Tag: #1 gym in america

Hockey Nutrition: Supplements

Today I want to wrap up this series on hockey nutrition by taking a birds eye view into supplements. If you missed the first two segments, you can check them out here:

Hockey Nutrition: In-Season Eating

Hockey Nutrition: What to eat?

Players generally look to supplements to fulfill one of two roles:

Improve health by either adding to an already well-rounded diet (rare) or by helping to fill in the gaps between what they should be eating and what they are eating
Improve performance and/or recovery

In both regards, there is a lot of controversy surrounding the necessity of supplements. I don’t think there’s a correct answer to that question in most cases, so I won’t participate in a futile argument. I will say, however, that whether it is POSSIBLE to get all the necessary nutrients from real food isn’t nearly as important as whether it’s PROBABLE that players will actually do what it takes to make that a reality. Moreover, supplements add an element of timeliness and convenience that real food can’t always offer.

With those things in mind, here are a few supplements that I have our players look into:

Whey Protein
Use: Use a serving as part of a snack when real food protein source is unavailable, and immediately before and/or after a training session.
Recommended Brands: Biotest Grow (TMuscle.com) or Optimum Nutrition (BodyBuilding.com)

Fish Oil
Use: Take 2g of combined EPA and DHA everyday to promote expedited recovery, low body fat levels, and overall health
Recommended Brands: Carlson Labs Elite Omega Fish Oil (Vitacost.com)

Carlson Labs has a bunch of different fish oil supplements. Because I’m cheap, I analyzed the amount of combined EPA and DHA per $1.00 and the “Elite Omega-3 Gems” turned out to be the most valuable.

Greens
Use: Take one serving everyday to help bridge the gap between optimal and realistic nutrition
Recommended Brands: Greens+ Berry (Vitacost.com)

Creatine Monohydrate
Use: Take 5g per day to help preserve muscle mass throughout the year. If possible, divide dose into two servings and take one 30 minutes before and one immediately after training or practice
Recommended Brands: Biotest (TMuscle.com)

Creatine consistently demonstrates improved strength and muscle mass compared to control groups. The concerns about excessive water weight and “losing it all when you stop” are completely unsupported.

Beta-Alanine

Use: Take 4-6g/day to improve performance in prolonged high intensity activities
Recommended Brands: Biotest (TMuscle.com)

Vitamin D3
Use: Take ~2000 IUs per day to help ward off the negative effects on bone strength and hormone production associated with insufficient sunlight exposure. If you can, get your school doc to check your levels of this so you can cater your exact dose more closely to your individual needs. This can have a HUGE impact on that mid-season/winter energy lull that most players go through.
Recommended Brands: Anything from the grocery store will work

Those are the core supplements that apply to hockey players. Of these, all but beta-alanine can pretty much be recommended to athletes in all sports, and even non-athletes. Similar to eating in general, supplements provide a means of improving overall health, which isn’t just a desirable goal for athletes.

Anytime I write something on supplements I invariably get a slew of emails from parents asking if these apply to their teenagers. The truth is that there is little to no research examining the safety of these things in teenagers. It’s unlikely there ever will be, as doing research on minors involves a more laborious research process and is generally a pain in the ass to do. That said, there isn’t really a reason to think that teenagers would respond drastically different than adults to the above products. As I mentioned in the recommendation above, I think teens may not have developed as significant of a Vitamin D deficiency as adults (yet), so it’d be a good idea to get levels tested by a doctor before blindly taking 2,000 IUs per day. Beta-alanine could be taken in lower doses (3-4 g/day depending on the size of the teen); creatine could do (2-3g/day).

Making the call on whether or not teens should take supplements is more a psychological concern than a physiological one. Many parents feel that allowing their kids to take supplements sends the wrong message, and that the kids should learn to eat properly first. I don’t disagree. Supplements should not be used to crutch a miserable diet. That said, supplements can support a mediocre diet, and kids need to be EDUCATED on why and how to eat well. Young athletes tend to get excited by supplements, making them more likely to be compliant with their training program and to pursue other information/behaviors that help them improve. This certainly isn’t the case with EVERY kid, but for many supplements is a “gateway” into more optimal choices. As long as they’re aware that supplements are just a piece of the puzzle, not the whole picture.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Muscle Imbalances Revealed: Upper Body

A few days back, I mentioned that I was working my way through a new collaborative resource called Muscle Imbalances Revealed: Upper Body (or MIRU for short) from Tony Gentilcore, Jeff Cubos, Dean Somerset and Rick Kaselj.

