After a long awaited launch, here it is! Kevin Neeld just released his new book Ultimate Hockey Training! This book is one like you’ve never seen before. This will raise the bar for any hockey training product forever!
He’s offering a ridiculous discount and throwing in some great free gifts from some of the world’s top experts in hockey development and performance training. When he told me he was gonna sell the book for under 30$, I thought he had brain damage! But he wants to make it affordable so anyone can buy it. You’ll have to hurry, though. This offer won’t be around for long…
Kevin isn’t just an “internet expert” that bases his recommendations on random theory or what he used to do as a player. He ACTUALLY trains hockey players for a living, and has been incredibly successful at it. Ultimate Hockey Training reveals Kevin’s entire hockey training system. I highly recommend you go pick up a copy now! At the price he’s offering the book, you would be crazy not to!
As I mentioned last week, my friend and colleague Kevin Neeld is releasing is Ultimate Hockey Training book this upcoming Wednesday! This will be a book on hockey training like you’ve never seen before. Most of the hockey products out there are pretty outdated as the majority of them were written or produced in the late 80′s-early 90′s and the information contained in them is flat-out outdated.
Kevin worked really hard (trust me, I know; we share the same office) to put together the most recent information available, combined with his many years of experience training hockey players to bring you the most comprehensive hockey product to date. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the information contained in this book will completely blow your mind away! One of the things Kevin covers in great details in his book is hockey-specific conditioning. To give you a sneak-peak, Kevin put together a free hockey conditioning webinar that describes:
Common problems in current hockey speed training
3 types of hockey speed and off-ice training strategies for each
Why “agility” training will NOT make you a faster skater
How speed training fits into a comprehensive off-ice training program
How to alter your speed training depending on the time of year
Again this is a completely free webinar that will open your eyes on hockey conditioning. And the whole chapter on conditioning in Ultimate Hockey Training, by itself, is worth the price of the book! Stay tuned on this website for details on the launch of Ultimate Hockey Training on Wednesday! Here’s the link for the free webinar again:
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I just wanted to write a quick post today to let you know that my friend and colleague from Endeavor, Kevin Neeld just posted a free webinar on transitional speed for hockey players. Kevin will be releasing his long awaited book, Ultimate Hockey Training next week, and he put up a webinar about speed training for hockey for you to watch completely free. This video will be leading up to his book launch next week. In the webinar Kevin discusses:
· Why most hockey players are doing the right speed training for the wrong sport
· Why hockey players shouldn’t do “agility” training ever again
· How to progress speed training exercises to make them more hockey-specific
· How speed training fits into a complete training program
You can check out this FREE webinar by clicking on the link below:
I’m working with Kevin on a day-to-day basis, and I can tell you he put an incomparable amount of work in the writting and publishing of his book. The results will speak for themselves when you see the book when it comes out next week. It is something like I’ve never seen before when it comes to hockey training. It will definitely raise the bar in terms of hockey products out there. I’ll just put it this way: the information you’ll find in that book will blow your mind away!
In the meantime, Kevin is offering you a free webinar that will get you thinking about the speed and agility work you do with your hockey players. Definitely a must watch! Here’s the link again:
I’ve been blogging quite a bit recently about the FMS and the importance of screening for dysfunctional movement patterns, and fixing them. As I’ve mentioned before, the FMS is probably the easiest tool in that regard because it gives an easy-to-follow, step-by-step assessment where you can easily score your athletes and fix the faulty movement pattern by applying the appropriate corrective exercises. After a week or two of corrective strategies, you re-screen and see if they improved.
But what if the corrections don’t fix your athlete or client? There might be a couple different reasons for that. The 3 most common would be:
Inappropriate corrective exercise selection
Incorrect or faulty performance of the corrective exercises
Incorrect scoring from the evaluator of the athlete or client
These should be the top 3 reasons to be considered if a movement pattern doesn’t improve. Sometimes however, the athlete will be screened correctly, given the right corrective exercises and they’ll perform them properly, but the assessment result will still tell you that the movement pattern didn’t improve. How is that possible?
One thing to consider is the recruitment patterns during high threshold activities. Let me explain…
A dysfunctional movement pattern may arise from a mobility (or flexibility) problem, a stability problem, or a motor control dysfunction. In any of these cases your body has engrained some motor patterns when you move, whether it is when you run, jump, walk, lift weights, etc. The functional movement assessment will allow to get rid of those compensation patterns.
Anyone surprised that I found this image on a Crossfit website?
But if you keep pushing your body to the limit (high threshold activities) while trying to correct a dysfunctional movement pattern, you might be wasting your time. Your body will always follow the path of least resistance when confronted to a high threshold or max effort activity, which is where the dysfunction will keep being encouraged. If you’re trying to re-train a movement pattern, it’s not a good idea to train in that max effort zone, especially with conflicting movement patterns. You’re not giving your body a chance to adjust and get used to the new movement pattern you’re trying to improve. Your body will always get back to what’s easier when facing a high demand task.
