Off-Ice Testing

In addition to my current responsibilities at Endeavor, I recently started as the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach and Manual Therapist for the Philadelphia Flyers Junior A team, a Junior A team that formed locally as part of the newly formed United States Premier Hockey League (USPHL). This is a really fun and exciting opportunity for me. Those of you that know me well know that, despite loving my job, I miss being in a team setting. There’s something about the long grind of a season, and working together to pursue a common goal that really drives me. Additionally, because the team is brand new and I know the Head Coach so well, I have a lot of freedom that probably isn’t common for S&C Coaches that are new to a team. Having the ability to communicate openly and effectively with a coach can have a profound impact on team performance, as it creates a more cohesive program, syncing off- and on-ice plans, sending consistent messages to players, training/coaching a player based on individual weaknesses as relayed by the coach, etc.

A few weeks ago, the team opened with camp and we dove right into testing. For the reasons I mentioned above, I had the ability to design the entire testing process exactly as I wanted. The three primary considerations here are: 1) Test selection; 2) Scheduling the testing sessions to get the information I wanted; and 3) Organizing the testing logistically to ensure it’s a smooth process. Today’s post outlines exactly how we conducted the testing process. My hope is that this will stimulate some discussion with those of you that work in team settings and either utilize different tests or don’t test at all. Please post your thoughts in the comments section below!

Test Selection
This process will depend heavily on the philosophy of the strength and conditioning coach. I look at it from two perspectives:

What information do I want from an tracking/analysis perspective?
What information do I want from a programming perspective?

In this case, I wanted to get an indication of where each player stood in terms of joint neutrality and mobility. For the players that trained with us all off-season, this is a standard part of the “retest” process that allows us to track how much players improved. In the rare case that they didn’t, it allows us to start asking different questions, place a greater emphasis on manual therapy work, or refer them out to someone with different skill sets. For new players, it gives us a baseline of where they are so we can track their changes over time, and also serves as an identifier of any “red flags” that may require immediate attention.

In terms of performance, my goal was to collect information relevant to our future programming, while simultaneously collecting enough information to physiologically profile the athletes. In simple terms, I want to be able to pick out the players that fall on either extreme end of the continuum from the high power, poor endurance players to the high endurance, poor power players. This gives me information to discuss goals with the player, discuss how these things may be influencing on-ice limitations in the coaches eye, as well as to drive any individualization from a programming or nutrition standpoint.

Our testing battery included:

Neutrality/Mobility
1. 3-Site Body Fat Analysis
2. PRI Assessments of Neutrality/Ligamentous Integrity: Extension Drop Test, Adduction Drop Test, Passive Abduction Lift Test, Shoulder Internal Rotation, Shoulder Flexion, and Horizontal Shoulder Abduction
3. FMS Assessments of Mobility: Active Straight Leg Raise, Shoulder Mobility, Ankle Mobility (not formally part of the FMS-7), and Cervical Spine Screens I took from the SFMA
4. Quadruped Rock
5. Seated Hip Internal and External Rotation
Performance
1. Vertical Jump
2. Lateral Bound
3. Reverse Lunge (Back Squat Grip) 5-RM
4. Bench Press 3-RM
5. Chin-Up Rep Max
6. 12 x 50-Yard Shuttles on 30s
  1. Average Heart Rate
  2. Maximum Heart Rate
  3. 60s Heart Rate Recovery

Scheduling the Tests
My major concern with the test scheduling was ensuring that I’d get accurate data. If the information collected isn’t accurate, it’s impossible to interpret. For example, if you want to know a player’s maximum vertical jump height, it’s unlikely you’ll get valid information if you assess this after they skate. Similarly, it wouldn’t be ideal to perform a lower body strength test before a lower body power exercise, as fatigue from lower body strength testing is more likely to interfere with a single-effort power test than vice versa. This is not only important from a within testing day perspective, but also from day to day, as soreness will inevitably effect testing performance as well.

For this reason, we set up the schedule as follows:

Day 1: AM: Body Comp, Neutrality, Mobility Testing; PM: Practice
Day 2: AM: Power, Conditioning Testing; PM: Practice
Day 3: AM: Strength Testing; PM: Practice
Day 4: AM: Practice; PM: Training Session
Day 5: AM: Practice; PM: Training Session
Day 6: AM: Practice; PM: Training Session
Day 7: PM: Scrimmage

This set-up allowed us to get testing numbers from the kids while they were fresh. The practices during the first three days were light so the players had plenty of gas in the tank for off-ice testing. Naturally, it doesn’t matter if the players are off-ice phenoms if their on-ice skills aren’t refined/prepared. The extra skill work early in the week, followed by having skates before training sessions, and training sessions that were more oriented toward teaching fundamental movement patterns we’ll be using a lot this season allowed a smooth transition from a testing to on-ice preparation focus.

Logistics
Some testing protocols were easier to organize than others, but the general layout looked like this:

Day 1
This was the most difficult one to handle, as there were lots of kids and lots of tests. We split the team into two groups, each blocked for an hour. When the players arrived, they would come to me for body fat, Matt Siniscalchi for a couple of the FMS tests, Matt Sees for a couple of the FMS tests, and then back to me for the remaining tests (after I had finished everyone’s body fat). In hindsight, this ran very smoothly, but we could have easily done it with just two coaches.

Day 2
The entire team came in at once. After we warmed up together, half the team went to do the Vertical Jump, the other half went to Lateral Bound. When everyone was finished testing, we swapped. This took about 15-20 minutes total. We then divided the group into 4’s to do the shuttle test. Each group took about 7 minutes so the last group had a pretty significant wait. We told guys to start rewarming up with some basic locomotion exercises when the group before them hit the half way mark, so no one was cold going into the test. While I wasn’t thrilled with having guys wait so long, I think it was good to have the entire team there to support their teammates, as this is a brutal test. Like the previous (and next) day, we had a 2-hour block scheduled to get through everything, but we ended up finishing pretty early.

Day 3
This was the easiest day to handle logistically. The team was again divided into two groups with an hour block dedicated to teach. Each group would come in, foam roll, go through a group dynamic warm-up, and then do the reverse lunge, bench press, and chin-up tests. The biggest hurdle here is that many of the players that hadn’t trained at our facility had never done a reverse lunge, so there was a bit of a learning curve. With the new guys, we emphasized that it was more about learning the movement and getting an estimation of where they were at so we could use those loads for programming more than setting a world record. There were some ugly reps throughout the morning, but overall everyone did a great job. Most kids are more familiar with bench pressing so that test ran smoothly and the chin-up test is always quick and easy because it’s only one set.

From a performance standpoint, I think this process is probably very familiar to most of the strength and conditioning coaches out there, at least those working in college or professional settings. What may be more novel is all of the neutrality/mobility testing we do, as I’ve gotten a lot of questions from people over the last year about how to integrate this information into a group or team setting, and how it’s used to alter programming. These are the exact topics I covered in my new DVD Optimizing Movement, which has been getting awesome feedback from the people that have checked it out.

“Kevin’s passion and knowledge shine through in this DVD set. He is able to teach so that a strength coach/personal trainer of any level will understand, leaving you with a hunger to learn more and an excitement to move on to the next slide. This industry is filled with information on maximizing movement quality but Kevin’s Optimizing Movement DVD is my go to. He starts from the ground up discussing the importance of setting a sound foundation for a client, using assessments to identify limitations they may have and corrective exercise to build a program fit to the individual’s needs. I refer back to the DVDs often and learn something new each time. All strength coaches and trainers will benefit from this awesome resource!”

Caitlin Vassello BS, CSCS
Strength and Conditioning Coach
Tier 4 Coach at Equinox

If you work in a group/team setting, and want to learn more about how to assess your clients/athletes and make their program and your coaching cues more individualized, Optimizing Movement will be right up your ally!

In the next two posts, I’ll discuss how I’m communicating testing results to the players and to the coach, and how I’m using testing results to drive programming decisions. Stay tuned, and as I mentioned before, please post your comments below!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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NHL Combine Training Program

Over the Summer I had an opportunity to train a junior player for the NHL combine. While I recognize that combine prep can be big business, I’ve steered clear of doing stuff like this in the past because I think training to prepare specifically for a testing battery can often be conflicting with training to prepare for the season. In this case, the player was one that was friends with many of the kids we trained already and had a very narrow window between finishing his junior program and attending the NHL Combine, after which he reported immediately to college to train for the remainder of the off-season. I wish I had the player for the full Summer, but it was fun preparing him for the combine before he left for college.

