Tag: Precision Nutrition

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

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

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!

Hockey Nutrition Coaching

I recently started, rapidly worked through, and completed the Precision Nutrition Certification Course. As I read through the 440 page text book over the last week, I was bombarded with great nutrition and supplementation information that really opened my eyes on differential strategies for people of different body types, and on how to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

While I found a lot of the advanced stuff really interesting, I think it’s important that people really master the basics before even considering the advanced strategies. For example, calorie and carbohydrate cycling probably won’t make a difference if the majority of your calories come from McDonalods, snacks, and other processed foods (including the “freezer dinners”).

The importance of nutrition in hockeyperformance cannot be denied. In fact, nutrition is largely responsible for:

Providing fuel for athletic movement
Replenishing energy stores after competition
Rebuilding bone and muscle mass following activity
Maintaining an athletic body composition (e.g. adequate muscle mass and minimal body fat for most sports)

This is truly just the tip of the iceberg. On a less obvious level, nutrition drives every function in your body, from maintaining the integrity of your cells, to allowing for proper blood flow and oxygen delivery, to improving eyesight.

Nutrition information is readily available. Indeed, it’s quite difficult to anywhere, watch TV, or listen to the radio without being bombarded by some sort of nutrition-related message. Unfortunately, finding QUALITY nutrition information is a different story. There are more commonly believed myths about nutrition than any other aspect of athletic development.
Last week I listened to an audio interview with my mentor Michael Boyle, where he referenced a nutrition axiom:

“Eat food. Mostly plants and animals. Not too much.”

Nutrition, at the most surface level, is really THAT simple. Think about all the food you eat. How much of it is actually food? In other words, how much of it is NOT a “food product”, or something that has been manufactured by mankind? My friend Brian St. Pierre refers to “food” as things that can be grown or hunted.

Gatorade? Not food. The typical school lunch of chicken nuggets and tater tots. Not food. All chips, pretzels, dunkaroos and other enticing snacks. Not food.

Nuts aside, there is NO real food here.

Looked at this way, it’s amazing how much of the typical American diet is lacking in real food. This is true of both athletes and non-athletes. The next time you’re about to prepare a meal, ask yourself how much of what you’re about to make is real food, and how you can increase the proportion of real food in the meal.

Another interesting thing regarding your diet is that the overwhelming majority of the calories you take in are used simply to sustain the vital functions within your body. In other words, if you take in 2,000 calories in a day, that doesn’t mean you need to burn 2,000 calories during a workout or through playing sports to maintain your current body composition. In physically active people, calories are burned in the following proportions:

60%: Basal Metabolic Rate (Calories burned to sustain vital functions)
10% Energy required to digest/absorb food
30%: Physical Activity

This means that 70% of your daily energy expenditure comes from things that are just a normal process of everyday life (eating, maintaining vital functions). Of course, these factors are specific to the individual. One pretty reliable equation to determine your Resting Metabolic Rate (similar to the basal metabolic rate, but encompasses food intake and minor movements) is the Mifflin Equation:

Men:
Resting Metabolic Rate (Calories/Day) =

10 x (weight in kg) + 6.25 x (height in cm) – 5 x (age in years) + 5

Women:
Resting Metabolic Rate (Calories/Day) =

10 x (weight in kg) + 6.25 x (height in cm) – 5 x (age in years) -161

Using this equation will give you an estimate of the amount of calories you burn everyday without accounting for physical activity. In other words, this will give you an estimate of the “70%” from above.

Low Calorie Diets for Fat Loss?

With few exceptions (football linemen, sumo wrestlers, etc.), maintaining relatively low levels of body fat is essential for athletes in all sports. In fact, a gold standard amongst high level male hockey players is that their body fat is below 10% (As far as I know there is no female standard, but the 10% equivalent for females is around 16%). Some coaches will dismiss a player altogether if he’s too far above this. The most commonly held belief in this regard is that the best way to lose fat is to eat less. This may be a decent start for those that eat excessively (not as many as you’d think), but weight loss/gain isn’t as simple as calories in vs calories out.

In the PN texbook The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition, authors John Berardi, PhD, and Ryan Andrew, MS, MA, RD present a case study whereby a female cross-country skier was looking to drop body fat. She was currently 5’6”, 165 lbs and 23% body fat. She was initially counseled (by someone else) to eat a high carbohydrate, low calorie diet, which caused her to lose both fat and muscle, dropping to a mere 160 lbs and 22% body fat. Discouraged, she then consulted with Dr. Berardi’s team, and made the following changes:

	After High Carb/Low Calorie	12 Weeks with Berardi’s Team	Net Changes after 12 Weeks
Height and Weight	5’6″, 160 lbs	5’6″, 135 lbs	Lost 25 lbs
Body Fat %	22%	9%	Lost 13%
Energy Intake	~2500 Calories/Day	~4000 Calories/Day	+1500 Calories/Day
Macronutrient Breakdown	15% Protein 65% Carbohydrates 20% Fat	35% Protein 40% Carbohydrates 25% Fat	+20% Protein -25% Carbohydrates +5% Fat

9% body fat is REMARKABLE and atypical for females. More importantly, this athlete dropped 13% body fat in 12 weeks, while INCREASING her caloric intake DRASTICALLY (60%!). These phenomenal results were the result of her metabolism becoming depressed from a severely negative calorie imbalance. As a quick disclaimer, because she was a cross country skier, she was burning a significant amount of calories through activity each day so I wouldn’t want you to blindly read this and start sucking down 4000 Calories each day.

Take Home Messages
Nutrition doesn’t need to be as complex as the special diet and supplement marketers make it. Eat every few hours, and drink water consistently throughout the day. Eat REAL food, not food products. Understand that weight loss isn’t as simple as eating less. Often times, eating more QUALITY food is the solution to achieving the body composition changes you desire and deserve.