That’s why it’s smart, even necessary, to back off the training intensity for a little bit while you re-train a correct movement pattern. After a week or two you can start reinforcing that new, more efficient movement pattern with lifting exercises and progressive loads, and higher demand activities, because let’s face it: your body will keep facing high threshold demands in training, sports and in everyday life. But it is important to gradually return to that point if you want to maintain the effect of the corrective work you’ve been doing. It doesn’t mean discontinuing all activities and training to focus solely on corrective exercises. It just means to avoid conflicting movement patterns (someone should avoid heavy squatting for a while if he’s trying to correct his deep squat pattern, or avoid max effort bench pressing if trying to improve shoulder mobility). It’s just about being smart about it, and knowing what exercises or activities could impair your corrective strategy efforts, and lowering the intensity or removing them from your routine for a couple of weeks while you fix your dysfunctional movement patterns.
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If you haven’t heard about the benefits of foam rolling to improve soft-tissue quality, you have probably been living under a rock for the past 5-10 years. Even with all the benefits of foam rolling though, sometimes it’s just not enough to take care of your soft-tissue quality.
There are a couple reason why foam rolling might not be enough:
1. The trigger point is too hard to reach with a foam roller
2. The pressure applied by the foam roller is not enough to effectively target the trigger point
3. The trigger point area is just too stubborn and won’t go away
Let’s go into a little more details for each of those 3 reasons and see the possible alternatives:
1. Sometimes, you’ll want to foam roll an area of your body that’s not exposed as much as your quads and upper back for example. Getting to smaller areas, close to the joints and the mid-line of the body can be a difficult task. A couple example could be the pecs, the high adductors, the long head of the triceps, the plantar fascia, the levator scapula and upper trap among others. These areas are located in spots where it is difficult to access with a foam roller. A good alternative would be to use a smaller surface like a medicine ball or a lacrosse ball. The lacrosse ball works particularly well on the pecs and the plantar fascia, and the medicine ball work really well for the high adductors.
2. When you’ve been foam rolling for a decent amount of time (usually 6 months or more), you’ll find that the traditional foam roller will not work your trigger points as hard as you would like (a.k.a. it doesn’t hurt anymore). There are a couple different ways to solve this problem. The first one would be to move to a denser foam roller; they sell rollers of different densities, with the foam roller plus (a PVC pipe warpped around a thin layer of foam) being the hardest one. If you feel really tough, or if even the foam roller plus doesn’t do anything for you, you can try a straight PVC pipe (which ends up being really cheap if you just get it a your local hardware store) or the rumble roller. I have yet to try the rumble roller, but I have had great comments on it.
Are you game?
Using a smaller, denser surface like a lacrosse ball might be appropriate in this situation as well. You’ll have more pressure applied on a smaller surface, which will increase the pain factor for sure!
3. That happens very often that all self soft-tissue tools won’t work to get rid of a trigger point. In this case the only option left is to consult a qualified massage therapist that will work your trigger points more in depth. An ART or Graston certified practitioner is recommended, as I feel it 2 of the most efficient soft-tissue methods available. A couple of visits might be necessary to get rid of your tight spots. And if you’re a high level athlete that imposes a lot of stress on his body, I would even recommend that you go see one on a regular basis, at least once a month; that will help keep you healthy in the long run.
If you want a complete soft-tissue routine you can use in your training, simply enter your info below and you’ll get my “Self Myofascial Release Routine” for FREE!
This past Tuesday was my birthday, and I just turned 30. People asked me a lot how I felt about it and if I was depressed about leaving my 20s behind. To be honest other than the fact that I’m probably not where I imagined my life to be at 30 5-10 years ago, I really don’t care about a simple number.
Exactly how I celebrated my birthday…I guess I was a little depressed
So as usual I’ll celebrate on my blog by…….you guessed it…..A RANDOM THOUGHTS POST!! I could put a 30 thoughts for 30 years thing, but frankly I’m getting a bit old and lazy, so I’ll make it 10! Without further ado, here it is!
1. If you haven’t started re-training breathing patterns, you’re totally missing the boat. This is something that the more I learn about it the more I realized its importance and how it affects everything else in the body (movement patterns, muscle elasticity, muscle tone, etc). If you haven’t already, you should familiarize with PRI and/or DNS stuff; you’ll understand what I mean when I say breathing patterns control everything.
2. I went to the Foo Fighters concert 2 weeks ago. Most. Awesome. Concert. Ever.
3. Learn more about the FMS. This is the simplest, most effective tool for fitness and strength and conditioning professionals to identify movement pattern limitations and dysfunctions. When you find the a limitation, you simply apply the corrections and you magically decrease the risk of injury of your athletes and clients. One really doesn’t need to know everything about functional anatomy or be a rehab genius. And it just works. Period.
