Month: August 2010

Hockey Development Coaching Program Re-Released!

I have some exciting news to share with you, but before I do, I want to remind you about one of my favorite newsletters. Personal Development expert Brian Tracy offers about a dozen different newsletters through his site, all of which are great. Depending on your business/interests, you may not be interested in all of them, but I think you’ll love the “Quote of the Day” newsletter he sends out. I saved a few recent ones that I really like:

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Louis Pasteur, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein.” – Jackson Brown Jr., writer

“We can learn from past failures and mistakes, but we shouldn’t get stuck there. We can keep future goals in mind, but we shouldn’t get stuck there, either. The only way to reach our potential is to focus on what we must do now – this moment, this day – to perform effectively and win.” – Joe Torre

“Men are anxious to improve their circumstances, but are unwilling to improve themselves; they therefore remain bound.” – James Allen

“It is literally true that you can succeed best and quickest by helping others to succeed.” – Napolean Hill, author

“A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills and uses these skills to accomplish his goals.” – Larry Bird, basketball player

I can’t get enough of these. If you want to sign-up for his newsletter you can here.

The Move

Emily and I found a great place in Philadelphia (randomly, since we found the place because a woman randomly approached us on a street corner after overhearing us talk about places) so the move is official. We’re both really excited. We’ll be Philadelphia residents by the end of the month. If you’re ever in the area, let me know and I’d be happy to show you around Endeavor.

Ultimate Hockey Development Coaching Program

I got such great feedback from the first go-around with my Ultimate Hockey Development Coaching Program that I’ve decided to re-release it. If you didn’t know, since the first launch, Bill Hartman and Mike Potenza hopped on board as contributors, both of which KILLED their Coaching Calls. Go to the link below for more information!

=> Ultimate Hockey Development Coaching Program <=

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

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Beta-Alanine Supplementation for Hockey Players

Today we have a guest post on beta-alanine supplementation for hockey players from Danielle LaFata, MA, RD, CSSD, CPT, who is one of the nutritionists that does a lot of work with hockey players at Athletes Performance. I’ve started recommending beta-alanine to more of our players at Endeavor and they love it. It seems to help them push through their conditioning work.

Enter Danielle:

“Hockey demands the need for quickness, agility, performing at a high intensity, quick recovery, muscular endurance as well as coordination and strength. Also, delaying the onset of fatigue is key to maintaining performance levels. Fatigue can be classified through a decrease in energy stores such as ATP, phosphocreatine and glycogenic substrates as well as accumulation of metabolites for instance ADP, inorganic phosphate, hydrogen ions (H+), and magnesium.

During high intensity activities, such as hockey, the glycolytic and phosphagen systems are used resulting in metabolic breakdown products such as increases in hydrogen ions leading to metabolic acidosis. When the body cannot clear the hydrogen ions quickly enough they bind with pyruvate to produce lactic acid. Excessive increases in blood lactate have been shown to hinder performance with a concomitant decrease in coordination and skill. Athletes are no stranger to the burning sensation brought on from lactic acid. In order to help regulate lactic acid levels researchers have found a compound called carnosine, which can buffer this rise in hydrogen ions, thus increasing parameters such time to fatigue and VO2 max/oxygen uptake.

Carnosine is a di-peptide that is formed by the amino acids beta-alanine(BA) and histidine. Not only has it been found to decrease hydrogen ion production, ultimately increasing pH levels, but also acts as an antioxidant, inhibits protein glycation and because of its hydrogen ion buffering it may augment excitation-contraction coupling improving work output. Although it is carnosine that ultimately improves work capacity through the listed functions, it is the non-proteogenic amino acid, beta-alanine (BA), that needs to be consumed in order to increase intramuscular and plasma carnosine levels.

Although there are no studies to date on the use of beta-alanine on hockey players, we can deduce from the current literature that BA may be a beneficial ergogenic aid. Many studies have shown oral doses of BA at 4-6 grams per day, in divided doses, improved total work done, time to exhaustion and VO2 max. There have also been a few studies showing benefits on performance when combining beta-alanine and creatine. However, BA needs to be taken for a minimum of 30 days, in order for carnosine to saturate the muscle and be effective. The beta-alanine we use and find effective is a brand called Carnosyn® and comes in tablet form. “

References
Zoeller RF, et al. Effects of 28 days of beta-alanine and creatine monohydrate supplementation on aerobic power, ventilatory and lactate thresholds, and time to exhaustion. Amino Acids. 2007;33:505-510.
Smith AE, et al. Effects of beta-alanine supplementation and high-intensity interval training on endurance performance and body composition in men; a double-blind trial. JISSN. 2009;6:5.

Hoffman JR, et al. Short-duration β-alanine supplementation increases training volume and reduces subjective feelings of fatigue in college football players. Nutr Res. 2008;28:31-35.

Stout JR, et al. Effects of 28 days of beta-alanine and creatine monohydrate supplementation on the physical working capacity at neuromuscular fatigue threshold. J Str Cond Res. 2006;20:4.

