In this episode, 🎙️ Ryan Jore sits down with Paulie Campbell, the owner of The Bar Gym 🏋️ in Helena, Montana. Paulie shares his journey of building his gym from the ground up, starting with just a shared space 4 years ago 🕒 and now operating out of a 5,000 sq ft facility 🏢.

A key focus for Paulie is training high school and youth athletes 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️. He emphasizes the importance of creating an inclusive environment 🤝 that caters to all types of clients. Paulie also discusses the challenges of getting buy-in from high school coaches, many of whom have limited expertise in strength and conditioning 💪.

Paulie dives deep into his training philosophy 📚, which prioritizes building athleticism through movements like isometrics and tempos ⏱️. He believes this approach is crucial for keeping young athletes healthy ❤️‍🩹, especially when it comes to protecting their knees 🦵 and shoulders 💪. Paulie highlights the importance of building resilient tendons 🦾, not just strong muscles, to help reduce injuries during the sports season ⚽🏀.

Throughout the conversation, Paulie’s passion 🔥 for developing well-rounded, resilient athletes shines through. Listeners will gain insights into the strategies and obstacles 🛠️ involved in running a specialized gym focused on empowering the next generation of sports stars 🌟.

Whether you’re a coach, parent, or athlete yourself 🧑‍🏫👨‍👩‍👧‍👦🏋️‍♂️, this episode offers a unique behind-the-scenes look 🔍 at how one gym is making a difference in the lives of young people through personalized, holistic training 🏋️‍♀️✨.

Follow Paulie Campbell on socials:

Instagram | Facebook | thebar406.com

Follow Granite Fitness on socials:
Facebook | Instagram | YouTube | X | granitebillings.com

Follow Ryan Jore on socials:
Instagram | jorestrengthtraining.com

#HighSchoolAthletes #InjuryPrevention #SpecialtyGym #YouthTraining #ResilienceThroughStrength #HolisticAthleteDevelopment #CoachEducation #GymOwnerInsights #HealthyTendons #AthleticPerformanceOptimization

Ryan Jore 0:11
Welcome to the granite fitness podcast. This week we have on Helena based trainer, Polly. Campbell. Polly, welcome to the show.

Paulie Campbell 0:16
Hey, thanks, Ryan. It’s been wanted to go out hunting, but I figured I better follow through on this commitment with you to have a conversation.

Ryan Jore 0:24
We’ll try and make it quick.

Paulie Campbell 0:26
It’s all good. It’s all good. I have family anyway, so, Oh,

Ryan Jore 0:30
perfect. So, yeah, so Paul is based out of Helena, and you own a gym over there called the bar. Now, how many years have you guys been open now?

Paulie Campbell 0:38
Oh, gosh, this is going on, like four years. I believe it’s crazy, because I’ve known

Ryan Jore 0:42
you the whole time, and it just doesn’t seem to me like it’s been that long. That’s insane. I guess you guys open, like, right during COVID, I guess so. Yeah,

Paulie Campbell 0:48
there was a there was a need for gyms, and there’s a way to scoot under the regulations and stuff they were trying to enforce. And so we just made a buy appointment only to to make it happen. And, yeah, it’s interesting, because I’ve had a lot of, you know, a lot of my clientele have been with me for years. Every week somebody will come in and be like, gosh, how long, how long have we been? How long have you been here? And we just kind of talk about how it’s, you know, how it started, you know, sharing half the space to then taking over a little more and more and more now with the expansion. So a lot of cool things coming down the pike here, which will be interesting in the next year or two, I think,

Ryan Jore 1:20
which really ironically. I mean, that’s, I think a lot of what a lot of gym owners get wrong is they want to start 100% from the get go, and it’s like such a smarter move to start with less than you need and then just gradually add a little more, a little more. Yeah.

Paulie Campbell 1:34
And in fact, so when I was in undergrad school, a mentor of mine, Paul Keenan, she owns Riverside Athletic Club, which is just north of my hometown, was Wisconsin about 20 minutes. And he was kind of telling me his story about how he started, and he basically had a garage when he started. And I remember he was telling me about like he really didn’t have memberships, but husband and wife, couple came in and they said they wanted to join, and he’s like, that just kind of like started the spark to the fire, and now it’s this huge facility in Merrill, Wisconsin, and so yes to what you were saying, it’s, I think it can be a bit ambitious, especially if you don’t have a name or a reputation in a community that you’re, you know, embedded in, just to go and open a gym, I think can be really, really challenging, and I’m understanding impossible, especially if you don’t have a reputation behind you, people don’t really agree you got out. And so, yeah, it’s, it’s been a blessing. There’s been a lot of headaches, but for the most part, it’s, been, you know, headaches or not, it’s been a blessing, and I have a tremendous amount of gratitude for what’s transpired.

Ryan Jore 2:47
I’m gonna change the order of my questions, but here just with talking about, so what is it do you feel that the bar brings to the Hell in a market that is unique?

Paulie Campbell 2:57
I think the first thing is environment. I think the value of the environment is important that you and I don’t want this to sound like the other gyms in the area suck because they don’t like they all have a place, right?

