I hope you’ve had a great week. David and I are heading out to West Chester, PA for the USA Weightlifting Sports Performance Course certification over the weekend. I grew up in West Chester, so it’ll be great to stop in to see my parents and spend some time in my old stomping grounds.

Things picked up a bit this week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning. Before I get to that, if you missed my two articles from earlier in the week, you can check them out at the links below:

  1. UCAN Break Carbohydrate Dependence
  2. A New Perspective on Program Design

While these posts approach somewhat different concepts, one of the underlying take homes from both is that we need to be adept at STRATEGICALLY implementing stressors. In this vein, stress doesn’t just refer to those from training or competition (although, these will make up a significant proportion of the total stressors for in-season players), but also dietary, environmental, psychological, and social stressors (amongst others!). Stress is cumulative and needs to be mediated or “overtraining” will result.  Overtraining can just as accurately be described as “under recovery” as it’s possible to drive someone into a state of overtraining without ANY training stressors at all.

Also, I wanted to remind you that today is the last day to pick up your copy of Joe Dowdell and Mike Roussell’s Peak Diet and Program Design Summit Package for $100 off. They’ve added a special bonus from Pat Rigsby (great for those of you that may own your own training business) AND a new payment plan. If you’re interested, check out their program here: Peak Summit Package

Moving on to this week’s content at Hockey Strength and Conditioning…

Mike Potenza kicked things off with a new “Youth Training Program” that emphasized lateral speed training. This exercise series, which Mike demos in the videos, is a great way to teach young players how to accelerate, decelerate, and change direction while maintaining proper body position. In other words, it drives performance through body awareness. For higher level players, under the assumption that they’ve developed these qualities already (not always a safe assumption), these are still great exercises to incorporate into off-season programs or toward the end of a warm-up at any time of year. Great stuff from Mike.

Click here to check out the program >> Youth Program: Lateral Speed Teaching

Darryl Nelson added an exercise video of two variations of a lunge complex, one using a valslide and one without it. I’m not exactly sure how Darryl builds these into the program, but they seem like great options for a warm-up or to build some low-intensity “hip mobility” or “lower body” work into an upper body day or full body lift where you want to back off the legs a bit.

Check out the lunge matrix video here >> Left Middle Right Reverse Lunges

The second part of my article series on developing youth training programs for an entire youth hockey organization just went up. This series gives you an inside look into my philosophy and approach to designing a program for a local youth club. As this is a question I get a lot (typically from a coach at one specific level), I think the article series will have a lot of valuable information in it for those of you that don’t necessarily train people for a living, but are left to your own devices for your hockey club. In my (unbiased) opinion, the strength of this series is that I don’t necessarily suggest that you need to do it EXACTLY how I do, but understanding my philosophy underlying the approach I take will help you apply concepts that seem most relevant to your situation. As I always say, there’s a madness to my method!

Check out the article here >> Youth Hockey Training Blueprint: Part 2

Make sure you check out these threads on the forum too:

  1. Motivation
  2. 1 Leg Cleans?
  3. Athlete Metabolism Issue
  4. Hockey’s Original Recovery Drink

That’s a wrap for today. As always, if you aren’t a member yet, I encourage you to try out Hockey Strength and Conditioning for a week. It’ll only cost $1, and if it’s not the best buck you’ve ever spent, I’ll personally refund you!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Last chance to save $100 on this: Peak Summit Package

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On Wednesday night I made it out to my first Flyers game of the year to watch them battle against the Sharks. It was one of the most exciting (and disappointing) games I’ve seen in a while. Flyers gave up a 4-1 lead, scored a goal as time expired in overtime (that was disallowed), and then lost in the shootout. D’oh!

I also got to see a few of the players I used to work with at UMass Amherst (who were out to see former UMasser Justin Braun play) and catch up with Mike Potenza briefly.

Mike had a really interesting video series at Hockey Strength and Conditioning this week on lateral speed training. I’m very progression oriented. With a few exceptions, if I can’t regress or progress an exercise, it won’t find its way into my programs. Coach Potenza demonstrates a 4-step lateral speed training exercise progression that doesn’t require a lot of equipment at all (perfect for most youth organizations). To see Coach Potenza’s progression (and his cat-like agility) click this link:

Videos: Lateral Speed Drills from San Jose Sharks Strength Coach Mike Potenza

I added an article with a few videos demonstrating a somewhat common shoulder movement abnormality we see in hockey players during upper body pressing movements, what the cause may be, and a few of the strategies we use to fix it. You can check that out here:

Videos/Article: Preventing Shoulder Injuries I: Implications for Pressing Exercises from me

The forum discussion on a hip impingement case study has been excellent. My friend Jeff Cubos is in the process of shooting some video on posterior hip capsule stretches (something almost every hockey player needs to be familiar with) so look for those in the next few days.

Click the link below for more information about Hockey Strength and Conditioning! See you on the inside!

To your continued success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Remember, it’s only $1 to try for the first week. You will never find more hockey training content anywhere for $1…trust me (I’ve looked!).

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