Before I in delve into today’s subject that is the groin pain epidemic, I want to make a short side note.  I just finished reading the Hero Handbook by Nate Green yesterday, and I must say that it is one of the most inspiring thing I’ve read in a while.  Nate talks about how to become your own hero through your lifestyle, your mindset, your training and your nutrition.  It is a very quick read, it’s 136 pages and the characters are big, so you should be able to read it in less than an hour.  And the best thing of all (which I still can’t believe) is that Nate gives the e-book for FREE on his website!  All you have to do is go to Nate’s website and download it.  As simple as that; no tricks, no signing up for anything, nothing!  It doesn’t get any easier than this.  Do yourself a favor and read the Hero Handbook RIGHT NOW!!

As for today’s subject…Groin pain, adductor strains and sports hernias are becoming an epidemic among athletes today, and especially among hockey players.  Playing the same sport year-round, poor training protocols (or simply no training at all), over-training and faulty movement patterns  are all perfect set-ups for groin pain, especially for hockey players because of the nature of the sport.

Before I go any further with my recommendations, I will say this: it is very important to clear out any other possible underlying issues in the first place.  Groin pain may be caused, for example, by Femoral Acetabular Impingement (FAI), which would warrant the subject of a whole book in itself.  In short FAI is an abnormality (usually a bony lesion) on either the femoral head or the acetabulum itself that creates impingement and may translate into groin pain.  But I digress.  What I’m saying is to get checked out first to make sure the issue is not coming from somewhere else.

• The first step to take with groin pain problem is to stay away from anything that hurts for a little while.  If you’re a hockey player and have some groin pain while skating, the first step to take is to stop skating, and I mean completely.  I know it sucks being forced to stay away playing, but this is a necessary process to follow, and it will all be worth it in the long run.  If you think the injury is not that bad and you’re just going to suck it up and keep playing until it goes away, it’s a BIG mistake.  First of all, groin pain, groin pulls and adductor injuries don’t magically disappear, especially if you keep doing the same thing that’s been causing the pain (skating, in this case), and first thing you know is the pain is going to get worse and worse and you’ll have to suffer for months.  So as much as it sucks, you need to take that time off.

• Foam roll your adductors and your hip flexors.  Most of the time, athletes will have scar tissue built up in their adductors and some kind of soft tissue limitation in their hip flexors.

• Stretch your hip flexors, glutes and hip external rotators.  Because of the nature of a sport like hockey (repeated hip extension, abduction and external rotation), athletes will have a loss in adduction and internal rotation, as well as hip extension range of motion.

Rectus Femoris Stretch (Hip Flexor)

Prone 90/90 Glute Stretch

• Strengthen the adductors and the psoas, which is usually the weakest of the 3 hip flexors.  These 2 muscles usually are very weak because they are underutilized in different sporting motions, especially the skating stride.

Lying Med Ball Crush

Seated Psoas Lift (make sure the thigh is above 90°)

Using this approach, you want to make sure to use these strategies at least twice a day, everyday (foam rolling, stretching and activation drills).  We’ve had hockey players (and many of them) with pretty bad groin pain getting back on the ice totally pain-free in as little as 2 weeks after they start applying those exact recommendations.  The key is really just to stay away from anything that hurts and be consistent with the exercises, and chances are you’ll be back on the ice (or the field) in no time.

To learn more athletic development secrets, check out my 3 FREE sports training reports that you receive by signing up to my newsletter!

I’ve written in the past about what the biggest secret to gaining weight was: EATING MORE.  The so-called hard gainers out there who blame their genetics and are trying to find the magical training program out there to gain muscle mass.  There is no secret.  But there are ways that are more effective than others.  Eating whole natural foods and eating more of it, and following a well designed training program like Show and Go from my colleague Eric Cressey will definitely get you where you want to be.

I just finished the last phase of Show and Go along with the whole Endeavor staff, and I must say that I’m really pleased with the results.  I established new PRs (personal records) for my front squat and my bench press, along with packing on 11 pounds (8-9 of which is lean muscle) over 4 months!  And honestly, gaining weight was not even my first goal going into the program; my main goal was to gain strength.  But I did eat a lot during those 4 months, so the weight and muscle gain was expected.

