Training youth athletes can be a challenge, even for the most experienced Performance Coaches. With the drastic fluctuations in structural, hormonal, and neurological development across adolescence, one of the most difficult things to do is teach youth athletes how to perform exercises (and other athletic movements) with proper technique.

Matt Siniscalchi is one of the best coaches I’ve ever met at getting athletes to move properly, quickly. This is one of the reasons he’s been such a valuable asset for us at Endeavor, and why he continues to be a great learning resource for me.

In this article, Matt shares powerful strategies that he uses to develop youth athletes. Check it out below!

Training Youth Athletes: Optimal Teaching Strategies by Matt Siniscalchi

Teaching youth athletes (12-16 years old) encapsulates:

  1. Knowing Long Term Athletic Development (LTAD)
  2. Teaching Fundamental Movement Patterns (squat, hinge, jumping, hopping, sprinting, push, pull, single-leg, core stability)
  3. Appropriate Energy System Development

A quick word on LTAD

Long term athletic development is a physical and psychological model for understanding what ages certain qualities have the highest potential for improvement in order for the athlete’s to take advantage of their full potential later in the sport’s careers. For a quick overview, check out these articles: Endeavor Endeavor’s Athletic Development Model and LTAD Stages

Fundamental Movement Proficiency

Teaching the fundamental movements is our top priority for training youth athletes. More than likely, athletes between 12-16 years old have minimal training background and may not move as optimally as we would prefer. We first perform a battery of assessments/screens to give us a baseline for each individual’s movement competency/capacity. After we do their movement screens, general strength testing (primarily bodyweight), and conditioning assessments, we create a program with methods to set them to successfully learn proper exercise technique. These include:

  1. Eccentrics for upper and lower body lifts (3-5sec eccentrics): Push-Ups, Pull-Ups, Lunges, squats, and deadlifts are typically introduced with 3-5sec eccentrics. Slowing down the movement helps the athlete grasp what positions they should be in and what they should feel throughout the exercise.
  2. Isometrics or pauses to teach either the bottom or top portion of the lift. Again, this strategy is helpful in allowing the athlete to feel proper positioning in the most difficult portions of an exercise or movement.

1-Arm Cable Stiff-Legged Deadlift Hold

An example of an isometric hold to help a youth athlete feel proper body positioning

Lifting is one piece of the training puzzle for our youth athletes. The other important aspects are sprinting (primarily acceleration/deceleration), change of direction drills, medicine ball throw variations (power), and jumping and hopping (2-leg & 1-leg variations). The principles we use when implementing speed, power, change of direction (COD), balance, or plyometrics are as follows:

  • Get into basic starting positions first to set athlete up for success before integrating a wider variety of starting positions
  • Slow down the movement before ramping up the speed
  • Focus on single jumps/throws/hops at a time before progressing to multiple or repeated jumps/throws/hops at a time

Sprints

2-Point Start (static starting stance)

 

Lean Fall Runs (dynamic starting position)

MedBall Throws

Side Standing MedBall Scooop: reset after each one

Side Standing MedBall Scoop Repeats: continuous reloading of hips

Jumping

KB Vertical Jump

KB Vertical Jump Repeats

These are examples of progressions that we implement to successfully teach our youth athletes to move properly. Everyone improves at different rates, so we either regress or progress according to their level of improvement.

Energy System Development

Energy system development is a hot topic of debate currently with coaches trying to find the best methods to get athletes in shape for their sport(s). Youth conditioning should rely primarily on aerobic/alactic energy system development. There seems to be more sedentary children nowadays than when I was growing up and it’s evident to us as a lot of kids struggle mightily in aerobic tests and/or have high resting heart rates.

The aerobic energy system has the greatest growth potential, meaning we can drastically influence this in our kids, even at young ages. If we create a large “engine” in our youth athletes, then when it comes later in their athletic career, we can start to build the “horsepower” (ability to repeat explosive sprints) much more efficiently. We influence this system by using body weight circuits, tempo runs, or short duration explosive bouts of sprints for their conditioning.

