with doctors. Word like I don’t you know. So the orthopedics is a natural stepping step.

0:58:07 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Crazy, yeah, all right, who would be in your dream celebrity foresum? If you got to pick a foresum of anybody in the world, pastor, president, who you taking?

0:58:19 – Ryan Degale
You know I’m a big F1 fan. I like Eretan Santa. I know a lot of F1 golfers do play golf, but Eretan maybe I didn’t even care if he’s the 30 handicapper, it’d be cool to pick his brain. Of course, tiger Woods because he’s transcended the game. And the last one man, I mean it may sound cliche, but already because he made golf cool. And you know I’m a huge believer in making it accessible to as many people as possible versus being kind of a little bit more of an elitist thing. You know, because what golf has taught me since I’ve been playing, since I was 11, everything was free for me. There was a guy in Barbados called Denny Foster who put a club in my hand and this opened so many doors for me. I mean, the seat time I get and who I can network with because of this game is just it’s a joke. And you know kind of pretty. Made me work, who I am today Having access to that, versus maybe 20, 30 years ago it wasn’t like that. So I like guys like Eastside Golf, but we’re some of their. You know their hoodies and apparel because you know it’s cool, make it cool. You know where the Jays or the Dung or whatever you know and just make golf cool. You know that’s why Anthony Kim was so popular. You know he had those huge belt buckles on point.

I just feel like guys these days they’re a little bit too. You know they’re robotic and sure there’s a lot at stake, but you know it’s an entertainment sport. You know, maybe this is why good good is getting some more views than PGA for events. I mean, I was watching the match the other day. I was like you know it’s a little bit boring. I’m going to turn on good good and watch Michael Thurbey on some hit bombs and talk about his injuries. And Rory was on TV. I’m sorry, but I mean you know we want to be entertained and I feel I don’t. I’ve been to a few live events since I was a member at Durell. I think they’re really close to having the right product. They need to go to 72 poles I don’t like the music in between and the shotgun starts to get all that and then they have a killer product, dude, and I think that that’s going to where the game is going to be going to.

1:00:16 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, we haven’t had one around here that I know of yet, and so I definitely be interested in checking it out and seeing seeing what the vibe is. I know the people are on one side of the fence or the other, really, but I definitely be interested in checking it out.

1:00:29 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, shotgun starts don’t make sense to me, because they you know they’re supposed to be ebbs and flow, golf course, architecture.

1:00:35 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, and these guys don’t care.

1:00:37 – Ryan Degale
These old guys don’t care about playing. They’re on my, my two TVs. They are. They’re on my. They’re playing Asian tour events for world ranking points all the time it’s off for less golf at around. Get the world ranking points and get rid of that stupid shotgun start and you know and just dominate. You know what I mean.

1:00:53 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, well, we’ll see what happens with that and you know it’s, it’s interesting to see. I mean now, with Rom going over there and and rumors of some other people maybe heading that way, it’ll be. These next couple of years are going to be. I can’t wait to see this Netflix series that just came out, to see some of the behind the scenes of all of that stuff.

1:01:10 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, it should be interesting. Do you see the the Rom dinner reservation card? Oh, you know the past champion, the? Well, the champion from last year, did you know? I think, what do you say? Meet the PGA tours players. Finally meet on the 18th green at 6pm, you know?

1:01:28 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, you know so that. So that came out last year on I think it was Shephlers I don’t know if those, I can’t tell if that was a joke. If I’ve heard some people say that that wasn’t a real deal and that they just redid it for Rom’s, this for Rom’s this year. So I don’t know, but either way I thought it was fine, it’s just wrong, way better right now.

1:01:45 – Ryan Degale
It’s just wrong, way better right now, you know he’s probably gonna fly there on his personal helicopter when he’s there now, no kidding.

1:01:51 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, this, that’ll be interesting to watch, all right, so so you’ve got. You’ve got the F1 driver, you’ve got Tiger, you’ve got Arnie the king. If we had the 18th Strong Jet and we could take you anywhere in the world. What’s your bucket list, course that you’re going to with these guys?

1:02:06 – Ryan Degale
Gosh first Augusta. But you know on value nice to not be like these memories. You still need to take me.

1:02:14 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, that’s definitely on the list over here, I believe. I believe you said your client. You’ve got a client named Jim. I’ve got a client named Jim, both members of Pine Valley. I think we need to get on to Jim’s and get down there. All right, what’s the best piece of golf advice you’ve ever been given?

1:02:36 – Ryan Degale
GDO Arnie Ells was hitting bunker shots and I walked over to him I said hey, I’m on a body. You know, how do you, how are you so fluid? You said you’re so big and stuff like that be easy. He said just wait on it because you know, most of the swing flaws are G2 improper sequencing, you know, and sometimes less is more in this game and so just, you know, be a little bit more patient. It helped me because I was quick and hitting some little left hurts and you know, after that I was hitting some high draws, low spin. It was pretty amazing because I have a lot of speed. And so if there’s like some things that are a little bit off, are you a little quick? Get ugly real quick.

1:03:18 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Hard to argue with anything that big earn says.

1:03:22 – Ryan Degale
Yeah, he’s a stud. I mean it’s crazy what he was able to do back when the Tiger era. I mean how’d you win that many times when Wood was at his peak dude? And same thing with Mcklisson. I mean he’s not exactly as popular as he used to be, but you got to respect. You know what what he was doing.

1:03:37 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Totally All right, my man. Last one is there a social media account that you follow? You? Obviously your Instagram is is blown up and you know, I always like to get an idea of what are some of the other accounts out there that people like yourself are watching, paying attention to. That the 18th wrong crew can benefit from.

1:03:56 – Ryan Degale
You know I’m a really big fan of personal development and mindset. I really think that Alex Hermozzi is the is the king of practical application and mindset, because you know you really difficult out there guys, and you know it’s. It’s especially with everything going on AI if you have a job that may be at risk for this sort of stuff. You got to be able to adapt and create value and I really liked that. This is why I decided to come out the shadows and start. You know, I was like you know I need to, I need to go and come out into the world. World. I’m going to start a YouTube channel and and I thought I was about a year ago that I decided to do this and so you know, I’m going to just basically be working, having online business with you know, some in person, of course, but mostly online.

1:04:43 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Well, you’ve taken it and you’ve run with it, so whatever you’re doing, it’s working, my man.

1:04:48 – Ryan Degale
Appreciate it, man. It was awesome. Thanks for having me on the show. I mean I could talk about golf and this stuff like for another 10 hours, so I appreciate you led me Babel.

1:04:58 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Yeah, man, well, let’s have, let’s continue this conversation down at Pine Valley. How about that?

1:05:02 – Ryan Degale
I love that.

1:05:03 – Jeff Pelizzaro
You called Jimbo’s up. You got it All right. Ryan, really appreciate you coming on. Everybody go check out Ryan over on Instagram golf underscore and underscore body, tons and tons of great information. Go on over there, check it out and Ryan can’t thank you enough again for coming on.

1:05:19 – Ryan Degale
Thank you, have a good one.

1:05:23 – Jeff Pelizzaro
Thanks for listening to the 18STRONG podcast and if you found this episode helpful, don’t forget to share with your friends. And, of course, go follow us over on Instagram at 18STRONG. Thanks again. We’ll catch up with you next week. Train hard, practice smart and play better golf.