Last week, I had one of our intern ask me a very tough question: “If you had to pick the best book ever that should be a must read, which one would it be?” ….or something like that.  The truth is, with my French-Canadian origins I have a hard time remembering exact quotes when it is in English.  Nevertheless, even if I think this a great question because we’re all looking for the best resources out there to better ourself at what we, this is still a very hard question to answer.  The reason is simple: there is just so many books and other resources out there, and a lot of them are filled with great information…

Then, I thought a little more and two books stood out in my head.  Not necessarily because they’re the two best books of all time nor because everybody in the strength and conditioning business swears by it.  These two books came up first because I consider they were the two most influencial so far in my career and they have strongly shaped the way I think about training and exercise in general.

The first one, Diagnosis and Treatment of Movement Impairment Syndromes by Shirley Sahrmann, despite being a physical therapy book can teach you a lot when it comes to functional anatomy and how muscles works synergistically.  Sahrmann discusses a variety of concepts that directly apply to training; for example, when you pull a muscle, you should look for a weak synergist that forces the injured muscle to compensate.  You will also learn to identify faulty movement patterns that could prevent a lot of injuries in your athletes.  The goal is not for the strength coaches and trainers out there to improvise themselves as physical therapists and try to treat injuries themselves.  This book should rather help you identify faulty movement patterns in your athletes and help correct them before injuries happen.  I feel this book is one of the most valuable tool for any trainer and strength coach working with athletes.

My second one, The Ultimate Off-Season Training Manual by Eric Cressey, was truly an eye-opener to me the first time I read it a few years ago.  This book made me realize how off-the-track so many of the coaches and trainers out there (me included at the time) are with their off-season training programs.  You’ll learn why training for maximum strength is so important during the off-season, the difference between spring and static proficient athletes and how you should train them differently, why athletes should minimize their specific sport practice during the off-season and you’ll get a 16 weeks of sample programming.  The off-season is the most important part of any athlete’s training and it could be the decisive factor that will make them reach the next level or not; that is why I feel this book should be a must-read for every strength coaches and trainers out there.

As I said earlier, there are just so many good resources out there and you shouldn’t limit yourself to one or two; that is why I have put a complete resource page together, make sure to check it out.

I hope this can be helpful to all of you!

As a strength and conditioning coach who works with a lot of hockey players, I see a lot of players who walk through our door with some kind of groin pain.  The adductor muscles are actually what we commonly refer to as the groin.  Without going into too much details about the complete anatomy of the adductor muscles, I would simply say that the adductor complex includes 3 different muscles (adductor brevis, adductor longus and adductor magnus) that adduct the thigh, and whether flex or extend it as well, depending of the angle of the femur relatively to the hip. 

It seems today that groin injuries are growing at an alarming rate among hockey players.  One of the reason is the nature of the sport; every skating stride recovery involves both hip adduction and hip flexion that put repeated stress on the adductor muscles.  Add to the fact that way too many hockey players spend a ridiculous amount of time on the ice year round and you’ve got yourself a perfect scenario for groin injury.  (On a side note, my good friend Kevin Neeld outlined some shocking facts about hip injuries in hockey player HERE)

That being said, the adductor group is one that deserves some attention in your training program.  You need adequate strength, mobility and soft-tissue quality in these muscles.  The adductor magnus is one of the muscles from that group that we see a lot of problems with when it comes to soft-tissue quality.  Because of its particular location, the adductor magnus is a muscle that is hard to target when doing soft-tissue work, especially its posterior fibers. 

A small and hard enough medicine ball can be of great help to target the posterior fibers of the adductor magnus:

Be sure to turn your toes inward to expose the adductor magnus effectively.

Give it a shot, you will probably be crying for your mom the first time as you’ll discover new and painful trigger points!

Today’s training tip is gonna help you stay away from back pain and it might just save you from surgery.  If you expect a new exercise, a new stretch or a new magical tool….well, think again.  It is as simple as it gets:

NEVER PICK UP WEIGHTS WITH A  ROUNDED BACK!

It amazes me to see so many people lifting to get stronger, reinforce good movement patterns  and prevent injuries, but will still pick up weights with a rounded back.  Let’s put it this way: picking up weights with a rounded back is one of the worst things you can do in a weight room to injure your back.  Bending over to pick up dumbbells involves putting your lumbar spine in a maximally flexed position which by itself, reproduces the mechanism of hernia (in fact, every movement that inlvoves maximal range of motion at the lumbar spine, whether it is in flexion, rotation or extension will put you at great risk).  Add the fact that you’re lifting a load at the end range of motion, and you’re just asking for trouble.

My advice would be to keep your back flat at all times.  While we’re there, why don’t you just put your weights or dumbbells on a bench or on the dumbbell rack; you’re gonna decrease the chances of having to bend over too low to pick them up.

This is seriously one of the most important things you can do right now in the weight room to greatly decrease your risk of having back issues in the future.

You can thank me later!

This is called a Monster Mini-Band Walk, and it might just be my new favorite injury prevention exercise:

The Monster Mini-Band Walk is designed to activate your glute muscles, and more specifically your gluteus medius.  Your gluteus medius is a small (usually weak in most people) muscle that creates hip abduction and external rotation.  Another important function of the glute medius is stabilize the femoral head in the hip joint. 

A strong glute medius is particularly important to prevent the knee to buckle in during different type of activities, which will help you stay away from knee pain.  This is especially important for basketball and soccer players who make a lot of jumps/landings, changes of direction and transitions during their sport practice; and these are all actions that put your knees at risk of buckling in.  Women in general would also benefit stronger glute medius since they have wider hips and their knees are more at risk of buckling in, whatever they do.

