Thank you to all of you that reached out to say happy birthday on Wednesday. Thanks to you, I beat Emily in the “how much does the world care about your birthday facebook challenge” for the third consecutive year!
It means a lot to hear from you…and some of my old friends that I haven’t heard from in over a decade (the power of facebook I guess). That’s probably the first sign of getting old, when I can say things like “I haven’t done that in over 10 years.” Every year a few people will joke about doing a deadlift in my honor or having a protein shake for me. As if my entire personality can be summed up by hockey, lifting, and protein shakes.
Is this all I am to you!
…Actually I guess that’s pretty dead on!
On top of Wednesday being an international holiday, this has been a good week. As you read this, David and I are on our way up to North Jersey to spend some time learning from Perry Nickelston, then are heading over to White Plains, NY to hang out with Anthony Renna. I’m really looking forward to catching up with these guys, and just getting out of Philadelphia/South Jersey for a few hours.
It’s been a great week in Hockey Strength and Conditioning too.
Sean Skahan posted a series of videos of players of his at different levels performing hang cleans. If you’re familiar with the exercise, which I suspect many of you are, you may not think this is as interesting as I did. The thing I really liked about these videos is they show that every player is a little different. I haven’t talked to Sean about these guys, but I suspect that they have different training ages and range of motion limitations (as all players do). Not every one of these videos was “text book” (although none were bad by any means), but it doesn’t matter. The goal of hang cleans is to generate explosive vertical power, safely. For non-Olympic lifters, it’s only important that the “catch” part of the lift be sufficient to not cause injury. I think strength coaches can “throw out the baby with the bath water” and over-emphasize technical aspects at the expense of the physical quality being trained, especially in these complex lifts.
Check it out here >> Hang Cleans from Sean Skahan
I really liked the new article from Darryl Nelson. He did a great job of outlining why the strategy that the OVERWHELMING majority of youth players take is GROSSLY misguided and uses a really great analogy to do so. I’d file this in the “must-read” category. Darryl has been very successful in helping move players from the high school to Division I and professional ranks. There’s a reason why!
Check it out here >> Strength Training Fundamentals from Darryl Nelson
Lastly, I added a 2x/week Early Off-Season Training Program. This is a program I wrote for our players at Endeavor that started training with us again immediately upon the conclusion of the season (in some cases, the very next day).
Check it out here >> Early Off-Season Training Program (2x/week)
That’s a wrap for this week. I’ll be back in a few days with some more great hockey training content for you. Remember, today is THE LAST DAY to save $70 on my Premier Hockey Training Program! This weekend I’m going to be going through all of the applications and contacting people about whether or not they’re the right fit for the program. A few spots have already been taken, so this is your final opportunity to reserve a spot!
Click Here for the best in Hockey Strength and Conditioning
To your continued success,
Kevin Neeld
P.S. Try HockeyStrengthandConditioning.com for 7 days for only $1! It’ll be the best dollar you’ve ever spent.
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