As with all of our athletes, we started this player off with an assessment and an overall “needs analysis”. We used our mobility screening to implement an individualized corrective program (as I discuss in detail in Optimizing Movement). From a performance standpoint, there were a few things to consider. The combine is an opportunity for programs to get an understanding of your physiological makeup, as well as your psychological makeup. To address the latter point, it was important for the player to recognize that part of what coaches are looking for is how you respond when things start to suck. There are a few tests in the combine (notably the VO2Max test and the Wingate) that aren’t very pleasant to go through; it’s important for players to dig deep and grind through these tests to leave a positive impression regarding their work ethic and resolve. We talked about this quite a bit, while he was training with us.

In terms of physiological profiles, what is viewed as advantageous (or disadvantageous) may depend a bit on the position of the player. In this case, the player was a goalie, so explosive power is an extremely important quality. I don’t always think it’s appropriate to judge players based on off-ice tests, but if I see a goalie with less than ~24″ vertical jump, I think they’re under powered and they better be EXCEPTIONAL in terms of their positioning and anticipation if they want to compete at higher levels. There are certainly some goalies that fit this criteria, but I’d much rather have an overpowered goalie than an underpowered one. Bottom line is the position requires a significant amount of explosive movement, and it’s important that goalies possess this quality.

In this case, the player came in and jumped 25.5″ with a counter movement, a number that isn’t remarkable in a positive or negative way. Being that the goal of him training with us was to help him stand out in this process in relevant areas, one of our major short-term targets was to improve this number as much as possible. Another major goal was to improve the athlete’s familiarity with the tests. This comes back to the idea I alluded to earlier, that test preparation and season preparation aren’t always the same thing. With our time frame, the more the athlete practiced the tests, the better prepared he’d be for combine.

Another major consideration when designing any training program is how much time the player has to train. In this case, we only had 3 weeks. This is extremely important, because it drives what can be emphasized with a realistic expectation of adaptation. If a player doesn’t possess a lot of strength, and you only have three weeks to make a difference, training methods involving higher rep sets with short rest periods designed to increase muscular size are unlikely to create a significant adaptation within that time window. In contrast, low rep, high intensity sets will have a much more profound influence given that the adaptations are primarily neural. In other words, from a speed/power/strength perspective, the training process in this time frame is much more about maximizing the individual’s current capacity than it is about creating a larger foundation from which to develop higher peak levels of these qualities.

In the end, the program consisted of:

Individualized corrective work
Contrast training to improve maximum strength and maximum power
Integrating each physical test into the program on a weekly basis (sometimes more)
High intensity work at a low volume to minimize fatigue accumulation and keep the quality and frequency of training high.
So-called “assistance work” to help keep the program balanced

The player trained 5 days per week for 3 weeks. The day of the combine, I got a text message that he tied for the combine lead in vertical jump at 28.5″, 3″ up from where we initially tested him 3 weeks prior. We actually tested him at 29.5″ at our facility the last day before he left (a discrepancy that could be explained by a number of factors, including a different warm-up process, nerves, etc.). All of his other numbers improved similarly, and in the end the player was rewarded for all of his hard work with a 3rd round selection (I was told this was ~2 rounds earlier than hew as projected).

Aside from being really proud of the work he put in, and happy that it paid off for him, I think this process helps shed light on the program design process in general. Every training program should be designed in consideration to the answers of these questions:

What is the athlete preparing for?
Who is the athlete (what is their training background and injury history, how do they move and what limits more optimal movement, and what are their current strengths and weaknesses)?
How much time do they have to train, both in terms of the total duration of their program, and how much time they can dedicate each week, day, etc.?

For Ultimate Hockey Training Insiders, I added the NHL Combine Prep program last week so you can see exactly what we did. If you’re not currently an Insider and are interested in joining, check out this link for more information: Ultimate Hockey Training

Ultimate Hockey Training-Membership Card Insider Small

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Youth Hockey Training: The Truth About Resistance Training

Every year I come across parents that are concerned about their kids lifting weights. Typically the kids are 13-14 years old or younger, and the parents (or in some cases the coaches) are under the impression that lifting weights at this age is inappropriate. Because this is such a pervasive feeling, I want to dive into this topic and point out some of the lesser discussed ideas that are pertinent in deciding whether weight training is appropriate for younger kids.

First off, let’s rename “weight training” to what it really is “resistance training.” Weights are simply one form of resistance, of which there are plenty, and any discussion on weight training would be misguided without mentioning that there are other ways to load the body to add resistance. This distinction will be important moving forward.

The biggest concern most parents have about resistance training for young athletes, rightfully so, is whether it is safe or not. You, like me, have probably heard that no one should lift weights until they’re at least 13 years old. This idea has two origins:

A concern about unclosed growth plates being at greater risk for fracture
Pre-pubescent kids have not hit the stage of hormonal development where they’re able to put on substantial amounts of muscle mass from resistance training.

To address the first issue, the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) put out a position statement years ago stating that resistance training is safe for kids as young as 6. Even at 6, the concern is mostly social and psychological, not physical. The concern that kids will fracture growth plates and stunt their growth is entirely unfounded (e.g. to my knowledge, less than 2 documented cases in the history of documented evidence). There are more reports of kids being rushed to the hospital from complications related to consuming energy drinks in the last year than there are of fractured growth plates EVER. In other words, fractured growth plates and stunted growth is not a legitimate concern. Simply, it does not happen.

It’s also important to remember that sometimes resistance training can be a way to DELOAD body weight. For example, performing a push-up requires pushing ~75% of an individual’s body weight. For a 100lb kid, this is ~75 lbs. While many parents are fearful of lifting weights, they’re in full support of body weight exercises such as push-ups, chin-ups, lunges, etc. The reality is that most kids aren’t strong enough to do very many QUALITY push-ups with good technique, and performing a dumbbell chest press (a bench press movement with dumbbells) with 2 x 15lb dumbbells can be an effective tool in improving the kid’s upper body strength in this pattern, along with a number of other benefits. External load often gets mistaken for internal load, which leads to underestimating how stressful certain body weight activities really are. As another example, the stress going through the kids’ bodies when they sprint full speed on the ice with ~10+ lbs of equipment on and stop sharply to change direction are higher than those resulting from doing lunges holding light dumbbells. Furthermore, research documenting injury rates from different sports shows that injury rates are DRASTICALLY higher in common youth sports like soccer, hockey, football, etc. than they are in weightlifting. In other words, in addition to growth plate fractures and stunted growth not being a serious concern, resistance training is actually incredibly safe when performed with proper progression and coaching.

If you look at Long Term Athletic Development models, you’ll see that kids around 12 years old are in a “sensitive period” for the development of speed and conditioning. Simply, this means that they can improve in all athletic areas (speed, power, strength, balance/coordination, movement efficiency, conditioning, etc.), but speed and conditioning are the qualities that will experience accelerated rates of improvement. Speed comes down to putting force into the ice (or ground) quickly. High force output and explosive movements rely heavily on “high threshold” motor units or “fast twitch muscle fibers”. One method of training these units/fibers is through resistance training. If you look back up at the graph above, you’ll notice that while hormonal development is still low at this age group, neural development is actually quite high. This means that the nervous system, which governs all qualities of movement ranging from the athlete’s movement patterns in general through the athlete’s ability to active their musculature to the greatest extent possible, is primed for “learning” and development at this age. If you can increase the athlete’s ability to produce force, they get faster. That is one reason why resistance training is appropriate for athletes at this level; it can capitalize on a huge open window of neural development to help teach kids how to move with better alignment/body awareness AND to teach them to active their musculature to a greater extent, resulting in increases in strength, power, and speed.

Sensitive Periods During Development, taken from USA Hockey’s ADM

From a conditioning perspective, adding load to someone that is proficient in a movement increases the heart rate response to that exercise. This is fairly intuitive. If you walk 50 yards, it’s not very taxing. If you walk 50 yards holding 60 lb dumbbells, your heart rate goes much higher. In other words, while people view “weight lifting” strictly in terms of improving muscle size (unlikely at 12) and muscle strength (possible to an extent), the reality is that there is much more to it. Resistance training at this age can be used as an effective tool to create a cardiovascular response. This is one reason why we pair lower and upper body exercises; it necessitates blood flow/circulation to the entire body.

With this understood, the question of how much resistance is appropriate comes to mind. For example, is it appropriate for a 12 year old to do an exercise like lunges with 30 lb dumbbells? If an athlete can do body weight lunges perfectly, giving them 10 lb dumbbells increases the load, requires more of a muscular force output, and generates higher heart rates. If he/she does that perfectly and easily, continuing to do reps with 10s won’t generate any adaptation; essentially it’s a waste of time. This is one of the fundamental concepts of training; you need to have a progressive overload to continue to adapt. Continuing to increase loads is appropriate as long as the athlete is able to maintain technical proficiency (e.g. proper form).

There are other methods of developing speed and endurance. I think most people would prefer to see their kids running endless sprints and jogging laps around the rink. While there may be some merit to this approach, the reality is that we’re seeing drastically more cases of overuse injuries in youth sports, largely as a result of year round competition; as a sport society we’ve replaced preparation with more competition. The fact that 10-14 year olds are complaining of groin and hip flexor pain is completely ridiculous. That said, the more repetitive stress you put through this musculature OFF the ice, in addition to what they’re inevitably doing ON the ice, the further you push them toward an overuse state. We use a combination of plyometric exercises, full body training (with external load if appropriate), core exercises, and a variety of other methods to help the kids develop their speed and conditioning, while simultaneously minimizing their risk of these overuse injuries.

Very few training decisions can come down to black and white questions like “Is lifting good for youth athletes?” There are too many factors that play into an educated response. I think a lot of the age-related recommendations for weight training that the general public has internalized can be traced back to safety concerns (as mentioned previously). While I wouldn’t give a 12 year old kid the green light to get a general gym membership and go lift on their own, I don’t think that is even remotely the same situation as training following a structured program written for kids at that age under the supervision of a qualified coach. The number one goal of any training program is always the safety of its participants. Not only can resistance training be safe for youth athletes, it can be SAFER than many of the traditionally recommended and commonly supported training methods for this age, and equally, if not more effective.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

P.S. Training programs for players at any age comes down to following proper guidelines and training progressions, two topics covered in depth in Ultimate Hockey Training.

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Optimizing Movement Q&A

With the official release of Optimizing Movement, I want to address several questions I’ve gotten both over the last week and over the last few years pertaining to the importance of maximizing movement quality and capacity. If you have a question not covered here, please post it in the comments section below!

Click here for more information and to watch the trailer! >> Optimizing Movement

What does “optimal movement” really mean?

Over the last several years I’ve referenced a growing body of research studies on a wide variety of populations that indicate that both athletic and non-athletic populations alike have an array of structural deviations and sub-clinical pathologies. Some are in pain; some are not. In other words, some may have issues that come to you as a red flag; others may not be aware of it at all (yet). Likewise, the Postural Restoration Institute has done an outstanding job of highlighting some of the structural and functional asymmetries that are present in all humans and how these may predispose different populations to specific injuries. Naturally, people also adapt to the stresses they DO or DON’T place upon themselves. These are small examples, but the big picture is that people are born with different structures and their structures adapt/change differently over time. Optimal movement starts by understanding the individual’s structural capacity. From here, the goal is to discover if the individual has limitations or imbalances WITHIN their maximum capacity, and then further prioritize which order to address these limitations depending on what the demands of the individual’s sport/activity are. Simply, the word “optimal” means allowing an individual to express their full movement capacity based on their structure.

How does optimal movement affect sports performance?

This is a bit of a loaded question and one that could be the subject of a book series. In short, there are three major buckets in which movement capacity can influence sports performance:

Economy
Skill Performance
Injury Risk

When a joint doesn’t possess sufficient range of motion or isn’t positioned optimally at any given time, another joint (frequently an adjacent one) will need to pick up the slack in terms of both providing the necessary motion to allow a certain movement, and in helping to produce or reduce/absorb the force that the other joint could not. As you can imagine, while this system allows the execution of some version of the intended movement, it certainly isn’t a very efficient system. Movement efficiency can influence both local (at a specific muscle or structure) and global (the entire system) conditioning/endurance, and may therefore impact how an athlete performs both at the end of a competition, AND at the end of the season.

Movement capacity can heavily influence skill performance. As a simple example, when a hockey player takes a slapshot, the movement necessitates internal rotation on the front hip, in this case the left. If the player doesn’t have sufficient left hip internal rotation (EXTREMELY COMMON!), they won’t have as large of an arc to produce force, they’ll lose some of their ability to use their glute to decelerate the movement, and they’ll need to compensate by both moving excessively at a neighboring joint (in this case probably more of a lateral bend and rotation of the spine/rib cage), and by excessively loading additional musculature to decelerate the movement. Tying this in to the third point, this environment can lead to breakdowns in a number of fairly predictable places: lumbar disc or spinal fractures, oblique strains and lower abdominal tears (e.g. sports hernias), anterior superior hip labral tears (the lack of IR on the lead leg will cause compensatory movement within the joint). This is a hockey example, but this can be paralleled to any high velocity rotational sport, such as baseball and golf, among others.

