Tag: Kevin Neeld

A New Perspective on Energy Systems

A couple days ago, I mentioned that we’re hosting Joel Jamieson’s new Certified Conditioning Coach course at our facility on April 2nd and 3rd. In response to that post I received a bunch of notes from people either expressing an interest in taking the course, or telling me how great it was when they took it previously.

If you’re interested in taking the course, register ASAP. We’re limiting the course to ~40 attendees and have already sold over half the seats. You can get more information and register at the link below.

Reserve your seat here >> Certified Conditioning Coach

Given the interest in energy system development my last post sparked, I thought it would be an opportune time to repost a video I’ve shown a few times of a presentation Joel gave on the topic. This is a GREAT presentation, and one of the best free resources available. Check it out below!

A few years ago when I first came across this presentation from Joel Jamieson, it caused me to rethink a lot of what I thought I knew about “conditioning”. Since that time, I’ve read (and re-read) his two books, seen him speak a few times, and even spoke alongside him when the two of us did a one day seminar (where Optimizing Movement was filmed).

Ultimate MMA Conditioning is a must-read for anyone that trains athletes in any sport

Needless to say, I think this information is incredibly valuable; it’s had a profound impact on the way that I write my programs.

Even in rereading my comments about the video below, I know that my perspective on energy systems work has changed considerably over the last 4 years, especially as it pertains to redeveloping aerobic qualities in hockey players (and all athletes in general) in the early off-season. We’re using methods now that I would have never thought to use in 2011, and the foundation for a lot of that change was built on this video.

Enjoy! And if you want to share any of the conditioning methods you’re using or have any questions, please post them in the comments section below.

A New Perspective on Energy Systems

I hope you’re all enjoying your day off (if you got one). Endeavor Sports Performance typically shuts down for Memorial Day, but Matt, David, and I are leaving Thursday night to head up to Boston for the Hockey Symposium, so we have to open up today to make sure all of our athletes can get their sessions in before we go. Just another day in the office! (I’m pretending that today isn’t the first day that it hasn’t precipitated since last November).

Rather than spending the day outside enjoying the sun and BBQing, I thought you’d be more interested in watching a great presentation on energy systems development from Joel Jamieson, who’s a really bright guy. Joel primarily trains MMA fighters out of his facility in Seattle, WA, but he also has experience with football and soccer players. More importantly, and you’ll get this quickly from watching his presentation, his training philosophy is science-based. While I don’t think that every line on a training program needs to have a citation next to it, I think using quality research as a backing for your training philosophies ensures that you understand the underlying principles of athletic development, which can be effectively applied to any sport (in a sport- and athlete-relevant manner).

This video is from a presentation Joel gave at the Central Virginia Sports Performance Seminar at the University of Richmond in Virginia, and he includes a download link for the power point slides so you can follow along. Click the link below and watch the video now (it’s completely free and doesn’t require registering for anything):

Click Here to Watch >> A New Perspective on Energy Systems

I finished watching the video late last week and left with a few good research resources to look into and an augmented understanding of energy metabolism and physiology. I can’t help but feel that some of his words will be grossly misinterpreted though.

One thing that stood out to me as extremely hockey conditioning relevant is the large degree to which the aerobic system contributes to repeat sprint performance with incomplete recovery. Using running as a model, Joel presented that the energy delivery for 200m (~22s) and 400m(~49s) sprints were 29% and 43% aerobic, respectively. In other words, in the time equivalent of an average hockey shift, roughly 1/3-1/2 of the energy provided is aerobic, and this is likely to increase with incomplete recovery between bouts (e.g. as shifts progress within a period).

In my opinion, Joel’s presentation offers more accurate explanatory power than it does a drastic change in the way we condition for hockey. The major take home message is that you need to understand the demands of the sport and prepare accordingly. I think people see something like “50% of energy is from anaerobic sources and 50% is from aerobic sources” and think “50% of my training should be sprint repeats and 50% should be continuous aerobic work.” In reality, all this is saying is that the sprint repeats will eventually be developing aerobic systems in addition to the know anaerobic benefits.

Primarily Aerobic? Anaerobic? Does it matter?

