Whoa – who was the a-hole this week and barely wrote anything for the site?
And by “anything” I mean “zero, zilch, nada.”
My bad.
But it was for good reason. I travelled to Colorado Springs this week to film some stuff with the National Strength & Conditioning Association (NSCA) for their upcoming 2019 (Virtual) Personal Trainers Conference, as well as made a cameo appearance at T-Nation headquarters.
Man, between those two establishments AND the National Olympic Training Facility AND The Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs is one buff and beautiful city.1
Also, as it happens, I’m off to Edmonton (<– that’s in Canada by the way) tomorrow to go film the (Even More) Complete Shoulder & Hip Blueprint with Dean Somerset this weekend.
So, yeah, it was a busy week. SO GET OFF MY BACK YOU BIG JERK
Melbourne, Australia: July 19-21st and Melbourne Strength & Conditioning. (<— Includes bonus “Psych Skills for Fitness Pros” pre-workshop with Dr. Lisa Lewis).
Luke (Worthington) and I did this workshop last summer in London and figured it’s only fair to bring it State side.
Combined we have 30+ years of coaching experience (I.e., one Mike Boyle or Dan John) and this workshop will be two days where we uncover every nook and cranny as it relates to how we assess our clients/athletes and how we best prepare them for the rigors of every day life/sport.
Upper/Lower Extremity Assessment
Technique Audits (how to coach common strength training exercises)
Ways to integrate PRI (Postural Restoration Institute) strategies that don’t make your brain hurt.
This will be a unique opportunity for people to learn from myself, but especially Luke, who is one of the best and brightest coaches I know. This will be his first time teaching in the States.
For more information and to register you can go HERE.
This will be the only time Dr. Lisa Lewis and I will be presenting this workshop together in 2019. In previous years we’ve presented it in Boston, London, Toronto, Bonn (Germany), and Austin, TX.
This 1-day workshop is targeted towards fitness professionals and digs a little deeper into what really “bogs” them down and stresses them out….
…their clients!
Click THIS link for more details on topics covered as well as date/cost/location.
SOCIAL MEDIA SHENANIGANS
Twitter
I still find one of the hardest things for me as a coach is to remember to keep things simple.
I get in my own way overthinking things. The best programs I write (and not coincidentally the ones clients tend to like the best) are the “simple” ones.
Fun Tony Fact: I can count on one hand the total number of times I’ve ever attempted to skate on ice. I say “attempted” because I believe the longest I’ve ever stayed upright before crashing to the ground (and taking someone with me) is nine seconds.
That said, despite my lack of skating skills I know a great program when I see it. Kevin and Travis have produced an outstanding resource here, and if you work with hockey players this is an absolute NO-BRAINER.
Speed Training for Hockey is currently on sale at a very fair price, but it only last through this weekend.
Melbourne, Australia: July 19-21st and Melbourne Strength & Conditioning. (<— Includes bonus “Psych Skills for Fitness Pros” pre-workshop with Dr. Lisa Lewis).
Luke (Worthington) and I did this workshop last summer in London and figured it’s only fair to bring it State side.
Combined we have 30+ years of coaching experience (I.e., one Mike Boyle or Dan John) and this workshop will be two days where we uncover every nook and cranny as it relates to how we assess our clients/athletes and how we best prepare them for the rigors of every day life/sport.
Upper/Lower Extremity Assessment
Technique Audits (how to coach common strength training exercises)
Ways to integrate PRI (Postural Restoration Institute) strategies that don’t make your brain hurt.
This will be a unique opportunity for people to learn from myself, but especially Luke, who is one of the best and brightest coaches I know. This will be his first time teaching in the States.
For more information and to register you can go HERE.
This will be the only time Dr. Lisa Lewis and I will be presenting this workshop together in 2019. In previous years we’ve presented it in Boston, London, Toronto, Bonn (Germany), and Austin, TX.
This 1-day workshop is targeted towards fitness professionals and digs a little deeper into what really “bogs” them down and stresses them out….
…their clients!
Click THIS link for more details on topics covered as well as date/cost/location.
