Tag: Kevin Neeld

Hockey Training Tip to Prevent Shoulder Injuries

Shoulder injuries are a serious concern for hockey players. More and more these days I’m seeing “high level” hockey players walk through our doors at Endeavor that strike me as shoulder injuries waiting to happen. This is one of my favorite pictures:

Note the hockey player on the far right.

If you notice, we’ve completely devolved back into having terrible posture. With most hockey players spending all day sitting (whether at school, watching tv, or stalking people on facebook), this posture of thoracic kyphosis (rounded upper back) and forward shoulders is becoming the norm. This is a SERIOUS problem for hockey players for two reasons:

1) An inability to extend at the thoracic spine (e.g. reverse this rounded curve) will limit rotation through this area. If you don’t believe, put your hands on each one of your shoulders and rotate as far as you can with your upper back hunched, then with your upper back extended as much as you possibly can. You’ll see that there is a significant difference in your ability to rotate through your upper spine. This has a number of performance implications, most visibly limiting your ability to generate rotational power while shooting.

Former BU and current Endeavor athlete Colby Cohen taking a slap shot.
I just assume this went in.

2) This rounded posture moves your shoulder blades out to the side which forces your shoulders forward (see guy on right below).

Do you see how his palms are almost facing backwards? This drastically increases your risk of suffering a shoulder dislocation. Imagine what would happen to that shoulder if a strong force was sent to his shoulder from a slightly backward angle. This happens almost every time a hockey player is hit from the side or into the boards (especially if the same side arm is raised to help “brace” for impact). In the middle picture, a hit from the side would result in the shoulder being pushed into the glenoid activity (shoulder socket), which could be absorbed by the entire upper body/rib cage. In contrast, the guy on the right would need to rely entirely on the long and weak posterior shoulder muscles, and the anterior glenohumeral ligaments.

I don’t know if this is really a hockey training tip or not, but one of the most effective ways to prevent shoulder injuries is to improve your posture. Creating and maintaining a good posture ensures appropriate balance in muscle length (and consequent strength) across the shoulder joint and creates more structurally stability to common hockey impacts. You don’t have to walk around with your chest puffed up like an idiot, but you should pay attention to how slouched you are throughout the day and make an effort to stand up and stretch out regularly.

One of the best ways you can reverse the sitting posture (and hockey posture for that matter) is through a common yoga position known as “lie on your stomach and push your chest off the ground”.

Doing this for 30s a few times a day and making a conscious effort to slouch less and be “taller” will help minimize your risk of shoulder injuries. Remember, you can’t out-do 23.75 hours of bad posture with 15 minutes of quality shoulder exercises.

Kevin Neeld

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2010 Midwest Performance Enhancement Seminar

I think the greatest display of pure bliss the human race ever encounters is when a young kid is handed a tall cone of delicious ice cream on a hot day. You see their eyes get bigger as the cone approaches their hands, and after a couple licks they get that sugar-enhanced look of psychotic happiness.

But from time-to-time, this happens:

and third-party bystanders get to observe the rapid reversal of the aforementioned progression of joy and the inevitable hysteria-driven water works and siren-like harmony that emerge from the kid.

This circumstantial description closely resembles the emotional roller coaster I went on recently when I found out about the 2010 Midwest Performance Enhancement Seminar.

Check out the presenters/schedule for this event:

9:00 – 10:00 – Brian Grasso: We’re Killing Kids! Why Current Sports Performance Training Methods are Stupid

10:10 – 11:10 – Lee Taft: How to Load the System for Functional Speed

11:20 – 12:20 – Mike Robertson: The Single-Leg Solution

12:20 – 1:30- Lunch

1:30 – 2:30 – Pat Rigsby: Finding Hidden Opportunity in Your Fitness Business

2:40 – 3:40 – Bill Hartman: Energy System Training for Field Athletes

4:30 – 5:30 – Brett Jones: Kettlebell Basics: How to Integrate Kettlebells Into Your Strength & Conditioning Program

With a list like this, the big question is “How much?” Incredibly, the seminar only requires a $149 investment (that is-if I registered before July 24th…plenty of time). Before reading any further about the seminar I opened up my go-to barrage of flight tabs to price shop on the cheapest flight possible from Baltimore to Indianapolis.

Full of ice-cream induced child-like excitement, I returned to the 2010 Midwest Performance Enhancement Seminar page to see when it was so I could book my flight and that’s when it hit me. The schedule gods batted that cone out of my hand like Ben Wallace protecting his net.

Unfortunately for me, the seminar is on August 28th, which is the weekend Emily and I are moving from Baltimore to Philadelphia (fortunate for me). Yes, after 15 months of commuting two hours from our place in Baltimore to Endeavor in South Jersey, we’re making the move to save my hips and sanity, and to move closer to where Emily wants to go to grad school. It’s just bad timing.

I’m pretty bummed I can’t make it…but that doesn’t mean you can’t! The list of presenters is really amazing; you’d have to be crazy (or moving) to miss this. Check out the link below for more information.

=> 2010 Midwest Performance Enhancement Seminar <=

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

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The Single-Leg Solution Review

I hope you enjoyed a relaxing 4th of July weekend…and/or recovered fully from your celebrating. Emily and I took off at the end of last week for Denver to go spend the weekend with her brother. I love it out there. If the Avalanche ever gave me a call I’d make the move out there in a heartbeat!

A couple weeks ago, I picked up a copy of Mike Robertson’s new DVD and manual set: The Single-Leg Solution

As you know, I’m a huge supporter of single-leg exercises for building lower body strength. I think hockey training programs should be based around single-leg lifts. In fact, I think training programs for all athletes should be based around single-leg lifts. With my hockey players, I followed what I think of as an inverted exercise model, whereby the traditionally thought of main lifts (which are all double leg squat and deadlift variations) are performed secondarily, if at all, following the traditionally thought of accessory lifts (single-leg lifts).

With that said, it’s easy to see why I’d be interested in the first ever product created to detail everything about the benefits (or lack thereof) of single-leg training, how to perform the lifts, and where they should fit in your program.

Single-Leg Solution Pros

The first thing I noticed about the product was that the cover is absolutely sick. I don’t know how Mike has doing his graphics, but I’m jealous.

After reading through the 96-page manual and watching the hour long DVD, I was really impressed with the comprehensive descriptions of the exercises. As I watched, I was thinking about how much I’d like every athlete I work with to have access to the DVD so they came to me knowing EXACTLY how I wanted them to perform the lift. For that matter, I wish every intern/job applicant also came equipped with that knowledge.

Mike’s DVD brilliant breaks down exactly how to perform the single-leg lifts (and their variations), common undesired movements, and how to coach athletes out of undesired movement into correct alignment, using both cues and reactive neuromuscular training. He also shows a few great ways to “unload” people that may not be able to hop right in to the more advanced variations (due to weakness, injury, etc.).

Other “pros” of The Single-Leg Solution were Mike’s unbiased breakdown of the benefits of single-leg training and where he fits the lifts into his program. Nowadays, it seems like the majority of people pitching the benefits of single-leg training or preaching about how they’re unnecessary and we should all stick with the “main lifts” are either regurgitating arguments they’ve heard from other people (not always a terrible thing) or just flat-out uneducated. It was refreshing to see Mike take an unbiased approach.

Single-Leg Solution Cons

First off, I want to make my position on these “cons” very clear. Mike is a brilliant guy, and (through emails and his products) has been an invaluable resource for me. “Cons” of the product aren’t so much “cons” as much as a couple things that I wanted more information on. After reading through the manual, two things really stood out to me regarding how double-leg lifts may still be superior to single-leg lifts in certain areas:

Point 1: A study presented in the 2005 NSCA National Conference by Chiu et al. found that “The magnitude and direction of forces in a SLS were significantly different when compared to running to cut, backpedal and cutting to the left for both the hip and the ankle. In fact a bilateral squat was much closer to these movements than a SLS.Joint contact forces during athletic movements may be more similar.”

I’ve looked everywhere and can’t find the publication of this information. I’d really like to know more about why they chose a single-leg squat (opposed to any other single-leg exercise like reverse lunges or back leg raised split squats) and if there was NO sigificant difference between the athletic movements and double leg squats or if the double leg squats were just less dis-similar (which essentially means nothing). I wouldn’t necessarily expect the magnitude of forces to be similar between athletic movements and a stationary squatting movement so I’m somewhat unclear on the strength of this argument IF it’s used as anti-single-leg (again-Mike doesn’t present it as one way or another, just presents the evidence).

Point 2: The implication was made that double-leg movements can be loaded more heavily and therefore provide a greater stimulus to the muscle. From a scientific standpoint, it’s hard to quantify exact muscular contributions during movements. To spare the semester-long discussion on why that is, I’ll move on to point out that many of our hockey players at Endeavor are doing back leg raised split squats and reverse lunges with very similar loads as they front squat (in some cases more). Coach Boyle has said the same thing about his hockey players. With that observation, I’m curious if I’m misunderstanding something about the loading argument, because it seems like you can load the involved muscles to a greater extent with single-leg lifts.

Overall, I think this is one of those products that should be in the library of every strength coach or trainer. Depending on your background, you may be familiar with some of the exercises, but the cuing/coaching, progressions, and programming are worth the investment.

Click the link or image below to check out more information about The Single-Leg Solution:

=> The Single-Leg Solution <=

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Off-Ice Testing for Hockey Speed

Last weekend I finished the last of 3 neuroscience text books I had been working for about the last year, which FINALLY freed up some time to read some other stuff.

“What do you mean that’s not cool?”

After I finished, I was going back through some old articles that I read a while back and came across an interesting one on hockey testing. The authors took 30 hockey players that were currently competing at the high school and junior levels through a battery of tests listed below.

Off-Ice Tests:

40-yard sprint test
Concentric Squat Jump w/ Arm Swing
Drop Jump
1-RM Leg Press
Sit-and-Reach
30-Second Wobble Board Test

On-Ice Tests:

Unanticipated Stop Test
Forward Max Skating Speed
Short-Radius Turns Test

After running a correlation-based analysis, the authors determined that there was a significant relationship between maximum skating speed and the 40-yard sprint test and the “Balance Ratio” (a measure determined from the wobble board test). However, the relationship wasn’t very strong, as each of these variables only explained about 25% of the variance in on-ice maximum speed.

Interestingly, the relationship between balance and maximum skating speed was stronger for players under the age of 19 than it was for older players.

Overall, these results aren’t that surprising. The same parameters that affect speed off the ice (lower body strength/power, core control, full body coordination, etc.) will logically improve speed on the ice. The finding that the wobble board balance test (a measure of reactive neuromuscular control) was more highly correlated to skating speed in younger players is further evidence of “natural” development (and the enhanced coordination that should come with age and experience).

I still don’t think it’s appropriate to compare players to each other using off-ice tests, but I’m excited by the effort that people are taking to find off-ice tests that are actually predictive of on-ice performance. I recently spoke with Mike Potenza (San Jose Sharks Strength and Conditioning Coordinator) , and he said that he was planning on spending more time analyzing various off-ice tests and seeing if any stuck out as influencing on-ice production (goals scored, +/-, etc.). The results from these efforts will be really interesting. If strong correlations can be found between select off-ice measures and any on-ice measure (even games played/missed), that will be a huge step for hockey testing. In the meantime, off-ice testing is still a great way to monitor improvement within a player.

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

Reference:

Behm, Wahl, Button, Power, & Anderson. (2005). Relationship Between Hockey Skating Speed and Selected Performance Measures. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research, 19(2), 326-331.

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Sub-Clinical Hockey Injuries?

Last week, Eric Cressey put up a few great posts on an issue that I think everyone working in the human performance arena should be aware of. You can check them out here:

Preventing Lower Back Pain: Assuming is Okay

Healthy Shoulders with Terrible MRIs?

Who Kneeds Normal Knees?

Despite the last title, these three posts contain a lot of great information. The big take home message from all these posts is that many people (athletes and non-athletes alike) have positive MRI findings (positive MRIs means something is wrong), despite not having ANY symptoms. This is most profound in the lower back area, where one study found that 82% of the 98 MRIs taken of asymptomatic individuals came back showing a spinal disc abnormality (Jensen et al, 1994). Eric points on in these posts that similar (although not QUITE as profound) findings have been found in the knees and shoulders of various athletic and non-athletic populations.

More specific to ice hockey players, recall from my post Off-Season Hockey Leads You to Surgery? that similar findings have been found in the hips of elite level hockey players. To refresh your memory, the article found that MRIs of 39 NHL and NCAA Division 1 players, twenty-one (54%) had labral tears, twelve (31%) had muscle strains, and 2 (5%) had tendinosis (degeneration of the tendon). Overall, 70% of these hockey players, who otherwise present as “healthy”, had irregular findings on their MRIs.

We could have a very lengthy discussion about how to interpret all this information, but one major question arises: “If they’re asymptomatic, do the positive MRI findings matter?”

The answer is yes. While positive MRI findings shouldn’t be taken as an instant justification for surgery, they still shouldn’t be overlooked. It’s likely that many of these individuals are just “sub-clinical”, meaning they have a pathology that isn’t normal, but hasn’t yet advanced to the point of pain or disability…yet.

A major take home from these studies is that many hockey players that appear fine probably have some pretty serious injury predispositions. Any injury (even subclinical) can cause neural alterations to the timing and strength of signals sent to various muscles, and therefore have a profound impact on movement.

This latter point was the main message in Proprioception and Neuromuscular Control in Joint Stability, the awesome text book I’ve spent the last 9 months reading.

When I read stuff like this it just reinforces how important it is to teach and emphasize proper movement patterns. It makes me wonder if my half dozen left shoulder injuries, bilateral hamstring tears, 5+ year groin pain, and double hernia surgery could have been prevented had I worked with a quality Strength and Conditioning Coach when I was younger. It also makes me nervous for the countless young players out there that think they can “do it on their own”.

Exercise isn’t as simple as people think it is. Injuries don’t happen by accident. Coaching isn’t a commodity; it’s a necessity. Hopefully hockey players will hear this message from a decent strength coach before they hear it from a physician.

To your uninjured success,

Kevin Neeld

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