Tag: Athletic Development Resources

A New Perspective on Energy Systems

A couple days ago, I mentioned that we’re hosting Joel Jamieson’s new Certified Conditioning Coach course at our facility on April 2nd and 3rd. In response to that post I received a bunch of notes from people either expressing an interest in taking the course, or telling me how great it was when they took it previously.

If you’re interested in taking the course, register ASAP. We’re limiting the course to ~40 attendees and have already sold over half the seats. You can get more information and register at the link below.

Reserve your seat here >> Certified Conditioning Coach

Given the interest in energy system development my last post sparked, I thought it would be an opportune time to repost a video I’ve shown a few times of a presentation Joel gave on the topic. This is a GREAT presentation, and one of the best free resources available. Check it out below!

A few years ago when I first came across this presentation from Joel Jamieson, it caused me to rethink a lot of what I thought I knew about “conditioning”. Since that time, I’ve read (and re-read) his two books, seen him speak a few times, and even spoke alongside him when the two of us did a one day seminar (where Optimizing Movement was filmed).

Ultimate MMA Conditioning is a must-read for anyone that trains athletes in any sport

Needless to say, I think this information is incredibly valuable; it’s had a profound impact on the way that I write my programs.

Even in rereading my comments about the video below, I know that my perspective on energy systems work has changed considerably over the last 4 years, especially as it pertains to redeveloping aerobic qualities in hockey players (and all athletes in general) in the early off-season. We’re using methods now that I would have never thought to use in 2011, and the foundation for a lot of that change was built on this video.

Enjoy! And if you want to share any of the conditioning methods you’re using or have any questions, please post them in the comments section below.

A New Perspective on Energy Systems

I hope you’re all enjoying your day off (if you got one). Endeavor Sports Performance typically shuts down for Memorial Day, but Matt, David, and I are leaving Thursday night to head up to Boston for the Hockey Symposium, so we have to open up today to make sure all of our athletes can get their sessions in before we go. Just another day in the office! (I’m pretending that today isn’t the first day that it hasn’t precipitated since last November).

Rather than spending the day outside enjoying the sun and BBQing, I thought you’d be more interested in watching a great presentation on energy systems development from Joel Jamieson, who’s a really bright guy. Joel primarily trains MMA fighters out of his facility in Seattle, WA, but he also has experience with football and soccer players. More importantly, and you’ll get this quickly from watching his presentation, his training philosophy is science-based. While I don’t think that every line on a training program needs to have a citation next to it, I think using quality research as a backing for your training philosophies ensures that you understand the underlying principles of athletic development, which can be effectively applied to any sport (in a sport- and athlete-relevant manner).

This video is from a presentation Joel gave at the Central Virginia Sports Performance Seminar at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and he includes a download link for the power point slides so you can follow along. Click the link below and watch the video now (it’s completely free and doesn’t require registering for anything):

Click Here to Watch >> A New Perspective on Energy Systems

I finished watching the video late last week and left with a few good research resources to look into and an augmented understanding of energy metabolism and physiology. I can’t help but feel that some of his words will be grossly misinterpreted though.

One thing that stood out to me as extremely hockey conditioning relevant is the large degree to which the aerobic system contributes to repeat sprint performance with incomplete recovery. Using running as a model, Joel presented that the energy delivery for 200m (~22s) and 400m(~49s) sprints were 29% and 43% aerobic, respectively. In other words, in the time equivalent of an average hockey shift, roughly 1/3-1/2 of the energy provided is aerobic, and this is likely to increase with incomplete recovery between bouts (e.g. as shifts progress within a period).

In my opinion, Joel’s presentation offers more accurate explanatory power than it does a drastic change in the way we condition for hockey. The major take home message is that you need to understand the demands of the sport and prepare accordingly. I think people see something like “50% of energy is from anaerobic sources and 50% is from aerobic sources” and think “50% of my training should be sprint repeats and 50% should be continuous aerobic work.” In reality, all this is saying is that the sprint repeats will eventually be developing aerobic systems in addition to the know anaerobic benefits.

Primarily Aerobic? Anaerobic? Does it matter?