Ryan Jore 3:15
I mean, you work with some of the other gyms in the area, so, yeah, yeah, the

Paulie Campbell 3:19
one I work for, after I opened my facility, it closed down, you know, I think I did a big, you know, market analysis. And, you know, I’ve been either a member or tried a day pass or week pass, you know, we moved to my helmet 10 years ago. And so I kind of had, you know, what the fabric of the the gym culture looked like in the area. We have everything from, you know, you know, small, independent owners, up to Planet Fitness and then YMCAs and things in between, hospital organizations associated with with with their health club. And when you walk in, you kind of get, when you walk into each one of these places you you kind of can get a sense for who they cater to, if that makes sense, and that’s not good, bad or indifferent. It’s just, it’s the environment, right? And so I think our environment is probably one of the number one thing is the number one thing that people comment on. So I’m a retired professional bodybuilder, Ryan, you’ve been my coach for multiple years here. And I think the important thing for people to recognize is creating an environment that invites all walks of life, regardless of what their goal is, whether it’s for mental health for that day, whether they’re training for, you know, ultra runs or bodybuilding competition, because you don’t want, like, the worst thing I think people can do is get a rap for being like the meathead gym, right? Because, generally, meatheads don’t have, they don’t spend a lot of money. The people that spend money are, you know, probably, I’ll say, the boomer population. They have a lot of disposable income and so, really catering environment that is kick ass. You know, we just had. Two huge murals painted on the wall. We added 1800 square feet with a physical therapist. We have five coaches and a physical therapist. So to further add to that question you asked, What’s really unique about our facility that others, you know, don’t really have that, I think, is the value we add. You know, if I’m working with a client, I can refer them right to the physical therapist. Is, is, is cash based out of pocket. So the benefit there is, you get better in less visits, because you’re spending an entire hour with Dr Cody versus going in seeing a vet tech, or, you know, which would be similar to a PA essentially, I wouldn’t even give him that much credit. And then, you know, you work with a physical therapist for maybe 15 minutes or out the door, but you see them more frequently and for more sessions, which can impact, obviously, scheduling vacation for work if you don’t get time off, all of those things. And you really get to know Cody. You get his you know, you get a cell phone number. You get to communicate with him. He’s done through screening. So I think we’re, we’re not quite to where I want to be in terms of all comprehensive but we’re, we’re, we’re a one stop shop, and we’re continuing to evolve in that capacity.

Ryan Jore 6:10
One like you said. I mean, just a couple years ago, you guys were half of a facility, and it was just you essentially, because when you started, it was just you and your wife that were doing the training, right? Yes, yeah, yeah. So now, I mean expanding to that is really quick timeline, if you look at it from a broad perspective, yeah. I mean it,

Paulie Campbell 6:29
it flew by so fast and just kind of looking back on, you know, when my my buddy Andrew, decided to leave, you know, he wanted to be closer to home. He had like, a 45 minute drive. I actually got really nervous about it and anxious, because I’m like, you know, I went from, I guess, without the office, probably, like, 1200 square feet of gym space to 3000 square feet of gym space, or 2800 or whatever it is, you know, minus the office and the two restrooms now, well, now it’s 5000 square feet so, but that’s just like a big burden to take on, right? So it’s like, for those of you listening, if you’re scared of risks, you know, I’ve always done really well responding to getting thrown in the Shark Tank. And that was me getting thrown into the Shark Tank. Either I dissolve my gym and go to work for somebody else, which I did not want to do, or I get creative about, okay, how can I maybe expand this? And so, you know, I kind of leaned into that, that unknown territory, and it’s and it’s worked out really well. I

Ryan Jore 7:26
mean, that’s kind of how you’ve approached your recent switch to running. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 7:32
pretty much it’s

Ryan Jore 7:34
like, Hey, I decided I’m gonna do an ultra run, and let’s get going

Unknown Speaker 7:37
on it. Whoa, whoa, whoa, not Ultra half marathon,

Ryan Jore 7:40
I mean, but it seems like I mean, Ultra is coming. That’s like, yeah, it’s coming. Yeah.

Paulie Campbell 7:46
I think so we could talk about that a little bit. I don’t want this to be entirely about me and my personal goals, but I know you have questions, so I’ll answer whatever questions you’d like,

Ryan Jore 7:56
yeah, yeah. Our main focus today, we were going to talk about was training athletes. Since that is, again, one of the things I really like. Richard Jim link said, you said, you do have kind of the meathead side. You’ve also got the older adult side, but then you’ve also got a really big program focused on training athletes, both one on one, and then looks like small group as well. Yep, basically I see where did you because I know, I know you played rugby growing up as well. So what really got you into interest in training athletes?

Paulie Campbell 8:18
Essentially, that was a need in the market after doing a market analysis and and this doesn’t mean like athletes in the area don’t go to different gyms and train they do, but there’s nobody really providing a service specifically for athletic needs outside of just school setting,

Ryan Jore 8:33
which is crazy for a school for a city the size of Helena, I

Paulie Campbell 8:37
know, and Helena is not that big of them, I feel like, yeah, yeah. Well, you guys are significantly larger, I think, in population. But, you know, with the amount of school systems we have in, you know, the Helen and the surrounding areas, my gym is in Montana city, so there’s, you know, there’s, I think, three schools within like, less than five minutes for my my place, and so, you know, I kind of promoted, like most everybody didn’t really know. I played Division One rugby in undergraduate school, and we had a very successful rugby team, rugby team. We played at the Big 10. We played at the Sweet 16 in Purdue. Like it was, we had, you know, for a walk on Division One rugby team. We had a stellar program. And so I was, you know, I honestly, I don’t really like, I have a few clients that are like, contest prep athletes. I’m gonna say I really don’t enjoy contest prep. I’ve retired, I’ve done all that. And it’s not that it doesn’t really, it’s not that it’s not fun. It just doesn’t interest me as much anymore. Yeah,