SOCIAL MEDIA SHENANIGANS
Twitter
I just left therapy.
I’ve been seeing the same therapist since 2011. At first we met 1x per week, for about a year. Now we meet 1x every 4-6 weeks; to check in.
It’s been an invaluable asset in my life. Just wanted to toss that tidbit out there. Your mental health IS important
Fun Tony Fact: I can count on one hand the total number of times I’ve ever attempted to skate on ice. I say “attempted” because I believe the longest I’ve ever stayed upright before crashing to the ground (and taking someone with me) is nine seconds.
That said, despite my lack of skating skills I know a great program when I see it. Kevin and Travis have produced an outstanding resource here, and if you work with hockey players this is an absolute NO-BRAINER.
Speed Training for Hockey is currently on sale at a very fair price, but it only last for one more week.
Kevin knows how to train hockey players. However, the information below can be applied to any athlete. In short: when it comes to making someone faster the answer is rarely “just go do some sprints.” Digging deeper and understanding inherent limitations from athlete to athlete needs to be considered.
Speed is one of the most highly coveted physical attributes in almost any sport, but particularly in ice hockey.
Unfortunately, many speed development programs take a bunch of dynamic warm-up and sprint exercises from track and field, scramble them together, and assume players will get faster.
There are two fundamental flaws in this line of thinking.
First, there is a lot more to speed development than simply sprinting.
Second, the assumption that all players (regardless of age, training background, physical development, etc.) will respond favorably to this type of program is clearly misguided.
The “this is what most people need” logic leading to this type of program is unique to the fitness industry and clearly unacceptable in almost every other area. For example, can you imagine picking your car up from a mechanic, and having he/she tell you…
“I rotated your tires, changed your oil, and topped off your windshield wiper fluid.”
“Why’d you do that?”
“Well that’s what most people need.”
“Yes…but I came in because my car is leaking transmission fluid.”
Having a diagnostic system to help identify limiting factors to speed development will help you avoid both of these mistakes by providing clarity on which physical qualities need to be the focus of a training program, and by tracking progress to ensure the training is actually leading to the results you desire.
Limiting Factors to Speed Development
Below is a slide from a talk I gave at the NSCA’s Training for Hockey Clinic a few years ago. While this is overly simplistic, it provides a starting point for understanding the key elements that underlie performance in each area, and therefore what areas need to be “tested.”
Focusing in on speed, there are 4 key areas that contribute to speed development and expression.
1. Technique/Pattern
Speed can be limited by a player’s technique or skating pattern. This is why skating coaches are so important – if players aren’t taught to skate efficiently, to find their optimal skating depth, feel comfortable on their edges, learn optimal transition mechanics, etc., they’ll inevitably be wasting energy and skating slower than they could if they improved their mechanics.
2. Mobility/Stability
That said, from an off-ice training perspective, one of the major goals of training is to remove barriers that may be preventing a player from skating with optimal technique, which brings us down to the rest of the items on this list.
From a mobility standpoint, if a player doesn’t have the ankle and hip mobility to get into an optimal skating position and execute an effective stride, they’ll be leaving speed on the table.
In support of this concept, Upjohn et al. (2008) compared the skating patterns of high and low caliber players, and found that high caliber players set up with their hips, knees, and ankles all flexed more, and this allowed them to have a longer and wider stride length, and greater knee and ankle extension during the push-off phase of skating. In other words, a lower skating position translated into a longer stride length, which allowed for a more powerful push-off with each stride.
In this way, ensuring that the player has the adequate range of motion to get into a deeper skating position can be viewed as speed training.
This research is insightful because it highlights the importance of having adequate ankle mobility. A lack of dorsiflexion, or knees going over the toes, will limit your skating depth, and a lack of plantar flexion, or pointing the toes away from the ankle, will limit your power through the end of the push-off. What isn’t as readily apparent, is how a deeper skating stance will require increases in other components of hip mobility, notably hip abduction or moving the foot out to the side away from the hip.
Another way to illustrate this is to consider the lateral split.