This is one of the reasons why I think it’s more important to have an in-depth understanding of the work:rest ratios and overall work intensities of the game than it is to understand the underlying physiological mechanisms driving them. As an overly simplified example, if hockey includes, on average, about a 40s shift of which about 20s is spent at all out intensities every 3 minutes, and we use some similar work intervals and work to rest ratios to create a slight overload on the involved metabolic systems, does us realizing that more of the on-ice energy AND off-ice training energy is coming from aerobic metabolism than we previously thought change the way we train? I’m not sure it does. I’m certainly not implying that I disagree with anything Joel said in his presentation, and I agree that certain athletes will need a greater emphasis on certain qualities based on their athletic profiles, but I think some people over-emphasize the physiological explanations and under-emphasize the much more obvious and intuitive game demands. What do you think? Check out the video and post your comments below!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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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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5 Ways to Get the Most from Your Athletes

Today’s Thursday Throwback discusses a few tips related to “the art of coaching” that will help you get the most out of your athletes. Despite originally publishing this over 4 years ago, these things continue to be staples in how our entire staff at Endeavor approaches coaching our athletes. These are timeless principles that can be applied in environments with athletes at almost every level. Enjoy!

5 Ways to Get the Most from Your Athletes

Piggy-backing on last week’s post on the importance of developing great coaching skills to compliment a sound knowledge base (refer here: Become a Great COACH!), I thought I’d share 5 ways I’ve found to get the most out of our athletes.

5) Make Exercises/Instruction Specific to the Athlete
In a strength and conditioning setting, there are appropriate degrees of specificity to incorporate into an athlete’s training program, and more appropriate training qualities to incorporate movements that more directly mimic sport movements. For example, speed and power work are more appropriate opportunities to teach foot patterns, body positions, and proper rotational power generation; whereas strength work that mimics sport specific movements would be fruitless/counterproductive.

Goalie-specific training exercise. Note the rapid eye movement that precedes the jump and the rebound.

In all cases, you can gain a lot of ground with your athletes if you can explain why what they’re doing will apply to their sport. This doesn’t need to be overly complex. When we kettlebell (novice) or trap bar (less novice) deadlift our athletes, we’ll explain that maintaining a neutral spine or “flat back” is important because it teaches the body to have a stable core, which will allow them to transition quicker in their sport. In reality, the athlete probably hears some Charlie Brown esque modification of what we’re saying: “wha wha wha wha CORE wha wha transition wha quicker”. “You mean this will help make me faster?!” “Yes.” Sold.

Maybe I wouldn’t have picked you last if you would pack your neck while you’re blocking Charlie Brown!

4) Be Flexible with Dress Code
When I started at Endeavor, one of the first things I did was establish an “acceptable” dress code. Shirts with inappropriate language/insinuations weren’t acceptable, nor were shirts that lacked sleeves (a tough sell in New Jersey!). The last thing I want is a bunch of kids that think they’re stronger than they are flexing in front of the mirror in between sets.

I wonder if people would still flex and lift up their shirt to ~~check out their abs in the mirror~~ wipe the sweat off their face if this was going on in the background

That said, there are times when it’s appropriate to bend the rules a little to meet your athletes half way. If your athletes want to wear the medicine ball that they just obliterated against the wall over their face, they should be free to do so.

Nice.

3) Don’t be an asshole. If you’re an asshole, apologize.
This will go hand-in-hand with the last point of this article, but strength coaches stereotypically have the reputation of being hard assess. I think there is a fine line between being a source of inspiration and motivation and just being an asshole. Why are you coming down so hard on an athlete? Is it because you really care about them and have a hard time watching self-destructive behavior? Is it because your personality just doesn’t mesh well with his/hers? Is it because you slept like hell the night before and are just generally irritable? Is it because you think that’s your job?

It’s worth being conscious of your own mood and recognizing how it may influence the way you coach. I also think it’s important to recognize that no one is infallible, even the coach. It’s okay; rather it’s recommended that you admit when you make a mistake and apologize to your athlete(s). It’s not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of humanity.