I was going to wait to write up a review on this as I still have a presentation to watch, but Rick sent me an email yesterday saying that today is the final day of their introductory price. In other words, tomorrow the price jumps $70.

Many of you may recognize the name; MIRU is a follow-up to a lower body system released last year. The lower body system was very well received by the full fitness industry continuum, from fitness enthusiasts to pro sports physical therapists. I’ve gone through both systems now and can say that if you liked the lower body system, you will LOVE the upper body system.

If you train hard yourself and/or work with clients in any performance or rehabilitation setting, muscle imbalances play a role in your success or lack thereof. In other words, muscle imbalances can be a significant contributor to pain and dysfunction, but can also be a less obvious barrier to training progress. I think most people can readily understand how only performing movements in one direction (e.g. only bench pressing in contrast to a more balanced program of pressing and pulling) could lead to imbalances over time. Probably less intuitive is the idea that how we carry ourselves throughout the day also significant contribute to muscle imbalances. Everything is important; not just how you move, but also how you don’t move. How you sleep, how you sit at a desk, how you drive, how you stand, how you walk, and how you long you spend doing each of these will all have a profound impact on your performance. MIRU did a great job of identifying common imbalances that general and more sport-specific populations suffer. More importantly, they outlined an exhaustive list of preventative and corrective strategies to help show you how to train/live your way back into a more balanced state. Below are three (of the many) of the things I really liked about the new Muscle Imbalances Revealed: Upper Body system.

Three Take Homes from Muscle Imbalances Revealed:

1) Connective Tissue Dictates Function
Dean Somerset’s presentation on ‘fascia’ was outstanding. He outlined a lot of the current research and thinking on the role fascia plays in performance, including how it communicates with the nervous system and how it adapts. Dean’s presentation was reminiscent of the two that I saw Thomas Myers give a few months back. Fascia is a living structure that constantly adapts to the stress (or lack thereof) placed across it and is an underlying factor in much of the movement dysfunction and eventual injury that we see on a daily basis. Because of it’s nervous system innervation, it can actually contract. Myers said that the 2010-2019 decade would be the “Fascial Fitness” era. I think the information Dean outlined in his presentation and the movement for most top performance experts and rehabilitation specialists to include soft-tissue work in their programs supports this. If you want a crash course on the current state of scientific knowledge on fascia, Dean’s presentation is your best bet. Of course, the science is interesting, but of no use if it lacks practicality. Dean followed up the scientific rationale with a number of easily implemented soft-tissue techniques (and how to perform them the CORRECT way) that people can incorporate into their pre-training warm-up routine.

2) Knowing What NOT To Do Is Half The Battle
Regardless of where you reside philosophically on the importance of assessments and corrective exercise, it’s relatively unarguable that people aren’t all built the same and that many will require some adjustment to their program to ensure they aren’t training their way into dysfunction or aggravating lurking injuries. It’s the old “don’t squeeze square pegs into round holes” analogy. Tony Gentilcore provided an in-depth look at upper body assessments, and then followed it up with a great battery of “if this, then don’t do this” scenarios and training strategies to help restore balance and optimal function across the thoracic spine and shoulders. Tony is a really bright guy and has been a great resource for me since I interned at Cressey Performance several years ago. Because the overwhelming majority of the clientele at CP are baseball players (and most of the rest are people that want to get really really ridiculously strong), Tony has years of daily experience working with high-risk populations to draw from, and it shows. His presentations were the ultimate display of practicality. They were also hilarious. If you have a good hold on all the assessment stuff and just want a few new punchlines to entertain your clients (or yourself), this would still be a great investment.

3) Proper Positioning Dictates Core Function
If I look back over the last year, I think one of the biggest changes I’ve made in my coaching philosophy has to do with the importance of positioning the spine and rib cage for optimal diaphragm functioning. Over the last 12 months, I’ve been exposed to this concept through multiple Postural Restoration Institute courses, Shirley Sahrmann’s new book “Movement System Impairment Syndromes of the Extremities, Cervical and Thoracic Spines“, Charlie Weingroff’s Training = Rehab, Rehab = Training, conversations I’ve had with other professionals about DNS, and now Dr. Jeff Cubos’ presentations. The general idea is that proper diaphragm function will drive both respiration and core control, which has implications for various aspects of performance, but will also play a role in dictating the body’s autonomic nervous system status. In other words, a poorly functioning diaphragm (unilaterally or bilaterally) can push you into a more sympathetic state during times when this system should be relatively dormant. This can have short- and long-term consequences on performance and recovery. A requisite step in establishing proper diaphragm function is establishing proper diaphragm position, which involves positioning the thoracolumbar junction and rib cage in a neutral alignment. Dr. Cubos goes through this in detail and provides exercise progressions for how to retrain your body to hold this position during movement. Dr. Cubos and I have come to know each other through our work with hockey players. Because he’s relatively new to the “internet scene”, he’s probably one of the brightest and most skilled guys you’ve never heard of. His MIRU presentations do an excellent job of outlining the whys and hows of one of the most overlooked aspects of training.

I haven’t worked by way through all of Rick’s presentations yet, but they’re off to a great start. If you’re interested in grabbing a copy of MIRU, do not wait! The clock is ticking (they literally have a timer counting down until the special offer leaves…only a few hours left). Click the image/link below to check it out!

Click here >> Muscle Imbalances Revealed: Upper Body

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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This Week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning

The NHL playoffs have officially started, which means one thing….the playoff beard is back! Last year a couple of the Endeavor guys and I decided on a no-shaving policy while our teams were still in the playoffs. The Flyers, who barely snuck into the playoffs, made it to game 6 of the finals, which lead to…

Chicks dig guys with thick playoff beards

Beards even look good from behind.

I wish I had a picture of Emily’s perpetual look of disappointment over the last 6 weeks of their playoff run. While she wasn’t exactly thrilled with the 2 inches of multi-colored fur covering my face (I think she was just jealous that she couldn’t participate), she came around when she saw how sweet my handle-bar mustache looked.

Sorry ladies. I’m taken.

Anyway, traditions need to start somewhere, and where better than my face. The Endeavor playoff beard contest is back. If you’re feeling daring and want to join the fun, fire over some pictures once it starts to look more ridiculous and less socially acceptable. We can do a post-playoff beard gallery.

On to this week’s hockey training content…

Mike Potenza added a video on a few exercises that are great for improving shoulder health on hockey players. The shoulder is a complex area, and ensuring it performs optimally requires understanding how the thoracic spine, scapula, clavical, and humerus bones and their surrounding musculature all interact to produce and control movement. Scapular muscle exercises are often overlooked in hockey training programs, but really need to be incorporated. Check out Mike’s Video:

Click here >> Scap Stability Exercises from Mike Potenza

On a similar note, Darryl Nelson added a video with a half dozen or so anterior core exercises. Some of these I’ve seen and used in the past with our players, others were interesting variations that I’ll likely use in the future. As I’ve said in the past, I really enjoy these videos because they’re great for idea generation. It’s helpful to have multiple strategies/exercises to achieve similar goals to keep things interesting for your athletes over the long haul. Darryl’s video had a few interesting core variations that you probably haven’t seen before.

Click here >> Anterior Core Variations from Darryl Nelson

Lastly, the 3rd annual Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group Hockey Symposium is rapidly approaching. I went to the first two and they were awesome. Not only is it an incredible learning experience, but it’s also an outstanding networking opportunity. In previous years, there have been a number of NHL and D1 NCAA hockey strength and conditioning coaches in attendance, not to mention a number of coaches from private facilities like mine. I’ll definitely be in attendance again this year. The line-up looks better than ever. Simply, if you train hockey players or are involved in hockey sports medicine to any capacity, this is a “must-attend.”

The great news is that the BSMPG is offering HockeySC.com members a $50 discount on admission. It’s cool of them to do it and well worth every penny. Download the coupon at the link below:

>> BSMPG Hockey Symposium Coupon <<

I hope to see you there!

That’s a wrap for today! If you aren’t a member yet, shell out the $1 to test drive 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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Body By Boyle Online (New and Improved)

I’m breaking my usual Monday-Wednesday-Friday update routine because I wanted to let you know about something I’m really excited about. As you know, I’ve been a huge promoter of Body By Boyle Online since it was first launched several months ago.