Ryan Jore 9:40
yeah, as you say, for the audiences aren’t aware that, so contest prep, meaning bodybuilders, correct,

Paulie Campbell 9:44
yeah, physique athletes, essentially, yeah, getting ultralean for a very short period of time. Yeah. And so, you know, I remember when I was growing up with athletics, you know, we didn’t really have an. Till maybe my junior and senior year, when I was on, you know, Alpine Ski Team. I didn’t really play any other sports long term in high school, I was really small in football. I didn’t take an interest in weightlifting. So I wasn’t strong, I wasn’t big. I was like, 160 pounds when I graduated high school. I’m like, you know, it would be great to give back to kids in the community that could benefit from what I didn’t have growing up to make them better, right? And there’s, obviously, with kids, there’s this component of going through puberty, right? And so you can, you know, a kid that hasn’t gone through puberty, you can have them lift weights as much as possible. It’s going to benefit them, but until they hit that, that puberty stage, that’s where you’re going to see them grow in other aspects, right? Bigger muscles, their joints, change their segments, change things like that. They’re better with their feet, better with their hand eye coordination. And girls, in particular, they go through puberty quicker than males do. So you see that accelerated in the female population. And then there was all this red tape to break through, like, oh, it’s going to stop my child’s growth. So we did with I had Danny and Noah, two physical therapists that were outstanding, Nikki, and I love them dearly, and they’re doing traveling physical therapy work. Now. I couldn’t have done this program without them. We did a meet and greet with the trainers and the parents. And so we had probably about, I’d say, 30 parent parents show up to the gym one night, and we did a very brief, 20 minute presentation about misconceptions about strength training and Youth and Sports conditioning and all these things. We answer questions. We got to know the parents. And my objective was not to, I don’t want 50 kids in my facility. That’s a you know, again, my facility is geared around toward like the, I’ll say the Bougie, posh, high end, semi private, right? I

Ryan Jore 11:46
don’t want to be your quality of quantity, correct?

Paulie Campbell 11:49
Exactly. You get 1215, kids in one class. There’s no way you have all eyes on all of those children. And that would be an absolute nightmare to try to be like herding cats. If you’ve ever seen Kindergarten Cop. That’s exactly what it would be like. And I do love kids, but it’s it would, it would just, I think, devalue the service a little bit more. So I’m not the cheapest in town. I’m not I’m proud of it. We’re worth it. And the kids that show up consistently see the results, and their parents see the results, and I continually get updates from parents. And the cool part about that is, is there’s not really a lot of automation with my business. It’s you’re when you’re getting messages from me, you’re getting messages from me. It’s not the scheduled system, which, again, those, those can be beneficial in certain capacities. But, you know, I like to, again, the value added, right? If you’re getting a text about how your athlete played on Saturday at her soccer game, you’re getting the text from me, and not a computer automation like, I really want to know what’s happening. So yeah, you’re charging

Ryan Jore 12:47
more because it allows you to have a number of athletes where you can still provide that service. Rick said, yeah, if you have 50 athletes, there’s just no way you can stay on top of that as one person. That’s

Paulie Campbell 12:56
just right, right? And yeah. And then there’s a whole other slew of issues that, you know, challenges that we would face that would be different from the challenges I faced, you know, kind of getting that the current strength and conditioning program going from the ground up. So one of my biggest challenges is getting through to high school coaches training their athletes. And there’s, there’s a lot of different things we could talk about today. We don’t have time to touch all of them, but simple things from, you know, I’ve seen programming from this the athletes that show me the programming that’s been written for them for this summer.

Ryan Jore 13:35
Little scary.

Paulie Campbell 13:36
It’s like, who wrote this? Like, no wonder you guys are undersized. Like, this is like, this makes zero sense to me. Like, if that you know what I mean. Like, we’ve been doing this long enough, and I understand that high school athletics, they have a lot of volunteers and things like that, which is wonderful, because we need those.

Ryan Jore 13:55
It is well intentioned. It’s just not always well thought out correct. And so

Paulie Campbell 13:59
I think what I’m going to do this year is I’m going to go talk to a couple football a couple football coaches say, Hey, I’m going to put together, if you’re interested, a free one month training block for your athletes, and one day a week on Friday, I’ll train them for free at my gym. It’ll be limited to six or eight athletes to see if they like it. I love that idea. The one thing I can say is, the athletes that have trained with me consistently, they get bigger, they get faster, they get stronger, and they learn more about nutrition and recovery.

