Tag: Athletic Development Resources

This Week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning

I received a ton of great feedback about the two articles I posted this week. If you haven’t had a chance to read them yet, you can check them out here: Functional Training Fallacy and Become a Great COACH!

Mike Potenza was the star this week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning. After wrapping up a busy week with their prospect camp, he somehow found time to put together an awesome article on movement training and a travel-friendly training program (sleep optional?).

Mike’s article on movement training was terrific. He outlined his philosophy on linear and lateral movement training, general progressions for this type of work, and specific exercise progressions for linear and lateral movements. He also wrote up a whole section on coaching cues to use to help get athletes to do things the right way. There is no benefit to training without proper movement, so hearing exactly what Mike looks for and how he cues his athletes is a great benefit. Check out the article at the link below:

Click here to read >> Linear and Lateral Movement Training from Mike Potenza

Mike also added a 2-day circuit based training program that doesn’t require any equipment. From what I gathered, this is something he’ll use for his guys that are traveling and don’t have access to much equipment. It’s great to have circuits like this as options because they aren’t overly technical (so you can be relatively confident that the athlete is doing everything the right way and they can be used by athletes that may be new to your system), and it keeps them relatively on track without sacrificing some of the niceties that the hockey off-season should allow.

Click here for Mike’s Program >> 2-Day Summer Travel Workouts from Mike Potenza

On this topic, I’ve come across some people in the hockey world that encourage players to finish the season, and then spend all of their time in camps, clinics, or in the weight room. Naturally, I think it’s extremely important that players make a commitment to their training in the off-season; I think it’s equally important that hockey development professionals recognize that hockey players also need time to recover and that mixing in a social engagement or vacation every now and then isn’t the worst thing. We actually schedule our 4-day programs to give our players 3-day weekends to head to the beach or just relax. Players should feel refreshed and ready to go at the end of the off-season, not beaten down. Too much time in the rink and gym with negligible opportunities to relax and enjoy life makes for a dismal entry into the season.

Do you really want to deprive your players of the…water…at the beach??

There have also been a couple great forum discussions over the last week. Darryl Nelson posted a link to a video of what appears to be the most comical and irrational implementation of science to date. It’s certainly an interesting idea, but I have a hard time buying that it’s the “future” of fitness. Although, the trend is for people to do less and expect more, so maybe this will catch on? There’s also a thread on on-ice conditioning progressions to enter the pre-season that is worth checking out. Some great minds weighing in with their advice.

As always, if you aren’t a member yet, I encourage you to try out Hockey Strength and Conditioning for a week. It’ll only cost $1, and if it’s not the best buck you’ve ever spent, I’ll personally refund you!

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

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Become A Great COACH!

A couple weekends ago, I was fortunate enough to attend Joe Dowdell and Mike Roussell’s Peak Training and Diet Design Seminar at Peak Performance NYC. I had planned on doing a recap of the event, but my friend Tony Gentilcore beat me to it. Check out his re-cap here: Learnification: My Weekend at Peak Performance.

Kale: the fuel for Tony’s big ~~brain~~ biceps

He also did a preview to the review, which you can find here: The Preview to the Review of the Peak Training and Diet Program Design Seminar

At the end of the 2-day event, Joe and Mike invited me to sit on their expert panel for a Q&A with the attendees. It was an honor to be up there with guys like Tony, John Romaniello, Jim “Smitty” Smith from the Diesel Crew, and Dr. Perry Nickelston.

Emily always says I have no sense of fashion, but I was the ONLY one that color-coordinated their beard with their shirt.

At one point, someone asked a question about what advice we would give trainers and strength coaches that really want to be successful in the industry. This was a great question, and the responses the other guys gave were outstanding. One of the points I really tried to emphasize is that it’s important to become a good COACH.

