Testing Power in Team Sport Athletes

Testing is an important part of the training process. Not only does it help coaches profile the athlete, and therefore make decisions about which areas require more attention from a training perspective, but it also provides a mechanism to track progress over time.

In a previous post, which followed all of the controversy surrounding one of the upcoming NHL Draft’s top prospects not being able to perform a single pull-up at the most recent NHL Combine, I presented averages on how our youth and junior hockey players performed on a chin-up rep max test, one indicator of upper body strength. If you missed that, you can check it out here: Ultimate Pull-Up Transformation

While there are many ways to test power in athletes, we started using a Lateral Bound Test in addition to some of the more traditional tests (e.g. Vertical Jump, Broad Jump, Hang Clean, etc.). Compared to other tests, this test provides:

An indication of power in a lateral/horizontal pattern, which is extremely specific to ice hockey, but also relevant to almost all team sports
An opportunity to identify side-to-side differences

As you can imagine, the lateral distance one can travel jumping off of one leg and landing on the other will be influenced by a few other confounding factors that need to be accounted for, namely:

Limb length
Hip structure
Lateral “flexibility”

Instead of attempting to measure all of these things individually, we simply calculate a “split” distance (as far as the athlete can spread his/her feet without putting hands on the ground) and normalize all jump distances to this. In this way, we account for how all of those factors affect the lateral movement.

The equation I used to calculate normalized lateral bounds was:

LB Norm = LB Avg/Split where LB Avg = (Lateral Bound Left + Lateral Bound Right)/2

The results from our pre-Summer testing are presented below:

The general story is that athletes become more explosive as they get older (not surprising). It is interesting to the note ranges at each age group, as there are plenty of examples of junior- and college-aged players jumping on a “U-15 level” and vice versa.

Of even greater note is that the correlation between vertical jump height and the normalized lateral bound distance in our junior and college players (we did a broad jump with the younger kids for logistical reasons) was only 0.28. For those of you that shutter at the thought of analyzing statistics, that is essentially “not a very strong relationship”. In other words, the link between vertical jump and lateral bound performance is quite weak, suggesting that power is dependent upon which pattern it’s being expressed in.

I took the results from our Junior and College players and ranked everyone from best to worst according to their vertical jump height. The player with the best VJ was renamed “Player 1”, and each player was renamed accordingly until the player with the last VJ, who was named “Player 35”. I then re-ranked everyone according to their normalized lateral bound distance.

Lateral Bound vs. Vertical Jump Performance

As you can imagine, this list isn’t entirely random. The player with the best VJ (Player 1) had the 4th best normalized lateral bound. Similarly, the two players with the worst VJ were also dead last in normalized LB distance. That said, there are some notable outliers. The players with the 6th, 7th, and 8th best vertical jumps are all toward the bottom of the list for normalized LB. Likewise, the 3 of the top 5 best normalized LB performances were handed in by the 26th, 22nd, and 25th best vertical jump performers.

There are a few important take homes here:

Power is pattern specific, so it’s important to select testing methods that provide the most appropriate information for your sport and/or training situation
Ranking players according to a single testing variable is likely to give very cloudy results.
There are high and low performers at every age group, but this doesn’t necessarily indicate that one player is better off than the other, as it’s extremely difficult to factor in genetic capacity. Testing results, especially at these age levels, need to be used to track individual progress and NOT to compare players against one another.

As always, if you have any questions, please post them in the comments section below!

If you’re interested in following a structured hockey training system to improve your speed, power, strength and conditioning, be sure to check out my new Ultimate Hockey Transformation system today!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Ultimate Pull-Up Transformation

If you’ve missed the news, there’s been a lot of talk about how Sam Bennett, the top ranked prospect in the upcoming NHL Draft, failed to do a single pull-up.

Photo from Getty Images

While I think it’s easy to point out the negatives of the situation, there are two really quick points that are worth considering:

I didn’t know pull-ups would be included in the NHL Combine testing until about 10 days out from the testing date. Luckily, I had still programmed chin-ups into every phase of the player I was preparing for the combine, as there is merit to the exercise. This is the danger in true “combine prep”. You not only sacrifice long-term development for short-term test prep, but you’re also hosed if there are any changes to the testing protocol.
If a player is THAT good on the ice, and can’t do a single pull-up, I look at that as the player having a HUGE opportunity for off-ice development. In other words, he may an enormous growth potential and therefore may be that much more appealing of a candidate.

This is an impressive resumeThis story has also brought out all of the “You can’t score goals from the weight room” idiots. No one will discount that on-ice skill is a valuable and desirable attribute to any player, but there is clearly value in being strong. Most of the top hockey strength and conditioning coaches in the world agree that having adequate “pulling” strength is protective from shoulder injuries, both contact and non-contact in origin. This is in addition to all of the performance related benefits of having a strong upper body.

In fact, a study published in 2011 (see: Physiological characteristics of National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I ice hockey players and their relation to game performance) comparing off-ice test performance to on-ice performance (e.g. +/-) found that the two off-ice tests that were most highly correlated to on-ice performance were a 12x110m sprint repeat test, and chin-up rep max test. The team tested in this study won the NCAA Division I national championship that year.

Based on some of our early testing this Summer, here are the results from the chin-up tests across different age groups:

This is obviously just a small sample of each age group, but it should paint a picture of what is fairly typical at each level. The U-16 group was the 2^nd team at that age; I suspect the first team, many of which have trained with us in the past, would have put up better numbers, likely about halfway between the U-15 and U-18 averages.

Only two players of the 89 players we tested couldn’t do any, both at the U-15 age group, one of which went in for major heart surgery two weeks after we tested him (he gets a pass in my book).

Improving Your Pull-Up Performance

Having worked with several players that have made the ascension from “0”, I can attest that the hardest chin-up or pull-up to get is the first one. In other words, it’s much easier to get from 1-2 than it is to get from 0-1. With this in mind, the two major variations we use to help improve pull-up performance in our players is:

Band-Assisted Chin-Ups
Negatives Only

By strapping “superbands” around the chin-up handles, some of the players’ weight is unloaded, allowing them to perform the sets with the specified sets and reps. As the player gets stronger, thinner bands can be used to provide less assistance, eventually progressing to full body weight chin-ups.

[quicktime]http://www.kevinneeld.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Band-Assisted-Chin-Up.mp4[/quicktime]It is a well-documented fact that muscles are stronger in their eccentric or lengthening action than they are in concentric or shortening actions. By having the player start at the top of the exercise and perform the lowering phase only (usually specified as 3 or 5 seconds on the way down), it allows them an opportunity to develop strength in the pattern, while capitalizing on the natural strength advantage this portion of the movement provides. If necessary, we’ll combine the two methods until the player can fully control their own bodyweight without the assistance.

[quicktime]http://www.kevinneeld.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Chin-Up-Negative.mp4[/quicktime]Wrapping Up

These strategies are extremely effective in helping players knock out their first chin-up or pull-up. If you want to not only bang out a bunch of pull-ups, but also improve your first step quickness, speed, strength, and conditioning, check out my new Ultimate Hockey Transformation program, which is guaranteed to deliver game-changing results.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

The last month has been one of the craziest, most event-packed months of my life.

I have a lot to update you on, but before I get into all of that, I wanted to let the fitness business owners (current and aspiring) know that Alwyn & Rachel Cosgrove are releasing their new Results Fitness University Online Mentorship program. It’s a 4 week online coaching program with videos, handouts and few coaching calls, with a bonus One-Day Live event.

To be honest, as interesting as the business side of things is to me, I’m way more passionate about learning about training-related topics, so that’s where I spend the majority of my con ed time/resources. With that said, I’m very selective about where I spend the limited time and money I do allocate to the business area.

The Cosgroves run the most profitable gym per sq ft in the country in Results Fitness.

Simply, what they talk about works. It’s been tested, and they have the results to back what they’re suggesting.

They’ve been one of my most trusted resources in this area not just because I think they know their stuff, but because they’re constantly striving to improve.

I had an opportunity to review the entire mentorship program over the last week and I can say without wavering that it was outstanding. If you run your own business, or want to some day, this will absolutely give you the blueprint you need to be successful. It goes on sale today, so if you’re interested in running a successful fitness business, be sure to check it out!

Check out the mentorship here >> Results Fitness University Online Mentorship

The Strength Coach “In-Season”
As for the last month. Well, for starters, we’re officially in game mode in terms of off-season training at Endeavor. We still have a lot of guys that are returning from their teams in the coming weeks, but over the last several weeks we’ve had players from Harvard, Holy Cross, Maine, Manhattanville, Merrimack, New Hampshire, Northland College, Penn State, Princeton, Providence, Salve Regina, St. Lawrence, SUNY Plattsburgh, UMASS Lowell, Union, Vermont, and Yale come in to start training for the Summer. This is in addition to all of our junior and youth players.

In fact, yesterday I spent 14 hours doing assessments and coaching groups, and then came home to write programs and get this post up!

This is by far my favorite time of year, as I’ve now worked with some of these guys for the last 5 years and it’s amazing to see how far they’ve come, not only as players and athletes, but as people in general.

It’s also interesting to see how much the guys have internalized much of what we ask of them, so much so that they can effectively teach new players how to do the overwhelming majority of the exercises. This not only makes our job a little easier, but I think it’s more fun for the players and builds a better training environment. We teach a lot up front so we can focus more on fine-tuning in the future. It’s more work in the beginning, but it pays off in the end!

