Former Hockey Trainer Turns Strength and Performance into Business Success

Opening a new business when the economy began taking the worst downturn since the Great Depression may have prompted many people to believe that Chris Phillips had taken too many pucks to the noggin during his 15 years of professional ice hockey.

Phillips had become a board certified athletic trainer and strength and conditioning coach, and for six years was the Head Athletic Trainer for the Mighty Ducks. He had worked with many of the top NHL and Arena Football League players in the country and at the time had just moved into women’s professional soccer as the Head Athletic Trainer for the Los Angeles Sol of the since-defunct Women’s Professional Soccer League.

He had the knowledge and experience in performance training and sports rehabilitation to succeed on any level. What he didn’t have, however, was the business acumen.

That was April 2009. Since then much has changed.

Today, at Compete Sports Performance & Rehab in Lake Forest, Phillips now has seven employees and hundreds of clients ranging from Little Leaguers to professional athletes who want to overcome a significant injury or improve their athletic performance.

In hindsight, starting a new business three years ago may have been one of the smartest things he could have done.

“It was bad timing because it was during the worst economy ever,” recalled Phillips, 43, sitting in his office surrounded by dozens of framed photos of his clientele. “When the Arena Football League went under (in January 2009) that gave me the push to do this, and word of mouth has kept us going. We’ve tried advertising but honestly our marketing and sales stuff has been a waste of money. By far, 95 percent of our referrals are by word of mouth. I’m good at what I do—strength and conditioning, and rehab—and I’m getting better at marketing and the business end of it, but marketing and sales is still hard.”Two of Phillip’s biggest clients are the LA Blues, a Major League Soccer team that plays at Cal State Fullerton, and the Anaheim Bolts, an indoor men’s team that plays at the Anaheim Convention Center. He said working with the Sol players, including three-time FIFA Player of the Year Marta and U.S. Olympians Shannon Boxx, Aly Wagner and Stephanie Cox helped prepare him for the transition from hockey to soccer.

“It was a good changeover from men’s pro hockey and football to soccer. That helped us grow from the soccer side,” Phillips said. “When the women’s team went under the general manager kept us on for the men’s team. My specialty is hockey, but now that we’ve gotten into soccer the last three years we’re getting more comfortable doing that. But we still get a lot of baseball and football, and a lot of rehab with cheerleaders.”

Injuries and Rehab

Phillips estimates that about 40 percent of his work deals with rehabilitation, but it’s also one part of the business that he wants to expand upon. Compete currently has physical therapists on site twice a week, and also at his other location, The Rink, in Westminster.

The most common injuries that Phillips sees are shoulder and elbow injuries among baseball players. He attributes that to overuse and lack of good mechanics. In the era of one-sport athletes who play year-round, Phillips says that athletes are afraid to take any time off because they don’t want to fall behind and lose their spot on the roster.

“Everybody is so competitive that it’s hard to take a month off. But they don’t see the big picture of what the real goal is here,” Phillips said. “To me it’s education and long-term athletic development. We want these kids to be good at 15, 16, and 17, and at 20, 21 and 22, not to peak when they are 10 or 11. They need to find time off.”

Anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) knee injuries are still one of the biggest injuries. Even with recent advances in medical technology, the athlete still is going to miss six to nine months, Phillips said. Concussions also are becoming more common, but there still is a lot of misconception about treatment because each one is different, he said.

“Concussions are very unpredictable so it’s hard to see that from our aspect,” Phillips said. “We don’t see them as much because of lack of protocol and the return-to-sport is not where it should be. You can’t tell a kid to take it easy. You’re going to see a lot more concussion treatments and working with (epidemiologists, who deal with causes, distribution, and control of concussions) and sports medicine physicians. They are definitely becoming more prevalent.”

With the physical and economic demands placed on sports today, especially among the professional teams who are paying players big money and even among amateur athletes who are trying to earn a scholarship, getting the athlete back in the game is a top priority.

“They want it done now. It’s our job to help them get back as soon as possible,” Phillips said. “There are certain times in the rehab process that you have to be aggressive. If you’re conservative, a lot of times you’re going to lose your job. We have to try certain things. It’s trial and error. Hopefully you don’t have a lot of errors. Occasionally you’ll have one. It’s the progress you’re looking for. We’re not just rehab. We want a return-to-sport so they can walk in ready to play.”

Looking at the Future

Along with the two professional soccer teams and individual clients, Phillips is planning to work with several Pop Warner football teams on strength and conditioning this summer. He also is developing a new partnership with a club softball team in Santa Margarita and taking on a new, combined soccer club, Laguna United.

Phillips recently completed negotiations for a new three-year lease on the facility on Dimension Dr., and hopes to add another employee to operate the business end so he can spend more time working with his staff and clients on strength and conditioning.

Phillips said eventually he’d like to cut back on his 13-hour days to spend more time with his wife and two sons, ages 9 and 14, but for now it’s all work. The greatest satisfaction he gets is helping others overcome their physical obstacles to achieve whatever goals they have athletically.

“Helping prepare these kids to have them accomplish what they want to, or getting a phone call or text from anyone who says the work we did has paid off, means everything to me,” Phillips said. “The last three years we’ve had 10 kids sign college scholarships. I want to see that number triple. I’ve never had a person say we didn’t give them what we promised. Watching the business continue to grow and working on the return-to-sport for a lot of these athletes has been pretty neat.”