Interview with Pat Galivan

Topic: Training for Life: Performance & Longevity

Guest Name: Pat Galivan

Guest Credentials: Co-Owner of GVN Performance, strength coach, Physical Therapist Assistant, and Gray Institute Fellow. Works with athletes of all levels, including players connected to the USA Hockey National Team Development Program.

Discussion Details: Pat shares how GVN trains both elite hockey players and everyday adults using the same core principles: movement quality, strength, power, and injury prevention. We talk about what a first evaluation looks like, how training complements physical therapy, and why their “Eternal Athlete” approach helps people stay active long-term.

Benefits of Watching: Whether you’re a competitive athlete or just want to stay strong and pain-free, this conversation shows how smart, individualized training can help you move better, feel better, and keep doing what you love.

Address of Guests’ Business: 2550 W Madison St, Chicago, IL 60612

Adam Wolf: Welcome to another spotlight series with the Rubic Guild. I’m Adam Wolf and Jessica Carlin is also here. Uh, welcome Jessica. We’re excited to have Pat Gallivan here who’s the owner of GVN Performance. Pat is a become a friend of mine and a colleague. He’s a I’ll let him tell himself about let him tell us about him. So Pat, hi. Thank you for being here.

Pat Galivan: I appreciate you having me. Uh yeah, definitely uh honored to uh get this opportunity to sit down and chat with you guys a little bit.

Adam Wolf: Tell us a little bit about GVM, who you’re co-owner with with your brother and and another person. Tell me about that.

Pat Galivan: Yeah, so I own GVM Performance um with my brother Brian Galvin and his wife uh Gabriella. Um, GVN started probably around 2011 or 12 or so. Um, and what we do is, um, we’re a strength and conditioning company. Um, and our main focus is working with hockey athletes from the professional level all the way down to the youth level, whether it be, you know, eight or nine year old kids that are working on like youth athletic development. Um, and we also have another branch of business where we work with adult general population clients. Um, many of whom um many of whom like uh to keep an active lifestyle um whether it’s playing men’s league hockey, pickup basketball, golf, um you name it. Um and you know as an extension of you know physical therapy um try to keep them healthy uh in their lifestyle choices.

Adam Wolf: I that’s you do a great job of it too and that’s kind of why I wanted to talk to you today and it’s funny like I don’t even the hockey stuff is a thing that you do in itself which is a lot of fun. We could go in places and that’s probably another conversation but I was really uh impressed with you with the stuff you do with the you know the weekend warrior or the the older population that maybe still wants to be active. Uh, I was impressed. And the way we came about, which was fun, was through somebody, we’re both working with somebody and I would have them, this person do some movements and some things and he’d kind of do them straight away and said, “Oh, Pat.” And I kept hearing your name back and forth and I was like, I I know Pat’s background and thought process a little bit about where he’s coming from. And then I, you know, we met and, you know, I don’t feel like you do yourself enough justice because you also are a physical therapy assistant, right? You have like a background in PTA that you worked in. Correct. I’m I’m teeing it up for you here, man.

Pat Galivan: Yeah. No, I think uh having, you know, the background phys as a physical therapist assistant um kind of gives like GVN a uh unique position um to know how to deal with certain uh limitations or or injuries that people come to us with. um you know just like you uh spent uh the early early days in my physical therapy career got a uh uh the applied functional science uh certification uh fellowship with the Gray Institute which kind of uh broadened my scope of being able to um watch people move. Um, and you know, I think, you know, with you being an instructor um, for that uh, program, it’s been nice to have somebody to be able to uh, throw ideas off of or if we’re sharing a client, um, whether they are starting with you and then graduating into more activity or or an athlete that’s, you know, at the, uh, top level of their sport. um being able to communicate and tell me what you’re seeing and go back and forth on that. I think uh it’s been huge for clients progresses and and and getting them to reach their goals and keeping them painf free. Um so I I incorporate a ton of that in in what we do. Um I still want to make sure that we’re hitting the the basics of strength and conditioning and and that type of stuff. Um but I think especially for the older population to you know keep them moving in uh three planes of motion and and keep them mobile um while uh attacking some of the like the just the general strength um to get them to where they need to be is is uh definitely something we pride ourselves on and it’s been nice to have that resource for our people.