Just last week I had a morning where a few little things kind of pissed me off, and I ended up taking it out on a player whose effort was a little “unmotivated” that day. After he finished training, I pulled him into my office apologized, said I was wrong to come down on him like I did, explained exactly what I was looking for from him and why I thought it was important/beneficial for him to adopt certain behaviors. He understood where I was coming from, we’re on the same page, and I think we’re both better off for it.

2) Play Music they Like
Music plays an irreplaceable role in building a high energy environment. In an ideal world, the athletes and coaching staff would both be inspired by the same genres of music. This isn’t always the case. Last Summer we had a couple groups of hockey players that absolutely thrived on Phil Collins. This started as a joke, but manifested into what I refer to as audible steroids. When Phil came on, everyone turned it up a notch.

Despite everything I learned from Tony Gentilcore while at Cressey Performance a few years back, I never personally took to techno music. But a few of our athletes requested a “Techno Tuesday” to break up the monotony of Metallica Monday, and Rise Against Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I hesitantly allowed it. Now Techno Tuesday has become Techno Weekdays. “Club Endeavor” wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but if it gets everyone to work harder, I’m all in. We even have a player that enters the morning group with a general sense of disdain, whose mood I can instantly turn by playing:

At least 20 of the 14,000 views are from my iphone at 8:15am.

1) Let Them Know You Care!
Save the best for last. NOTHING else matters if your athletes don’t know much you care about them. “Care” in this sense refers to both wanting the best for them as athletes AND as people. Become personally invested in their success. I can’t tell you how many 1-on-1 meetings I’ve had with players just to get a better understanding of what their personal goals are and to ensure I’m doing everything I can to help move them in that direction. I’m exceedingly flexible with scheduling to accommodate beach trips and visits from out of town girlfriends.

It’s imperative that the athlete makes a commitment and demonstrates a dedicated effort to their own progress, but I don’t think this needs to happen at the exclusion of all things fun, especially not in the Summer, and not with hockey players that are stuck indoors for the majority of the year. I (only half jokingly) tell our players to soak up as much Vitamin D as they can over the weekend because Vitamin D is thought to be helpful in improving maximum strength levels in deficient individuals (most hockey players).

At the most foundational level, getting athletes to buy in to your program comes down to them understanding that you have their best interest in mind. Sometimes this comes down to reanalyzing your intentions with the program, but most times it comes down to the way you build your relationship with your athletes. Once they know how much you care them, they’re much more likely to respond to your advice.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team

“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University

Were you duped by EMG?

EMG (electromyography) is the measurement of the electrical input to “activate” a muscle, and is often used as an indication of how much force the muscle will produce. It can be a useful research tool, and one that I’m very familiar with, having spent my two years of grad school working in the Exercise Neuroscience Lab at UMass Amherst. That said, the results from EMG-based studies, especially surface EMG, are frequently misquoted, misinterpreted and poorly applied.

Today’s Thursday Throwback discusses some of the limitations to EMG, and what you should be on the look out for as someone that is likely to read someone else’s interpretation of these studies. As I always say, if you want better answers, you have to ask better questions. Today’s post (and the linked article) will help you do just that.

Were You Duped by EMG?

Last week I got an email from my friend Rob McLean with the Colorado Avalanche in reference to an exercise that is considered the “best” because it produces higher EMG levels than other exercises. Rob’s question was, simply, “what do you think?”

A couple years ago, I wrote an article for StrengthCoach.com that Coach Boyle was gracious enough to allow me to re-post at my site here: EMG for Strength Coaches

This article identifies and explains a lot of the common myths associated with interpreting EMG-driven research and is a great starting place for people new to EMG altogether. There are additional considerations when interpreting EMG research that I think are relevant to those in training and sports medicine professions and to the general “fitness enthusiast”, as it will allow you to better spot bullshit (and bullshit interpretations) when you see them.

False Assumptions

1) Force Production = Force Expression
People tend to equate EMG activity with instantaneous force production. Because of the time course associated with the electrical input signal stimulating a mechanical action, this is an inherently misguided notion. That said, even with this assumption, force production does not always equate to force expression.