Ryan Jore 14:26
All the kids you post on Instagram are monsters, yeah,

Paulie Campbell 14:30
yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s been amazing. I think one of the most, one of my first athletes was Tavin McMaster, yep, I was like him, he’s, a he’s an offensive lineman, and I’ve been training him for since I’ve almost been open in the new facility. He started at like 220, pounds, and he’s 6364, he might be taller, but he’s eye level with me, if not a bit above and now he’s playing at Carroll, and he’s 300 pounds, and he’s so fast. Yeah, and freakishly strong. And it’s just the stuff you

Ryan Jore 15:03
post to, like, he’s like, he’s strong on squat and bench and deadlines and stuff. But then you post like, you know, he’s doing rotational stuff, he’s doing single leg stuff, like, he’s not just this, like, I’m good at these three things in a box. Like, he can do a lot of cool stuff,

Paulie Campbell 15:15
right? And that’s really, and that’s really kind of, I really like working with with athletic athletes and the athletic population, because it opens my Pandora box of opportunity and possibility when it comes to training. So I’ll say we can kind of do some novelty stuff that still has transfer and application to the field or the ice. I train Brooklyn panco. She’s, I love Brooklyn so much. She’s been one of my originals. Also she plays Division One hockey out east. She’s an amazing athlete. She was on SportsCenter last year, and, you know, she’s, she comes back and she trains with me, whether it’s on Thanksgiving, Christmas, summer, and we constantly are making progress. This doesn’t mean kids don’t have, you know, hiccups and and setbacks, and I think, I think there’s a lot of ego involved with high school athletics, and it’s my intention is, yes, I do want to make money. That’s why I’m in business, is to make money, but I’m also in business to help your program improve their ability to perform. And how do you do that? You know, you there’s got to be some level of autonomy between, you know, getting personalized service and the sporting program at at a particular high school. You can

Ryan Jore 16:32
even just see how much you care with your social media for, like, I feel like, especially in the fall, like, seems like every Friday or something, you’re at a different football game for one of your athletes. Like, that’s not a, you know, that’s not a service that everyone does. Like, and showing that you actually care like that, that you’re still going to come watch them. It’s not just like when you’re paying me here in the gym,

Paulie Campbell 16:48
right? And like, and I get, I have conflict about that internally, like, I wanted to go hunting tonight, but I made a commitment last week to three of my boys that are playing at Helena high tonight, that I’ll be there. And that’s

Ryan Jore 17:01
the same Helen I had that just lost to Billings West,

Paulie Campbell 17:03
yes, yes, but you know that that’s part of my responsibility. And parents see me show up, and they’re, you know, I don’t expect anything out of it, other than, you know, I want to, you know, I make it known I’m there. I watch from the sideline, you know? I give feedback, I send my athletes text game day. You know, you know inspirational things or things about getting your mental attitude right, and each player responds differently to a different message, right? So they’re all not getting the same canned message. It’s very personable, and it

Ryan Jore 17:39
can literally even help you as a coach in your programming, because you can see, like, oh man, so and so’s, you know, not as explosive as I’ve had, you know, like, little things like that, because you’re like, Okay, we need to maybe do a little bit more of this. Or like, oh, he seems like he’s favoring this hip. Like, maybe we need to be getting something there. Like, there’s a ton you get out of it, just from a coaching perspective. So, or even I’ve had that with clients where, like, if I wasn’t that familiar with their sport, like going and watch them compete in something is a good way to be like, Oh, well, I see we need, you know, we need to work on rotational strength, or we need to work on lower body power, whatever. Like, just watching them compete in sport does a ton for the coach as well.

Paulie Campbell 18:11
Yeah, 100% and you know, one of the struggles that I’ve had, you know, I remember when I played rugby in college, it was very difficult to keep weight on, and that’s magnified even more so when you’re in high school and you’re a multi sport athlete, and so providing some nutritional guidance has been very important. It’s been critical, and it’s been very beneficial for all of my athletes that I’m working with the I think one of the biggest challenges, and this message is used to go out to parents. And I say this with empathy and love, is that your kids don’t have to be involved in absolutely everything. I think there’s kind of a psychological component there that, you know, they always have to be doing something if your kid is, you know, I think it’s and I can say this, I don’t have kids, but I was an athlete. I was a multi sport athlete. I know how it is. My parents were always supportive of me. If I started a sport, I had to finish the season. I could never quit. That was very important, and that was very, very well communicated in the beginning, you know? But what ends up happening is it’s very similar to like I asked my coach one year when I was doing my one of my pro shows, I’m like, hey, could I I needed to train for the Grand Teton because I was going to summit that with Nikki. And I did. And then I had a pro show to compete at, and he’s like, Well, generally, if you train for both, one or both are going to suffer. So I didn’t train for the Grand Teton until after my last show. So I had, like, three or four weeks, right? And that was very beneficial to me. So the same thing kind of applies to to youth athletes. Is like, if there’s a sport you really like, give 100% to that sport. Doesn’t mean you have to be in multiple sports, right? Because now you run into the issue of, are you able to strength train? Because you, mm. Athletes and hear me, parents, hear me. Coaches. Hear me. Athletes. If you are in a sport you need to train in season. If you take in season off, you are essentially reducing your ability to improve your athletic performance into that season and the next season, so you’re always a year behind if you do that well.

