Tag: mike roussell

This Week in Hockey Strength and Conditioning

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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Peak Performance and Diet Design Seminar

Over the Summer I was very fortunate to attend Joe Dowdell and Dr. Mike Roussell’s Peak Performance and Diet Design Seminar and Joe’s facility Peak Performance NYC. The seminar was a blast. It was great to catch up with Dr. Perry Nickelston, Tony Gentilcore, and Joe and meet John Romaniello, Sean Hyson, Jim Smith, Mike Roussell, and a number of the other attendees.

You may recall that I discussed the “expert” panel Q&A that Joe asked me to be a part of here: Become a Great Coach!

Social gatherings aside, the seminar itself was packed with great information. It was the first time I saw either Joe or Dr. Mike speak, so to say it was an eye opener would be an understatement. I’ve referenced back through the binder that all of the attendees received several times since the course and thought it would be a good topic for today’s post. Without further ado, here are 5 things I picked up at the seminar.

5) Citrulline Malate
Dr. Roussell discussed his supplement recommendations, and divided them up into “core”, “performance enhancers”, and “case specific.” This in itself is an important concept as many people are quick to start taking supplements (or following training programs for that matter) based on what others are doing, which completely neglects the importance of individual training and body composition goals and stress tolerance. I was familiar with most of the supplements Dr. Mike spoke about, but one really caught my attention: citrulline malate.


According to Dr. Mike, citrulline malate can help fight fatigue and decrease muscle soreness by preventing lacate build-up and acidosis, as well as clearing ammonium.  CM also increases BCAA utilization during exercise, so it’s a great compliment to BCAA or protein supplementation. Some of these attributes have been described with arginine supplementation (such as one of the main active ingredients in all the garbage NO supplements), but Dr. Mike pointed out that arginine is shuttled to the liver shortly after absorption, making it a less effective option that citrulline malate. For hockey players, this means maintaining high performance through long shifts and physical games. For lifters, this means achieving more work in a training session and an expedited recovery. For everyone, this seems like good news.

4) Comprehensive Periodization
Joe is one of the most thorough planners I’ve ever spoken with. When a pro athlete comes to him, he lays out their schedule for the next several weeks or months (depending on what they know) and varies the stresses of the training based on their sport-specific training/practices, travel, and their competitions. This allows for both optimal progress and facilitate recovery, which in turn feeds optimal progress/performance. To an extent, every strength coach does this, but Joe really takes it to the next level. In the manual, Joe included a 4-phase (~5 months) training program that he used with National Fencing Champion Tim Morehouse and 4-phase energy system development program that he used with MMA fighter Marcos “Loro” Galvao. Looking through these programs spawn a lot of ideas regarding the importance of long-term planning and stress management, options for program periodization, and general options for resistance and energy systems training. You can infer a lot about the quality of a coach from analyzing his/her programs, and the attention to detail Joe builds into his programs explains why his gym is a top 3 gym in the nation.

3) Variety
I’ll be honest, I’m not usually impressed with random exercise variations. I think a lot of people put an excessive emphasis on variety at the expense of actually becoming proficient in the movements and their progress suffers accordingly. I also think that people prioritize effective behind “sexy” in selecting exercises (hence all the crazy BOSU and stability ball exercises that people fell in love with). That said, Joe put together a 23-page list with ~650 different exercise variations, describing the “dominant movement pattern or emphasis” for each and including additional classifications when appropriate. Beginners need to master the basics; that should be clear. But more advanced athletes with longer training backgrounds (5-10+ years depending on the consistency) will benefit both physically and psychologically from a varied stimulus. This is by far the most comprehensive list of categorized exercises I’ve ever come across. I’m impressed.

2) Training Residuals
In the interest of prioritizing different training qualities to help make maximum progress, it’s important to understand how long you can leave a quality alone before it starts to degrade. Joe did an outstanding job of discussing Dr. Issurin’s research in this area. Understand “motor ability” residuals as Dr. Issurin calls them, is extremely important in designing programs for elite level athletes. Joe also discussed the physiological changes that drive these residuals, but the list below will give you an idea of how long qualities last before they start to degrade.

  1. Aerobic Endurance: 30 +/- 5 days
  2. Maximum Strength: 30 +/- 5 days
  3. Anaerobic Glycolytic Endurance: 18 +/-4 days
  4. Strength Endurance: 15 +/- 5 days
  5. Maximum Speed (Alactic): 5 +/-3 days

1) Competing Demands
Related to the point above, it’s important to understand which physical qualities will interfere with the development of other qualities. In other words, you want to design your training so that the primary, secondary, and tertiary (if applicable) emphases of a given training phase compliment each other. Mixing contrasting qualities will limit the development of both. Again, Joe highlighted Dr. Issurin’s work in this area, which is briefly illustrated below:

  1. Aerobic Endurance: Alactic (Sprint) abilities, strength endurance-aerobic, maximum strength-hypertrophy (after)
  2. Anaerobic (Glycolytic) Endurance: Strength endurance-anaerobic, aerobic restorative exercises, aerobic-anaerobic (mixed) endurance
  3. Alactic (Sprint) Abilities: Aerobic endurance, explosive strength, maximum strength-hypertrophy (after), aerobic restoration exercises
  4. Maximum Strength-Hypertrophy: Maximum strength-innervation, flexibility, aerobic restoration
  5. Learning New Technical Elements: Any kind of training modality, but after the dominant tasks

A “Top 5” doesn’t really do the seminar justice. Joe described ALL of the adaptations to various resistance training and energy system development strategies and Dr. Mike gave the most comprehensive talk on nutrition and supplementation that I’ve ever seen. Simply, there wasn’t really any component of designing training programs or diets that they didn’t discuss, in detail (I think that was their intention!).

For those of you that missed the seminar, I know they recorded the entire thing and are in the final stages of putting together a huge package with all of the DVDs and the binder I alluded to earlier with all of the slides and extra bonuses from the presentation. Look out for more information on that in the near future, but in the meantime, Joe Dowdell put together a free webinar for you on the “Top 5 Keys for Success in the Fitness Industry.” If you’re coming from a hockey background, this may not interest you, but if you’re personal trainer, strength and conditioning coach, or fitness enthusiast, I highly recommend you check out the webinar!

Click here to watch >> Top 5 Keys for Success in the Fitness Industry

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Random Hockey Training Thoughts

I hope you had a great weekend. This was the first weekend in a month that I’ve been home so it was nice to spend some time with Emily and relax a bit. On Saturday, Emily and I “doubled” with David Lasnier and his ladyfriend at Raw, my favorite sushi place in Philadelphia. Because of the company, David refrained from rolling all of the wasabi into one big clump and eating it whole.

I just assume this is common behavior in Canada

Last weekend I had an opportunity to attend an invite-only symposium on USA Hockey’s American Development Model. They did a great job bringing in speakers from different sports, countries, and disciplines, and I couldn’t say enough good things about the direction USA Hockey is going in general. In a few upcoming posts, I’ll explain more about the state of youth hockey, what USA Hockey is hoping to do, and what you can do to help. In the meantime, it’s been a while since I’ve done a “random thoughts” post and there are a lot of little things I want to share with you.

  1. I get questions about supplements ALL the time, usually from kids that eat like crap and have been “educated” (I use that term VERY loosely) by fellow high school students. Supplements can be very beneficial, but as an athletic society, we need to do a better job of educating our youth on the performance enhancing benefits of proper eating. I think kids view supplements as the key to performance enhancement, and eating a quality diet just as a means of improving general health, which they have no utility for as they’ve never suffered any consequences of impaired health (these things come much later in life). Often times, the best strategies for building muscle, facilitating recovery, and ensuring adequate energy to train and perform at a high intensity are found in pretty basic eating and hydration strategies that don’t require supplements.
  2. If you’re a high school player, it’s safe to say that EVERYTHING you’ve been told from your buddies about supplements is wrong.
  3. Speaking of misinformation, I’m amazed at the amount of garbage that is perpetrated as “goalie-specific training” for hockey goalies. Luckily, Maria Mountain has really stepped up as a CREDIBLE expert in this area and has done an outstanding job of providing goalies with training advice that will actually make them better. If you’re a goalie and haven’t heard of Maria, you’re spending more time pulling pucks out of your net than you should be. Check out her site here: Hockey Training Pro
  4. Citrulline Malate may be the most effective supplement you’ve never heard of. Dr. Mike Roussell first brought this to my attention at a seminar over the Summer and it’s definitely worth looking into. He recently wrote a great review of it on Joel Jamieson’s site here: Citrulline Malate – Your Key to Winning In the Last Round?
  5. Dave Ritter and Anne Davis, two presenters at USA Hockey’s ADM Symposium from the US Tennis Association recommended two NY Times articles that I had an opportunity to read through last week. They were just long enough to test my attention span, but I’m glad I worked my way through to the end. Both question current trends/thoughts in our country in the areas of athletic development and success. Check them out here: What if the Secret to Success is Failure?, How to Grow a Super-Athlete
  6. I’m always on the prowl for new resources. Recently I’ve found myself looking to these 4 guys more and more for new information or a different look at program design/implementation: Joel Jamieson’s 8 Weeks Out, Cal Dietz’s XL Athlete, Jim Snider’s Neuro Explosion, and Kyle Bangen’s Bangen Athletic Development
  7. Have you ever watched a mite or squirt hockey practice and noticed that the coach seems to be yelling more than teaching? Those kids should be having fun the ENTIRE time they’re on the ice. Similarly, the COACH should be having fun the entire time. If you don’t like kids, don’t coach them!
  8. With the popularity Facebook has enjoyed, it seems like every industry is trying to develop their own social media site. I can’t tell you how many requests I’ve received to join DIFFERENT business referral sites! Do we really need a social media site for people to say, “I think you should go train with Kevin at Endeavor”? Inevitably, the industry will overgrow before dying back down to a few reasonable, valuable resources. A local group has started a sports-driven site called UR Sports Page that I think may survive the process. Great idea to provide an exclusive site just for athletes.
  9. Core training continues to be a hot topic in athletic development and fitness crowds alike. Naturally, this means that a lot of people will fall victim (e.g. waste their time and money) to unscrupulous marketers making amazing claims about the crap they peddle. It’s great to see that Mike Robertson has spent the time and energy to put together a quality core training resource. If you haven’t been following Mike’s work over the last week, check out these posts: Should You Crunch?, Should You Crunch? Part 2, My Core Training Story. I know he has some other great posts planned for this week too. Click any of the links above to head over to his site now, read through the content and sign up for his webinar “Complete Core Training”. It’s free!