Enhancing our athletes’ potential for success is a “slow-cooking” step-by-step process that requires patience, principle-based training, consistency, having fun, and understanding how each athlete develops as an individual.

Try implementing these strategies with your youth athletes! If you have any questions, please post them below.

-Matt Siniscalchi, CSCS
Performance Specialist, Endeavor Sports Performance

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

Last week was a busy week as I had a fairly full schedule of manual therapy clients on top of my coaching responsibilities. It’s been a fun couple of weeks as I’ve had a few pro baseball pitchers and a former (and possibly future, depending on whether or not he’s ready to hang up the shoes and grab a whistle full time) pro basketball player come in for assessments and start training.

I’ve been studying up on baseball

While I’m okay with being labeled a “hockey guy”, the reality is that as a coach, if you understand the foundations of human movement and physiology, and the movement patterns, energy system proportions and injury patterns of a sport, you can design a great training program. I may not be able to throw 90 mph (…or even 60), and my little carny hands can barely palm a mini basketball, but neither of those things are any indication of an ability to design and implement programs to help improve performance in baseball and basketball athletes. This is actually a nice segway into today’s first “Stuff You Should Read”

Mini Basketball Net

This, I could handle. (Image from: dazadi.com)

Training Stuff You Should Read

1) Internet Hockey Training Experts from me

This is a throwback from a couple years ago that I think is just as relevant today as ever. Before you sign up to train with someone based solely on the fact that they competed at a high level, read this.

2) Improving Core and Lumbopelvic Control with the Slideboard Hamstring Curl by Matt Siniscalchi

Matt does a great job connecting a common posture that athletes present with to how this posture biases them toward a predictable exercise technique flaw. Despite this sounding a little “technical”, the power in this article is that Matt is approaching the issue from a coach’s perspective on exercise performance. He demonstrates “wrong” and “right” and then provides some things to look for and coaching cues to help you get there. I’ve been so impressed with Matt’s coaching over the last year that I recently wrote him a testimonial for his website, while I was helping him make a few tweaks to it. And because I have his password, I maaaaay have added something else. Check out Matt’s site here: Matt Siniscalchi

3) Functional Movement Screen and Mixed Martial Arts by Patrick Ward

This is a summary of a recently published study evaluating an FMS-based corrective approach in MMA athletes. Patrick does a great job summarizing the article and identifying the power in using the FMS, a system that is still surrounded by misunderstandings.

4) Does Overtraining Exist? by Patrick Ward

In this article, Patrick shares an email exchange he had with someone battling overtraining symptoms. He moves on to describe many of the physiological mechanisms underlying and affected by overtraining. I really liked this piece because it provides clear explanations on the different types of overtraining, and I know Patrick is very well read in this area. This is a topic that has always been important, but especially now as competition schedules in youth sports have gotten completely out of control and people seem to be clinging to nonsensical volume-based workouts with the sole intent of sweating more and working harder. There are times to push and times to back off and knowing when to do which can have a HUGE impact on athletic performance and adaptation.

5) 11-Day NBA Warning: Inside Roy Hibbert’s Offseason Training by Brett Koremenos

This is an article about NBA star Roy Hibbert’s off-season training with Mike Robertson this past Summer. I’ve followed Mike’s work for the last 7-8 years, and have benefited greatly from his products and articles. I spent the better part of my Friday morning reading through the articles he emailed out in his newsletter, which included this one. There are a few things I like about this article: The poetic description of lifting weights, the fact that a star professional athlete is working hard to improve his game despite being at the top, and the focus on creating a large, solid foundation of quality movement and stability before progressing to a larger focus on more traditional training goals (e.g. speed, power, etc.).

6) Can You Guarantee Improved Performance by Mike Robertson

This is another great piece from Mike that outlines the three foundational pillars of developing improved athletic performance. As I mentioned above, Mike does a good job of explaining the importance of developing a solid foundation of certain qualities to improve athletic performance and how each of the three pillars will influence sport performance. I especially liked the discussion on conditioning as it pertains to an improved ability to log quality practice within the sport.