Ryan Jore 20:19
And Randall and I talked about this on podcast for it’s like, it doesn’t mean that you continue the same level of volume, like you will cut some volume when you’re in season, but it’s like, you don’t just go to zero, like, it’s not just practicing games, like, you still need to be hitting some level of strength

Paulie Campbell 20:32
training, right, the maintenance phase, right? It’s the same thing that, you know, you do with athletes that are in race season. It’s like, well, you know, as your mileage increases, you know, we’ll kind of look and adjust your your volume and intensity accordingly. The same thing needs to happen. And then, as far as you know, nutrition and recovery. I think recovery is the biggest thing that athletes struggle with, and I think part of that is, you know, you get it’s, it’s educating the parents, right? So having conversations with them about, you know, what’s appropriate, what may not be appropriate. And when you’re young and you’re in a sport, one or two or more in a particular, I’ll say, quarter or portion of the year, you know you’re not going to be able to eat all the vegetables and all the fruits like those are very important. Those are the foundation. But you’re going to need pizza, you’re going to need Pop Tarts. You’re gonna need high calorie, get some calories in sources of energy, because you’re the demands you’re placing on your body are gonna require the energy, especially

Ryan Jore 21:30
you said, like, the kids who are like, either like, struggling to keep the weight on, or, like, once we’re actually trying to gain weight, it’s like, it’s like, if you’re like, 150 pound, like, junior in high school, it’s like, you can just eat whatever you want. I mean, like, you actually probably need to eat. Need to eat more than you think you need to eat to actually just be able to maintain if you’re in a full season sport.

Paulie Campbell 21:47
I’ve been a nutrition coach for a very long time, and most of my clientele, we track macronutrients, right? That’s totally not necessary. That’s, I would say, for 99% of my athlete population in high school or junior high or even younger, that’s not an appropriate task for adolescents to be taking. So if athletes are looking to increase their body weight, the only change we talk about is adding a high calorie protein shake at the end of the day before bed. Right? Because it’s measurable, it’s easy. They don’t have to think about it, and that’s a conversation after their parents to ensure that they’re falling through. Ensure that they’re falling through. So you know, they’re using whole milk or a milk substitute, if they’re lactose intolerant, peanut butter or some butter. If there’s any allergies, there a scoop of whey protein powder, which is not a steroid, and it’s completely safe for your kids, just as creatine is. And if your kids aren’t taking creatine monohydrate, parents, that’s like, not taking your employer’s 401, K match, okay, that’s, it’s silly. You need to, like, that’s go out and buy it now, just a regular monohydrate. So those simple changes, right? We can easy to evaluate. Let’s start here. Do this every single day before you go to bed, or an hour before you go to bed. And let’s measure it in four weeks, and it never fails. Kids are up in weight. Yep, they feel better, right? Because they’re getting more food in throughout the day. So it kind of helps on all fronts and the multi sport athletes are really difficult to gain. Have gained weight. It’s just it’s a full time job, like you have to eat when you’re not even hungry. Essentially,

Ryan Jore 23:21
Dan John has a great chapter on one of his books. How, with his athletes, it’s like they need to eat a breakfast, a lunch and a snack before they’re even allowed to do their afternoon workout. It’s like, if you come to me and you haven’t had those three things, he’s like, you’re just going home, like, I don’t want you in the weight room. Like you’re you’re not going to have the full energy you need after a full day of school. Like, at that age, like you need to have a couple 1000 calories in before you’re lifting.

Paulie Campbell 23:43
Yep, 100% and that’s one of the first things I ask. You know, when athletes come in, I ask, What did you do today? What do you have coming up later today? And are you training tomorrow? Like I want to know in that short window, because that’s going to that’s going to influence what we do for the day, whether it’s intensity, volume, etc, well, it’s a great

Ryan Jore 24:04
example of like, say, how the best programs are written in pencil, not pen. It’s like you can have the greatest program, but it’s like, if coach made them run 15 extra gassers yesterday, it’s like you’re not going to do the same thing that you had planned had they not been doing that well. And that’s

Paulie Campbell 24:17
a message that I’d like to get out to coaches. If your kids are constantly run into the ground. It’s like the best, the best finisher. You always hear, you know, or see videos posting about the best finisher for after a workout, for athletes, go home, go home, get some food, get some rest. That is the best finish we could provide, you know. Because, let’s face it, I know the high school coaches and the junior high coaches. I know you’re working your kids, you demand a lot of them, as you should. That’s that’s your job, but just arbitrarily throwing in stupid at the end of a practice because you’re in a position of making those those demands is absolutely silly,

Ryan Jore 24:57
and we did when I was there age. It’s like, oh. Okay, yeah, 40 years just to throw the stick shift back then, but

Paulie Campbell 25:03
you were 40 pounds lighter, and you, you know, weren’t taking 10 milligrams of lisinopril to lower your blood pressure. So it’s like, just let your kids go home and rest, like most athletes would benefit from that when they have an opportunity to recover. Well, you said,

Ryan Jore 25:18
especially in this era now, where, like, these kids have, like, practices till eight, nine o’clock at night, like they need to just go home and rest at a certain point,

Paulie Campbell 25:24
because then you got homework, you got other family obligations, you know, they want to go out and hang out with their friends. Like they need to have a social life too. So there’s no like, there’s no magic formula here. But I do think these are things that you know, programs need to take into consideration. And for the most part, I would say high schoolers, high school coaches have been very supportive of their athletes getting specific attention with a trainer, and I think they need to be. You know, let’s face it, if I walked, if I walked into a handful of gyms in the area or high schools during their summer program, the coach isn’t even present. So how do you know your athletes are doing something right? Or they’re on their phone, or they’re in their office doing something else? They’re not present with their kids. They’re not coaching their kids. They’re not firing them up. I