4. Periodization is not only about writing different training cycles that alternate qualities being worked on; it’s about training volume more than anything else. Once you understand you don’t need to run your athletes to the ground during every training sessions, they start to make huge progress. As counter-intuitive as it sounds, it’s alright (even favorable) to let your athletes leave the gym fresh sometimes. When you understand how to manipulate training volumes to create overload and overcompensation, you understand how powerful it is.
5. I feel very fortunate to be surrounded by great people in my life. My bosses, friends and my girlfriend all took care of me so much for my birthday, and I am very thankful to them. A new pair of Nike Free’s and tickets for a Cowboys-Eagles game are just a few of the reasons that made my birthday so awesome.
6. Another thought on breathing; it should be trained in various positions (supine, prone, quadruped, etc) to make sure you “own the breath” in various postures. Also, to train breathing, a balloon might become your best friend.
My new best friend
7. Right now is the best time of year for sports. Football season is in full effect, hockey season just started and it’s playoff time in baseball. You couldn’t ask for anything more! ……oh, wait….maybe that your team would do better….
Not the best year to be a Red Sox fan…
8. One of the readers of my blog sent me a link to a 3D shoulder model. When people send me stuff like that I usually assume that they’re looking for some kind of financial benefit, but this one is a totally free website and I thought I’d share it with you because it’s pretty cool. You see the whole shoulder in 3D and spin it around, and click one button if you want to see the skin layer, only the muscles, the bones, etc. It’s pretty cool. Check it out HERE.
9. Next on my continuing education list for the next couple of months:
- USA Weightlifting certification
- The book Movement System Impairment Syndrome, by Shirley Sahrmann
- The Functional Training Handbook, by Craig Liebenson
- Muscle Imbalances Revealed 2.0 DVDs
- Both of Alwyn Cosgrove and Cressey, Robertson and Rigsby’s fitness business products
10. Yet another great post from my colleague and nutrition expert Brian St. Pierre on artificial sweeteners and stevia. Definitely a must read: The Stevia Story. I really enjoy Brian’s blog as he is as honest and objective as it gets with what he writes about on top of being incredibly smart.
That’s all for the celebratory randomness! See you next week with some new content!
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With most of the pro leagues and fall ball seasons almost over for every player at this time of year, it’s time to start making a plan of attack for the off-season in the next couple of months, before spring training comes around in late February-early March. There are obviously many options that present for baseball players of all ages for the off-season.
Unfortunately, season is over for most.
For the younger crowd (12 and under) it should simply be playing a different sport and changing the stimuli from baseball. That will allow the kids to develop a variety of skills other than just throwing a baseball a swinging a bat. This will also give a rest to the throwing shoulder, especially pitchers.
For players a little older, strength training should be a priority to maximize strength, power and decrease the risk of shoulder injuries. Unfortunately, too many baseball players (in part because of the culture of the sport) are not going to be part taking in any strength and conditioning program. The option of not training at all seems to be more appealing to many players, apparently. I’m even talking about professional players. Whether they don’t recognize the huge benefits from it or they’re just being too lazy is a totally different discussion.
Some players who actually do something and engage into a baseball strength and conditioning off season program, don’t always take the best route. Running distances and doing some band exercises for the shoulder might sound a good program to engage in for baseball pitchers to spare their shoulder. But what those players fail to realize is that there is a lot of factors that you need to address in the off-season, and you probably shouldn’t waste your time doing distance running. Mobility and range of motion deficits, dysfunctional movement patterns, muscle weaknesses and joint instabilities are just a couple of examples of problems baseball players present with that need to be addressed in the off-season.
A decent strength and conditioning program in the off-season should cover the following;
These are just a couple of examples that should be included in your baseball off-season training. If your program doesn’t include at least all of the above, you should start looking for a different strength coach or trainer (or get one if you’re trying to train on your own!).
My colleague Eric Cressey put a more exhaustive list together a couple of weeks ago of what a baseball off-season training should comprise of. If you haven’t read it, I strongly suggest you do so.
Also, by entering your information below you’ll get access to my FREE report on shoulder injury prevention strategies. That will definitely help you build you baseball off-season training program!
Sometimes it’s funny to realize how things happen. There are certain ways of doing things, certain trends that we never really question and we just go with the flow. It’s part of our life, of our daily routine, but we never questioned why things are the way they are in the first place. And when you realize why the things are the way they are it makes sense, but at the same time it’s the stupidity of convenience that took us there.
Pretty vague for a blog post intro, right?
Let me explain….
