Month: May 2010

Hip Mobility Exercise for Hockey Players

I’ve been outspoken about the importance of achieving and maintaining optimal hip mobility (read: range of motion) as a means of improving rotational power (important for skating fast and shooting hard) and preventing hip-related injuries like groin and hip flexor strains, sports hernias, and low back pain.

This is one of my favorite hip mobility exercises that has found it’s way into the warm-up of every hockey training program I write. This is another great exercise that I’ve borrowed from my friend and colleague Nick Tumminello. It emphasizes all three planes of hip movement in diagonal patterns. This is a must for all hockey players.

Diagonal Hip Rock -> Step

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. I’m on my way to the 2nd Annual Boston Hockey Conference. Stay tuned, on Monday I’ll be revealing the hockey development project I’ve spent the last several months working on!

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Hockey Training Stuff You Should Read

Between writing the blogs and newsletters for my site AND Endeavor’s site, I’ve been doing a lot of writing recently. Usually when I write, I try to not rehash on things I’ve already talked about. I’d hate for anyone to ever refer to me as monotonous. The other day I was rereading a few articles I had read before and it hit me that it’s helpful to hear QUALITY information over and over. It helps make it more concrete in your mind.

With that said, I’ve created a list of a few articles and interviews that I’ve been a part of that I think EVERYONE should read. These articles outline much of the scientific foundation that I base my hockey training programs on. Spend a day or two re-reading these articles and post your comments below!

Maximal Force: Cracking the Nervous System Code

3 Tricks to Increase Maximal Strength

Fight the Injury Blues: Keep Lifting

Rethinking Bilateral Training

Dissecting the Sports Hernia

Battling Anatomy: Implications for Effective Squatting

Rapid Rate of Force Development

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. In the next week, I’ll be announcing the official launch of my Ultimate Hockey Development Coaching Program. Stay tuned!

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Hockey Core Training Exercises

A couple weeks ago, my colleague Dr. Jeff Cubos told me to check out a relatively new assessment protocol called the Bunkie Test. I had never heard of it before so I took a look and found some interesting stuff. We haven’t integrated these “tests” into our assessment protcol at Endeavor, but I am integrating a few of the concepts into our hockey training programs.

The whole idea behind the Bunkie Tests is to assess the performance of different functional lines within the body. As an example, there is a well established connection between the external obliques and contralateral (opposite side) hip adductors (“groin” muscles). They frequently serve integrated functions in athletic movements. If you look at this picture of me taking a slap shot while at Delaware, you’ll see that my upper body is turning to the left, while my right leg extends and external rotates. This means that my left external oblique and right hip adductors are decelerating the movement. On the opposite side of things, my right external oblique and left hip adductors are both shortening.

Slapshot

This is just one illustration of this connection between the trunk and hip “core” musculature. Below is a video of an advanced core training exercise we’ve been using with a lot of our athletes recently.

There is also a lateral connection between the obliques and same side hip abductors. A great core training exercise to strengthen this functional path is:

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

Ice Hockey Training
Hockey Strength and Conditioning

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NHL Combine Testing Results

Last week at Endeavor Sports Performance, my boss left a copy of the 2003 NHL Pre-Draft Combine packet with the test results in my office. I don’t put too much stock in absolute testing numbers (how many future NFLers have been studs at the combine and flopped in the show!). I think it’s more important to look at improvement within an individual. Having said that, I’ll never turn down an opportunity to see how the world’s elite level players are performing.

Other than how archaic some of the tests are, two things really caught my eye:

Average Bench Press (150 lbs): 9 reps
Average Bench Press (Total Weight Lifted/Body Weight): 7.2
Average Vertical Jump Height: 23.6 inches

Compared to other professional athletes, these numbers are alarmingly mediocre.

On a personal note, I’ve never been the best jumper. I remember doing a vertical jump test in a Physiology of Activity class as an undergrad at U of Delaware. In the peak of my hockey shape I jumped 24″. On a Just Jump Mat at Cressey Performance a couple years back, I peaked at 28.5″, by far my best showing ever.

During my last year in grad school at UMass a professor from another department that also trained at the school gym asked me to do a bodyweight bench press test for as many reps as I could. I was somewhat tired and sore going into the test (if you’ve ever been in grad school, you know that sleep is a commodity infrequently enjoyed). I was around 171lbs at the time, so I did the test with 175lbs, just to be fair. I did 21 reps.

Naturally, it’s not fair to characterize an athlete by two tests, but rest assure that the majority of the other test results were equally as mediocre (with the exception of the average 9% body fat). I think it’s interesting that I’d test in the upper echelon of NHL prospects off the ice.

What’s the point?

Don’t put too much stock in absolute testing values. Your goal should be improvement. I remember a conversation Nick Tumminello and I had a couple weeks ago where he said something like, “It doesn’t matter how strong and fast you are if you suck at your sport.” Those words may be surprising to you coming from a highly respected strength and conditioning coach that has made a career out of training athletes, but he’s right.

You should always be training, but be realistic. If your speed or strength isn’t your weak spot, spend MORE time learning to play the game (power skating, puck handling, seeing the ice, etc.). Hockey development programs need to include a balance of off- and on-ice training.

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. I’m weeks away from launching my new hockey development program. You’ll be blown away by the quality of the content. Stay tuned.

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Active vs. Passive Stretching

Over the weekend I was sifting through some articles to see if I could find a good one to write a review on for Fitness Research Review Service.

I came across an interesting article assessing differences in flexibility improvements comparing active and passive stretching and wanted to share the results with you.

I still go back and forth on stretching. Part of me thinks it’s completely necessary. Part of me thinks that spending 30s a couple times a week stretching a muscle isn’t going to undo the hours we spend in bad positions. The time numbers just don’t add up. I also think there’s something to be said for manual therapy and myofascial release as a mechanism of improve tissue length/extensibility.

With all that said, I think it’s important that you contract the antagonistic muscle whenever possible during your stretches. For instance, if you’re doing a half kneeling hip flexor stretch, squeeze your butt on your back leg while you perform the stretch. There are two reasons to do this:

1) Contracting the antagonist muscle inhibits (read: relaxes) the stretched muscle due to a neural mechanism.

2) Contracting the antagonist muscle promotes muscular control and stability in the improved range of motion.

In line with the second point, a study by Meroni et al. (2010) compared active stretching (using antagonist contraction to pulling the joint into its endpoint and holding it there) with passive stretching (typical static stretching method). In this study, despite the total passive stretching session duration lasting longer than the total active stretching session duration (12 mins vs. 8 mins, respectively), the active stretching group’s ROM improved significantly more than the passive groups after 6 weeks of performing the stretches 2 times a day for 4 days per week (8.7 degrees versus 5.3 degrees).

A subset of the initial group was re-assessed 4 weeks after the conclusion of the study. Interestingly, the active stretching group maintained a 6.3 degree ROM improvements, whereas the passive stretching group only maintained a 0.1 degree ROM improvement. Maintenance was better in both groups for the individuals that participated in sports. Interestingly, those participants in the passive group that didn’t participate in sports actually LOST 2.7 degrees of ROM over the 4 weeks following the study.

This study definitely questions the long term efficacy of typical static stretching protocols and provides evidence that static stretching may induce only short-term changes in the musculotendinous complex.

Interesting stuff to say the least. I think one of the big take homes here is:

If you’re going to perform static stretches, contract the antagonist muscles during the stretch!

-Kevin Neeld

Reference:
Meroni, R., Cerri, C.G., Lanzarini, C., et al. (2010). Comparison of Active Stretching Technique and Static Stretching Technique on Hamstring Flexibility. Clinical Journal of Sports Medicine, 20(1), 8-14.

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