That’s a wrap for today. Check back in a couple days for a few interesting insights into the chicken and egg cycle with postural adaptations and goalie-specific performance.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Become A Great COACH!

A couple weekends ago, I was fortunate enough to attend Joe Dowdell and Mike Roussell’s Peak Training and Diet Design Seminar at Peak Performance NYC. I had planned on doing a recap of the event, but my friend Tony Gentilcore beat me to it. Check out his re-cap here: Learnification: My Weekend at Peak Performance.

Kale: the fuel for Tony’s big brain biceps

He also did a preview to the review, which you can find here: The Preview to the Review of the Peak Training and Diet Program Design Seminar

At the end of the 2-day event, Joe and Mike invited me to sit on their expert panel for a Q&A with the attendees. It was an honor to be up there with guys like Tony, John Romaniello, Jim “Smitty” Smith from the Diesel Crew, and Dr. Perry Nickelston.

Emily always says I have no sense of fashion, but I was the ONLY one that color-coordinated their beard with their shirt.

At one point, someone asked a question about what advice we would give trainers and strength coaches that really want to be successful in the industry. This was a great question, and the responses the other guys gave were outstanding. One of the points I really tried to emphasize is that it’s important to become a good COACH.

If you’ve read any of my stuff in the past, you know that I place a premium on staying current with relevant research and innovative training methods. I also think it’s important to test new things to ensure that we’re constantly finding improved ways to train our athletes and clients. Because of the internet-driven gold rush, there seems to be an ongoing contest of who knows more, and less emphasis is being placed on how to actually coach athletes. This is creating an increasingly large discrepancy between intellectual and inter-personal knowledge. In other words, there are really bright people in the training industry that aren’t great at implementing everything they know. As Mike Boyle always says, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.”

Another trend, one that I doubt will ever disappear, is that strength coaches only want to work with elite athletes. I made a comment during the expert Q&A that from a coaching standpoint I don’t do anything with our elite hockey players. That’s not really true.  Our high level hockey players require a more in-depth focus on assessment and personalized program design. These athletes have put a ton of miles on their body, and tend to have greater compensation patterns and injury-prevention concerns than players competing at lower levels. My point was that elite level athletes are extremely neurologically efficient, and tend to do things pretty well with very little coaching. Many already have a few years of training experience under their belt and have been taught the basics of lifting. There is a lot to be gained from coaching elite level athletes, but it’s certainly not the best way to learn to coach. I recognize there is an assumption that the best training professionals are working in professional sports, and therefore working with high level athletes is an indication of competency. There are, in fact, many extremely bright and able coaches in professional sports. But not EVERY person that works in pro sports is not the best; many networked their way into those positions.

On the other side of the athletic continuum are the motor morons. These are the kids that move like shit, have never been taught anything (at least not correctly), and go blank when you try to cue them on anything. Some of these kids may even have pretty well-developed skill sets in their sport of emphasis, and therefore are successful despite a lack of any foundation of athleticism (which invariably catches up with them in the form of poor performance and/or injury). If a coach can get THESE kids to perform exercises correctly and move properly, THAT is the ultimate sign of competency. It’s the experience you develop working with these kids that teaches you how to use different language to make each individual understand what you’re looking for, and how to look for and correct common movement impairments/abnormalities. In other words, this is how you learn to coach effectively.

Coaching is an art, and one that needs to be refined for different training environments. I tell the coaches on our staff at Endeavor that they should try to think of ways to teach every exercise we do in 10s or less and use language that they can use to cue athletes from across a room. The textbook approach of walking each athlete through every exercise step-by-step would result in 4-hour training sessions. It’s not practical. Give the athlete enough to get started, make sure they understand the postures associated with proper exercise technique that purvey most exercises and let them get started. Not every athlete makes the same mistake and telling every athlete every step of every exercise is excessive. Let them try it, see where they err, and correct accordingly.

Take Home
If you’re a young coach, don’t be in a rush to work with professional athletes; be in a rush to become an outstanding coach. We need more great coaches at the youth level anyway, but this is certainly the best place to refine your coaching ability. If you want to become a good coach, find a strength and conditioning coach that seems to “get it” in terms of understanding proper movement, that works with a high volume of athletes, and ask to intern or volunteer. If you’re looking, I highly recommend getting in touch with people like Tony and Eric Cressey (Cressey Performance in Hudson, MA), Mike Boyle (MBSC in Woburn, MA), Brijesh Patel (Quinnipiac University in Hamden, CT), Jeff Oliver (Holy Cross in Worcester, MA), and Robert dos Remedios (College of the Canyons in Santa Clarita, CA).

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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This Week at Hockey Strength and Conditioning

I’m really looking forward to this weekend. After I wrap everything up at Endeavor for the day I’m heading into NYC to attend Joe Dowdell and Mike Roussell’s Peak Training and Diet Design Seminar. Hopefully I’ll see you there! After 6 consecutive weekends of seminars/home study courses with one wedding mixed in, I’m looking forward to having a month or so to kick it in Philadelphia with Emily and/or make a beach trip for the first time this Summer.

Caribbean water…quickly becoming a distant memory


This has been a cool week at HockeyStrengthandConditioning.com. Things got started with Kyle Bangen and Anthony Renna posting two awesome videos on the forums: one video interview with Steven Stamkos on his off-season training (he has his head on straight), and one comedic look at why the Rangers are always a disappointment (great for everyone that isn’t a Rangers fan).

Mike Potenza added a video interview with Power Skating Coach Cathy Andrade. I don’t know anything about Cathy, but the power skating strategies and teaching cues she mentions are very familiar. I like the idea Mike had here. It’s extremely helpful to hear what quality professionals in other aspects of hockey development are teaching players, so that we can send a consistent message and/or become more synchronous in our terminology. Cathy may have a sound background in exercise science, but I suspect she doesn’t. Yet, when describing ideal skating postures, she uses some terminology very similar to what I would. She gives a lot of good tips for young skaters that also serve as reminders for more experienced players. Hopefully we can get more of this type of information up on the site in the future. Check out the video at the link below:

Click here to watch >> Interview with Power Skating Coach Cathy Andrade

Sean Skahan posted Phase 4 of his ACL Rehab Program. The program was for a player 15-weeks post surgery. It’s interesting to follow the progression through the four phases of this program, as this phase includes a lot more lower body work. Sean and I have very similar philosophies on training around injuries, so I can appreciate his approach in continuing to train this player, despite a recent surgery. I think all training for players in this situation needs to coincide with some level of communication with the physical therapist, or whoever is running the site-specific rehabilitation. Often times, syncing up with the PT will allow a more aggressive strength and conditioning approach, as the PT can provide some guidance on when to hit the gas and when to back off a bit.

Check out the program here >> ACL Rehab: Phase 4

Lastly, there was a forum post last week from a pro player that had been following the programs I’ve been posting and asked a great question about how he should progress through the rest of the off-season given he had limited time to work with since the European pro camps start in early August. At this point, he’s about 3-4 weeks pre-camp and should be progressing into a more conditioning/work capacity driven program. Because he’s been following two of my previous programs, it was most appropriate for him to work off a draft of my Phase 3 off-season training program so I posted that. The program emphasizes transitional speed, power training with both a high load medium velocity and low load high velocity orientation, work capacity, and conditioning. You can check it out here:

Click here to get the program >> 4-Day Off-Season Training Program: Phase 3

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

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