Month: February 2015

Player Development Advice from an Unlikely Source

Every year, in recognition of the giving spirit of the holidays, the Endeavor staff does a small gift exchange. This year the guys got me two books that were awesome. The first of which was called The Big Lebowski and Philosophy: Keeping your Mind Limber with Abiding Wisdom. I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this, but it’s basically a philosophy book that uses scenes from the movie to make philosophical arguments.

As I’m writing that, I realize how lame it sounds, but the movie is so funny that the book was actually awesome. And once every few years I really like a good philosophy book. I found out there’s actually a whole series of those books, some of which seemed more interesting than others (i.e. The Inception book could be a good read).

The other book, which sounds even nerdier than the last, was a book that used mathematics and historical math-related stories to challenge many common sense ideas. Yes, while you were out watching Fifty Shades of Grey, I was finishing a book about math and logic.

The book is called How Not to be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg, and was probably the best book I’ve read in the last two years.

It was in this text that I found incredibly wise words pertaining to long-term athletic development.

Check out the first excerpt below:

“One of the most painful parts of teaching mathematics is seeing students damaged by the cult of genius. The genius cult tells students it’s not worth doing mathematics unless you’re the best at mathematics, because those special few are the only ones whose contributions matter. We don’t treat any other subject that way! I’ve never heard a student say, “I like Hamlet, but I don’t really belong in AP English – that kid who sits in the front row knows all the players, and he started reading Shakespeare when he was nine!” Athletes don’t quiet their sport just because one of their teammates outshines them. And yet I see promising young mathematicians quit every year, even though they love mathematics, because someone in their range of vision was “ahead” of them.

We lose a lot of math majors this way. Thus, we lose a lot of future mathematicians; but that’s not the whole of the problem. I think we need more math majors who don’t become mathematicians. More math major doctors, more math major high school teachers, more math major CEOs, more math major senators. But we won’t get there until we dump the stereotype that math is only worthwhile for kid geniuses.”

When I first read this, the thing that jumped out to me was how much in sports, as in math, we overvalue early achievers. There is now very clear evidence that early success is NOT a strong predictor of future success and anyone that’s been around any sport for a long time has seen studs at younger levels fall into irrelevance at older levels.

He continues…

“The cult of the genius also tends to undervalue hard work. When I was starting out, I thought “hardworking” was a kind of veiled insult – something to say about a student when you can’t honestly say they’re smart. But the ability to work hard – to keep one’s whole attention and energy focused on a problem, systematically turning it over and over and pushing at everything that looks like a crack, despite the lack of outward signs of progress – is not a skill everybody has. Psychologists nowadays call it “grit”, and it’s impossible to do math without it. It’s easy to lose sight of the importance of work, because mathematical inspiration, when it finally does come, can feel effortless and instant. I remember the first theorem I ever proved; I was in college, working on my senior thesis, and I was completely stuck. One night I was at an editorial meeting of the campus literary magazine, drinking red wine and participating fitfully in the discussion of a somewhat boring short story, when all at once something turned over in my mind and I understood how to get past the block. No details, but it didn’t matter; there was no doubt in my mind that the thing was done.

That moment of inspiration is the product of weeks of work, both conscious and unconscious, which somehow prepare the mind to make the necessary connection of ideas. Sitting around waiting for inspiration leads to failure, no matter how much of a whiz kid you are.”

Does the second sentence sound familiar? It is almost verbatim what a former D1 player said to me a few years ago at our facility (Ok, he wasn’t as elegant, but the thought was the same), which I alluded to here: This may be why you’re not playing.

“It can be hard for me to make this case, because I was one of those prodigious kids myself. I knew I was going to be a mathematician when I was six years old. I took courses way above my grade level and won a neckful of medals in math contests. And I was pretty sure, when I went off to college, that the competitors I knew from Math Olympiad were the great mathematicians of my generation. It didn’t exactly turn out that way. That group of young starts produced many excellent mathematicians, like Terry Tao, the Fields Medal-winning harmonic analyst. But most of the mathematicians I work with now weren’t ace mathletes at thirteen; they developed their abilities and talents on a different time-scale. Should they have given up in middle school?