Ryan Jore 26:10
could be wrong, but I thought, like, in the summer, they’re not even allowed, like, contact hours, like, they can essentially have, like, not required practices, but I don’t think they can actually be present for that. I’m just

Paulie Campbell 26:20
saying, like, general lifting, and maybe there, maybe there are constraints there. I can watch kids move on the field, Mike, and I can tell if they’re doing things right in the weight room, just based on how they move, you know, and it’s and so that’s kind of a, that’s kind of a tough position to be in, you know, I had a, I had butted some coaches last year, and I’ll tell this story. I won’t use names or schools or anything. That’s not important, but I had like three athletes come in. Their calves were smoked for like 10 days, like it lapsed. And I was asking me, What are you guys doing? Well, our coach made us do calf raises, and essentially what it was is they, I think they used the bleachers or the stadium, and for whatever step they were on, that corresponding step, whether it was step one or 10, they had that many calf raises, and I don’t know if we’re single or double, and these kids came back and they were just wrecked. And it’s like, that’s not the goal, right? Most of these kids throughout the summer aren’t lifting. They’re going to hang out with their buddies in the gym, right? And there’s nothing wrong with that. I think there’s camaraderie, there’s teamwork, there’s team building and things like that. But I was a kid in high school, when you’re in the weight room, we were in the weight room for ski team for a very short period of time. The attention span of high school athletes is, let’s just be honest, it’s not like a bodybuilding mentality. It doesn’t necessarily need to be that. But, you know, there definitely, I think there could be some areas for improvement across the board. And I think coaches, absolutely, I don’t care if you use me or not, whatever community you’re in, I would encourage you to, you know, send your athlete to get more specific help if they need it, or if they’re interested in

Ryan Jore 28:04
it. Well, it’s like, we don’t, we don’t tell the coaches what plays issue we’re in. But coaches also, then are not gonna be the experts on, like, what exercises their their students need to be doing. Like, it’s different hats for different

Paulie Campbell 28:16
folks, right? They don’t, you know, they don’t have a, you know, they don’t have degree in, you know biomechanics, and you know anatomy, and you know they’re, they’re, they’re, I’ll say blue collar workers for the most part, and they’ve got,

Ryan Jore 28:29
I mean, honestly, it’s brilliant. No different. Again, not step on toes, but a lot of doctors in the same situation who then act like they are exercise science. Again, it’s like, they understand the medical realm, but it’s like, sorry, I don’t like, you don’t squat, you don’t run, you don’t do these things. I don’t think you have a full understanding of what this actually is, right,

Paulie Campbell 28:45
which is unfortunate. And the same with the nutrition space. With doctors, they take one intro to nutrition class. I mean, their their time and energy is spent in, you know, other areas. And that’s not to discredit them, because that’s, that’s what they’re going to school for. But, you know, it’s like, if an athlete has an injury or something, and they come to the gym like, hey, my shoulders really messed up. It’s, I can’t diagnose that. I don’t even want to try to diagnose it. Like, exactly. I probably could feel like that’s out of my way. Go see dr Cody. He’ll get you back in business as soon as, as soon as possible. You know, I don’t want to sit here and guess that’s outside of my scope of practice. We can work in conjunction. I can have a conversation with them. We can titrate you awesome things and transition you back whatever we need to do, but go see that person that specializes in that area to help you get back to to all cylinders firing.

Ryan Jore 29:36
So that actually perfectly leads me into my last two questions or categories ahead for you, one way to look at we’re gonna talk knee health and shoulder health. I don’t care which one we start with, but so let’s, since I have knee health on the board first, what are some areas of focus you look at for keeping your athletes knees healthy? Like, whether that’s for a programming perspective, or, like, what muscles are you specifically targeting, or exercises you’re trying to ensure you get in, like, any number of areas there. So.

Paulie Campbell 29:59
So for we’ll start with, I’ll say knee and hip both, because they can’t they can go hand in hand, even ankle. But we’ll just say knee and this can go for shoulders too. Is isometrics. We talked about the first

Ryan Jore 30:15
level. Yeah, the

Paulie Campbell 30:17
juice is worth the squeeze, especially like, you know, transitioning to in season and in season, or it doesn’t. It doesn’t really matter. You could apply them anywhere throughout the year with an athlete. But you know, if you’re going to start with, you know, two days leading into football season, simply doing isometrics to get the joints ready for the task at hand. I mean, I’ve got a library list of exercises,

Ryan Jore 30:39
but I guess patterns, maybe more specifically, like movement patterns. Well,