If you’ve read any of my stuff in the past, you know that I place a premium on staying current with relevant research and innovative training methods. I also think it’s important to test new things to ensure that we’re constantly finding improved ways to train our athletes and clients. Because of the internet-driven gold rush, there seems to be an ongoing contest of who knows more, and less emphasis is being placed on how to actually coach athletes. This is creating an increasingly large discrepancy between intellectual and inter-personal knowledge. In other words, there are really bright people in the training industry that aren’t great at implementing everything they know. As Mike Boyle always says, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Another trend, one that I doubt will ever disappear, is that strength coaches only want to work with elite athletes. I made a comment during the expert Q&A that from a coaching standpoint I don’t do anything with our elite hockey players. That’s not really true. Our high level hockey players require a more in-depth focus on assessment and personalized program design. These athletes have put a ton of miles on their body, and tend to have greater compensation patterns and injury-prevention concerns than players competing at lower levels. My point was that elite level athletes are extremely neurologically efficient, and tend to do things pretty well with very little coaching. Many already have a few years of training experience under their belt and have been taught the basics of lifting. There is a lot to be gained from coaching elite level athletes, but it’s certainly not the best way to learn to coach. I recognize there is an assumption that the best training professionals are working in professional sports, and therefore working with high level athletes is an indication of competency. There are, in fact, many extremely bright and able coaches in professional sports. But not EVERY person that works in pro sports is not the best; many networked their way into those positions.

On the other side of the athletic continuum are the motor morons. These are the kids that move like shit, have never been taught anything (at least not correctly), and go blank when you try to cue them on anything. Some of these kids may even have pretty well-developed skill sets in their sport of emphasis, and therefore are successful despite a lack of any foundation of athleticism (which invariably catches up with them in the form of poor performance and/or injury). If a coach can get THESE kids to perform exercises correctly and move properly, THAT is the ultimate sign of competency. It’s the experience you develop working with these kids that teaches you how to use different language to make each individual understand what you’re looking for, and how to look for and correct common movement impairments/abnormalities. In other words, this is how you learn to coach effectively.

Coaching is an art, and one that needs to be refined for different training environments. I tell the coaches on our staff at Endeavor that they should try to think of ways to teach every exercise we do in 10s or less and use language that they can use to cue athletes from across a room. The textbook approach of walking each athlete through every exercise step-by-step would result in 4-hour training sessions. It’s not practical. Give the athlete enough to get started, make sure they understand the postures associated with proper exercise technique that purvey most exercises and let them get started. Not every athlete makes the same mistake and telling every athlete every step of every exercise is excessive. Let them try it, see where they err, and correct accordingly.

Take Home
If you’re a young coach, don’t be in a rush to work with professional athletes; be in a rush to become an outstanding coach. We need more great coaches at the youth level anyway, but this is certainly the best place to refine your coaching ability. If you want to become a good coach, find a strength and conditioning coach that seems to “get it” in terms of understanding proper movement, that works with a high volume of athletes, and ask to intern or volunteer. If you’re looking, I highly recommend getting in touch with people like Tony and Eric Cressey (Cressey Performance in Hudson, MA), Mike Boyle (MBSC in Woburn, MA), Brijesh Patel (Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT), Jeff Oliver (Holy Cross in Worcester, MA), and Robert dos Remedios (College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, CA).

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Functional Training Fallacy

Over the last several weeks, I’ve been very fortunate to have an opportunity to work in close conjunction with Ned Lenny, a really bright physical therapist with an office in Cherry Hill, NJ. Ned has been doing some in-house work for us at Endeavor, which has been a great educational experience for me and our athletes.

Ned and I were talking about one of our hockey players, and we started talking about training strategies for muscles primarily considered stabilizers. The rotator cuff and the lateral hip musculature are two popular muscle groups that populate the stabilizer category.

Collectively, the rotator cuff muscles function to stabilize the humeral head within the glenohumeral joint and ensure proper tracking of these two bones on one another

The deep hip rotators (pictured) and the gluteus medius (not pictured) compromise the lateral hip musculature typically considered as serving a stabilization function

These muscle groups do in fact function primarily as stabilizers. In other words, they provide dynamic control of the surrounding joint and stability of the joint so that high levels of force can be generated by the extremities. At the risk of beating this analogy to death, attempting to express strength or power with poor stabilizer function is similar to attempting to shoot a cannon from a canoe. Stability creates the foundation for strength and power. In fact, it’s a prerequisite for the expression of these qualities.

This understanding is a huge step in the right direction from the textbook approach to training where external rotators are only trained in external rotation movements and internal rotators are only training in internal rotation movements without any focus on their co-contraction functions in the interest of more global movement. Instead of these isolated rotations, better exercise choices are:

Rotator Cuff: Partner-assisted dynamic stabilizations, farmer’s walks, waiter’s walks, 1-arm stability wall hold, etc.

Lateral Hip Musculature: Backward monster walks, lateral mini-band walks, all single-leg exercises

In these exercises, the aforementioned muscles function in concert with one another to promote stability. This would be the most functional/integrative way to approach training these muscle groups. In both the hockey and sports training industries, there are tendencies to utilize new information in an extreme fashion. In other words, pendulums tend to swing too far in one direction; too much black or white and not enough shades of gray.

Sometimes the training industry goes too far…

In this case, Ned pointed out that training and movement aren’t just about function, they’re also influential in tissue nutrition. In this vein, nutrition refers to fluid and nutrient circulation to tissue structures within the body. When muscle groups become too rigid, they lose nutrition, become fibrotic, and can even begin to calcify. Naturally, this results in a loss of mobility and proper function. Taking muscles through a full range of motion helps improve nutrient delivery to the structures and therefore can help improve their function. This line of logic indicates that, despite the lack of “functional” carryover, there is still a place for more isolationist exercises like pure internal and external rotations.

A more functional approach to training the rotator cuff

Of course, before the people that have only been recommending tubing exercises for rotator cuffs for the last decade celebrate, the isolationist approach, by itself, is still not the best way to go. The major take home here is that, as with all things training, there are shades of gray. There is a place for both modalities. This is also another example that sometimes the most sport-specific training solution is anti-sport-specific training!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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This Week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning

Another busy week at Endeavor is in the books. This morning I ran a session at 4:45am because one of our players was flying out to a charity event in Colorado. I’m a little tired, but it’s important to me that I’m supportive of our players, especially when it’s to help a charity!

Speaking of which, my friend Eric Cressey recently did an in-service for his staff on how to address the elbow. He covered everything from functional anatomy, to injuries, to injury mechanisms, to strength training program modifications (basically…everything). Because a few of his staff members couldn’t be there, he filmed the whole thing. The video came out really well and provides a ton of awesome information so Eric decided to sell it to the public for $10. Eric has been one of my go-to resources for the last few years and he continues to be a pioneer in the sports training industry with regards to utilizing an understanding of functional anatomy to implement injury prevention strategies in an athlete’s training program. While the elbow isn’t the sexiest of joints, its function does have significant implications for athletes in all sports.

I’ve watched the video and the content, as is always the case with Eric’s stuff, is excellent. But there’s an added incentive for you to shell out $10 to check it out. Half of the proceeds from all purchases of Eric’s “Everything Elbow” (the alliteration practically sells itself) goes to Kevin Youkilis’ charity Youk’s Kids. Youk’s Kids supports at-risk youth at the Italian Home for Children located in Jamaica Plain, critically ill children at Josh Cares in Kevin’s hometown of Cincinnati, as well as Youk’s Kids own Athletes for Heroes program. I’m always up for supporting charities, even those run by Red Sox players. If you have an undying passion to learn everything you can to better train athletes, a weird affinity for elbows, or just want to show some love for Youk’s Kids, grab a copy of Eric’s Everything Elbow today!

On to this week’s content at Hockey Strength and Conditioning:

Yesterday I added an article on hip assessments for hockey players. The article covers an assessment to screen for an anatomical adaptation that a lot of hockey players seem to possess. This adaptation may or may not have implications for their on-ice game, but always has some sort of effect on their off-ice training. It’s not always feasible to take every player through a thorough assessment, but it’s helpful to have an understanding of these assessments so you can break them out if someone presents with perplexing movement behavior that doesn’t seem to correct with other strategies in your tool box. Check out the article and video at the link below:

Click here to read/watch >> Hockey Hip Assessment: Femoral Ante-/Retro-version

Earlier in the week, Darryl Nelson added a video of a number of posterior chain exercises. All of these exercises I’ve seen in some capacity or another in the past; some I use regularly, others less often. Regardless, the video is an awesome learning tool because it presents a number of options to hit the hamstrings and glutes in both knee- and hip-dominant patterns, and you can hear Darryl coaching in the background. For those of you that train athletes, I think there is a ton of value in hearing how an experienced coach cues his athletes. With Darryl’s experience, and given that he’s also filming, you know he’s only using the cues he knows are most effective. It also provides insight into what movement flaws he’s looking for during the exercise. Similarly, if you’re an athlete, it’s helpful to know how to perform these exercises with proper form. Check out the video at the link below:

Click here to read/watch >> Posterior Chain Variations

Lastly, and I think most excitingly, there’s an awesome forum discussion under the thread “Slideboard”. A bunches of coaches have weighed in on what length of slideboard they use, whether they adjust the length for players of different sizes or goalies, and what they like/dislike about each approach. In discussions like this, I’m not sure anyone is “right” or “wrong”, but it’s interesting to hear everyone’s thoughts. A lot of great minds chipping in.

As always, if you aren’t a member yet, I recommend trying out the site for $1 Hockey Strength and Conditioning for a week. If it’s not the best buck you’ve ever spent , I’ll personally refund you!

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

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Perform Better Summit Recap

A couple weeks ago David Lasnier and I drove out to Chicago for Perform Better’s 3-Day Summit. We were both excited for the summit, but we were both equally as excited for the drive. I know some people loathe car rides (Emily averages about 3-6 minutes before she falls asleep…even when she’s driving), but we both love them. Aside from enjoying the luxurious comfort of my ’99 Saturn 4-door family sedan, it gives us an opportunity to talk shop, catch up about life, and finally settle the ongoing battle of who has the highest caffeine tolerance.

I win

A few of the highlights from the trip:

Talks

Naturally, it would be impossible for me to recount everything I learned from an event of this magnitude. Below are a few of the more “big picture” take homes:

Success Secrets from Mike Boyle
This was arguably the best talk of the event. As far as I know, this was the first time Boyle told his story publicly. Not exactly the “overnight success” that so many young coaches seem to be chasing (myself included at times!)

It’s not a goal until you write it down. Write down your goals, specifically, and great things will happen.
Your income is directly proportional to the number of people you help. Help more people achieve their goals, make more money.
“Most people give up right before the big break” Keep building positive habits and opportunities will come.
Anyone who is excellent in anything gets paid. “This is not about putting in your twenty and getting a pension. It’s about changing people’s lives and leaving a legacy.”
During the apprentice years, be prepared to work two jobs and volunteer. Not an easy time, but a great opportunity to develop a lot of experience and hone your coaching skills.
Pay it forward. Help as many people as you can. This just comes down to being a good person, but you never know how/when things will come back around for you.

Building Better Athletes from Robert Dos Remedios
First time I heard Coach Dos speak. Awesome presentation and great guy. Inspiration below:

“The harder you work, the harder it is to give up.”
Don’t allow athletes to bend over. “Don’t show the world you’re tired.”
“The will to win is nothing compared to the will to PREPARE”

Anatomy Trains in Training from Thomas Myers
This was the second time I got to see Myers speak in a 3-week time span. Major take homes:

All symptoms are patterns
10x as many nerves in fascia as muscles; fascia is an incredible sensory source
Experimentation becomes gesture. Gesture becomes habit. Habit becomes posture. Posture becomes structure.
Fascia transmits forces; idea of tensegrity.
Fascia is elastic and plastic, and typically gets injured as a result of moving too fast.
The entire concept of individual muscles is a result of scalpel-driven dissections. Idea that we have 600 muscles is not as accurate as us having 1 muscle in 600 fascial pockets
Concentrically loaded structures need manual work along fibers; eccentrically loaded structures need work across fibers.

Evolve or Die from Thomas Plummer
First time I’ve heard any of Plummer’s information. Calling him animated would be a drastic understatement.

This is the “results age”. People don’t want features; they want progress
People buy expertise, not motivation (we have energy drinks for that).
3,000-8,000 sq ft is an ideal facility space
“Up your presentation” If you want to have a premier facility, make it look that way.
Facilities should offer 5-6 price points for services scaling from basic to very in-depth.

Barefoot Training from Mark Verstegen
I’ve followed a lot of Mark’s work, but I had never heard him speak. Great presenter (as was the case with most of the presenters I saw).

Shoe-wearers demonstrate a progressive narrowing of the anterior portion of the foot and degradation of joint ROM
Idea is that modern “stability” shoes lead to decreased proprioceptive input to foot and lower body, which may lead to decreased arch and foot strength
30-75% of runners get injured every year. Knee is most common injury site.
Before ANYONE starts barefoot training, they need to demonstrate some basic level of overall fitness and have proper running mechanics
Barefoot training will not automatically correct poor movement patterns, but may help expose them.
Big take home concept from this presentation was that people shouldn’t blindly dive into switching all of their training over to barefoot or minimalist shoes. Like every aspect of performance training, precautions and progressions are of paramount importance.

The Compliance Solution from John Berardi
Dr. Berardi is another guy whose work I’ve studied for the last 5 years or so. His perspective was refreshing and dedication to continual improvement was inspiring.

