NSCA’s Coaching Podcast, Season 6 Episode 10: Heidi Campo

Learn about the new NSCA Strongman Special Interest Group (SIG) from strength and conditioning coach, Heidi Campo. Campo talks with NSCA Coaching and Sport Science Program Manager, Eric McMahon, about her path in strength and conditioning that ran from bodybuilding and powerlifting to becoming a strongman competitor. Campo discusses her experiences spending the winter in Iceland at the “Nest of Giants” with four-time World’s Strongest Man, Magnus Ver Magnusson, and how camaraderie in the sport ignited an even stronger passion for her work as a coach. This episode also discusses how strongman is not just for elite competitors, and how training concepts and methods from the sport can be integrated across all levels of athleticism, multiple sports, and for clients of any age. 
 
You can reach out to Heidi on Instagram: @muscleyogi or by email at heidi@coachbta.com| Find Eric on Instagram: @ericmcmahoncscs or Twitter: @ericmcmahoncscs  

Join the NSCA Strongman Special Interest Group to continue the conversation and learn more.

“It didn't matter if I was training for the Arnold, or if I was brand new. I was just the same as them. And that's something that really ignited my passion for it, was just the absolute level of camaraderie that I found in the sport.” 7:15

“Strongman is the ultimate functional training. It's going to improve longevity for life. Moving, loading, carrying. We move sideways, front and back. We move things. We're moving forward with heavy things on our back, carrying heavy things. Farmers carries at our side. It's incredibly dynamic.” 18:24

“When they feel that level of accomplishment of something so primal as just picking up a boulder, it does things for their confidence that is I don't have the words for it. It's amazing what it can do for them.” 21:20

[00:00:00.00] [MUSIC PLAYING]

[00:00:04.33] Welcome to the NSCA Coaching Podcast, season six, episode 10.

[00:00:09.70] It didn't matter if I was training for the Arnold, or if I was brand new. I was just the same as them, and that's something that really ignited my passion for it, was just the absolute level of camaraderie that I found in the sport.

[00:00:24.78] This is the NSCA's Coaching Podcast, where we talk to strength and conditioning coaches about what you really need to know but probably didn't learn in school. There's strength and conditioning, and then there's everything else.

[00:00:35.61] Welcome to the NSCA Coaching Podcast. I'm Eric McMahon. Today, we're joined by Heidi Campo, a strength and conditioning coach, and the Chair of the NSCA Strongman Special Interest Group. Heidi, welcome.

[00:00:47.48] Thank you. I'm excited to be here.

[00:00:49.67] Always run into you at our coaches conference, at our national conference, a ton of different NSCA events. We've been talking about having you on the podcast for a while now to talk a little bit about strongman, and your background with that sport. But I want to kick things off, just give us a little intro about yourself. How did get into the field of coaching and strength conditioning?

[00:01:11.45] Yeah, so to kind of summarize a long story, I've been invested in it my whole life. I was interested in it from a young age, just watching my parents work out in their home gym. And when I was 15 years old, I started coaching as a swim coach. So that was in 2005. And I've never done anything else. This is my only career of interest. This is my passion. This is what I do. In 2010, I became certified as a personal trainer.

[00:01:41.24] Then around 2012, 2013, I started my own coaching business, Body Temple Athletics, which has been growing and successful since then. A few years after that, I was getting more into bodybuilding, powerlifting, and then eventually strongman. Bodybuilding is kind of the first thing I sort of fell into, as do a lot of people. I just had kind of an interest with the aesthetics of it, and then realized that was, to me, it was pretty boring. And then I fell into powerlifting after that. I did powerlifting competitions pretty religiously for a few years.

[00:02:19.20] I started the University of Utah powerlifting team, which was a club sport not a official sport. It was just a club sport. But we had a lot of fun with that. And then I, just after a while, you get kind of bored just doing squat, bench, and deadlift all the time. And I was like, man, I just need something a little bit more engaging, a little bit more interesting. And I found strongman. And I'm happy to tell you that whole-- that's kind of a saga on how I got into strongman. But that's sort of my background summary of what got me into the whole industry.

