Why Most Youth Strength Training Programs Suck
The vast majority of youth “strength training” or “athletic performance” programs suck.
Why?
1. They fail to make you strong.
2. They don’t teach you how to move well – which is a pre-requisite for getting strong.
Here’s one of our 17-year-olds sumo deadlifting 190 kg / 418 pounds for 5 reps.
And it’s not uncommon for our 16- and 17-year-olds to do walking lunges with 80, 90, or even 100+ kg as you see here…
Not to toot my own horn or anything…
But our guys get strong.
And they do so while displaying good lifting form.
Unfortunately, this is hardly the case with most junior hockey players.
I’ve talked about what’s wrong with our current way of training young athletes before in detail in this post.
And now, STACK.com published my article where I explain the biggest mistake in youth strength training programs.
Read the full scoop here:
2016 Off-Season Training Highlights – Part 2
My hockey guys were hitting PR’s in the gym week in, week out during the off-season.
But it wasn’t just about lifting weights this summer.
As I’ve said many times before, pushing, pulling and squatting a heavy bar is NOT the only part of developing true athleticism.
So we sprinted, we jumped, we changed directions, we pushed the sled and carried heavy objects for distance.
Here’s a taste of what took place in our off-season program…
We had so many guys reach new levels of strength that it would take me ages to upload all their lifting videos to Youtube.
I’m a lazy bastard, so I won’t do that.
But I’ll end this post with a solid display of raw strength.
Here’s Matias Nisula of our U20 team trap bar deadlifting 235 kg for a big PR to cap off the off-season in style.
Props to all the guys for a solid effort throughout the summer. Things will only get better as we move on to in-season training starting next week.
I expect big PR’s all season long…
2016 Off-Season Training Highlights
It has been a great summer.
I had the chance to train ca. 100 hockey players, including college, Junior National Team, and U18 and U20 World Champions.
Even if I say so myself, the strength improvements we’ve witnessed have been excellent.
Here are our U18 and U20 hockey players hitting heavy singles on chin-ups during the last week of the off-season.
I’ll be posting some more vids in the next few days.
Stay tuned…
World Championship, MVP Honors & NHL Draft Pick
Time to break my summer writing slump with a quick shout-out.
This past weekend, the Pittsburgh Penguins – current Stanley Cup champs – picked Kasper Björkqvist of our Blues U20 team in the second round of the 2016 NHL Draft!
Photo credit: Pittsburgh Penguins Twitter
For the past year that I’ve trained him off the ice, we’ve been focusing on filling out his frame and making him as strong and powerful as possible in the gym.
Winning gold with Team Finland at WJC 2016 and earning MVP honors in the Finnish U20 League last season are proof that his efforts are paying dividends.
The Pens’ director of amateur scouting Randy Sexton stated that “We think he’s a year or two away from being ready to turn pro. He’s physically very strong, he’s got great hockey sense, his overall skillset is very, very strong”.
As a strength coach, nothing makes me happier than having NHL scouts and decision-makers praise one of my athletes for his physical strength.
That’s not all, though.
Five weeks into our off-season training this summer, Kasper told me he’s already “feeling faster than last year”.
And the fact he has been hitting PR’s in training week after week tells me it’s only gonna go forward and upward from here.
To experience the off-ice training methods that get NHL hotshots giddy about their draft picks’ physical performance, go to:
World Champions! (Again)
I called it.
10 days ago, I told you how Team Finland was gearing up for the U18 World Championships in Grand Forks, ND with one goal in mind…
Winning gold.
And last night they did, beating Sweden 6-1 in the final after a convincing performance.
A personal highlight was watching three of the players I trained this season – Kasper Kotkansalo, Emil Oksanen and Urho Vaakanainen – celebrating on the ice after the final.
All that hard work and the hours they put in on and off the ice obviously paid off.
With our U20 National Team clinching the WJC title just three months ago, I’m proud to say we have produced a new generation of WINNERS.
So join me in congratulating Head Coach Jussi Ahokas and the entire U18 National Team for the World Championship.
Well done, boys.
If you want to experience the “World Champion approved” workouts I use with my Junior National Team players, check out:
Awesome Ab Exercise!
I’ve been burning the midnight oil (literally!) working on a cool new project. More on that in a couple weeks.
My own training has taken a hit because of that, which sucks big time – but that’s the price you pay when you’re busy creating wicked content through sleepless nights.
I did, however, manage to come up with an awesome new ab exercise.
I had seen some peeps doing fallouts on the TRX on Youtube, but couldn’t find anyone doing them on rings. So I decided to be the first.
This is basically a standing ab wheel performed on rings. I do think the rings make the movement slightly easier, since they hang in the air, and thus provide less friction than an ab wheel rolling on the floor.
Obviously, this is a fairly advanced core exercise. Just as you wouldn’t jump straight into doing standing ab wheels, you gotta work your way up to ring fallouts over time.
I first tried this exercise about a year or two ago – and completely bombed. I couldn’t even straighten out my arms with the rings at hip level.
But I’ve been hitting the abs in training with laser-like focus recently, hammering dragonflags, bodysaws and various ring exercises, so I thought I’d give these suckas a try again.
For those of you wondering, my progression scheme was extremely simple…
Dipped my toes in with the rings hanging at about upper thigh level a few weeks ago, and was surprised to see how easy it felt. Then I gradually lowered the rings a few inches every workout until I got all the way down to being parallel to the floor.
Put these bad boys in your bag of goodies and you’ll be one step closer to a core that’s not just all “show”, but 100% “go”.
Cool New Ring Push-Up Variation
Many of you have requested more training videos on this site.
And looks like I invented another awesome ring movement to kick off 2016.
So to appease the masses, here’s a cool new ring push-up variation.
Holy chest pump!
I’m dubbing this the Around the Clock Ring Push-Up.
Why?
Imagine your head is a clock and your arms the hands of that clock. As you go down into a push-up, the right arm remains close to the body while the left one goes straight forward – or 12 o’clock.
Next, your left arm goes forward and slightly to the side – at 10.30. Then, directly to the side, at 9 o’clock. And finally to the side and back, around 7.30.
Now you come back to 9, 10.30 and 12. That’s seven total reps. Then you repeat the same thing on the right side… 12 – 1.30 – 3 – 4.30 – 3 – 1.30 – 12 for another seven reps before moving back to the left side – if you still got enough juice to go on as your chest will be on fire at this point.
I got 24 reps in the video above, which isn’t too shabby considering it was the third time I tried this exercise.
This is a fairly advanced ring movement, so make sure you build up to it over time by first mastering these 6 ring push-up variations.