Tag: ben bruno

Athletic Development Things You Should Read

I hope you had a great weekend. Emily and I kept pretty busy. We hosted a game night for a few of her friends Saturday night; I discovered that I’m not very good at Pictionary. Oddly, the group wasn’t very receptive when I proposed a redemption challenge of a deadlift contest.

I thought we’d mix things up a bit to start the week off and I’d direct you to a few articles I think you’ll really enjoy.

Good Read # 1: 2012 Resolutions: A Healthier Plan Creates a Healthier Golfer

About a year ago I started doing some writing for the Golf Association of Philadelphia. In this article, they asked me for some tips on how to avoid the pitfalls of traditional new year’s resolutions. While this was written for a golf audience, almost everything in the article is applicable to anyone reading this. Give it a read and let me know what you think by posting your comments below!

Good Read # 2: What’s Wrong With Keeping Your Chest Up?

David Lasnier wrote this post earlier in the year and I thought it was really well-written. David outlines why a common coaching cue needs to be put into perspective, and highlights the effect that extension at the thoraco-lumbar junction has on the ribs anteriorly. There are a number of powerful performance implications from the message David provides in this article; a definite must-read for anyone in the performance training field.

Good Read # 3: 24 Habits of 24-Hour Athletes

This is a simple, to the point article from my friend Kyle Bangen. Kyle is the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Michigan Tech. I’ve had the pleasure of going to a few seminars with him, which affords some time to talk shop and pick his brain. In this article, he emphasizes that athletes can’t just be committed during their 2-hour practice or training time if they want to be successful; it has to be a lifestyle. I recommend retyping his 24 habits, printing them, and posting the list somewhere where you’ll see it frequently.

Good Read # 4: Core Values

This is another article from Kyle Bangen on the core values of his program at Michigan Tech. Along the same concept as the previous post, Kyle uses core values to describe his philosophy and expectations, both for himself and for his athletes. #9 is the key to success in hockey, as in life.

Bonus Read: Good Fitness Reads for the Week

Every week, Ben Bruno puts together an EXHAUSTIVE list of fitness articles, videos, and interviews that he enjoyed the previous week. I’ve been fortunate to be included in many of these; that may have even been how you first came across my site! If you’re looking to kill a few minutes…hours…or days, check out Ben’s list and click through some of the articles that pique your interest.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Ultimate Hockey Training Q&A

I wanted to kick things off today by saying thank you to everyone that has invested in my new book Ultimate Hockey Training. I’m truly humbled by the level of interest the book has received from a worldwide audience (I even got a request from someone from Australia!). As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, I wrote the book for you based on the questions I receive from you most often, and additional information that I felt was prudent for the hockey community to be aware of.

I also wanted to extend a sincere thank you to my colleagues, many of which I consider friends and/or mentors, in the strength and conditioning industry that have helped spread the word about the book launch. I’m honored that Mike Boyle, Charlie Weingroff, Maria Mountain, Tony Gentilcore, Jeff Cubos, Brian St. Pierre, David Lasnier, and Ben Bruno all took time to mention Ultimate Hockey Training on their sites and that people like Anthony Renna, Perry Nickelston, Joe Dowdell, and Jaime Rodriguez have all posted things on Facebook or Twitter. I appreciate the help guys!

In case you missed it yesterday, I also posted the link for you to watch the third (and final) video in the Ultimate Hockey Training series for absolutely free-no registration required at all. Click here to check it out: Complete Hockey Training System

For today’s Q&A, I want to address some of the other most common questions I’ve gotten over the last week. If you have questions that aren’t mentioned here, post them in the comments section below and I’ll get back to you ASAP!

1) Is Ultimate Hockey Training right for me?

Whenever a new product comes out, there are some people that are on the fence about whether or not it’s “right” for them. Yesterday’s post (which you can find here: Ultimate Hockey Training: The Story) exposed, if you will, the reason why I wrote the book in the first place and the justification for the price point of the product (I actually got an email from a potential buyer asking if he read something wrong! “Am I missing something? Is everything really only…”). My hope was that the post cleared up some of the “is it right for me” questions that you may have had.

