Blogs

One of my favorite presentations at the Boston Hockey Summit in May was Jim Snider’s talk on “Dryland Speed Training for Hockey”. Coach Snider is the Strength and Conditioning Coach for the Men’s and Women’s Ice Hockey teams at the University of Wisconsin. Needless to say, that program has an outstanding reputation. Coach Snider’s whole […]

A couple weeks ago I attended the Boston Hockey Summit, a hockey-specific seminar hosting collegiate and professional strength and conditioning coaches, physical therapists and hip surgeons, and a professional power skating coach. This was right up my alley! My hope is that more of these seminars will pop up across the country and that more […]

Last week, we agreed that mental preparation is essential to athletic success. I’ve read through a lot of articles and books related to mental preparation for athletics and frankly, I’ve been disappointed. My colleague and friend Kim McCullough has put together the best step-by-step guide to preparing mentally for the game of hockey that I’ve […]

Vince Lombardi was one of the most successful coaches of all time. He’s still the most frequently quoted name in sports. A few notable quotes: “Mental toughness is essential to success.” “You never win a game unless you beat the guy in front of you. The score on the board doesn’t mean a thing. That’s […]

The other day I was watching Any Given Sunday with my girlfriend Emily. One of the underlying themes of that movie was that no individual player is bigger than the team. This mentality is a HUGE problem in youth hockey, as players that develop faster tend to think that they ARE the team, not a […]

I don’t have swine flu…but I do have a new job! As of Monday (June 8th), I’ll be starting as the Director of Athletic Development at Endeavor Fitness in Sewell, NJ. The facility is awesome. Check out the pictures on their site www.EndeavorFit.com. I’m excited to get started. We have an impressive line up of […]

Whether you’re an ice hockey enthusiast or strength and conditioning professional, you won’t want to miss this opportunity! After my longwinded talk about the importance of education (and continuing education) last week, I thought I should forward this along to you.  Eric Cressey just sent me an email letting me know about Strength and Conditioning […]

I remember a conversation I had with Michael Boyle last Summer about grip strength. To paraphrase, he was joking about how ridiculous it is for hockey players to spend so much time doing wrist curls when they’re legs are so weak they’ll never get to a puck anyway. The take home message is that you’re […]

If you haven’t noticed, I’ve been trying to post more videos recently. I love videos. If pictures are worth a thousand words, videos are worth one hundred BILLION words. I’ve read entire articles with detailed exercise descriptions that made no sense to me. Then I’ll watch the 30s of accompanying video and it all becomes […]

Building off the exercise I posted the other day, this is another dynamic movement that trains core control. The idea is that you minimize the rotation of your trunk while catching the ball. You can progress this exercise by having your partner throw the ball slightly further away from your shoulder. You could also make […]