What you learn after a long time in math-and I think the lesson applies much more broadly-is that there’s always somebody ahead of you, whether they’re right there in class with you or not. People just starting out look to people with good theorems, people with some good theorems look to people with lots of good theorems, people with lots of good theorems look to people with Fields Medals, people with Fields Medals look to the “inner circle” medalists, and those people can always look toward the dead.”

The thought process here is very simple:

Overvaluing the idea of “natural talent” and early success can cripple an athlete’s work ethic.

As a coach, it’s incredibly important to reward behaviors and not outcomes. It’s equally vital to acknowledge successes, but help the kids place more value on working as hard as they can and focusing on getting a little better each day.

To help you understand why this is so important, let me share another story about one of the soccer teams we’ve been training recently (and really there’s at least one of these kids on every team).

One of the teams we train is a very talented boys team of HS kids. At the end of the training session, we typically wrap up with some form of shuttle run, most recently of which was 75-yard shuttles (cones at 0 and 25) where the kids are expected to give 100% effort on the entire run.

While the entire team is talented, and most are very athletic, there’s one kid that stands out as being faster and springier than the other kids. Because of this, he runs every shuttle just fast enough to beat the other 2-3 kids he’s running against, and he almost always wins. The exceptions are when he completely packs it in and just trots, in which case he comes in right behind the next fastest kid.

Here’s the problem: Being the fastest kid on your team can give you a false sense of security.

First off, he may be the fastest kid on his team NOW, but as puberty (and training) catches up with the other kids, he may not be the fastest for long. Maybe more importantly, is being the fastest on your team doesn’t mean you’re the fastest on every team.

And as athletes get older, the funnel gets narrower. This is probably best highlighted by the women’s hockey teams with USA Hockey. You can be the best player at the U-18 level, but the next year you need to be a top 20 player on the ~U-35 (or however old the oldest player) team. This means you not only need to beat out everyone in your age group, but basically every player on the U-18 teams for the preceding decade.

Not everyone has what it takes to compete at the most elite levels. There are a lot of things athletes can’t control, most notably their genetic ceiling.

The one thing that every athlete has 100% control over is his or her work ethic.

In the example above, the soccer player may be running fast enough to beat his teammates, but not fast enough to cause his body to adapt favorably. So while the kids he’s just barely beating are getting a little better every time they train, he’s doing just enough to stay where he is.

I always come back to the question “Where’s your finish line?”

Do you want to be a good U-16 player, or a great college player?

I think most athletes need raise their expectations for themselves. In fact, I believe this so strongly that we plastered these words on our back wall so it’s the first thing you see when you walk into our facility.

Most athletes are capable of way more than they’ll ever realize. And while the athletes need to expect more of themselves, coaches (and parents) would benefit from placing a greater emphasis on LONG-term development and developing positive behaviors at young ages that will benefit the kids not only in their athletic endeavors, but throughout the rest of their lives.

This is not only true in sports, but as Ellenberg points out, also true in academia.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team

“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University

Pros and Cons of the “Fitness” Industry

Last week one of our former athletes reached out to me about doing an interview for a class he was taking. His assignment was to interview someone in the field he intended to work in, just to get a better idea of what it’s like.

On a personal note, it’s pretty cool to see athletes I’ve worked with as young teenagers buy in to the process and see results so much that they pursue a career in the same field. This reminds me of something I remember Mike Boyle saying. To paraphrase, “It’ll take 10 years to realize the real impact you have on kids’ lives.” I haven’t been at Endeavor quite that long, but have already had several athletes tell me they’re now (or will soon be) pursuing a career in strength and conditioning, physical therapy, or some other related profession.

Getting back to the interview, the first question he asked me was what some of the pros and cons were of working in the industry. I’m quite confident that everyone views these differently, depending on their individual circumstances, but here is my take.