Here’s a sample 1-day diet record of what I was usually eating in a day:

Breakfast:

- 8 eggs omelet with onions, peppers, spinach and organic sharp cheddar cheese

- 2 Ezekiel bread toasts with organic butter

- 2 clementines, 1 kiwi fruit and 3oz of pomegranate juice

Post Training:

- Smoothie w/ 1.5 cup of organic whole milk, 1 scoop of protein, 1 banana, 4 strawberries, 1 T.spoon flax seeds, 1 T.spoon cacao nibs, 2 T.spoon natural peanut butter and 1/2 cup of oats

Lunch:

3/4 pound of chicken breasts

2 cups mashed potatoes (made w/ organic milk and organic butter)

carrots w/ hommus

Snack:

16oz of plain whole fat organic yogurt, 1 scoop of protein powder, handful of cashews, 1/2 cup blueberries and 1/2 cup granola mix

Dinner:

3/4 pound of pork chops breaded w/ quinoa flakes

2 cups of green beans cooked in organic butter

Pork, quinoa and green beans

I don’t know exactly how many calories it represents, but if I had to guess I would say close to 4,000.  And yes I do realize that it’s a lot of food in one day; and it’s also almost all whole natural foods (nothing pre-packaged or overly processed).   I went from 220 to 231 pounds in 4 months eating pretty much like that everyday.  My goal is not to show off, but rather to make “hardgainers” realize what does eating A LOT of food actually means.

It’s really easy to make excuses, but a lot harder to cook food, plan ahead for all your meals for the day and actually eat that much food.  Combine those strategies with a good, no-nonsense training program like Show and Go and you won’t have to complain about not gaining weight anymore.

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to learn all the secrets on athletic development and receive your 3 FREE gifts!

I’ve written in the past about specializing too early in a sport and how bad it affects your body.  Similarly, playing the same sport year round is a sure way to get injured in the long run because of the repeated stress on the body.  Parents and coaches seem to strongly encourage that practice to get their kids better though; they think that doing more is going to be better and they’re scared that not participating in summer leagues and specialization camps will leave their kids trailing behind.  Here’s a top 3 reasons why practicing the same sport year-round is not a wise option.

1. Playing a sport, no matter which one, will impose a certain type of stress on your body with the same repetitive motions you’re going to go through.  Taking hockey for an example, the way you skate (hip external rotation and hip extension) is going to increase the wear and tear on your hips muscles, tendons, ligaments and cartilage.  It is the same thing for every sports, and to a certain degree it is expected.  Playing the same sport year-round will accelerate that wear and tear, and when you do so at a very young age when your body is still developing it just makes things worse.  Instead of varying the stimuli imposed on your body by playing different sports with distinct off-seasons and getting good training time in to help reverse the damage, you’re stressing the same structures in the exact same way over, and over, and over again.   The result is that we end up with 17 years old hockey players who need hip surgery.  That is a major problem!  Until we get that, we will still have 14-18 years old athletes who suffer from overuse injuries and career-ending surgeries.

2. You get nothing out of summer leagues and showcases.  Coaches will try to convince parents and kids that they absolutely need that for their development, otherwise they won’t develop as fast as the other kids and they won’t get all the exposure summer leagues provide.  Brian Burke, the Toronto Maple Leafs’ general manager himself, blames that type of practice; he mentioned in a presentation that they analyzed the playing time of players in summer leagues.  A random 3rd line right winger gets an average of less than 5 seconds of puck contact throughout a full game! 5 seconds!  This is what you call development?! And on top of that, the exposure you get from summer leagues and showcases is almost non-existent.  If your kid is good enough, he’ll get noticed.  Period.  No need to over-expose him/her with the fear that his/her talent will go unnoticed.

If you’re kid is that good he’ll get drafted. Don’t worry.

3. Fun.  Kids don’t have fun anymore.  How would you feel if you were a 12 year old kid who’s being pressured by his coaches and his parents to go to every specialization camp possible and play in summer leagues every year?  There is a time for specialization, but  at 12 years old it’s not the time, nor is it at 13, or 14 for that matter.  Kids need a break, they need to have fun playing other sports.  There’s going to be plenty of time ahead to specialize in one sport and put all your time and energy getting better in one particular sport.  For now, let’s have the kids do their thing and develop naturally while becoming better athletes in general by playing multiple sports and having fun.

Learn all the secrets you REALLY need to learn to become a better athlete, and sign up for my FREE newsletter.  You’ll get instant access to 3 reports on athletic development secrets!

I’ve written a lot about core training and different core exercises in the past.  But one thing that’s really important to consider with core exercises is that you just can’t use anyone randomly with any athlete or client.  It is fair to say that we should use progressions with our core exercises, at least with beginners; start them with more simple and basic exercises and progress them to more challenging variations.  You should do that with all your core exercises from the different groups: anti-flexion, anti-extension, anti-rotation, anti-lateral flexion and inner core exercises.  Today, I want to focus on anti-extension, or the anterior core group.