The REAL News
As exciting at this time of year is, I have even bigger news. After a ~6 year courting period, I finally mustered up the stones to ask my beautiful, incredibly patient roommate (she loves when I call her that) Emily to marry me. And…she said yes!

What started with…

Ended with the happiest moment of my life! (Special shout out to Emily’s sheep slippers…She’s all mine fellas)

We’ve always wanted to do a destination wedding, which not only lets us go on a sweet vacation, but makes the planning process pretty easy. In fact, it took us about one weekend to nail down all the big items. We’re both elated!

So I got this going for me, which is nice.

Shortly after this, I found out that my ’99 Saturn 4-door family sedan (affectionately known as the Bat Mobile) with 216,000 miles on it failed inspection. This is not news, as it fails inspection every year, but the repairs this time would cost notably more than the value of the car, effectively rendering it totaled.

Goodbyes are hard, especially since this is the car that carried me through college, grad school, and countless amazing road trips (including out to the Chicago Perform Better Summit a few years back), but it was short-lived as I picked up a new (used) Honda Civic, which is now known as Knight Rider (I don’t know why; it just felt right).

Oh, and Emily and I bought a house! We’re still going through the mortgage process, but we’re planning to close at the end of June. Looks like I’ll be in the Cherry Hill, NJ area for the foreseeable future!

Needless to say, real life is coming at us at full speed!

The Best Seminar Ever?
In the middle of all of this, I was able to escape up to Boston for the annual Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group (BSMPG) Summer Seminar. I haven’t missed this seminar since it first started several years ago, and I strongly believe it’s one of the best in the world. I was fortunate to have an opportunity to speak at it last year, alongside an awesome lineup featuring guys like Marco Cardinale, Fergus Connelly, Adriaan Louw, Val Nasedkin, Joel Jamieson, Bill Knowles, Rob Butler, Charlie Weingroff, Ben Peterson, and a number of other incredible speakers.

I think every year is the best year ever, and this year was no exception. The speakers were outstanding, but I always learn a lot from speaking with the attendees, as many are Head S&C coaches or Athletic Trainers at many of the top NCAA and professional programs in the country. Art Horne also organized a special “invite-only” Directors Meeting on Sunday that provided an open forum for discussing the state and future of performance training, especially within team/organization settings. Hopefully I’ll get around to typing up some thoughts I have in the near future.

It All Comes Unraveled
My Ultimate Hockey Training Insider’s Section now features a video database of over 850+ exercises that we have used or currently use with our athletes. At the risk of under-exaggerating, this takes up a lot of space.

And with the release of my new Ultimate Hockey Transformation program, which is hosted on the same server, I wanted to make sure that there were no delays in video loading/download times that resulted from server overload. Frankly, I’m inpatient, and I don’t think I’m the only one. So I’d rather put out the extra loot to minimize loading delays for my members/customers.

This was a great idea for about a week, at which point the new server crashed, all of my sites went down, and there were no backups. I tend to be pretty level headed during times of adversity, but the prospect of losing 5+ years of articles and needing to rebuild all of my sites from scratch pushed me about as close to the edge as I’d like to go! This about sums it up…

NOOOO KELLY CLARKSON!

Through some finagling, we were able to dig up a back-up from my old hosting plan and I spent most of Saturday getting everything brought back up to speed. There are still some glitches I’ve working through, but I didn’t lose everything so disaster averted! I appreciate your patience over the next couple of weeks as I get things figured out and updated. Please let me know if you notice anything not working as it should!

I haven’t had as much time to write recently as I’d like, but as you can tell, it’s been a busy month! I appreciate your continued support and am looking forward to getting some new articles out to you in the near future.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Off-Ice Training for Adult Hockey Players

As hockey continues to grow in popularity, so too does the number of adults that refuse to hang up the skates. It’s been very interesting to see how many adult players not only like to keep playing, but will reach out to me to see what they can be doing to help be in better “hockey shape” for their games.

As with younger players, some are interested in improving their performance. Others simply want to avoid nagging injuries or do enough to not be so sore after they play.

Naturally, those with full time jobs (and possibly kids) don’t usually have as much time or energy to dedicate to the training process.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a few simple strategies adult players could use to modify the programs within the Ultimate Hockey Transformation package to cater it to their specific needs:

1) Spend a week JUST doing the warm-up everyday

The warm-ups within Ultimate Hockey Transformation are comprehensive. They are meant to fully prepare your body to perform at your best. At first, they may seem a bit daunting and time consuming, but once you get into a routine they’re much quicker. This is one reason why spending a week just going through the foam rolling, mobility work, and dynamic warm-up will benefit you. It will let master the process so it only takes ~10 minutes instead of 20-30.