Adam Wolf: think that like you know being able to speak what you know the common movement language and I feel like the way that I look at and I think one of the things you do a good job of Pat is you know I think about PT is more micro and more performance which is really just the other end of the movement spectrum if people are like good minus to good plus you know you’re like in the good good plus world and I’m more in the good minus and getting them to good world but it’s the same spectrum and you we’re able to look at it micro to macro and speak some of the same language about what I might be wanting somebody to work on and you can like run with it really well with your team and you have a little bit of a team as well, right? Like tell us uh a little bit about, you know, what you do and where you guys are at because you have a lot going on.

Pat Galivan: Yeah, sure. Well, we uh our location downtowns at Johnny’s West Ice House. Um at our location, we have myself and then three other trainers. Um Chris SD, Cade Swagert, and Andrew Lozanac. And um it’s it’s been cool to uh watch the team develop over the years. Um you know, when you get a you know, I’m sure you’re the same as in the physical therapy realm when you get a new therapist and they’re young and they’re pretty green, you take them under your wing a little bit and you’re sitting there wondering if they’re going to pan out, you know, and then two, three years down the road like you’re like, “Holy, holy crap, look at this guy, man. He’s a phenomenal coach now.” Um, so you know, we do every week, you know, we’re going to have a staff meeting in a few hours where, uh, you know, we’ll go over, you know, different questions and needs and, uh, each person, depending on the week, we’ll go through like five to 10 minutes of, uh, information that they’re learning and continuing education. Um, so, you know, it’s been fun to build that up. And then, you know, as far as like our facilities in the suburbs, we have one in at Fox Valley Ice Arena um in Geneva, Illinois, one at um Northshore Ice Arena in Northbrook. And then in Michigan, we have one in Plymouth. And that’s our location where we work with the US National Team Development Program. Um so between the four location

Adam Wolf: for those listeners

Pat Galivan: for hockey. Yes. For hockey.

Adam Wolf: Sorry, I take that for granted. Like everybody just knows that, right? Yeah.

Pat Galivan: Um but between all of our I think you know uh what’s unique about us as a company is we have so many like highlevel coaches within uh the realm that you know we have our own text groups we have you know uh kind of get togethers to where we can share information and debate and discuss and keep an open dialogue what’s working what’s not working I learned this new thing from here and there and uh you know everybody just kind of grows and it creates a a really like growth growth mindset uh atmosphere.

Jessica Carlin: It’s important. I have another question for Pat, which is I understand that you have a that you work from anyone from extremely high level athletes to weekend warriors and people trying to increase wellness and longevity. What would you say are similarities? So when somebody walks through your door, whether they are at the really high performing end or the entry level end, what are some similarities in your intake process and how what would somebody ex what could somebody expect that walked through your doors that’s not a professional hockey player?

Pat Galivan: Um well first and foremost um you know I try to put the same amount of significance as if I’m working with a NHL player as I do with you know a 55year-old uh guy that’s playing men’s league twice a week and wants to like you know get around with his grandkids and and be healthy from that perspective. Um, I would say with the the processes can be pretty similar. Um, as far as when we’re uh doing evaluation when a new client’s coming in, um, you know, we’ll we’ll sit down and we’ll talk about goals and limitations and training history, experience, past injuries. Um, you know, then we’ll we’ll spend some time going through a table assessment where, you know, we’ll look at kind of like the the big rocks where you’re looking at hip range of motion, ankle range of motion, uh, T-spine, shoulder, um, you know, core stabilization, hip stabilization, um, through a table test and a movement assessment. Um I would say I would probably go a little bit more in depth on the movement assessment with a a high level player where um you know the the assessment is more uh dynamic um a little bit higher level maybe plyometric looking at landing mechanics from that perspective whereas you know depending on the activity level or um you know if a client’s coming in that has like a history of low back pain and wants to get healthy. Like I’m going to be looking at at uh different level movements with them. um where one might just be I’m looking at like a you know a uh overhead squat uh for a gem pop gem pop client and then you know I might be looking at like a you know single leg depth drop landing for a pro hockey player or pro athlete um from you know 12 to 16 inch box and seeing looking for like a dynamic VGUS of the hip and knee and um how they organize their body with that. Um, that’s one example. Like body composition, we’ll do body composition testing. Um, that can be left up to the client. Um, some clients, they don’t want to do body comp and they just want to come in and get going and feel good, which I’m usually fine with. um the the athlete depending on the age like a seasoned pro may be pretty happy with their nutritional habits and and where their their body composition is. Whereas like a 16 17 year old kid uh you know who’s maybe needs to put on quite a bit of muscle and size needs to go through the body composition and nutritional educational process and supplementation and all that education. um they might, you know, go a little bit more in that direction. Um and then, you know, for pretty much all of our athletes, we’re going to be uh using the force plates to look at, uh you know, force outputs, um and asymmetries with their counter movement jumps and uh max strength testing with isometric belt test. Um whereas again you know depending on the gem pop uh client like some of them may be interested in that and their main goal is just to improve on the ice um and others are just kind of looking to get out of pain and be healthy and and be able to function on the ice. Um and they might not care about that at all. So it’s it’s really like what what does the purpose person want and what are their goals and desires that we’re going to try to meet focus on.

