You Have an Opportunity…

Last week I came across a couple articles and a video on hockey development and hockey training that I thought were well done and wanted to share with you. Before we get to that, I wanted to ask a favor of you.

About a year ago, my friend Sarah Cahill first told me about a group in Boston known as Inner City Weightlifting. Sarah is an incredible strength coach, but also the most compassionate person I know. It did not surprise me at all that she would want to get involved with this type of effort. ICW is one of the most amazing organizations I’ve ever heard of.

InnerCity Weightlifting
Check out their mission statement:

“Our mission is to reduce violence and promote professional, personal and academic achievement among urban youth. We work with young people at the highest risk for violence in order to reduce youth violence by getting our students off the streets and into the gym, where they are empowered with the confidence and positive support needed to say no to violence and yes to opportunity.”

Lofty task, especially in the Boston areas they’re targeting. What doesn’t come through in the mission statement is the actual implementation. The founders, Jon and Josh Feinman, would literally drive into the most dangerous areas to pick up kids that couldn’t find a way to get there themselves. They’re pulling kids out of gang-driven, futureless areas, giving them a same place to spend time, teaching positive mental skills and life habits (while training) and providing kids with an opportunity to become strength coaches by sponsoring certifications and education opportunities for them. They’re also, quite impressively, breaking down social barriers, as the urban youth turned S&C coaches have opportunities to train clients from all walks of life (earning an income), but notably executives from Microsoft. Yes, former (and what would be future) gang members, training Microsoft execs.

 

Inner City Weightlifting

Jon shown here with an ICW disciple.

Check out the feature ESPN did on ICW: ESPN Feature on ICW

The weekend I filmed my Optimizing Movement DVDs in New Hampshire, I had an opportunity to stop by UMass Lowell on my drive home and sit in on a few presentations that Kevin Carr, Brendon Rearick, Ana Tocco, and Henry Lau (I’m sure amongst others) helped organize. Jon and Josh, along with Reggie Talbert (former gang member turned GM and Coach at ICW) and Joe Sierra (an ICW Coach and now Assistant Manager) had an opportunity to introduce themselves and tell us about their story. Honestly, I was fighting back tears through their entire talk, unsuccessfully (one dropped), which ultimately ended a 7.5 year no-cry streak that was reset shortly after watching The Notebook.

mcadams
There’s nothing to be embarrassed about here…
So…where do you fit in? If you’ve been reading my site for a while, you know that I almost never ask for favors. In fact, I think the single other time I did make a request, it was to help sponsor my dad who was doing his first 100-mile bike ride to raise money for Multiple Sclerosis. Likewise, this request has nothing to do with me, but is an opportunity to support an amazing cause that I believe in. My friend Anthony Renna, after hearing about ICW’s story, decided to dedicate an entire Strength Coach Podcast to help spread the word about their cause. He also went a step further and had co-branded (SC Podcast and ICW) t-shirts made. THIS is where you come in. The t-shirts are available for purchase here: Limited Edition ICW Fundraiser T-Shirt. They’re only $25 and all of the proceeds go to ICW. I just bought 6 for myself and coworkers at Endeavor. If they sell 500 shirts, they raise over $8,000 for ICW! That would be an amazing contribution!

Strength Coach Podcast Inner City Weightlifting Shirts

SC Podcast Logo on the Front; ICW on the back.

However, if each of you reading this buys ONE, WE can single-handedly raise over $24,000! 

$25 gets you a sweet t-shirt, and helps support an unbelievable cause, providing opportunities for inner city kids to not only get access to a safer environment, but to change the course of their future permanently.

Even better, if you buy a shirt and email me the receipt, I’ll hook you up with a FREE copy of Ultimate Hockey Training AND if you’re local to the Mid-Atlantic area and can make the trip to see me at Endeavor Sports Performance in Pitman, NJ, I’ll assess you (or your kid) and write a 1-month training program for you for absolutely FREE!

If you aren’t local to Endeavor, but would like some feedback on your exercise technique, just shoot video of yourself performing the exercises you want feedback with and send them to me (or post them on youtube and send me the links) and I’ll provide feedback and a few coaching cues to help make sure you’re getting the most out of your lifts. This is a GREAT deal! Basically you get an awesome t-shirt, a great hockey training resource, and 30-days of coaching for $25!