This is one of the reasons why I think it’s more important to have an in-depth understanding of the work:rest ratios and overall work intensities of the game than it is to understand the underlying physiological mechanisms driving them. As an overly simplified example, if hockey includes, on average, about a 40s shift of which about 20s is spent at all out intensities every 3 minutes, and we use some similar work intervals and work to rest ratios to create a slight overload on the involved metabolic systems, does us realizing that more of the on-ice energy AND off-ice training energy is coming from aerobic metabolism than we previously thought change the way we train? I’m not sure it does. I’m certainly not implying that I disagree with anything Joel said in his presentation, and I agree that certain athletes will need a greater emphasis on certain qualities based on their athletic profiles, but I think some people over-emphasize the physiological explanations and under-emphasize the much more obvious and intuitive game demands. What do you think? Check out the video and post your comments below!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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“…one of the best DVDs I’ve ever watched”
“A must for anyone interested in coaching and performance!”

Click here for more information >> Optimizing Movement

3 Rolling Exercises You Should Be Doing

As a final reminder my 4th of July Sale ends Friday. Check out the links below if you’re interested in saving some loot:

Ultimate Hockey Training (~~$35.95~~ $19.95)
Ultimate Hockey Transformation (Pro: ~~$147~~ $77 Elite: ~~$117~~ $57)
Optimizing Movement (~~$97~~ $47)

3 Rolling Exercises You Should Be Doing

*Several of the videos in this articles are large, and take a bit to load. Please be patient.

Going through a general foam rolling sequence is helpful in both increasing circulation as part of a warm-up and in troubleshooting some nagging areas of “stiffness.” Once athletes establish a regular routine of rolling, it can be helpful to show a few different strategies to address specific areas. These are three rolling exercises I show a lot of our more experienced athletes that often have a very powerful impact on how they feel and move afterward.

Hip Rotators

Most people are familiar with how to roll their glutes. While this is beneficial, it’s really only addressing the most superficial level of musculature. Many athletes, and almost all hockey players, are stiff throughout their entire posterior hip, including the rotators that are “deeper” than the glutes.

When you roll with your knee bent, as I am in the above video, you stretch the glute, thereby increasing the resistance to the ball sinking into the hip. By straightening the leg, you relax the superficial layer and allow the ball to sink deeper, where it can influence the hip rotators.

Because of the size of these muscles, I often recommend a “sink and breathe” technique over actually rolling around. See the video below for an example.

[quicktime]http://www.kevinneeld.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Lax-Ball-Posterior-Hip.mp4[/quicktime]Posterior Adductor Magnus

The adductor magnus is the largest of the adductors and is an easy muscle to find. It’s basically the mound of meat at the top of your inner thigh. If you grab your high right inner thigh with your left hand, your fingers will wrap toward the back of your thigh. If you sink your finger tips into your thigh a bit you’ll be able to find a natural groove between the back of the adductor magnus and the medial hamstrings. If you follow this groove up toward your hip, you’ll find that things get pretty “gunky” as you get toward the top (in the red circle area in the picture below). The inability to separate these muscle groups is one reason why people have a difficult time squatting to their full depth and is often a contributing issue in athletes with groin pain.

[quicktime]http://www.kevinneeld.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Lax-Ball-Posterior-Adductor-on-Box.mp4[/quicktime]This is another “sink and breathe” exercise. Explore the top ~6″ or so along this groove, then sink into a sensitive spot and just sit and breathe until you feel some of the sensitivity dissipate. From here, you can straighten your knee and then rebend it. This basically keeps the adductor where it is, but stretches the hamstring, creating a relative glide between the two muscle groups.

Rectus Femoris/Vastus Intermedius

There are four separate muscles that comprise the quadricep group. Because they’re so superficial, they’re fairly easy to access with a foam roller.

[quicktime]http://www.kevinneeld.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Foam-Roll-Front-Quad.mp4[/quicktime]That said, it can be helpful to get into the rectus femoris, and especially BENEATH the rectus femoris into the vastus intermedius with a lacrosse ball.

Left: Rectus Femoris (the only quad that is also a hip flexor) highlighted in red. Right: Rectus Femoris removed, showing the vastus intermedius beneath it.

If you lay your right hand on your lower right thigh so that your thumb is a few inches above your knee cap and sink your thumb into your quad, you’ll likely be right in the middle of the white area in the image above. If you slide your thumb slightly toward the middle of your thigh, you’ll roll off the edge of the rectus femoris. THIS is where you want to put the lacrosse ball as you lay your leg down on top of it (same positioning as the video above). From here, you can explore along this groove until you’re about mid-way up your thigh. With athletes that have discomfort around their knees, this can often bring a lot of relief.

[quicktime]http://www.kevinneeld.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Lax-Ball-Quad.mp4[/quicktime]

Wrap-Up

Learning more specific self-soft-tissue treatments can help athletes troubleshoot issues on their own over time. These are three exercises I’ve used with a lot of our athletes that can make a big impact on how they feel and move. With all of these, discomfort is expected, but nothing should ever be painful. Start slow and progress pressure as you feel comfortable.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team

“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University

Asking Better Questions

Before jumping into today’s content, I just wanted to give you a quick reminder that the 4th of July Sale ends in two days. Check out the links below if you’re interested in saving some loot:

Ultimate Hockey Training (~~$35.95~~ $19.95)
Ultimate Hockey Transformation (Pro: ~~$147~~ $77 Elite: ~~$117~~ $57)
Optimizing Movement (~~$97~~ $47)

Several months back, Devan McConnell and I attended the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston. If you’re not familiar with the event, it’s essentially a weekend of panel-based discussions with industry experts on topics pertaining to the use of data in sports, all in the pursuit of gaining a slight edge over the competition. Many of the panels were divided by sport, but there were several others on topics like wearable technology, agents/negotiations, developing a career in the industry.

Every panel had a slightly different feel to it, but if I had to sum up the weekend, the general message was:

Ask better questions. Make more informed decisions.

If you’ve read my work before, you know that I frequently say “If we want better answers, we have to ask better questions.” Below are 3 examples of questions I get frequently, and how they can be reframed to drive move productive discussions and programming decisions.

1) What’s the best way to develop speed?

Reframed Question: What is limiting MY development or expression of speed?

This, as with all of these examples, is not just an argument in semantics. The way these questions are phrased will drive different answers/discussions and potentially very different programming strategies. Consider the chart below from my talk at the 2015 NSCA Training for Hockey Clinic:

Programming for speed development will, or at least should, differ depending on the needs of the athlete. A young athlete with a poor strength base will make significant leaps in speed through strength training. Many athletes have significant room for improvement by working on their technique (e.g. stride efficiency in hockey). In contrast, an older athlete that has spent years focusing on their strength will benefit from an increased focus on rate of force development training (ROFD), will require a highly focused training phase (e.g. a block, not concurrent periodization model) and will likely need longer periods of rest between sprints to ensure full recovery and maximal output.

These are all programming decisions that can make a huge impact on the design of the program and the eventual training adaptation.

2) Is squatting (or any exercise) good?

Reframed Question: Is squatting (or any exercise) the most optimal exercise based on the desired adaptation and MY structure and movement competency?

There are a few different ways to approach exercise selection, but the goal of the exercise and the movement competency of the athlete ALWAYS need to be considerations. If the athlete does not have the ability (whether it’s for structural or functional reasons) to get into a good squatting position, squatting likely isn’t a good exercise choice to develop physical capacities. In other words, it’s not wise to overload a pattern that the athlete can’t perform well. This is not rocket science; it’s borderline common sense.

Having said that, I think people get way too enamored with exercises and forget that the loading parameters are going to dictate the physiological stimulus, and therefore how the athlete adapts to the exercise. See the table below:

This is far from a comprehensive look at programming strategies, but it provides an illustration of how ANY exercise can be loaded to drive very different adaptations. Mike Boyle recently posted a quick Q&A on his site on a related topic: Can You Gain Mass With Split Squats?

Before choosing any exercise for a program, you should answer these two questions:

What am I trying to accomplish?
Can I (or the athlete) do the movement properly?

Once again, reframing the original question leads to a very different outlook on the program design process.

3) Is “insert player name” in shape?

Reframed: Is the player physically prepared and adequately recovered to fulfill the role the coaching staff needs of them on this night?

Asking if a player is in shape illustrates a very superficial understanding of physical preparation. Intuitively, I think we all recognize that “in shape” needs to be operational defined. In other words, in shape for what?

Many would assume that a marathon runner is in shape, and that a heavy set baseball reliever is not. “In shape” seems to be defined, arbitrarily, by some unstated combination of aerobic endurance and body composition. This is not to say that there is no value in these two metrics-there is a lot of value in both-but determining whether a player is in shape needs to be defined within the context of the role that player needs to fill. Consider these examples.

A few years ago I worked with an NHL guy that was in and out of the line-up and filled a 4th line role when he played. He averaged around 5-6 minutes a night and most shifts were short. From an energy system development standpoint, this players needs are VERY different from a 1st line player that also logs PP and PK minutes to play ~20 minutes/night. The 4th line player plays shorter shifts, has more rest between them, and accumulates less fatigue over the game. In other words, the program could have a greater emphasis on developing alactic power (think pure speed and power with full recovery) and less of an emphasis on developing lactic capacity. I’d want this player to perform well on short sprint tests and reasonably well on an aerobic test like a beep test, but poorly on a 300-yard shuttle repeat test.

Unfortunately, a lot of times practices aren’t set up to prepare players for their on-ice roles, at least not from an energy system development standpoint. There are a different ways to look at this idea, but the easiest one is to consider the demands of the goalie position. Take a look at the graphs below from Devan McConnell, which display heart rate data for a goalie in a practice and in a game.

As a general statement, the game is characterized by highs and lows: Move explosively, recover fully (similar to the 4th line player example above). In stark contrast, practices are characterized with middle-high work loads continuously over the course of several minutes. You don’t need a PhD in biochemistry to recognize that the two graphs don’t look alike, and that a player continually being “trained” with the demands of the bottom graph will lead to adaptations that don’t optimally prepare them for performance in tasks like the top graph.

Similarly, in the absence of actual testing data, coaches may comment that a player looks slower or out of shape. As is the theme of this article, this type of remark requires context. Is a player slow because they’re under-prepared and/or de-trained or because they’re over-stress, over-fatigued, and/or under-recovered? A poor night of sleep (or several poor nights of sleep) will absolutely impair a player’s speed and conditioning, as will accumulated fatigue from a string of hard practices of games. In this case, assuming the player is under-prepared would lead a coach to increase their training, which would have the polar opposite effect of its intention. This really highlights the importance of monitoring workloads, perceived exertion, and subjective recovery. This information will help make more informed training decisions. With two players that look slow, one may require a focused training block on speed/power; another may require an ice bath, massage and day off from practice.

Wrap-Up

Making more informed decisions starts with asking better questions. Often times questions need to be reframed within the context of a specific situation or for a specific individual. Making subtle adjustments in how you ask common questions can have a profound impact on how you program, both from a training and a recovery standpoint.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Year-round age-specific hockey training programs complete with a comprehensive instructional video database!

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“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team

“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University

5 Ways to Get the Most from Your Athletes

Today’s Thursday Throwback discusses a few tips related to “the art of coaching” that will help you get the most out of your athletes. Despite originally publishing this over 4 years ago, these things continue to be staples in how our entire staff at Endeavor approaches coaching our athletes. These are timeless principles that can be applied in environments with athletes at almost every level. Enjoy!

5 Ways to Get the Most from Your Athletes

Piggy-backing on last week’s post on the importance of developing great coaching skills to compliment a sound knowledge base (refer here: Become a Great COACH!), I thought I’d share 5 ways I’ve found to get the most out of our athletes.

5) Make Exercises/Instruction Specific to the Athlete
In a strength and conditioning setting, there are appropriate degrees of specificity to incorporate into an athlete’s training program, and more appropriate training qualities to incorporate movements that more directly mimic sport movements. For example, speed and power work are more appropriate opportunities to teach foot patterns, body positions, and proper rotational power generation; whereas strength work that mimics sport specific movements would be fruitless/counterproductive.

Goalie-specific training exercise. Note the rapid eye movement that precedes the jump and the rebound.

In all cases, you can gain a lot of ground with your athletes if you can explain why what they’re doing will apply to their sport. This doesn’t need to be overly complex. When we kettlebell (novice) or trap bar (less novice) deadlift our athletes, we’ll explain that maintaining a neutral spine or “flat back” is important because it teaches the body to have a stable core, which will allow them to transition quicker in their sport. In reality, the athlete probably hears some Charlie Brown esque modification of what we’re saying: “wha wha wha wha CORE wha wha transition wha quicker”. “You mean this will help make me faster?!” “Yes.” Sold.

Maybe I wouldn’t have picked you last if you would pack your neck while you’re blocking Charlie Brown!

