Wrapping up another busy week at Endeavor and at HockeyStrengthandConditioning.com. This week we added:
Off-Season Phase 2 from Darryl Nelson
Darryl posted a 4-day off-season training program for a relatively advanced lifter. This looks pretty similar to how I write programs for our hockey players, but it’s interesting to note a few differences in exercise selection and set/rep schemes. Darryl has been incredibly successful with the U.S. National Team Development Program so there’s a lot to be learned from reading through his programs.
Mental Toughness Training for Hockey Players from Brijesh Patel I’ve been fortunate to learn from a lot of great people over the years, but Brijesh has been the underlying source of as many “aha” moments as anyone. Aside from being very bright, Brijesh really understands the coaching side of the equation. In other words, our jobs as Strength and Conditioning COACHES isn’t just to design quality programs; it’s to get our athletes to perform the best. A lot of the team-building side of training is lost in my facility because we work with groups of athletes from a lot of different teams, but Brijesh is a master at this. This is a quick read, but highlights an often overlooked aspect of hockey performance that players, parents, coaches, and trainers can benefit from hearing. I’m looking forward to catching up with Brijesh (and you?) at this year’s Boston Hockey Symposium.
Slideboard Hamstring Curl Variations from me Lastly, I added two videos of variations to a slideboard hamstring curl that we’ve been using a lot at Endeavor. I really like slideboard hamstring curls for posterior chain development, but we quickly ran into a problem where our athletes were able to perform 12+ with ease. As with every exercise, progression is key. We’ve used the two variations in this video to help increase the difficulty of the exercise, but keep the same movement qualities we want.
There have been some good threads (~7 to be exact) on the forum too so sign in and check those out. Some great discussions on in-season recovery (same ideas can be applied to the off-season), good books to check out, conditioning for this time of year, supplements, and more!
That’s a wrap for today! If you aren’t a member yet, shell out the $1 to test drive Hockey Strength and Conditioning for a week. If it’s not the best buck you’ve ever spent, I’ll personally refund you!
To your continued success,
Kevin Neeld
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In-Season Training
With the off-season here, this isn’t a very timely post. Nonetheless it’s an important message that I think more parents need to hear. Last week I got an email from a parent of a high school girl we train at Endeavor asking if I thought it would benefit her daughter to continue training twice per week in-season. She was asking because her daughter is in her senior year of high school, and would soon be leaving to play division 1 lacrosse out west. That school, she pointed out, has their athletes train twice per week in-season, and she was wondering if having her daughter start that schedule now would better prepare her for college.
In-Season Training I thought this was a great question and highlights an incredible insight that so many coaches, parents, and athletes overlook. In-season training is an absolute necessity, but is almost always completely neglected.
We even had a hockey player last year tell me that his coach told the entire team NOT to train in-season because it wasn’t good for them.
Don’t be ridiculous.
While I think this is an impressively stupid thing to say for scientific reasons, I also think it demonstrates an incredible ability to selectively neglect an obvious occurrence:
EVERY PROFESSIONAL AND DIVISION I COLLEGIATE PROGRAM FOLLOWS AN IN-SEASON TRAINING PROGRAM!
How can anyone look at the levels of every sport considered “elite”, see a commonality amongst all of them, and then say something like “in-season training isn’t good for you”?
Did you eat a lot of paint chips as a kid?
HAHAH…Why?
I think one of the reasons in-season training is so frequently neglected is because of a lack of understanding of how the volume and nature of the training program should change to accommodate the volume and nature of the stresses imposed by they sport. There are some commonalities in exercise selection, but the design of our in-season hockey training programs is DRASTICALLY different from that of our off-season programs.
Naturally, in-season training carries a number of important benefits. Unfortunately, most youth sports programs aren’t set up to accommodate in-season training. There’s an excessive focus on competition at the expense of preparation, and the “training” side of preparation is neglected altogether. Add this to the fact that most youth athletes don’t have a true off-season, and it’s easy to see why youth overuse injuries have skyrocketed over the last decade.
