Month: August 2010

Athletic Development Stuff You Should Read

I’ve been on a huge continuing ed kick recently and have come across some great stuff I want to share with you.

New Study Finds 70 Percent of Able-Bodied Hockey Players have Abnormal Hip and Pelvis MRIs
This brief article was written in mid March so it isn’t “new” anymore, but it’s still worth the 2 minutes it’ll take you to read if you haven’t yet. For hockey players, this is huge. This study highlights the fact that a positive MRI finding (e.g. they find something wrong with you) doesn’t necessarily mean you need surgery. It’s just a piece of the puzzle. Almost identical information has come out regarding the shoulders of baseball pitchers. Forget the specificity of the joint (or population), the big take home here is a doctor telling you something came back as “wrong” doesn’t mean you should immediately sign up for surgery. Intelligent conservative treatment may be a more advantageous option!

Relationship Between the Kinetics and Kinematics of a Unilateral Horizontal Drop Jump to Sprint Performance

Turns out single-leg transitional power correlates to sprint performance. Could it be that single-leg training is important for athletes??

Counter-Intuitive Rehabilitation

Charlie Weingroff did an AWESOME interview for Super Human Radio that you can listen to for free at the link above. Charlie delves into a lot of the problems, or more politely “limitations” of most physical therapists and gives some great examples about how the body functions as a unit. Even if you aren’t a physical therapist, this is a great listen for every athlete and parent because it gives you an idea of what you should be looking for in a great physical therapist. Do your best to ignore the supplement promotions during the commercials.

Diaphragmatic Breathing Questions

Every time I visit Carson’s site, I learn something new. I’ve started incorporating breathing exercises and coaching cues into our programs at Endeavor a lot more over the last couple months, in large part because of what I’ve learned from Carson about the importance of proper breathing in athletic performance. Carson answers a handful of really well thought out questions in this post.

The Truth about the Trapezius

Nick Tumminello discusses some interesting research that questions our understanding of the role of the upper trapezius. Functional anatomy is probably my favorite area of study so this one really caught my attention.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Sport Specific Training vs. Sports-Specific Training

For the last decade or so, the words “sport specific training” have frequented the marketing of people with services claiming (sometimes accurately) to develop athletes. The “sport-specific” movement was initially characterized by people taking identical movement found in sports (e.g. a baseball swing, a hockey shot, etc.) and providing some sort of resistance to the pattern.

The “Sport-Specific Training” Mistake
Unfortunately, the approach of loading skilled movement patterns is counterproductive. Whether or not you get stronger from doing these loaded repeated movements is somewhat debatable, but in the interest of optimism, let’s suppose that there is a strengthening effect. The problem is that the skilled pattern itself is negatively affected. The loaded movements ruin the movement pattern; usually in terms of both neuromuscular timing and outcome accuracy. This is just a fancy way of saying that the way your muscles control the movement and the accuracy of the movement are negatively affected. Think of the implications this has for ice hockey. Altered shooting form and accuracy can make a HUGE difference since most players only get a shot or two a game!

The other, less frequently acknowledged downside of this comes back to the idea of tissue stress accumulation I discussed a couple weeks back (Long Term Hockey Development and Injury Prevention). The more you move through a pattern, the larger the amount of stress the involved muscles and surrounding tissue take. Because we are a stimulus driven society and typically focus little, if at all, on recovery, doing extra work on top of playing your sport in these sport specific patterns can push you closer or over your injury threshold.

Do We Need “Sport-Specific Training” At All?
While the training was a bit off, the intention was great and it made a lot more people in the sports arena aware of the necessity of physically preparing to play. With that though, it gave the allusion that every sport had it’s own secret training protocol and that athletes need highly sport-specific training in order to get the results they deserve. In other words, hockeyplayers needed “hockey-specific” training, soccer players needed “soccer-specific” training, and so on.

In reality, most popular sports (soccer, baseball, hockey, football, lacrosse, basketball, field hockey, and volleyball, amongst others) share more athletic qualities than people realize. Maximizing athletic performance in any of these areas requires training to ensure:

  1. Appropriate multi-planar joint stability of the ankles, hips, thoracic spine (upper spine), and glenohumeral joint (shoulder).
  2. Appropriate stability of the knee, lumbar spine (lower back), scapulothoracic joint (shoulder blade), and elbow
  3. Improved full body power
  4. Improved strength of all major muscle groups in FUNCTIONAL movement patterns (e.g. lunge and squatting patterns, NOT machine work!)