Mike Boyle’s work has had a profound impact on my training philosophies and methodologies. I’ve been fortunate to have had the opportunity to read his books, watch his DVDs, attend his seminars, and visit his facilities at BU and MBSC. He’s also been an incredible mentor, always making himself available to me if I have questions about anything from sports hernia referrals to running a private training facility. Moreover, I’ve learned and continue to learn a lot from his disciples (Sean Skahan, Mike Potenza, Darryl Nelson, Devan McConnell, Kim McCullough, and Jaime Rodriguez…to name a few).

In short, Boyle has had a remarkable impact on the hockey training and development industry as well as strength and conditioning as a whole. This is, in large part, a result of his dedication to continuing education. In fact, if there’s one thing that he taught me that I had to highlight as THE most important thing, it’s that I should never stop learning. In this way, I’ll always stay on top of my game, be aware of new information, and put my athletes in the best environment to succeed.

It is for that reason that I place so much value in Body By Boyle Online and why I know you’ll benefit so much from it as well. That brings us to today’s exciting announcement.

A couple weeks ago, I got an email from Boyle and Kevin Larrabee about them relaunching their site in a way that makes the content more easily accessible and costs less. Instead of having me try to describe all the changes to you, I thought it would be easier if I had Kevin (the other Kevin) come on and do a quick interview about it.

Enter Kevin:

Me: First off, congratulations to you and the rest of the Michael Boyle Strength and Conditioning staff for being ranked the #1 Gym in America. That’s quite an honor! As you know, I’ve been a huge supporter of BodyByBoyleOnline since you guys first launched it. Looking through the programs provides invaluable insight into Coach Boyle’s underlying philosophies and methodologies, and the constant content updates are outstanding. In fact, we use many of the presentations as continuing education for our staff during our weekly meetings. Can you talk a bit about what changes you’re making to the subscription options with this “re-launch” and what lead you to make these changes?

KL: Thank Kevin! We are bringing everything that has helped make MBSC the #1 Gym in America to BodyByBoyle Online. With the relaunch we had two major goals. First off we wanted to make the content as easy to assess as possible. For us, that meant duplicating all of our content for a website, and in doing so offering multiple qualities of the videos for those with fast or slow connections.

Second, we wanted to created a second membership level for those that might not want to do online training and just want the rich educational content that we have put together. To be honest over half of our members simply come to watch the staff meeting videos as well as the exclusive seminars that we film. For example we just filmed the 2011 MBSC Winter Seminar that featured Dan John as well as Mike. We understand that many people want to go to more seminars, but the time and cost of travel is just too high. So for those people, we now offer a standard version of BodyByBoyle Online at a reduced rate of $39.97/month (for now). Of course all of our current members will also be given access to the website as part of their Platinum membership ($59.97/month).

Me: Although the site is “Body By Boyle”, he’s not the only content contributor to the site. Can you provide some insight into some of the other guests you have add content?

KL: I think that is what makes BodyByBoyle Online so great and a pleasure to produce. We have had speakers come in to the facility to do private seminars for our staff. In the last couple months we have had Sue Falsone form Athlete’s Performance present and do a hands on about the thoracic spine, Nick Tumminello came in to talk rotary training, Chris Frankel did a lecture and hands on about suspension training, and always have guests stopping by, especially when the Perform Better Circuit is coming through town. This just goes to show you how much Mike values continuing education and how important it is for you to be one of the best in this field.

Me: I think one of the things that causes people to hesitate sign up for sites/services with monthly memberships is a fear that the information will stagnate. Can you talk about what plans you guys have for the site in the future and what members have to look forward to?

KL: Trust me when I say you have an ongoing stream of new content. We film our staff meetings each week, our guest speakers, F.A.Q. with Mike where he goes in depth on subjects and answers questions from the members, and we are even dipping into the vault with some classic Boyle videos. All you need to do is take a look at Mike’s shorts to see the videos are 15 years old or so. But the best part, is that the videos from the past are even more relevant now than they were then. One of the VHSs that Mike has converted to digital video is his olympic lift video where he goes through the various lifts. Guess what, we still use the same coaching steps as he did back then.

We have also made digital versions of Mike’s current DVD offerings such as the three DVD set he just produced and released a few months ago.

Me: Thanks Kevin. I appreciate you taking the time to be with us today. I look forward to seeing the content additions over the upcoming months!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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