- The first most basic progression for most would be, with no big suprise, the front plank.

The front plank is a basic bodyweight exercise that requires to maintain a straight line throughout your body and keep a neutral spine position.  This is also the goal of most other progressions, but the front plank plank does that without additional challenges.

- The second progression would be the stability ball front plank.  Once someone has mastered the front plank and can hold it for over a minute, you can progress them to the stability ball version.  The biggest difference with the stability ball front plank is that the surface on which you place your elbows is unstable, which in turn will require a greater activation from your core muscles to maintain the proper position.

- The third one is a similar variation from the stability ball front plank.  Once that position is mastered, you can incorporate mini-rollouts with the same position on the ball to make it more challenging.  Once again the goal is to maintain a neutral spine and keeping the belly tight even if we added movement.

- The slideboard bodysaw would be the next progression following the stability ball minirollouts.

The effect is pretty much the same because your points of contact on the ground further away from each other (elbows and feet), but this time since your moving your whole body away it makes the slideboard bodysaw much more difficult.

- The last one, but not the least, is the ab wheel rollout.  This implement has been around forever, but I fell like it is not appreciated enough.  When done correctly the ab wheel rollout is one of the most difficult anterior core exercise of all.  You need to be really strong in order to maintain a neutral spine throughout a full range of motion.  And to push things a little further, when you’ve mastered the ab wheel rollout, you can do it band-resisted:

There are many other variations of anti-extension core exercises we use with our athletes at Endeavor, but hopefully this gave you an idea of how progress anterior core exercises.

Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter to get your FREE gifts on athletic development!

My colleague Kevin Neeld was having a phone conversation with a fellow strength and conditioning coach on the phone yesterday, and since we share the same office I couldn’t help but hear everything he was saying.

Sharing an office with Kevin is sooooo much fun

He was talking about the way we do things at Endeavor and how it might be different for other coaches in different settings.  That got me thinking on how important it is to take your setting into consideration with the way you do assessments, write programs, coach your athletes, etc.

At Endeavor, we are training mostly hockey players, which means that we are super busy during the summer months (May through August) which is the hockey off-season and the rest of the year during the hockey season things are slower and we train some athletes from other sports that are in their off-season (mostly baseball, soccer and lacrosse).  The athletes we train from those other sports also happen to be much younger than the college/pro hockey players we train in the summer; most of them are 16 and under.  We do mostly small group training and the time we spend with our athletes every week is not a lot.  In that type of setting, we do things differently than we would with a professional team or in a college setting for example.

Doesn’t exactly look like Endeavor!

It might come as a big surprise to many that we currently don’t have an assessment or testing protocol with our new athletes.  Some may argue that testing and assessing every new athlete that walks through your door is of utmost importance, and they might be right.  But again it comes down to the fact that you need to do what’s best in your own situation.  With the little time we see our athletes, we can’t afford to waste our time with things that are not going to be top priorities.  And the truth is that we used to have an assessment protocol which was basically the FMS (functional movement screen) and some goniometer measurements, but we realized after using that protocol for a while that it didn’t change the way we were writing programs anyway.

Hurdle step test from the FMS

So why do it in the first place?  Even athletes playing the same sports will need to be trained pretty much the same way, but I will admit that there might be some individual differences between athletes playing the same sport.  But the thing that we found out is that we can always identify the problems just by observing our athletes move during the warm up and the rest of the training.  If you’ve been around long enough, major dysfunctions are easily identifiable and adjustments on the programs can be made on the fly.  We also have a high number of younger athletes, and they definitely don’t present with as many restrictions (if any) as some of the older athletes will.  We’ve been quite successful with that approach, both from a time management and injury prevention standpoint.

A similar situation presents itself with performance testing; most of our athletes (for the older ones at least) get tested by their own team at the end of the season and at the beginning of training camp.  So where’s the need for performance testing really when they provide us with all the data they/we need anyway twice a year, sometimes more.

There are many factors that will determine how you implement your system and the way you work with your athletes.  These include, but are not limited to:

- Number of athletes per group

- Sports the athletes play (do all athlete within a group play the same sport?)

- Age of the athletes and training experience

- Number of coach-to-athlete ratio

- Time available with athletes every session and every week

- Equipment available

- Setting of your facility (how your facility is divided and if you can keep an eye on everyone all the time)

- Experience

- Etc.

As you can see it leaves a lot of possibilities depending on many different factors.  You can’t judge what someone does until you’ve seen what their situation is.  Every good strength coach or trainer out there does things differently because they are in a different setting.  Eric Cressey assesses and writes an individual program for every client and athlete that trains at his facility.  Mike Boyle, who’s an equally good and successful coach doesn’t assess anyone and have all his athletes from the same sport on the same program.  Who’s right and who’s wrong? Again, I think they’re both right because they do what’s best for their own situation.

All in all, it’s very important to be able to adapt.  In my opinion, it might be what distinguishes the great coaches for the good ones.  Analyze, apply and adjust things in order to be as efficient as possible in your situation and to get the best results possible for your athletes.

I haven’t done a random thoughts post in a while, and for some reason I like writing these.  Hopefully, you like to read them just as much! Today also marks my first anniversary at Endeavor.  I guess that makes 2 good reasons to write a random thoughts post! So without further ado;

1. Butter is good for you.  I’m sick of people being scared of butter and how everyone is saying how bad it is for you and that it raises your cholesterol and bla, bla, bla.  The truth is butter is one of the most stable fat sources over high heat, compared to most vegetable oils which are very unstable.  It’s also a great source of vitamin A, vitamin E, beta-carotene, omega 3s and CLAs (if you get the organic kind of course).  For all these reasons, butter is an excellent choice for cooking and/or to incorporate in your diet in moderate amounts.  And as I mentioned last week, we should all focus on eating more real food, and butter is exactly that.  Just make sure you get the organic kind, like any other dairy.

2. Baseball season is right around the corner.  For the first time of my life, I had the chance to work with baseball players for a full off-season, and I must say I totally loved it.  I had a lot of time to make them stronger, faster and reduce their risk of injuries through good training.  A couple of weeks away from training camp, all of our players are about to leave for their team completely pain free and 2 of our high school pitchers got their fastball up to 90 and 88 MPH respectively.  So all in all, I can say it was a success and I already can’t wait to work with more baseball players next off-season!

3. As I’m writing this, I’m just finishing the book Never Eat Alone.  I can say that it is by far one of the best book not related to fitness that I’ve ever read in my life.

It highlights the importance of surrounding yourself with a lot of people and making contacts with people in a lot of different fields.  I already knew that having contacts was important for your career because without good contacts in the fitness business I wouldn’t be where I am today, but the way Keith Ferazzi puts it in his book is really eye opening.  Whether you’re in the fitness business or not, you definitely should read that book!

4. I just came back from a road trip to Ohio this past weekend to see on of Endeavor’s hockey player play, and I must say it was a blast!  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love road trips!  It’s cool to discover new parts of the country, be in good company, listen to good music, and more than anything drink plenty of stimulants!

And when you drive to go see a good hockey game, it always makes things even more interesting!

5.  I read Brian St. Pierre’s blog post last week on How to Buy Olive Oil.  Brian basically says that not all olive oil are created equal because the olive oil industry is pretty much corrupted.  Most of the olive oil brands are imported from Italy, but most of the time they’re just bottled in Italy as they are actually made in other countries.  And most of the time the quality of the oil is not what they claim on the bottle.  Long story short, the only way to know if the olive oil you’re buying in the US is legit is to look for the COOC (California Olive Oil Council) Logo on the bottle.

On an interesting side story, I went food shopping last night and tried to find a good brand in my local grocery store.  Result: of the dozen of brand the store carried, not one had the COOC label!  Just another proof that your typical grocery store’s products are of inferior quality.

6. What’s the most common compensation pattern at the shoulders? Upper trap dominance.  A lot of athletes have this problem and it’s easily noticeable in different upper body exercises.  For more detail on this, make sure you get the free report on shoulder injury prevention strategies by signing up to my newsletter!

We all know that nutrition is an essential part of any successful training program.  Whether it’s for muscle gain, fat loss, increase your strength or improve your performance in your sport, good nutrition needs to be a part of your plan if you want to achieve the desired results. And nutrition like everything else is evolving, but maybe in a not so good way.

It just seems to me that the more we know about nutrition, the more we try to complicate things in order to achieve our goals; low carb, high carbs, low fat, cycling, vegetarian, ketogenic and all types of diets.  We try to manipulate our protein/fat/carbs ratio perfectly to maximize our results and take all sorts of supplements to help give us an extra edge.  We just try to do too much and most of the time we just fall off our over-complicated plan in as quickly as a couple of weeks.  The truth is that it’s hard too keep up with a diet that requires you to calculate your macro-nutrient ratio, to count calories and weigh your food every meal and snack you eat.

How did we get there?  I’m no nutritional expert, although I probably know more than the average person because of my background and because of what I do for a living, but why does nutrition need to be that complicated?  Well, it doesn’t.  Good nutrition, no matter what your goal is, should be to eat as much natural, unprocessed foods as possible.  Our ancestors never had any weight or cholesterol problem because they were eating too much red meat or too many eggs!  And I’m pretty damn sure they never EVER counted calories either.  When did we lose the focus of eating foods that could be grown or hunted?  When did we start making lunch meats, crackers and cookies staples in our diet?  When did freakin’ cereals became the most popular breakfast?? Come on!

When did this become a healthy breakfast?

We count calories, carbs, fat and everything, but we eat incredible amounts of highly processed foods on a day-to-day basis.  That just doesn’t make sense to me! Next time you’re going to have a granola bar or something like that, do me a favor and look on the label.  Don’t even look at the protein, fat and carb content; just look at the list of ingredients.  You’ll be surprised at the number of preservatives and chemicals with weird names there is in there.

We need to take a step back and look at our lifestyle as a whole; we move less, we eat more processed food, we’re always looking for the quick fix when we’re hungry (we don’t spend time cooking and actually sit down to enjoy our meal).  And yet we’re counting calories, complaining about our obesity epidemic, arguing over what works best between low carb and low fat diets and wondering why there are more and more types of cancer and other types of disease that didn’t exist 100 years ago.  Really?!

When you’re eating a good balance of real, natural foods that can be grown (fruits, vegetables, whole grains) and hunted (all sorts of meat) every piece of the puzzle will fall in place.  Low-quality processed foods are nutrient-deficient and no matter how much you eat they never really fill you up, so it’s way too easy to over-eat and that’s when you need to start counting calories.  Real food on the other hand will always fill you up because of the high nutrient content and it is be very hard to over-eat.  Nutritionist Brian St. Pierre‘s recommendations has gone in that same direction for a long time; people need to start eating REAL food! (By the way guys, Brian’s blog is awesome and filled with great information about nutrition so make sure you check it out).  Buy real food, cook more, prepare in advance, enjoy your meals and try to limit the amount of processed foods you eat, and I guarantee you everything will fall into place.

Nutrition should really be THAT simple. Period.

There are many important factors that account for the results you’ll get from your training: your training program, your nutrition (including supplement use), the quality and quantity of your sleep, the effort you put into your training and many other things.  Among these other things is your training environment.  Too much people underestimate the power of your training environment.  Lifting in a weight room where you’re surrounded by people stronger than you, people that push you and where you listen to loud and angry music will make all the difference in the world.

I have known this for a while, and I actually lived it the for the first time back in 2007, when I was an intern at Robert Morris University under Todd Hamer.  Before that, I was either lifting in commercial gyms or in private gyms and always with training partners that were weaker than me.  At RMU, I learned what it was to be surrounded by strong people and having the ideal atmosphere.  The progresses I made that summer were really surprising to me to say the least!  But then I went back to lifting in a commercial gym for two years and a half and most of the time I was lifting by myself.  That’s not to say that I didn’t make any progress during that time period, but it just wasn’t the same.

I have now been at Endeavor for close to a year, and I was looking back at the progress I’ve made in my training in the last year, and it’s simply amazing!  I’ve put on 18 pounds (14-15 being lean muscle), I broke my deadlift PR within 3 months of being here:

I broke my front squat PR about 2-3 months ago:

and I broke my bench press PR last month. And I’m no exception. Our athletes all experience similar results. The environment in which you lift is one of the most underrated, yet very powerful factor that will influence your results. It’s about the people you surround yourself with, it’s about the atmosphere, it’s about the coaches and it’s about the music!

If you don’t have the opportunity to train in that type of facility for different reasons and you’re stuck lifting in a commercial gym here’s two things you can do:

1- Find a good training partner (ideally stronger than you) who’s going to be reliable and who’s going to push you when you need it.
2- I-Pod! If you lift in a commercial gym and you don’t have your own music, it’s been proven scientifically that your testosterone levels are dropping at an alarming rate every second you listen to Justin Bieber. And I can assure you that the lady lifting the pink dumbbells for 57 reps of curls while chatting with her friend is going to have the best of you. So do yourself a favor and load your I-Pod with angry music. For a couple of suggestions, check out my blog post Top 10 Lifting Songs.  Rise Against, Korn, Rage Against the Maching, Eminem and Metallica are all decent options.  But let’s face it when you’ve been listening to the same stuff for a while, you need something angrier.  This is what led me over the years to become a huge fan of Slipknot and Devildriver.  If you feel like your lifting music is not kicking your ass hard enough this is a good choice to bring things to the next level: