Tag: hockey training

Hockey Training Tip: Speed Limitation

Hockey Speed Training Tip: When attempting to improve a player’s speed, it’s important to determine what the limiting factor to his or her performance is. A few of the most common culprits are:

  1. Skating technique
  2. Lower body strength/power
  3. Single-leg stability

Training single-leg strength is a great way to improve skating speed

When coaches instruct a player to do things like bend their knees, get down lower, and “stop on a dime”, in many cases the player does not physically possess the capacity to do so. In other words, until the player’s strength and power is improved, they physically are incapable of doing what the coach asks. Identifying and training the limiting factor will save the player and coach a ton of frustration and lead to faster, more remarkable progress.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Check out Ultimate Hockey Training for more hockey training strategies to improve skating speed!

P.S.2. When you sign up for my newsletter (below) you’ll automatically receive a FREE copy of my hockey speed training manual “Breakaway Hockey Speed”.

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USA Hockey Level 4 Presentation

On Saturday I had an opportunity to present at the USA Hockey Level 4 Coaches Clinic in New Jersey. I was fortunate to sit in on the presentations from John Riley, Kerry Fraser, and Ryan Walter, all of which were insightful and inspiring. It makes me miss being on the ice!

As is often the case during events like this, the schedule was changed a bit and I had about 40 minutes to get through 60 minutes of material. While I was able to get through most of it, I did have to skim over some of the slides and skip over a few videos, a couple of which I think are extremely beneficial for coaches to see (e.g. the dynamic warm-up and lateral miniband walk videos). As a result, I wanted to post a copy of the power point (in PDF format), and the videos to the presentation below, so anyone in attendance that’s interested has an opportunity to review the material and post any questions they may have below.

Also, I know there was a lot of interest in where to buy some of the basic equipment I reference in the presentation (i.e. foam rollers and minibands). You can buy some of this stuff at any sporting goods store, but I’ve found the quality is pretty poor. The only company we use is Perform Better. Their stuff is high quality, inexpensive, and they have the best customer service out there. For your convenience, you can access the foam rollers (get 1′ 6″ round rollers for your whole team), and minibands (I recommend the yellow ones for younger teams, and green and blue for peewees and above) here: Foam Rollers, MiniBands.

I’ll be posting Q&As and a couple points of clarification on important training methods and their application to hockey performance throughout the week, so please post any questions/comments you have below.

You can download the presentation here: Physical Development for the Hockey Athlete

Videos are below. I also included a few that were in the talk I gave at the USA Hockey U-14 Regional Camp in Colorado Springs earlier in the Summer.

Enjoy.

Foam Roll Circuit

Dynamic Warm-Up

Quick Feet

Front 1/2 Kneeling Start

Side 1/2 Kneeling Start

Lateral Back Pedal to Sprint

5-Yard Sprint to 5-Yard Backward Back Pedal to 10-Yard Sprint

Lateral Bound

Hang Clean

Med Ball Shotput w/ Rapid Step Behind and Partner Toss

DB Reverse Lunge

Reverse Lunge (Front Squat Grip)

DB 1-Leg Stiff-Legged Deadlift

DB Chest Press

1-Arm DB Row

Wall March Hold

Lateral MiniBand Walk

Split Squat IsoHold to Slideboard

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Get an inside look at how I design year-round comprehensive hockey training programs here: Ultimate Hockey Training

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Hockey Specific Exercise?

Last week I posted a video of a lower body work capacity exercise that we’ve used quite a bit at the end of this off-season. Today i wanted to share a companion exercise that encompasses somewhat of a more “hockey-specific” movement pattern.

On that note, I think it’s important to understand what hockey-specific means. It’s been funny over the last year to hear how many parents and coaches talk about our training at Endeavor Sports Performance as “hockey-specific”. In a lot of ways, it really is. We prepare our players for the demands of the game, and make sure that we peak their speed, power, and energy systems work to create the smoothest transition to pre-season as possible. That said, if you walked into our facility and watched our players train, you wouldn’t see anything that looks like hockey. In fact, a lot of what makes the programs I write hockey-specific is how I explain the benefits of various components to the players. In many cases, specific exercises and program design strategies are appropriate for a number (if not all) sports, but the explanation to the athlete about how it transfers is different.

Does this make it hockey specific?

(This is what happens when you hit yourself in the face with the bar while doing hang cleans…lesson learned)

All that said, this exercise does have direct application to hockey with regards to the body position, movement pattern, and involved energy systems. It’s also pretty funny to watch how long it takes them to get set up for, what they know will be, their very last video appearance of the Summer (watch for Gabe Antoni trying to sneak into the shot after being told he couldn’t just skip to the end of the training day to be in the video).

Split Squat IsoHold into Lateral Bound

We progressed it:

  1. Week 1: 3 x 3x(5s+3)/side …3 sets of 3 cycles of 5s holds with 3 max effort jumps each side
  2. Week 2: 3 x 4x(5s+3)/side
  3. Week 3: 4 x 4x(5s+3)/side

This is another great exercise to incorporate into the end of the off-season, once players have established sufficient strength and endurance to maintain the desired positions and speed of movement. If you missed it, check out my last post on another variation of this concept: Late Off-Season Conditioning

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Get an inside look at how I design year-round comprehensive hockey training programs here: Ultimate Hockey Training

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

Late Off-Season Conditioning

Several years back I was fortunate to be able to spend some time at Holy Cross with Brijesh Patel, who is now at Quinnipiac University. I always learn something when we get together, so I really enjoy the rare opportunity when I’m able to shut everything down and just spend the day observing and talking shop.