Nutrition Coaching is the perfect compliment to a well-designed athletic development training program. I’m in the process of developing a Nutrition Coaching Program at Endeavor for our athletes there; I may extend that to offer it to online clients as well. in the meantime, if you’re in the market for a world-class Nutrition Coach, I highly recommend you contact my friend Brian St. Pierre.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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

Sports Nutrition Resource

Earlier this week, we had 7 incredible Hockey Nutrition Tips from Brian St. Pierre. If you missed them, check them out below:

Hockey Nutrition Tips: Part 1

Hockey Nutrition Tips: Part 2

With the off-season upon most of the hockey world, I’m getting a lot of questions from players about how to add muscle mass. A few others want to shed some fat this off-season. I’m glad I’m getting the questions. The off-season is really the time where hockey players can make HUGE changes to their bodies and nutrition is a big part of that.

With that in mind, I want to introduce the best sports nutrition resource out there. Now, I’ll preface this by saying that Brian and I have plans to write a Hockey Nutrition Manual sometime in the near future. Unfortunately, the project keeps getting pushed back because Brian has “more important things” to do like “getting married” and “taking care of his new puppy” (which did a depth jump off a couch and broke it’s leg in the first week they owned it…the puppy was quick to learn Brian’s high intensity training mentality, picture below).

Brian's Dog

We WILL finish the Hockey Nutrition Manual before 2010 ends. In the meantime, there is an absolutely amazing nutrition resource that I think every coach, parent, player, and water bottle should own: Dr. John Berardi’s Precision Nutrition!

I’m still blown away that there are people out there that don’t own this. It’s the single best nutrition resource ever. It amazes me that people hesitate to spend money on this, but they’ll gladly spend hundreds of dollars on supplements. Precision Nutrition isn’t a weight loss guide. It’s not a muscle gaining guide. It’s a SYSTEM that teaches you how to manipulate your diet to achieve ALL of your health, performance, and body composition goals. If you need to gain muscle mass this year, Precision Nutrition will help. If in a couple years you need to shed some fat, Precision Nutrition will help.

The PN System includes: The Success Guide, The Diet Guide, The Quick Start Guide, The Super Shake Guide, 5-Minute Meals, The Individualization Guide, The Measurement Guide, The Plant-Based Diet Guide, The Maintenance Guide, and The Support Guide. It also comes with Gourmet Nutrition, my favorite cookbook!

Check out Dr. Berardi’s Precision Nutrition “Executive Summary”:

Covers everything you need to know about nutrition. Precision Nutrition contains everything you need to get the body you want.
Teaches you how to eat for your goal and your body. We teach you how to develop a custom nutrition plan unique to your physiology.
Written in plain English. We make advanced nutrition research easy to understand – and easy to use, right away.
1 year of 24/7 online support on our private member forum. You’ll need help, and with PN you get it – from our expert coaches and nearly 40,000 fellow members from around the world.
1 year membership to our online library of articles, e-books and software. Access our complete Exercise Video Database and thousands of pages covering every conceivable fitness and nutrition topic in the Member Zone.
Includes more than 25 goal-specific exercise programs by world-class coaches. We had the top coaches in the world develop exercise programs specifically for Precision Nutrition members.
Includes the PN cookbook, Gourmet Nutrition Volume 1. Good, healthy food can be delicious, and in Gourmet Nutrition we show you how.
Results 100% guaranteed. We put our money where our mouth is. If PN doesn’t work for you, we’ll not only give your money back, we’ll buy you another book of your choosing!
$50 off before April 15th! Order today for an unbeatable deal.

If you have questions about this system, please do not hesitate to contact me. This is the exact nutrition system that many of the top strength and conditioning professionals in North America use, and I know hockey players up through the pro levels that use it as well.

Make the smartest investment of your life and check out Precision Nutrition now!

To your off-season success,

Kevin Neeld

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

Top 10 Strength and Conditioning Newsletters

Last night I surprised Emily by picking her up at the airport (she was expecting a friend from work). Her flight was delayed, so I’m a little tired today!

I’m always curious what resources other Strength and Conditioning Coaches go to for new/unique training information. There are a ton of great books, websites, audio programs, and DVDs out there, all of which cost money.

Below is a list of my the Top 10 FREE Newsletters that I think all Strength and Conditioning Coaches should subscribe to.

Everyone will benefit from all of these, but you may find some speak to you more than others so I don’t think it’s fair to rank them (that’s why they’re all labeled “1”).

1) Eric Cressey’s Newsletter

1) Michael Boyle’s Functional Strength Coach Newsletter

1) Nick Tumminello’s Newsletter and Video Course

1) Mike Robertson’s Newsletter

1) SBCoachesCollege.com Newsletter

1) Brian Tracy’s Newsletters (I love the “Quote of the Day newsletter)

1) Mike Geary’s Newsletter (Great Nutrition and fat loss tips)

1) John Berardi’s/Precision Nutrition Newsletter

1) Kevin Neeld’s Newsletter (Had to throw that one in there)

1) Kim McCullough’s Hockey Newsletter (This is a must-subscribe for both male AND female hockey players and coaches)

These are the newsletters I read on a daily basis. If you know of other great newsletters please post them below so we can all benefit from them!

Keep learning. Keep training smart.

-Kevin Neeld

P.S. Don’t forget to register for this FREE teleseminar with guest speakers like Mike Boyle, Eric Cressey, Gray Cook, Shirley Sahrmann, and Stu McGill: Sports Rehab to Sports Performance Teleseminar

P.P.S. I’m really excited that my Ultimate Ice Hockey Training Facebook Group has broken the 1,000 fan barrier. Help spread the word to other motivated hockey players and coaches!

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