Blogs

Continuing on yesterday’s discussion on the groin injuries that plague hockey and soccer players…The second step in analyzing an athlete’s groin pain is to do a crude posture analysis.  I don’t advocate strength coaches or sport coaches pretending to be physical therapists, but there are some pretty basic posture assessments that sometimes provide a lot […]

At least once a week I get a question from an athlete, parent, or coach involved in soccer or ice hockey about “groin” pain.  I put groin in quotations because the groin is often referred to as one muscle, although the injuries people refer to as groin strains typically involve several, usually the adductor brevis, […]

This week was…different.  Gym was closed on Monday and Wednesday so I went 4 straight days (Tuesday-Friday) instead of Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday.  Wednesday I did 100 rep chin-up and 100 rep push-up tests in the shortest time possible.  That was probably the worst feeling ever-Everyone should do it once…no one should do it twice. […]

I love video.  I’d rather watch a movie then read a book. I’d rather watch an exercise video than read a description and I’d rather watch a presentation than listen to it.  Video is already beginning to dominate the athletic development industry as coaches see its value in teaching exercises.   Brijesh Patel took it […]

On Tuesday I had the pleasure of visiting Brijesh Patel, the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Quinnipiac.  Brijesh primarily works with the mens and womens hockey and basketball teams there.  We spent about 7 hours picking each others’ brains about everything from groin and hip flexor injuries to speed training to program design. I […]

Yesterday I mentioned that, on the ice during a game, top speed isn’t reached or maintained for long.  Having said that, it is still important to understand that many of the direction changes in hockey occur at near-top speeds.  Also, many all out sprints start from a glide or light skate, and involve varying foot/leg […]

Is this hard to believe? World records in under 100m events continue to be broken regularly by, literally, the fastest people in the history of the world.  It would only be logical then, to think: If the fastest people in the world are training one way, I should also train that way to become fast. […]

What a week!  My schedule was a little more sporadic so my structured program got broken up a bit, but I still got everything in.  I moved my “refeed day” from Monday to Thursday.  It felt like my birthday.  Pizza, ice cream, huge steak dinner.  Despite breaking my scale at home (it still insists that […]

“Why don’t you lift legs?” “My legs are already big enough.  I don’t want them to get any bigger.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a conversation with hockey players that started just like this.   First off, in probably 97% of cases, their legs aren’t big enough.  B: Something tells me […]

I’ll be the first one to admit that I don’t follow politics as closely as I probably should.  Yesterday I made it a point to take an hour to watch some of the Inauguration festivities, including President Obama’s speech.  One of the recurring themes I noticed throughout his speech was that we need to start […]