Take responsibility for client’s results AND compliance
Talk to clients in a way that is more likely to make them change (don’t be an asshole; be inspirational)
Coach both sides of the brain (Left: Logical, analytical, scientific, etc.; Right: Emotional, artistic, questions reason, etc.)
Give 1 habit at a time; make them small, clear daily habits. Compliance drops from 85+% to <35% when moving from 1 to 2 habit assignments.
Ask “how confident are you that you can do this habit?” before letting them loose. If they know in advance they can’t do it, adjust to make it easier.

Social
With the caliber of speakers at this event, I knew I’d come away with a few new ideas on how to improve our programs at Endeavor. That said, I learned just as much outside of the presentations as I did in. David and I stayed with Kyle Bangen, the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Michigan Tech, so the three of us spent a lot of time together. On Friday, we grabbed lunch with Coach Boyle and got to catch up a bit about how things are going at BU and MBSC. What really stood out to me is how “famous” Boyle was at this event. It literally took us 30 minutes to walk a couple hundred yards from one end of the conference center to the other because so many people grabbed him along the way. Probably more notable was how genuinely happy Boyle was to see/meet each one of them. Boyle continues to have a huge influence on my career; he’s been a great mentor for me, both in terms of providing current insight into training methodologies and shaping my overall character. I hope to reach a point in my career when I can reminisce about my experiences working at the NHL (still holding out for the Flyers to call) and Olympic levels, and helping other strength coaches do the same.

Me and Coach Boyle in the back of Gray Cook’s talk

About an hour later, David and I were completely tanked and in desperate need of a coffee. Right at that time, Charlie Weingroff walked by with a not-so-inconspicuous ziploc bag full of Red Line, or as he calls it, “liquid courage”. David must have stopped at 4 7-11’s looking for Red Line on that trip with no luck. Charlie must “know a guy”.

Chris Poirier and the PB team hosted a social that night. I spent the majority of the time catching up with Darryl Nelson and Maria Mountain, and I got to meet fellow-hockey strength and conditioning coach Anthony Donskov. I told Chris later that it was cool that the event was so-well attended that we could have a mini hockey-specific mastermind there. It was interesting to learn that we all had very few differences philosophically. The major differences in execution came down to what we were able to implement logistically in our setting, which is what we spent the majority of the time talking about. If I had an opportunity to redesign our facility from scratch I would knock down a few walls to ensure complete visibility. A huge design mistake that is a constant consideration in how we design programs and structure the flow throughout the facility.

After the social we went back to our hotel…slash water park. A view from our room balcony:

Our hotel pool had a moat around it

The next day was awesome. David, Kyle, and I had another “hockey training meeting” at lunch with Maria Mountain and Anthony Donskov. I wish I would have recorded this lunch. A lot of great ideas thrown around from really bright people. Before the day wrapped up I got a chance to catch up a bit with John Berardi. I’ve been following John’s work for several years now, and still believe that his book Precision Nutrition is a must own for athletes and non-athletes alike. The results John showed from his online training clients were pretty remarkable, and as I mentioned above, his realization that a lack of information isn’t as much of a problem as us relying on a poor delivery vehicle for this information is dead on. We talked about the idea of putting together a “dripped” information system so that our athletes could receive nutritional habits based on their body composition goals to focus on every couple weeks with a few tips in between on how to implement or stay on track with the habit. Ultimately I think this is the direction we’ll go with our athletes; it’s just a matter of whether I’ll wait for him to design the product or if I’ll team up with someone to do it myself.

I don’t remember when, but at some point I caught up with Gray Cook and Brett Jones in the lobby. Both of these guys were awesome to talk to. Most of our hockey players have really jacked up feet, so I was looking for some insight from Brett on when he does and doesn’t recommend orthotics. We have an inordinate number of hockey players that present with flat feet and I’m not at all convinced that it’s a purely structural problem. I am, however, convinced that foot alignment and control is of paramount importance in human performance, even in hockey players. Ultimately I think I’ll end up paying Charlie to do an in service for our staff on the issue because he seems to have a better hold on it than anyone else I’ve talked to, but until then I’m still searching for answers elsewhere and Gray and Brett are as bright as they come.

Because we had a 14 hour drive home and we lost an hour with the time zone change, David and I decided we were going to leave first thing Sunday morning. And while I came for training information, I wasn’t going to leave Chicago without a slice of authentic deep dish pizza.

Most filling pizza ever

If you’ve been on the fence about attending one of the Perform Better Summits in the past, I highly encourage you to take the plunge next year. The presenters are world class, there is a lot of really bright attendees and they’re just generally fun. Hopefully I’ll see you there next year!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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