When an athlete suffers an injury, the early decisions made around their training can have a profound impact on their reconditioning timeline.

Research has shown that training the opposite limb can result in up to 77% of the gained strength transferring to the untrained (injured) limb. This is a result of adaptations in the nervous system that allow for a strong neural drive and coordinated contraction to be maintained in the injured side, despite it not actively moving.

Focusing on multi-joint exercises with slow eccentric and rapid concentric phases will maximize the transfer effect.

These positive neural adaptations accompany desirable hormonal responses to heavy resistance training, which may positively impact tissue healing.

If the goal is to optimize injury healing, and expedite a return to full performance, complete rest is rarely the answer.

Feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. For more information reconditioning injured athletes, check out Optimizing Adaptation & Performance

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

Mike Potenza (San Jose Sharks) recently shared an article on 3 powerful strategies he’s used to successfully return his players from injury.

Unfortunately, it’s still extremely common for athletes to be told to rest for several weeks until the injury “heals”, and then receive a green light to fully return to sport.

While time may allow for the injury to heal, the inactivity associated with rest will cause the athlete to significantly detrain.

Just as we wouldn’t recommend that an athlete sits on the couch all off-season and then transitions into competition, the recommendation of simply resting sets the athlete up for failure.

Simply, the athlete returns slower, weaker, and with less endurance.

The methods and progressions Mike outlines have been key to his success in helping his athletes, not just return to sport, but return to the same level of elite performance they achieved prior to the injury. 

The goal is never to just have the athlete in the line-up; the goal is to have the athlete prepared to make an impact.

And while Mike has spent the last 14 years working in the NHL, the methods he discusses apply to athletes in all sports, including “tactical” athletes.

Check out the article here >> 3 Powerful Strategies for Successful Reconditioning

In the article, Mike discusses:

  1. An often overlooked, but extremely effective method for preserving and developing muscle mass around an injured area
  2. An essential strategy to develop and guide program design and motivate the athlete throughout the reconditioning process
  3. How to “program” sport participation as part of the rehabilitation process to allow the athlete to make an immediate impact upon returning

Check out the article here >> 3 Powerful Strategies for Successful Reconditioning

Want to learn more?

Optimizing Adaptation & Performance, the new health and sport performance video series I did with Mike Potenza and Jim LaValle features over 7.5 hours of content tying together the most effective strategies in assessments, program design, sports science, and nutrition/supplementation.

Until this Friday (11/8) at midnight EST, you can save $50 off your access to the entire Optimizing Adaptation & Performance package!

Get your copy and save $50 here >> Optimizing Adaptation & Performance

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Optimizing-Adaptation-and-Performance.png

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to post them below!

Get your copy and save $50 >> Optimizing Adaptation & Performance

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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

I’m extremely excited to share that today Optimizing Adaptation & Performance is officially live!

Optimizing Adaptation & Performance features over 7.5 hours of video and PDFs from all of the presentations from a a seminar I did last Summer with James LaValle and Mike Potenza at Mike Boyle Strength and Conditioning.

There’s more health and performance information available now than ever before, and it’s become increasingly difficult to sift through all of the marketing hype to find the most effective solutions.

When Mike, James and I originally talked about putting this seminar together, our goal was simple – share our most effective research- and experience-supported solutions to help optimize an athletes health, training adaptation, and game-day performance.

With that in mind, the presentations cover a wide array of topics, including:

  • In-season program design
  • Multi-stage reconditioning of injured athletes
  • Workload monitoring and developing effective reports for coaches
  • The most effective recovery strategies for different types of training/sport stress
  • Using testing as a diagnostic process to design more effective programs
  • Hormonal implications of overtraining/under recovery
  • Training, nutrition, and supplementation strategies to optimize mitochondrial development, and muscular hypertrophy/strength
  • How health of the gut, brain, and immune system influence each other, and nutrition and supplementation strategies to optimize all three

Proven Strategies for Better Results

On a personal note, I’m really excited to share this information for a couple reasons.

First, this information is powerful – it can have a profound impact on the health, performance, consistency, and durability of athletes in every sport.

Mike, James and I have worked in every setting – professional and collegiate sports, private sports training facilities, general fitness clients, etc. – and there are strategies shared in the OAP videos that can be applied in all of these environments.

Increase your “Range”

Second, I strongly believe in the importance of having a range of solutions for different problems.

Athletes and training clients don’t always respond to the same strategies in the same way, and between individual preferences and logistical constraints, if you only have one tool – it’s likely you’ll run into situations where you can’t use it.

By spanning assessment, sports science, recovery interventions, program design, and nutrition/supplementation, OAP provides complimentary solutions to help facilitate the optimal response, despite different situational constraints.

For example, athletes at all levels suffer from depleted energy at some point throughout the season. This can result from:

  • Insufficient or inappropriate preparation
  • Detraining throughout the season
  • Excessive workload
  • Misguided dietary strategy
  • Suboptimal sleep
  • Inadequate or poor use of recovery strategies

Depending on the situation, some of these areas may be more realistic to improve than others, so having a process to identify what is contributing to the athlete’s lack of energy and solutions to address each limiting factor will allow you to always make an impact.

Optimizing Adaptation & Performance discusses each of the above points in detail, and provides different strategies to address the same problem.

Save $50

The videos of each presentation, along with PDFs of the slides, are now available through a protected “member” section of the OAP website.

Until this Friday (11/1) at midnight EST, you can save $50 off your access to the entire Optimizing Adaptation & Performance package!

Get your copy and save $50 here >> Optimizing Adaptation & Performance

As always, if you have any questions, feel free to post them below!

Get your copy and save $50 >> Optimizing Adaptation & Performance

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com\

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

Use CODE: "Neeld15" to save 15%