This is a cause that means a lot to me, and if we team up together we can have a HUGE impact on an incredible organization and the kids surrounding one of the greatest hockey cities in the world. Click the link below to grab your shirt today and then forward me the receipt (kn@kevinneeld.com)!

Grab your shirt here >> Limited Edition ICW Fundraiser T-Shirt

Tomorrow I’ll be back with a few great hockey development resources that you’ll want to see!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Ultimate Hockey Training

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Interview with Examine.com Founder Sol Orwell

With the release of the new The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide, I was fortunate to grab Sol Orwell, one of the founding members of Examine.com to do a quick interview. If you missed the posts from the last two days, you can check them out here:

  1. The Best Supplement Resource Ever
  2. The Truth About BCAAs: Do you really need them?

Supplement Goals Reference Guide

Save $10 on the best supplement resource ever
>> The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide <<

KN: Thanks for taking the time to do this Sol. I’m sure it’s nice to take a break from sifting through new research! For those that aren’t familiar with your work, can you give a quick rundown on your background?

Thank you Kevin!

My background is a bit odd. I call myself the immigrant dream – I came to Canada for high school, and immediately started to dabble with websites. I went to university with a full scholarship, but lost it within the first semester – I was too busy building up my business. I retired a few years after graduating – money wasn’t motivation to me, and I preferred to travel, go on epic walks with my dog, and so forth.

Still, I was pretty unhealthy, and as I got more fit, I wrote down what was working and what wasn’t. Asking a lot of questions, I got connected to Kurtis Frank, who eventually became the co-founder for Examine.com. Since then, he does the primary research, and I make sure everything remains humming along. We also have an awesome editorial team of smart people involved now

KN: Good stuff. One of the oldest arguments out there is that you don’t need supplements if you eat properly. What are your thoughts on this?

It’s both true and untrue.

I will agree that for areas like protein and multivitamins, they can be a waste. Protein powder is a supplement (and a tasty one at that), and is just *one* way to get protein. It isn’t the only way.

At the same time, the reality is that supplementation should be focused on targeted areas, not something to take in general. So when you get to supplements like berberine (great for blood sugar control), curcumin (great for inflammation), cissus (great for joint pain) – well, you just don’t get them via diet.

Lastly, you also enter environmental factors. If you don’t eat enough fish, you should supplement fish oil. If you don’t get enough direct sunlight, you should supplement vitamin D.

Supplementation can be quite potent, it’s just unfortunate that supplement companies and their marketing has made so many people wary.

KN: I always come back to the idea that being able to get things through diet/lifestyle and actually getting them are rarely synonymous with the athletes and clients we see, which makes the argument a bit of a moot point anyway! Your last point is a great segway to my next question: With all the outrageous claims that some companies make, what can people do to make sure their supplements are safe AND effective?

Whew – it’s tough.

Education is the way to go. You need to arm yourself with knowledge on what has been proven to work, what has been proven to be useless, and even what may work (there are a lot of promising supplements that we need do conduct more research on).

Honestly, and this will sound very self-serving, but our site – Examine.com – is the way to go. We’ve been around for 2.5+ years. We are independent and have no affiliation with any supplement company. We are neutral, with an editorial team comprised of a medical doctor, an MBA/MPH/PhD(c), a PhD, and a pharmD. It gives us a base of both theoretical and practical knowledge on what works, and what doesn’t.

KN: You recently put together the “Supplement Goals Reference Guide”, which is hands down the most comprehensive resource on supplements I’ve ever seen. Can you give our readers an inside look at what’s in the guide and how it can help them?

Thanks.

The S-G Reference (as we call it) is the summation of our 2.5+ years of research. We looked at 2300+ human studies (a common trick supplement companies do is to use rat studies or human petri-dish studies and make bold claims from them) to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Basically, you look up any supplement (we have over 300), and we will tell what the research says it does or doesn’t do. For example, if you looked up berberine, you would see it has a notable effect in decreasing your total cholesterol, and a very strong reduction in blood sugar.

What makes the S-G Reference so powerful is that it lets you look up over 200+ different health goals to figure out which supplements you should take, and which you may want to avoid. This goes back to my earlier point that supplementation should be targeted, and not just taken because it “may” be healthy. So for example, if you suffer from nausea, you can look it up and find that ginger actually helps decrease it!

That’s our entire point here – figure out what your health goals are, and find out which supplements will help or hinder you towards those goals.

KN: Wow, great stuff Sol. There aren’t many days that have gone by since I first opened my copy that I haven’t referred back to it at least once. It’s an unbelievable (I literally cannot believe you guys were able to put this together) resource. I know I’m grateful you put it together! Thanks again for taking the time to share some insight into Examine.com and the S-G Reference. We’ll talk soon!

Join over 5,000 other people and grab your copy (with FREE lifetime updates!) here
>> The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide <<

 

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

P.S. Don’t forget the discounted price only lasts until noon (EST) today (Friday) so don’t drag your feet! Grab your copy now! The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide

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“…one of the best DVDs I’ve ever watched”
“A must for anyone interested in coaching and performance!”

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The Truth About BCAAs: Do you really need them?

As you may have noticed from yesterday’s post (See: The Best Supplement Resource Ever), I’m pretty excited about the new Supplement-Goals Reference Guide from the guys at Examine.com.

Supplement Goals Reference Guide

Save $10 on the best supplement resource ever
>> The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide <<

Today the Examine.com team put together a quick fact sheet on a supplement that almost every athlete and lifter has taken at some point. This is a great example of how utilizing the research to provide simple guidelines that you can then interpret to decide if the supplement is worth your money. Enjoy!

What are BCAAs?

A BCAA is a branched chain amino acid. There are three amino acids with branched chains: leucine, isoleucine, and valine. Leucine positively and potently influences muscle protein synthesis while isoleucine increases glucose uptake into the muscle cells.

The three BCAAs earned their fame by promoting muscle growth and speeding up recovery when taken orally. They have been a consistent presence on the supplement market, sold alongside protein supplements and other amino acids like glutamine.

What do they do?

Studies have shown that BCAAs do work. These studies involve two groups of participants, one given BCAAs and the other a placebo. Short term biomarkers of muscle growth are noted, and subjects are asked to rate their perceived fatigue and soreness over the next few days.

These studies have found evidence that muscle protein synthesis is higher in the presence of BCAAs in the body, compared to a placebo. Most subjects also report less muscle soreness the day after exercise.

There have been studies to assess the ability of BCAAs to improve endurance, but endurance-enhancing effects tend to occur in athletes under a lot of cognitive stress. Anti-fatigue effects are more likely due to cognitive improvement, rather than muscle metabolism. BCAAs may be useful from an endurance standpoint in a sports setting, like a game of soccer, where athletes requires hand-eye coordination. Anti-fatigue effects are unlikely to manifest in a gym setting.

Should I take BCAAs?

Not everyone needs to take BCAAs. Many BCAA studies were conducted on fasted individuals, meaning participants arrived at the lab with no breakfast, ready to work out. Tests on individuals in fed states produced lacklustre benefits in comparison with fasted groups, suggesting that the BCAAs provided in normal dietary protein are sufficient to improve muscle protein synthesis and reduce soreness.

Eating or supplementing protein can eliminate the benefits of BCAA supplementation, since dietary and supplemental protein are good sources of BCAAs.

Practical take-aways

  1. BCAAs are important amino acids and should be present in a diet.
  2. When tested in fasted states or in states with a low BCAA intake, BCAAs promote muscle protein synthesis and aid in recovery.
  3. The majority of studies that show the benefits of BCAAs are done on fasted individuals.
  4. Dietary protein contains BCAAs.
  5. BCAAs have a role to play in fasted training or during periods of time that protein cannot be consumed.
  6. BCAA supplementation is likely unnecessary in trainees that are able to consume protein during the time supplementation would normally occur.

Do I need BCAAs?

You may want to consider BCAA supplementation if you train in a fasted state, or if eating protein too close to a workout causes stomach irritation, and if you are unlikely to eat immediately after your workout.

Join over 5,000 other people and grab your copy here
>> The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide <<

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

P.S. Don’t forget you can get your hands on this incredible resource for only $29, but only until tomorrow (Friday) at noon! The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide

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“…one of the best DVDs I’ve ever watched”
“A must for anyone interested in coaching and performance!”