The further apart the feet spread, or the further the hips move into this abduction position, the lower the hips drop. So if someone doesn’t possess the hip mobility in this direction, they’ll have to stand up higher to allow for a full stride.
This, along with a lack of ankle mobility, is one of the major reasons players will adopt a higher skating position. Again, all of this just illustrates that mobility in very specific areas can improve skating position, stride length, power through push-off, and ultimately speed. In other words, mobility work IS speed training, and if a player with a mobility restriction just runs more sprints, they’ll be missing out on a huge opportunity to improve their speed.
Note how greater hip abduction range of motion allows the player in red to achieve a much lower hip position, despite being several inches taller than the player in gray.
3. Muscle Size/Strength
Within a similar context, one of the major limitations to skating speed, particularly in high school and younger aged players, is a lack of lower body strength. Strength is a function of both how large the muscles are, listed as “muscle size” on the chart, and how effectively the brain can activate those muscles to produce force.
Strength can limit skating speed in two important ways.
First, if a player doesn’t possess the strength and local muscular endurance, listed in the stamina column, to maintain a low skating position, they’ll start to stand up taller as fatigue sets in. As they stand up taller, their skating stride shortens, they produce less push-off force with each stride, and they slow down.
Secondly, speed is largely determined by how much force a player can put into the ice with each stride. The more force that pushes into the ice, the further the player is propelled forward. By improving the player’s ability to produce high levels of force, you allow them to increase their propulsion with each stride, which simply means that each stride will push them further forward, allowing them to cover more ice with the same number of strides. Force is really just another way of saying strength. So in this way, strength training is really speed training.
Great example of a player possessing significant relative strength in a single-leg pattern.
4. Rate of Force Development
Lastly, ROFD stands for rate of force development. If a player produces the same amount of force, but does it faster, it will shorten the time it takes for them to complete the stride, allowing them to initiate their next stride sooner.
I don’t see this a lot, but in some players that have spent a lot of time developing strength using traditional bodybuilding or powerlifting methods, they’re capable of producing high levels of force, but they do so slowly, so the thing that’s limiting their speed the most is their ability to produce that force at a faster rate.
This is really the first time in this discussion where sprinting, plyometrics, and other more traditional speed and power work has a place in improving a limiting factor to speed.
That isn’t to say that these methods aren’t important in a comprehensive speed development program, but hopefully you now have a better appreciation for how speed training is MUCH more than just simply running.
Relevant Tests for Tracking Progress
There are a lot of performance tests available to help provide insight into limiting factors to speed development, and many of them have merit. Below are a few that I’ve found particularly effective, both in terms of the information they provide and the ease of implementation.
Mobility/Stability
This section could easily be its own article, but in the interest of simplicity, players should have some assessment of ankle mobility, hip range of motion, and single-leg stability. I’ve used several tests over the years to accomplish this, but want to highlight the Y-Balance Test, which has a few notable benefits:
Performance in this test correlates with ankle dorsiflexion and hip flexion range of motion, two important areas for achieving an optimal skating depth
The test serves as a reasonable off-ice assessment of stride length
Some studies have found a relationship between performance in this test and injury risk
The Y-Balance Test is really designed to be an end-range stability assessment, but if you watch how the player goes through it closely, you can get a sense of what may be limiting them from going further. For example, if the knee doesn’t smoothly drift forward over the toes without the heel popping up, the player may have an ankle mobility restriction.
Addressing mobility restrictions and improving single-leg stability should improve performance in this test AND stride length on the ice.
Speed/Acceleration
20-Yard Sprint with 10-Yard Split Time: The body positions, movement pattern, and ground contact time in the first few strides of acceleration more closely resemble the characteristics of skating than top-speed running.
With this in mind, a 10-yard sprint provides valuable information about a player’s ability to accelerate.
However, because hockey players aren’t the most polished sprinters (and they don’t need to be, as mentioned above), there can be a lot of variability in the start. Extending the sprint 20-yards gives a great indication of the players early and late phase acceleration while minimizing the impact a variable start will have on the overall time.
Lower Body Power
Vertical Jump: The vertical jump is one of the most commonly used tests to assess lower body power, and has been shown to moderately correlate to on-ice sprinting speed.
Aside from published research studies, I’ve personally been involved with testing a wide range of players both on and off the ice (youth players, junior teams, NHL Development Camps, NHL Training Camps, Olympic Training Camps, etc.) and the relationship between VJ height and on-ice speed is consistent across all of these groups, making it a suitable option for all players.
Part of the value of the test is that it’s so heavily used that it’s fairly easy to find normative data to look at how a given player compares to others in his or her age group, playing level, etc.
Equipment can be a limitation for some, so using a broad jump (or long jump) is a reasonable alternative. However, I’ve found that broad jump distance correlates with height, so ideally you’d divide the jump distance by height to get a scaled number to track over time.
Lateral Bound: This is a movement included in most hockey training programs, but not one many players are using to track progress.
Compared to the vertical and broad jump, this tests power in a lateral/horizontal pattern, which is more specific to skating, and provides an opportunity to identify side to side imbalances. I’ve also found that in players that are quick on the ice, but don’t have great vertical jumps, they tend to perform well in this test. Including both tests gives a more complete picture of the power profile of the player.
Leg length also plays into jump distance in this test, so it’s important to take a quick measurement of that (or split distance) as well.
I’ve published normative data for players in different age groups here: Hockey Power Testing.
Lower Body Strength
Dumbbell Reverse Lunge (5-RM): For strength testing, it’s possible to get a really good snapshot of the player’s ability to produce force through their lower body with this test.
Similar to the lateral bound, the reverse lunge is a unilateral exercise requiring single-leg stability and dissociated movement between the two legs, two fundamental characteristics of skating. It’s also a fairly easy movement to teach, so it’s safe to implement with players across all age groups.
Strength will fluctuate across developmental years, but by the time players hit high school, they should be able to use at least their body weight in external load (e.g. 90lb dumbbells for a 180lb player).
Wrap Up
There are two major points I want to leave you with.
First, developing speed involves a lot more than running sprints. It’s important to recognize the potential limiting factors to a player developing and expressing higher levels of speed to ensure these are being addressed through a comprehensive training program.
Second, running through these (or similar) tests can be helpful in both identifying individual areas for improvement and ensuring that a player’s training program is leading to the desired results.
The ability to produce force is the foundation for producing force quickly, the recipe for speed. If a player does not have adequate strength, that should be the primary focus. If the player is very strong, but doesn’t perform well in the jumping or sprinting tests, then exercises to improve rate of force development and acceleration should be the primary focus.
A well-designed, comprehensive speed training program should lead to improvements in all of these areas. Addressing a player’s limiting factors is the key to optimizing his or her speed development.
This is a no-brainer if you happen to work with hockey players.
What’s refreshing about this resource is that, while Kevin works with NHL players and has worked with many elite level hockey players throughout his coaching career, this is about keeping things simple and honing in on the basics.
This is about making better athletes.
Speed Training for Hockey is currently on sale at a hefty discount for the next two weeks, so act quickly before the price jumps up.
When I first moved to Boston – roughly seven years ago – I was working at a swanky, fancy-pants commercial gym in the downtown area and I remember on one of my days off Eric Cressey and myself took a little road trip to Worcester, MA to take part in an impromptu and informal workshop that orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Chris Vinton, was doing at the College of the Holy Cross on Femoral Acetabular Impingement (FAI).
Like some of you seeing this for the first time and starring at the screen as if I were saying the alphabet in Klingon, at the time of Dr. Vinton’s talk I had a similar reaction: Femoral Acetabular Say-What-Now???
Without beating around the bush, in laymen’s terms: “FAI is a condition of too much friction in the hip joint. Basically, the ball (femoral head) and socket (acetabulum) rub abnormally creating damage to the hip joint. The damage can occur to the articular cartilage (smooth white surface of the ball or socket) or the labral cartilage (soft tissue bumper of the socket).”