In the most simplistic sense, the body operates within a “use it, improve it, or lose it” framework. If athletes aren’t working to improve or maintain athletic capacities, they’re going to lose them. It’s that simple. Years ago I read about a theory stating that the fatigue associated with the end of a season isn’t just the result of of accumulated wear and tear, it was also the result of trying to maintain a given performance level while athletic capacities like strength, power, and speed were diminishing. Think of an athlete’s maximum capacity being a 10/10 and the maximum amount of this capacity needed to perform optimally at any given time being a 8/10, or 80% of their capacity. With a lack of in-season training, athletic capacity may diminish to an 8.5. Now for the athlete to perform at that same level (8 out of 8.5), they’ll be operating at ~95% of their capacity. Which do you think will be tougher to maintain through the end of the season?
With in-season training, less if more. The goal is to create the bare minimum stress to the body that results in the largest improvements in strength and power, and the restoration of structural balance across the major joints in the body. If youth organizations would sacrifice 45 minutes of practice time twice per week to get a quick lift in, they’d notice substantial performance improvements and reductions in injury rates. It’s a shame that more people aren’t doing this.
To your success,
Kevin Neeld
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Pre-Puberty Hockey Training
Last week I had an opportunity to speak with the parents of two local teams with ’98 and ’97 birth-year players. After that talk, I got a great question from a well-read mom with regards to the effectiveness of training before the athlete has reached puberty. Her thought was that because the hormonal profile of the athlete isn’t conducive to adding muscle mass, it may not be worth the time.
While this is a logical thought process (and she’s correct about pre-pubescent athletes not being able to put on substantial amounts of muscle mass), it’s important to understand that the addition of muscle mass is not the only goal of training. When it comes to both performance AND injury prevention, we look at other qualities such as:
Movement pattern quality
Body awareness
Linear and transitional mechanics and acceleration
Power
Strength
Conditioning
Each of these terms is really just an umbrella-concept that encompasses many other more-specific training qualities. Importantly, none of these things manifest in isolation. A poorly conditioned athlete is more likely to default to faulty movement patterns upon the onset of fatigue. A weak athlete may not possess the strength to move with quality. Everything is inter-related.
To our hockey mom’s point, kids can condition on their own without having to spend an hour in the car getting to our facility (one of her underlying concerns in posing her question). In other words, the question comes back to, “how will training with you guys differ from training on my own?”
Benefits of Pre-Puberty Training
As the Director of Athletic Development and co-owner of Endeavor Sports Performance, it’s my responsibility to ensure that our entire staff is well-adept at spotting and correcting faulty movement patterns. This is something we take a lot of pride in and one of the things that I think the overwhelming majority of the “personal trainers” and so-called “sports trainers” (I call these guys the “guys in the field” because they tend to coach huge groups of athletes through generic “speed and agility” work in a field all at once, and are more drill sergeants than coaches) don’t know that they don’t know. A well-trained eye can go a long way in preventing unnecessary injuries.
The other important consideration is that strength is not strictly a function of muscle mass. This is a novel concept to most parents, but strength is neurally mediated. This means that, for any level of muscle mass, there is a spectrum of obtainable strength. This is why the “my legs are big enough” argument that many high school hockey players use an excuse for neglecting their lower body is stupid. Just because you’re big doesn’t mean you’re strong. Likewise, just because you’re small, or do not have a hormonal profile conducive to putting on muscle mass, does not mean you can’t get strong. Strength results from an improved neural input signal to the working muscle. In overly simplistic terms, your brain becomes better at activating your muscle’s to produce more force. This can be improved at any age.
I love this kid
Over the last several months, we’ve taken on more young athletes (middle school aged) at Endeavor. This wasn’t our original intention, but after receiving dozens of inquiries from parents of these athletes and meeting them, we decided to give it a go. These athletes tend to make extremely quick improves in motor pattern quality. Once they’re taught how they should be moving, they pick it up pretty quickly and internalize it, which provides huge performance and injury-resistance benefits. The other thing, which can’t be overlooked, is that the confidence of athletes at this age SOARS when they start training. I think this is a combination of overcoming adversity and working hard through a program AND just knowing that they’re doing things that most other athletes aren’t. Given the paramount importance of confidence in athletics, I don’t think this training benefit should be overlooked.
Take Home The training program design and coaching style will differ for pre-puberty athletes, but the benefits of training are still substantial. Just because an athlete doesn’t have a hormonal profile conducive to adding muscle mass DOES NOT mean he can’t make considerable improvements in strength, conditioning, movement quality, and confidence. At this age, it’s extremely important that athletes train under the supervision of coaches that understand how to teach and reinforce proper movement patterns and exercise technique. It’s all about building a solid foundation for the athlete to build on in the future.
To your success,
Kevin Neeld
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This Week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning
This week has been crazy, both for me at Endeavor (we had about a couple dozen new hockey players start), and over at Hockey Strength and Conditioning. In the last week, we’ve added 6 new articles, programs, and videos, including a couple REALLY great ones from Mike Potenza and Sean Skahan.
Before I get into that, I want to let you know about a new product from my friend Mark Young that some of you may be interested in. As you know, I’m big on using research to design my hockey training programs. Amongst other things, research can provide insight into injury rates and mechanisms, how to correct movement pattern impairments, and more effective program design strategies. Unfortunately, a lot of research is also crap and is almost invariably MISQUOTED by the media. In other words, a lot of the research findings we’re fed are, well, wrong. I had a chance to review Mark’s “How to Read Fitness Research” a few weeks ago and was impressed. He provides a framework to critically analyze research in light of your goals, and presents it without boring you to tears (something I can’t say of some of my old college professors!). This certainly isn’t for everyone, but if you’re a fitness professional, it’s worth looking into. And he’s offering a 40% discount that ends tonight at midnight, so you’ll have to act quick. Click the image/link below for more information.
On to today’s post on Hockey Strength and Conditioning:
Scap Stability Exercises Part 2 from Mike Potenza A follow-up from Mike with more videos of scapular stability exercises that hockey players should be doing to keep their shoulders healthy and performing optimally.
Off-Season Weight Gain: Eat that Elephant from me
It’s not what you think…actually maybe it’s exactly what you think (who doesn’t enjoy a delicious elephant steak every now and then?). You’ll have to read to find out. This article provides a birds-eye view of my approach to helping the dozens of players that come through our doors with lofty off-season weight gain goals stay on track and get results.
Youth In-Season Introductory Program from Sean Skahan
This is an addition to our new “Youth Hockey Training Program” feature to HockeySC.com. Sean lays out a great program for youth players and includes videos of all the exercises. The idea with these programs is to provide structure for the thousands of players at the youth level that want to start training, but don’t have access to a well-equipped gym or strength and conditioning coach. Following a program like this from a guy like Sean is certainly a much better approach that perusing the internet and downloading some bodybuilding program from a guy that probably doesn’t train anyone.
Identifying Strength Qualities for Your Training Program from Mike Potenza
This is a monster from Mike. The first time I ever saw Mike, he was presenting at a conference at Northeastern (I think it was the 1st Boston Hockey Summit) and discussing the system he uses for categorizing his athletes based on their training age. It was a brilliant, objective concept and shed some light on the complexities of his job at the NHL level…and some light on how poorly some players train at the youth levels. This articles outlines the qualities that hockey players need to focus on at different training ages and provides a common language for strength and conditioning coaches and hockey coaches. One of the best articles to date.
Grier Persevered to Carve Out Lengthy NHL Career from Mike Potenza A feature story on Mike Grier that holds a lot of lessons for up and coming hockey players. Potenza, Sean Skahan, and Mike Boyle have all worked with Mike Grier during the off-season. Grier is a great example of what consistent, focused, hard work can get you.
Changes to the In-Season Program from Sean Skahan This was an awesome article from Sean that highlights some of the difficulties that NHL Strength and Conditioning Coaches face when implementing in-season programs. Sean points out that there are times when he’s more of a “recovery coach” than a “strength coach.” This articles dives into how Sean has made a pretty significant change to the Ducks’ in-season training program this year based on their schedule. Good read.
Remember that the BSMPG is offering HockeySC.com members a $50 discount on admission. It’s cool of them to do it and well worth every penny. Download the coupon at the link below:
That’s a wrap for today! If you aren’t a member yet, shell out the $1 to test drive Hockey Strength and Conditioning for a week. If it’s not the best buck you’ve ever spent, I’ll personally refund you!
To your continued success,
Kevin Neeld
Please enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Athletic Development and Hockey Training Newsletter!
Concussions in Hockey
Last week, I got a message from Jim Cruver about a video on concussions in hockey that he thought I should check out (thanks Jim!). This actually aired on ESPN mid-last week; it’s definitely worth the 7-minutes to watch. Check it out:
Great to see some of the teams from my home-town making the video as part of the goon-squad. And I don’t have the cleanest mouth, but I’d be embarrassed if I were featured on ESPN saying some of the things these coaches were caught saying to young kids.
My pro-USA Hockey American Development Model stance continues. I applaud Kevin McLaughlin, Senior Director of USA Hockey’s Hockey Development program, for the steps he’s taking in trying to cut back on hockey concussions at younger levels, and most notably for pushing the checking age up to 13, instead of 11.
I know the contact-enthusiasts will argue against this change, but the bottom line is that the physical development range is too large and the psychosocial maturity is not developed enough at this level for checking to be safely and properly implemented. There needs to be a policy change in the interest of protecting our young players and Kevin McLaughlin is taking the steps to make this happen. If you’re initial thought is, “checking is a part of the game, and shouldn’t be removed from the 11-12 year-old level,” I’d urge you to consider how you may feel if your son was drilled from behind by a 12-year old that looked like a 16-year old, suffered a concussion, and missed 6 months of playing. The point isn’t that checking isn’t a part of the game, it’s that it’s being implemented the wrong way, especially at these younger levels. A change in emphasis needs to start with coaches and trickle down to players and parents, quickly.
The #1 concern in making this change is that players will be less “skilled” at giving and receiving contact at the 13-14 year-old level because they haven’t had as much practice or experience. Logical argument. I think the big thing is that MOST kids aren’t being taught how to give and receive hits at any age, they’re just told to go after people. But that argument aside, there’s actually been some research on this issue that will help shed some light on whether early exposure helps make contact safer at the bantam level.
Study 1:
Hagel, B., Marko, J., Dryden, D., et al. (2006). Effect of Bodychecking on Injury Rates Among Minor Ice Hockey Players. Canadian Medical Association Journal, 175, 155-160.
This study looked at the effect on injury rates that a particular rule change had. This rule change moved 11-year olds into a contact league with 12-year olds, opposed to keeping them in a non-contact league with 10-year olds. Notable results:
The 11-year olds in the contact group had a 2.1x higher incidence of injuries than 11-year olds in a non-contact group. This injury rate was 85.5 per 1,000 players (astronomically high).
More than 2x greater incidence of injuries classified as “severe” amongst 11-year olds in contact group.
Contact-group had 3.4x greater incidence of concussions and 2.6x greater incidence of fractures
Study 2:
Macpherson, A., Rothman, L., & Howard, A. (2006). Body-Checking Rules and Childhood Injuries in Ice Hockey. Pediatrics, 117, e143-e147.
This study aimed to compare injury levels between Ontario youth hockey leagues (allowed body checking at 10-11 y/o range) and Quebec youth hockey leagues (allowed body checking at 14-15 y/o range). Straight from the abstract:
“Of the 4,736 hockey injuries, 3006 (63%) were in Ontario and 1730 (37%) were in Quebec. Most of the injuries occurred in areas in which checking was allowed (2824 [59.6%]). At ages 10 to 13, players had significantly greater odds of suffering a checking injury where checking was allowed (odds ratio [OR]: 1.86). Players in this age group were also more likely to suffer a concussion (OR: 1.42) or fracture (OR: 1.25) where checking was allowed. Among older players, when checking was allowed in both provinces, there were higher odds (OR: 1.90) of receiving a checking injury in the province that had introduced checking at a younger age, suggesting that there is no protective effect from learning to check earlier.”
Last sentence bolded for emphasis. Basically what this is saying is that players that have been checking since the 10-11 y/o age, were TWICE as likely to sustain a checking-related injury at the 14-15 y/o level compared to those that were just checking for the first time at this older age level.
These are far from the only two studies that illustrate these points, but they’re a good start. The take home messages from these studies is that introducing checking at younger ages substantially increases the injury rate at these levels, AND has absolutely no protective effect at older levels. In laymen’s terms, it’s a lose-lose.
Hockey can’t afford to lose any more players like this.
Hockey needs to get away from the “hit to hurt” mentality and get back to teaching the original intention of contact in the sport-separation of the player from the puck. Every hockey fan loves to watch a big hit, but we need to keep the potential consequences of these hits in mind. Some of the game’s best players have their careers cut short because of hits that probably shouldn’t have ever happened. Concussions in hockey deemed accidents are one thing, but coaches and parents (and even players!) encouraging players to take a run at someone is unacceptable. Hopefully the injuries to popular players like Sidney Crosby and Marc Savard, AND a growing body of research evidence will fuel a much-needed change in both the rules and teaching of the game.
