Peptide Nation

0:04Hello and welcome to Fashion People. I'm Lauren Sherman, writer of Puck's fashion and beauty memo line sheet. And today with me on the show are Amy Schultz and Jessica Alexander, founders of Contra Sports Club. We're talking the business of being in shape, peptides and plenty more. Before we get going, I wanted to remind you that if you like this podcast, you'll definitely love Puck. where I send an email called Line Sheet. If you're a fashion person, you get that reference. It's an original look at what's really going on inside the fashion and beauty industries. Line Sheet is scoopy, analytical, and above all, fun.

0:43Along with me, a subscription to Puck gains you access to an unmatched roster of experts reporting on powerful people and companies in entertainment, media, sports, politics, finance, the art world, and much more. If you're interested, listeners of Fashion People get a discount. Just go to puck.news slash fashion people to join Puck or start a free trial. Happy Friday, everyone. Hope you're having a great week. I am back in Los Angeles. I'm settling back into life here for a while. It's been nice. I feel relaxed. I feel calm. I feel like I'm missing out always. But I did, I went to a really nice dinner on Wednesday night, hosted at a private home in, I guess it was the Hollywood Hills.

1:30I don't even know where it is. Like Woodrow Wilson. I had to go up my hall and drive, which is always scary for me. I'm still kind of a novice driver. Anyway, the home was designed by this firm Omi Design and Omi, sorry, it's called Omi Dezen. I know that's how it's pronounced according to Omidezin. That's what it is. O-M-E-D-E-Z-I-N. According to AI, that's how to pronounce it. Anyway, they threw this dinner party in partnership with Lumens and Louis Poulsen. I wanted to shout out Lumen CMO Dana Gers, who is a Net-A-Porter alum, who was definitely a reason I was invited to this. And I just went because I was like, The thing about LA is you go to dinner, you go to a fashion dinner, it's the same 10 lovely human beings at every single dinner.

2:21And I was like, you know what? Might as well go and meet some people, see some people I maybe know adjacently or meet some people. And it was really nice. I got to see the fashion person adjacent chef, Andy Baragani, who was there wearing, you know, who was married to Keith Pollack, who is like an OG fashion person. We all love Keith. Shout out to Keith. I doubt he's ever listened to this. He works in at West Elm now. He's he doesn't care about this stuff. But we all he's one of those people everyone loves. Tim Blakes even loves him. But anyway, Andy was wearing I don't know if we'd ever met in person.

2:59It was nice to meet in person. And also he was wearing an amazing Dario the Tally designed Versace t-shirt sweatery thing. It looked it was like peach and burgundy. I mean, pinky peachy pink and burgundy. It was so good. He looked so good. And he had just bought it yesterday. So it was fun. And then Jesse from Basic Space was there. He's been on the podcast and he was really the only other person that I knew. But it was honestly really nice to chat with Dana about how she ended up in the design world from fashion. And, you know, all I do is follow the money. And when I think about that, like the design market, all I see are dollar signs.

3:37I'm like, this is a huge opportunity.

3:43Jessica Alexander and Amy Schultz, welcome to Fashion People. Thanks so much, Lauren. We're so excited to be here. And it's so good to be here. Thanks for having us. I'm so happy to have you. So what did you each have for breakfast this morning? Oh, that's a good question. I haven't had breakfast yet. I'm not even going to lie to you. It's quite early over here. Yeah. What time is it? It is 8 a.m. 8 a.m. Wow. Thank you all. I appreciate you. Thank you. We love you, Lauren. Yeah, we love you. We got you. What time do you, I feel like I've quizzed you all on this before, but what time do you usually get to the gym?

4:18Like around 8 or 9? 8 a.m. Usually. Eight or nine is our first client because Amy and I are usually there all day. So if we go any earlier, too much. But we both wake up at like 6, 5.30, much earlier to get ready for the day. Yeah, we have our little rituals in the morning. I miss the L.A. I'm very happy being in Paris, but I really miss the L.A. time way of life. Like getting in at 5.30 and going to bed at 10.30 or 9.30 or whatever. Here I get up at like 7.15 and go to bed at like 12.30. It's not as fun. Yeah, it's different. Yeah. Yeah, LA really supports that like naturally healthy lifestyle, I feel like.

