Kevin Neeld — Hockey Training, Sports Performance, & Sports Science

This Week in Hockey Strength and Conditioning

I hope you’ve had a great week. David and I are heading out to West Chester, PA for the USA Weightlifting Sports Performance Course certification over the weekend. I grew up in West Chester, so it’ll be great to stop in to see my parents and spend some time in my old stomping grounds.

Things picked up a bit this week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning. Before I get to that, if you missed my two articles from earlier in the week, you can check them out at the links below:

  1. UCAN Break Carbohydrate Dependence
  2. A New Perspective on Program Design

While these posts approach somewhat different concepts, one of the underlying take homes from both is that we need to be adept at STRATEGICALLY implementing stressors. In this vein, stress doesn’t just refer to those from training or competition (although, these will make up a significant proportion of the total stressors for in-season players), but also dietary, environmental, psychological, and social stressors (amongst others!). Stress is cumulative and needs to be mediated or “overtraining” will result.  Overtraining can just as accurately be described as “under recovery” as it’s possible to drive someone into a state of overtraining without ANY training stressors at all.

Also, I wanted to remind you that today is the last day to pick up your copy of Joe Dowdell and Mike Roussell’s Peak Diet and Program Design Summit Package for $100 off. They’ve added a special bonus from Pat Rigsby (great for those of you that may own your own training business) AND a new payment plan. If you’re interested, check out their program here: Peak Summit Package

Moving on to this week’s content at Hockey Strength and Conditioning…

Mike Potenza kicked things off with a new “Youth Training Program” that emphasized lateral speed training. This exercise series, which Mike demos in the videos, is a great way to teach young players how to accelerate, decelerate, and change direction while maintaining proper body position. In other words, it drives performance through body awareness. For higher level players, under the assumption that they’ve developed these qualities already (not always a safe assumption), these are still great exercises to incorporate into off-season programs or toward the end of a warm-up at any time of year. Great stuff from Mike.

Click here to check out the program >> Youth Program: Lateral Speed Teaching

Darryl Nelson added an exercise video of two variations of a lunge complex, one using a valslide and one without it. I’m not exactly sure how Darryl builds these into the program, but they seem like great options for a warm-up or to build some low-intensity “hip mobility” or “lower body” work into an upper body day or full body lift where you want to back off the legs a bit.

Check out the lunge matrix video here >> Left Middle Right Reverse Lunges

The second part of my article series on developing youth training programs for an entire youth hockey organization just went up. This series gives you an inside look into my philosophy and approach to designing a program for a local youth club. As this is a question I get a lot (typically from a coach at one specific level), I think the article series will have a lot of valuable information in it for those of you that don’t necessarily train people for a living, but are left to your own devices for your hockey club. In my (unbiased) opinion, the strength of this series is that I don’t necessarily suggest that you need to do it EXACTLY how I do, but understanding my philosophy underlying the approach I take will help you apply concepts that seem most relevant to your situation. As I always say, there’s a madness to my method!

Check out the article here >> Youth Hockey Training Blueprint: Part 2

Make sure you check out these threads on the forum too:

  1. Motivation
  2. 1 Leg Cleans?
  3. Athlete Metabolism Issue
  4. Hockey’s Original Recovery Drink

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

P.S. Last chance to save $100 on this: Peak Summit Package

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Kevin Neeld

Kevin Neeld Knows Hockey

Kevin has rapidly established himself as a leader in the field of physical preparation and sports science for ice hockey. He is currently the Head Performance Coach for the Boston Bruins, where he oversees all aspects of designing and implementing the team’s performance training program, as well as monitoring the players’ performance, workload and recovery. Prior to Boston, Kevin spent 2 years as an Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach for the San Jose Sharks after serving as the Director of Performance at Endeavor Sports Performance in Pitman, NJ. He also spent 5 years as a Strength and Conditioning Coach with USA Hockey’s Women’s Olympic Hockey Team, and has been an invited speaker at conferences hosted by the NHL, NSCA, and USA Hockey.