Force production is the mechanical tension developed in the muscle. Force expression is how that force translates into movement or the control of movement. The two differentiate primarily based on activity of synergistic and antagonist muscle groups and structures. As an oversimplification, envision the biceps brachii producing 5 units of force and the triceps brachii producing 0. You can imagine that the elbow would flex at an appropriate speed based on the force production of the biceps. Now envision an identical situation, but with the triceps producing 4 units of force. The elbow would still flex, but now it wouldn’t be 5 units of expressed elbow flexion force, it would be 1. This example removes all syngerists and the concept of connective tissue tensegrity and mechanical force dispersion, but provides a simple illustration of the difference between force production and force expression.

Isolation without integration is never the goal of a hockey training program

Often times it’s force EXPRESSION that we’re most concerned with, not force production. The major take home here is that EMG studies that focus on the comparison of activity within a single muscle and compare this amongst different exercises completely overlook the importance and inevitably of antagonist and synergist activity.

2) More is Better
The underlying assumption and arguably largest misinterpretation of EMG is that MORE activity is a GOOD thing. In reality, EMG activity always needs a contextual qualifier to rationalize whether increased activity is beneficial or detrimental. My friend Jim Snider from U of Wisconsin did a great job of explaining this in his presentation over the weekend at BSMPG’s Hockey Symposium. Not every muscle plays the same role within the body. There are segmental stabilizers that create a stable base from which more global mobilizers can function. More EMG activity in these stabilizers, especially at the expense of coordinated firing patterns relevant to their true function in movement, is likely detrimental to performance.

This is about as functional for hockey as smoking cigarettes

Secondly, it is often the case that the goal of any given muscle is to use the absolute bare minimum of activity necessary to accomplish a given task. This is true in the interest of energy preservation. This is one of the reasons why we don’t coach a “hard brace” during plank exercises. In this situation, we’d be encouraging a high threshold strategy for a relatively basic task. Instead, we aim to optimize body position and ensure proper breathing patterns and simply allow the nervous system to appropriately interpret the force needs to provide accordingly. Utilizing high threshold strategies for low threshold tasks has a number of other deleterious implications, but that of excessive energy use is not to be overlooked.

Wrap-Up
I fully understand why some interpret EMG studies the way they do, but isolating an individual muscle in EMG is no better than attempting to isolate individual muscles in training. There are likely more implications for this research in a rehabilitation setting than in a training setting, but in both environments it’s important not to overlook the vast mechanical and neurological integration of human movement. Getting back to Rob’s question, my rationale for including some exercises and excluding others goes well beyond isolated gross neural input signals. Every exercise we use serves a specific purpose and fits within a linear and/or parallel progression. In other words, my interpretation of an exercise’s proficiency is based on my particular training philosophy and system, which is likely quite different from most others. As always, it’s important to critically analyze information as it becomes available and not get caught up in something just being “new”. Remember, hyped up garbage is still garbage!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Training Around An Injury

Today’s Thursday Throwback is an article I originally wrote in 2011 that discusses the importance of training AROUND an injury and exactly how to go about it. If you have any questions, please feel free to post them in the comments section below!

Training Around an Injury

A few years back I wrote an article for T-Nation called Fight the Injury Blues: Keep Lifting. I think one of the biggest mistakes athletes make is that they completely shut down, physically and mentally, after suffering an injury that necessitates a limitation in their training/practice/competition. Some injuries may in fact require complete rest, but these are by far the minority and most of these only require complete rest for a week or two. The article outlines a few examples of what injured athletes can STILL do from a training standpoint, and the neurological benefits that are parlayed to the injured limb when the opposite limb is trained. The research in this area is interesting. If you haven’t read the article yet, take a minute to do so after you finish reading this post.

I recently got a question from a Canadian university player in the Atlantic University Sport league that read:

“Yesterday I read one of your old t-nation articles about training while injured and it touched a bit on unilateral training and the bilateral transfer involved (10% to 77% i believe it said). I was wondering if that kind of training would create imbalances in strength and muscle size. I’m going in for hand surgery soon and want to continue training my left arm/hand if its beneficial. What type of set/rep range would u hover at to reduce the risk of imbalance?”