5:08It's true. It's a very different wine. The early bedtime is such a thing here. It really is. Yeah. So I wanted to have you all on because you own this really amazing gym fitness lifestyle center in this very special part of Los Angeles. And we talk a lot about things like peptides and fitness and working out on fashion people. It's very fashion people adjacent, I would say. and I thought it would be interesting because you work with a lot of creative people on their workout routines and I right before I came to Paris I came to see you guys four times which was very fun to set myself up for being here where you know I have found a really great legree class that kicks my butt but other than that it's very gentle exercise here but I would love for you all to kind of explain who you are and what you do and like what Contra is because a lot of the people who listen to this that visit LA probably are going to stop by or like usually when they're in LA half the year like a lot of fashion industry people who live in Europe live in LA part-time and I'm curious how you kind of came up with your brand of fitness because it's so unique yeah we would love that thank you yeah again so much um also we are very proud of you for staying on it so far away you know i would you know i would we do know you're very on it we're excited you're a dream to work with you really are you listen you do but yeah i guess I'll go first.

6:51So I'm Amy and I am a physical therapist and strength coach. So I guess to start my career, I was super athletic growing up. I was a big kid, giant. I was pretty much the same size as I am now at 10 years old. So I was naturally very, very good at athletics growing up, but I also got injured a lot. And so I was exposed to physical therapy and rehab at a really young age. Fast forward to college and my adult life, I ran track and field. In college, I was a pro cyclist. And at the end of my cycling career, I was really lost. I didn't know what I wanted to do moving forward because I was just an athlete my whole life.

7:41And I went back to what do I want to do for the greater good of society, I guess. It was really like I wanted to help the high performer. So I went to physical therapy school and there I actually ended up writing a research paper on surfing injuries that I was able to share with a lot of the rehab community. But also, during that time, I realized this was the first paper in research on, for anything, action sports with the surfing community. So I actually ended up cold calling everybody in the surf industry, from every coach to every trainer to every brand, etc. And the only person to take my call was actually the head of performance or sorry, the head of rehab at that time for the WSL.

8:36His name is Tim Brown, and he sort of took me under his wing. And I was able to work with a lot of the surfers on tour for their performance or their competition series. And through that, I actually ended up at Red Bull. And so I was with Red Bull back in the day when they were under their high performance bracket. and with that we were able to do so many fun creative things any insane idea that they threw at the wall we had the support and the backing to try to make it happen you know like we worked on projects where athletes would ride their bike out of a moving helicopter and crazy crazy things like that and so I was exposed to a lot of fun amazing projects and amazing people and Red Bull high performance facility at the time in Santa Monica.

9:31All the athletes were able to come and I sort of I oversaw all of their rehab in the facility. I was also able to travel with skate, surf and snow at the time. And through skateboarding, I actually met Jess and I'll let her give her background for you guys. So hi, I'm Jess. So for me growing up, I was not an athlete. I was completely the opposite of an athlete. I was very much just not exposed to athletics. I grew up a little bit rough, if you will. Like my background was just more like I was partying and out there and had no direction and was very, very lost and really didn't know what I was into.

10:13I was really into music. I was really into fashion, but I didn't, I just could never quite get it together. I didn't have the support to do so. And so coming into my adult life, I was feeling really lost and I was really out on the fringes, if you will, having a good time at a very young age. And I actually found performance and athletics for myself just in feeling like my mental health was tanking and feeling like I was, you know, doing all this really fun stuff and going to all these shows. But I really wasn't well inside. And so I was trying different things, you know, to move my body. And I found this performance gym in Atlanta, originally from Atlanta, Georgia.

10:54And I just started going. And it was this old strength conditioning coach. And he was incredible. And I was just training and training. And then through that, not to be corny, but it pretty much saved my entire being. I really found my own strength and my own power and my own, through being physically strong and fast and all of these things that I was never able to be before. I was like I want to do this for other people you know I want to I want to do this for a living and I was able to then be inspired to actually go to college which was something I wasn't going to do and through that journey realizing I was working with different types of people and humans and was really drawn to the athlete so I am an ATC and strength conditioning coach and so through that experience becoming a practitioner and becoming a strength coach I just decided I wanted to develop the athlete, a high performer, people that really wanted to move.

