Postural Restoration Institute Interview

I was recently very humbled to be asked to be the “Featured Interview” for the Postural Restoration Institute (PRI).

As you likely know, I’ve been heavily influenced by the lens through which PRI views structure and function, and their courses have had a fairly profound impact on the way we assess and train our athletes at Endeavor. I like to think our philosophies and methodologies have also had an impact on them, as we now have evidence of PRI’s support for heavy lifting!

Instructor Jen Poulin preparing to pull 5 wheels after a long day of teaching at Endeavor

While the interview certainly has a PRI undertone, it also dives into several things I think you’ll really enjoy, including:

My vision for Endeavor Sports Performance, and ultimately, what I strongly believe is the best approach to preparing athletes
Exactly what we’re doing with our off-season hockey players at Endeavor this Summer
A few ways we have and are integrating PRI concepts into our programs
My short list of go-to rehabilitation specialists in our area
A list of my mentors, which (not coincidentally) are also the top people I recommend young S&C professionals pursue internships with
My thoughts on the Postural Restoration Trained credentialing process

Check out all of this and more here >> PRI’s Featured Interview with Kevin Neeld

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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PRI, FMS, DNS, and Physiological Buffer Zones

It’s been an exciting week. Our off-season hockey group at Endeavor is growing quickly as players return back from their junior and pro teams. We’re doing some different things in terms of assessment and program individualization, which means a lot more work for me, but will ultimately be a process that provides better results for the players and interesting data in terms of tracking specific adaptations to various program design strategies.

Two nights ago, just over a week after returning from working at their Pre-World’s Camp in Lake Placid, NY (where they were playing Miracle on loop in the lobby…which was awesome), I watched in a quasi-permanent state of cardiac arrest, as the US Women’s National Team reclaimed the world championship in a great battle with rival Canada. I’ve seen these two teams compete against each other 4 times at this point, and every game is incredibly competitive and exciting. It’s a great rivalry, and one that I think will help grow the women’s game worldwide.

Capping things off, I found out this week that the editing is now complete for my new DVD “Optimizing Movement”, which should be available in the near future. The DVD dives into exactly what assessments I’m doing for our incoming athletes, how we use this assessment to systemize a corrective approach, and how all of this drives our program design. This is really just the tip of the iceberg so keep your eye out for more information in the near future. I’m also in the final stages of completing an exciting project that I’m hoping to announce by the end of the month.

With all of that in the background, I haven’t had as much time to write as I’d like. Having just hosted PRI’s Pelvis Restoration course at our facility last weekend, several ideas related to PRI have been on my mind recently and will likely be topics for future posts. As PRI gains in popularity, their information will naturally be met with more questions, and likely more skepticism. I think this is a good thing in the long run as it allows us all to grow from the discussion. I think a lot of the misconceptions about their information are driven by people with only a partial understanding of their perspective, and either an opposition to PRI evangelists or a generally evangelical affiliation for another seemingly conflicting educational resource. I’m a bit of a continuing education junkie and am interested in learning from a wide variety of resources, but I hesitate to subscribe to any extreme as I believe strongly that all information is in some stage of evolution and the excessively enthusiastic support for any paradigm is likely to be misguided as this evolution takes place.

With that said, Patrick Ward wrote two outstanding posts recently that I want to share with you. I always enjoy Patrick’s perspective because he’s a relentless learner, has a great filter, and respects the complexity of the human ecosystem. He, whether aware of it or not, has become a great mentor for me as I continue digging further down this rabbit hole. I’d encourage you to read these two articles, slowly, as well as all the comments beneath the second article. Lots of great stuff here!

Patrick discusses the idea of the Physiological Buffer Zone in his presentations included in the Strength In Motion DVD set.

That’s a wrap for today. As always, please post your comments below!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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The Path to the NHL

It’s been a few weeks since my last post. While I typically don’t like to go this long without sharing some content with you, I’ve been extremely busy working on a few exciting projects to be released throughout this year. More information on that in the near future. In the meantime, I wanted to share an article with you that someone sent me a few days ago. I still think the idea of long-term athletic development is incredibly misunderstood and there seems to be a trend to listen to the opinions of a former player, parent, or coach that is pulling their opinion from a fairly limited sample size and usually the over-glorification of an outlier, instead of listening to the pool of experts from various fields that are all championing the more intelligent approach. With that said, it never hurts to have a coach from the highest levels support an idea that we know to be true, yet still have to argue for. Check out the article below. It’s a quick read, so share it with anyone else you know in the hockey world.

Read the article here >> Wanted for NHL: True Athletes

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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The Essentials of Exercise and Fitness Nutrition

I was digging through some emails that I missed earlier in the week and saw that Dr. John Berardi is offering a FREE 5-day video course on exercise and fitness nutrition. The course will dive into:

How to integrate nutrition in a health, fitness, or athletic environment
How exactly to assess someone’s nutrition needs
How to devise a nutrition plan based on that assessment
What stats to measure and how exactly to measure them
How to optimize a nutrition plan based on those stats

I’ve learned a TON of incredibly valuable nutrition information from Dr. Berardi; he continues to be my “go to resource” for current dietary strategies to help alter body composition and maximize performance and recovery. It’s rare that someone of his caliber will give away such valuable information, so I strongly encourage you to sign up for the free course while it’s still available! Go to the link below for more information.

Click here >> The Essentials of Exercise and Fitness Nutrition

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Precision Nutrition Certification

Every year I get a handful of emails from colleagues asking about my experience with the Precision Nutrition Certification program. Because I’ve received several of these questions in the last week, I thought it would be an opportune time to re-post a review of my experience with the PN Certification. Check it out at the link below and feel free to post any questions you may have in the comments section. Also, they’re offering a special $200 discount to you since you’re being “referred” by a current PN certified coach, which is a pretty sweet deal. Click here to save $200! Precision Nutrition Certification

Even if you have no interest in the coaching program, I’d recommend heading over to their site and just checking out all their transformations. Berardi has really created an amazing trail of success stories!

Precision Nutrition Certification Review

A couple weeks back I posted something on facebook about taking the Precision Nutrition Certification Exam. Since then, I’ve received a handful of emails from other strength and conditioning professionals on what my thoughts on the cert were. In essence, everyone wants to know:

“Is it worth the money?”

In short, my answer is a resounding YES! In long, I couldn’t say enough good things about the book, educational videos, and accompanying material. In order to successfully provide nutrition coaching to both athlete and non-athlete populations, I felt I’d need:

A detailed description of the underlying physiology that drives nutrition-based adaptations
How different body types are affected by various dietary strategies
What circumstances warrant supplementation, and which supplements Dr. John Berardi and Ryan Andrews (along with the rest of the PN team) have determined are safe and effective
An understanding of all the steps along the dietary strategy continuum from the most basic strategies (e.g. eat more vegetables) to the most complex (e.g extremely low calorie/carbohydrate diets and macronutrient cycling)
Fluid requirements
A multitude of implementation strategies to account for the varying psychologies of clients
The questionnaires, assessments, and tests required to successfully implement nutrition coaching

The Precision Nutrition Certification Program provided all of that and infinitely more. Essentially the program laid out EVERYTHING I would need to know to successfully implement a Nutrition Coaching Program at Endeavor in an admirably clear, step-by-step fashion. The program was clearly laid out with the student in mind. There are plenty of opportunities to reinforce newly acquired knowledge, and it even walks you through the entire coaching process, telling you exactly when you need to schedule each meeting, and what you need to go through in these meetings.

Admittedly, I’ve studied enough about nutrition to know the basics. I imagine most people have. Although I enjoyed the art of implementation that this program discussed regarding these more basic nutritiong concepts, from a “mind-expansion” aspect I was much more interested in some of the advanced strategies. A few of the highlights:

Caloric and macronutrient recommendations based on body weight, body type, body composition, and goals
Caloric and macronutrient cycling strategies
Supplements to facilitate injury healing
How to infer hormonal imbalances from skinfold testing (this was really cool)
How to combat excessive cortisol environments with various supplements

In reality, the majority of this stuff probably applies to bodybuilders and figure competitors more than youth (or even elite) athletes. Simply, because most athletes nutrition is horrendous, these advanced strategies will be lost on them. With that said, it was still interesting to learn about and to keep in mind as a tool to use in the future with the appropriate clientele (e.g. an advanced athlete with specific body composition needs that has demonstrated a relatively profound mastery of basic nutritional concepts).

The Precision Nutrition Certification program isn’t the only one out there, but it’s the one I trust the most. I’ve been following Dr. Berardi’s work for a while now and enjoy his attention to staying current on research, but realistic in implementation. In other words, he understand the psychology behind nutrition as much as the physiology. Importantly, he’s not ANOTHER one of the fat nutritionists that doesn’t practice what they preach.

Look at the guns on this guy!

Dr. Berardi has been successful in implementing diet and supplementation strategies to improve the body composition and performance of a diverse clientele ranging from himself (important), to elite level athletes, to non-athletic populations.

Not interested in Nutrition Coaching?

I know not everyone reading this will be a professional that is interested in offering nutrition coaching. If this is you, Dr. Berardi hasn’t forgotten about you. I’ve always said that his Precision Nutrition book and accompanying Gourmet Nutrition is the best nutrition resource for athletic and non-athletic populations alike. No they are not free. Yes they are worth the money.

I’ve been saying for years now that everyone should own a copy of Precision Nutrition. People usually respond in one of three ways:

Ignore me completely
Immediately buy the book
Mull it over indefinitely, and shoot me an email every time I mention it and ask “Is it REALLY worth it?

To address the latter, yes it REALLY is worth it. It’s worth it for people that want to lose fat; it’s worth it for people that want to gain muscle; it’s worth it for people that are more concerned with athletic performance; it’s worth it for people that are bored with the foods they’re eating; it was worth it for me; it is worth it for you. If you order before October 31st, you can get the entire Precision Nutrition System for $50 off ($97). I’m always amazed at how people can come face-to-face with something that has life-changing potential, but comes with a relatively small initial investment and just write it off as “too expensive”. You CAN and should afford it; you may just need to figure out how. Click the image below for more information on how you can get the PN System for $50 off!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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