While I was there he had a few off-season hockey players finishing up a workout with an exercise that I saw, immediately stole, and continue to use today. In fact, it was ultimately this experience that was the inspiration for one of our hockey players favorite (…and least favorite) conditioning techniques:

Split Squat Hold into Slideboard

The exercise I stole from Brijesh is what I (and maybe he) call a Squat Hold into Vertical Jump. Pretty straight forward. You can categorize this however you want (work capacity, lactic capacity, etc.), but as I’ve mentioned in the past, the fatigue mechanisms at play in static and dynamic environments are somewhat different, but both affect hockey players every time they step on the ice. As you can imagine, this also helps reinforce low position strength/endurance, which is essential for maintaining a good skating position through fatigue.  You can learn more about these concepts in the video below:

Hockey Conditioning

Finally, here is a video of the Squat Hold to Vertical Jump. The players are holding a squat position for 10s, then doing 3 max effort vertical jumps, and cycling through that process 4 times. The progression for us looked like:

  1. Week 1: 3 x 3x(10s+3) …3 sets of 3 cycles of 10s holds with 3 max effort jumps
  2. Week 2: 3 x 4x(10s+3)
  3. Week 3: 4 x 4x(10s+3)

Squat Hold into Vertical Jump

Special thanks to Kyle Criscuolo, Gabe Antoni, Nick Cruice, Kyle Smith, and Vinny Scotti, who are entering their Freshman years at Harvard, Benley, Union, UNH, and Merrimack, respectively, for letting me film them while they go through hell!

This is an appropriate exercise for the end of the off-season and/or early pre-season before the skating volume picks up too much. Give it a try and post your comments below!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Get an inside look at how I design year-round comprehensive hockey training programs here: Ultimate Hockey Training

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Improving Shot Power Through Rotational Power Training

As has been the theme this Summer, the last several weeks have been exceptionally busy. I was in Blaine, MN for 10 days with the US Women’s National Team, which was an awesome experience. Anthony Donskov and Sarah Cahill were out there with me, both of which are awesome coaches that I always learn a lot from. The three of us have become affectionately known as “The Unit”. While I was out there, Sarah and I had an opportunity to meet and talk shop with Mike T Nelson and Cal Dietz (separately), which was great. I binge read Cal’s 350+ page book over the weekend so I’ll share some of the things I learned in the near future.

The Unit Locker

As a quick aside, last night I confirmed that I’ll be speaking at the USA Hockey Level 4 Clinic in New Jersey in a couple weeks. Let me know if you’ll be there!

Last night I also worked with David Lasnier to test the U-18 team we work with. It was interesting to see how all of their hard work paid off over the Summer. The team tested exceptionally well, but some of the highlights included the goalie knocking out 17 chin-ups (perfect form; team average was over 10), and one of the players doing DB Reverse Lunges w/ 90lb dumbbells for 20 on each leg, at which point I stopped him. Unfortunately, 90s were the heaviest dumbbells we had at the rink so that was where the majority of the team rep-tested (intended to do a 5-RM). Overall I was really impressed, and am looking forward to how the two U-16 teams do over the next couple of weeks and how everyone does with the few on-ice tests we’ll be doing soon.

Rotational Power Training

I’ve written in the past about the role that off-ice rotational power development plays in improving shooting power and other aspects of hockey performance. Today I just wanted to post a video of one of my favorite exercises: Side Standing Rotational Med Ball Shotput with Rapid Cross-Under and Partner Pass

There’s a lot to take in with this, but the idea is that it:

  1. Integrates a dynamic start and change in foot position
  2. Drives rotational power from the ground-up, very similar to the strategy most commonly used on the ice
  3. Utilizes rotational hip torque to generate power
  4. Integrates a rapid adjustment in eye position, both to track the ball into the hands, and to turn to pick a spot on the wall to throw the ball at (we coach our players to pick a spot and throw the ball through that spot…quickly) which happens constantly on the ice

Tough day to be the wall
This is a great exercise for a lot of reasons, but it’s also relatively simple to teach. I get questions a lot from people running youth off-ice programs that don’t have a lot of equipment or time; I think this is a good fit for those situations (starting without the foot movement and without the partner toss). That said, we wrap up our rotational med ball work at the end of the off-season and almost never come back to it until the end of the season because the players undergo so much rotational stress on the ice.

Aside from being a beast, I chose to gave Eric some press here to return the favor, as I found out early this week that my name ended up in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in an interview he did about his role with the Penguins next season.

Now he can tell his friends that he was featured at KevinNeeld.com, which is basically the same thing (no?).

Give this exercise a try and please post any questions you have about how or when to do it below!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Get an inside look at how I design year-round comprehensive hockey training programs here: Ultimate Hockey Training

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