Optimizing Movement DVD Package

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The Best Supplement Resource Ever

One of the questions I get the most is “What supplement should I take for…*INSERT TRAINING GOAL HERE*?” As a preface, and in the interest of full disclosure, I’m a supplement guy. I think the right supplements, if used properly, can have a profound impact on health and performance. In other words, they can help you achieve your training goals faster or to a greater extent, and often times can be used to help provide some extra fuel/resources for adaptation, which becomes increasingly necessary as your training volume increases. That said, I hate getting these questions for three major reasons:

  1. There are SO many supplement companies out there that it’s difficult to keep track of everything.
  2. The supplement industry is almost entirely unregulated, meaning companies can make whatever outrageous claims they want AND they don’t even need to put in the bottle what the label says is on the bottle (this is a horrifying fact).
  3. Most of the people asking this question are exceptionally far from needing advanced supplement protocols to achieve their goals

Gumby

“Hey, uhh, what’s the best way to put on muscle mass? I’ve tried EVERYTHING and I’ve only gained a pound.”
This guy needs a barbell and red meat diet, not nitric oxide supplements.

It’s for these reasons that I was so excited to grab a copy of Examine.com’s new The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide a few months back. Sol Orwell, one of the creators, said to me when I first got it:

“I can promise you, it’s nothing you’ve ever seen before.”

And man was he right! The guide is basically the most comprehensive research analysis, ever, on every major supplement. The neat thing is that it’s also divided by training/health goals. In other words, if you wanted to read about beta-alanine for anaerobic conditioning, you could just open up the PDF and click the link for “Beta-Alanine” to see the proposed benefits and level of evidence for each benefit or you could click, for example, the link to Anaerobic Running Capacity and see which supplements help with that and how strong the evidence is for each. This is a neat way to break down the information because you may end up doing a search for a supplement for a specific health or performance goal and actually find out that there are a number of others that are actually better.

Supplement Goals Reference Guide

The most informative, honest, unbiased look at supplementation, ever.

In addition to being the most comprehensive conglomerate of supplement research ever, by far, one of the things I love the most about this resource is that it’s completely unbiased. Examine.com doesn’t sell supplements; they aren’t marketing their own products. They’re not marketing any products really. The guide simply provides REAL evidence as to what works and what doesn’t, so YOU can then make informed choices about what to buy. It’s also incredibly simple to use as a reference anytime something new comes to the market, AND (maybe the best part), if you grab a copy now they’ll hook you up with LIFETIME updates for FREE! As more research is published and they update the resource, you’ll get an updated version for absolutely free. Can’t beat that deal! And from today at noon to Friday at midnight (EST), they’re running a special sale to celebrate surpassing the 5,000 sale mark and the addition of a medical doctor, pharmaceutical doctor, and two PhDs to their editorial team!

Save $10 on the best supplement resource ever
>> The Supplement-Goals Reference Guide <<

Tomorrow I’ll be back with a great article discussing the potential benefits (or lack thereof) of a supplement that almost EVERYONE that trains is familiar with or has taken!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

Please enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Athletic Development and Hockey Training Newsletter!

Get Optimizing Movement Now!

“…one of the best DVDs I’ve ever watched”
“A must for anyone interested in coaching and performance!”

Optimizing Movement DVD Package

Click here for more information >> Optimizing Movement

Training Stuff You Should Read

Last week was a busy week as I had a fairly full schedule of manual therapy clients on top of my coaching responsibilities. It’s been a fun couple of weeks as I’ve had a few pro baseball pitchers and a former (and possibly future, depending on whether or not he’s ready to hang up the shoes and grab a whistle full time) pro basketball player come in for assessments and start training.

I’ve been studying up on baseball

While I’m okay with being labeled a “hockey guy”, the reality is that as a coach, if you understand the foundations of human movement and physiology, and the movement patterns, energy system proportions and injury patterns of a sport, you can design a great training program. I may not be able to throw 90 mph (…or even 60), and my little carny hands can barely palm a mini basketball, but neither of those things are any indication of an ability to design and implement programs to help improve performance in baseball and basketball athletes. This is actually a nice segway into today’s first “Stuff You Should Read”

Mini Basketball Net

This, I could handle. (Image from: dazadi.com)

Training Stuff You Should Read

1) Internet Hockey Training Experts from me

This is a throwback from a couple years ago that I think is just as relevant today as ever. Before you sign up to train with someone based solely on the fact that they competed at a high level, read this.

2) Improving Core and Lumbopelvic Control with the Slideboard Hamstring Curl by Matt Siniscalchi

Matt does a great job connecting a common posture that athletes present with to how this posture biases them toward a predictable exercise technique flaw. Despite this sounding a little “technical”, the power in this article is that Matt is approaching the issue from a coach’s perspective on exercise performance. He demonstrates “wrong” and “right” and then provides some things to look for and coaching cues to help you get there. I’ve been so impressed with Matt’s coaching over the last year that I recently wrote him a testimonial for his website, while I was helping him make a few tweaks to it. And because I have his password, I maaaaay have added something else. Check out Matt’s site here: Matt Siniscalchi

3) Functional Movement Screen and Mixed Martial Arts by Patrick Ward

This is a summary of a recently published study evaluating an FMS-based corrective approach in MMA athletes. Patrick does a great job summarizing the article and identifying the power in using the FMS, a system that is still surrounded by misunderstandings.

4) Does Overtraining Exist? by Patrick Ward

In this article, Patrick shares an email exchange he had with someone battling overtraining symptoms. He moves on to describe many of the physiological mechanisms underlying and affected by overtraining. I really liked this piece because it provides clear explanations on the different types of overtraining, and I know Patrick is very well read in this area. This is a topic that has always been important, but especially now as competition schedules in youth sports have gotten completely out of control and people seem to be clinging to nonsensical volume-based workouts with the sole intent of sweating more and working harder. There are times to push and times to back off and knowing when to do which can have a HUGE impact on athletic performance and adaptation.

5) 11-Day NBA Warning: Inside Roy Hibbert’s Offseason Training by Brett Koremenos

This is an article about NBA star Roy Hibbert’s off-season training with Mike Robertson this past Summer. I’ve followed Mike’s work for the last 7-8 years, and have benefited greatly from his products and articles. I spent the better part of my Friday morning reading through the articles he emailed out in his newsletter, which included this one. There are a few things I like about this article: The poetic description of lifting weights, the fact that a star professional athlete is working hard to improve his game despite being at the top, and the focus on creating a large, solid foundation of quality movement and stability before progressing to a larger focus on more traditional training goals (e.g. speed, power, etc.).

6) Can You Guarantee Improved Performance by Mike Robertson

This is another great piece from Mike that outlines the three foundational pillars of developing improved athletic performance. As I mentioned above, Mike does a good job of explaining the importance of developing a solid foundation of certain qualities to improve athletic performance and how each of the three pillars will influence sport performance. I especially liked the discussion on conditioning as it pertains to an improved ability to log quality practice within the sport.

7) Quick Thoughts on Barefoot Training by Charlie Weingroff

Several years ago I thought I had a pretty good understanding of this topic. Get people in shoes that move in multiple planes (e.g. Nike Frees). Try to decipher whether a “flat foot” is a functionally flat foot or a structurally flat foot. Teach people to create an arch with barefoot strength training movements. That seemed pretty straight forward to me. Then the Postural Restoration Institute came along and had a completely different spin on footwear, largely condemning the Nike Frees I had recommended so much in the past. While I don’t like all of the shoes on the PRI approved shoe list for athletic purposes, I also understand why they’re making the recommendations they do and can see the limitations in a lot of other shoes within that frame. Charlie falls into the “he talks, I listen” category for me. In this article, he highlights some of the places he feels people would benefit from training barefoot, some of the places they’d probably be best to have shoes on, and the grayer areas.

Lastly, if you missed the articles I posted last week, you can check them out below. These were among the most “shared” articles of any I’ve ever written as the topics seemed to garner interest from PTs, DCs, Strength Coaches, and yoga instructors alike:

  1. Chest Breathing vs. Belly Breathing
  2. 5 Ways Breathing Affects Sport Performance
  3. Philadelphia Union Fitness Coach Kevin Miller on Optimizing Movement

That’s a wrap for today. If you’ve come across any great articles in the last couple of weeks, please post them in the comments section!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

Please enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Athletic Development and Hockey Training Newsletter!

Get Optimizing Movement Now!

“…one of the best DVDs I’ve ever watched”
“A must for anyone interested in coaching and performance!”

Optimizing Movement DVD Package

Click here for more information >> Optimizing Movement

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