4) Be Flexible with Dress Code
When I started at Endeavor, one of the first things I did was establish an “acceptable” dress code. Shirts with inappropriate language/insinuations weren’t acceptable, nor were shirts that lacked sleeves (a tough sell in New Jersey!). The last thing I want is a bunch of kids that think they’re stronger than they are flexing in front of the mirror in between sets.

I wonder if people would still flex and lift up their shirt to ~~check out their abs in the mirror~~ wipe the sweat off their face if this was going on in the background

That said, there are times when it’s appropriate to bend the rules a little to meet your athletes half way. If your athletes want to wear the medicine ball that they just obliterated against the wall over their face, they should be free to do so.

Nice.

3) Don’t be an asshole. If you’re an asshole, apologize.
This will go hand-in-hand with the last point of this article, but strength coaches stereotypically have the reputation of being hard assess. I think there is a fine line between being a source of inspiration and motivation and just being an asshole. Why are you coming down so hard on an athlete? Is it because you really care about them and have a hard time watching self-destructive behavior? Is it because your personality just doesn’t mesh well with his/hers? Is it because you slept like hell the night before and are just generally irritable? Is it because you think that’s your job?

It’s worth being conscious of your own mood and recognizing how it may influence the way you coach. I also think it’s important to recognize that no one is infallible, even the coach. It’s okay; rather it’s recommended that you admit when you make a mistake and apologize to your athlete(s). It’s not a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of humanity.

Just last week I had a morning where a few little things kind of pissed me off, and I ended up taking it out on a player whose effort was a little “unmotivated” that day. After he finished training, I pulled him into my office apologized, said I was wrong to come down on him like I did, explained exactly what I was looking for from him and why I thought it was important/beneficial for him to adopt certain behaviors. He understood where I was coming from, we’re on the same page, and I think we’re both better off for it.

2) Play Music they Like
Music plays an irreplaceable role in building a high energy environment. In an ideal world, the athletes and coaching staff would both be inspired by the same genres of music. This isn’t always the case. Last Summer we had a couple groups of hockey players that absolutely thrived on Phil Collins. This started as a joke, but manifested into what I refer to as audible steroids. When Phil came on, everyone turned it up a notch.

Despite everything I learned from Tony Gentilcore while at Cressey Performance a few years back, I never personally took to techno music. But a few of our athletes requested a “Techno Tuesday” to break up the monotony of Metallica Monday, and Rise Against Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. I hesitantly allowed it. Now Techno Tuesday has become Techno Weekdays. “Club Endeavor” wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but if it gets everyone to work harder, I’m all in. We even have a player that enters the morning group with a general sense of disdain, whose mood I can instantly turn by playing:

At least 20 of the 14,000 views are from my iphone at 8:15am.

1) Let Them Know You Care!
Save the best for last. NOTHING else matters if your athletes don’t know much you care about them. “Care” in this sense refers to both wanting the best for them as athletes AND as people. Become personally invested in their success. I can’t tell you how many 1-on-1 meetings I’ve had with players just to get a better understanding of what their personal goals are and to ensure I’m doing everything I can to help move them in that direction. I’m exceedingly flexible with scheduling to accommodate beach trips and visits from out of town girlfriends.

It’s imperative that the athlete makes a commitment and demonstrates a dedicated effort to their own progress, but I don’t think this needs to happen at the exclusion of all things fun, especially not in the Summer, and not with hockey players that are stuck indoors for the majority of the year. I (only half jokingly) tell our players to soak up as much Vitamin D as they can over the weekend because Vitamin D is thought to be helpful in improving maximum strength levels in deficient individuals (most hockey players).

At the most foundational level, getting athletes to buy in to your program comes down to them understanding that you have their best interest in mind. Sometimes this comes down to reanalyzing your intentions with the program, but most times it comes down to the way you build your relationship with your athletes. Once they know how much you care them, they’re much more likely to respond to your advice.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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

Get Ultimate Hockey Transformation Now!

Year-round age-specific hockey training programs complete with a comprehensive instructional video database!

Get access to your game-changing program now >> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team

“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University

Were you duped by EMG?

EMG (electromyography) is the measurement of the electrical input to “activate” a muscle, and is often used as an indication of how much force the muscle will produce. It can be a useful research tool, and one that I’m very familiar with, having spent my two years of grad school working in the Exercise Neuroscience Lab at UMass Amherst. That said, the results from EMG-based studies, especially surface EMG, are frequently misquoted, misinterpreted and poorly applied.

Today’s Thursday Throwback discusses some of the limitations to EMG, and what you should be on the look out for as someone that is likely to read someone else’s interpretation of these studies. As I always say, if you want better answers, you have to ask better questions. Today’s post (and the linked article) will help you do just that.

Were You Duped by EMG?

Last week I got an email from my friend Rob McLean with the Colorado Avalanche in reference to an exercise that is considered the “best” because it produces higher EMG levels than other exercises. Rob’s question was, simply, “what do you think?”

A couple years ago, I wrote an article for StrengthCoach.com that Coach Boyle was gracious enough to allow me to re-post at my site here: EMG for Strength Coaches

This article identifies and explains a lot of the common myths associated with interpreting EMG-driven research and is a great starting place for people new to EMG altogether. There are additional considerations when interpreting EMG research that I think are relevant to those in training and sports medicine professions and to the general “fitness enthusiast”, as it will allow you to better spot bullshit (and bullshit interpretations) when you see them.

False Assumptions

1) Force Production = Force Expression
People tend to equate EMG activity with instantaneous force production. Because of the time course associated with the electrical input signal stimulating a mechanical action, this is an inherently misguided notion. That said, even with this assumption, force production does not always equate to force expression.

Force production is the mechanical tension developed in the muscle. Force expression is how that force translates into movement or the control of movement. The two differentiate primarily based on activity of synergistic and antagonist muscle groups and structures. As an oversimplification, envision the biceps brachii producing 5 units of force and the triceps brachii producing 0. You can imagine that the elbow would flex at an appropriate speed based on the force production of the biceps. Now envision an identical situation, but with the triceps producing 4 units of force. The elbow would still flex, but now it wouldn’t be 5 units of expressed elbow flexion force, it would be 1. This example removes all syngerists and the concept of connective tissue tensegrity and mechanical force dispersion, but provides a simple illustration of the difference between force production and force expression.

Isolation without integration is never the goal of a hockey training program

Often times it’s force EXPRESSION that we’re most concerned with, not force production. The major take home here is that EMG studies that focus on the comparison of activity within a single muscle and compare this amongst different exercises completely overlook the importance and inevitably of antagonist and synergist activity.

2) More is Better
The underlying assumption and arguably largest misinterpretation of EMG is that MORE activity is a GOOD thing. In reality, EMG activity always needs a contextual qualifier to rationalize whether increased activity is beneficial or detrimental. My friend Jim Snider from U of Wisconsin did a great job of explaining this in his presentation over the weekend at BSMPG’s Hockey Symposium. Not every muscle plays the same role within the body. There are segmental stabilizers that create a stable base from which more global mobilizers can function. More EMG activity in these stabilizers, especially at the expense of coordinated firing patterns relevant to their true function in movement, is likely detrimental to performance.

This is about as functional for hockey as smoking cigarettes

Secondly, it is often the case that the goal of any given muscle is to use the absolute bare minimum of activity necessary to accomplish a given task. This is true in the interest of energy preservation. This is one of the reasons why we don’t coach a “hard brace” during plank exercises. In this situation, we’d be encouraging a high threshold strategy for a relatively basic task. Instead, we aim to optimize body position and ensure proper breathing patterns and simply allow the nervous system to appropriately interpret the force needs to provide accordingly. Utilizing high threshold strategies for low threshold tasks has a number of other deleterious implications, but that of excessive energy use is not to be overlooked.

Wrap-Up
I fully understand why some interpret EMG studies the way they do, but isolating an individual muscle in EMG is no better than attempting to isolate individual muscles in training. There are likely more implications for this research in a rehabilitation setting than in a training setting, but in both environments it’s important not to overlook the vast mechanical and neurological integration of human movement. Getting back to Rob’s question, my rationale for including some exercises and excluding others goes well beyond isolated gross neural input signals. Every exercise we use serves a specific purpose and fits within a linear and/or parallel progression. In other words, my interpretation of an exercise’s proficiency is based on my particular training philosophy and system, which is likely quite different from most others. As always, it’s important to critically analyze information as it becomes available and not get caught up in something just being “new”. Remember, hyped up garbage is still garbage!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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