Secret to USC running back Woody Marks’ success: acupuncture

The needles never bothered Woody Marks. Mostly because he never looks at them. All USC’s star running back knows is every Wednesday his acupuncturist will put them in whatever muscle has been aching that week.

“I just close my eyes,” Marks says, “and let him do it.”

Over a senior season in which he has carried the ball 174 times — 53 more than his career high — and accumulated 1,024 rushing yards, the first Trojan in seven years to do so, Marks has done whatever he can to keep his body in peak form. The needles have become an essential part of that recovery process, one that Marks and those closest to him credit for keeping him as healthy as he’s ever been.

But acupuncture is just one part of his routine. Twice a week Marks gets a massage. He also gets a pedicure, to help relieve his sore feet of dead skin, a trick he learned from running backs coach Anthony Jones.

“It makes you feel light on your feet,” Marks said.

Whatever extra treatments strength and conditioning coach Bennie Wylie has suggested, Marks has been more than willing to try. In addition to his usual routine, he’s tried cryotherapy, infrared therapy, massages with cupping — anything to keep inflammation down and ward away the nagging injuries that followed him over three years at Mississippi State.

Recently, Marks even went to a spa for the first time. It was an eye-opening experience. “Amazing,” he says with a smile.

“I didn’t know a spa had that much in it,” Marks continued. “I went inside a room, and I did the cold thing you step in. I went into a sauna. They had a pool. I did hot rocks. I did a lot of stuff. It was all tied in, so I was like, ‘I’mma get my money’s worth. I’mma do everything.’ My body was feeling extra good.”

The opposite was true when he transferred to USC last January. A hamstring injury had hampered any hopes of him leaving for the NFL draft. So when he entered the transfer portal in search of a true workhorse role, the Marks family wanted to ensure his new school not only had ample opportunity but also a plan for keeping him upright along the way.

He wasn’t always the best gauge of his health. Marks was the type who always played through pain. Even when he shouldn’t have. At Mississippi State, he once broke his nose in a game against Alabama, only to stuff gauze in both nostrils and return to convert a third down.

“He’s not a guy you tell not to play football,” said Quinton Wesley, his high school strength and conditioning coach and a close family friend.

But when Marks chose USC in the portal, Wesley sat him down. He knew injuries could derail Marks’ path to the NFL if he wasn’t mindful. He needed to make his body more of a priority.

In Starkville, Miss., a city of just 25,000, there hadn’t been many extra treatment options. But every option he could imagine was at his fingertips in Los Angeles, where Marks marveled at the fact that a masseuse could make house calls.

“We knew he had injury issues in the past,” Wesley said. “This was the last go-round, the last stop, the last opportunity. He had to do more small stuff to be at his best every Saturday. It wasn’t really a choice. Just something that had to be done, in order to get to where he needed to go.”

The small stuff has made a major difference at USC, where Marks is on pace to finish with the most carries in a season of any running back in Lincoln Riley’s head coaching career. Marks is also just the fifth Trojans back since Reggie Bush left in 2005 to rush for more than 1,000 yards in a season.

When he crossed that threshold last week against Nebraska, Marks was feeling about as bad as he had all season. He had successfully avoided injury for 10 games, but a flu outbreak that swept through USC’s locker room late last week didn’t spare the senior back.

Naturally, Marks still played. He hadn’t even told his mom he was sick. Marks cobbled together a career-high 146 yards and when he saw his mom afterward, Tameka Marks wondered if her son’s asthma suddenly was kicking up again.

“He could barely breathe!” she recalled.

But after three years of battling through bumps and bruises, Marks has been mostly healthy. The new recovery routine has kept him as fresh as anyone could have hoped. And his NFL stock has soared as a result. The investment, by all accounts, has been well worth it for Marks.

Still, after all the treatments he’s tried, there’s one change that Tameka is hoping her son can make. Though, she thinks it’s probably a long shot.

“Now, we just have to get him on some vegetables,” Tameka said. “He does not like eating his vegetables.”