FAI comes in a few flavors. You have your Cam form which manifests itself as a bony overgrowth on the femoral head itself, and you have your Pincer form which results from a bony overgrowth on the rim of the acetabulum itself. And lastly, for those unfortunate few who can’t seem to make up their mind, you can also have a Mixed form which is a bony overgrowth of the two.
Even then, seven years ago, as I was sitting through the presentation, FAI wasn’t that prevalent in the athletic or fitness community – or, so it seemed. I couldn’t recall one case of a current or past client who I felt fell under this FAI tree.
Fast forward to today and it seems everyone has FAI. Hockey players, baseball players, soccer players, the mailman, the woman who does your hair, Batman. Everyone.
Of Note: Eric was talking the other day about this and mentioned something about a recent study that came out which showed something like 90% plus of high school hockey players have some degree of FAI.
I’ll have to see if I can ask him to find the study. Stay tuned……
I don’t feel it’s because of some new pandemic or anything – like we’ve somehow mutated into a bunch of hip impingement ninjas. Nah – nothing like that.
Well, maybe a little bit. If I were speak freely I do feel that athletes today – particularly young athletes – fall into two categories:
1. Those who specialize too early and play ONE sport year round without any breaks. It’s not rocket science to see how someone who plays a rotational sport year round, and develops pattern overload, can run into problems.
2. Those who make the Tin Man look agile. It’s sad to say, but kids (and adults) just don’t move around as much anymore. Texting has taken the place of riding a bike. Call of Duty has trumped pick-up baseball games. Escalators > stairs.
So I think we have ourselves to blame…..to a degree. When we take people who have joint restrictions and don’t move well, and then ask them to “do stuff” they aren’t prepared to do. Well…….
But too, I just feel we’ve gotten a heckuva lot better in recent years at screening for FAI and recognizing symptoms.
Before I go on I should state the obvious: as a strength coach I’m not diagnosing anything. I can use some rudimentary “screens” (like the one to follow) which will better help me ascertain the situation and provide information on how I’ll go about programming for someone. But almost always, I’ll be referring someone out to a more qualified fitness professional who can do a more thorough exam and/or possibly order an MRI.
That said if I’m working with an athlete or general population client who’s complaining of consistent and chronic hip pain – especially if they participate in a rotational sport or when squatting, I can do a quick “screen” as follows.
Here, I lie the person on their back and make sure their lumbar spine is flush against the table. Then I’ll bring the affected limb into flexion, adduction, and internal rotation.
If the person winces or punches you in the face, it’s fair to say that that lit them up, and they may be a candidate for FAI. You can tweak the test by having them brace their abs – which will encourage more posterior pelvic tilt – and if it feels better, you know that’s it’s more of an alignment issue and not a worse case scenario.
No need to send someone for an MRI when all they had to do was posteriorly tilt their pelvis.
But it stands to reason that even with their anterior core engaged, if that still causes discomfort, it’s time to refer out and get them to see a more qualified practitioner to dig a little deeper. Only through a combination of screens, tests, and possibly an X-ray or MRI can FAI be truly diagnosed.
But What Can You Do In the Meantime?
A lot, actually. But lets try not to get carried away in thinking we’re going to solve the issue. This is more about working AROUND the issue and maintaining a training effect than anything else.
FAI is a condition, not a disease. But here’s some food for thought.
1. Rule numero uno is to nix squatting. You’re not going to last long as a strength coach or personal trainer if you’re throwing caution to the wind and squatting those who are candidates for FAI.
I will say, though, that I say that with a grain of salt because technically you could still squat someone – albeit NOT BELOW 90 DEGREES OF HIP FLEXION.
If you look at the pictures provided above of the Cam and Pincer lesions, you can see how if someone were to squat below 90 degrees, that that would be, well, dumb.
Depending on symptoms you could get away with staying above 90 degrees, but honestly my rule of thumb is to wait six months before playing with fire.
2. The good news is that you can still hit the lower body fairly hard. Things like rack pulls, trap bar deadlifts, or even conventional deadlifts would be fair game given that neither require significant hip flexion. In addition barbell glute bridges would be a viable option as well.
3. Surprisingly, single leg work is fair game. Even things like Bulgarian split squats – as counterintuitive as it sounds given they require deep hip flexion – would be okay.
The thing with single leg work is that the trainee can sort of find his or her “groove” with regards to hip internal and external rotation and be able to find a pain free ROM.
To that end I wouldn’t be apprehensive to crush single-leg training with someone with FAI – although certain things like femoral glide syndrome should be on the radar and may lend itself to making appropriate modifications.
4. Go read anything and everything by Kevin Neeld on the topic. THIS and THIS would be good starts.
And that’s about it really. I think as strength coaches and personal trainers it IS in our best interests to know when to refer out and understand scope of practice. But just as equally (if not more) important is to have the ability to assess and screen clients for certain conditions and be able to still garner a training effect and not make them feel like a patient.
Of course there is still a lot that’s unknown about FAI (s0me doctors still fail to admit that it exists!), and this post isn’t meant to serve as a definitive path to address the issue. If anything I just wanted to throw it out there and hopefully bring forth a little more awareness on the topic.
You know how all the major movie studios wait until the end of the year to release their “passion” projects, or those films they deem will do well when it comes to awards season? Well, it seems as though this is THE week for fitness products to be released. Fittingly, my good friend, Kevin Neeld, just released his own manual, Ultimate Hockey Training, and I asked if he’d take a few moments to answer a few questions on it.
Now, admittedly, I don’t train a lot of hockey players; nor do a watch hockey (sorry Kevin). But, I did attend a Mercyhurst College women’s hockey game back in the day, so that should count for something! I had a crush on one of the players, and she never really knew I existed other than the fact that I said hi to her once.
That notwithstanding, Kevin is one of the brightest guys I know, and he’s gone out of his way to provide a HUGELY insightful resource for anyone who, regardless of whether or not they train hockey players, is involved with training athletes and increasing the degree of their badassery.
With that, enjoy the interview!
TG: Kevin, here’s the part where you tell us a little about yourself – school, training career, whether or not you like walks on the beach? Tell my readers a little about yourself – and if you could include how 2-legit-2-quit it was when you interned at Cressey Performance (back in the summer of 2008) that would be awesome .
KN: My introduction to the training world started because of my passion for the game of hockey. As a player, I was always told that I was as skilled as anyone, but that I was too fat, slow, and generally unathletic to compete at a high level. That wasn’t exactly what they said, but that’s what they meant. When I was 14, I was fortunate to be “given a chance” by a coach that was ahead of his time on the training side of things. I completely overhauled my athleticism in an off-season and knew then that I wanted to make a career out of helping other hockey players to do the same.
Since then, I moved on to do my undergrad work at the University of Delaware, where through one of my internships I first came across Mike Boyle’s work. I moved on to study Exercise Neuroscience at UMass Amherst (a Top 5 ranked kinesiology program at the time). To be honest, as much as I learned in my 6 years of college, I learned infinitely more through my internships and outside reading. Over the last 5 years I’ve read dozens of books on everything from manual therapy techniques to neuromechanics, and have read through a stack of research articles about as tall as I am. The key for me was listening to what my mentors suggested as quality information and really diving in to that material.
As you know, in the Summer of 2008 I did an internship with you guys at Cressey Performance. At the time, I had planned to go back to Delaware to teach my own power skating and puck handling clinics all Summer. Instead I decided to pay my way through a Functional Anatomy class that was part of BU’s DPT program and spend the remainder of my time with you guys. To this day, that was the smartest career decision I’ve ever made. Not only did I learn a lot that Summer, but you, Eric, and Brian are still great resources for me now.
I learned a lot of that “functional anatomy” stuff from Eric, but it was you, Tony, that taught me that it’s not worth lifting weights, if you can’t do it to techno music. You’d be proud to know that we now have “Techno Tuesday” at Endeavor…which has pretty much become “Techno Weekdays”.
TG: Duuuuuuuuude. You have no idea how happy that makes me! Since then, you’ve gone on to a successful career, being featured in the likes of t-nation.com, elitefts.com, and I even saw one of your articles featured on the homepage of Yahoo not too long ago. Congrats!