This is a great question. As you can see, there is a pretty big discrepancy between the upper and lower limits of strength transfer from one side to the other. To take a step back, what the 10%-77% numbers are implying is that if you only train ONE side of your body (e.g. only 1-Arm DB Chest Press or 1-Leg Squat on the left side), 10-77% of the strength gained on that side will also be gained by the right side. In other words, the right side does nothing, but gets 10-77% stronger.

This “transferred” strength improvements results from the wiring of the nervous system. In an effort to oversimplify the complexities of the nervous system, the body adapts to things it does repeatedly. When the nervous system is forced to send signals for strong contractions to one side, it “learns” how to do so for the other side as well. The 10-77% range is a large one, but the strength transfer will be greater if you use compound exercises (multi-joint movements), slow down the eccentric phase of the lift, and maximize concentric acceleration.

To address the question at hand: Yes, training one side will cause imbalances in strength and size. While muscle imbalances (a somewhat vague term) are one of the major predictors of injury (second to previous injury), there are some important qualifiers in this situation.

1) Consider the Alternative

The alternative to training the “good” side only is to avoid training those segments of the body altogether. Physically, this will cause an equally undesired atrophy of the musculature AND neural drive to the musculature. In this scenario, the athlete needs to restore the lost muscle mass and neural efficiency bilaterally, which will not only set them back quite a bit in their training, but may also require focused dietary changes to sufficiently increase the caloric and protein intake to allow for training-drive hypertrophy.

Mentally, most athletes are extremely competitive and active, and don’t respond well to being told to completely shut it down for extended periods of time. Again, depending on the injury, rest may be an advisable solution, but in most cases, it will do more harm than good.

2) Injuries Inherently Cause Imbalances

There is no avoiding imbalances following an injury. Whether it’s thumb surgery or a shattered femur, the neuromuscular system is going to adapt to minimize stress to the impaired area. That is why rehabilitation is so important; the goal is to restore symmetry across the injured area and between the injured and uninjured side. Training the uninjured side will minimize strength losses bilaterally, so that there is less ground to make up upon getting cleared for training. This also highlights the importance of ramping up training/sports participation over a period of time instead of just jumping right back in. The body requires time and focused effort to restore symmetry. Just because an athlete is no longer injured does not mean he’s ready to return to play; they’re just at a different stage on the Injury-Optimal Performance continuum.

With regards to what set/rep ranges to utilize, the important thing to remember is that the transferred adaptations are neurally-driven strength improvements. Therefore, in order to maximize transfer, you’ll want to stay in neurally-driven strength improvement set and rep ranges (in general, 3-6 sets of 3-8 repetitions). If higher rep ranges are utilized then there will be more of a hypertrophic effect on the working musculature that will not be experienced by the injured side.

The other thing to consider, in this case, is that you can do anything that takes your hand out of the movement. Remember, it’s not an upper body injury, it’s just your hand. There are ways to train around that, such as doing:

Arm Strap Pulldowns

Slideboard Flys

And you can do these in whatever rep ranges you feel are most advantageous for your situation because they aren’t unilateral movements. You won’t have to worry about the degree of transfer from one side to the other.

Hope this helps. The big take home from this is that injuries shouldn’t cripple the athlete. Find ways to train around the injured area so the athlete can continue to make progress, or, at the very least, minimize performance losses associated with the healing and rehabilitation phases.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Year-round age-specific hockey training programs complete with a comprehensive instructional video database!

Get access to your game-changing program now >> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team

“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University

Hockey Hip Injuries: FAI

Today’s Thursday Throwback highlights a structural abnormality that affects the overwhelming majority of the hockey population specifically and much of the elite athletic population in general.

While the tone of this post (and the linked article) is specific to one structural abnormality, the foundational theme is not. The real message here is that every athlete is built differently, both from their genetic make-up and how they’ve adapted to stressors over the course of their lifetime.

As a result, it’s incredibly important that coaches appreciate these individual variations and don’t attempt to coach every athlete into a somewhat arbitrary movement “norm”. Often times athletes are patterning movement around the range of motion that they have and can control. If an athlete doesn’t have the motion to perform an athletic movement correctly, it’s wise to dig deeper to see if it’s a structural or functional limitation. If functional, use whatever tools you have to improve it. If structural, coach around it. Either way, the goal is to optimize movement.

Check out the post, and post any thoughts/comments you have in the section below!

Hockey Hip Injuries: Femoracetabular Impingement

Femeroacetabular impingement (FAI) is an anatomical abnormality that anyone that trains hockey players needs to be aware of. In the most simple sense, FAI affects hip flexion ROM, especially past 90 degrees. This will necessarily lead to restrictions in many common lifting and jumping movements and will affect a player’s skating stride.

Mike Reinold recently posted a terrific article from Trevor Winnegge that I think you should read.

Check it out here >> Femoroacetabular Impingement: Etiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment of FAI

I don’t think strength coaches need to go through a screen for every possible injury that a player may incur, but I do think it’s important to be able to recognize signs of injuries or anatomical abnormalities when the player is warming up and training off the ice.

This article did a great job of outlining information related to the diagnosis and treatment of these injuries, but I think the real insight comes from the discussion section. I don’t always spend time reading through the discussion in most articles, but this was well worth the time. When you read it, you’ll see comments from people like Mike Reinold, Eric Cressey, and Jeff Oliver (really bright guys).

Pay special attention to comments regarding how FAI will affect movement so that you can be on the watch for this. Here’s a glimpse at some of my additions:

Round 1
We see a good number of these cases as well since the majority of our athletes are hockey players. As Eric mentioned, most have terrible soft-tissue quality around the hip.

The Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis mechanism probably holds extra weight amongst hockey goalies, who grow up dropping to their knees in an almost uncontrolled free fall at ages when they surely don’t have the muscular development to control the motion.

Given the magnitude of these surgeries, we try to focus on conservative approaches. Using single-leg work gives the hips more degrees of freedom, but keeping the athlete above their hip flexion end-range also helps ensure that we’re not getting compensatory lumbar movement.

Round 2 (In response to Jeff Oliver’s comments)
Great point about not being “knee benders”. Because of my history working with hockey players on the ice, it seems that most coaches want their players to skate with the “ideal” stride. I think FAI is one illustration of why some players may opt for a different pattern.

Lumbar compensation, in some plane, is almost inevitable when people reach their hip flexion ROM, especially in bilateral lower body exercises. The only difference between FAI athletes and “normal” athletes is that FAI athletes will hit that hip flexion end range sooner, in at least one hip. If it’s a unilateral problem, you’ll likely see one hip drop below the other during squatting. That’s why I like single-leg work so much for these athletes-it gives the spine options as to which plane to move (namely that lateral flexion becomes more available) and lessens the compression load. This way, if an athlete fails to stop at THEIR end range (which they need to be educated on), they’re in a less damaging environment.

The Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis involves some, typically blunt, force that causes a shift in the growth plate at the femoral head/neck junction, which negates the head/neck offset (at least this is the theory). I’ve heard this attributed to things that kids naturally do like jumping out of trees, falling while playing on the playground, or repetitively free falling to your knees while learning how to play goalie! Now, with no femoral head/neck offset, when the femoral head recentrates in the acetabulum, hip flexion will be limited and it’s likely that the repetitive attempts to push hip flexion past the newly found limits will cause some accumulated trauma locally, which (in my opinion) could lead to additional bone growth and therefore an additional exacerbation of the problem. I know that’s long-winded; I hope it all makes sense. Feel free to email me if you have other questions.

Again, I highly recommend you read the whole article. Knowledge is power, and given that FAI is leading to surgery in a lot of cases, the more you know about to the more you can prevent FAI leading to excessive labral damage and future osteoarthritis (as is often the case when FAI goes unchecked).

Check it out here >> Femoroacetabular Impingement: Etiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment of FAI

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!

Get Ultimate Hockey Transformation Now!

Year-round age-specific hockey training programs complete with a comprehensive instructional video database!

Get access to your game-changing program now >> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team

“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University