Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve come across a few interesting articles I know you’ll enjoy. Check them out below:
1) No More Pulled Hamstrings by Mike Robertson
Mike continues to punch out great information on a consistent basis. This article highlights a multi-faceted approach to minimizing hamstring strain risk. While this is focused on hamstring strains, this same thought process can be applied to muscle strain prevention across the entire body. Great stuff from Mike.
2) Three New Core Exercises for Goalies by Maria Mountain
Maria is one of the few people writing about hockey training on the internet that can back her recommendations with actual real-world experience. As a result, her site is one of the only ones I consistently look to for new information on the topic. In this post she shares a few new core exercises that she’s been using to train goalies. I’d extend the exercises to say they’re appropriate for hockey players at all positions (and almost all other team sport athletes). We use variations of all of these at our facility regularly.
3) Athlete Monitoring on a Budget – An Experience by John Abreu
This is an article that I originally learned about from Devan McConnell, and I’m glad he shared it. This approach is very similar to what I’ve introduced with the Flyers Junior Team and our off-season hockey players at Endeavor, and what our staff has implemented with the US Women’s National Hockey Team. The key is to really boil down your metrics to things that have meaning to you (and/or your coaching staff) and preferably things you can influence (e.g. training loads, sleep hours, soreness, etc.).
Finally, below is a video from the 2014 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference featuring a panel comprised of Malcom Gladwell (Author of Outliers: The Story of Success
, among others) and David Epstein (Author of The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance
). It’s a long video, but it makes for a great listen if you can cue it up on your phone and listen (please do not watch) while you drive.
To your success,
Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com
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“Kevin Neeld is one of the top 5-6 strength and conditioning coaches in the ice hockey world.”
– Mike Boyle, Head S&C Coach, US Women’s Olympic Team
“…if you want to be the best, Kevin is the one you have to train with”
– Brijesh Patel, Head S&C Coach, Quinnipiac University
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Together We Rise: A Campaign for Everyone
Hi Kevin
Great few articles here. Also just want to say that I love the approach you take to training and you have had a big influence on my programming over the last few years.
In your comment about Maria’s core exercises you mention that you feel they are applicable to all hockey players and that you use a number of variations of them at Endeavor. Just from watching I was thinking of how you could apply them to a skater and the idea of having them in more of a lateral lunge position instead of half kneeling came to mind. Is this one of the ways that you alter the exercises to make them more applicable to a skater? Thanks Kevin.
Thanks Joel. I can appreciate your thought process. With these types of exercises, we tend to err on positions that are less “hockey-specific” early on, as we need to rebuild fundamental movement capacities. Specific to her videos, we don’t do any “crunches”, but 1/4 Get-Ups follow a somewhat similar thought process as her first video. We’ve used standing “wall dribbles” and the tall kneeling position for a lot of exercises, and all of our chopping/lifting motions we do with a rope with a “pull into push” pattern. We haven’t used the position in her video, but we’ve done wide stance positions once we progress to standing and have done standing stride positions in the past.