Digital Social Hour - Slant Board Guy On Creating the Slant Board & Working with Pro Athletes | DSH #181

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

On today's episode of Digital Social Hour, Slant Board Guy reveals the importance of streteching, getting his product in the hands of professional athletes & how he came up with the business. BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] APPLY TO BE ON THE POD: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH HelloFresh: https://www.hellofresh.com/50dsh Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankelly LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and build something for us to stand on wow so you literally made it yourself yeah yeah yeah we and you were able to get it in the hands of professional athletes like lebron james entire nba teams how did you manage to pull that off the calves one of the strength coach derek milander reached out the digital social hour i'm your host sean kelly along with my co-host wayne lewis what up what up and our guest today slam board guy how you going doing well man how's it going yeah good finally good to get here absolutely so let's uh let's talk about the product and how you got started i mean i use it every day it It's a great product. Yeah, it's a bit of a crazy journey. I've never been in business and I just, I broke my ankle when I was 11.

So I got two screws in there holding my ankle together. So I've got no mobility. I've always been into fitness. This is just the short version. And yeah, I couldn't squat. So I went to a fitness camp and there was a heap of people there squatting and I i couldn't do it so we put some timber underneath my feet and at that time i was in construction so at the end of the camp um i said i could probably just go back to work and and build something for us to stand on so i went back to work and build a wedge and the rest is kind of

wow so you literally made it yourself yeah yeah yeah we um yeah i went to work made it and then gave it to one of the guys and we didn't have any social media i didn't have facebook didn't have anything at all um and they said yeah they come and picked it up and they said this is this is awesome and i'm like oh it's just i just built it in a day like it wasn't wasn't anything fancy how much does it weigh that's about 2.4 kilos i don't know what was that in pounds yeah and what's the science behind it like the angle and everything um it was just it was really like trial and error like when we first started like there was no specific angle that i'd built it to so originally we started at 30 degrees and then um sent a few out to some people and they said it would be too steep so we played around with

some angles and then when we started getting some feedback that everyone liked the angle that we used that's that's when we locked it in and so what's the angle at now 27 27 27 degrees so what is what does it actually do for the human body like what what are the benefits oh there's there's huge amounts of benefits i think like the biggest thing that popularized like our product was knees over toes got um and you know knee health but um predominantly like people with no ankle flexion what does it do for the knee well when you squat and your knife goes further over your toe it puts more emphasis on your vmo and some people most people say that um the vmo is what protects you need the. And where's the VMO located? Just this part. Okay.

Is that where your meniscus is? Yeah, your meniscus is on the front, and then this is just on the side here. Got it. Yeah, it's just VMOs. Everyone, like Ben, News Over Toe come out and probably put the word and everything around it. And people have been – he's just popularized the movement to be honest there was there was a few other coaches training kind of similar um along the way but he popularized

it to yeah knees over toes guy that's how i found out about you guys yes so did you file a patent on the design yeah yeah so on the original one that you've got we've got a design pattern nice um and then on this one we've got a design and a pending utility and you were able to get it in the hands of professional athletes like lebron james entire nba teams how did you manage to pull that off how'd you get it to lebron yeah um lebron i think the the way it happened is the calves one of the calves strength coach um derek melander reached out um and they the calves bought about eight or 10 boards of us. And I think he's friends with LeBron's coach,

personal coach. So then they reached out and so that's how that all happened. And I think Spencer Dinwiddie, like nearly, it's nearly like in all the NBA teams, NFL teams. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah. It's crazy. Once your product is so good, it speaks for itself basically. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, it's crazy. Once your product is so good, it speaks for itself, basically. Yeah, well, I mean, that's what I love about your story, but we haven't even done any social media marketing. At all.

None. Not once. How many items have you sold? How many boards have you sold so far? Around the vicinity of 50,000 to 60,000. Jeez. That's crazy. At what price? $129 135 oh nice trying to do the math

that's a lot of money these are actually gonna last forever too like are you are you need is one right you don't have to they don't break they don't bend they don't yeah so originally we made the timber one that sean's got um indestructible in a way right yeah and that one's that one's super cool and then so we're thinking like what can we do we designed this one so like you can kind of travel with it you can you didn't get into business to run payroll did you that's okay i didn't either now there's gusto gusto not only offers payroll but also benefits onboarding and hr all in one place to more than 300 000 businesses maybe you want federal state and local payroll taxes to be filed automatically no matter