It all started with me reading the book Movement by Gray Cook (which I’m not completely done reading yet). Well, let me start off by saying that it’s definitely a must read for any fitness and strength and conditioning professional. Going through the book I learned a lot about how to assess movement, see the body and movement patterns as wholes, not separate muscles and individual segments. But there were also many ‘Ah-ha!” moments for me in the book. One of these “Ah-ha!” moments was about the evolution of the fitness business. I’ll take a step back from specific strength and conditioning and specific sports training here…
Seriously, you need to read this book.
When you’re educated and competent enough, whether you’re a strength coach or a personal trainer, you know that machines are not the most optimal and functional options for healthy clients and athletes. But the reality is that across the world there are still plenty of coaches and trainers that still put their clients on these machines. I’m still not sure if it’s because they don’t know any better, if they’re REAAALLY lazy and don’t feel like coaching simple movement patterns or they’re just completely retarded. But seriously, if you’re reading this right now it is a sign that you are looking for new information and I won’t teach you anything about why machines are not optimal for strength training. But have you ever asked yourself the question: “how does this machine epidemic started? How did the idea of locking someone into a restricted, unnatural movement pattern that doesn’t require any stabilization from the rest of your body came up?
You definitely need GREAT coaching skills for this…
If we ever thought about it, we each might have our little theory. This one might just be the best one so far….
“In the early days of weight training, trainees took the time to learn to squat properly with full range of motion, balance and control. They developed a strength platform built on a good squat pattern, but modern attitudes disregard the benefits of slow, steady development and consistent acquisition of the squat skill (…). We started thinking more of exercises than of movements.”
“We saw the obvious benefits of training the legs with the squatting exercises. Some people couldn’t do these exercises (…). We modified the general exercise rather than correcting the flawed movement patterns displayed by the trainees. Moving weight became more important than moving.”
That’s quoted from Gray Cook in the book Movement. I think this is right on the money! And that’s how we started modifying exercises to fit people’s limitations. Using heel lifts, doing quarter squats, and then the machine was the modification all the way down the chain. The squatting pattern was used to create a machine that would put you in a seated position, where you don’t have to support the weight of your body and where the involvement of stabilizers is minimized because of the guided movement pattern and the support of your torso on a back rest. That machine is called a leg press. That’s how it started…
People wanted to workout without realizing the importance of movement patterns. So as good as our society is at finding quick fixes, we created easy ways for people to exercise without the need to move well first. We’re more focused on developing muscles than quality of movement. And this is where we stand today.
From one point of view, I can see the convenience of making exercising very accessible to pretty much everyone, without any consideration for how well you move of your fitness level. But at the same time, how did we get there in the first place? Why would we need to develop muscles and cardio-vascular capacity without moving well first? When doing so, we’re just putting fitness on top of dysfunction. So we keep making those dysfunctions worse and worse by putting fitness and muscle tone on top of that. And it obviously leads us to overuses and injuries. Moving is exercising. In today’s society we need to encourage people to move more, to be more active, for adopt healthier lifestyles for all the reasons that we already know. But does it mean that we need to put everyone on machines to develop muscles before any consideration for movement quality? I don’t think it has to be the answer.
Moving is exercising. There is no shame on starting at the bottom of the pyramid and focus on what matters. Development of fitness comes after, once movement patterns are developed and controlled.
It’s crazy how things happen sometimes…
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Many factors account for shoulder health and injury prevention. Rotator cuff strength is only one of them. Every rehab/pre-hab program will include some type of external and/or internal rotation at the shoulder. It is in fact an important part of a rehab or pre-hab program because of the decelerative nature of the rotator cuff in throwing sports, and its role in stabilization of the humeral head in the glenoid fossa.
I want to bring your attention to the last part of this last sentence “stabilization of the humeral head in the glenoid fossa. This means that the rotator cuff muscles don’t have external and internal rotation of the humerus as their only function. Which also means that they shouldn’t be solely trained in rotation if it’s not the only function.
Stabilization is actually a really big function of the rotator cuff muscles. And a function that needs to be trained and a reinforced. So in conjunction with any external and internal rotation based movements, there should be a certain amount of dynamic stabilization that is included in a program.
Don’t know where to start? Check this variations:
Like I mentioned earlier, rotator cuff work alone, whether it is rotation based, stabilization based, or a combination of both, is far from a complete shoulder injury prevention strategy for healthy and optimally performing shoulders. There is at least 5 other strategies to help maitain optimal shoulder function that you can apply. Enter your info below to get my FREE Shoulder Injury Prevention Strategies report to learn what they are!
He’s offering a ridiculous discount and throwing in some great free gifts from some of the world’s top experts in hockey development and performance training. When he told me he was gonna sell the book for under 30$, I thought he had brain damage! But he wants to make it affordable so anyone can buy it. You’ll have to hurry, though. This offer won’t be around for long…