Paulie Campbell 30:44
I like heel floating exercises, right? So, like, a split lunge, right with, with, like the front, like, essentially, the ball of your foot forward on the plate, and then the rest of your foot is off of the plate, horizontal with the ground. You know, the heel isn’t dipping, it’s not elevated up. It’s completely horizontal, like it would be on the floor, and holding that for, you know, 1520 seconds or so, maybe 30 seconds, and then graduating, you know, that into some contrast work. Maybe you superset that with, like, maybe a sled push or a hamstring or something of that nature, right to kind of get those, those segments ready for the task during that training session, but also the season. Because I think if we look at the landscape of what athletes do throughout the summer, I mean, they’re hanging out with their buddies, they’re doing stuff, they’re active, but they’re probably not lifting as much as they are in season. So when? So imagine going from like, I’ll say cold turkey, beginning of the season. Kids are excited for summer. You know, for the first month, they really don’t give a shit about anything other than hanging out with their friends. And now we’re closing in on, you know, less than a month before football starts, and now we’re doing two a days. Yeah, they’re young, but they still get injured. Yep, right? So essentially, circling back around to, you know, different movement patterns that will be a moving pattern, you know, I really like this isn’t really necessary. Well, it could be like Temple work. I know we do a lot of Temple work as well. I like posterior pole banded RDL with a pause or a tempo. That seems to work really, really well. Because I do think sometimes athletes need to learn the foundations again, of certain movements as they transition back getting ready for the season. For shoulders, one of my favorite warm ups is to throw an athlete on the bike or the rower. You know, whether it’s, you know, if they’re already involved in season where they’ve been lifting for a while, I’ll have them do I’ll start the session with a couple intervals. And, I mean, like two to 310, to 15 second max effort ballots. We’re not doing this for the whole hour. Same thing on the row, or maybe it’s a 500 meter all out row. You know, both of those are kind of full body, full body workouts. Gets the body prime for what we’re going to be doing. For shoulder work, I like to use a lot of bands, generally, for athletes, if you think about the nature of I’ll use football or even basketball and volleyball, there’s a lot of overhead extension with arms, right? Or there’s a lot of pressing in front of your in front of your, like a bench press, right? And so those muscles are obviously going to get, I’ll say, I don’t want to say overused, but they’re going to be the primary muscles used in season, right? Regardless of what position you’re playing, whether you’re throwing the football or whether you’re the O line or safety, like your overhead extension or your pressing those two movements. And so what’s really vulnerable a weak shoulder. And so how do we protect that? Well, again, isometrics, Temple work, things like Temple lateral raises. We could do negative push ups. We could hold, you know, the bottom end of a push up, you know, for 1015, seconds. But then Let’s also not forget, you know, the posterior side, so having a really strong backside, especially in season, because those those muscles don’t get trained a whole lot. I mean, even if you look at some of the defensive moves with football players, they’re not using a ton of back muscles unless, of course, they’re doing like a swim move or something like that. Again, another very vulnerable position for your shoulder to be in, especially if you’re getting hit from both sides or whatever the case might be one of my athletes. I’m not going to use his name. He had rotator cuff surgery last year and recovered very quickly. He’s a highly, highly skilled golfer and he’s a very highly skilled football player, and so I was actually training him this morning. He has a game up in Malta today, and I was asking him, how’s your shoulder? He’s like, it’s just kind of tired. And I’m like, you know that? You know, we talk about the pain scale and where it’s at. He’s like, it’s not really pain. It’s just tired. And I’m like, you know, that’s probably, it’s for a variety of reasons. You know, you had surgery on it, so it’s obviously, it’s going to be weaker. There’s nothing you can do about that other than. Strength training. But I said it’s early season, so the demands you’re putting on it right now are probably not what it’s used to, especially since this first season you’re experiencing post surgery. So I said we’ll just continue to monitor it. We did a ton of shoulder mobility work today. I shouldn’t say a ton. We did a couple sets of different things. We did some rotation, exactly. Yeah, because he’s got, you know, a six hour freaking bus ride up to mall to the play, and then they’re coming back, I think, late tonight. So I wanted to make sure we get his body moving, you know, make sure there weren’t any issues. He had some calf tightness on one side. So, you know, we did some isometrics there as well. We used the Arsenal strength squat machine, and we just did some. We did like a three second hold at the top with a, you know, a three second eccentric, essentially, really low volume, right? So, like in season, we’re not doing a ton of weight. We’re not doing a ton of volume, almost, yeah, I think we were like eight reps or less today on everything. It was like, generally, like that, four to eight rep range with what we were doing. We did some explosive, some explosive work, you know, with minimal load, etc. Yeah. And

Ryan Jore 36:08
I guess one things that I wanted to tie in, just the common theme that I heard listening from the training side is like hammering so much again, we’re talking tempo. We’re talking isometrics. Really, we’re talking there is tendons like the muscles are super important, yep, one of the things, especially the coaches, never factor in again. This is why it’s also kind of mean to say idiotic, but idiotic. Just hammer these kids and say calf raises that quickly is okay. Yes, you’re working the muscles, and their muscles are maybe ready, but their tendons may not be. Tendons recover slowly. Tendons don’t get the same blood flow. So, like, we need to get the tendons just as strong as we need to get the muscles, which, like you and I are talking the other day about, like, really, leading someone into a pre season with just a crap load of isometrics to get those tendons right, because that’s where you tend to see most issues. You don’t see a ton of, like, actually, like, you know, burst muscles or something like that during game. It’s more like knee tendonitis, shoulder tendonitis, elbow tendonitis, it’s like, well, how can we make strong tendons? Like you said, it’s tempos, it’s ISOs, like, getting that stuff ready for the season, which is not the sexy stuff. Like, you know, no one, no one worries about a big elbow tendon, but it’s like, we, we want to have strong, resilient tendons. And like you said, isometrics and eccentrics are where we’re going to get that.