To dig a little deeper, it’s fair to mention that the book does cover some pretty “scientific” topics that may catch readers coming from strictly a hockey background by surprise. If you’ve read my site regularly for the last couple years, you’ll already appreciate the importance of some of these topics. Ultimate Hockey Training discusses common, but complex hockey injuries such as chronic groin and hip flexor strains, femoroacetabular impingement (FAI), sports hernias, etc. On this topic, mechanisms of injury and preventative and restorative strategies are addressed. Ultimate Hockey Training also has a lot of detail on how the nervous system influences specific physical qualities, such as speed, power, strength, and conditioning. The nervous system is integral in driving/controlling all movement, so I think it’s imperative to identify how to manipulate the system for the development of desirable qualities.

While these topics might be a little over the head of readers without an exercise science background, I don’t think it prohibits them from using the information. The book is PACKED with practical applications. For those of you curious as to what other topics are covered, take a quick glimpse at the table of contents:

Chapter 1: Understanding The Process
Chapter 2: The Hockey Training Revolution
Chapter 3: Lifelong Hockey Development
Chapter 4: Discovering Hockey Function
Chapter 5: Unlocking Functional Movement With Self-Myofascial Release
Chapter 6: Innovative Dynamic Warm-Ups
Chapter 7: Breakaway Hockey Speed
Chapter 8: Creating Strength And Power Through Neural Manipulation
Chapter 9: The Case For Unilateral Training
Chapter 10: Strength And Power Training For Hockey
Chapter 11: Functional Core Training
Chapter 12: A New Look At Hockey Conditioning
Chapter 13: The Truth About Stretching
Chapter 14: Special Topics In Injury Prevention
Chapter 15: Year-Round Training Considerations
Chapter 16: Conclusion

Hopefully you scan that list and think “There’s nothing left. He covered it all!” That was certainly my intention!

2) Do you cover nutrition?

Brian St. Pierre added a brilliantly written hockey-specific nutrition manual “Ultimate Hockey Nutrition” that is available for purchase to Ultimate Hockey Training customers. For those of you that don’t know Brian, he’s been my go-to nutrition guy for the last five years. Not only does he have a lot of experience working with hockey players at all levels, but he actually played through juniors. I don’t many nutritionists that can “skate the skate”, so to speak. Ultimate Hockey Nutrition is great because it’s written with practical applications in mind. He even included different meal plans for high school, junior and college players (each) for before practice, games, and both home and road tournaments.

Proper Nutrition: The most recognized and least practiced component of hockey performance!

It’s truly a “player’s resource” in that it provides answers to ALL of the nutrition and supplement questions that Brian and I have gotten from hockey players over the last several years.

3) Have the things in this book been “tested”?

Absolutely. I remember hearing someone say years ago that the coolest thing about visiting Mike Boyle’s facility was that everything he talks about, he actually does. As I mentioned, the book covers some of the scientific rationale behind why I design programs the way I do because I think that’s important. In the interest of “sexier marketing”, you’ll often see people clutch on to the latest gimmick and pitch it as a cure-all.

This may sell, but this kid isn’t coming out of the corner with many pucks!

I don’t have time for that. Everything we do at Endeavor is backed by a solid scientific rationale. And everything I wrote about in Ultimate Hockey Training has been tested in our facility. If it looks good on paper, but isn’t practical, then it won’t work. My understanding is that most people aren’t interested in things that don’t work!

4) Is mental preparation covered at all?

Actually, the mental side of things is the one area that I didn’t touch on. Mental training could be an entire book in itself (it is; see Hockey Tough by Saul Miller). That said, I think neglecting mental preparation is a huge mistake and is FREQUENTLY the limiting factor in an individual’s and team’s performance. In order to fill the gap, I reached out to my friend Kim McCullough, who is very knowledgeable in this area, and she put together a terrific manual called “How to Think Like a Player” that is a FREE bonus for anyone that buys the book. I also have bonuses from Sean Skahan, David Lasnier, Eric Cressey, Maria Mountain, Rick Kaselj, and Charlie Weingroff. When I said yesterday that each one of the bonuses would be worth the listed book price, I wasn’t kidding!

That’s a wrap for today! Hopefully that answers any questions you still had. If not, please post them down below and I’ll get back to you immediately.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Endeavor Training Program

I get a lot of inquiries about what training program I use. I have training goals that I’m in constant pursuit of, but I also use our staff training programs as an opportunity to experiment with new exercises, progressions, and program design strategies. In today’s post, I want to give you an inside look at a new program design strategy I’ve been experimenting with for the last couple months.

As a preface, one of the problems I battle with is finding the right balance between stress (in the true sense-meaning training, nutrition, work, and all other life-related stresses) and recovery. Simply, I’m far from proficient at walking away from uncompleted work, so I find myself trying to squeeze 25 hours into every day, for months at a time (time flies when you have your head up your ass!).

Sleep…my long lost friend

In the past, I’ve trained 4 days/week on a Lower/Upper split Monday-Thursday and just took Friday-Sunday off. There are some inherent recovery issues with this set-up, but it fill well with my time at Endeavor. About 6-months ago, I changed to a more traditional Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday/Saturday split, which helped with recovery a lot (obviously). I also changed from going Lower, Upper, Lower, Upper to Upper, Lower, Upper, Lower. For me, a really heavy lower body day was completely debilitating for the upper body lift the next day, but the opposite was not true.

All of these things helped, but a couple months ago I made a change to the program that has accommodated both my increasing work demands and my unwavering pursuit of improved strength. I’m not exactly sure how I came across it (I suspect it was from one of Ben Bruno’s “Good Reads of the Week” posts), but I read a great article from Jason Ferruggia suggesting to take a 4-day program, but only train 3 days per week.

Old Schedule:
Monday: Day 1 Upper Body
Tuesday: Day 2 Lower Body
Thursday: Day 3 Upper Body
Friday: Day 4 Lower Body

New Schedule:
Monday: Day 1 Upper Body
Wednesday: Day 2 Lower Body
Friday: Day 3 Upper Body
Monday: Day 4 Lower Body
Wednesday: Day 1 Upper Body
Friday: Day 2 Lower Body

And it goes on like this. This schedule helps recovery for a few reasons:

  • It decreases the total training stress on any given week (3 sessions vs. 4)
  • It decreases the body-part specific training stress for any given two week period (3 vs. 4)
  • It decreases the lift-specific training stress for any two week period (more on this below)

To expand on this latter point, and this was one of the main messages of Jason’s original article, if I have a “primary” lift like a heavy chin-up or deadlift on Day 1 and Day 2, now I’ll only be performing that lift (with maximal loads) every ~10 days instead of every 7. Because these are the lifts that impose the greatest degree of neural fatigue, spreading them out a bit can have a profound impact on recovery.

Naturally, there’s a lot to consider when choosing a training frequency and overall program design schedule. As I alluded to in Program Design for Small Groups, recovery time is dependent upon both relative and absolute training loads, the latter of which will be lower in athletes with a “younger” training age.

This is the first time I’ve experimented with this training schedule and I’ve really benefited from it. I feel better than I did before and have set a few PRs in the process (as has our other coaches following the programs). It looks like I’ll be sticking with this schedule for the foreseeable future, at least until my schedule eases up a bit!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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This Week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning

Check out what you missed this week over at Hockey Strength and Conditioning!

Article: Leadership Lessons from the NHL from me
A recap of the most important lessons I learned from my 1st NHL training camp. From talking to Coach Potenza, this is stuff that we agree all coaches AND players should know.

Article: How Should I Strength Train Leading Up to Training Camp? from Mike Potenza
A great description of the off-ice training protocols Coach Potenza uses with the San Jose Sharks to prepare them for training camp.

Video: 10-Rep Cluster Bench Press from Sean Skahan
Clusters are a great way to build strength. Cool video from Coach Skahan.

Video: Rear Foot Elevated Jump from Michael Boyle
A single-leg plyo exercise from Coach Boyle. This would be a great one to use in conjunction with a back leg raised split squat if you’re into pairing strength and power exercises.

Video: Goblet Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat from Ben Bruno
I was exhausted just watching this video!

Click the link below for more information about Hockey Strength and Conditioning!

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

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