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Best Way to Win Games

What’s the best way to win a hockey game?

Ask ten coaches that question, and you’ll hear answers like:

“Score more goals than your opponent.”

“Special teams.”

“Great goaltending.”

“No turnovers.”

“Aggressive forechecking, tight defense.”

All important, no doubt.

But they’re not the MAIN difference between winning and losing.

So what is?

Having your best players healthy and in the lineup.

History is full of examples of this…

The Buffalo Sabres looked a strong candidate to win the Cup in 2006.

But then they had to play the Eastern Conference Finals with four of their top defenders – Teppo Numminen, Dmitri Kalinin, Jay McKee and Henrik Tallinder – on the injured list.

The Carolina Hurricanes plowed through the injury-ridden Sabres in Game 7.

And went on to hoist the Cup that summer.

9 straight wins to kick off the 2015-2016 season, and Canadiens fans were already planning the club’s 25th Stanley Cup parade along the usual route in downtown Montreal.

Then Carey Price suffered a lower body injury in November, sat on the shelf the rest of the season and the Canadiens missed the last playoff spot in East by 11 points.

At the apex of his career, Sidney Crosby dominated the first half of the 2010-2011 campaign and was on pace to score 132 points that season.

Then he suffered two concussions in back-to-back games, which left him sidelined close to a year.

The high flying Penguins transformed from a Cup contender to a first round exit the moment Dave Steckel’s shoulder connected with Crosby’s head in the final minutes of the 2011 Winter Classic.

Sure, not every injury that occurs in hockey can be prevented.

But it’d be foolish to overlook the importance of doing everything you can to keep guys healthy.

One silly injury to your starting goaltender, #1 center or top offensive D-man could mean the difference between winning and losing.

Especially in the playoffs.

For a great resource that keeps your best players healthy and playing at the top of their game, go to:

http://www.NextLevelHockeyTraining.com

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5 Random Tips for Faster Strength Gains

Here we go…

1. On chin-ups, think of driving your elbows down and back to properly engage the lats instead of just pulling with the arms.

2. Wave volume and intensity over time for best gains in strength, size and work capacity.

This goes out to all y’all bangin’ out 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps or 5×5 for six months in a row.

3. On single-leg movements like split squats or reverse lunges, think of pushing the heel of the working leg through the ground.

This helps with maintaining stability and allows you to lift more weight.

4. Add slow eccentrics into your workouts.

But be sure to limit them to the off-season. Guys hate how the subsequent muscle soreness makes their legs feel heavy on the ice during hockey season.

5. Do push-ups, dips, rows and chins on rings to maximize upper body development.

One look at a male gymnast’s upper body tells us everything you need to know about how effective the rings are for that.

To learn how to use these (and many, many more) tips in your off-ice workouts for the best results, hop over to:

http://www.NextLevelHockeyTraining.com

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Taking Your Vitamins the Russian Way

I’m sure you’ve heard the breaking news already…

The ENTIRE Russian U18 team got caught one day before leaving for the World Championships in the biggest mass doping scandal in hockey history.

Kids these days…

Sheesh.

Funny thing is, there are much better (not to mention healthier!) methods for improving performance than ye ol’ “Russian way” that involves gagging down a plethora of pills your coach hands out after practice.

How do I know this?

For starters, I trained three Finnish players that won silver at the 2015 U18 World’s since last summer.

All of them made great strength gains and took their game to the next level this season.

Two of the guys were called up to play in the Finnish Elite League, and the third won gold at WJC 2016 as well as the MVP title in the Finnish U20 league.

Another three of my athletes made the roster for Team Finland at this year’s U18 tournament starting next week.

And rest assured, not a single paper cup filled with colorful “vitamins” was ever given to these players in the locker room.

All you need to make great performance gains is a solid off-ice training program.

No doping required.

Grab yours at:

http://www.NextLevelHockeyTraining.com

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Research Study Gives Training Guru Black Eye

Here’s something you may find interesting.

One of the things I talk about in my Next Level Hockey Training System is the importance of getting strong (relative to your bodyweight)…

And how becoming strong will help you better perform on the ice.

It’s amazing how many hockey players don’t get this.

They’ll run laps and lift puny weights all day long because they listened to some clueless “training guru” on the internet.

Here’s the kicker…

A study from 2011 compared off-ice testing results and game performance of 24 members of an NCAA D1 men’s hockey team.

Among a battery of fitness tests, the researchers found only a few tests to be predictive of player performance.

Those were…

* Leg press

* Chin-up

* Bench press

* Repeat sprinting ability

While I personally don’t value the leg press for athletic performance (a squat variation would be better in my honest, but ALWAYS accurate, opinion), the proof is in the pudding…

Lower and upper body strength combined with speed and explosiveness maketh a hockey player.

It’s what I’ve been saying all along.

To become the strong, fast, powerful hockey player you were meant to be, check out:

http://www.NextLevelHockeyTraining.com

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Do You Make These 4 Common Training Mistakes? (Part Deux)

Continuing with the post from two days ago on common training mistakes I was asked about in an interview…

Mistake #3: Using machines almost exclusively

If they’re training legs, people will do some leg extensions, move on to the leg press, hop on the lying leg curl machine, then do a few hip abductions and adductions, and call it a day after that.

What a waste of time.

You would get a much better training effect when replacing those exercises with a single- or double-leg squat variation, deadlift variation, glute ham raises and hip thrusts.

Machines can be useful for certain exercises and in certain situations but the majority of your training should consist of free weights – barbells, dumbbells and your own bodyweight.

Mistake #4: Unbalanced training

By “unbalanced”, I mean guys will work the show muscles (chest, shoulders & arms) all day long, and completely neglect the backside of the body – the upper back, glutes and hamstrings.

Overemphasizing the front side of the body will lead to muscular imbalances, slouchy posture and increase injury risk.

Not to mention that a dude with a pancake ass and wet noodles for hamstrings won’t score high with the ladies.

Or dominate on the field or pitch.

Just sayin’.

To rid yourself of a flat ass, shaky hamstrings and a frail upper body, go to:

http://www.NextLevelHockeyTraining.com

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How to Piss Away a Billion Dollars Overnight

A fleet of Rolls-Royces.

A $5,700,000 crown worn by the bride. (that’s not a typo)

Performances from J. Lo, Sting and Enrique Iglesias.

And a nine-tier iced wedding cake, decorated with garlands of white and pink flowers, looming taller than any of the 600 guests in attendance.

All part of the world’s first billion dollar wedding taking place last week at a luxury Moscow restaurant as a billionaire oil tycoon’s 28-year-old son got married to a dentistry student.

This got me thinking…

If I had a spare billion to piss away like that, what would I buy?

Hmmm, let’s see…

Soooo, there’s an island only a ten-minute helicopter ride away in South Beach that costs $110 million?

Sold.

The “Blue Moon”, a rare 12.03-carat blue diamond ring currently worn by some snotty, spoiled 7-year-old brat in Hong Kong demanding a measly $48.5 million for it?

My precious.

And an Australian company has got a roll of gold toilet paper up for sale… 3-ply, 22-carats, 100% safe for just $1.3 million?

Hook me up, sir.

Then again, I COULD stop acting like a rich, pompous bastard and invest some of that moolah into something useful…

Like a top level off-ice training program guaranteed to take your strength, power and performance to the next level.

Best part?

You won’t piss away a billion dollars.

But you’ll feel like a million bucks when you’re done with the workouts.

Details at:

http://www.NextLevelHockeyTraining.com

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Do You Make These 4 Common Training Mistakes?

A journalist writing a piece for an online mainstream fitness site recently approached me with this question:

“What do you think is the biggest mistake people make when working out? What is the best way to recover from the mistake and/or avoid it in the first place?”

Your typical mainstream fitness guy or girl isn’t my piece of pie, really.

I have zero interest in that crowd and RARELY accept non-athletes as clients.

But since the journalist wanted to hear my perspective as someone who trains athletes and I don’t like to turn interviews down, I showed her the green light.

So here’s what I told her…

Mistake #1: Not having clear goals

People say they want to “get back in shape” or “lose some weight”. Those are not goals, they’re wishes.

Goals are clear, definite, written objectives you can measure and keep track of over time. That’s how you know you’re moving in the right direction or if you need to adjust what you’re doing.

An example of a solid goal could be “I will lose 10 pounds of fat in the next 90 days” or “I will deadlift 400 pounds by the end of the year”.

Mistake #2: Not having a training program

A dude can spend 15 minutes “warming up” on the elliptical or treadmill – which doesn’t even prepare the body for strength training, by the way – go from barbell benching to incline dumbbell bench to dumbbell flyes, then hit the pec deck machine and round it all up with some cable crossovers because they heard that you need to “hit the muscle from all angles”.

After that they jog another 15-30 minutes on the treadmill, feeling out of breath and oblivious to the fact that their workout was far from productive.

There’s no rhyme or reason to what they are doing.

It’s all based on what they feel like doing on any given day and the false assumption that you need to completely trash a muscle to make it stronger and bigger.

That’s not smart training and definitely not how you get maximal results.

You need to have a written plan detailing the exact exercises, sets, reps and rest periods before you even enter the gym. This one minor adjustment alone will put you ahead of 80% of all gym-goers.

And what about the other two cardinal training mistakes I told the reporter chick?

We’ll get to them in another post in a day or two. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, scurry over to NextLevelHockeyTraining.com to make sure you avoid all the mistakes that rob people of their gainzzz.