Paulie Campbell 37:16
And you mentioned something, and I know we’ve, we’ve talked about this before, is the blood flow like those are less vascular than our than our muscle tissue. And you have to think of it like, you know, car, you know, you get a, you know, you replace, like a tie rod or something like that. You need to get your car realigned. And so think about your your tendons and ligaments like that. You’re kind of realigning your body for the task that you’re going to be putting it through that season. Yep, and it’s not sexy, but the cool part is, is you don’t need to do that indefinitely. You can sprinkle in, you know, isometrics, you know, two or three isometric exercises.

Ryan Jore 37:50
Yeah, it doesn’t have to be the whole program, but we just need to see something with it.

Paulie Campbell 37:54
And I would speculate, you’ll probably see it. I don’t want to say a ton, but you’ll probably see a reduced risk of injury or experience less injuries with athletes

Ryan Jore 38:03
Exactly. Say, we can never totally prevent injuries, but we can create a more resilient tendon that is less susceptible. Yeah, one of the other things I thought those underage you mentioned is stuff like lateral raises. It’s like, you know, no one looks at a lot of reasons like that doesn’t seem sport specific to most people. It’s like, well, when am I ever doing this? But as you mentioned in football, like, say, if you are doing a swim move, stuff like that, where your shoulders in a vulnerable position. We don’t need to do 10 sets a week there, but we need to see at least a little bit there, so that you’ve got some exposure and some stability built up in those ranges. Because end ranges happen in sports, like, your shoulder is going to get yanked back. If you’re a quarterback, at some point, you’re going to get hit in this position. And if we’ve never built any resilience. They’re like, it’s just more susceptible. Yeah,

Paulie Campbell 38:43
and think of like, think of that segment right, that lever arm that’s coming up so that quarterbacks arm that’s back. You get hit in the hand. The amount of torque that’s placed on that shoulder is absolutely brutal. And

Ryan Jore 38:56
honestly, every Sunday, I see someone get hit like that. And like this just shows you how much more insanely, like, resilient those guys are. Like, if you did that to me once, I’m like, I cannot imagine. I know. And they’re hitting that way, like, three, four times a game, like, oh, at full speed, just and

Paulie Campbell 39:12
tendonitis and getting bursa sacs and stuff like that, the recovery time can almost be worse than a broken bone. Yeah. I mean, we’re talking fake four now, Yep, yeah, it’s, it’s really bad. And so to get ahead of that curve ball, it’s, I think it’s important to do isometrics. And so I’m gonna, I’m gonna toy around this year to see if I can, I can get some more buy in from some of the coaches and, you know, just kind of experiment with different things. But the cool part is I know what I’m doing works because I get to test it with the athletes that I’m training before

Ryan Jore 39:45
we go. I want to make sure our audience knew where to find you. So where can they find you on social media? Yeah,

Paulie Campbell 39:50
so I have to look up my my tag on Instagram. So it’s coach dot Polly, and that’s with ie. So it’s coach, dot Polly, underscore, i n c, and then on Facebook, it’s just, I believe it’s just Paul Campbell. And again, this is kind of one of the say that, and some people still get it wrong. I’m not super active with my business stuff on Facebook. Again, this is one of the business struggles. It’s like social media is one of the first things to go because I used to post, you know, tons of videos, but now it’s like it’s just a whole nother task list. And so I

Ryan Jore 40:34
do think there is sometimes a correlation, not entirely, because some are good at doing both, but there’s sometimes a correlation between how much social media someone’s putting out and how many like clients they actually have. Like, there is a ratio there, like, a certain point. Yeah, if you’re serving certain people, you just can’t be posting 50 times a day. Just, there’s no way.

Paulie Campbell 40:51
Yeah, and it’s crazy, because I have, like, I’ll go through my Google Photos, and I’ll go to my video section, and I have tons of videos, but I just, I haven’t posted them. And again, like people know me, people you know the kids, repost the stories that I share so that that gets that information out there. I do have to tell you a funny story before we depart here today. But so tavid, the football player I was telling you about before. He was probably like, 262 70 at this time. This is probably a year, year and a half ago. We were doing a drill. It was a footwork drill, and then there was, like, a little bit of some upper body work involved. But essentially, the end result was I was I was the defender. I was coming up to him, and I was holding one of those big ass Swiss balls, kind of like in front of my, like, up against my torso, and he kept hitting me, which was the objective at the end, for for blocking, and he just, he wasn’t hitting me. And I’m like, like, tavid hit me. Like, if you hit like this on the field, you’re gonna get manhandled. And so, and I don’t think I have the video anymore, unfortunately. And so the last rep we did of this particular drill, he hit me so hard I got launched back into the squat Max machine and the garage door. And his eyes got real big. He’s like, are you okay? I’m like, That’s the intensity I’m talking about. I want you to do you’re not gonna hurt me. I mean, that’s almost died, but, yeah, still there.

Ryan Jore 42:18
It’s memorable for him. And then, where can people find your gym page as well? On Instagram. It’s

Paulie Campbell 42:26
the bar 406, dot com. And if you have any questions, you can just, there’s like a little icon at the bottom. How can we help you? Just type it in there. I’ll get notified. It goes to my cell phone. And if you’re interested in getting your athlete in, or, you know, anything, reach out. I’ll answer your questions. I’ll have a phone conversation with

Ryan Jore 42:48
you. Awesome. Thank you, Mr. Campbell, you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai