Jan

29

Off-Ice Ice Hockey Training Part 3: Speed, Agility, Quickness and Conditioning

Filed Under Articles | 1 Comment

Most youth hockey programs get 1-2 hours a week for off-ice training.  In the last two articles I’ve gone over dynamic warm-ups and core training, the most important two forms of training that every hockey player should be doing.  Taken together, the warm-up and core training generally takes the first 15 minutes of each session.  That doesn’t leave much time for everything else.  This makes it that much more important that hockey players don’t waste their time with garbage training.

While speed, agility, and quickness training and conditioning are generally viewed as separate entities, they can be combined in the interest of saving time.  The key is to really understand the demands of hockey.  Speed is one of the most important skills of the game, but top speed is rarely reached and when it is, it’s almost never maintained for very long before a player will need to change direction.  As a result, the abilities to start explosively, stop quickly, and change direction rapidly are much more desirable than simply being fast in a straight line.  To be overly simplistic, hockey-specific speed is really just well-designed agility training.

When designing hockey-specific agility drills, you’ll want to:
1) Include what I refer to as proactive and reactive drills.  Proactive means that the path and direction changes are pre-determined.  The player must move through the drill as quickly as possible.  Reactive means the player’s movement is in response to some other stimulus, usually in the form of a partner (mirror drills) or coach (command drills).

2) Include movement changes specific to hockey.  Hockey players often have to transition between forward, backward, diagonal and lateral movements.  Agility drills should reflect these movement changes.  For instance, you could design a circuit of agility drills that involve a 5 yard back pedal to a 5 yard sprint in the diagonal forward direction (45° turn); then a 5 yard back pedal to a 5 yard sprint in a lateral direction (90° turn); then a 5 yard back pedal to a 5 yard sprint in the backward diagonal direction (135° turn); etc.  You could also mix in shuffling, crossover steps, and different starting positions (forward, backward, lateral, push-up position) to maximize the on-ice carryover.

3) Include speed changes specific to hockey.  While I made it a point to acknowledge that top speed isn’t maintained for long, it’s important to understand that many of the direction changes in hockey occur at near-top speeds.  Also, many max effort sprints don’t begin from a stationary position.  Your off-ice training should reflect this.  Include longer range accelerations (20-30 yards) with a quick deceleration and direction change (similar to a pattern a wide receiver may run).  Include agility circuits that start with a speed build-up.  This allows the athlete to practice accelerating from a moving position, which is usually the way it happens on the ice.

If you consider all of these things while designing your agility drills, you should be able to maximize the effectiveness of your speed, agility and quickness training while minimizing your training time.  Switching gears a bit, a lot of these same concepts can be applied to a hockey specific conditioning.  Again, analyze the demands of hockey.  Do hockey players skate at a low or medium intensity for several minutes at a time?  Not if they’re any good!  Most players and coaches recognize that the average shift is 30-60 seconds, followed by AT LEAST twice that much time of rest.  This means that hockey specific interval training would involve work to rest ratios of 1:2 at the low-end and 1:6 at the high end.  However, while a shift may last 60 seconds, shifts almost NEVER involve maximal effort skating throughout the entire duration.  Usually there’s a quick sprint, then a glide, then lighter skate to a new position, then another quick sprint, etc.  In other words, most shifts are characterized by multiple short, high-intensity sprints followed by brief resting periods.

To maximize the hockey specificity of your conditioning, high intensity multi-directional movements should be used.  As an example, I’ve used 10-yard repeat sprints from a push-up starting position as a conditioning exercise.  The athletes explode up from a push-up position, sprint 10 yards, then walk back and immediately repeat for 4-6 reps.  Then they take a few minute break before repeating the interval.  That’s just an example.  You could also use a partner mirror drill as a conditioning tool.  Have one player be a leader, another a follower.  The leader can move within a pre-determined area or along a pre-determined path and the follower must mirror the movements exactly.  Let them go for 15 seconds or so, rest 15 seconds, then switch roles for an interval, then rest for a couple minutes before repeating everything again.  Depending on the length of the work intervals, I generally keep conditioning down between 3-8 work intervals.  I may use 3 work intervals for something like a 300 yard shuttle run with cones at 0 and 25, and 8 intervals for something like 20s lateral mirror drills (4 repetitions as the leader and 4 as the follower).  Starting to get the picture?  The idea is to build a higher work capacity by maintaining a high workload, while still providing adequate rest to maintain a high intensity.  Usually conditioning should last about 10-15 minutes.

If you follow all the principles outlined in this article, you can effectively improve hockey-specific speed, agility, quickness, and conditioning in less than 30 minutes.  By incorporating a well-designed dynamic warm-up and core training program, you can drastically improve on-ice performance in less than two hours a week.  Now with all the tools, the only missing ingredient in the success formula is your unparalleled determination to outwork your opponent.  Keep working hard.  Your results will speak for themselves.

This article was originally published at ezinearticles.com

Kevin Neeld, BSc, MS, CSCS is the Director of Athletic Development at Endeavor Fitness in Sewell, NJ and the author of Hockey Training University’s “Off-Ice Performance Training Course,” a must-have resource for every hockey program.  Through the application of functional anatomy, biomechanics, and neural control, Kevin specializes in guiding hockey players to optimal health and performance. Kevin developed an incredible ice hockey training membership site packed full of training programs, exercise videos, and articles specific to hockey. For a FREE copy of “Strong Hockey Core Training”, one of the sessions from his course, go to his hockey training website.

Jan

29

Off-Ice Ice Hockey Training Part 2: Hockey Specific Core Training

Filed Under Articles | Leave a Comment

There’s nothing more frustrating than spending countless hours working toward something, only to realize you haven’t made any progress.  Actually, there is one thing: spending countless hours working toward something, only to realize you’ve actually been progressing in the WRONG direction!  In the world of hockey training, crunches, sit-ups, and partner leg throw-downs predominate as the most utilized forms of core training.  Bad news for players that were actually hoping to improve their performance through training.

I could write a book on the reasons why these exercises are not only poor choices with regards to performance, but are actually dangerous!  In the interest of time, I’ll summarize all the arguments against these useless exercises by saying that at no point do you need to rapidly or strongly flex your trunk (think crunch motion) during the game of hockey, and performing these movements over and over reinforce the poor hunched over posture that we spend way too much time in already (sitting at a computer, driving, sitting in a classroom chair, etc.).

To understand how to best train the core, we need to define the core musculature and its function.  The core includes ALL of the muscles that attach to the hip.  This is an important point.  Only training the abdominals inevitably leads to muscular imbalances and leaves opportunities for improved performance untapped.  The core musculature includes the abdominals, glutes, hip flexors and rotators, all of which should be trained using functional patterns.

The two primary functions of the core are:

1) To create a stable base for extremity (arm and leg) movement
2) Create trunk stiffness for efficient force transfer between the lower and upper body

Both of these functions revolve around controlling pelvic/hip movement.

The core needs to be both stable and reactive, and should be trained in that order.

Despite the potentially confusing structure and function of the core, the training is pretty straight forward.  To establish a stable core, all hockey players should start with a basic core training circuit involving front planks, side planks, and glute bridges.  Once they can hold each position for 3 sets of 30s with perfect form, they should progress to 1-leg variations to add in a rotation component.

This is when things start to get fun.  There’s nothing stable about the game of hockey.  In truth, core stability in an unchallenged environment won’t do a whole lot for a hockey player on the ice.  The key is to train the core for reactive stability.  In other words, the core needs to maintain stability while being exposed to some challenging force.  On the ice, this force can from an external source, such as an opposing player, or internally, such as decelerating momentum from a shot.  The key to making a core stability exercise a reactive core stability exercise is to add in a perturbation.  In general, reactive core exercises involve one athlete trying to maintain a position, while another athlete provides slight challenges to this position in the form of taps or pushes.  These exercises are usually performed for time (working up to 30s).  A few examples would be:

Side Plank with Perturbation
Athlete sets up in a side plank position with his top hand reaching straight up.  Partner lightly taps the athlete’s hand, while the athlete resists any movement.

Hockey Stick Partner Perturbation
Athlete stands in an athletic position holding a hockey stick in front of himself.  The partner lightly taps the stick in all different directions while the athlete resists any movement.

Overhead Hockey Stick Partner Perturbation
Athlete stands in an athletic position holding a hockey stick straight overhead  The partner lightly taps the stick in all different directions while the athlete resists any movement.

The latter two exercises can all be performed from a half-kneeling (lunge position) or tall-kneeling position (kneeling on both knees and getting as tall as possible).  To increase the challenge even further, the athlete performing the exercise can close his eyes.  This really challenges the body’s sensory system.

The next progression is into explosive medicine ball throws, to really train the core force transfer function.  Before you transition from resisting movement to creating it, you need to know which areas to move from to maximize force transfer and minimize injury risk.  As a general statement, you want to move at the hips and thoracic spine (think moving through your chest area), and minimize ALL movement around the lumbar spine (or low back).  This is true for both linear movements (bending forward, backward or side to side), and rotational movements.  Once you understand where to move, you’re ready to progress to throwing around some medicine balls.  My favorite two medicine ball exercises are:

Overhead Floor Slams
Hold a medicine ball directly over your head.  Then slam it straight down into the ground in front of your feet as hard as possible.  Catch it on the rebound, rapidly return it to the overhead position, then slam it again…and again…and again.

Side Standing Shot Put
Stand facing perpendicular to the wall.  Load the ball in front of your back shoulder with your back elbow raised even with the ball.  Drive off your back leg and throw the ball as hard as you can using a punching motion.  Catch the ball on the rebound, rapidly return to the start position and throw it again.  Switch sides and repeat.

Most medicine ball exercises are best performed between 8 and 12 reps.  Any more than that and the movements lose their power.

The final core training progression is to incorporate reactive stability into explosive medicine ball throws.  The way to do this is to perform a couple explosive throws, catch the ball and freeze in a position while a partner provides a perturbation.  For example, if you were performing the overhead floor slam, you would perform 2-3 reps, then catch the ball and hold it overhead while a partner lightly tapped the ball for 5-10s while you resisted all movement.  Then you’d perform 2-3 more slams, and repeat the overhead perturbation, cycling through this process 2-4 times.  This type of training will have the maximal carryover to on ice performance, as you’re alternating between explosive power and reactive stability.

For hockey players to get the most benefit from their core training, they should begin with basic core stability exercises before progressing to reactive stability exercises.  After spending some time working at these, players can advance to explosive medicine ball exercises and then to advanced exercises incorporating explosive movements with reactive stability holds.  Following this progression will help guarantee that off-ice core training leads to on-ice improvements in performance.

In part three we’ll jump into speed, agility and quickness training, as well as the best way to condition for hockey.  Stay tuned…

This article was originally published at ezinearticles.com.

Kevin Neeld, BSc, MS, CSCS is the Director of Athletic Development at Endeavor Fitness in Sewell, NJ and the author of Hockey Training University’s “Off-Ice Performance Training Course,” a must-have resource for every hockey program.  Through the application of functional anatomy, biomechanics, and neural control, Kevin specializes in guiding hockey players to optimal health and performance. Kevin developed an incredible ice hockey training membership site packed full of training programs, exercise videos, and articles specific to hockey. For a FREE copy of “Strong Hockey Core Training”, one of the sessions from his course, go to his hockey training website.

Jan

29

Off-Ice Ice Hockey Training Part 1: Developing an Effective Off-Ice Warm-Up

Filed Under Articles | Leave a Comment

Hockey is the greatest sport on earth.  Finally recognizing this, the number of youth hockey programs in the U.S. continues to grow rapidly.  Characterized by rapid high-intensity movements, high velocities, and full-speed collisions, it’s not hard to see why off-ice training would be advantageous.  With injuries such as “groin” pulls, hip flexor strains, sports hernias, and shoulder separations plaguing the sport, it’s not hard to see why off-ice training is a NECESSITY.

Whether or not to train for hockey is not a question.  It’s a no brainer.  Hockey players that train excel and dominate.  Players that don’t fall behind and are at an increased risk of injury.  Almost all coaches and players recognize that much.  The question I receive the most is, “Where do I start?”  That’s the right question to ask and the question I’d like to address.  In this article series, I’m going to walk you step-by-step through the process of creating an effective off-ice training program.

Where to Start
Without a doubt, the best place to start is by adding a dynamic warm-up before every training session (off-ice AND on-ice sessions) and game.  Trash the old jog around the rink and stretch as a team routine.  Despite popular belief, stretching before high intensity activity doesn’t decrease injury risk.  In fact, research suggests that it actually INCREASES the risk of injury!  Believe it or not, stretching before high-intensity activity also leads to decreases in speed, agility, balance, and muscular strength and power.  The jog and stretch may warm-up the body a bit, but it does nothing to increase functional range of motion around the joints you use during training or playing hockey.  It simply isn’t effective in preparing the body for what is to come.  The solution: dynamic warm-ups.

Things to Consider
A dynamic warm-up is a series of exercises designed to increase body temperature, blood flow, joint range of motion, and neural drive to the working muscles.  Sound better than decreased performance and an increased risk of injury?  When putting together a dynamic warm-up, you’ll want to consider these things:

1) Skating takes the knees and hips through a full range of motion in all directions (flexion and extension, abduction and adduction, internal and external rotation).
2) Stickhandling and shooting take the shoulders through a full range of motion
3) Hockey involves both linear, lateral, and diagonal movements
4) Hockey is a high-intensity, high-velocity sport
5) The hip musculature and scapular stabilizers (muscles around the shoulder) are important problem areas to address to decrease injury risk
6) Core training should be performed during the warm-up, ensuring that athletes put maximum effort into it and that the appropriate muscles are activated for the training to follow.
7) The dynamic warm-up should last around 10 minutes

Taking these 7 things into consideration, let’s take a look at a basic program I’ve used with high school and college players in the past.

Every one of these exercises should be performed for about 15 yards.

1) Walking Knee Hug with High-Knee Hold
2) Walking Lunge with Overhead Reach
3) Inchworm
4) Walking Inverted Reach
5) Diagonal Walking Lunge
6) Butt Kickers
7) High Knees
8 Side Shuffle Right
9) Side Shuffle Left
10) Carioca Right (Quick feet emphasis)
11) Carioca Left (Quick feet emphasis)
12) Carioca Right (Long stride emphasis)
13) Carioca Left (Long stride emphasis)
14) Straight-Legged March
15) 50% Sprint from Push-Up Start
16) Back Pedal
17) 75% Sprint from Push-Up Start
18) Back Pedal

Let’s take a look at how this warm-up addresses all the things I mentioned earlier.

1 & 2) The knees, hips, and shoulders are taken through a full range of motion throughout this warm-up (notably in the lunging, cariocas, and inchworm).

3) Forward, backward, side-to-side, and diagonal movements are all incorporated.

4) The warm-up involves higher intensity movements and increases in speed.

5) The psoas, a hip flexor commonly problematic in hockey players, is isolated and activated during the walking knee hug with high knee hold as you’ll hold the knee against your chest, then let it go, holding it using your hip flexors as high as possible for a second before moving into the next step.  The other muscles around the hip are activated through the side shuffling and cariocas.  Lastly, the scapular stabilizers and other muscles around the shoulder are activated during the inchworm.

6) When performed correctly, inchworms should effectively warm-up the abdominal musculature, and the walking inverted reach should activate the glutes.  While this is far from sufficient core work, it’s a good starting point.

7) Lastly, this program can easily be performed within 10 minutes.

There are an infinite number of dynamic warm-up exercises you can perform.  While I prefer moving warm-ups, it’s entirely possible (and sometimes better in the beginning) to sufficiently warm-up an entire team using stationary (not progressing over a distance) movements.  Performing a dynamic warm-up before practices and games will save you valuable ice time as you won’t have to spend as much time on the ice warming up.  Follow the guidelines in this article to design your own warm-ups and/or use the sample warm-up I’ve provided before every training session, practice, and game and you’ll be making the first step towards improved performance

Stay tuned for part two of this series, where I’ll go into why most of the core training incorporated into off-ice training programs does nothing to improve performance, and show you the most effective functional core training for hockey players.

This article was originally published at ezinearticles.com.

Kevin Neeld, BSc, MS, CSCS is the Director of Athletic Development at Endeavor Fitness in Sewell, NJ and the author of Hockey Training University’s “Off-Ice Performance Training Course,” a must-have resource for every hockey program.  Through the application of functional anatomy, biomechanics, and neural control, Kevin specializes in guiding hockey players to optimal health and performance. Kevin developed an incredible ice hockey training membership site packed full of training programs, exercise videos, and articles specific to hockey. For a FREE copy of “Strong Hockey Core Training”, one of the sessions from his course, go to his hockey training website.

Dec

31

Improving Your Hamstring Flexibility

Filed Under Articles | Leave a Comment

Yesterday Karl (our first intern at Endeavor Fitness) and I went through the Functional Movement Screen together.

I’m proud to say, as the mentor, that I came out victorious with a score of 18 (over his measly 17!).

He “lost” because his hamstring extensibility (or flexibility) was terrible. While most of our athletes have decent hamstring extensibility we do have a few that are pretty locked up.

With Karl, and some of our athletes, I’ll have them do this quick stretching activity to improve hamstring extensibility.  When someone is available, we’ll usually do this with a partner, which allows “on the fly” adjustments to leg positioning, but often times I want our athletes to do this at home, using a wall as their partner.

Please ignore the music in the background!

The protocol is:

1) Set up with one leg raised in a “hamstring stretch” position with your knees of both legs fully extended and the toes of both legs pulled toward your shins. In this position, your lower back should be flat (or with a slight curve), and you should feel a good stretch in your hamstrings on the raised leg. Hold this position for 10 seconds.

2) If you feel like you can, shift your body a little closer to the wall to increase the stretch on your hamstrings.

3) Actively raise your heel off the wall and hold for a few seconds. Return to the wall and rest a few seconds. Repeat 2-3 times.

4) If you feel like you can, shift your body a little closer to the wall to increase the stretch on your hamstrings.

5) Actively press your heel into the wall as hard as you can without it lifting your hips or moving your body at all (or breaking your heel through the wall!). Keep pressing for 3-5 seconds, then rest a few seconds and repeat 2-3 times.

6) If you feel like you can, shift your body a little closer to the wall to increase the stretch on your hamstrings and hold this final position for 10 seconds.

Most people notice a substantial improvement in their hamstring extensibility after performing this circuit. If you’re really locked up, try doing this twice a day for a couple weeks and see how much you improve.

Dec

25

Core Stability for Instant Strength Increases!

Filed Under Articles | Leave a Comment

A few weeks ago I started working with a Division 1 bound high school baseball player.

During his first session, he was able to do a set of Dumbbell Reverse Lunges with 40s for 6 reps/side.

2 weeks later he did a set of 4 reps/side with 75s, and he did 70s for 6/side the following week.

There are multiple possibilities to explain this drastic strength increase:

1) Becoming more comfortable with the movement pattern

2) Increased neural drive to the involve musculature

3) Better night of sleep before the training sessions later in the program

While I won’t rule any of these things out, I’ll say that these strength increases aren’t abnormal here.

With all of our athletes, there seems to be one common theme:

When our athletes learn to brace/stabilize their core during the lifts, their weights go through the roof!

Simply coaching athletes to “get up tall” and/or (depending on the lift) “keep their core tight” while they lift has an incredible impact on their ability to transfer force through their core, and therefore the weight they can lift.

Many athletes pick this up from simple coaching cues. For the athletes that need a little more help, I teach them how to brace their core with these instructions:

1) Put their hands on their stomach

2) Tighten up their core, which contracts the stomach musculature

3) Take a deep breath “in through their belly”, without releasing the core tightness

4) Practice taking mini-breaths in and out without losing their core tightness

After teaching them this skill in a static environment, most are able to transfer that to their lifts.

Dec

23

Does Flexibility INCREASE your risk of injury?

Filed Under Articles | Leave a Comment

A couple weeks ago I did an audio interview with Joe Heiler for SportsRehabExpert.com, one of the most underrated membership sites on the web. I’m really humbled that he asked me to contribute.

If you’ve never been there, check it out. Joe’s a really bright guy and has compiled a lot of great information from other smart, successful coaches and therapists.

One of the things that came up during the interview was what we can do to prevent “groin” (adductor) strains. We’ve been fortunate in that we haven’t had too many adductor injuries in our athletes. This is probably, at least in part, due to the hip mobility and hip muscle activation exercises we use.

We did have a couple athletes complain of adductor pain though, and they all had ONE thing in common:

OUTSTANDING ADDUCTOR FLEXIBILITY!

This trend flies in the face of the “you got hurt because you didn’t stretch or aren’t flexible enough” way of thinking.

In these athletes, we were able to resolve their pain relatively quickly, by having them STOP STRETCHING their adductors, start stretching their glutes a few times a day, and by doing isometric adductor strengthening exercises by crushing a medicine ball between their knees for time.

The rationale was simply that their adductors were weak relative to their abductors (to be overly simplistic: weak groin, strong glutes).

By stretching their glutes and strengthening their adductors, we were able to shift the strength and stiffness relationship between those muscles into more balance and get rid of their pain within a week or two.

Dec

17

Should Kids Lift Weights?

Filed Under Articles | Leave a Comment

A couple months ago I wrote a quick article for the Endeavor Fitness website on the issue of whether kids should lift weights or not.

It’s a question I get a lot, or more accurately, it’s a misconception I have to explain a lot.

Today I read Eric Cressey’s newsletter on the same issue.

Whether you’re an athlete, parent, coach, or “trainer”, you should check out both articles. If you’re like most people, you’ve likely been given poor information on the subject.

Check out the articles:

Kevin’s Article on Endeavor Fitness’ Website

Eric’s Newsletter Article

Aug

18

Everything You Need to Know About Testes

Filed Under Articles | Leave a Comment

This isn’t going to be nearly as crude as you’re hoping for.
…but it got you this far didn’t it?

Performance nutrition expert Dr. John Berardi, along with the help of Dr. Bryan Walsh, put out these two posts that do an awesome job explaining the cause and results of hormone imbalances in both men and women.
As a man, I found this first post (and the two videos with it) to be very enlightening.  If you’re a fan of testosterone boosting supplements, this is a must watch for you.

Men:  http://www.precisionnutrition.com/testosterone-replacement
As a man, I found this second post (and the two videos with it) to be very…I got nothin.  I made it about 3 minutes into the first video and realized that the only things I’ll ever know about women is that they are all different, but equally confusing.
I still recommend you check out the link though. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did.

Women: http://www.precisionnutrition.com/female-hormones

- Kevin Neeld

Jun

22

Hockey-Specific Sprinting with Jim Snider

Filed Under Articles | Leave a Comment

One of my favorite presentations at the Boston Hockey Summit in May was Jim Snider’s talk on “Dryland Speed Training for Hockey”. Coach Snider is the Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Men’s and Women’s Ice Hockey teams at the University of Wisconsin. Needless to say, that program has an outstanding reputation.

Coach Snider’s whole presentation was insightful, but there were two aspects that really caught my attention:

1) He was a big advocate of uphill sprinting. Why uphill? Sprinting uphill increases the foot/ground contact time, which is more specific to all forms of hockey skating (forward, backward, crossovers, and direction changes). Adding an incline to sprints also minimizes the risk of blowing out a hamstring and cuts down on the landing forces that need to be absorbed by the legs and hips (takes stress of your ankles, knees, hips, and low back) since your leg isn’t “falling” from as high as it would during flat ground or downhill sprinting.