With this in mind, over 80% of training will be almost identical for athletes of all the above sports. I remember hearing Mike Boyle joke once that he created the Boston University Field Hockey program by taking the Ice Hockey program, deleting “Ice”, and adding “Field”. I’m not sure if he actually did that or not, but his point was clear. The major differences in training programs between sports are:

  1. The proportion of work in the areas outlined above. For example, a lacrosse player may need more explosive upper body work than a soccer player because of the physicality and shooting in lacrosse
  2. The direction of the training stresses. For example, sports like volleyball and basketball necessitate more vertical power training (e.g. vertical jumping) than sports like soccer and ice hockey, which are predominantly (although not entirely) horizontal-based. Similarly, sports like baseball, golf, hockey, and lacrosse will necessitate more horizontal rotational power training than sports like football because of the importance of shooting in these sports.
  3. Conditioning. The metabolic demands between sports like football, volleyball, and soccer are completely different. As a result, so is the emphasis on conditioning. While almost all conditioning for sports should be interval-based, the frequency, intensity, and duration of the conditioning should be specific to the sport.

Sport- vs. Sports-Specific Training
The major take home from all of this is that athletes and parents should be actively seeking out “sports-specific” training, not “sport-specific” training. Sports-specific training creates separation from the largely irrelevant personal training and body building alternatives out there, but encompasses the important idea of training in the interest of athletic development.

Training for athletic development is the key to experiencing a long, successful sports career while avoiding the injuries imposed by so-called “sport-specific” training programs.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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No One Conditions Alone

I’m in the process of writing an article for Hockey Strength and Conditioning on my experience helping with the San Jose Sharks prospect camp a few weeks back and I wanted to share a modified excerpt with you.

Mike’s intern Marcello, after coaching for a few hours (aka not at all warmed up or training) hopped in with one of the Sharks to do a brutal conditioning session on the treadmill. Why suffer the anguish? Conditioning alone sucks. Actually, conditioning sucks. Conditioning alone just sucks worse. It’s a huge help to have someone going through the grind with you.

Since returning, I’ve implemented a No One Conditions Alone policy at Endeavor. Coming back to Potenza’s incredible ability to lead by example, I didn’t tell anyone it was our policy; I just started conditioning with people who ended up having to condition on their own (we have to audible on our conditioning strategies for some of our athletes based on weekend tournaments and injuries). The first time I hopped in to do shuttles with someone, I got a thank you email. Our athletes noticed. Our staff noticed.

Just the other day, as luck would have it, one of our hockey players had to go through this brutal isohold->slideboard series 6x through, all with a 12 lb vest (the highest volume we go with this).

He was alone. I hopped in. Fellow coach David Lasnier hopped in. One of our interns hopped in.

Most recently, David and I trained together through a torturous circuit (4x through 50 yard sled march, 50 yard farmers walk, 20 sec squat hold, 20 kettlebell swings, 50 yard overhead keg walk, 20 sec front plank), after which I was only pretty sure that neither of us would throw up or pass out. I was in my dark place bad.

Quick side note. “Dark place” refers to that state of being where:

1) You can hear yourself breathing from the inside of your head

2) You can hear other people talking, but it sounds more likely someone narrating your life than someone actually speaking to you

3) You’re EXTREMELY fatigued. When I was in high school, I was so tired one morning (back to back practices with off-ice in between) that I got half way through my bowl of cereal before I realized I had poured orange juice on it. That is extreme fatigue.

After I got a drink from our fountain, I turned around to see one of our interns doing shuttle runs by himself. Damn it. I limped over to the track and immediately jumped in with him. As I returned back to the beginning of our track from the 1st lap on our shuttles I saw David walking over to one of our stationary bikes, where he sat down and finished a conditioning session with one of our other interns.

I try to encourage a team atmosphere at Endeavor. It’s important to me that our athletes know they aren’t being barked at by someone with a loud voice, but no work ethic. It’s important they know that our staff and everyone they’re training with are in it for the same goal: to make them succeed.

There are two major take homes from this “experiment”:

1) Lead by example. I didn’t have to say much before all of our coaches and interns were hopping in to condition with athletes or race them during sprints if they needed an extra push. I just did it.

2) Go through the grind together. Athletes have a lot more respect for coaches that put their blood lactate where their mouth is (not my best metaphor).

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

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7 Habits of Highly Effective Interns

With another season of internships wrapping up at Endeavor, I thought it’d be appropriate to outline a few things that all interns should be aware of.

1&2) Show up early. Stay late. This is probably the easiest way for an intern in any industry to make an impression. One of our Summer interns regularly stuck around for 13 hour days just because he liked being there. Not surprisingly, we asked him to start doing some part-time work with us in the Fall. Dedication goes a long way.

3) Don’t get too comfortable. This is a mistake I’ve made in the past. Depending on the internship, you may be surrounded by people around your own age (including your “superiors”). It’s okay to joke around every now and then, but certain topics about your extra curricular activities probably shouldn’t be brought up ever and a certain comfortable/familiar tone you should avoid using with your superiors.

4) Study your superiors. I use superior due to lack of a better term. In our industry, almost everyone has a blog. At Endeavor, I have my site, I write for Endeavor, and David Lasnier has his site. Our interns also know that both David and I read Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson, Mike Boyle, and Carson Boddicker’s sites on a regular basis (amongst others). Make it a habit to read everything your superiors write and try to follow along with the people that they’re reading too.

5) Try new exercises. If something isn’t familiar to you, try it. Become proficient at it. You need to be able to demonstrate every exercise to coach it anyway and actively jumping in to try an exercise shows you’re interested in learning.

6) Ask well thought out questions. One of my favorite things is when an intern says something along the lines of, “I was reading the book you let me borrow; I have a question about…”. Doing outside reading shows they’re passionate about the field and getting better. Asking questions shows they aren’t glazing over the text, but really trying to critically analyze everything. This can also be applied to questions you have about the purpose of certain exercises and/or why they’re included in certain parts of the program.

7) Ask for feedback. Feedback about your performance will make you better. This is true in any industry. If you don’t ask for feedback you may not get it. It’s important to learn what your strong and weak parts are so you know how to improve in the future.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Hockey Development from the Ground Up

One of the most prevalent movement flaws we see on a daily basis is an inward collapsing of the knee during cutting, squatting, and jump landing patterns. This is especially true in females, who tend to have a more difficult time preventing this motion due to their skeletal structure (wider pelvis). This pattern can lead to a variety of knee injuries, the most threatening of which is the well-known ACL tear.

Retraining Proper Movement Patterns

The approach we take in retraining this pattern includes educating our athletes on what the pattern should look like, strengthening the muscles on the outside of the hip, which is influential in pulling the upper leg and knee out, and practicing proper technique in a variety of athletic movements (including speed training, plyometric training, resistance training, and conditioning). This approach has proven extremely effective for just about every athlete we’ve had.

The exception is athletes that have a flat foot (or two). When the foot flattens out (or pronates), it drives the lower leg into internal rotation. My colleague John Pallof calls the talocrural joint (what many refer to as the “ankle joint”) a torque converter, since inversion and eversion (inward or outward tilting) at this segment leads to internal and external rotation of the lower leg. He also pointed out that a few degrees of excessive inversion (as is the case in individuals with flat feet or “over pronation”) translates into even more degrees of internal rotation of the lower leg, which translates into even MORE degrees of internal rotation at the hip.

Try This!

One way to illustrate this concept is just to move your arm in large circles. If you look at the diameter of the circle made at your arm by your shoulder, it will be considerably smaller than the diameter of the circle made by your hand. In the above example, your lower leg would be your upper arm (small circle) and your hip would be your hand (large circle).

In athletes that have difficulty keeping their knee out, despite a few weeks of training and coaching under their belt, I take a closer look at their feet and am starting to notice a common theme.

If you look closely, you’ll see that the achilles tendon appears to head straight down, and then take a somewhat sharp turn toward the outside of the foot. This is indicative of an over-pronated foot. This athlete appears to have the problem on both feet. Can you imagine what his knees will look like?

See how his knees appear to point inward? In a correctly positioned foot, the achilles would appear more vertical and the back of the knee would be facing straight back instead of rotating toward the inside.

There is some debate about whether we can restore an arch in our feet through training. I’ve run this question by my friend Ryan Chang, who was a fellow grad student when I was at UMass Amherst, but current works as a Pedorthis at Kintec Footlabs and has done biomechanics work for Adidas, and he seemed to think getting an orthotic was the better route. John Pallof agreed. It’s better to get a corrective orthotic in there early to prevented undesirable motion at the knee and hip. As I mentioned in last weeks newsletter, unwanted motion accumulates into serious injuries. Knee meniscus tears and hip labral tears are amongst the many injuries that could result from this.

If your feet look like the gentleman’s in the picture above, it may be worth scheduling an appointment with a specialist to see if you’re right for orthotics. John Pallof was kind enough to pass along his “go-to” resource in this regard: Sole Supports. If you go to the site, you can find a provider that’s near you.

Take Home Message

My hope is that you take this information seriously and don’t push this stuff to the back burner. I recently heard my friend Joe Heiler (a PT from Traverse City, MI) mention that Jan Eckstrand presented research at the 2009 Soccer Industry Medical Symposium 2009 stating that an analysis of 70 teams from 18 countries over 8 seasons (over 9000 injuries!) revealed that previous injury was BY FAR the best predictor of future injury. This isn’t to say that previous ankle sprains are predictive of future ankle sprains (although they are); this means that ANY injury is the greatest predictor of ANY future injury. This point CANNOT be overlooked. Injury prevention should be the primary goal of every athlete, and is the primary reason I think athletes need to be training year-round.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Don’t forget to check out the re-release of my Hockey Development Coaching Program! The bonuses alone are worth the investment.

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