(And lest we forget that you just released a pretty kick-ass training manual: Ultimate Hockey Training).
Even more impressive, is that you’ve gone on to specialize in a niche market (hockey) and help run one of the premiere hockey training facilities in the country (Endeavor Sports Performance, located in Sewell, NJ) – how’s that working out? What prompted you to focus on hockey?
KN: Thanks man. Being featured on well-respected sites is flattering, but I’m more proud of what we’ve been doing at Endeavor than anything else. There are a lot of people that write well that don’t actually train anyone. That will never go away; it is what it is. But we’ve really created something special with our training programs at Endeavor. We follow a similar model as CP, but instead of having a primarily baseball market, ours is hockey.
In the last few years, we’ve helped a few dozen kids move on to compete at the D1 Prep, Junior A (EJHL, USHL, OHL, BCHL), and professional levels (CHL, IHL, ECHL, AHL, NHL). This is probably commonplace in Boston, or in certain areas of Michigan or Minnesota, but our facility is in South Jersey, which is far from regarded as a hockey hotbed, and almost all of our players are local.
I’m not one to take credit for their accomplishments. We’ve had a handful of kids that were on that path before they came to us, but the kids I’m especially proud of were the ones that were deemed D3 material that caught the eyes of D1 scouts and eventually committed D1 because of how prepared they were at the beginning of their season and the kids that were “too small”, but dominated anyway because of their speed and strength. These are the cases that I can hang my hat on and realize that what we’re doing is really working.
On a personal level, my passion for this field grew out of wanting to help hockey players fulfill their potential. A lot of my background is in on-ice skill development. As my career continues to progress, I’ve moved deeper into the athletic development/training side of things and further from on-ice work. While I’ve developed an appreciation for training athletes in all sports, and genuinely enjoy taking part of the process of their development, nothing lights my lamp more than training hockey players.
TG: I can definitely relate there. As a former collegiate baseball player, I LOVE the fact that my job entails showing kids what NOT to do with their training. To that end, I have to assume, much like what we come across with the baseball players we train at CP, hockey has its fair share of overuse injuries, weaknesses, and “red flags” that permeate the sport. Can you elaborate on what you typically come across with your athletes?
KN: Yea, you could say that. Hockey is as bad as any sport in pushing year-round participation and early specialization. Hip flexor and adductor strains are not only common, but they’re accepted as part of the sport. It’s insane. Our players from last off-season have started to trickle back in and so far not a single one had any adductor or hip flexor problem that caused them to miss time. Not one. And that’s despite the fact that these players left late August or early September to go play for their teams and haven’t done much training since. It’s amazing how effective a few simple strategies can be in preventing these injuries.
The problem with these injuries is that players still operate under the old paradigm that more hip flexor/adductor flexibility is always better and if something gets hurt it’s because it wasn’t flexible enough. In dealing with players with these injuries, I’ve found that the overwhelming majority of them are excessively flexible in the injured structure.
I’ve found that about 3 weeks of focused stretching for the antagonist and strengthening the injured tissue results in a complete cessation of symptoms with no reoccurrence. I think the message needs to permeate that flexibility isn’t inherently good; it must be put within the context of structural balance in terms of antagonistic levels of stiffness and strength. Unfortunately, the predispositions to these injuries are what leads to more severe problems like hip labral tears and sports hernias further down the line. At the risk of being overly simplistic, maintaining soft-tissue quality and structural balance, and recognizing bony ROM limitations is key to reducing the occurrence of these injuries, and in restoring health when a player starts to venture down this path.
The other big thing is that almost every hockey player has an overly kyphotic thoracic posture. Glenohumeral dislocations and acromioclavicular separations are common in hockey. While traumatic contact-driven injuries are somewhat unpreventable, players need to understand that an overly kyphotic posture is going to cause scapular abduction, which is going to position the glenohumeral joint anterior to the midaxillary line.
