Tag: colby cohen

In-Season Hockey Training

Most of our off-season hockey players wrapped up their training last week. Most youth programs are getting started with camps in the next couple weeks. At this time of year, I get a ton of questions from players and parents about what they can do in-season to help maintain or continue progressing their physical development.

For starters, I think it’s important to establish how crucial in-season training is. In-season training has certainly gained favor over the last decade or so, but there are still thought-leaders/organization heads with an old-school mentality that don’t emphasize it nearly enough. This, in part, might be explained by a lack of understanding of the goals of in-season training:

  1. Maintain physical qualities (continue to increase in lesser trained players)
  2. Reverse negative changes in soft-tissue length and quality
  3. Facilitate recovery

This stuff is VERY important in-season!

All of these goals are inter-related. When done right, in-season training will help players feel, perform, and recover faster. As an example, take a look at a few interesting statistics from my friend Stieg Theander’s work with the Phoenix Coyotes:

Man Games Lost to Injury

  • 1996: 450
  • 1997: 473
  • 1998: 250 (Stieg’s first year!)
  • 1999: 149
  • 2000: 142

The first year resulted in a ~45% reduction in man games lost to injury. After 3 years, that number decreased another 25%. That’s a 70% reduction in man games lost to injury in three years! It would be short-sighted to attribute all of this to in-season training, but it highlights the magnitude of change a quality training program can have on a team’s health. Think your team would do better with a 70% reduction in games lost to injury?

In-Season Training Composition
Some of the hesitancy with implementing in-season training programs boils down to not understanding how to design and implement the program. If a player take their off-season program and follows it through the year, they’ll be completely buried before Thanksgiving. The off-season is about developing capacity; the in-season is about doing the bare minimum to maintain capacity. These are much different goals and require drastically different approaches.

Three In-Season Program Changes
I’m in the process of developing the new in-season programs for the entire Team Comcast Tier I youth organization for this season, so I’ll probably post some of the programs to HockeySC.com over the next couple weeks. Until then, here are three in-season program changes to think about:

1) Speed and conditioning work is on the ice
In the off-season, we sprint twice per week and condition between 2-3 times depending on the phase. In-season, the players’ speed and conditioning work should be done on the ice. If players perform drills at a high tempo, they’re getting the most hockey-specific form of speed training possible, and most practices are of sufficient tempo to prepare players to compete in a game (despite what physiologists may tell you). Hammering sprint and conditioning work off the ice will put excessive wear and tear across the muscles of the hips and lower body. In-season, sprint work should be limited to very low volume (e.g. 4-6 sprints of 10-15 yards), and be done sporadically. Conditioning should be low impact (e.g. on bikes or using circuits), and be used to compliment on-ice conditioning. Most youth players skating 4+ times per week will be fine in this department. Pro players that may not get much ice during games are a different story and will benefit from supplementary conditioning work.

2) Avoid rotation
This is anti-sport-specific training at it’s finest. Hockey players rotate several hundred times per week during practices and games to turn, give and accept passes and hits, shoot, and orient their eyes in a more optimal position to read the play. All of this is stress in a rotation pattern. Like speed work, rotation-based core work should be limited in volume and frequency.

During this time, however, it is extremely important to maintain rotation-pattern mobility. Amongst others, hips and thoracic spines tend to stiffen up as the season prolongs. Maintaining this mobility is a top priority and should be done on as close to a daily basis as possible. In our setting, we built our warm-up to encompass these qualities so we know they’re hitting them every time we see them, and encourage teams to do the same warm-up when they’re not under our supervision. We’ll also build some extra mobility work into the off-ice training sessions (lying knee to knee mobilizations, diagonal hip rocks, wide stance quadruped rock, seated thoracic rotations, diagonal arm arcs, etc.).

Lying Knee to Knee Stretch. This can also be done for reps with 2s holds, and with a sleeved shirt.

3) Strength and Power are Key
In general, the physical qualities stressed on the ice during the season are multi-directional speed, low load power, and work capacity/conditioning. To design a program that compliments on-ice work, it’s important to consider what qualities ARE NOT being stressed on the ice. Strength and high load power are visibly absent from the list above. ALL in-season work should be low volume, but there should be a greater proportion of the total training program allocated to these qualities than the others that receive more on-ice attention. To be overly simplistic, if all players did was follow this template:

A1) Olympic Lift
A2) Hip Mobility
B1) LB Push
B2) UB Pull
C1) LB Pull
C2) UB Push

they’d be much better off than what most players do.

Great display of power. Colby Cohen hang cleans 235 x 3

The key is to get a low volume of high intensity high quality reps in, and then call it a day. Don’t overdo it. 2-3 sets of 4-8 reps is all it takes for most in-season lifts. As a general rule, player’s shouldn’t be smoked at the end of an in-season training session; they should feel warmed up and energized. There is a time for tough sessions in the interest of team building or developing mental toughness, but this is the exception, not the rule.

Hopefully this provides a reasonable insight into the composition of an in-season training program. In a couple days, I’ll post some important information on how to alter the stimulus of a training program to minimize the risk of detraining throughout the year. Check back soon!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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This Week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning

It’s been a great week at Endeavor. We had a about a half dozen extremely motivated hockey players join our off-season training groups, including Colby Cohen, who came with a bittersweet present.

Bruins Stanley Cup Champion T-Shirt (damn it)

As a Flyers fan, it’s tough to have a Bruins Stanley Cup Champion t-shirt in my office, but I’m happy that Colby got to be a part of their run (6th name from the top on the right hand column).

Speaking of hockey players looking to get better, we’ve added some great content to  Hockey Strength and Conditioning that you’ll want to check out over the weekend.

My friend and long-time Carolina Hurricanes Athletic Trainer and Strength and Conditioning Coach Pete Friesen added a video interview with him on the fitness demands of hockey and highlights some of the things his athletes do in the off-season. Pete’s an awesome guy and has a ton of experience. This was a cool feature.

Check out the video here >> Training with the NHL Carolina Hurricanes from Pete Friesen

Darryl Nelson wrote an article on core training for hockey players. I think the major concepts in Darryl’s article are commonly accepted amongst well-educated hockey strength and conditioning coaches, I don’t think the concepts have trickled down to players, parents, and coaches yet. In other words, the information hasn’t yet reached the populations that need it most. Darryl’s article highlights an important function of the true core (not what most people define it as), and identifies why a few of the most common core exercises can actually be counterproductive. Quick read with powerful implications.

Check out the article here >> Core Training from Darryl Nelson

Sean Skahan added an awesome webinar on in-season training for professional players. Hopefully the title doesn’t mislead you. Sean outlines the importance of in-season training and discusses the goals of in-season training, the components of the program, how he assesses for common movement impairments that predispose players to injuries, and details his progressions for core training, strength work, and power training for hockey players. There is a ton of valuable information in here for hockey training programs at all levels.

Check out the webinar here >> In-Season Training from Sean Skahan

The forums have had some good discussions recently too. As I said last week, because of the quality and timeliness of the training programs we post online, we’re starting to get more semi-pro hockey players signing up as members, using the programs, and posting their questions on the forums. Basically they get access to high quality programs and can have professional hockey strength coaches answer all of their individual questions. Not bad for less than $10/month! I appreciate those of you that have helped spread the word about HockeySC.com. One of the reasons I like training hockey players so much is because they’re dedicated to doing whatever it takes to get better (something Sean pointed out in his webinar…with the help of the Hanson brothers). Unfortunately, most players, parents, and coaches still aren’t aware of the resources available to them, so it’s great to have your support in spreading the word about our site.

As always, if you aren’t a member yet, I recommend trying out the site for $1 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

P.S. Just a friendly reminder that you only have a couple days left until the price jumps up significantly on Maria Mountain’s Ultimate Goalie Training 2.0. If you’re looking for a complete off-ice goalie training program, this is it!