11:45And I was lucky enough through that experience post-college to be scouted by Nike. I was working with a lot of high school teams and doing all these things. And I never thought I would get scouted by Nike. They were doing at the time something called NTC, which was these big activations in different cities. And long story short, they scouted me and brought me out to campus. And I did a big, you know thing out there with a bunch of different practitioners and trainers and I was like man if I could work here that would be the dream you know way out of my way out of my depth and I just tried and interviewed I was like I want to be here this is what I want to do and I was blessed enough to get the position and so moved to Portland started working at Nike World Headquarters and through that experience I think being there was different than I thought once I got there but What Nike did for me was open a lot of doors to be able to study under some really incredible people.

12:43So while I was there, not only was I doing things for Nike and activations, I was working with a man named Bobby Stroop at an APEC in Tyler, Texas. So I was working with a lot of NFL, MLB, NBA, NFL Combine, working with the Portland Trailblazers. So really experiencing very traditional sport at a very high level and being able to work with those athletes. And I loved it. And I still felt like that environment was amazing, but it didn't speak to the other part of me. This creative part, this part that's super interested in music and fat, like just it wasn't, they didn't align. and so through that I've always loved skateboarding and been a fan of it and enjoyed it I really have believed that skateboarders not only are moving the needle in human performance but also moving the needle in fashion and culture and all of these places and I was just noticing that they weren't being taken care of and so in feeling burnt out in that way I was like you know what these are the creative and elite performers that I want to help and so I set my sights to do so I I was like, I'm going to do this or leave the industry.

13:50I want to help the people that originally that I was grounded by in my youth. Set out to do that. Got a job with Team USA for the Olympics leading up to 2020. Was working with Nike SB, and that's when I moved to L.A. And was traveling on the road a lot with those specific athletes by myself. And that's when I met Amy. Amy was also traveling with those athletes. And so through that experience, we were exhausted together on the road. So tired. Like beyond. We were really out there. There wasn't a lot of support in those arenas as well. Red Bull was pretty much the only one supporting that endeavor.

14:29And so when we came together, not only both of us just being female practitioners in this space and having the same passion and having the same heart, We were a bit frustrated, I think, with, you know, being in these different spaces. We were finding we've been blessed enough to work at the elite level of sport, you know, in whatever capacity. And we've also been blessed enough to work with just a range of different humans. And we saw that if you weren't an elite, you know, NBA player, you know, if you go to a Red Bull High Performance Center or you go to, you know, whatever it is at the highest level, you're going to get a team of orthopedic surgeons.

15:07So if someone gets hurt, you get imaging right away. Then you're going to come see us as practitioners and we're going to do your rehab. And there's going to be a strength coach there to lead you back. And there's going to be access to a sports scientist that's going to take your data and a nutritionist and all of these things that make a human an athlete. athlete better. And we were seeing it done really wrong and really right. So we were, you know, and then in LA, we were looking at some of our other creative humans in community because we both are very inspired by art and culture besides sport.

15:41That's what we love. And we were just seeing some of our friends in community not have any idea about any of that, you know, just really like, I'm just going to go do Barry's boot camp. And they were having fatigue and they're in pain. And so anyway, through that experience, Amy and I were just like, why is there not a space that's one beautifully curated that has all of these things that elite athletes get? Because we have the best information to teach people what's right and what's not right for not only the high performing athlete and the creative athlete, but also the creative human. Like a lot of those other gym spaces not only didn't have those things that can make you better or can make you better, they also weren't that inviting.

16:25You know, it's either like a Pilates class or then you go to like a brute gym. And it's just very, a very stark difference. And we really set out with Contra to create a space that's not only aesthetically pleasing and beautifully curated because we want to work in a space that's stunning and architecturally a place you want to be in for a long time. it's more motivating but also to create an ecosystem where we have a team just like at the elite level of all of these things aforementioned the orthopedics are us everyone under one roof working together to make the human better so we say with Contra Sports Club we really created it for the creative athlete or the creative human and everybody is an athlete so looking to that community to bring that sport and that wellness and education around that to the fashion community, athletes and everybody under one roof and kind of working together.

17:26So that's like our backgrounds and kind of why we created Contra. This is, I don't know how to ask this because it's like everybody's into working out now and being healthy and that's like a part of culture but it wasn't always like that with creative people and I assume even like you work with like a lot of skateboarders and obviously that's very physical but I could see a world 20 years ago where it wasn't like they were going to work out to no it was almost not only that they weren't and a lot of the creative community wasn't it was almost anti. Anti as well. Like that is for jocks. And if you're not a football player or a basketball player, you didn't grow up doing sport, then that's not for you.

18:13It didn't seem cool. It was like lame. And for us, you're correct. And that's why we were drawn to the skateboarders, the creatives, all of these people that are already in our community, people we're hanging with and, you know, sharing all of these cultural interests with, but they're not healthy and they're not performing at the best that they could. Not only like, okay, skateboarders, sure, on their board and the way that they move and making sure they're healthy and really making health cool was kind of what we were trying to do. You know, now it is cool, but we really set out initially a long time ago to do that.

18:50But also for our creatives, because we were seeing like, you know, burnout and drop in cognition and they you know they're not excited about they're not feeling creative and but they're not moving and they're not doing these things that actually enhance those creative pursuits so you're correct and that's why we were like man how do we make this attractive to the people that are actually moving the needle in society like anything that is cool and that is on the cusp and creative and kind of makes the world turn and like why can't health be cool for them And like all of these things that these pro athletes have for them.

19:28But we kind of like tricked it. If you know, we hit it. We hit it. We made it look really enormous. Yeah, we tied it up in a little bow. So, well, the funny thing that I said to you all, and I've like gone on and off of I'm I've always been like super active and played sports and have done every single fitness thing possible. basically i'm not like obsessed with trendy stuff but i'll try anything once just to see and then as you all know i was a big fan when i was in la of burn i can't wait to go in june when i come back for the air mesh show um but i've done training on and off and had some really amazing trainers over the years and have gotten really into like pilates reformer and le grieve in the past two years or so being in LA and being older and my hips and I was a big runner and all this stuff.

20:26Anyway, the thing that was amazing, that's amazing about what y 'all have done is it's like, there's no smell. You walk in and you can't smell sweat and I don't know how you're doing it. Thank you. Oh my God. Lauren, that actually means more than you know, because we clean this place so much so much yeah it's wild like you can't smell sweat i don't know how you guys did it well thank you we are a nitprix that's why i think that's the other i mean again thank you seriously we're like oh god yes goal hit but i mean that's exactly like just to our original points like there were so many spaces they're nasty they're grimy they're so uninviting You don't want to be there.

21:11We have people that are there for five hours a day doing their rehab and working with, you know, the rest of the team that Jess has mentioned. And you don't want to be in a disgusting environment for five hours. You know, you want to be somewhere that you're comfy and cozy and that's elegant and nice. and yeah I think for us is maybe it's I don't know if it's being women or like just really OCD like I don't know we are take a very we that's a really big part of like we want to make sure the space is super clean super inviting super it's even it should smell like a candle when you come in there you know but it's the people are performing and sweating and moving you know you've been in there it's like everybody's working really hard but uh we gonna make sure that that's cleaned up

22:06So tell me, what are people coming to you all for? Because you have massive, everybody, when you search this, you need to search Contra Los Angeles gym for it to pop up. What are they, you have a wide suite of services. So like you do physical therapy and you do. What I thought was interesting about working with you all is the fact that it did feel like the first session was it was physical therapy. It was figuring out the right routine for me. And then it was also like I over exercise and you all knew it. And so you were like, one time I came and you were like, you're not, we're not going to exercise today.

22:48Because I had like something crazy. I had like been on a plane or something and you all, you were like thinking about my nervous system a lot, which is mental health stuff too, or like mentally connected to physical. But you have like a lot of different things that you do and you offer. What are people, what kind of like customized packages are people coming to you for at this point? Right. Yeah, that's a really great question, Lauren. So because we have so many services and because me and Jess have been around high performance for a really long time, we take a really individualized approach. so you know your goals and needs are going to be different than a pro basketball basketball players goals and needs right especially day to day and to your point you know one day you went hard in the gym we worked out and you sweated and then the other day your nervous system was fried and you were laying under the red light and you took a nap so we're like we're not going to wake you up and then go slam some balls, you know, just because.