In other words, the shoulder will be positioned more in front of the torso then directly on the side of it. When a player gets hit from the side, the force is now driven either through the anterior glenohumeral ligaments and/or the AC joint and a subluxation occurs at the weakest link. I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but postural restoration isn’t a foo-foo training goal; it can have severe implications for force generation, transfer, and absorption.
TG: Here, here!! I couldn’t have said it better myself. We deal with PLENTY of sacred cows in the baseball world (namely, distance running and those archaic band exercises pitchers like to do), so I can definitely commiserate with you there.
Lets discuss a little program design shenanigans. When assessing a new athlete, what are some things you’re looking at? Are there any exercises in particular that you try avoid with your hockey athletes?
KN: We spend a lot of time looking at the hips. I’ll assess:
Hip internal and external rotation in a hips flexed and hips extended position (to help dissociate capsular restrictions)
Femoral ante/retro torsion using Craig’s test
Hip extension ROM using a modified Thomas Test
Hip adduction ROM using the Postural Restoration Institute’s Adduction Drop Test
Hip flexion ROM using a quadruped rocking test
Hip flexion ROM using the active straight leg raise
Collectively, the results of these tests paint a pretty clear picture of the player’s hips and what limitations are bony and what can be modified. We’ll also take a look at thoracic rotation to see if there is a severe imbalance one way or another.
From an exercise selection standpoint, we place a high priority on horizontal/rotational power as the off-season progresses. We’ll use med ball shotput and scoop progressions from a side-standing and front-standing position to help groove and improve proper mechanics and power in these positions.
Early in the off-season we build in a disproportionate amount of rotational work in the athlete’s non-shooting direction. In exercises like belly presses, chops, and lifts, they’ll do 1 set in their shooting direction and 3 sets in their non-shooting side. The goal is to help restore balance in these patterns, both from a neural and structural standpoint, following a long-season of thousands of single-sided rotations.
Note from TG: EXACTLY!!! We do much of the same with our baseball guys, as to better offset any “predictive” imbalances that accumulate over a loooooooong season.
And, because I love hate mail, I’ll mention that we also use a primarily single-leg lower body training system.
We still include double-leg exercises like back squats, front squats, trap bar deadlifts, stiff-legged deadlifts, slideboard hamstring curls, cable pullthroughs, etc., but our lower body training model is an “inverted” version of the norm.
In other words, most people use exercises like squats and deadlifts as the “main” exercise and then use single leg squat and deadlift variations and lunges as “assistance” work. In our model, the single-leg exercises are primary; the bilateral exercises are secondary (or tertiary).
TG: Okay, lets get to the meat and potatoes. Tell us a little about Ultimate Hockey Training – I’ve been working my way through it, and to say you’ve covered all your bases would be an understatement! What distinguishes this from any other similar product out there?
KN: Thanks Tony. Ultimate Hockey Training basically outlines my entire hockey training system. It includes age-specific guidelines, an excessive presentation of our linear and parallel exercise progressions, year-round program design strategies, and injury prevention considerations. My goal was to lay it all out, but pick topics and use language that would be of interest to the whole spectrum of the hockey development community, from players, parents, and coaches, to those that train or rehab hockey players for a living.
Many of the hockey training resources out there today are either severely out-dated, overly theoretical, really watered down to appeal to young players, or just complete garbage. That’s not to say they’re all bad; I support what Maria Mountain and Kim McCullough, and a couple others have done. I think what allows UHT to appeal to such a wide audience is that I’ve included theoretical and research-driven discussions on all the topics for the training and sports medicine professional, but included a ton of sample routines and progressions for those without the academic background.
Ultimate Hockey Training isn’t a generic/canned training program; it’s a system. In other words, it’s not designed to help a player (or to help a coach help a player) improve for 8-weeks; it’s designed to help them improve for their entire career, however long that may be and wherever that may end. Hockey is one of the most rapidly growing sports in the U.S., but preparatory training is still poorly understood on a wide scale. Hopefully this will help provide those that want the information most with a framework from which to start building programs that actually work.
Awesome stuff Kevin! For those interested in checking out the manual, and for more information, click below:
