This was an exciting week. On Wednesday, I had my first “hands-on” day in massage school. It was pretty basic work, but it was good that they put us right into it. I’m really looking forward to the experience, as I think becoming proficient in different manual therapies will help us trouble shoot a lot of the movement impairments we see in our more elite players. Typically we have to refer out for these, and simply hope that the players will take the initiative to go get the work done. In the near future, we’ll be able to handle it all in-house.
We also got our first shipment in of our men’s high performance shirts for our new apparel line. I haven’t spoken much about this because the overwhelming majority of the work has been planning and we haven’t had anything tangible to show for it until recently. The shirts came out perfectly, and they have performance qualities that can’t be matched by any other apparel line out there. More on this in the near future.
Lots of exciting things coming in the near future from Endeavor
This week I added two new articles that I think are geared a little more toward the hockey player, parent, and coach populations more so than the hockey training crowd. I recognize that some of my articles can get pretty scientific and might be over the head of the average hockey enthusiast. These posts are simple, yet very powerful. If you haven’t already, please give them a read and forward them along to anyone you think would benefit from reading them as well.
We had a few great additions to HockeyStrengthandConditioning.com this week too.
Mike Potenza kicked things off with a new article on building leg strength in youth goaltenders. Don’t let the title fool you, this is outstanding information for hockey players at any position. Mike presents a strong rationale for why this type of training is important, and then presents a detailed exercise progression, with a ton of pictures and exercise descriptions. The article concludes with a 4-phase training program utilizing the exercises presented in the article. This is a great article for youth players, parents, and coaches to read and begin implementing immediately.
Read the article here >> Establishing a Foundation: Leg Strength for Young Goaltenders from Mike Potenza
Darryl Nelson added a video of a couple single-leg Olympic lift variations that he includes in his programs at the US NTDP. I’ve never used these in our programs, but I liked the way they looked in the video. I’ll likely start playing around with these myself and they may make their way into our off-season hockey programs this year.
Check out the videos here >> Single Leg Olympic Lifting from Darryl Nelson
David Lasnier wrote an outstanding article on integrating frontal plane movements into hockey training programs. David has been on a tear recently. He’s had a few incredible posts on his site DavidLasnier.com, has a couple articles in the pipeline that I’ve had an opportunity to read in advance, and this article is really well done. He presents the rationale for why frontal plane exercises are important for hockey players, and discusses specific exercises (using videos to demonstrate proper technique) to improve strength and power in this plane. Many of these exercises can also be used for work capacity or conditioning purposes as well. Great read for everyone in hockey (players, parents, coaches, sports med professionals, etc.).
Finally, there have been some great discussions on the forum that are worth joining. When you sign in, check out these forum threads:
That’s a wrap for today. As always, if you aren’t a member yet, I encourage you to try out Hockey Strength and Conditioning for a week. It’ll only cost $1, and if it’s not the best buck you’ve ever spent, I’ll personally refund you!
To your success,
Kevin Neeld
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