7) Quick Thoughts on Barefoot Training by Charlie Weingroff

Several years ago I thought I had a pretty good understanding of this topic. Get people in shoes that move in multiple planes (e.g. Nike Frees). Try to decipher whether a “flat foot” is a functionally flat foot or a structurally flat foot. Teach people to create an arch with barefoot strength training movements. That seemed pretty straight forward to me. Then the Postural Restoration Institute came along and had a completely different spin on footwear, largely condemning the Nike Frees I had recommended so much in the past. While I don’t like all of the shoes on the PRI approved shoe list for athletic purposes, I also understand why they’re making the recommendations they do and can see the limitations in a lot of other shoes within that frame. Charlie falls into the “he talks, I listen” category for me. In this article, he highlights some of the places he feels people would benefit from training barefoot, some of the places they’d probably be best to have shoes on, and the grayer areas.

Lastly, if you missed the articles I posted last week, you can check them out below. These were among the most “shared” articles of any I’ve ever written as the topics seemed to garner interest from PTs, DCs, Strength Coaches, and yoga instructors alike:

  1. Chest Breathing vs. Belly Breathing
  2. 5 Ways Breathing Affects Sport Performance
  3. Philadelphia Union Fitness Coach Kevin Miller on Optimizing Movement

That’s a wrap for today. If you’ve come across any great articles in the last couple of weeks, please post them in the comments section!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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I haven’t spent as much time reading others’ websites as I typically do over the last 6 months as I’ve been chin-deep in massage school, a few good books, and working on a couple projects for Endeavor. That said, I’ve come across several awesome articles that I wanted to share with you that cover a range of topics from hockey training to parenting to manual therapy to soccer preparation (these articles have direct applications to hockey players too!). Most of these won’t take very long to read, so don’t be overwhelmed by the number of articles here. Lots of good stuff so grab a seat somewhere comfortable and dig in!

This will do.

  1. Shoulder Injuries in Hockey Players from David Lasnier
  2. Those Who Have Influenced Me from Sean Skahan
  3. Some Thoughts on Training the Lactate System from Patrick Ward (Read the comments section too!)
  4. My 13 Simple Rules for Hockey Parents Everywhere from John Buccigross
  5. Parenting Advice from a Former NFL Head Coach via Mike Boyle
  6. Lessons from Inside Out Coaching: The 20 Year Window from Mike Boyle
  7. Every Hockey Parent Should Read This via Mike Boyle
  8. Not Everyone Gets A Trophy from Anthony Donskov
  9. A Note to the High School Athlete, From: Your Strength Coach from Anthony Donskov
  10. Sprinting and Hockey Players from Jeff Cubos
  11. Discussing dynamic ligament stabilization, performance of orthopaedic tests, and proper palpation technique for osseous articulations from Andreo Spina
  12. Paradigm Shift: On changing the manual therapy zeitgeist from Andreo Spina
  13. McKenzie Method vs. SFMA from Charlie Weingroff
  14. An interview with Philadelphia Flyers trainer Jim McCrossin from Broad Street Hockey
  15. The Prevalence of Hip Abnormalities in Soccer Players from Matt Siniscalchi
  16. Basic Soccer Strength Program from Matt Siniscalchi
  17. Core Stability for Soccer Athletes from Matt Siniscalchi
  18. Fatigued? How to Modify Your Training Program To Keep Progressing from Matt Siniscalchi

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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As I mentioned on Friday, this was the first weekend in the last three months that I wasn’t traveling or hosting guests. It was great to relax and unwind a bit. Emily and I shot down to Hockessin Athletic Club in Hockessin, DE to get massages and spend some time in the pool/sauna yesterday. A great way to recover and regenerate from a turbulent few months and prepare for more excitement ahead. As a quick aside, if you’re even remotely close to Hockessin (e.g. within 2 hours), you owe it to yourself to make a trip out to the health club. It’s my go-to spot to get a massage (I’ve had 6 different therapists and they’ve all been tremendous), and the facility itself is remarkable.

Having some downtime also allowed me to catch up on a little reading, some of which I wanted to share with you today. These are a handful of great articles from some of the brightest people I know. I’m fortunate to have opportunities to learn from these coaches, and we’re all fortunate that they take the time out of their busy schedules to share information with us! I also threw in an article on Mike Kadar of the Pittsburgh Penguins from NHL.com because I thought it was a great story!

  1. 5 Years of Cressey Performance: Success Isn’t Just Measured in Revenue from Eric Cressey
  2. As Little as Necessary from Jeff Cubos
  3. Early Rehab for Lumbo-Pelvic-Hip Injuries from Jeff Cubos
  4. Tweaking Physiology from Patrick Ward
  5. Tweaking Physiology Part 2: Divide and Conquer from Patrick Ward
  6. The Epidemic of Concussions from David Lasnier
  7. Expanding on the 1-Leg Squat from David Lasnier
  8. Assessment Using Single-Leg Deadlift Pattern from Matt Siniscalchi
  9. Thoughts on How to Organize Soccer Practices from Matt Siniscalchi
  10. Useful Pressing Progressions for Soccer Athletes from Matt Siniscalchi
  11. Not Overloading Athletes: Other Factors to Consider from Matt Siniscalchi
  12. Malkin Bringing Trainer Back to Moscow from NHL.com
  13. John Gaudreau Interview at Flames Prospect Camp (You may have to dig for this one)

I also wanted to let you know about two other great opportunities. Patrick Ward recently opened up spots for “online training” with him. If you’re interested in taking your performance to a new level, I highly recommend looking into this. You can read more information here: Online Training with Patrick Ward

Finally, Ranfone Training Systems in Hamden, CT is hosting a 2-day course with Charlie Weingroff in November. As you may recall (see: Training = Rehab Rehab = Training), I think very highly of Charlie. He’s a jack of all trades and a master of…well, all trades. And he’s constantly learning to become even better. If you’re a fitness or rehab professionals, I highly suggest signing up for this seminar: Charlie Weingroff at Ranfone Training Systems.

Last, but certainly not least, I wanted to extend a congratulations to the hockey players I’ve been fortunate to have an opportunity to work with that attended NHL prospect camps this year in Buddy Robinson (Vancouver Canucks), Chase Hatcher (Philadelphia Flyers), Nick Sorkin (Philadelphia Flyers) and John Gaudreau (Calgary Flames). Keep working hard!

Buddy either scored here, or plowed his 6’5″ 220lb frame straight through the net. Either way, I’m proud of you man!

That’s a wrap for today. Hopefully you’ll have an opportunity to sift through all of these articles. There is a ton of great info that applies to hockey players specifically and athletes in general.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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I wanted to switch things up a bit to start this week off and feature some work from other people that I’ve really enjoyed. If you’re having a tough time shaking off the weekend and need an outlet to kill some time while you’re pretending to work, this is it!

These articles, in one way or another, all directly relate to the off-ice training of hockey players. In some cases, the author refers to athletes in a different sport (e.g. soccer), but the principle still applies to hockey players. Enjoy! And if you have any questions or comments about the articles, post them below!

  1. Sounders Sports Science and Mentorship Weekend In Review: Lessons Learned by Patrick Ward
  2. The Complexity of It All: Food for Thought by Patrick Ward
  3. Early Rehab for Anterior Lumbo-Pelvic-Hip Injuries by Jeff Cubos
  4. How to Improve Quickness: Understanding Shin Angles by Brijesh Patel via Eric Cressey
  5. Post-Workout Stretches for Hockey Players by David Lasnier
  6. How Injuries Actually Happen by David Lasnier
  7. Overhead Work and Shoulder Flexion Limitation by David Lasnier
  8. Hip Range of Motion & Groin Strains of Soccer Players by Matt Siniscalchi
  9. Producing Power without the Hang Clean by Matt Siniscalchi

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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