Pros

It really depends exactly what sector you want to work in, as working with different ages, genders, athletic populations, and settings will all lead to different pros and cons. In my position, I get an opportunity to work with populations ranging from youth athletes looking to stay healthy and improve their performance to Olympic athletes training to compete for a world championship with USA Hockey to general population clients looking to improve their fitness.

The one thing common to every population that continues to fuel my enjoyment for the field is the opportunity to facilitate someone’s development.

Simply, watching people progress is rewarding.

As you may know, some of the players I started training shortly after joining Endeavor are now currently playing for professional teams. It’s great to watch them develop, both as athletes and as people.

While they don’t garner as much attention, I take just as much pride in helping a young athlete make a team they’re trying out for or have a little more confidence playing at their current level, and helping general population folks improve their health and fitness.

Quality training can have a huge impact on a person, both physically and psychologically, and it’s fulfilling to help guide people toward their goals.

Cons

Every training client will bring his/her own challenges. I don’t view any of them as “cons” per se, but there are parts of my job that I definitely enjoy less than others.

Because everyone can exercise, a lot of people think they’re exercise experts.

This is no different than all the experts that call in to sports radio stations on Monday morning to complain about all the mistakes their city’s NFL coach made the day before, but it can be exhausting to have to constantly defend a philosophy to people with very little understanding of the underlying physiological mechanisms of training adaptation and how these may differ for different populations.

One of the big problems in our field is that it’s difficult to distinguish between an actual expert and those that represent themselves as experts.

The barrier to entry to become a personal trainer is minimal, so people can take an online or weekend certification course and immediately be perceived as qualified.

Fitness Expert

Image from CatrinaIsHungry.com

It’s interesting to note that training typically involves a high level of physiological load to create a specific adaptation that moves “healthy” (or at least uninjured) clients toward improved health, fitness or performance.

Physical therapy traditionally involves lower physiological loads to help bring an injured area within a client/athlete back to baseline (and beyond in many cases).

Physical therapists require 3-5 years of college leading to a doctorate and work under state licensure. “Trainers” need a weekend course with no other education and no state licensure.

It’s easy to see why this is not only frustrating for those that have higher qualifications, but it’s also dangerous for the public that is entrusting their health to someone that doesn’t have the foundational knowledge to design and implement an appropriate program.

Concluding Thoughts

I hope in my lifetime I see the bar raised for what minimum requirements a “trainer” must have. I know a lot of people get into personal training because they like training themselves and want to help others. That’s an admirable mission, and I understand the perspective. However, you can make parallel arguments in a lot of different professions. Maybe I like doing my taxes (stay with me) and want to help a few friends save some money so I help them with theirs. Or I read a lot about investment strategies and share some advice with a coworker. Or I find a few new healthy recipes I like and share them with my family. These are all examples of finding something I enjoy and using it to help others. Under no circumstances, though, can I claim to be a professional in accounting, financial advising, or dietetics. There are significant barriers to entry for these professions, as the “cost” of letting anyone advise on these matters is high, and potentially socially dangerous. It’s odd to me that the industry designed to help people manipulate their physical health in a way that influences the musculoskeletal, neuromuscular, cardiovascular, and endocrine systems basically lets anyone with an interest and a few hundred bucks work in the field.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Hockey Hip Injuries: FAI

Today’s Thursday Throwback highlights a structural abnormality that affects the overwhelming majority of the hockey population specifically and much of the elite athletic population in general.

While the tone of this post (and the linked article) is specific to one structural abnormality, the foundational theme is not. The real message here is that every athlete is built differently, both from their genetic make-up and how they’ve adapted to stressors over the course of their lifetime.

As a result, it’s incredibly important that coaches appreciate these individual variations and don’t attempt to coach every athlete into a somewhat arbitrary movement “norm”. Often times athletes are patterning movement around the range of motion that they have and can control. If an athlete doesn’t have the motion to perform an athletic movement correctly, it’s wise to dig deeper to see if it’s a structural or functional limitation. If functional, use whatever tools you have to improve it. If structural, coach around it. Either way, the goal is to optimize movement.