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and more one all this and more with no hidden fees? Try it out for three months for free at gusto.com slash social. That's gusto.com slash social. Your bag, pretty easy. And then you can hook resistance bands onto the side of it. So for all the guys that do a lot of traveling. So these hooks are for resistance bands? Yeah, they're specifically located so you can put, you know,

if you put your foot a little bit on the board or all the way on the board um but yeah so then you can travel with it comes with resistance bands and if you're in a hotel you can can pretty much get a full workout just with with that wow my uh my mother tore her meniscus do you think she can recover without the surgery that they keep recommending like just naturally 100 yeah i'm trying to instill that into her but and how i think one i'd be just definitely looking at what knees over toe this guy does but you know he's um ro keep i think he's his big thing so it's like reverse out knee pain so if you've been watching his stuff yeah it's like the first thing he recommends to anyone he's just walking backwards yep i do that every day yeah it's and it's it's crazy right it's like something

that's so simple yeah um people look at me crazy but i'm like i used to do it um walking up a hill though yeah i go on this walk and seven hills before i got cold and i will walk backwards up a hill so people do look at you crazy they drive past like what the yeah that'd be just like the next progression right so for someone like sean's That'd be just like the next progression, right? So for someone like Sean's mom might be just like on flat ground, walking backwards and then up a hill. Why is that like talked about, walking backwards? Why do you think that is?

And, I mean, there's definitely a lot of benefits to it. I feel like it strengthens the whole back of your leg, everything about the back of the legs. I don't know i think you never hear people mention it i think for so many years man everyone was trained the same right so it's like and no one ever wants to be the the outcast one to bring to bring something to light and i think that's why ben like just exploded onto the scenery and i think when we first first met him i think he had 20 000 followers wow yeah yeah he

blew up after that joe rogan podcast yeah i met him when he had 20 000 he did a zoom call and no one hopped on the zoom call i was the only one on the zoom call wow and um that's when he started talking about sled work dragging the sled and pull and pushing the sled yeah and i said well we don't have a gym in our gym we don't have a sled what do we do he's just like um let me get back to you in a week got back to you in a week got back to me in a week and said turn the treadmill off and and walk backwards on the treadmill like a dead mill so you see it all over into the now at the moment everyone's yeah treadmill turned off and and walking backwards it's great man are you a fan of stretching at all

yeah like it's again i think the traditional trainer i was doing when i was playing sport is we weren't really doing too much of it right so it's like i think it's huge what sport did you play rugby league rugby and you weren't stretching well i've heard stretching deactivates the muscle is that true i don't i know there's a difference between the static stretch and the quick ones right and certain timing is better for each one yeah going back to your question but when we were doing rugby league it was like squat deadlift bench press like it was always just that and right i think now people starting to realize and it's a bit more that's why i like coming to america so much because athletes are paid so much it's like every every coach out there's just looking for like the one percent like what's the top one

percent we can do but can we change this or can we change that because athletes getting paid so much money right so for organization if if they get injured in there out for a long time it's cost them a lot cost me a lot right so I think that they look at every tiny little bits and pieces and not the 0.5 percent or whatever it is yeah they don't go and try it so it's like it's very very different to what's what's going on in australia at the moment do you think plyometrics would have been good for rugby players yeah yeah and i think the problem we have in australia is i think that a lot of our strength coaches and a lot of our coaches that are in sport they are from that sport 20

years ago and it's evolved yeah so it's the sports evolved and the players evolved like they're bigger faster stronger they play longer minutes but the coaching i don't think it's evolved to that level yeah rugby is a fun sport to watch yeah no it's painful sport yeah why do you think there's so many injuries in rugby what do you mean no like seriously rugby is a tough sport there's more than football, but they have no pads. Oh, there's no pads? No, we don't wear pads. In rugby?

Whoa. Wait, you haven't seen a rugby game? No, I saw. I thought they had pads under the clothing. No, some people wear them. But I think, like I said to you before, rugby is dangerous. So you guys, the game stops and starts, right?

Mm-hmm. So we play 40 minutes each half. And so they're on there for 80 minutes. The game doesn't stop. Oh, there's no timeouts? No, no timeouts. Wow. So the athletes progressed.

So they've got bigger. They've got stronger. And they play more. So they're hitting each other with forces that are bigger, longer. And I just think that the training hasn't evolved where it needs to be. You know, specifically like knee strength, right? It's like the upper body and the whole quads and everything is all bigger, but we haven't strengthened the knees or we haven't strengthened the ankles. So it's like most injuries we get is like knees and ankles.

Right. And I think it's crazy because I think like some of our biggest athletes over there, they've got injured. They come over to the US to do recovery. And some of our stuff's been in the facilities over here. And they're like, oh, where did you get this stuff from? And they're like, oh, it's an Australian guy that does it. And they're like, oh, I didn't know.