I think people can get carried away with hill training. The goal isn’t to find the biggest hill in your community and run your athletes up it until they puke. If the incline is too steep it will start to have a negative effect on running form and can put unnecessary stress on your athletes’ achilles tendon. Try to find a hill that is around a 10 degree incline and use that.

2) Coach Snider outlined his progression of sprint starting positions, and I thought it was both brilliant and logical, and have adopted a similar approach with all my hockey players. The progression is:

Phase 1: Lunge Start/Side Lunge Start
Phase 2: Kneeling Start
Phase 3: Single-Leg Standing Start
Phase 4: Counter-movement Start (as in jumping backwards then accelerating forward)

Starting a sprint from a lunge position is a brilliant way to teach people to drive hard from a stationary position and maintain the forward lean they need to accelerate. I’ll try to get pictures/videos of these up in the next few weeks so you can see exactly what these movements look like.

-Kevin Neeld

Feb

4

Picking A Protein Supplement

Filed Under Articles | Leave a Comment

At least once a week I get a question from someone about which supplements to take to get the most out of their efforts.  There is no shortage of options-that’s for sure.  Unfortunately, MOST supplements aren’t worth your money.  As a general statement-the more colorful and flashy the label, the more expensive and worthless the supplement.  There are a few supplements that have stood the test of time and proved effective through comprehensive research: Fish oils, creatine monohydrate, and a protein or protein/carbohydrate shake.  The next big question is, “Which protein supplement should I take?”

Below is a copy of an email I sent to a student of mine who was looking for the answer to that question for her dad.  As an appropriate prequel-I’m not a big muscle milk fan.  I know it tastes good-so do cheeseburgers, but I don’t recommend eating those while you lift.  There’s one ingredient in Muscle Milk (glycocyamine) that’s been tied in with increasing homocysteine levels, which is a marker for cardiovascular disease.  Considering the risk, there is no benefit of taking Muscle Milk over other protein shakes.

“Assuming your dad has now discarded all of his muscle milk and is looking for a new protein supplement, I have some recommendations.  Different protein supplements are more ideal for different purposes.  If he is drinking it before, during, and/or after working out (before/during AND after is typically best), he should look to get a whey protein supplement.  Whey protein is rapidly digested and consequently used  wherever needed IMMEDIATELY.  This is in contrast to casein protein, which takes longer to be digested and absorbed.  Think of casein as a time-release protein-it provides smaller amounts of protein over a longer period of time.  I typically have a whey protein supplement AND a casein/whey mix supplement.  I take the whey either before or sip on it during my lifts, and then drink a shake after my workouts.  I take the casein/whey mix whenever my schedule is too chaotic and my planning too poor to have a whole food protein source and I need a quick source of high quality protein.  When looking at protein supplements I typically look for something that has 20-30g of protein per serving.  Many supplements will have something like 75g per serving, and use that as a selling point.  The amount of protein that can be absorbed at any one time is highly dependent upon the individual and the current status of that individual (immediately after training vs. day off for example), but I can’t imagine anyone using 75g at once.  Taking that much just puts a little more stress on their kidney and lets them  urinate out their money (pleasant, I know). I don’t recommend taking more than 40g in any one sitting, for anyone.  I’ve had success with products from BioTest (Surge for during/immediately after workouts, GROW! for after workouts, Metabolic Drive to fill in for missed real food meals), and Optimum Nutrition’s 100% Whey protein.”

I don’t usually like to make blanket statements like this, but frankly-if you aren’t taking a protein supplement, you aren’t serious about your training.  Don’t take my word for it.  Pick up some Surge and Metabolic Drive from BioTest.  Try it for yourself.  When you start to notice that you’re progressing faster and feel better, send me a thank you email.

Next Page →