Check out the post, and post any thoughts/comments you have in the section below!

Hockey Hip Injuries: Femoracetabular Impingement

Femeroacetabular impingement (FAI) is an anatomical abnormality that anyone that trains hockey players needs to be aware of. In the most simple sense, FAI affects hip flexion ROM, especially past 90 degrees. This will necessarily lead to restrictions in many common lifting and jumping movements and will affect a player’s skating stride.

Mike Reinold recently posted a terrific article from Trevor Winnegge that I think you should read.

Check it out here >> Femoroacetabular Impingement: Etiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment of FAI

I don’t think strength coaches need to go through a screen for every possible injury that a player may incur, but I do think it’s important to be able to recognize signs of injuries or anatomical abnormalities when the player is warming up and training off the ice.

This article did a great job of outlining information related to the diagnosis and treatment of these injuries, but I think the real insight comes from the discussion section. I don’t always spend time reading through the discussion in most articles, but this was well worth the time. When you read it, you’ll see comments from people like Mike Reinold, Eric Cressey, and Jeff Oliver (really bright guys).

Pay special attention to comments regarding how FAI will affect movement so that you can be on the watch for this. Here’s a glimpse at some of my additions:

Round 1
We see a good number of these cases as well since the majority of our athletes are hockey players. As Eric mentioned, most have terrible soft-tissue quality around the hip.

The Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis mechanism probably holds extra weight amongst hockey goalies, who grow up dropping to their knees in an almost uncontrolled free fall at ages when they surely don’t have the muscular development to control the motion.

Given the magnitude of these surgeries, we try to focus on conservative approaches. Using single-leg work gives the hips more degrees of freedom, but keeping the athlete above their hip flexion end-range also helps ensure that we’re not getting compensatory lumbar movement.

Round 2 (In response to Jeff Oliver’s comments)
Great point about not being “knee benders”. Because of my history working with hockey players on the ice, it seems that most coaches want their players to skate with the “ideal” stride. I think FAI is one illustration of why some players may opt for a different pattern.

Lumbar compensation, in some plane, is almost inevitable when people reach their hip flexion ROM, especially in bilateral lower body exercises. The only difference between FAI athletes and “normal” athletes is that FAI athletes will hit that hip flexion end range sooner, in at least one hip. If it’s a unilateral problem, you’ll likely see one hip drop below the other during squatting. That’s why I like single-leg work so much for these athletes-it gives the spine options as to which plane to move (namely that lateral flexion becomes more available) and lessens the compression load. This way, if an athlete fails to stop at THEIR end range (which they need to be educated on), they’re in a less damaging environment.

The Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis involves some, typically blunt, force that causes a shift in the growth plate at the femoral head/neck junction, which negates the head/neck offset (at least this is the theory). I’ve heard this attributed to things that kids naturally do like jumping out of trees, falling while playing on the playground, or repetitively free falling to your knees while learning how to play goalie! Now, with no femoral head/neck offset, when the femoral head recentrates in the acetabulum, hip flexion will be limited and it’s likely that the repetitive attempts to push hip flexion past the newly found limits will cause some accumulated trauma locally, which (in my opinion) could lead to additional bone growth and therefore an additional exacerbation of the problem. I know that’s long-winded; I hope it all makes sense. Feel free to email me if you have other questions.

Again, I highly recommend you read the whole article. Knowledge is power, and given that FAI is leading to surgery in a lot of cases, the more you know about to the more you can prevent FAI leading to excessive labral damage and future osteoarthritis (as is often the case when FAI goes unchecked).

Check it out here >> Femoroacetabular Impingement: Etiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment of FAI

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team

“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University

“I don’t even want to be here”

Over the last 6 weeks we’ve been training a lot of youth soccer teams. As a general rule, the kids are great, which in part stems from the fact that the organization is very well run and therefore draws in great athletes with comparable attitudes.