For some, this will also feel like a workout in itself. By doing it everyday for a week (or most days of the week for a couple weeks) you’ll build up a foundation of fitness for you to progress on from in the future.

Lastly, getting a lot of practice with these things will help you feel which exercises really cater to your specific needs. I realize you’re probably not going to go through a full warm-up before every adult league game, but mixing in a few of the most beneficial mobility exercises before you hop on the ice can go a long way in maintaining your flexibility over time and preparing you to play better on the ice. Ultimate Hockey Transformation Training Programs-Small

2) Start with the U-14 programs

Every adult is a little different, but as a general rule, I wouldn’t recommend adult players jumping into programs that have Olympic lifting variations and other complex movements. If you’ve been out of training for a while, the first step is to get back to mastering the basic movements. This is the same goal we have for our younger athletes. It’s important to get very good at the basics before progressing to more difficult exercises.

The programs at this age also have less of a time commitment, so you won’t feel like you’re falling behind if you can’t train 4 times per week.

As a result, the U-14 programs are a perfect starting place for most adults.

3) Cut back on the number of sets

Depending on the phase, sometimes an exercise may have anywhere from 2-5 sets. More sets not only means a longer day in the gym, it means more stress to the body. If you’re working all day, and trying to squeeze in a quick lift before running home to eat dinner with your family and then heading out to play a game, you may not have the time or the “stress reserve” to do the full program.

Shaving off a few sets so you’re only doing 2-3 sets of all the main exercises and 1-2 sets of all the supporting exercises is a great way to adjust the program to fit your needs better.

Get your training programs today>> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

4) Stick with the in-season programs

All of the in-season programs are designed to train 2 days per week with relatively few exercises, sets and reps. While our players continue to develop strength and power during this time, the reality is that the focus during the season is on maximizing on-ice performance so the total volume of training needs to be cut back a bit to account for the increase in on-ice work. For the reasons mentioned above, sticking to these programs (or at least starting here) will be a great option for most adult players.

5) Focus on the nutrition strategies recommended in the manual

When I talk to the players on our youth teams about their nutrition, I’ll tell them, “Some of you have terrible eating habits. The rest of you are even worse.” And we all laugh. The reality is, most adults aren’t much better.

There is some research that connects BCAAs (protein) to decreased soreness. I strongly believe dehydrated muscle tissue is more likely to tear (or “tweak) than hydrated tissue. Carrying around extra body fat isn’t good for anything.

Brian St. Pierre did an incredible job delivering a TON of easy to implement strategies to help you improve your nutrition, which ultimately will help you improve your body composition, perform better, and recover faster. This information, and the habits you develop following it, will benefit you and your family for the rest of your lives, on and off the ice!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Ultimate Hockey Transformation Q&A

With the release of my new Ultimate Hockey Transformation program this week, I’ve gotten a lot of questions that I wanted to address in today’s post. If you have a question that isn’t mentioned here, please post it in the comments section below!

Get your training programs today>> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

How long are the programs?

The programs for each age group are a little different. The U-14 off-season program is 12-weeks long, while the U-16, U-18, and Junior/College off-season programs are all 16-weeks. All of the in-season programs are 20-weeks, except the Junior/College one, which is 24.

What if I don’t know how to perform the exercises?

One of the best parts of Ultimate Hockey Transformation is that I have high quality videos demonstrating how to perform every exercise included in the program with perfect technique. If an exercise is new to you, you can simply pull up the specific video and see exactly how I want you to perform it. The manual also features a section on “Optimizing Movement”, which discusses common exercise flaws, including pictures of the most common mistakes, and the coaching cues I use with my athletes to make sure they’re doing everything with perfect technique. This is the closest thing to having me in the gym with you!

How do I find the videos I need?

Ultimate Hockey Transformation includes a Video Database reference sheet that lists all of the video links in alphabetical order so you can quickly find the ones you need. Better yet, all of the exercise names in the programs are hyperlinked to the video of the exercise. It couldn’t be any easier!

What if I don’t have the equipment needed to do the program?

The manual features an entire section on “Exercise Modifications” that tells you exactly what to do if you don’t have specific pieces of equipment.

Is there nutrition plan included in the system?

The Ultimate Hockey Transformation “Pro Package” features a brand-new nutrition manual from Brian St. Pierre that is AWESOME! It not only details exactly what you should be eating and when, it provides a ton of ways for you to individualize your nutrition based on your body type and goals, and strategies to maximize your recovery.

How long do I have to wait to get the program after I order?

The entire program is delivered digitally so you’ll have INSTANT access to all of the programs and supporting materials immediately after payment is processed!

The entire Ultimate Hockey Transformation package is currently being offered at an introductory rate. NOW is the perfect time to grab a quality program and start making the most of your off-season. Don’t miss out on a great opportunity to change the path of your career!

Get your training programs today>> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

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!