23:56Exactly. And so basically, what a first session with us looks like is somebody comes in and we just sit down with them and we talk and we're like, where are we at and where do we want to get to? And then we make a plan with all of our team. So right, just mentioned. Cool. Like, let's say somebody's super injured or has this lingering thing that we want to get another set of eyes on, we'll send them to go see one of our orthopedic surgeons and just get imaging and just check in from a different medical lens. Maybe they're there doing rehab or they sprain their ankle or something like that. And so then they'll work with one of our practitioners from a rehab lens.

24:38Really, when you ask what we do we do it all but um in the sense of you know there's a lot of wellness like we take wellness we look at whether it's performance or rehab or regeneration we call it instead of recovery because recovery is just so overused so we need um we want to look at the person and their needs you know there's a there's so many facilities that offer all of these things we know this now you know there's red light therapy and there's sauna and there's cold plunge and there's pt and you know and it's just there it's and it's not only there it's overwhelming it's overwhelming like what do i do what do i do what's the purpose and so our entire initiative with contra is to really look at the human and look at their wellness like again whether it's a performing athlete a model a creative whatever it is we're gonna do a really detailed intake like we did with you and ask you a lot of different questions so we can actually kind of look at what you really need because someone might come in and be like I want to be fit and we're like great we're going to get you there but what's your stress level like what's your travel like you know it we don't want to say okay great let's get to training and then we know that your nervous system and your hormone like everything's down in the dumps so we really like to back everything down take a really really specific approach and take a detailed approach and take our time so that we can make an actual plan and educate the person in front of us like what do you actually need and how do we get you there so that they feel empowered yeah everybody leaves with homework so much homework you know the other thing too that what we saw from before and really um dictated the approach that we use now too is instead of having a multidisciplinary team so like just mentioned all these gyms have pt and recovery and red light and sauna and yada yada instead of going from one modality to another how do we all put all of our brains together and create this plan working together around the person in front of us so instead of somebody going and seeing our dietitian and then going and seeing a strength coach and then going and getting blood work cool that's great but are all of those different people communicating together and making a plan together to achieve that person's goals.

27:00So that's also, we really, really strive to create an interdisciplinary approach to healthcare as well. So I'm sure that there are other gyms or facilities. It doesn't feel right to call it a gym in Los Angeles that tries to do this kind of stuff holistically or whatever, and they have different approach. But I would say from a like aesthetic perspective, it's interesting being in Paris, there are a lot of like very chic looking gyms where, or there's like, there's this new sauna that just opened that's like interior design. Like there it's, there's like a real high, um, focus here on the way that the, the facilities look.

27:46And I would say other than the springs, which is like mostly, uh, map Pilates and yoga and things like that. And you all, I can't think of another place in LA that looks good. I'm just curious from your perspective, like, why do you think that's not as much of a focus in the city that is obsessed with aesthetics and obsessed with, and we're going to get, we're going to talk a lot about peptides. I'm very excited, but, but you know, obsessed with the way you look, but then you go to these places and they're not like that cute. I'm just curious from your perspective, like why you think that's not, because you know the community so well there, why that's not like the emphasis of a lot of places in LA in particular.

28:38Being really transparent, I think the interesting intersection that Amy, the unique perspective that we are blessed to have, like we kind of drawing back to the union of the conversation, like sport and fitness and then fashion and culture have been separate in a sense like yes everyone needs to work out and be fit but the culturally it's a very different um just different perspective you know so I think for us we recognize that we had a unique perspective in the sense of like okay most gyms where you're to your point it's where you're gonna go strength train or whatever it's very dingy it's very like masculine it's very dark smelly smelly and like there's a very certain color scheme that i don't know why people continue to use like reds rice green don't use it please stop using bright green just these things that i'm gonna be really honest that we feel are really tacky like we don't even want to train in those spaces and we do this for a living and then on the very flip side of that you know you have these other studios maybe more like yoga or maybe to your point sauna cold plunge the regenerative spaces they they're getting that where it's all it's supposed to be beautiful because you're relaxing and we were just like why why we the miss why the miss yeah where where is the intersection here so for us i we also don't know that's literally why we opened contra because we were we were ideizing for we got to do it better yeah there's just nothing there's nowhere we could take our people and feel good and so we we hope we set the standard now in general that this should just be standardized yeah and you're also in you chose a really interesting area of los angeles uh right off of western in this it it's called melrose hill it's like used to be it's it's a really for people who aren't familiar with with los angeles and i've written a little bit about it because i'm so fascinated by it but But it's very close to Hollywood.