Hill CA, et al. Influence of b-alanine supplementation on skeletal muscle carnosine concentrations and high intensity cycling capacity. Amino Acids. 2007;32:225-233.

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Long-Term Hockey Development and Injury Prevention

At Endeavor, we really pride ourselves on constantly looking for better ways to develop our athletes. All of our coaches continuously look for cutting edge information on program design, more effective exercises, nutrition, recovery strategies, and injury prevention (amongst others). Working alongside such passionate people is what makes my job so much fun to do.

Over the weekend I spent some time watching DVDs of a 3-hour presentation from Dr. Vladimir Issurin on Block Periodization. Dr. Issurin is a scientific advisor to the Soviet and Israeli Olympic teams. His presentation delved into how to alter the emphasis of various training aspects to best peak for competition. Eastern European training methods have always intrigued me, so I was psyched I got an opportunity to hear from one of their secret weapons.

The Death of Development

One of the things he said that really caught my attention was (to paraphrase) that in today’s athletic development systems, competitive workloads have replaced training workloads. Think about it. Add up the total time athletes spend practicing and training in a given month. Add up the total time hockey players spend playing games. In previous hockey development models, a ratio of preparation: competition would likely be AT LEAST 5:1, meaning players would spend 5 hours of preparation (practice and training) for every 1 hour of competition. Now this ratio is significantly closer to 1:1, if not 1:2.

Concomitant with this shift in competition emphasis, we’ve seen a drastic increase in the amount of burnout amongst high school players and an UNACCEPTABLE increase in the number of non-contact and overuse injuries. To address the former, this means that when hockey players should be entering their best years, they’re so burnt out from 70+ game youth seasons, spring league, summer league,a nd select teams that they give it up. This is tragic.

Tissue Stress Accumulation

The increase in overuse injuries is related to what I think of as “tissue stress accumulation”. Simply, this means that the stresses placed across tissues within your body (muscle, tendon, ligament, etc.) accumulate over time, ESPECIALLY if special attention isn’t paid to recovery. When I was in San Jose, John Pallof (a brilliant physical therapist) said he thought one of the reasons groin strains, hip flexor strains and sports hernias were so much more prevalent now is because hockey players are training more than ever before. John noted that the training is absolutely necessary for the prevention of a host of other injuries, but he alluded to a great point: With the increase in competitions both within a season and across multiple seasons (Issurin) and the necessary increase in training (Pallof), our body’s just aren’t given the time to recover that they need. This reality is exemplified by the fact that almost ZERO attention is paid to recovery and improving soft-tissue quality.

Take Home Messages

There are three things you should take from this (and pass along to everyone you know and love):

1) As a hockey community, we need to ease up on the number of games (and number of seasons for that matter) and put a greater emphasis on practices with components of skill development. It’s okay to slow down practice and focus on individual skills. In fact, it’s paramount for development.

2) From a training standpoint, the goal is to get the maximum benefit from the minimum amount of training. This comes back to minimizing tissue stress accumulation and highlights the fatal flaw in the “more is better” idea. This focus underlies the design of all our athletic development programs at Endeavor. It’s why we sometimes use 2 sets instead of 3, why we tell athletes to lift lighter weights on certain sets, and why we dial back our strength work significantly when it’s time to really hammer home conditioning. Maximum results, minimum stress. That’s the goal.

3) Lastly, EVERY hockey player should be actively pursuing improved soft-tissue quality. I recently heard someone say that athletes ignoring performance-limiting factors (such as poor soft-tissue quality) are essentially driving with the brakes on. At Endeavor, we address soft-tissue quality by having our athletes go through a self-myofascial release circuit before they do their dynamic warm-up, which uses foam rollers, tennis balls, and medicine balls to break up knots and adhesions within the muscle (taking the breaks off). These implements can help restore normal muscle extensibility and fluid motion in young athletes and help maintain tissue quality in older athletes.

As athletes get older, it is ABSOLUTELY IMPERATIVE that they go see a manual therapist on a regular basis to do some soft-tissue work done on their hip musculature. In this case, manual therapists include professionals that can do massage, A.R.T. (Active Release Technique), and Graston. This is truly the secret behind long-term injury-free athletic excellence. I’ve found that most massage therapists avoid the hip musculature for liability reasons, and therefore aren’t of much use for our purposes (although the relaxation is still awesome and I’d never tell anyone not to get a massage).

Me on my walk home after a great massage.

Because not all manual therapists are created equally, I made it a mission to seek out the top professionals in our area to refer our athletes to. I generally tell our older athletes to go see one of these therapists once per month to get work done, sometimes more or less depending on the therapists recommendation. I highly recommend you find someone in your area too. It’ll be worth it in the long run.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Off-Ice Performance Training Course

Kevin is the author of Hockey Training University’s “Off-Ice Performance Training Course“, the first product on the market geared toward helping hockey players and coaches of all age-levels and abilities design and implement effective off-ice training programs. This incredible resource includes three FREE bonuses (valued at over $250!): “Complete Hockey Nutrition and Supplementation”, “The Secret to Team Success Guide”, and 1-Week Pre-Season Training Guide.