So we're more well-known over here in the US than what we are in there. Really? Wow. So Australia's behind. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, we are definitely the us definitely sets a tone in certain markets in certain markets yeah but i feel like i would

think that would be already over there already i mean no because i hear some players that get injured here go out there and get treatment too yeah australia certain doctors are better there something like didn't kobe do that for me i think stem some kind of stem stem cell or something like that yeah because like a lot of it because what's legal there isn't legal here okay so stem cells are illegal there i think so okay yeah well as much as i know it's like nearly the opposite like all of our rugby league stars when they get injured they come here okay so i can rugby leagues pretty much the biggest sport. So were you pro? You were a pro rugby player? No, no. No, not by far.

Like I said, I'm really passionate about it because I think it's, one, we should be educating our kids about our bodies a lot better than what we do so they're not getting into the predicament of getting injured and preventing them to reach a level they should in sport. There's always going to be the accident that happens and we can never prevent that. but i think if there's all these little things like you know no one was teaching us to look at our ankles and our knees and like it wasn't that it was just like how can we get bigger stronger faster um so and do these

come in different colors like red white pink blue just in them ones we just do blue and that black um will they come in other colors yeah it just depends like we we'll probably do like custom runs for like teams and stuff like that okay um is that the goal with the company you want to go more wholesale model for teams um yeah i mean it's crazy because so many players in so many teams have got them but just then the whole team hasn't got them or like that you know they're what you call the affiliation or the actual team and themselves don't have them all so it's like I don't know like yeah wholesale to like even gym lines but I think it needs to come with like an education piece yeah yeah because this should be in gyms I would see should be every gym should

have something like a couple I think like 90% of the population wouldn't be able to squat properly, right? So it's just like that ankle mobility is not there. And it's just like, it's not to make sure people don't work on ankle mobility, but at the start when they go in, you know yourself, you use it, right? But you can do a squat on that and how your quads feel. Oh, it burns. Yeah, right? And it's reducing the risk of injury because you haven't got

any weight right like you know you haven't got weights holding on your back like you're not doing a back squat i've never felt a quad burn like that in my life which i try and tell everyone what workout were you doing just squats but you feel it in your quads my squats with no weight you just going up yeah well i hold it when i'm down and it's just a burn wow because once your knee goes over your toe it's more quad dominant right and like it's not upper quarter it's like lower quad it's here oh so it's not upper quad, it's lower quad. Oh, so it's knee stretch. Literally focuses.

You can feel this burning. And these are good for stretching too. Yeah. Because when I stepped on it, I felt instant stretch in the back of my legs. Yeah. And then that's a set. You can do your calf, you can do this soleus. There's so much you can do on it.

So originally when we first created it, it was just to help people squat and the evolutions come where people are doing so many exercises on it so how like like how how can you like how can as far as from like an evolution standpoint like is there ways you can make this product better better or harder to use like more difficult yeah that's longer that's why we designed that one with the band so that's like another evolution we've got another one that's like just two single ones so like you can put your legs further apart your feet further apart if you need to um and they stack on top of each other so they don't take up any any room um and then we did we designed one for a couple of um nhl players that goes both ways so it's angled like that um it's on our website but it's um most people it's always angled like this yeah so when they'll nearly like how they're together

they're like um so like when they're doing their plyometrics and they're just jumping off one board to the flat floor it wasn't really suiting them because of how they skate yeah because their feet are like this all the time yeah they go in a little bit yeah so they wanted to jump from one to the other yeah um and they just thought the slant board might might tip that so that to put against a wall but we said i don't we'll just design one one board for you wow that's great customer service man you're designing a whole new product for an athlete yeah we did that and then we didn't we didn't really think anything of it we sent out to st louis um and he loved it and then he posted about it a few times and and then just kicked off and i'm just well, we may as well just manufacture these ones.

And we manufacture them all ourselves on the Gold Coast. That's incredible. So just about to stitch up some manufacturing here in the US. Oh, nice. That's a rare thing to find. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, well, three months on a boat in a container is like- Too long.

