Month: January 2011

Updates at Hockey Strength and Conditioning

As I promised last week, we’ve gotten the new “youth hockey training program” addition of Hockey Strength and Conditioning underway by adding a team dynamic warm-up that players can use before every practice, off-ice training session, and game. Each exercise specifies the exact distance or repetitions to use and has a video. I thought adding a dynamic warm-up was the best place to start as this is something that EVERY player and team can implement immediately.

With warm-ups, consistency is key. The more players can internalize the process, the more it becomes part of their regular routine. This provides them an opportunity to go through something that is physically beneficial before games, but also allows them a time to mentally prepare for the game. Routines are great in this regard.

Get the warm-up here >> Team Dynamic Warm-Up

San Jose Sharks Strength and Conditioning Coach Mike Potenza added an interesting piece on post-game conditioning options. There is some room for debate regarding to what degree players should be conditioning in-season. This really depends on the player’s situation-number of ice slots per week, tempo of practices, playing time in games, and at the youth level-whether they’re playing other sports or not. Naturally, total stress to the body needs to be accounted for. The advantage of using a post-game conditioning strategy is that the team is already together and in “performance mode.” By clumping activity together during one time period of the day, you can maximize the recovery time throughout the rest of the day (at least, as much is possible in the professional setting). The thing I like about Potenza’s article is that he breaks down the conditioning protocols based upon the number of minutes his players play in a game. In this way, the conditioning is specific to the needs of the player and not just a one size fits all approach.

Check it out here >> Post-Game Conditioning

Lastly, my article “Dissecting the 1-Leg Squat” went up this week. The article outlines why I’ve completely abandoned the “pistol” variation of 1-leg squatting, how we lead up to 1-leg squats, and how we progress them. In my opinion, this version of the 1-leg squat is easier to perform, maintains a more optimal alignment of the involved segments and is easier to progress. The article spawned a forum rant about whether the traditional “thigh parallel” identifier of full squat depth is what we should be using.

Get the article here >> Dissecting the 1-Leg Squat

If you aren’t a member, go check out what you’ve been missing by clicking the link below. If you are a member, go check out all the content I mentioned above and hop on the forums to comment on the threads!

Click Here for the best in Hockey Strength and Conditioning

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Remember, it’s only $1 to try HockeyStrengthandConditioning.com for the first week. You will never find more hockey training content anywhere for $1, and it’s only getting better.

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Myofascial Release Basics

With the increased attention paid to “soft-tissue work” and “myofascial release” techniques, I think it’s important that everyone understands the basics that provide the underlying foundation for why these methods are effective and necessary.

I went into this at a very superficial level here: Foam Rolling Science Made Simple but I want to dive a bit more into the, well, slightly less superficial science behind it.

In laymens terms, these techniques are used to release or remove restrictions from the muscle. Most people are familiar with the feeling of having a “knot” in a muscle; that understanding will do for now.

Restrictions can be broadly categorized as adhesion or trigger point based. Wikipedia provides an easy-to-understand definitions:

Adhesions are fibrous bands that form between tissues and organs, often as a result of injury during surgery. They may be thought of as internal scar tissue.

In contrast:

Trigger points are hyperirritable spots in skeletal muscle that are associated with palpable nodules in taut muscle fibers.

A display of potential trigger point areas

My understanding is that adhesions are more the result of damage (contact, improper muscle under-/over- use, injury, surgery, etc.), and that trigger points are more neurally mediated (excessive or inappropriate neural input to a localized area). In both cases, an adhesion or trigger point will pull on or otherwise affect surrounding areas in the presence of movement. This is ONE of the driving factors behind the idea that symptomatic areas aren’t always the cause of the problem.

Years ago, Michael Boyle provided a great illustration of this at a seminar one year where he put a band around someones neck and lightly pulled. “Where do you feel the pain?” “On the side of my neck.” General wisdom would say to ice, massage, and stretch the area. In reality, these methods may bring temporary relief, but as long as there’s a rope around your neck, it’s going to hurt. You could save yourself the ice, massage and stretching by just removing the rope (in this example).

For something a little less abstract, let’s consider that the glutes and/or TFL can become restricted and increase the tension on the IT Band.

This scenario, which is pretty common in athletes from various sports, can lead to a host of painful symptoms including lateral knee pain (one of the locations of this potential pain is pictured above). Some manual therapy work to the TFL and glutes will release the tension and therefore return the athlete to a pain-free condition.

In many cases, adhesions and trigger points, which can be thought of as “soft-tissue restrictions” present because of positions we hold our bodies in for prolonged periods of time. For that reason, many people will have restrictions and common areas (e.g. hip flexors, pec major and minor, lats, cervical extensors, etc.). Because of the diagonal and rotational nature of the skating stride and the lateral nature of crossover patterns, hockey players tend to have pretty predictable restrictions in the hip rotators and the adductors.

Digging a lacrosse ball into these muscles will make most players yelp

The high, inner area can become especially problematic for hockey players

Both of these pictures are especially illustrative of how adhesions between any two structures or triggers points in any one structure could affect surrounding areas, as optimal movement is dependent upon proper extensibility of and gliding upon these individual and collective muscles. By the time hockey players are in high school, the muscles around their hips’ are completely gunked up. This will impede blood flow, lead to abnormal firing patterns, and generally increase the amount of resting tension put on surrounding structures. In other words, the associated changes aren’t just mechanical, they’re also circulatory and neural. Maybe more importantly, addressing these restrictions will make the athlete FEEL better.

With a basic understanding of what the restrictions are and the effect they can have on the body, the question becomes how to get rid of them. Adhesions tend to break up in response to localized pressure driven along the direction of the adhesion.  Trigger points, on the other hand, tend to respond better to sustained pressure in one location. Using foam rollers, medicine balls, lacrosse balls and other implements to perform self-myofascial release work (to address these restrictions) is a great way to minimize the risk of these turning into more substantial problems. With that said, these methods aren’t nearly as specific or effective as getting worked on by an experienced manual therapist.

Check out the video below of Cole Hamels talking about his experience working with my friend Dr. Michael Tancredi:


Cole Hamels Explains Benefits Dr. Tancredi Chiropractic Care from Harry Scheid on Vimeo.

The thing I like the most about this video is that it’s straight from the athlete’s mouth, meaning it’s not overly scientific. If players started getting regular work done from an Active Release practitioner or a great massage therapist like my friend Craig Bohn at Hockessin Athletic Club, I think a lot of the chronic groin and hip flexor strains and sports hernias that we’re seeing through the high school, college, and pro levels would start to disappear. I know our athletes have had tremendous success in warding off these injuries (and returning from soft-tissue injuries sooner) as a result of getting regular soft-tissue work done.

Whether you perform self-myofascial release work or go see an experience manual therapist is secondary in importance to not neglecting soft-tissue quality altogether. Because it can be difficult to enforce this stuff on a team-wide basis in most youth programs, it’s up to parents to go buy a foam roller or look up a manual therapist for their son/daughter. It’s well worth the investment; your kids will thank you later!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Hockey Training Newsletter


Monday Musings

A few random thoughts/resources for you today:

Things You Should Read

Over the last couple weeks I’ve written quite a bit for our Endeavor site. It’s not always easy to come up with content for this site, Endeavor’s site, and Hockey Strength and Conditioning every week, but I do not best not to recycle too much material so everyone gets fresh stuff.

Just….one….more…article idea!

With that said, I think these three posts are worth reading. The first two will help keep the motivation of athletes and coaches high as the new year progresses. The third will dive into some of the misconceptions about ACL injury prevention. Check them out here:

Achieving Athletic Excellence in 2011

Hold Yourself to a Different Standard

The Truth about ACL Injury Prevention

The Devolving Athlete?

Last week I dialed in to catch the second half of a teleseminar that IYCA founder Brian Grasso hosted with Mike Robertson, Eric Cressey, and Will Fleming. I don’t know much about Will, but Mike and Eric have been outstanding resources for me over the last several years. As you know, I speak very highly of their work and have a deep respect for their knowledge and coaching ability. Naturally, it’s always great to hear these guys speak about their philosophies and what they’re doing currently. The call was in regards to a new High School Athlete Certification program that Brian is launching with the IYCA, but there were some important messages discussed throughout. You can listen to the call for free at the link below:

Training High School Athletes Teleseminar

One of the things Eric mentioned toward the end of the call is how athletes today are DEVOLVING. In other words, because of the increased tendency to sit ALL day long and because kids aren’t nearly as active in their spare time as they used to be, their bodies are undergoing structural changes. I agree whole-heartedly with his observation, and this is one of the major reasons why the “this is what I did as a kid, so this is what you should do now” mentality of so many coaches is grossly misguided. Even if our knowledge of training hasn’t changed (which it has, substantially), the ATHLETE absolutely has and the design of our training programs needs to accommodate the differences.

I can’t help but think back to my early anatomy and physiology classes where there were times that I, like most students, got that feeling of “when will I ever need to know this?” Over time I’ve come to appreciate some of the less obvious teachings of those years. For instance, understanding how various soft-tissue structures within the body adapt to different stimuli is not only essential for anticipating changes occuring from everyday living, it’s also essential in order to design training programs to modify these structures. A brilliantly written training program for an athlete 15 years ago, that doesn’t take into account the anterior hip and upper chest restrictions present in the overwhelming majority of the current population will almost inevitably lead to injury (or at the very least, impaired performance). If you’re a student, soak it all up-you’ll be surprised at how much that information helps in the long run.

Training vs. Working Out

With the spawning of the profound idiocy that is Planet Fitness, there seems to be an increasing divide in the perception of training and fitness. Check out this ESPN attempt at a comical portrayal of what you may encounter at your local gym:

Annoying People You Can’t Avoid at Gym

In reality, people go to gyms/training facilities for one of only a handful of reasons:

  1. To feel good about themselves (which may or may not include any actual hard work)
  2. To socialize
  3. To get results

I think it’s important to distinguish between working out, which is the exercise equivalent of spinning your tires with regard to body composition changes, and training, which is progressive and goal-oriented. I realize that people use them interchangeably; apply your definition as you see fit, but recognize the difference in mentality between what I’ve described above. People that “work out” are a combination of health conscious and goal-dreaming. In other words, some are in because their doctors told them they needed to start exercising or they’d subject themselves to a substantial health risk (these people should be commended for at least taking the first step); others are in because they want a different body, but not bad enough to actual set goals and consistently work toward them (the overwhelming majority of people in the gym). Planet Fitness was not so surprisingly left off Men’s Health’s Top 10 Best Gyms in America List (nor would you likely see them on a Top 1000 list).

Look, I COMPLETELY understand that there are populations that are turned off by the typical “meat head” and that PF just isn’t the place for the heavy lifters (Quick Side Story: When I was a grad student at UMass Amherst, I trained an incredible group of five women, mostly faculty at the University, between the ages of 40-60, using complex circuit-based resistance training and interval conditioning. Screams, grunts, and groans were frequent. They used to joke that they wanted to go to Planet Fitness together and try to set off the lunk alarm. Meat heads?). And I’m back… What is outrageously socially irresponsible is having a constant supply of candy at your front desk for members to take for free and hosting bagel and pizza parties every month. C’mon-trying to make your members feel comfortable? Give me a break. Promoting unhealthy foods as a means of “comfort” is one of the underlying reasons why so many people are dangerously overweight as it is.

As a society, we’ve drastically overcomplicated this obesity “epidemic”, and places like Planet Fitness are feeding right into it. In the old days, effort was necessary for survival. Didn’t feeling like moving around to catch or grow food? You died; it’s Darwinism. Nowadays there are so many dietary quick fixes that modern day Darwinism has simply becoming keeping these inevitable diabetics alive via increased health care rates.

But I digress.

The big take home of that rant is that results require goal-setting and effort…and Planet Fitness makes me sick. “Working out” has some merit, but if more people adopted the “training” mentality, we’d have a lot more success stories.

To your success,

-Kevin Neeld

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Hockey Strength and Conditioning Update

This is the first Hockey Strength and Conditioning update of 2011! As I mentioned in a previous post (2011 Hockey Strength and Conditioning), we have a few exciting things in store for our members this year. If you didn’t read about it yet, click the link above to check it out. The overall intention was to expand our content to provide more information that youth coaches and parents could use. If you weren’t sure if the site was right for you last year, it will be in 2011!

There’s been some great stuff over the last couple weeks:

My Road to the Top from Michael Boyle
Hopefully you’ve read this already, but this is a must-read for aspiring strength and conditioning professionals. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the underlying theme of Coach Boyle’s article really applies to anyone that aspiring to do anything. This hit home for me.

In-Season Core Training-Phase 3 from Sean Skahan
This is the third phase of Sean’s in-season core training program for the Ducks. It’s a great mini-circuit that would hit all the major movement patterns in a short amount of time. For youth coaches, this progression is something you could pull off the site and start using immediately. As long as your athletes demonstrate proficiency with the movements, it’s okay to progress to the next phase.

Video of the Week: 1-Leg DB Row from Darryl Nelson
Darryl shows a variation to a traditional 1-arm db row and provides some coaching cues to correct some common errors that the athlete in the video is demonstrating. It’s always interesting to see what other coaches look for while their athletes are lifting.

Table Stretching from Mike Potenza
Four partner-assisted stretches to loosen up the hips. Mike walks you step-by-step on how to perform the four stretches, what compensations to look for, and how to position your body to ensure the athlete is moving in the right places. I may just be lazier than Mike, but if I was working with older athletes that were mature enough to get it, I’d teach the team how to do this so I didn’t have to stretch everyone out personally. It’s all situation specific though.

By the weekend we’ll be posting an article I wrote on “Dissecting the 1-Leg Squat” (which dives into why I’ve abandoned the pistol variation altogether and exactly how I think the exercise should be performed to get the most bang for your buck) and a youth team dynamic warm-up with videos. This dynamic warm-up is the first part of our “youth training programs” addition to the site. In my opinion, establishing a dynamic warm-up should be the first priority of youth coaches because it’s something that can be done before EVERY practice and game. This warm-up is exactly what we use at Endeavor with all of our youth hockey teams and I’ve included videos of all the exercises so people unfamiliar with the names will know how to do them. Any questions, just hit up the forum.

Which leads me to…

The forum activity has been outstanding over the last week. Kevin Schaeffer asked a great question on how to improve sleep quality, especially for teams that are traveling a lot. Interesting responses there. Sean started a thread on the controversial topic of whether VO2 max testing is worthwhile for hockey players, and I added a video I stole from my friend Maria Mountain that redefines how we think of “strong.” The Hockey Strength and Conditioning forum is starting to turn me into one of those guys that just lurks around the internet all day waiting for an exciting update.

This guy knows what I’m talking about

If you aren’t a member, go check out what you’ve been missing by clicking the link below. If you are a member, go check out all the content I mentioned above and hop on the forums to comment on the threads!

Click Here for the best in Hockey Strength and Conditioning

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Remember, it’s only $1 to try HockeyStrengthandConditioning.com for the first week. You will never find more hockey training content anywhere for $1, and it’s only getting better.

Please enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Athletic Development and Hockey Training Newsletter!