Athletes have to produce and absorb force in all angles, on both one and two legs, and their off-season training should prepare them to do so. Jump on two legs. Hop both linearly and laterally on one leg. Bound from leg to leg to get into the frontal plane. Progress from slow to fast.

It’s Sunday which means I review some of the podcasts I listened to and articles that I read throughout the last week.

When it comes to the podcasts, I really enjoyed Derek Hansen on the Pacey Performance Podcast. Derek is a leader in the field of strength and conditioning and has a ton to offer.

For articles, the piece written by Noah Harrison on rib flare was very good. Tons of people, dare I say most people, probably deal with ribs that are sitting where they should be, and this article is chalked full of info.

Enjoy!

Podcasts 

The FitCast with Brett Bartholomew

The FitCast with Michael Boyle

CVASP with Tom Farrow

Strength Coach Podcast with Mike Perry and Kyle Holland

Pacey Performance with Derek Hansen

Articles

How to Avoid Injury and Maximize Strength by Correcting Rib Flare by Noah Harrison

6 Things Every Mentor Should Do by Harvard Business Review

8 Strategies for Maintaining Strength by Eric Cressey

Very Stable Idiot by Stu McMillan

Sleep and Training by Tony Gentilcore

Our early off-season conditioning (April & May) with Women’s Hockey has evolved a little bit this year with more focus being put on aerobic work, mostly on the Assault Bike via longer rides like a 3 mile as well as tempo runs, aerobic circuits, and slideboard work for a handful of reason;

• Aerobic system is responsible for maintaining power output for long periods of time (like a hockey game).
• A strong aerobic base will help to delay the fatigue and enable a hockey player to recover better between shifts, between periods, and even between back to back games on the weekend
• Aerobic conditioning gives an athlete of any kind some time away from the strenuous high intensity conditioning and/or training that they go through
• Aerobic conditioning can actually help increase para-sympathetic tone and as a result improve recovery

As the off-season moves forward we will continue to tax aerobic qualities but also add in more alactic power and alactic capacity work (June & July), building towards primarily lactic power and lactic capacity the final 4-6 weeks (August) prior to the pre-season.

Not only is the sled a great tool to develop speed (acceleration) but the sled crossover is one of our staple movements with hockey to improve groin health, strengthening/training the adductors of the under leg for the demands of a long hockey season in an extremely functional manner.

“Pushes, pulls, hip hinges, squats, and loaded carries.” – Dan John

After some jumping and med ball throws our Day 1 Lift with UNH Volleyball essentially follows the Dan John template.

✅Something explosive 👉 Hang clean

✅Hip hinge 👉 Trap Bar deadlift

✅Pushes 👉 Standing Landmine Press

✅Squat 👉 1-Leg Squat

✅Pulls 👉 Suspension Row

✅Carries 👉 heartbeat walk (no video)

We added some shoulder prehab and core work mixed in between sets and finished off on the Assault Bike with .5 Mile sprints.

It’s Sunday which means I review some of the podcasts I listened to and articles that I read throughout the last week.

When it comes to the podcasts, there wasn’t a ton of new information, but the podcast on sleep that Mike Robertson did was great. Lots of basic yet applicable information that anyone can apply to their life right away to improve their sleep and overall health and well being.

For articles, I really enjoyed the article by Craig Pickering on improving performance on game day. There are some smart people out there that are doing some simple power based work on game day or the day before to help improve game day performance and this article helps with what someone may want to look into doing.

Enjoy!

Podcasts

The FitClique with Josh Bonhotal

Power Athlete Radio with Justin Roethlingshoefer and Devan McConnell

Smart Nutrition with Charlie Weingroff

Physical Prep Podcast on Sleep

Articles

What Happens to Your Body on No Sleep by Wes Judd

Training to Prevent Hamstring Injuries by Kevin Carr

The Distance Debate by Ross Eves

Your Conditioning Program Does Not Have to be Sport Specific by Craig Marker

How to Enhance Performance on Competition Day by Craig Pickering

Earlier today Coach Chase Campbell posted something on twitter about how he disagrees (I agree with him) with the thought that Olympic lifts can potentially be dangerous and take a long time to teach/learn. Like Chase, we not only use Olympic lifts but have never had someone get hurt using the lifts (we do most everything from the hang because it’s safer) nor do we find them overly difficult to teach. We use Olympic lifts in combination with body weight plyo’s and/or different jumps, along with various med ball throws to not only train power across the entire force-velocity curve but to also train power in various planes in hopes of developing a more well rounded and more powerful athlete.

It’s Sunday which means I review some of the podcasts I listened to and articles that I read throughout the last week.

When it comes to the podcasts, the strength coach podcast with Alex Hutchinson was very good, with a lot of talk on how we can push our bodies further then we think we can.

For articles, its hard to go wrong with anything that Tony Holler or Chris Korfist write. Tony’s article on transforming from slow to fast is really, really long, but there is a lot of good stuff. Chris’s article is on the Bulgarian split squat (Rear foot elevated split squat) and how much he loves it, which I tend to agree with.

Enjoy!

Podcasts

Strength Coach Podcast with Alex Hutchinson

Just Fly Performance with Mark Watts

CVASP with Mike Rankin

Just Fly Performance with Scott Thom

Articles

3 Guiding Principles to In-Season Training by Zach Dechant

Trainable Exercise Menu by Chris Chase

3 Simple Ways to Tranforms Slow to Fast by Tony Holler

My Love Affair with Bulgarian Split Squats by Chris Korfist

Another month, another post on some random thoughts that have been going through my head. Some of these thoughts come from books that I am reading, podcasts I have been listening to or working day to day in the weight room and coaching athletes.

Enjoy!

1. A question all strength coaches should ask themselves…Is an athlete in a better position to stay healthy and succeed at their sport because of the time they have spent working with you? No one truly cares about weight room numbers, they care if the athlete has gotten better or not.
2. We’ve added a little reactive agility/speed work with our women’s hockey team because of all hype it is getting lately. We are simply doing some of our acceleration work that we’ve done in the past, just having athletes react to one another. For example, with our ½ kneeling side starts we have athletes react to one another and racing/competing for 10 yards. Early results are that its added some fun and competition to the acceleration work, and we’ve seen athletes sprinting harder to the 10 yard marker. So far, so good.
3. I really, really, really like landmine presses. One, they are extremely shoulder friendly. Two, you are on your feet like most sports. Three, there is a core component that you don’t get with most pressing exercises. Four, you are essentially overhead pressing in a much safer manner. Lots to like.
4. There are so many sacred cows in the world of strength and conditioning and/or fitness that need to die. We could make a long, long list.
5. Strength coaches need to open up more. Athletes need to know you and they need to trust you. If they don’t know and trust you, you’ll be fighting an ongoing uphill battle.
6. The field of strength and conditioning is all about serving, working for the athletes that we get to work with…yet our field is over-run with egos.
7. Injury prevention is performance training. Performance training is injury prevention. I’m not sure you can have one without the other.
8. There is one coaching cue/tactic that I use that seems to have a very high rate of success – to take some weight off the bar. Its amazing how often things clean up and look better by simply going a little lighter.
9. The longer I am in this field, the more I question the value of using 1 rep max numbers to program numbers off of, especially Olympic lifts. The nervous system doesn’t understand percentages, it understands how difficult/stressful and exercise is for the body at that moment in time.
10. Though some would argue, I am a firm believer that good strength and conditioning will decrease injury rates.

Our early off-season running with hockey always starts with tempo runs 1-2 times per week. Our rationale for starting with tempo runs is to start building an aerobic base and to also work on sprint mechanics.

But more importantly, tempo runs slowly get hockey players into hip extension in a less aggressive way then starting with sprinting would, as sprinting would be potentially problematic for athletes coming out of a long season that places their hips in a continuous flexed hip position. We eventually get to sprinting when some of the postural issues have been ironed out.