30:44It's pretty central. But it was underdeveloped from retail and every perspective. And then this one family started developing it. And now there's Etra. There's Bar Atoile. There's David Zwirner. Coe has their store there. Spinelli Kilcallen has a store. There's Kiko is around the corner. straight from London all the way to LA. They opened a store. There's lots of Rocky's matcha pop-ups there. There's the grocery store. Anyway, it's a little fishes right around the corner. Anyway, if you're not from Los Angeles, A, you should book. If you come for a week, you should do something at Contra and you should go to this neighborhood and hang out.

31:33I've kind of used it as my downtown coming from Eagle Rock and would kind of there in Larchmont Village were like the places I would go around and get food and go shopping, go out to eat and all that stuff. But it feels like a different city. And I'm just curious, like, did you all target it? Did you see what was happening there? How did you end up? Short answer, yes. Yeah, we did. Yeah, we were really fortunate to find the town and be one of the first people to start renting space there because it's really to your point like up and coming and it's booming now and we have amazing amazing neighbors yeah we were really like intentional you know we were we were noticing it was interesting and trying to figure out la is huge and vast and sprawling and if you go to one area freaking sucks and go to another area it's great and blah blah and for us we were noticing just looking at areas we were kind of looking in that area but we noticed some of these certain people you mentioned popping up and we're like what's going on over here um and then we were really blessed to meet the melrose and western team like going over there and starting to look great they're so incredible and zach glassery and what he's done with the area and we were also very inspired when we found him and his team and then the space it was so kismet because what his mission and their mission over there to do with that area and be able to culturally develop it but in such an authentic way it's not forced and it's so we were like oh my god we found the most perfect place we could ever be so yeah it was it was really intentional it was kind of kismet kind of intentional um and then that way now our community is already we're all together there and everyone and walks the block and all of those people are our clients and we're able to kind of like co-create and you know we have a little we call it our little living room space in the front and a lot of times people will take meetings from there and hang out and so it's cool to see all of these cultural minds come together and be together and then have this opportunity.

33:41Well it's really community driven too because to your point like Zach and his team just developed the entire neighborhood and block that everybody is a neighbor like you really really feel that being there everybody's working together we're doing collapse with each other uh to just this point everybody's training at our space and then we go after work and we go get drinks and we go get food at some of these amazing bars and restaurants around you know it's it's really really community Yes. And it feels really good. We feel very honored to be the place that everyone gets to come play, if you will, because it's like, yes, our space is wellness and we're training and all of these things.

34:23We're getting better. But it's like we keep it very playful and very light because really, that's the only time a lot of any of those people have to put their farm down, you know, enjoy and be in a space of like minded people. So it's fun. So supportive. It's crazy how fast it happened because I've seen attempts at developing things before. And I think it looks good. Like they didn't F up the storefronts. Like they all it's all different. But it doesn't feel super overdeveloped. Like those Werner buildings look like they should be the Werner buildings. building the old brick and stuff grandma and etchar is in as very unique like those the little shopping center over there it it feels like they didn't they didn't fuck with them that much and i think that's part of it too like yeah right yep when you go to some other areas of la and you see the development you're like oh i know who did that development because like aesthetically you know um and sometimes that's fine but in in this case it feels like a real like walking neighborhood too right yeah which is which is really nice do you have a lot of people who are kind of transient who are coming in and out and live in LA part-time and and that sort of thing because when I came to visit you there was a well-known model there you had some athletes like it felt like people who probably only live in LA three months out of the year or what have you?

36:02We get a lot of that. All of our, I mean, as you know, even we don't have our address on there because we do have a lot of high level people. We try to keep it very tight, you know, and very closed and everything we have done has been word of mouth. So it's been really awesome to see the clients we do have then telling their friends and their friends. And we have a lot of people that will fly in and do a stent getting ready for a show or getting ready for, you know, whatever it might be. Tour and stuff. Yeah, tour. And so it's cool. We have a lot of in and out. We've got our mainstay neighborhood people that live in L.A.