Yunus Barisik, Author at Next Level Athletics

Yunus Barisik

Author Archives: Yunus Barisik

Yunus Barisik, CSCS, specializes in making hockey players strong, fast and explosive. He has trained 500+ hockey players at the junior, college and pro levels, including NHL Draft picks and World Champions. An accomplished author, Yunus has had articles published on top fitness and performance sites, including T Nation, STACK and Muscle & Strength. He also wrote Next Level Hockey Training, a comprehensive resource for ice hockey players on building athletic strength, size and power, while staying injury-free.

6 Reasons Why You Gotta Train with Gymnastic Rings

6 REASONS WHY YOU GOTTA TRAIN WITH GYMNASTIC RINGS

UPDATED JANUARY 14, 2017

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According to Christopher Sommer, a well-known gymnastics coach, rings are the single greatest tool ever made for developing upper body strength, and something I include in every training program I write for clients with access to them beyond the beginner stage.

Even though they may look like a relatively simple training implement, I need to stress the fact that you shouldn’t underestimate the usefulness and difficulty of training with gymnastic rings.

Push-ups on the ground, dips on bars or L-sits on parallettes are no comparison to performing these exercises on rings.

In fact, they’re not even in the same ballpark.

A guy could easily be able to do 20 bodyweight dips on a dip station, yet not be able to perform a single good rep on rings. They’re that hard.

If you haven’t already experienced the great training stimulus that gymnastic rings can offer, here are 6 reasons why you should include them in your strength training program.

Reason #1 – Great Upper Body Strength & Size Gains

How to Avoid Shoulder Pain

I wish there had been a resource on keeping shoulders healthy when I first got into barbell strength training, because I certainly could have used it.

Or maybe there was but I was too thick-skulled to listen. Injuries are for old guys and pussies, I always thought.

Boy, was I wrong.

While I’m by no means a “shoulder expert”, my own shoulder problems have led me to modify and find safer ways of training over the years.

Plus, I have seen my fair share of guys with shoulder issues training hockey players – a sport where shoulder injuries are about as commonplace as Big Macs on a fat kid’s dinner plate.

So without further ado, here are a few simple tips how to keep training hard while preventing shoulder pain.

5 Stanley Cup Champ Training Tips from the Chicago Blackhawks

With another great NHL season in the books, here are 5 training and success tips inspired by the 2015 Chicago Blackhawks Cup run.

1. Set Goals and Follow Through on Them

The one thing that separates the successful from those who never get anywhere in life is that winners set goals, then relentlessly pursue them until they get what they want.

Revisiting the 2015 NHL Draft Combine Testing Results

Last weekend, the annual NHL Scouting Combine took place in preparation for the 2015 NHL Draft held June 26-27 in Sunrise, Florida.

I’ve briefly mentioned Combine results in the past when discussing body fat levels of elite athletes from various sports.

There are some aspects of Combine testing that I disagree with but that would warrant its own article.

Today we’re gonna take a quick look at what happened when the top 120 draft-eligible prospects in hockey came together for a weekend of physical and medical assessments.

What Stood Out and What Can We Learn from the Combine?

Let’s look at the top 10 results in vertical jump, bench press and pull-ups. I picked these as they’re the simplest tests for power and upper body strength, and what most people are familiar with.

6 Snatch Tips for Athletes

No man should ever experience a life without snatch.

If you want bigger, stronger, healthier shoulders and a higher vertical jump, you gotta know how to perform and progress snatches safely over time.

Here are six ways to getting the most out of them.

1. Start with 1 Arm Dumbbell Snatches

I know some strength coaches dislike 1 arm DB snatches due to lack of hip extension – one well-known guy called them “not even a real lift” to my face not too long ago.

While I don’t disagree with that notion, I still believe they deserve a place in a proper strength training program.

It’s by far the easiest snatch variation to teach, thus making it very attractive in my eyes for teaching a large group of athletes how to accelerate and decelerate external loads rapidly.

Off-Season Hockey Strength Program: Phase 1

Note: I wrote this article back in 2015.

While I still use many of the same methods and principles explained below with my hockey players, the workout plan feels outdated to me.

I'm always tweaking and testing my strength program to give better results to athletes. That's why workouts from a few years back won't be as effective as what I'm doing today.

Access my latest, updated off-ice training programs here:

http://www.NextLevelHockeyTraining.com

During the final week of my internship under Kevin Neeld at Endeavor Sports Performance last year, I was given the assignment of writing a 12-week off-season training program for an imaginary teenage hockey player and one for a pro level hockey player.

After putting pen on paper, Kevin proceeded to ~~roast~~ question me for an hour in his office about why I chose specific exercises, sets/reps/rest periods, tempos and everything else involved in designing a comprehensive strength training plan.

Having to defend my view points to a much more knowledgeable and experienced strength coach was definitely a great learning experience and increased my confidence in being able to rationalize my training philosophy and methods to just about anyone.

I’ve had a few people, both online and in person, ask me about off-season hockey training – so I thought I’d use this article to give those of you interested a glimpse into how we train.

4 Reasons Why High Frequency Training Leads to Faster Strength Gains

My own training has been going really well as of late, which can be evidenced by numerous PR’s I’ve hit over the past few months.

I believe a big reason behind this is increased training frequency coupled with performing only a handful of key lifts while training with submaximal weights, something that I rarely see mentioned in fitness magazines where the typical recommendation revolves around increasing exercise selection and workout volume within a single session.

Trains with high frequency – is ridiculously strong

I’ve always believed the standard way of splitting the body in smaller muscle groups, then training each body part once per week is about the worst thing you can do as a natural person with average genetics when trying to improve strength and athleticism.

However, for the longest time I bought into the notion that you could only train “heavy” three times per week for fear of overtraining.

While I still think 3 full-body or upper/lower training sessions per week works well for quite a while for just about anyone looking to experience marked strength and size increases, at some point you need to try something different to blast through plateaus.

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