I regret you leaving too. Bob Ford will forever be one of the top 3 humans I have ever been around in my life.Originally Posted by John Janecek
Starting Strength Coach
Bleed Purple brother! Only job in 27 years I regret leaving for the "next best thing" on the coaching ladder...
Member
I regret you leaving too. Bob Ford will forever be one of the top 3 humans I have ever been around in my life.
Member
Awesome to hear the SS model impacting student's lives!
I recently finished my secondary school teaching practicum in Physical and Health Education (PHE) where I had the opportunity to teach the "Senior Weight Training" class for 5 months. Before Christmas I had written a post asking for some advice on how to best implement SS with a large group of high school students. The responses I received were very helpful and allowed me to make the most of my limited time. Unlike the aforementioned story, however, I was in the public school system.
It was pretty rough in the beginning. Class size (35 students), individual instruction time, lackadaisical attitudes, and limited space made for a difficult starting point. After about two (frustrating) weeks, I started an after-school Weightlifting Club. This afforded me two advantages: I could spend more time teaching the students who actually cared about this stuff (most people took the class for the perceived "easy A"), and I was able to more effectively lay the groundwork for the rest of the students during our designated class time. FYI: Teenage hockey players do not like being told their 225lb "knee hinges" are not proper squats. Lots of bruised egos.
It took about a month, but the Weightlifting Club eventually grew from 5 students to just over 20...pretty surprising, for a public school. I wrote out monthly workout logs for all the students to track their progress and record what they did each day (I literally had to spell everything out for them, otherwise they wouldn't do it). By the end of my practicum I felt really good about the progress of most of my class. Girls who had sheepishly taken the class were now squatting more than their bodyweight and the hockey bros finally learned how to squat properly. Moreover, I was able to impart some of the knowledge I gleaned from SSBBT3 and PPST. It is often said, "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink"; while this may be true, I made all the horses in my class very thirsty.
Additionally, I created some "performance challenges" for the students to compete in. After all, PE needs to have an element of fun! Many of these challenges mimicked Strongman events and were typically done at the end of the week. One particularly entertaining challenge involved a 40m unweighted ProwlerPush (we tried loaded pushes with 10lb/side...copious amounts of vomiting ensued) followed by an 80m trap-bar carry with 135lb. The students loved these types of challenges and I was always creating new ones for the end of Friday's class each week.
It was really encouraging to read a success story of strength training at a high school. It can be very challenging and I applaud the achievement. Keep up the great work!
Starting Strength Coach
Couldn't agree more. Best coach I ever worked for.
Member
Great story. Pretty similar to our situation. I know hockey is big in your part of the world, it is here as well. Our league is the best prep league in the US. The problem we face with those guys is two fold, 1) They literally skate hard 12 months a year and play 5 games in a weekend leading up to their season 2) Most come from great affluence and have spent 10's of thousands of dollars on coaches and "guru's" to tell them what they want to hear. It is amazing to see the difference between our hockey kids from the fall and the Lacrosse/Football kids in the winter. The recovery aspect of their training is non existent. Even with modest weights to start, they stall a linear progression in two weeks from all the hockey they play. They get discourage because they are always exhausted and aren't making the progress in the weight room they would like. To combat that, we have to weigh them every single day to ensure that they eat enough. That helped a great deal. Knowing they are going to get weighed in and get a lashing if the scale doesn't go up, is enough motivation for most. They also get embarrassed when I refuse to let them lift when they are shot. When they can't do what the other guys are doing in the weight room, it sends a clear message that something has to change. After a few years of beating my head against a wall with those guys, I switched over to coach Janecek's approach with a timed lift. It ensures they get decent volume, even if the intensity isn't very high on particular days. It also made every lift a "success", meaning they weren't getting pinned on a weekly basis. They progressed, but at a slower rate. It is just the nature of the beast. I have the luxury during the winter of breaking my groups into "developmental" and "advanced" groups. The "developmental" kids lift on the clock. It gets them a ton of practice under the bar. The "advanced" group runs a linear progression for 8-10 weeks. These kids get strong.
I really do believe that this way of training will spread and people will start to figure it out, at least I hope.
Member
Amen to this. It's actually insane when you look at how "elite training academies" structure their programming/scheduling for their athletes. Off the top of my head I can think of several hockey-specific training facilities in my city that market state-of-the-art training (i.e.: they tell people it's what the Vancouver Canucks use) programs which, in reality, are no more than a hodgepodge of intense conditioning exercises. The kids graduate high school at 6'0, weighing 170lbs, and are embarrassingly weak albeit very talented hockey players. Blows my mind that this type of "strength training" is being hailed as the standard for elite hockey performance...in a country which has dominated the hockey world since time eternal (sorry, America)! You're right when you say recovery is virtually non-existent with this population. Between the demands of school work, club hockey, hockey academy training, and "strength training facilities" (which have these athletes doing endless kettle-bell swings and medicine ball twists on bosu balls) these kids are exhausted all the time. Many of them don't even show up to school until after lunch because their parents let them sleep in due to the intense demands of their hockey.
For those who don't believe me, you can visit the websites of these training centres and watch their promo videos. Pretty eye-opening stuff. Not to mention you have to put a second mortgage on your house to afford it! I have yet to hear of a training facility in my city (private or mainstream) that preaches simple linear progression, with properly programmed recovery, as the best way to improve strength in young athletes. And since I'm Canadian I'll go ahead and apologize for our collective lack of understanding.
Member
We have always struggled with our best hockey players, for the most part, being terrible lifters. Most have been to their "elite" hockey trainers. Their mechanics in all of the lifts are terrible, on the edge of causing injury. It doesn't make the job easier when the average kids see the really talented kids be terrible in the weight room and honestly, not trying to get better. B/c they don't pay me thousands of dollars, I know nothing. The kids who stick with it see the benefits rather quickly. Our high end kids are really high end. In the last 3 years, 4 or 5 kids will end up in the NHL at some point in their careers. 3 of them are unsuspecting looking but are incredibly talented on the ice. Side note, I was able to drink from "The Cup" this summer b/c one of our alums was on the Penguins. I am not a hockey fan, but it was pretty cool.
Working with high end football and basketball players is fun because they both look the part and are incredible athletes. It helps to push the lesser athletes because they see the great players performing at a high level in the weight room. It's the funny thing about those two sports, generally, not all athletes that look the part are good, but most of the good ones look the part.
Being in this environment, our kids see what genetic potential looks like as well. We had a top 100 high school football player, who will likely leave college early and be a first round pick. He was not the hardest worker, often times lazy, but the very first time he did a hang clean he did 275 lbs with zero effort. At 270lb's he could 360 dunk a basketball and ran a sub 4.7 electric 40. As a strength coach, I had nothing to do with that, and I tell the other kids that. I refuse to hide behind this kids talent. I worked with him and helped when he was willing, but that talent is god given. It makes our lesser kids work harder, which is nice.
Starting Strength Coach
I have been actively involved in hockey my whole life as a coach, pro shop manager, and player. I have trained many hockey players over the years in my gym. The problem is that they skate way too much and there is never an off-season. It is impossible for the Bantam Major/Midget Minor/Major/Junior players to develop any strength and that is often what holds most of these kids back from going on to the next level.
The ex. phys. guys have done a great job of grossly polluting the off-ice training of these kids with silly conditioning work. The kids are already on the ice 5-6 days a week and do not need any additional conditioning work, but that is the only thing these ridiculous 'performance training centers' offer. There is rarely a lack of conditioning among young hockey players, but almost always a lack of strength.
When a kid is run down from too many games, too many practices, and too much conditioning how can you expect them to perform? And when they are embarrassingly weak to begin with they really don't stand a chance. The only training off the ice a kid should be doing during the season is squatting once a week, pressing once a week, benching once a week, deadlifting once a week, power cleaning once a week, and maybe a few chin ups. It would help to have a good coach making sure they are doing it right and programming the load for each session, and it would be even better if the players started the season strong to begin with.
Of course, the guys who are skilled enough always dominate no matter what (Gretzky's all-time bench max was 140), but there are a lot of guys that could perform well at the next level if they were just a little bigger and stronger. Every time I hear people talking about the NHL draft, I never hear the scouts talking about the kid needing to pass better or skate backwards more smoothly, it is always...he needs to be bigger and stronger to play in this league.
It takes an educated parent to understand all of this and to help. The coaches, rinks, and camps all want kids on the ice year round to pay the bills and most hockey players love the game enough that they don't want to take a break. Taking three-four months off to run a novice progression and gain some muscular body weight is the most important thing a developing hockey player could do for their career and probably less than .00001% ever get an opportunity to do so. We need to do a better job of letting people know about this. I guess I should write an article for all my hockey friends about the importance of strength.
I have a kid that is supposed to go to the NTPD (US National Team Development Program) in two years that I worked with this past season starting back up in a few weeks. We struggled making much progress during the season for all the stated reasons, so I am hoping we get a few solid months this summer to make some gainzzz.
Member
It's almost criminal when you consider the amount of money spent sending kids to train at "elite performance centres". I wrote a post last year asking for advice on how to convince a family member that my strength training wasn't going to lead to heart disease, obesity, and atherosclerosis; that was a tough enough sell in and of itself and took a great deal of well-documented research on my part to prove the point. I can only imagine the struggle with trying to convince a parent that their darling little athlete isn't actually benefiting from their "elite training"!
Any thoughts as to how you'd approach this with your athletes? While I myself do not train elite level hockey players I do interacted tangentially with the Vancouver Giants (WHL) hockey team.
Member
As an addendum, here is an example of what we are pitched up here in Vancouver:
http://http://twistuniversity.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/Linked-System-Strength-Training.pdf
At first glance things don't sound so bad but, upon practical application, things go from zero-to-sixty pretty fast. This particular hockey training centre is heralded as one of the top training facilities in the country. As you can see from their training videos, this is primarily a conditioning program billed as a strength training program:
http://http://www.twistperformance.com/SportsPerformance
During my younger years as a provincial-level competitive athlete, anyone who was anyone in the Vancouver sports scene would rave about the "incredible strength training program" offered by this facility. Knowing what I know now, it seems a lot of sizzle and no steak.
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