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Top Hockey Development Posts of 2010

With 2011 officially upon us, I can’t help but reflect on what a great year 2010 was. A few of the highlights:

  1. We had an extraordinary Summer at Endeavor (awesome to watch Eric Tangradi score his first NHL goal and Colby Cohen play his first NHL game).
  2. I was able to make a trip out to San Jose to spend some time with my friend Mike Potenza, and another trip down to Raleigh to meet Pete Friesen and attend his Physio-Fitness Summit (which I recapped for a HockeyStrengthandConditioning.com article).
  3. My Ultimate Hockey Development Coaching Program was not only a big success, it was a lot of fun to do. The thing I like about doing “interviews” is that I pick up a lot of new stuff too. Joe Heiler, Jeff Cubos, Brijesh Patel and Jared Beach’s talks were especially enlightening to me, but I’ve heard great feedback about all the other talks as well.

  4. Along those same lines, the launch of HockeyStrengthandConditioning.com was particularly exciting. When I was growing up as a player, it was nearly impossible to get access to NHL coaches, players, trainers, etc. Now, the internet has made this exceptionally easy. The fact that you can now make a nominal investment and get immediate access to the guys that have help develop elite level hockey players at all ages doesn’t only appeal to me as a professional, it excites me as a former player. And the networking possibilities are unreal. When I was a senior at the University of Delaware, I wrote a letter to every US-based NHL Strength and Conditioning coaches inquiring about internship opportunities. While I wasn’t able to grab an internship out of their effort, there were a few NHL Strength Coaches that called me and spent some time giving me advice on how to break into the industry (Mike Kadar, who is now with the Pittsburgh Penguins was especially helpful). At HockeyStrengthandConditioning.com, you can post an inquiry on the forum and get responses from many of the top hockey strength and conditionign professionals in the world (including several that work in the NHL or with NHL players). Awesome.
  5. Emily and I made the move from Baltimore to Philadelphia at the end of August. My commute to Endeavor has dwindled to measly 25 minutes from what was a grueling 2 hour trek. It’s still enough time that I can go through an audio book every week, but short enough that I don’t need to wake up at 5:30 and drink 3 coffees and a spike just to make it to work (awake) by 8:30.

And finally, I’ve gotten terrific feedback on many of the posts on this site over the last year. It’s certainly come a long way from when I first started a few years back. As you continue to spread the word about this information to people you know, I continue to get more feedback to cater the content to your interests.

With all that said, here are the top Hockey Development posts of 2010!

7. Hockey Injuries: Sports Hernia Case Study

6. Hockey Training Tip to Prevent Shoulder Injuries

5. Hockey Training with the Vertimax

4. Randy Pausch, Will Smith, Kevin Neeld?

3. Video Reveals Secret to Developing Elite Level Hockey Players!

2. No One Conditions Alone

1. The Truth About Sidney Crosby

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. If you haven’t yet, go sign up for the 2011 Sports Rehab to Sports Performance Teleseminar. It’s free, and the speaker line-up is incredible!

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Hockey Injuries: Sports Hernia Case Study

Before jumping into today’s post, I just wanted to say a quick congratulations to several of our athletes from this off-season.

  • John Gaudreau (’93) is tied for 2nd on his team (Dubuque Fighting Saints) and tied for 3rd in the USHL for points, as a first year player!
  • Matt DiGirolamo was awarded the starting goalie position at UNH this year and is off to a great start. Check out this article: New Hampshire’s DiGirolamo a blast from the past for Umile
  • Colby Cohen played his first few games in the NHL over the last week and played quite well. Colby worked extremely hard with us at Endeavor all Summer. The gains he made are clearly helping him on the ice.
  • Eric Tangradi scored his first NHL goal a couple weeks back and looks bigger and faster on the ice than ever. great on the ice.

We’re really proud of the hard work these players have put in with us at Endeavor and also on the ice with their respective teams. Keep up the great work guys!

As you may know, I’ve spent a lot of time researching topics related to hip and lower abdominal injuries. Because injuries like hip flexor strains, groin strains, hip labral tears, and sports hernias are affecting an increasing number of players (and receiving an increasing amount of attention), I feel it’s important to do whatever I can do prevent these injuries in our players. Over the last couple years at Endeavor, we’ve pretty much eliminated hip flexor injuries altogether, and have been able to quickly restore balance in players suffering groin strains (almost always in players that refuse to take any time off the ice).

Sports hernias and labral tears can be a bit of a different scenario because surgery is an option, and one heavily pushed by most docs. This raises the debate, “Should ‘strength coaches’ be involved in these types of injuries at all or strictly leave them to surgeons/PTs?” It’s an interesting debate, but one we’ll leave for a different discussion. Over the Summer, we had a player come to us with the following situation:

  • LONG-term adductor/groin pain (several years!), in the area of the adductor longus (as expected)
  • Showed other symptoms of a sports hernia (notably painful during movements that stretch the rectus abdominis)
  • Painful during ALL movements, even jogging
  • No health insurance
  • 5 weeks to train


Goal # 1: Do everything you can to avoid this!

The reason I said we’ll leave the surgery debate for another time is because, without insurance (or shelling out $10,000 in cash), surgery wasn’t an option at all. Nor was seeing a physical therapist for that matter. Admittedly, the situationw as a little intimidating. He had 5 weeks to be symptom free AND to be ready to step on the ice for a new professional team in London, England. With that time course, there is no room for “I think this should work”; you get one shot. I spent quite a bit of time writing his program, and reached out to three incredibly bright coaches/mentors of mine: Eric Cressey, Michael Boyle, and Charlie Weingroff, all of whom provided invaluable insight into the situation.

A couple take homes were:

  • Don’t do ANYTHING that was painful (even mildly painful). In this situation, this meant NO lateral movement (including lateral squats, shuffling, slideboarding, amongst others), no reverse lunges or back leg raised split squats, and no skating!.
  • Focus on restoring balance across the hips. In this situation, this meant restoring length across the anterior hip, loosening up the glutes, and focusing most of the strength work on the posterior chain.

Compared to other off-season hockey training programs, this didn’t leave us with a ton of options. Naturally, we HAMMERED the soft-tissue work for the anterior and interior thigh compartments and also the glutes. We quickly progressed him from a foam roller to a PVC pipe, which gets a bit deeper because of it is so much denser.


PVC Pipe: An injured hockey player’s best friend.

The two areas I wanted to dive a bit deeper into are the stretching (geared towards adding length to the muscle) and the conditioning.

Stretching: Adding Sarcomeres in Series

Because one of the major focuses was to restore alignment, we used several stretches repeatedly:

  1. 1/2 Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch w/ Downward Foot Press
  2. 2-Way Rectus Femoris Stretch w/ Downward Foot Press
  3. Stability Ball Internal Rotation Stretch
  4. Prone Active Hip Internal Rotation Holds
  5. Seated Glute Stretch
  6. Med Ball Loaded “Y” Stretch

Again, the goal here was to open up the anterior hip (remove some of the anterior tilt), improve hip internal rotation, and increase his ability to extend through the thoracic spine. The “Downward Foot Press” is a strategy we used to increase the tension in the stretched muscle in order to stimulate adding actual length (sarcomeres in series) to the muscle. We also had him hold the 1/2 Kneeling Hip Flexor Stretch for 5 mins on each side for the same reason. Stimulating actual muscle length is achieved through prolonged time in a stretched state and/or tension in a stretched state. After several weeks of this, he said his helps felt a lot looser, and his groin pain was starting to subside a bit.

Conditioning: How to stay in good shape when every movement hurts

How do you condition a hockey player when he can’t skate, run or slideboard, and you don’t want him to bike because of the concern of further exacerbating his already substantially shortened hip flexors? There are a couple options left, but the two that suited our purposes the best were:

  1. Forward Sled Marches
  2. Med Ball Circuits

On our sticky track, it typically takes around 25-30s to march a sled 25-yards to the end of the track. This made it pretty easy to build in an interval training component to his program. Because his body orientation while marching with the sled didn’t necessitate extreme hip flexion, he was able to perform the exercise pain free. Two wins.

Med Ball Circuits were a no brainer. High intensity, maximum velocity rotational movements are a must for off-season hockey training programs anyway. Devising a circuit to incorporate these was another great way to get some extra valuable work in while also improving his conditioning. The circuit was:

  1. Overhead Med Ball Slams: 12x
  2. Front Standing Med Ball Scoops: 10x/side
  3. Side Standing Med Ball Shot Put: 10x/side
  4. Underhand Med Ball Scoops: 12x

We’d have him perform the circuit anywhere from 3-5x, depending on the week.

At this point, you’re probably wondering what the outcome of all this was. After all, understanding these strategies is only worth your time if they worked. Last week he sent me a quick message to update me on how things are going. He said he’s been completely pain free all season (first time in years!), and he’s currently the second leading scorer on the Newcastle Vipers (EIHL).

A few important take homes from this experience:

  1. Many injuries that are typically thought to warrant surgery can be treated conservatively if done right
  2. A crucial factor in alleviating “soft-tissue” injuries is to avoid anything that irritates it
  3. EVERY PLAYER NEEDS TO TAKE TIME AWAY FROM THE ICE EVERY YEAR!
  4. Having a network of experienced professionals in your field is invaluable
  5. Studying injury risk factors can have a profound impact on your athlete’s careers. It’s worth your time.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Off-Season Hockey Development

As the chaos typical of off-season hockey training starts to die down, I wanted to share some “Wednesday Wisdom” with you.

1) Hockey Development includes, or should I say necessitates, taking time AWAY from hockey! My friend David Lasnier talks about this and other great hockey training tips in a podcast he recently did with Perry Nickelston. Check it out here: Stop Chasing Pain Podcast with David Lasnier

2) I recently got an email question from my colleague Dennis Adsit asking about heart rate responses to slideboarding compared to shuttle runs. There is a very long-winded response to this question which outlines what we’re really looking for out of our conditioning, but the simple answer is you can get comparable heart rates if you really push the tempo. While this isn’t always possible as fatigue really starts to infiltrate, this is the tempo we want to aim for on EVERY interval (at least, every interval under 30s).

20s Slideboard

3) About 6 weeks ago, Robert Morris University goalie Marissa Angel set a personal record with 2 chin-ups. The next week she set a PR with 3 chin-ups. The next week 4. The next week 5. Last week 6. And just yesterday 8. I couldn’t be more proud of the hard work she’s put forth this Summer. Getting strong isn’t only for male hockey players. For most females, doing 8 chin-ups seems like a tall feet. As with any long-term goal, the most important step is the first one!

4) Being an explosive hockey player on the ice starts with being explosive off the ice. Check out the videos below. In the first video, where (from left to right) Dave Macalino (URI), Jeff Buvinow (Brown), and Charlie Vasaturo (Salmon Arm Silverbacks; BCHL) perform a 1-Arm DB Hang Snatch with an 80, 90, and 90 lb dumbbell (respectively).In the second, Colby Cohen (in the Colorado Avalanche system) does a Hang Clean with 230 for 2 reps.

1-Arm DB Hang Snatch

Hang Clean

5) You don’t need to wait until a certain age before you can start getting strong. This video is of ’96 Conor Landrigan doing DB Reverse Lunges with 65 lb DBs. Conor had zero lifting experience before starting with us about 3 months before this video was taken. We have about a half dozen ’96 hockey players that are of comparable strength. It’s no coincidence that these players are amongst the top players in the country. The work ethic that goes into building strength like this also transfers into other aspects of hockey.

DB Reverse Lunge

6) Last week I was driving on a state highway in Maryland and was abruptly stopped by a red light at a 4-way intersection. One of the “ways” was a parking lot. The quick red light caused about a half dozen cars on each side of the road to come to screeching halt. I looked at the perpendicular lights to see who triggered it and saw it was the car coming from the parking lot. I looked at the driver, who was texting on a phone inconspicuously positioned on his lap. I looked at his green light. I looked at him, back at the green light. Hilariously for him, and enragingly for me, he glanced up to see if the light had turned green right after it returned back to red. This struck me as a great symbol of current sociological norms. As we make an effort to occupy every second of our time, life is often passing us by.

7) Speed training with a crossover and transitional emphasis is a must in any hockey training program. I outline a lot of the dynamic starts and transitional speed drills in my hockey speed training manual Breakaway Hockey Speed.

10-Yard Sprint (5-Yard Back Run Start) 1

10-Yard Sprint (5-Yard Back Run Start) 2

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

 

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