Jessica Carlin: Thank you. Yeah,

Adam Wolf: I think that’s one of the things you you do a good job of is being able and I was impressed by about your organization early on was that you get a metrics and you get like true numbers. I think that’s a conversation we’ve had before. So, um, thank you for that. I don’t want to take up too much of your time. We’re keeping this at 10 to 15 minutes. So, anything else you want us to know about your business? Where can we find you? Are there any specials or anything that you’re doing right now that you want people to know about?

Pat Galivan: Uh, yeah. Um coming out of the summer, which is our big uh uh big busy time of the year with our offseason program and all our athletes, we start um shifting our focus more to that general population training, which is basically anyone who’s not, you know, playing uh uh competitive sports. Um and we hold a a group class at 7 a.m. Monday through Friday. Um and the focus is pretty similar to um training an athlete. We call the class the eternal athlete. Um so initially we’ll start off an evaluation and we’ll take a look at any uh range of motion limitations, movement limitations and we will come up with something specific for each person to work on when they first get into the gym and run through on their own. And uh you know it’s it follows a similar format as like a an athletes training session where you know you’ll get warmed up good, activated. Um, we’ll work on some speed and power in the first block. We’ll get into kind of a main strength lift. Then we’ll get into some more secondary accessory lifts and finish with like a, you know, metabolic conditioning block at the end. So, we’re hitting all the the pillars of uh what you need for performance. Um, so that is kind of back in action and putting an emphasis on that. Um, you can find us on Instagram at GVN Performance and we probably have some other uh social media platforms too which I will not know the name of uh what we are. I’m sure probably under GVN performance though. Yeah, that’s that’s Gabby’s uh area of expertise. So, um, and other than that, no, I think, uh, you know, I just I can’t stress enough how how nice it is to have like a clinician of Adam’s caliber as well as the rest of his staff at the Movement Guild. um to because sometimes we’re going to get um cases that are maybe a little bit above our heads and uh we need to refer out um to a trusted source that has a lot of experience and is going to know um be able to identify like what the course of action needs to be for someone. And then whether it’s like okay they go to physical therapy because now it’s just not the time or we can kind of work together and communicate um to um you know go go forward with that person’s particular issues um that is something that kind of makes you sleep a little easier at night um for uh the trainers and who we have over here at GVM Performance. So

Adam Wolf: yeah, I feel like we we’re nice compliments to each other’s businesses in a lot of ways because like we’re, you know, as I said, speak the same language and we’re not, you know, we’re doing different things and similar. So thank you.

Pat Galivan: Yeah, it’s great. I I can I you you you you tell me something, I know exactly what you’re talking about and uh it just it makes it easy and it re reassures yourself that you’re like on the right track, you know.

Adam Wolf: Exactly. Appreciate your time today, my friend. Thanks again for being here.

Pat Galivan: Yeah, this was great. Appreciate you guys.

Adam Wolf: Talk to you soon. Thanks again.