Last Wednesday, as it always does, our night ended with two (one U-14 and one U-15) girls soccer teams that both started at 8:30pm. For our facility, accommodating 35+ athletes at once is a challenge, and as you can imagine, getting that many adolescence athletes at that hour leads to a wide range of blood sugar, fatigue, and interest levels.

For what was probably only the 2nd or 3rd time in my career, I heard what could very well be the most deflating statement an athlete could make, and it came from one of the girls ~10 seconds after getting everyone lined up for the warm-up, standing in the front of one of the lines, at concert level volume for the whole room to hear.

Not ideal.

Here’s the thing…I completely understood where she was coming from. And while I didn’t agree with her timing, I didn’t resent the feeling.

Over the past couple weeks I started asking a lot of the girls what time they wake up in the morning. Most are around 5:30am. They spend some variable amount of time getting ready for and bussed to school, then sit in school for ~6 hours, come home to do homework, then go off to practice for an hour, then in to train with us.

The “My head is up, but I’m actually sleeping” pose. I don’t think you’ll find a single science or history teacher at Henderson High School in West Chester, PA that couldn’t vouche for my mastery of this. Sneaking in a quality 30 minute nap each day is what allowed me to train hard at practice that night.

Pretty easy schedule no?

As an aside, it’s funny to watch the parents that stick around in our waiting area while their kid(s) train. Most parents are up at a comparable hour (although most of the kids I asked said their parents were up after them), go work an 8-hour work day, then come home to take care of the kids (dinner, transportation, etc). When they get to our facility, many will sit with their heads against the wall and either stare blankly across the turf for about an hour or they’ll actually nod off.

In other words, they check out, mentally and physically, while the kids are expected to be fully engaged with us.

This is only marginally related to this article, but I’m not one to pass up an opportunity to tie in a Big Lebowski reference.

Simply, no one can be on their “A Game” every day, and it’s easy to understand how the schedules of most youth athletes would lead to the occasional feeling of “I’d much rather be napping”.

What would you do?

You might be wondering how I handled the comment.

What would you do? Reprimand her? Kick her out? Suggest she suck it up?

In the past, I may have done any of these things. In this case, I just laughed and said “I hear you. Do the best you can.”

I believe very strongly that, as a coach, it’s more beneficial to highlight positive things than negative ones. If I would have made a big deal of the comment, the group likely would have gotten off to a collectively awkward start and I suspect more girls would be thinking about how much they also didn’t want to be there.

Instead, we all moved on and quickly forgot about it.

Then I said this…

At the end of the session, I pulled her aside and said 4 of the most powerful words in coaching:

“I’m proud of you.”

And here’s why…

After she made the comment, she absolutely crushed the training session. It may have been out of rebellious rage, but she did her best and actually set a great tempo for the rest of the group.

She was also one of the first ones to start encouraging the rest of the group when the conditioning started to get tough.

Athletes in that mood can be HUGE detriments to the group. They can sloth around and spread their negativity. In these cases, they aren’t only hurting themselves, they’re actually hurting the whole team.

Not only did this athlete not do that, but she actually raised the bar for everyone.

If on your WORST day, you still make your team better, you’ll find success in everything you do. That, to me, is something to be proud of.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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

Get Ultimate Hockey Transformation Now!

Year-round age-specific hockey training programs complete with a comprehensive instructional video database!

Get access to your game-changing program now >> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team

“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University

Athletic Development Stuff You Should Read

Over the last few weeks I’ve come across a handful of articles I think you’ll really enjoy. Check them out below:

Athletes Are Made in the Off-Season by Steve Nash
Projecting the Development of High School Pitchers: Training Habits Matter by Matt Blake
Walmart, GNC, Target and Walgreens under fire for selling bogus supplements
Airing of Grievances – 2014 Edition by Mike Robertson
The Positivity Trap by Krista Scott-Dixon
And last, but not least…Ovechkin grants young fan’s request (video below)

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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

Get Ultimate Hockey Transformation Now!

Year-round age-specific hockey training programs complete with a comprehensive instructional video database!

Get access to your game-changing program now >> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team

“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University