I just assume this went bar down?

While I presented these as three distinct issues, I don’t feel they can really be separated. I can’t imagine a situation where an athlete has a mobility limitation that impairs their skill expression and increases their injury risk, but improves their economy/conditioning. To me, it always comes back to the Athletic Performance Pyramid idea; the larger the foundation, the higher the peak.

Optimizing Movement is all about building a larger foundation, so the athlete can fulfill his/her TRUE athletic potential.

What if I don’t have time for assessments?

If you don’t have time, I’d suggest making time. Always think “how”, and not “if”. That said, I understand that some folks are in really tough situations and don’t have the flexibility to even determine where their time is spent with a team or client. In this case, I’d suggest looking for a new job! But in all seriousness, I get it. If you are an astute observer of movement, you can pick up on a lot just by watching your athletes/clients move. As I discuss in the DVD, a corrective approach isn’t just about corrective exercise. When you learn what to look for and have a system set up to address limitations when you see them, you can take a huge step in the right direction without including formal assessments. This is a major topic of Optimizing Movement and one that I think will resonate with just about everyone in the training and rehabilitation professions.

Is Optimizing Movement an ACTUAL DVD or just streamed online?

Optimizing Movement is a 2-DVD set. After you order, the DVDs will be shipped directly to the address you specify. In addition to the U.S. and Canada, the DVDs can be shipped to Australia, Asia, Europe, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. If you’re in an area where shipping isn’t currently available and would like to buy the DVDs, just drop me a note below and we’ll work it out. If you’re in a sunny area, I may even deliver them myself.

What if I don’t like it?

I can’t imagine that will happen. I sent an advance copy to a D1 Hockey S&C Coach, and he emailed me back with “Just finished the first DVD. Hands down the best DVD I’ve ever watched.” The information has been very well received and I know you’ll love it too! That said, I understand there may be a person or two out there that are offended I’m wearing a Flyers hat the whole DVD and will want to return it. The DVDs are backed by a 60-day 100% no risk, no questions asked money back guarantee. Simply return the DVDs and you’ll be issued a full refund.

Click here for more information >> Optimizing Movement

That’s a wrap! As I mentioned above, if you have a question that wasn’t addressed above, please post it in the comments section below!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Optimizing Movement is Here!

In February, I had an opportunity to do a one-day presentation with Joel Jamieson at Dynamic Strength and Conditioning in Nashua, NH. Shortly after announcing I would be there, I got an influx of emails from people that wouldn’t be able to make it (weird that people wouldn’t want to travel to New Hampshire in the middle of Winter?), but were hoping my presentations would be recorded. I’m excited to announce that the 2-DVD set of the three presentations I gave are FINALLY here!

Click here for more information and to watch the trailer! >> Optimizing Movement

As I alluded to in my article “Groundbreaking Research on Hockey Hip Injuries” from a couple days ago (which also discusses how prevalent these issues are in other sports and populations), the athletic population that is entering our facilities these days are increasingly “sub-clinical”, presenting with a number of structural and functional limitations that will heavily influence their movement, athletic capacities, and ultimately their performance in sport. The assumptions that exercise technique standards should be the same for all athletes and that athletes are symmetrical in their joint structure and range of motion aren’t just misguided, they’re potentially very dangerous. As a result of these things, the sports performance coach or clinician that has a toolbox of specific assessments, a system of effective corrective approaches, and a keen eye for how specific limitations influence movement expression/exercise technique, will be able to design more individual-specific training programs and use more individual-specific coaching/teaching cues. Simply, this approach leads to better results, and helps develop high performing, extremely durable athletes, which is always the goal.

This is exactly why I put this presentation together, to outline my philosophy, assessment system, and corrective approach to training athletes. The DVDs are divided into three sections:

Optimizing Movement: Creating a Foundational Platform for Peak Performance
Integrating Assessments into Sports Performance Programs
Managing Movement: Corrective Exercise and Program Adaptations

Optimizing Movement systematically addresses the whys and hows of assessing individual athlete needs and designing programs accordingly. The feedback from personal trainers, strength and conditioning coaches, and rehabilitation professionals alike has been outstanding so far. Click the link below for more information and to grab your copy today!

Click here for more information >> Optimizing Movement

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

P.S. No time for assessments? Optimizing Movement presents alternative approaches on how to individualize programs that can be used in ANY training situation! Click here to learn how >> Optimizing Movement

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