Usually, the things I like the most about Hockey Strength and Conditioning are the articles, programs, and exercise videos. I learn a lot by delving into what some of the top hockey training professionals in the world are doing with their athletes. I usually come away with new ideas for exercises/exercise progressions or program design strategies. As an example, our entire off-season med ball progressions were built from ideas I gathered from watching Mike Potenza’s videos.
With that in mind, Mike Boyle posted a great article this week on essential equipment to have for training hockey players. Because equipment availability lays the foundation for your programming, it was really interesting to hear what someone with Coach Boyle’s experience thinks is a “need-to-have”, “nice-to-have”, or simply a “luxury”. You can check out the article here:
Contrary to the norm, the thing I benefited from the most over the last week was the forum discussions. Coach Boyle’s article stimulated a great conversation about the importance of slideboards versus cable systems that gave me some great ideas for future equipment purchases/exercise ideas.
My friend Devan McConnell started a great post on concussions and fighting that was eye opening. Because concussions, probably more than any other hockey injury, have long-lasting life-altering effects on players’ health, it’s of paramount importance to try to prevent these injuries. Darryl Nelson had a couple very insightful additions to this conversation. He’s become a forum superstar; I always look forward to hearing what he has to say.
Lastly, former BU player and current pro hockey player (Las Vegas Wranglers of the ECHL) Kevin Schaeffer posed the question as to whether anyone noticed if more of their players were starting to wear orthotics in their skates. This is a really interesting topic yesterday; I’m interested in seeing what others have to say on this as I know many of the other coaches on the site have encountered this issue at least once.
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Precision Nutrition Certification Review
A couple weeks back I posted something on facebook about taking the Precision Nutrition Certification Exam. Since then, I’ve received a handful of emails from other strength and conditioning professionals on what my thoughts on the cert were. In essence, everyone wants to know:
“Is it worth the money?”
In short, my answer is a resounding YES! In long, I couldn’t say enough good things about the book, educational videos, and accompanying material. In order to successfully provide nutrition coaching to both athlete and non-athlete populations, I felt I’d need:
A detailed description of the underlying physiology that drives nutrition-based adaptations
How different body types are affected by various dietary strategies
What circumstances warrant supplementation, and which supplements Dr. John Berardi and Ryan Andrews (along with the rest of the PN team) have determined are safe and effective
An understanding of all the steps along the dietary strategy continuum from the most basic strategies (e.g. eat more vegetables) to the most complex (e.g extremely low calorie/carbohydrate diets and macronutrient cycling)
Fluid requirements
A multitude of implementation strategies to account for the varying psychologies of clients
The questionnaires, assessments, and tests required to successfully implement nutrition coaching
The Precision Nutrition Certification Program provided all of that and infinitely more. Essentially the program laid out EVERYTHING I would need to know to successfully implement a Nutrition Coaching Program at Endeavor in an admirably clear, step-by-step fashion. The program was clearly laid out with the student in mind. There are plenty of opportunities to reinforce newly acquired knowledge, and it even walks you through the entire coaching process, telling you exactly when you need to schedule each meeting, and what you need to go through in these meetings.
Admittedly, I’ve studied enough about nutrition to know the basics. I imagine most people have. Although I enjoyed the art of implementation that this program discussed regarding these more basic nutritiong concepts, from a “mind-expansion” aspect I was much more interested in some of the advanced strategies. A few of the highlights:
Caloric and macronutrient recommendations based on body weight, body type, body composition, and goals
Caloric and macronutrient cycling strategies
Supplements to facilitate injury healing
How to infer hormonal imbalances from skinfold testing (this was really cool)
How to combat excessive cortisol environments with various supplements
In reality, the majority of this stuff probably applies to bodybuilders and figure competitors more than youth (or even elite) athletes. Simply, because most athletes nutrition is horrendous, these advanced strategies will be lost on them. With that said, it was still interesting to learn about and to keep in mind as a tool to use in the future with the appropriate clientele (e.g. an advanced athlete with specific body composition needs that has demonstrated a relatively profound mastery of basic nutritional concepts).
The Precision Nutrition Certification program isn’t the only one out there, but it’s the one I trust the most. I’ve been following Dr. Berardi’s work for a while now and enjoy his attention to staying current on research, but realistic in implementation. In other words, he understand the psychology behind nutrition as much as the physiology. Importantly, he’s not ANOTHER one of the fat nutritionists that doesn’t practice what they preach.
Look at the guns on this guy!
Dr. Berardi has been successful in implementing diet and supplementation strategies to improve the body composition and performance of a diverse clientele ranging from himself (important), to elite level athletes, to non-athletic populations.
Not interested in Nutrition Coaching?
I know not everyone reading this will be a professional that is interested in offering nutrition coaching. If this is you, Dr. Berardi hasn’t forgotten about you. I’ve always said that his Precision Nutrition book and accompanying Gourmet Nutrition is the best nutrition resource for athletic and non-athletic populations alike. No they are not free. Yes they are worth the money.
I’ve been saying for years now that everyone should own a copy of Precision Nutrition. People usually respond in one of three ways:
Ignore me completely
Immediately buy the book
Mull it over indefinitely, and shoot me an email every time I mention it and ask “Is it REALLY worth it?
To address the latter, yes it REALLY is worth it. It’s worth it for people that want to lose fat; it’s worth it for people that want to gain muscle; it’s worth it for people that are more concerned with athletic performance; it’s worth it for people that are bored with the foods they’re eating; it was worth it for me; it is worth it for you. If you order before October 31st, you can get the entire Precision Nutrition System for $50 off ($97). I’m always amazed at how people can come face-to-face with something that has life-changing potential, but comes with a relatively small initial investment and just write it off as “too expensive”. You CAN and should afford it; you may just need to figure out how. Click the image below for more information on how you can get the PN System for $50 off!
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The Truth About Sidney Crosby
The first time I heard the name Sidney Crosby, I was a senior in high school. I was at practice for my Junior Flyers team, the week before we headed up north to play a tournament against many of the top Tier 1 teams in the country, including Crosby’s Shattuck St. Mary’s. At that time (’02-’03) Crosby was 15 years old and thought of as the top midget-aged player in North America. No pressure.
In the seven years following that tournament, Crosby has revived a dying NHL organization (Pittsburgh Penguins), been named Team Captain of now one of the top teams in the world, led his team to two Stanley Cup Finals, winning the second, and most recently scored the overtime Gold Medal winning goal in the 2010 Winter Olympics for Canada. This is on top of a LONG list of other personal and team accomplishments on his road to the NHL (read more here: Sidney Crosby). At the age of 23, Crosby has accomplished more than 99% of professional hockey players ever will. And after I gave my Fantasy Hockey Team a pep talk a few games into the year, Crosby has been on fire this season as well.
Admittedly, I wasn’t always the biggest Crosby fan. When he first joined the NHL, he struck me as a little “soft”. Being a bit more objective, maybe that behavior is a little more understandable given how young he was. After all, you wouldn’t throw an exceptionally talented peewee into a midget game and expect him to be at the same physical and mental maturity level as the other players.
Now, I’m a huge Crosby supporter. There is no denying what he’s done for hockey. With the help of a few timely rule changes and an exciting supporting cast (Ovehckin, Datsyuk, etc.), Crosby has helped drastically improve hockey’s popularity across the U.S. Who knows, a few more months and hockey may overtake Nascar in the sports popularity ranks! On top of that, I’ve had the opportunity to learn a bit more about Crosby’s character over the last year, leading me to have a deeper respect for what he’s been able to accomplish. He’s not a superstar by accident.
The correlation between hockey playing ability and beard growing ability isn’t well established.
From talking to people that have worked with and around Crosby, I’ve heard one thing consistently:
“He is always trying to get better.”
If he was a Tier II youth player trying to make the jump to Tier I, you’d expect that. If he was a college player trying to catch the eye of pro scouts, you’d expect that. Even if he was an AHL player or mediocre NHL player that wanted to make a more consistent contribution, you may expect that. Crosby is none of those. An argument could be made that he is the best player in the world, yet he still strives to be better.
I’ve been around hockey for the last 18 years and there is one thing that limits player and team development as much as, if not more than anything else: Contentedness.
I think every player should have the experience of being one of the “go-to” players on their team. It builds confidence to be a leader in some way. Likewise, I think every player should have the experience of being on a team that has a legitimate chance of winning a championship of some sorts. With that said, these successes should never justify cockiness, arrogance, or contentedness.
If a player is SERIOUS about competing at the next level, they need to consistently work to improve their game. This includes off-ice training (check out this article on Crosby and his Strength Coach Andy O’Brien: Trainer’s innovative regimen key to Crosby’s game), power skating, puck handling, studying game film, and watching games at the nextl level to prepare mentally for what is to come. The name of the game is always potential fulfillment. Everyone’s potential is different, but every player deserves to feel the success and accomplishment associated with fulfilling it. There is no certainty that past successes will lead to future ones. Everyone that has been around hockey for an appreciable amount of time has seen standouts at one level flounder at the next, or, contrarily, mediocre players at one level flourish at the next. Often times, it’s preparation time that explains this discrepancy.
Sidney Crosby may be the best hockey player in the world, yet he meticulously analyzes his game for areas to improve and tirelessly works to make these improvements. This characteristic is both admirable and inspirational, and represents a humility that every player should adopt. Things don’t always go according to plan:
…Wait for it…
But the best way to guarantee your own success is to never stop working toward improving yourself as a player and as a teammate.
To your continued success,
Kevin Neeld
P.S. You can now get access to my entire Hockey Development Coaching Program at an EXTREME discount. Go to Hockey Development to take advantage of this offer today!
Finally, the Secrets of Elite Level Hockey Development are Revealed!
Click the image below to discover how you can benefit from over 150 years of collective hockey development experience from 14 of the world’s top experts!
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This Week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning
In order to give you an opportunity to catch up on all the stuff added last week (Last Week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning), we slowed things down a bit this week. This week we added:
Video: Alternate Arm Scap Wall Slide from me This is a variation to the more traditional scap wall slide that I’ve really taken to. This post has a video demonstrating the exercise and an explanation of why I think it’s better suited for hockey players than the traditional version.
Article: Hockey Nutrition Simplified from Chris Collins The importance of nutrition is not to be overlooked. As you know, this is an area that I’ve been paying more and more attention to recently. Chris does a great job of outlining three “big picture” nutrition focuses that hockey players should pay attention to. These three considerations alone will have a profound impact on a player’s eating habits.
My friend Dr. Jeff Cubos started a great thread on the forum titled “Introductions”, where our members have an opportunity to introduce themselves. The more we learn about each other the more we can help each other. This was a great idea from Jeff and an outstanding opportunity for some of the more “quiet” members to come forward. After all, one of the largest benefits of joining a community like ours at Hockey Strength and Conditioning is the associated networking. Having said that, you can’t network if no one knows who you are! Whether you’re a player, parent, coach, strength coach, Michael Boyle enthusiast, or some combination of the aforementioned, I encourage you to log in and introduce yourself!
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Combating In-Season Fatigue
As the hockey season progresses, fatigue accumulates. In other words, the intensive energy that most players bring into the season begins to fade somewhere around the mid-point of the season (near January) and a cascade of deleterious effects on performance follows.
Ultimate In-Season Performance Factors
Factor 1: The Diet Depending on the sport, it’s not unusual for some players to drop between 5-10 lbs in the first month or so of the season. In the case of athletes coming off a lazy off-season, this may not be a bad thing as the weight is likely UNDESIRABLE body fat. Alternatively, the athletes that follow a well-designed training program during their off-season and drop weight when the season starts probably don’t have as much fat to spare and are losing DESIRABLE muscle mass.
Despite the differential outcome, athletes in both situations need to pay better attention to their nutrition. The overwhelming majority of athletes are malnourished, despite sometimes being overfed. This results from a combination of a lack of knowledge/education on healthy eating (no thanks to the crap-perpetrating of the controversy-hungry media) and a lack of support (intentionally or unintentionally) of friends and family. As I mentioned on Monday (Hockey Nutrition Coaching), most people are grossly misinformed about their caloric intake needs. Hopefully the equation I presented in that post helped give you an idea of the HUGE number of calories that you burn just to sustain life, let alone as a result of digesting/absorbing food and physical activity. On top of those numbers, the per pound caloric needs of teenagers are about 1.5x that of adults.
In-season players need more of this stuff. (…so do off-season, pre-season, and post-season players)
For example, to maintain body weight a moderately active adult should consume about 15x their body weight in pounds:
A 180lb adult should consume: 180 x 15 = 2,700 calories/day
A moderately active teenager should consume closer to 22x his/her body weight in pounds:
A 135lb teenager should consume 135 x 22 = 2,970
This relative extra intake goes toward growth and development. What most young athletes fail to account for is the drastic increase in physical activity that coincides with the initiation of a new season (between around 500 and 1,000 calories per ice session depending on their size, skating intensity, ice time, etc.). To oversimplify weight maintenance, energy intake (calories from food) needs to match energy expenditure (calories burned from resting metabolism, digestion/absorption of food, and physical activity). If an athlete transfers from training hard four times per week in the off-season (what we recommend) to training hard twice, practicing 3-5 times and playing a game or two per week, their energy expenditure skyrockets. In order to adequately fuel for optimal performance, energy intake needs to increase substantially as well. If not, muscle will be lost and performance will suffer.
Factor 2: Hormonal Recovery Our hormones, most relevantly those that contribute to anabolic (build-up) and catabolic (break-down) functions, are in a constant state of flux. These hormones increase and decrease in concentration based on the stressors we experience. If we train/play hard and fuel ourselves appropriately, this hormonal balance is optimized. If, as is the case in-season, we train/play hard, but fuel ourselves sub-optimally (in both total intake and food choices), the balance will tip toward catabolism (breakdown). In this case, catabolic hormones like cortisol become relatively high and tell the body to store fat and breakdown muscle; it’s a survival response.
Ryan Kesler with high cortisol levels?
Unfortunately, this balance isn’t as simple as optimizing training stimuli and nutrition. ALL of the stressors in life contribute. While transitioning from the summer to fall sports, most athletes have to also deal with school starting, which is a source of stress itself.
Pythagorean what? Why do I need to know this!
It also requires a transitional period as student-athletes adapt to the new schedule. While hormonal profiles require specific medical tests, there’s a simple way to assess if you’re on the right track or not.
Every morning, before you roll out of bed, take your heart rate by finding your pulse (either on your wrist or neck). Count the beats for a 20s time period and multiply by 3 to find your resting heart rate in beats per minute. Do this every morning and write down what you find. If your resting heart rate elevates by 10+ beats per minute, that’s a pretty good sign that you aren’t recovering from the stressors in your life (both sports and non-sports related).
If this is the case, start by assessing your nutrition and by dialing back your training a bit (I’ve actually sent people home form Endeavor when I think they’re headed down this path). It’s also important to regulate your sleep schedule. I understand how difficult (nearly impossible) this is for teenage athletes, but the more consistent you are in when you go to bed and when you wake up, the better you’ll feel and perform. As a general rule, the goal is to go to sleep and wake up within an hour of the weekly-schedule on the weekends. If more sleep is needed, a 30-60 minute nap mid-morning is a healthy alternative, but the 12-hour weekend hibernations typical of most teenagers should be avoided.
Factor 3: In-Season Training I’ve touched on this before so I won’t belabor the point, but too many hockey players make the mistake of ceasing their strength and conditioning programs (or athletic development programs) when the season starts. The goal of these programs is to improve the player’s quality movement, strength, speed, power, and conditioning capacities. All of these qualities require maintenance or they will degrade (some more quickly than others). Degraded capacity directly translates into degraded performance and increased injury risk. The nature of the training will NEED to change to account for the demands of sport practices and games, but all athletes should continue to train in-season.
Inevitably, I’ll get a dozen or so emails about 2 months after the Summer ends former players we’ve trained at Endeavor that left when the Fall came saying how great they felt at the beginning of the season, how they stopped training altogether, and how terrible they feel now. They then usually inappropriately default to reusing off-season training programs to try to “get it all back” in the shortest time possible, and feel even worse as the total combined intensity and volume of training, practice, and competition is too much for the body to acclimate to. Consistency is paramount; intelligent fluctuations in the training program are equally essential.
Concluding Thought As a final tip, everyone (athletes, coaches, parents, etc.) should get their Vitamin D levels checked at least twice per year (to start). The importance of Vitamin D in various aspects of health and energy is becoming increasingly highlighted by recent research, and most people are deficient. The current recommendation to meet Vitamin D requirements is 30 minutes of direct sunlight around noon, most days of the week. From a practical standpoint, this is laughable. Not many students, parents, or athletes are afforded the opportunity to strip down to a bathing suit and frolic around outside for 30 minutes in the middle of the day.
Oh it’s noon! Time for our daily vitamin D break!
Also, sunlight exposure opportunities decrease dramatically during the colder months. This is a largely overlooked factor in the January/mid-season energy slump that most hockey players go through. As a result, supplementation becomes essential. Get your levels checked a couple times a year to ensure that you’re avoiding a health and performance deteriorating deficiency.
To your success,
Kevin Neeld
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