Present Ideas for Athletes, Coaches, and Strength Coaches

Last Christmas my face lit up like a 6-year old ripping through wrapping paper to discover a toy fire truck (or iPhone in today’s kids) when I opened my presents. I got 5 AWESOME Physical Therapy textbooks.

It was probably the most excited I’ve been about Christmas presents in over a decade. My family thinks I’m strange, and they’re right, but that was all I wanted!

So for the fellow Athletic Development Enthusiasts out there that can never have enough great training information (or the significant others/family members of such enthusiasts), here is a list of some of the incredible books, DVDs, and websites I recommend to everyone:

1) Assess and Correct by Bill Hartman, Mike Robertson, and Eric Cressey: I just wrote a review on this. If you don’t have it already, get it now!

2) Precision Nutrition by Dr. John Berardi. This is still BY FAR the best nutrition resource for EVERYONE, competitive athletes to stay at home parents.

3) StrengthCoach.com with Michael Boyle. Coach Boyle’s membership site has the most current information from the Strength and Conditioning Industry’s most successful coaches.

4) SportsRehabExpert.com with Joe Heiler. This is a great resource for physical therapists and athletic trainers to stay current on the practices of some of the greatest minds in the world.

5) StrengthandConditioningWebinars.com with Anthony Renna. This is one of the most brilliant advancements in the history of strength and conditioning continuing education. Without taking credit away from any of the other great sites out there, this is my favorite site on the internet. Learning great education from incredible presenters without leaving my home..what’s not to love?

There are a ton of great products out there. Among others, I can attest that anything from Nick Tumminello, Kim McCullough, Brijesh Patel, Eric Cressey, Michael Boyle, Mike Robertson, and Bill Hartman will be packed with incredible information.

If you have specific questions about other products, please don’t hesitate to email me.

Happy Holidays!

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Should Kids Lift Weights?

A couple months ago I wrote a quick article for the Endeavor Fitness website on the issue of whether kids should lift weights or not.

It’s a question I get a lot, or more accurately, it’s a misconception I have to explain a lot.

Today I read Eric Cressey’s newsletter on the same issue.

Whether you’re an athlete, parent, coach, or “trainer”, you should check out both articles. If you’re like most people, you’ve likely been given poor information on the subject.

Check out the articles:

Kevin’s Article on Endeavor Fitness’ Website

Eric’s Newsletter Article

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Assess and Correct Review

Last week I received my copy of Assess and Correct in the mail, the new DVD set from three of the brightest and most well-respected guys in our industry: Mike Robertson, Bill Hartman and Mike Robertson.

I’ve been fortunate to learn a ton from all of these guys; I own all of their products and rewatch/reread them on a regular basis, so I was psyched that all three of them teamed up for this project.

Assess and Correct really exceeded my expectations.

The first DVD walks you through a series of simple assessments to identify your personal weaknesses and imbalances that may be inhibiting your performance.

The major benefit of this assessment DVD is that they are all self-assessments, which means you don’t need anyone else to run you through them.

Being able to run yourself through a series of assessments to identify performance limitations is an invaluable tool.

Best part?

The entire series of assessments takes less than 10 minutes!

The second DVD is PACKED with corrective exercises to improve your limitations and really help you unleash a whole new level of performance.

This is truly an invaluable resource.

If I told you that I could teach you how to identify your MAJOR performance limitations in less than 10 minutes, would you be interested?

Of course, you aren’t stupid.

If I told you I could then teach you all the exercises to fix your limitations and drastically improve your performance, would you be interested?

Any serious athlete would be. Any serious coach (sport or strength and conditioning) would be interested in learning this for their athletes.

Whether to pick up Assess and Correct is really a no brainer.

The only people I would say definitely should NOT get it are the people that have no interest in learning from the most intelligent, most successful Therapists and Strength and Conditioning Coaches in the business.

Click here to take the first step toward lifelong performance improvement!

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How Lifting Movement Speed Can Drastically Improve Your Strength

As a reminder, check out my new hockey training website to pick up my Off-Ice Performance Training Course for only $47!

I should have an update for you soon on my OTHER new hockey training site too, so check back for that.

While I was in grad school at UMass Amherst, a lot of my research/reading focused on exercise neuroscience. While some of that can be really technical (and boring), I was able to pick up a lot of usable information about how to manipulate our nervous system to improve performance.

One simple way to manipulate the nervous system in every workout is by changing the speed at which you perform your lifts.

In general, the eccentric or negative phase of the lift should always be under control, meaning it shouldn’t be a dangerous free-fall. I’ll actually write in time lengths for this part of the lift in many of my programs. For example, I may write in 5s negatives for a dumbbell chest press. In this case, the lifter would lower the dumbbells down toward his/her chest in 5 seconds before lifting them back to the top.

Without exception, the concentric or “up”phase of EVERY lift should be performed as rapidly as possible…Always! Even if the weight is near your max, you want to think about moving it as quickly as possible.

One of the things I learned while sifting through all that research is that the intention to move fast has similar effects on muscle recruitment as actually moving fast.

So by simply thinking about lifting the weight as quickly as possible, you can reduce the recruitment threshold of your motor units (which drives muscle contraction), which basically increases muscular tension and “driving power”.

Down under control. Up fast.

-Kevin Neeld

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How Much Protein Should You Take In?

Protein has long been hailed as the “super nutrient” amongst athletes and lifters.

Dr. John Berardi recently sent out an email presenting a few new studies have sparked up a lot of conversation about whether athletes do have a higher protein requirement than non-athletes and if the additional protein actually contributes to improved performance or training results.

I’m a huge fan of high protein diets (in most cases), so when I caught wind of these studies I had to check out what Dr. Berardi had to say about them.

Click here to read why you should limit your protein to 20g per meal.

-Kevin Neeld

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