Today’s podcast features Ty Terrell, Director of Strength and Conditioning for Oklahoma Men’s Basketball. Ty brings deep experience from the NBA, having led performance programs for the Washington Wizards and Atlanta Hawks. He specializes in athlete development, performance testing, and biomechanics-driven return-to-play protocols. Ty has been mentored by Lee Taft and Bill Hartman, and has a unique fusion of abilities and methods in human performance.
Typically, the goal of athletic performance training is based on increasing outputs, muscle size, and aerobic capacities. Less emphasis is given to athletic movement qualities, how the body creates space for motion, and the process of loading and releasing energy. In understanding both outputs and movement dynamics, a more comprehensive training experience can be provided.
On today’s podcast, Ty speaks on optimizing the phases of athletic movement, particularly the “unloading” and reversal phases of squat and jump patterns that are often missed in training. He discusses the balance and interplay of movement-oriented training with strength and output capabilities. From a practical perspective, Ty gets into the nuts and bolts of unweighting methods, opening space in squat and hinge patterns, working absorption and propulsion with cables, step-up dynamics, and much more.
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Timestamps
2:45– Holistic Athlete Development in College Sports
11:06– Organic Skill Development Through Free Play
19:04– Optimizing Movement Patterns for Athletic Success
20:06– Biomechanical Efficiency in Training Practices
29:52– Optimal Force Production for Athletic Enhancement
38:04– Optimizing The Phases of Athletic Movement for Vertical Jump Outcomes
47:44– Band-Assisted Unweighting for Muscle Recovery
53:54– Optimizing Movement Quality with Training Modifications
55:27– Optimizing Movement Quality Through Unweighting Methods
1:01:43– Efficient Transition Phases in Vertical Jumping
1:09:30– Cable Unweighting for Enhanced Movement Patterns
1:13:31– Cable Lifts and Step-Up Techniques
Quotes
(18:21) “I keep things very simple. I don’t get far away from like, just the traditional movements. You have to be able to squat well enough.” – Ty Terrell
(22:40) “The unweighting phase creates the potential for the braking phase. The braking phase slingshots us into the propulsive or concentric phase.” – Ty Terrell
(23:15) “You need output, you need to be able to produce that quickly. But there are aspects of movement quality that will negatively impact your propulsive output. So you have to have both. And I think the biggest thing is to find is to define what is good enough in your situation.” – Ty Terrell
(40:12) “I think you’re trying to get the most with the least. And the priority is to make them feel like they can go out and play. So it’s more restorative.” – Ty Terrell
(44:48) “I kind of want that inflammatory process to occur in the off-season. So, you know, the adaptations and responses that come with that as opposed to the season, it’s like we’re trying to dampen those inflammatory responses so we can do something the next day.” – Ty Terrell
(49:00) “A big thing we do either at the beginning of the workout to learn movement or to learn how to move in a Low threshold way we do a kind of sandwich. Maybe we had a sprint day, maybe at an encore workout, then we’re going to sandwich the day with, hey, like another like 10 minutes of low threshold work and unweighting, you know, so like front foot elevated split squats.” – Ty Terrell
(50:31) “You have to find a way to come back into that space a little bit or else you won’t be able to access internal rotation.” – Ty Terrell
(53:00) “So if someone can’t access their posterior hip, maybe doesn’t have IR at the hip joint to do that, you can. You can create an influence from the ground (reverse ramp) up to do that.” – Ty Terrell
(55:40) “The forefoot is going to give you an IR stimulus from the ground up. The heels elevated is going to give you an ER stimulus from the ground up.” – Ty Terrell
(56:39) “Like expansion allows movement, and so if my muscles get really tight and compressed, I can’t move into that space. So like when you roll you’re moving. I don’t want to get too into weeds here but you’re moving fluid and getting to different parts of the body.” – Ty Terrell
(1:01:02) “We might do like a reverse bear crawl to squat, you know, and like I’ll, you know, you’re just kind of back into the bottom of a squat; Then we’ll go to like a band-assisted squat. And I teach, you know, inhale down, exhale up, exhale with a little bit of acceleration; in like three weeks. And I don’t know if that’s a good time frame or not, but this kid added 2 1/2 inches to his vert. And it was not because he changed his output.” – Ty Terrell
(1:02:51) “The more force you can produce early, you’re a better accelerator.” – Ty Terrell
About Ty Terrell
Ty Terrell is the Director of Men’s Basketball Strength and Conditioning at the University of Oklahoma, a position he has held since July 2024. In this role, he oversees weight room operations, applies athletic testing and analyzes the results, creates player performance development plans, works on athlete return-to-play programs, and implements recovery strategies for student-athletes.
Before joining the Sooners, Terrell served as the Senior Director of Athletic Performance for the Washington Wizards, where he oversaw performance programs for teams under Monumental Basketball, including NBA, G League, and WNBA teams. In this role, he ran the player development program, implemented a performance testing battery, and was responsible for advising coaching staff on player workloads and the team training schedule.
Prior to his tenure in Washington, Terrell worked as a performance coach for the Atlanta Hawks, during which he implemented and executed player development programs and performance testing and collaborated on return-to-play programs from injuries.
Terrell earned his bachelor’s degree in kinesiology from Concordia University Chicago in 2021. He resides in Norman, Oklahoma, with his wife, Kendra, and their two children, Archie and Raegan.
In his current role at Oklahoma, Terrell applies his extensive experience from professional basketball to develop comprehensive strength and conditioning programs aimed at preparing student-athletes for the demands of collegiate and professional play. His holistic approach emphasizes not only physical training but also recovery strategies and return-to-play protocols, contributing to the overall performance and well-being of the athletes.
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