[00:02:52.42] I remember talking to you, I think it was last year at the national conference about your path into strongman, and just the extreme you took to really go find the sport, right in the sport's backyard. And I want to let you tell that story. I think it's really cool when coaches have a passion, like you talked about, and you pursue that. And it takes you through a series or a progression. And for a lot of us, maybe bodybuilding or powerlifting is part of that, for different coaches at different times.

[00:03:26.82] But tell your strongman story. I think it's a really cool one.

[00:03:30.33] Yeah, yeah. So I mean powerlifting was definitely my gateway drug to strongman. But I just, when I realized I was looking for something more, I discovered strongman. And I saw a video on YouTube it was a short 20-minute VICE documentary. It was called "The Giants of Iceland" or "Into the Next of Giants," something like that. And it was a little 20-minute documentary about the strongmen in Iceland.

[00:03:56.28] So to tell people about that who may not be familiar with it, Iceland is kind of known as the Mecca for strongman, because of how many incredible athletes that very small country has produced, starting with Jon Pall Sigmarsson, Magnus Ver Magnuson, and now Hafpor Bjornsson. And I saw this documentary. And I was like, wow, I have to go to Iceland. I couldn't get into strongman simply by watching YouTube videos, or learning how to do it myself here in the States. No, I had to go to the complete extreme. I had to go to the Mecca, and learn from the greats.

[00:04:34.32] And so I started asking around. I'm like, man, how do I get to Iceland? And it was figuring out how to get there, who to talk to. And I actually found Magnus Ver Magnuson, who, by the way, was four-time world's strongest man back in the '90s, absolute incredible athlete, arguably one of the best Strongmen of all time. And I found him on Facebook. And I reached out to him. And I was like, hey, I want to come to Iceland. And I want to go to Jakabol. So Jakabol stands for the nest of Giants in Iceland. Is Icelandic.

[00:05:10.95] And I was like, hey, I want to come to Iceland and learn strongman from you. And he was like, sounds good. Come on up. We'll take care of you. And that was kind of my first exposure to the sport really. And I did go. I did go to Iceland. Magnus found me a job. I was working at a hotel, called the Viking Inn. I was there night bell guard. So if someone rang the doorbell at night, I'd have to go answer the door and get them situated with their room for the night.

[00:05:37.69] But other than that, I was just living in Iceland over the winter from 2015 to 2016, just hanging out, training strongman, going on tours around the island, working at the hotel, and hanging out with Magnus and his family. And one of the things that I learned from that experience was just it really ignited my passion for the sport, because of how extremely hospitable these men were. And I had never before walked in-- never before or since really-- have walked into an environment of people who are absolute pinnacle of greatness at what they do, and to feel so incredibly welcomed.

[00:06:17.28] I walked into that gym, and they never looked at me differently. They didn't see me as a small novice female. They saw me as one of them. And that's something that really ignited my passion. And just being treated with so much respect and dignity, and there was so much camaraderie. It was like, hey yeah, you are one of us simply by your interest, and not your skill level, not your experience. You're interested. You're one of us.

[00:06:45.22] And like I said, Magnus took me in. I spent Christmas with his family and Hafpor, he was great too, training with him. He was getting ready for the 2016 Arnolds. And I always love telling people this story. But there was a point where it's like he was doing this really heavy frame carry. I don't even remember exactly what it was. But he gets done with the frame carry, sets it down on the ground, points at me, and he's like, all right, what weight do you want?

[00:07:08.09] And all the guys just jump in. They start stripping the weight down, and just working me into the rotation. It didn't matter if I was training for the Arnold, or if I was brand new. I was just the same as them. And that's something that really ignited my passion for it, was just the absolute level of camaraderie that I found in the sport.

[00:07:27.00] That's so cool that you had that experience. And a couple of things come to mind from that. You're way outside your comfort zone. You just go into a completely different country, part of the world. And connecting with people who are the best of the best in their sport. And you didn't know them beforehand. So I want to ask you about making those connections. How did you seek them? How did that first early couple of conversations go? And take us through that a little bit.

[00:08:00.96] Because I know there's so many coaches out there who, whether they get to meet an athlete they look up to growing up, or a coach that they look up to professionally and something they aspire to, they have to take the plunge and go have that first conversation, introduce themself. How'd that go for you?

[00:08:19.93] You know, everyone who I've interacted with in the sport has been just an absolute delight. Now Magnus is known in the sport, of a sport that's full of wonderful people, he stands out as being exceptionally wonderful. So he took me in like a daughter. And we still stay in touch. I would consider him a good friend of mine. We will sometimes face message each other, and just catch up, see how each other are doing. But he really-- he took me in like a daughter.

[00:08:50.62] And it never felt awkward. When I first landed in Iceland, he picked me up from the airport, gave me a big hug, and was like, welcome. Let me give you a tour, took me out for breakfast. And I was like, what? These people are so nice. And I think that there is a little bit of-- when you have nothing left to prove, there's no egos anymore. And he had proven four times over that he was the World's Strongest Man.

[00:09:21.64] And 0 was just no egos left. He was really kind and really helpful. But back here in the States, I had a few people here who were helping me out before I went to Iceland. So the only female that I had really seen doing the sport before, her name is Leslie Hofheins. She was a pro-American Strongwoman too with a number of titles under her belt. And she was training at the powerlifting gym that I was at. And she was the first time I ever saw her, I was like, whoa. That is an incredible human.

[00:09:53.17] She was one of the strongest, most incredible females I'd ever seen. And so I kind of was nervous at first to approach her, because I was over here in my little powerlifting corner. And she's over here taking the weights that I'm squatting, and throwing it over her head with one hand. And I'm like, what? These people are so strong. So I approached her. And I was like, hey, Leslie, I'm curious about getting into strongman. I don't look like you. I'm not as strong as you. Can I do it?

[00:10:19.40] And she was like, same thing, absolutely. Let's get you into it. She got me set up with Van Hatfield, who was a few hours south of me so van Hatfield was another pro-American strongman here in Utah. And she got me connected with him. I started training at Patriot Strength Club with Van Hatfield, Jordan Larson, Kevin Faires. And then later on down the road Rebecca Rowley joined our group.

[00:10:46.64] And for those of you listening who may not know who these people are, Jordan Larson deadlifts over a thousand pounds. Kevin Faires is a World's Strongest Man competitor. Rebecca Rowley, she won some World's Strongest Woman. I believe she got second or third place. So our whole crew ended up going on to just do incredible things. And I know none of them are done.

[00:11:09.76] Jordan is still doing incredible things with his athletic career. Kevin obviously is just doing an incredible job with his strongman career. So I did get to go down to Patriot Strength Club and train with these guys for a little bit before I went to Iceland. And then when I came back from Iceland, I continued to train with them for quite a while. But everything from the greats that I trained with to the people in my backyard, back to your original question is, how did it feel to make these connections? You just find the biggest person in the room and ask them who they know.

[00:11:45.34] And it's a small enough sport that they probably know somebody. And they're also friendly, and they're so willing to get more people involved. Every once in a while, you get a bad egg out there. But for the most part, if you are willing to just seek out the answers, the people around you are more than happy to provide you with the opportunities to do that.

[00:12:07.87] And something from that, it's an untraditional path even within strength and conditioning, so with that comes a community element. When you find like minds, it's likely that they can come together and find some common ground. I want to ask you how that went for you in being part of the Strongman Special Interest Group starting with the NSCA. This is a relatively new group, and I think it's one of the ones that has had a lot of excitement at our events.

[00:12:38.92] I know Joe Kenn talked about his experience training Strongman athletes, now after being in the NFL for so long. And there's just a lot of good conversation and dialogue about that. So talk about-- give a little plug for the special interest group that you're the chair of.

[00:12:58.84] Yeah, yeah. So I started-- so I mean I love the NSCA. I got involved. And for all you listeners out there who are not a part of the NSCA, my question is why. This is a fantastic organization. And the NSCA has done for me-- they didn't ask me to say this, by the way. I'm just saying this. The NSCA has done for me professionally what strongman has done for me personally.

[00:13:20.77] The NSCA has helped me develop in such an incredible way, and just getting around incredible coaches and educators. So if you don't have you NSCA certifications, go get them. And get plugged in. But I was just browsing around on the website one day, looking for ways to get more involved, came across the SIGs, the special interest groups. And I was looking through. I was like, man, they have bodybuilding. They have powerlifting. They have figure skating. They don't have strongman. What the heck?

[00:13:50.59] And so I just sent some emails around. I was like, hey, can I start this? And everyone, yeah. You can start it. And so kind of the same thing. I've always sort of found myself in these strange little pioneering niches, because I'm not the kind of person who really like asks permission to do something. I guess I sort of find the gaps, and I just go there. And so I started our special interest group in 2020. That was kind of my lockdown project that I had a lot of fun with.

[00:14:17.47] We needed to collect a certain amount of signatures. And we rapidly acquired signatures, because one thing to do to start the SIGs is you need to prove that there's interest in the group, which we did almost instantly. And that's been a lot of fun. So through those opportunities, we have the Facebook group, which Rick Howard and Garrett Reid are doing a really good job of posting a lot of educational content, lots of-- I wouldn't say lots of-- but there is starting to be more research in strongman.

[00:14:49.84] You can get on there and see some of the recaps that we have on some of the research done with, hey, how does the diameter of the stone change a lift? The diameter of your log? How does that change the force velocity of the movement, whatever? But Garrett and Rick have broken a lot of that stuff down on the Facebook group, which anyone can join. Anybody can join that.

[00:15:10.24] And we have more opportunities to continue to speak. I spoke at the Rocky Mountain regional conference in 2021. Garrett, he's on my board, he actually just got promoted to vice president. He's going to be speaking at the Florida State clinic this November. So if you are interested in learning more about strongman, I would recommend going to the Florida State clinic, because he will be speaking on strongman at that.

[00:15:37.18] But yeah, no. The SIG is awesome. I love it. It's a great opportunity for me to connect with more like-minded people. Like Joe Kenn, he was awesome. I met that guy, and it's a big extended family, because it's like, oh hey, turns out Joe Kenn knows Van Hatfield, and he gives me a big handshake. He's like Van's first 800-pound deadlift was in my garage. And it's like that's so cool. I mean we are all-- it's like a big extended family. And I love it so much.

[00:16:08.93] I have two biological brothers, and 500 other brothers. And it feels that way. I mean this is really truly a family. We look out for each other, and we celebrate each other's successes.

[00:16:20.17] I love that enthusiasm, and just obviously how you talk about the NSCA. For anyone listening in, just on the special interest groups, the NSCA is a volunteer organization, and special interest groups are a volunteer-led initiative. And so if you have an interest in a sport or something within strength and conditioning that you do, you can reach out to us, and we can give you that information on that process.

[00:16:45.40] A lot of people don't realize they can be part of building something that is the NSCA. And that's a leadership opportunity for you in whatever area you have interests, in this case, strongman. You mentioned Garrett's talk at the upcoming Florida State clinic. And one of the things he's going to mention is recognizing the benefits of strongman for the elderly, special populations, and general populations. And so there's this element there of strongman for the rest of us.

[00:17:18.19] If we're not competing in the sport, or we don't consider ourself strongman athletes, how relevant is the sport of strongman or the implements that you train with for everyone else?

[00:17:32.57] I mean I'm smiling so much right now, because just I love that question so much. Because my joke is, is if people meet me at an airport or something like, what do you do? I'm like, oh, I do strongmen. They look me up and down. What you? You do strongman? But you're a skinny female. I'm like, I know. But strongman's for everybody. That's the thing.

[00:17:51.44] And I know Robert Linkul, he is also involved with the NSCA, and he's a fantastic coach, wonderful human if you get a chance to meet him. He will leave you feeling better than before you met him. But I know that he uses strongman training for his elderly populations. That is something that he specializes in, is in training the older adult. He does a lot of lectures and seminars with the NSCA, a lot of education. And the thing is-- and I know everyone-- this is such a controversial word, but functional training. Strongman is the ultimate functional training.

[00:18:26.64] It's going to improve longevity for life. Moving, loading, carrying. We move sideways, front and back. We move things. We're moving forward with heavy things on our back, carrying heavy things. Farmers carries at our side. It's incredibly dynamic. And it also gives coaches an opportunity to really hone in their skills, because sometimes you get a piece of equipment that isn't standardized. OK. You're a coach. Figure out how to help your athlete hone in that movement.

[00:19:03.48] I've watched athletes pick up a number of strange objects from fire hoses, fire hydrants, rocks that we pulled out of the river, engine blocks. You name it, any sort of weird thing, it might be in a competition where you have to figure out how to pick it up. And as a coach, learning from a textbook is one thing. OK, here's my movements. Here's how I have to do them. But what happens when it's uncommon?

[00:19:33.10] Well, then you have to use your brain and your reasoning, and your coach's eye to figure out, OK, how do we really effectively make this object move from point A to point B, the most safe and efficient way. And I think that my years of doing strongman has just helped accelerate my coaching experience, and my coach's eye infinitely. It's the opportunities that the sport has given me have been a lot, but also the skills that the sport has helped me develop have been incredibly relevant.

[00:20:08.83] I use strongman implements with any of my clients that I might be training for personal training or my teams. I do coach a strongman team, but I also coach regular people. And it's an incredible opportunity to just hone in your skills. But we can also give our client something on that note. Because let's say you have a mom that you're training. She's 50. She's a little out of shape. She sees a barbell, and she goes, wow, that looks heavy because I saw guys at my gym picking that up. And they looked strong.

[00:20:44.83] And you look at her, and you know she has the physical capability to pick up that barbell. But maybe she has the mental block. Sure, she's like, yeah. I'm not going to even try it. But you're like, OK. OK, well let's go pick up this Atlas stone. The Atlas stone doesn't have the weight written on it. It's not something she's ever seen anybody do before. And lo and behold, you safely and effectively work her up to being able to do that. She picks it up, no problem. Then you tell her how much it weighed.

[00:21:11.20] You're like, hey, by the way that was a 150 pounds. What? I mean they get so excited. I've seen people cry. I've seen people jump up and down. And these are just regular general population people. And when they feel that level of accomplishment of something so primal as just picking up a boulder, it does things for their confidence that is I don't have the words for it. It's amazing what it can do for them.

[00:21:41.77] For someone that doesn't know all these strongman implements, give us a little background on what would make up a strongman competition or the types of implements or tools that would be used, or how those workouts would be built. I think there's a lot of us that are really interested in adding some of these flexible or dynamic training methods to their workout, but maybe just don't have a grasp on what type of equipment they would need.

[00:22:10.15] Yeah. Yeah, so the brief history of strongman is-- so we've had feats of strength throughout all of human history. That is nothing new. I think since humans could pick up a rock, they were comparing who could pick up the bigger rock. I think that is part of human since the dawn of time.

[00:22:30.76] But the modern strongman did evolve from the circus. And what happened was is you would have bodybuilders and strongmen, one in the same back then. They would be flexing. They would be impressing their audiences. And then they would do these impressive feats of strength, where they lift up heavy objects, and impress the circus goers.

[00:22:51.91] And over time, it started to evolve, and then people would claim themselves world's strongest you name it. They can pick up this item. So they were getting specialized in their circus acts, so to speak. And then eventually The World's Strongest Man television show came along. And that was the first time that strongman was really formalized. And if you study the sport, I mean you can say this was the start of the sport. This was the start of the sport. But The World's Strongest Man television show was the first time that it really brought it to the public eye.

[00:23:30.70] And that was back when you'd see these guys on ESPN. They'd be pulling an airplane. They would be picking up-- they'd call them like the big Flintstone rocks. It looked like a barbell with big old Flintstone unfinished, unpolished boulders on each end. They would get into a hollowed out car with straps on it, and they would carry the car. So there wasn't really a standardization of the equipment, because strongman started as entertainment in the circus, and then it evolved to entertainment on television.

[00:24:04.34] So The World's Strongest Man television show was first and foremost entertainment on TV, to be sold to the masses, and entertain people. So it wasn't necessarily always fair, and the best athletes weren't always set up for success. Sometimes they would just set up events that would be more entertaining for the audience. Until the Arnold came around, and they started to do a little bit more standardization. They started to treat it a little bit more like a competition.