Execution:

•  Wrap a mini-band around  your ankles
• Take a wide stance (slightly wider than shoulder width appart)
• Slightly bend your knees
• Take backward steps and make sure you keep your knees out the whole time

You can incorporate the Monster Mini-Band Walks in your warm-ups or even in between your sets of sprints, plyos or lifting.

Give it a shot!

I’ve had a few colleagues write about this in the past, but since it’s my first official post on my website, I figured that I’d start with the essentials.  The reason is simple: you should know where to start and what to include when designing a training program.  So here is a list and description of what I feel like every training program should include.

 1. Soft-tissue work.  Every training program, whether it is for an athlete or a non-athlete, should include some form of soft tissue work.  It could be done with a foam roller, medicine ball, The Stick, a Thera-Cane, a Lacrosse ball or any other tool you feel will help work on trigger points and adhesions.  Soft-tissue work will further help improve tissue flexibility and muscle function, as a muscle with many trigger points might not contract in an optimal way.

 2. Mobility/Dynamic flexibility.  The point has now been made through research that dynamic and static stretching are totally different in nature, and in the way they affect the muscles.  Dynamic stretching is more specific to training and activities, as it improves range of motion during movements.  Dynamic stretching also improves stability in that newly gained range of motion, which is CRUCIAL in every sports.  For more information on mobility and dynamic flexibility, and also for a ton of great drills to include in your warm ups, you should definitely get Assess and Correct, which is an incredible resource made by 3 of the best in the business.

 3. Speed/Agility work.  Every athlete that competes in a team sport needs to improve his speed, transitional speed and reaction time.  Speed is improved mostly with sprints on various distances (usually from 10 to 60 yards) using different starting positions that will reflect specific positions of your sport.  Transitional speed and reaction time is usually improved through agility drills and plyometrics.  Agility drills could include sprinting, shuffling and back pedaling as well as changes of directions.  Plyometrics are generally more jumping based drills that focus more on improving the stretch-shortening cycle of the muscles.

 4. Power training.  Power is the ability to develop the greatest amount of force in the shortest amount of time possible.  In other words, power is the combination of speed and strength and is obviously of great importance in most team sports.  Power is usually developed through Olympic Lifts and medicine ball throws.  Power development exercises usually include whole body movements and are great at improving the force transfer from the lower body through the core to the upper body.

 5. Strength training. This is something that is essential to developing stronger athletes.  Strength is a very important component of athletic development.  Strength development improves muscle coordination and helps recruit more muscle fibres within each muscle.  This will later transfer to more power and more speed, as more muscle fibres are recruited when sprinting, throwing, jumping, etc.  Typical strength training exercises include lunges, chin ups, chest press with dumbbells, etc.

6. Core training.  Let’s make one thing clear: crunches are worthless and won’t do anything for you, from an athletic standpoint.  If you’re still not convinced, let me ask you this question: when in any sport activity are you lying on your back and crunching up? You already know the answer.  Core training should include two components.  The first one would be to develop the ability to resist movement through anti-flexion, anti-extension and anti-rotation exercises.  The first function of the trunk musculature is to stabilize the spine in all three planes of movements to prevent it from shear forces applied to it by going in too great range of motion.  Let’s put it this way, the lower spine is pretty much the only joint where you don’t want range of motion.  So it would make sense to limit the torque forces applied to it.  The second component of a good core training program would be to improve the rotational movements.  As I just mentioned, you want to limit the range of motion at the lower spine, but rotational movements are inevitable and even essential in many sports like hockey and baseball.  So what’s the right thing to do? You want to teach the body to rotate from the good regions.  And that would be from the hips and thoracic spine.  So, you would want to include in your programs rotational core exercises that will reinforce the pattern to rotate at the right joints. 

 7. Injury prevention exercises.  Whether that is to reinforce good movement patterns, to activate weak muscles at the hips or at the shoulders or with simple stretches to improve posture or range of motion, injury prevention exercises are one of the most important components in a training program.  Keep in my mind that if your athlete is injured, he cannot improve his performance; this is why reducing the risks of injuries should be your number one priority as a strength and conditioning coach. 

 8. Specific conditioning.  I wrote here specific because I feel it is very important that your conditioning program reflects the demand of your sport.  Conditioning, for most sports should be in the form of interval training BECAUSE IT IS THE WAY SPORTS ARE PLAYED.  Pretty much every team sports are played in some sort of interval based effort where a short to moderate effort period is followed by a rest period of some sort.    Depending of the sport your athletes are playing, you should play around with the work/rest ratio to match the specific demand of the sport.  Pretty much no team sports are played in a long continuous effort for many minutes.  That is way I feel aerobic training is completely retarded for most sports.  The only reason people are still doing it is mainly because their coaches or trainers used to do that when they were athletes 20 or 30 years ago and have not been educated on the true functions of the aerobic and anaerobic systems.  If you are still doing that, you need to realize that you have far better options to condition your athletes that will bring you far better results.

 9. Static stretching.  I do think that dynamic stretching is more specific to sports training than static stretching is.  But that is not to say that I don’t believe nor use static stretching.  In fact, I think that static stretching is truly valuable when used appropriately.  Static stretching is great at restoring muscle length after a training session.  I also think that it is great to use to stretch an antagonist muscle before using an activation drill with an agonist muscle.

 There it is, the 9 key components that I feel should be included in every training program.  I hope it helped some of you, and feel free to post your comments below!