Slant Board Guy On Creating the Slant Board & Working with Pro Athletes | DSH #181

At that time I was in construction so at the end of the camp I said I could probably just go back to work and build something for us to stand on.

Wow, so you literally made it

yourself.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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 Cavs, one of the Cavs strength coach, Derek McLander, 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, Slampboard Guy.

How you going?

Doing well, man.

How's it going?

Yeah, good.

Finally, good to get here.

Absolutely.

So

let's talk about the product and how you got started.

I mean, I use it every day.

It's a great product.

Yeah, it's a bit of a crazy journey.

I've never been in business and I just 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 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, 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 built a wedge and the rest is kind of

made it yeah

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 didn't have Facebook didn't have anything at all

and they said yeah they come 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's that in pounds yeah and what's the science behind it like the angle and everything um it was just it was 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

sent a few out to some people and they said it was a bit 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 when we locked it in.

So what's the angle at now?

27 degrees.

27.

27 degrees.

So what does it actually do?

for the human body?

What are the benefits?

Oh, there's huge amounts of benefits.

I think the biggest thing that popularized our product was knees over toes

and knee health.

But predominantly people with no ankle flexion.

What does it do for the knee?

Well, when you squat and your knee goes further over your toe, it puts more emphasis on your VMO.

And

some people, most people say that the VMOs is what protects your knee the most.

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, that's, it's just the VMOs, you know, everyone like Ben, knew the toe, come out and,

you know, probably put the word and everything around it.

And, you know, people have been,

it's just popularised the movement, to be honest.

There was, there was a few other coaches training kind of similar

along the way, but he popularised it to.

Yeah, knees over toes guy.

That's how I found out about you guys.

Yes.

So did you file a pattern on the design?

Yeah, yeah.

So on the original one that you've got, we've got a design pattern.

Nice.

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?

That's crazy.

How did you get it to LeBron?

Yeah,

LeBron, I think the way it happened is the Cavs, one of the Cavs strength coach, Derek Melander, reached out.

And the Cavs bought about eight or ten boards off us.

And I think he's friends with LeBron's coach,

personal coach.

So then they reached out, and so that's how that's how that all happened.

And I think Spencer Dinwiddie, like nearly, it's Nelly, like in all the NBA teams, the NFL teams.

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 to sixty thousand

jeez that's crazy at what at what price um

129 135.

oh nice trying to do the math that's a lot of money

these are actually going to last forever too like are you all 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 put it on.

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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 oh so these so these hooks are for resistant 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 then if you're in a hotel you can can pretty much get a full workout just with with that.

Wow.

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

I think,

one, I'd be just definitely looking at what knees over toes guy does.

But, you know, his

R-O-K-P, I think, is his big thing.

So it's like reverse out knee pain.

So if you've been watching his stuff, it's like the first thing he recommends to anyone.

He's just walking backwards.

Yep.

I do that every day.

Yeah.

And it's crazy, right?

It's like something that's so simple.

Yeah.

People look at me crazy, but I'm like,

I used to do it walking up a hill, though.

Yeah.

I go on this walk in 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?

That'd be just like the next progression, right?

So for someone like Sean's mom, it might be just like on flat ground, walking backwards, and then up a hill, you know, and then why, why isn't that like talked about walking backwards?

Or 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 leg

i don't know i i think for some you never hear people mention it i mean 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 um ben like just exploded onto the scenery you know 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 that's when he started talking about sled work, dragging the sled and pushing the sled.

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,

let me get back to you in a week.

Got back to me in a week and said, turn the treadmill off and walk backwards on the treadmill, like a deadmill.

So you see it all over the internet now at the moment.

Everyone's treadmill turned off and walking backwards.

It's great, man.

Are you a fan of stretching at all?

Yeah, like it's again,

the traditional training 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?

Wow.

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.

When we were doing rugby league, it was like squat, deadlift, bench press.

It was always just that.

And

I think now people are starting to realise, 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 coach out there is just looking for like the 1%.

Like, what's the top 1% we can do?

Like, can we change this or can we change that?

Because athletes are getting paid so much money, right?

So for an organisation, if they're getting injured and they're out for a long time,

it's cost them a lot.

It's cost them a lot, right?

So I think that they look at every tiny little bits and pieces and like the 0.5% or whatever it is,

yeah, they'll 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 the sports evolved and the players evolve, like they're bigger, faster, stronger.

They play longer minutes.

But the coaching, I don't think, has evolved to that level.

Yeah, rugby is a fun sport to watch.

Yeah.

No, it's a 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.

Yeah, but they have no pads.

Oh, there's no pads?

No, we don't wear pads.

And rugby?

Whoa.

Wait, you haven't seen a rugby game?

No, I saw it.

I thought they had pads under the clothing.

No,

some people wear them, but I think, like I said to you before,

you guys, the game stops and starts, right?

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.

All right.

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, you know, bigger and 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, it's 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.

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.

I'm just like, so like,

we're more well known over here in the US than what we own there.

Really?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah.

So Australia is behind.

Yeah.

Or we're like.

He said, yeah.

Yeah, we are definitely.

The U.S.

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, because I hear some players that get injured here go out there and get treatment, too.

Yeah.

Certain doctors are better there.

Didn't Kobe do that?

For me?

I think stem, some kind of stem stem cell or something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because like a lot of our.

Because what's legal there isn't legal here.

Okay.

Okay.

So stem cells are illegal there.

I think so.

Okay.

Procedural stem cells.

Yeah.

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 like in rugby league's pretty much the biggest sport.

So were you pro?

You were a pro rugby person?

No, no.

No, not by far.

Okay.

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 then preventing them to reaching where they should, a level they should in sport.

But 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?

And do these come in different colours, like red, white, pink, blue?

Just in them ones, we just do blue and that black.

Will they come in other colours?

Yeah, it just depends.

We'll probably do like custom runs for like teams and stuff like that.

Is that the goal with the company?

You want to go more wholesale model for teams?

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

what would you call it?

The affiliation or the actual team themselves don't have them all.

So it's like, I don't know, like...

Yeah, wholesale to even gym lines.

But I think it needs to come with an education piece.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because this should be in gyms.

I haven't seen it should be every gym should have something like that

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 it's not to make sure people don't work on the ankle mobility but at the start when they go in um you know yourself you use it right but you can do a squat on that and and how your quads feel like oh it burns yeah right and and it's reducing the the risk of injury because you haven't got any weight right like you know you haven't got weights holding on your back but 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 crazy just squats but you feel it in your quads but squats with no weight you're 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 quadrant it's like lower quadrants here so oh so it's knee strings like literally focuses you can feel this 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 knee strings you can do your calf you can do there's soleus There's so much you can do on it.

So originally when we first created it, it was just for 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 or harder to use, like, more difficult?

Yeah, that's why longer.

That's why we designed that one with the bands.

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

And they sack on top of each other so they don't take up any any room

And then we did we designed one for a couple of NHL players that goes both ways So it's angled like that.

It's on our website, but it's um most people I saw is angled like this.

Yeah, so when they'll do nearly like how they're together They're like that

So like when they're doing their plyometrics and they'll just jumping off one board to the flat floor It wasn't really suiting them because of how they skate because their feet are like this all the time Oh, yeah, they go in a little bit.

Yeah, so they wanted to jump from one to the other.

And they just thought the slant board might tip so that to put it against a wall.

But we said, oh, Donnie, we'll just design one board for you.

Wow, that's great customer service, man.

You're designing a whole new product.

You're an athlete.

So we did that, and then we didn't really think anything of it.

We sent it out to St.

Louis and he loved it.

And then he posted about it a few times and then it just kicked off.

And I'm just like, 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 takes

takes up a fair bit of cash flow.

Right.

Three months.

It was stuck at the port.

Yeah.

Oh, just, yeah, like, it literally takes that long by time.

Oh, it does.

Oh, shit.

Yeah, because they're, they're, I mean, they're two pounds each, right?

No, two, that's like 2.4 kilos.

I think it's about like five and a half.

Five, five and a half pounds on the the freight on the airplane, it'll cost too much in shipping.

It'll be way too heavy.

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 to you.

But what is the shipping cost?

I include it in the price.

So

every product of yours got free shipping.

The disadvantage is like you can only get one in a 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 it's like

if not 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 uh 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.

Where's the soleus?

It's right down the bottom here.

So 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.

Really?

The soleus is what's the small muscle?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then people come back and go, no, it's the tongue.

It's his back.

Like, technically, that's probably another muscle, but it's probably one of the strongest muscles in the body.

But no one 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 leg when you do a calf raise?

Yeah.

Yeah.

so if you watch some of these hockey players and again i most of the education comes from the this um ice hockey player over in st louis um but yeah if your knee is over your toe and then you do like a calf raise you'll feel it really completely different so it's like oh i gotta start trying though they try it it's like it's next i used to sprain my ankle every week but i 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 bend your knees so it's like over your toe you know how you're taught it's bad to to bend your knees over your toe?

It's actually not bad.

Wow.

I think a lot of that was, yeah, like that was back in the day.

And I think it's just more end range

to try and get your body in positions that you're going to be in when you play basketball, right?

So everyone knows that when you play basketball, your knee does go over your toe.

But when we're training, if we're not putting our knee over our toe, then what's going to happen in the game?

Chances you're going to get injured and you're going to hurt yourself.

100%.

It's all different for everyone.

you for your mum to say oh yeah and complete end range knee over toe like it's not not practical right yeah i keep telling her to do like those tibialis raises and to walk backwards but yeah it's not like a known thing so she thinks it's kind of weird yeah and it's just and they're they're little ones that you can like you know the tib raises 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 changed it's elevated my vertical i feel stronger my calves are looking better yeah shin splints yeah having those i have a problem with shin splints oh you do oh i do what advice advice can you give for shin splints?

Tib razors, just like you can do.

Sean will be able to tell you, you can do them without any equipment up against the wall

just to fail until they'll burn.

And it seems silly, but I think like after a week, two weeks, you notice a huge difference.

Yeah, you won't hop in the gun.

Shin splints are like,

even when just going on my walks, I get shin splints after a while.

Really?

Six miles?

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...

I don't know.

It's a lot of 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 wearing tear.

That's why they have the sleeves to keep the bone and the 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 got to 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, 10 miles a day.

So that's a lot.

Yeah.

Make a world of difference.

What about for people with knee issues?

What exercises to do or what I recommend to do?

Again, I'd probably, it depends.

This isn't medical advice, but like I'd start with just the walking backwards.

Walking backwards.

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.

It's 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.

You know yourself when you use your board, you don't really need weight.

You can you can add weight, but 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?

Just on Instagram at Slampoard Guy.

and our website is just slampallguy.com.

I prefer Wayne 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.