[00:24:33.26] And the sport is still relatively new. I mean, the sport has not officially been around for very long. But what we are seeing is it's still figuring out its way. So if you're getting involved with the sport. there's a lot of different directions you can take it. There's unsanctioned events. Utah, we have a number of unsanctioned competitions that run here. And all you really get from those are you get to hang out with your community, you get bragging rights, and you get to have a lot of fun. But you don't necessarily get to rise up in the ranks of a federation and win a title.

[00:25:09.80] And then you have various federations, like Strongman Corporation is the big one. And you can compete at a state level. Then you can go on to compete at regionals, go on to compete at nationals, go on to compete at the Arnold. And there's a lot of opportunities within that. And there's lots more federations out there that are starting, and growing, and finding their own niches.

[00:25:32.12] So to answer your question of what is the standardization in strongman, there isn't. It's still finding its standardization. Now, there are big equipment companies like Rogue coming in with sponsorships, and they do want to create levels of standardization, because then they can sell standardized equipment to the public who wants to train for these standardized events. So we are seeing it become a little bit more standardized. But they're still not quite-- not like extreme consistency across the map.

[00:26:05.08] Gotcha. No, that's interesting to hear. And I think what comes to mind, and I'll go back to seeing some of those World's Strongest Man TV shows back in the day, the Atlas stones, and carrying-- you mentioned pulling an airplane, or a bus, or a car-- those types of events. You mentioned before the term functional training. That term takes us back. And once you get past maybe the perception around functional training of standing on physio balls or the things we kind of poke fun at as strength coaches, it really is sport general training. And I think one theme that comes through here is that training is more dynamic today than it's ever been in history.

[00:26:51.07] And training mindsets are more flexible today than they've ever been, because they need to be. I think there are so many sports, and I'm going to go into the traditional sports realm for a second, there's so many sports, professional athletes, for example, where they need to compete at their best consistently, and it's not a set peaking period. Or tactical strength and conditioning, where you need to be ready all the time. It's not a four year progression up to the Olympics or whatever your build-up may be.

[00:27:24.35] And so we've had to build more of these universal implements that can be interjected into different types of training, different types of workouts. And to me, when I hear the word functional training, it goes back to that. It's taking a step back from the progression, and just thinking of it more on a movement level. And in truly the function that comes from that. I know there's a lot of dialogue and there's a lot of debate in the field when we throw out different terminology. But I actually don't mind that term from a standpoint that it takes us forward in the way it broadens the exercise selection that we have.

[00:28:01.48] And strongman is a great example of that. I know there's a chapter in the new essentials of strength and conditioning textbook that starts to get into untraditional weight room equipment. And it might be from a textbook standpoint, it might be kettlebells even, that weren't in there in the second or third edition. And it's been a progression there. It's exciting to see that as strength and conditioning coaches we talk about movement, we think about movement. And we can apply these same concepts of things like picking up heavy Atlas stones, or loaded carries is a great example of almost something we've overlooked in training for so long, just picking something up and carrying it for a distance, and just all the benefits for the body as a whole.

[00:28:53.57] I want to ask you, for all of us that are, OK, I'm sold. I want to implement some sort of strongman implement in my training program. But I have more of a traditional weight room program. We're doing on some Olympic lifts. We're doing some squats, some presses, some pulls. What's a good starting point for throwing one of these movements into your workout with a given team or a sport?

[00:29:23.39] Yeah, so that's the great thing about strongman is you can start with what you have. You don't need-- so I want to talk to my high school coaches out there. You don't need a big budget to start doing strongman. Go. Figure out what you have. And figure out how to move it in a different way. Maybe you have dumbbells up to 100 pounds, great. Have those guys hold them and see if they can move with those dumbbells in their hand. Do those heavy farmer carries, not light farmer carries, not suitcase carries, heavy farmer carries.

[00:29:55.94] I also really recommend for people to get into sandbag training, and not just filling up a sandbag and carrying it, but the sandbag throws. That is, I think, one of the best ways. And I'm very biased on this because I spent a good portion of my regional conference lecture talking about this. But I think that sandbag throws overhead is one of the best ways to really teach the triple extension, because it opens up the kinetic movement from, OK, my barbell stops when it's at the top of my head, to the movement continues.

[00:30:30.95] I have to get the sandbag over the bar. And so it really shows those athletes, OK, my movement has to continue. I know boxing coaches. They always say, punch through the bag. Don't stop your fist when you hit the bag. Punch through it. So I like to teach people with a lot of throws, because it improves their barbell work. And sandbags are pretty cheap and easy to come by. You can get them from Cerberus. Or if you're looking for more of a budget option, Muscle Pirate. Both of those are great options, and they will serve you well.

[00:31:07.64] You can even find tires. Most farm companies, you can get old used tractor tires for free. They don't mind. Now I know that this is something that's a little bit of a hot topic right now, is defining is a tractor tire a piece of equipment. And that is something if you are in the private sector you should pay attention to. I know that there was a personal trainer recently who had a client get injured while doing a tire flip, and they sued them. And the client was able to win the case, because it came back as a tire should not be a piece of gym equipment. It's not classified as gym equipment.

[00:31:44.71] So pay attention to what you're using. You don't want to use rusty junk that you found in the garbage, unless you're crazy like some of us strongmen. But if you are in a professional setting, you need to just pay attention to what you have from a safety point. But ultimately, you can use anything in strongman.

[00:32:05.68] That's a great point on the safety side. A lot of us-- I can speak from personal experience, are calling up the local tractor supply store to see what tires they have available, and that they're getting rid of. And from a safety standpoint, we always have to go back to that, and think about the risk that we're putting into our environment.

[00:32:31.45] And yeah, I think this was great. This was a great conversation. I think it opened some eyes to just the number of options that we have in training. And I hope that this inspires someone to take the plunge and challenge yourself to be a better coach. I think going back to some curriculum, if you want to be a better teacher, teach something you've never taught before.

[00:32:58.05] You want to be a better coach, coach a movement that you've never coached before. Learn to do that. Strongman gives us an opportunity as strength and conditioning coaches to refine our skills and very similar at times movements, to what we do in a traditional coaching setting, but apply it to something completely new. And I think that can invigorate or refresh your coaching mindset when you do that. So I definitely encourage everybody listening in to go find something, and pick it up, and start messing around with some strongman, some coaching.

[00:33:35.69] Heidi, just for everyone tuning in, wants to reach out to you, ask any other questions. What's the best way to do that?

[00:33:41.96] Yeah, so I do have social media. But I am in a phase of life right now where I'm creating strong digital boundaries. So if you do reach out to me on my Instagram, that's Muscle Yogi, you can reach out to me there but I only access that from my desktop now. So I'm not seeing it every day. LinkedIn is probably the best way to get in touch with me. I do have those notifications on my phone. So if you want to reach out to me via LinkedIn, or can we have my email listed somewhere for the podcast?

[00:34:13.88] Absolutely.

[00:34:14.27] Yeah, I'm happy to give out my email to any other coaches interested in getting involved. And then especially the SIG Facebook page. Again, I only access social media via my desktop. But it's me and lots of other resources on there, lots of great coaches. Joe Kenn's involved on the Facebook page. So you can get on there and ask questions, and maybe he'll answer.

[00:34:36.77] Yeah, Heidi, thanks for being with us. This was a lot of fun. For everyone listening go to Facebook, and check out the NSCA Strongman Special Interest Group page. Special thanks to Sorinex Exercise Equipment, a sponsor on this podcast, and thanks for tuning in.

[00:34:54.16] Hi, this is 2022 NSCA Professional Strength and Conditioning Coach of the year Dan Dalrymple. Thanks for listening to the NSCA Coaching Podcast, a top resource to hear relevant stories and insights from great coaches like you. To always get the latest episodes delivered right to your phone or computer, subscribe to on iTunes or look up the NSCA Coaching Podcast on your favorite podcast platform.

[00:35:18.52] Also go to nsca.com to join the NSCA at an upcoming conference or clinic.

[00:35:26.77] This was the NSCA's Coaching Podcast. The National Strength and Conditioning Association was founded in 1978 by strength and conditioning coaches to share information, resources, and help advance the profession. Serving coaches for over 40 years, the NSCA is the trusted source for strength and conditioning professionals. Be sure to join us next time.

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