Month: March 2022

Individualizing Training in Group Settings

There are a lot of different approaches to individualizing training in group settings.

First, it’s important to recognize that attempts to improve the program shouldn’t get in the way of being able to run it. There are very real logistical and cultural barriers to running what you may envision as the most “optimal” program. The goal here is to start making SUBTLE adjustments to address individual needs.

Here are a few strategies I’ve used in the past:

  • Systemize “corrective” work. Post sheets on the wall or on a digital display that has the individuals name (or jersey number) with a list of what you want them to do, and another sheet with pictures to serve as cues.
  • Make any exercise selection adjustments you want on the actual program display, and reinforce that the athletes should reference that (not just follow someone and do what they do)
  • If your facility requires progressing through set stations like an assembly line, divide the stations up by goal (e.g. strength emphasis vs. speed emphasis) and program goal-specific exercise variations that can be performed in the same areas.
  • Teach A LOT up front, and then encourage the members/athletes most experienced in your system to teach newer/younger athletes. This provides built in support for you and a leadership/growth opportunity for them.

Feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. If you’re interested in more information about how to profile an athlete’s needs and use the profile to individualize a training program, check out the videos at Optimizing Adaptation & Performance

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Movement, Stress, and Injury Risk

Building on yesterday’s post on the impact of the interaction between conditioning and movement efficiency on performance…

Movement quality and conditioning also impact injury risk.

This 2013 study found that military personnel with slow 3-mile times (i.e. poor aerobic fitness) and poor movement quality (defined as FMS Score ≤ 14) were 4.2x more likely to sustain an injury.

A few quick thoughts on why this matters:

  • If an athlete has restrictions in mobility and/or stability, they have fewer options to absorb force/stress and are more likely to “wear out” something along the path they’re using. Increasing movement variability not only has performance benefits, it allows stress to be distributed through joints and soft-tissue structures in different ways, which is a factor in injury risk reduction (particularly in overuse injuries).
  • If an athlete is poorly conditioned (whatever that means for the task at hand), movement quality and control will break down sooner and they’re more likely to reach an injury threshold and/or rely on passive structures to absorb force, which has both short- and long-term joint health implications.
  • Regardless of movement quality and conditioning, at some point, everyone breaks. Monitoring the volume and intensity of sport demands in some capacity is crucial for ensuring you don’t overlook major spikes in either.
  • Maximizing movement variability and optimizing conditioning levels for a given sport will help improve durability across typical and atypical sport/activity demands.

Feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. If you’re interested in more information about how to profile an athlete’s needs and use the profile to individualize a training program, check out the videos at Optimizing Adaptation & Performance

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

Movement Efficiency

Great quote from Ben Peterson et al.

Efficient movement can maximize performance for a given athlete’s conditioning level. The opposite is also true. Inefficient movement can also impair an athlete’s ability to display their high level of conditioning.

Movement efficiency and conditioning go hand and hand. If a player is struggling late in shifts or game – try to decipher if it’s a conditioning issue, movement efficiency issue, or both.

Feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. If you’re interested in more information about how to improve an athlete’s movement alongside their conditioning levels, check out the videos at Optimizing Adaptation & Performance

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

How would you change your program…

How would you change your program…

When I started integrating more movement-based assessments into our intake process, it quickly became clear that every individual presents with different structures, mobility limitations and movement tendencies that will influence their ability to successfully perform certain exercises.

This was the theme of my previous post – not all exercises are a good fit for every athlete.

Similarly, each individual’s “performance profile” will present unique strengths and weaknesses, which need to be considered within the context of their training goals.

Even if two athletes have the same goal (e.g. improve speed), they may be starting from completely different places, and therefore require different strategies to help them reach their goal. For example, a strong and powerful athlete that wants to improve speed needs a different program than a weaker/less powerful athlete.

Several years ago, I started asking myself “How would I change the program if my career depended on the progress of this one individual?”

This helped me reconsider my approach and eventually cater more work specific to the needs and goals of the individual.

This isn’t to say that every athlete needs a completely novel training program designed from scratch. But the “thought experiment” of putting one athlete in the spotlight may help identify small changes to the intent of a training phase (i.e. how does the target for this phase align with the athlete’s needs) and/or exercise selection (i.e. are there exercises that need to be removed or added based on the athlete’s movement profile and injury history) that can have a major impact on the athlete’s progress.

The next time you sit down to write a program, consider each individual athlete that will go through it, and ask yourself that question. I hope it has the same impact on your process as it has on mine.

Feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. If you’re interested in more information about how to profile an athlete’s needs and use the profile to individualize a training program, check out the videos at Optimizing Adaptation & Performance

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

Influence of Structure on Exercise Selection

I had a great discussion the other week with @Rocky_Snyder for his Zelos podcast, and one of the things that came up was the influence of an athlete’s build on exercise selection.

It reminded me of this slide from my “Performance Profiling as a Platform for Program Design” talk from our Optimizing Adaptation & Performance seminar series. These are pictures @michael_boyle1959 sent me a few years back of 2 girls that trained at @mbscofficial.

Seated, they’re about the same height. Standing, it’s a much different story. The thigh to torso length relationship will have a significant impact on how these athletes move.

In squatting, for example, the bar needs to stay centered over your mid foot. If the load of the bar is centered too far toward the heel, the athlete will fall back; too far toward the toes, the athlete will fall forward.

Longer femurs relative to torso length (as with the taller athlete here) will require the athlete to lean significantly further forward to maintain the bar over the mid foot. In these cases, the bar isn’t loading DOWN through the spine, it’s loading FORWARD and pushing the torso further toward the thighs. This both changes the loading pattern (e.g. more posterior chain dominant to prevent folding forward), but also increases shear forces across the spine.

Taken together, squatting for the taller athlete is probably training a different pattern than intended AND increasing injury risk. Risk/Reward isn’t favorable for that exercise for that athlete.

Simply, not every athlete is a good fit for every exercise.

There are a lot of different factors that should affect program design and exercise selection. Looking at the athlete in front of you and making adjustments based on their build is low hanging fruit.

Feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. If you’re interested in more information about how to profile an athlete’s needs and use the profile to individualize a training program, check out the videos at Optimizing Adaptation & Performance

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!