Takes up a fair bit of cash flow. Right. Three months. It was stuck at the port. Yeah. three months on a boat in a container is like too long takes up a fair bit of cash flow three months it was stuck at the port yeah oh just yeah like it literally takes that long bottle oh it does oh yeah because they're they're i mean they're two pounds each right no two that's like 2.4 kilos so i think it's about like five and a half five five and a half pounds on the freight on the airplane it'll cost too much in shipping it'll be way too heavy yeah well we used to until i don't know three four months ago we used to air freight every single one to the customer like yours was all air freighted yeah and like fedex is three days four days but what is the shipping cost um i include it in the price so yeah every every product has got free shipping but yeah

um the disadvantage is like you can only get one in the box right but if you just flip the other one upside down two of them could go in there but you can't give two to the customers if you did it like that it'd be it'd be perfect what advice can you give someone that has constant ankle sprains to strengthen their ankles i'd stretch man just like constant constant stretching um that's that's probably what i'd do and then just like more work around like the soleus i found that um where's the soleus it's right down the bottom here so it's just like okay a lot of people don't really think about it they're just like they work on their calf but the soleus most people say it's just like a lot of people don't really think about it. They're just like they work on their calf. But the soleus, most people say it's the strongest muscle in the body.

Wait, the soleus is what's the small muscle? Yeah. Yeah. And then people come back and go, no, it's the tongue. It's this. But like technically, it's probably another muscle, but it's probably one of the strongest muscles in the body. But none really focuses his work on it. So it's like when you see people do a calf raise and their legs are straight,

it's just really targeting their calf. So you're saying to bend your you see people do a calf raise and their legs are straight it's just really targeting their their calf so you're saying to bend your leg when you do a calf raise yeah yeah so if you watch some of these hockey players and again most of the education come from the the some ice hockey player every in st. Louis but if your knees over your toe and then you do like a calf raise you feel it really different so I gotta start trying to try it yeah try it it's next i used to sprain my ankle every week but i got an ankle brace started stretching started doing plyometrics so when you're doing calf raises you want to kind of sit on them a little bit

yeah bend your knees so it's like over your toe you know how you're taught it's bad to bend your knees over your toe it's actually not bad wow i wouldn't teach you this i think a lot i think a lot of that was yeah like that was back in the day and i think it's just more end range like if to try and get your body in positions that like you're going to be when you play basketball right so everyone knows that when you play basketball your knee does go over your toe yeah when we're training if we're not putting our knee over our toe then what's going to happen in the game yeah chances you're going to toe, then what's going to happen in the game? Chance is you're going to get injured and you're going to hurt yourself.

100%. It's all different for everyone. For your mom to say, oh, yeah, complete end range knee over toe, it's not practical, right? Yeah. I keep telling her to do those tibialis raises and walk backwards, but it's not like a known thing. So she thinks it's kind of weird. Yeah.

And they're little ones that you can, the tib raise that you can lean up against the wall like you don't need equipment for it right so i do those like four days a week and it's it's elevated my vertical i feel stronger my calves are looking better yeah shin splints yeah i haven't had those i have a problem with shin splints oh you do oh what advice can you give for shin splints tube raises just like you can can do sean be able to tell you you can do them without any equipment up against the wall um just to fire until they'll burn and it seems silly but i think like after a week two weeks you notice a huge difference yeah you all have them again so like even when just going on my walks i get shin splints after a while really six mile i mean going six miles a day

what do you think causes shin splints i think isn't it separation from the actual bone itself in some aspect or uh i don't know this is like it's a lot of uh pounding here so what happens is from what they say it's like the muscle and the bone start to kind of separate a little bit so that's why they have just wear and tear that's why they have the sleeves okay keep the bone and muscle together that's my whole point right like no one taught you about shin splints or you about shin splints when we were younger so it's like so you just gotta deal with it right deal with it and deal with it and then someone comes out and goes oh no you can just like it's a simple exercise like why aren't we teaching young kids that yeah at a young age i wish i had this when i was a distance runner because i had so many injuries because you're running eight ten miles a day that's a lot yeah make a world

of difference what about for people with knee issues what what exercises to do or what i recommend to do again i'd probably it depends like this isn't medical advice but like i'd i'd start with just the um walking backwards walking Yeah, like probably five to ten minutes a day. Yeah. And then progressively, like I said, you can go uphill. It's the same as when I hop on a slant board. There's step ups, step downs that you can do on there, squats. There's a few different ones you can do on there

and you just progress, like slowly progress. So like I wouldn't be going on there and just jumping on there with weight. Right. You know yourself when you use your board, you don don't really need weight you can you can add weight but um yeah there's probably just three or four exercises that i do like walk backwards squats step up and step downs absolutely well it's been a pleasure man any closing comments and where people can find you um just on instagram it's sample guy um and our website's just slam for guy.com perfect way? At the creator on Instagram.

Right there. There we go. Sean, Mike, Kelly, guys, thanks for tuning in. Digital Social Hour. I'll see you next week. Peace. Thank you.