I officially played my last game of competitive hockey in March of 2003. I miss the game everyday, but I won’t go out and play recreational hockey to fill the void. It’s not that fact that I work early mornings and late nights and have a business to operate, or the fact that my skill set has vanished faster than my receding hairline. I don’t play because too many players on the ice have an identity crisis! I don’t want “couch potato” Tom, who never played the game in his life, but watches NHL hockey every night on TSN and loves the “rough stuff”, to try to re-live the glory days he never had on me. I just don’t want to be put into a situation where egos and attitudes are involved. No one in recreational hockey is getting paid and no one is making a living on the ice. Bottom line: no one is playing at an elite level! What does this possibly have to do with Strength and Conditioning?

Poor educators take difficult material and further obscure the subject. Good teachers can take the same material and package it in a way that all can understand.   There are few Coaches in the Strength and Conditioning industry that fit the mold of “teacher”. Dan John is one of those coaches. Michelangelo once said: “simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” The simplicity Coach John employs is an inspiration to all coaches caught in the world of quick gimmicks, fads, broken promises, Internet “gurus”, armchair trainers, Greek philosophers, unnamed forum posters, and overnight success stories. The quantity of information floating around (much with little substance and big price tags) can make you feel like your running in place sometimes. More often than not that’s exactly what happens in the fitness industry. I recently had the opportunity to hear Coach John lecture the staff of MBSC. His message is a “MUST” for all Coaches looking to fight the food fight.

There’s a lot of glimmer and sparkle in the fitness industry these days that comes at the expense of substance: Twitter accounts, Facebook pages, YouTube videos, blogs, articles, “likes”, “follows” and every other form of social marketing under the sun. While I certainly don’t blame fellow practitioners for jumping on the social media scene (I have), finding quality information is like mining for gold.  According to Wikipedia: “Gold has been a valuable and highly sought-after precious-metal for coinage, jewelry, and other arts since long before the beginning of recoded history.” In other words, gold is a valuable resource! Fool’s gold on the other hand is very common, so common in fact that in the earth's crust it is found in almost every possible environment, hence it has a vast number of forms and varieties. I believe the same holds true regarding information in the fitness industry. Plenty of resources, but few that hold their value in gold. Below are three ways to mine for gold in the fitness industry.

Contact athletes are exposed to high-end impact forces that affect the entire Kinetic Chain on a daily basis. I have written in the past about the training implications of building “functional hypertrophy” and the demands contact places on the body, in particular the shoulder complex. Without a doubt, the biggest issues we deal with at Donskov Strength and Conditioning during the coarse of the competitive hockey season are shoulder related (AC joint) due to high impact collisions. Keep in mind that we perform a healthy dose of T-Spine mobility; horizontal/vertical pulling and “direct” cuff training in order to prevent these occurrences and we will continue to do so.   However, I am beginning to re-think the volume of horizontal pulling that we incorporate into our programs at DSC. This is a number that will increase in the future and will directly affect the push/pull ratio within our program design.

The use of debit card transaction has grown considerable over the years. Although I’ve never enjoyed watching money leave my account, the convenience is priceless. One swipe and magic, money has disappeared! With convenience one also has to assume risk. If you overdraw (miscalculate your funds) your account may be suspended, closed and accumulated debt is inevitable. In-Season strength and conditioning is debit card management! Too many transactions/stimulus and athletes fail to recover, leaving their accounts empty and exposed. Below are several major programming differences between an off-season and in-season hockey (insert any sport here) strength and conditioning program.

As strength and conditioning professionals our job is to provide a safe platform for our athletes to develop strength, power, speed and other specific variables that can directly impact athletic performance. Simply put, we manage stress for a living. We prescribe specific doses of stress to elicit desired adaptation(s).   Too little we fail to alter performance. Too much, overtraining and organism breakdown are the result.  It is our goal to apply the right amount of stress at the right time to allow adaptation to occur (hypertrophy, strength, power ect.).

If there is one thing I’ve learned over the years training youth athletes’ it’s to NEVER take anything for granted. Just when you think something is too obvious to be addressed, it reaches out and smacks you right between the eyes. I know that over the years I’ve learned from these encounters and now take every step necessary to avoid the “obvious” mistake of not addressing the obvious (I know the word obvious was used several times over the last few sentences, it’s obvious). Below are three Tips from the Trenches and experiences that I have learned from along the way. Hopefully this can allow you to learn from my mistakes. 

Donskov Strength and Conditioning has built a niche over the years training hockey players. I would imagine my previous career in the sport (both at the college and semi-pro level) has led to the large influx of players and organizations entrusting DSC to train their athletes. I would also hope that my thirst for knowledge and professional experience in exercise science far surpasses my so-called career as a player. John Wooden once said “Don’t confuse professional experience with your ability to teach it.” Just because you played, doesn’t mean you’re a qualified coach. Although we take pride in our niche base of hockey players, I’ve never been a fan of what I would call “specificity overkill”, or sports specific overkill. Our job is defined, as Strength and Conditioning professionals not sport coaches. What’s the job of a strength and conditioning coach? Pretty simple; improve strength and conditioning qualities that can tangibly be carried over into competition!  Some qualities overlap regardless of sport. Some do not.

I have had the privileged of training a youth hockey organization here in Columbus, Ohio for the last five years. To say the experience has been rewarding would be an understatement. I truly believe one of the best ways in which I’ve evolved, as a strength coach is my experience training the youth population. Young hyper mobile Tommy who’s only experience in the weight room was lifting in Dad’s basement doing a heavy dose of arm curls and triceps extensions posses a completely different set of issues than training a college/professional athlete. The former is a novice lifter needing a solid foundation of stability, strength and neuromuscular efficiency, where the latter may be an advanced lifter recovering from a grueling season, hypo-mobile, needing fluctuating stress levels to adapt. I enjoy training both populations. I love my job.

The current state of youth development is at a crossroads. What we’ve done for the past decade or so has been sub par. Kids have been encouraged to specialize at an early age (year round), play too many games, and parents dream on behalf of their children with the cumulative result to this equation leading to burnout and an underdevelopment of our youth.   Hockey is a glaring example. Here are some of the issues currently plaguing youth development (exert taken from Misha Donskov/ADM presentation):