NEWS & EVENTS
  Cal Hogan trained with us for almost 4 months before starting baseball. All his hard work has paid off as he's having an unbelievable season for St. Augustine Prep. He currently boasts a .488 batting average and is tied for the team lead in RBIs with 16. Check out this article (and the big picture of Cal) on St. Augustine earning a big to the Joe Hartmann Diamond Classic with a big win over Holy Spirit. Big Win Brings Prep Baseball Team a Award -Kevin Neeld
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If you’ve been reading your emails, you know I’m not a huge fan of distance running (or other steady-state forms of “aerobic” exercise) for athletes. In fact, I think it’s counterproductive. Sometimes when I talk about this I get the feeling that people regard my comments as “theory” and refer back to the “this is the way I did it, and it worked for me” mentality. Addressing the latter, our understanding of the interaction of the nervous system and soft-tissue structures within the body, as they relate to performance, has DRASTICALLY improved over the last 15 years. If you were going in for heart surgery and your 65 year-old surgeon said, “I’m going to follow the same protocol they used when I was a kid”, you’d find a new surgeon. Training is no different. Distance running has been rooted in sports training for decades, but it is NOT the most effective (results) or efficient (time) way to conditioning athletes. Consider the conclusions from a recent study: - Prolonged endurance exercise reduces the ability to produce force at high velocities. - Long-term aerobic training results in a decrease in the absolute content of fast twitch muscle fibres (Type IIa and Type IIx), which results in a decreased ability to produce high amounts of force or produce force rapidly. - Compared to strength training alone, combined strength and endurance training results in a significant increase in total cortisol (a hormone with a catabolic effect on muscle) levels, possibly due to the excessive stress of adrenal activation. Interestingly, strength training alone has actually been shown to decrease cortisol levels. - When the total amount of work is equal, continuous and interval training produced equivalent adaptations in aerobic capacity, but the interval training resulted in greater adaptations in anaerobic capacity and power output. - Compared to an aerobic training group, an interval training group lost 9x as much body fat. This occurs despite the interval training group burning less overall calories. - Compared with controls, sprinters had a significantly increased compliance and elasticity of the tendon and aponeurosis of the vastus lateralis and medial gastrocnemius at high levels of force production, whereas long-distance runners had a significantly decreased compliance and ability to absorb energy. Reference: Elliott, M., Wagner, P., & Chiu, L. (2007). Power Athletes and Distance Training: Physiological and Biomechanical Rationale for Change. Sports Medicine, 37(1), 47-57. There were several other notable conclusions from that study as well, but the take-home message is already clear. For team sport athletes, conditioning should be done using interval training, which improves the athletes’ ability to move explosively for a longer period of time. To your continued success, Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS Director of Athletic Development (856) 269-4148 P.S. In-season, pre-season, off-season, it doesn't matter. Training is a YEAR-ROUND process. Call me today at (856) 269-4148 or send me an email to start training to take your game to the next level today!
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Almost inevitably when a parent or coach steps into our facility while we’re training their kid/team, one of the first things that comes out of their mouth is, “They aren’t even sweating. Work them harder!” I’ll be the first one to point out a lazy athlete and the first to speak out about the benefits of hard work (read: effort) on physical and mental toughness. Having said that, there is FAR more to training than just making someone sweat. Michael Boyle once said, “Any idiot can write a book, and most idiots do.” I say, “Any idiot with a whistle can make someone tired, and most idiots do.” It’s important as parents and coaches that we learn to dissociate fatigue and effective training. If I asked 100 athletes if they wanted to be more explosive and faster, I bet I’d get a yes response 100 times. By definition, maximal effort throughout training requires the athlete to be well-rested. We have a saying at Endeavor: “Explosive. Not tired.” I’ve found that most of our athletes are conditioned to sprint, jog back to the starting line, then go again immediately. The second you start a sprint while still breathing heavily, your speed training has officially become conditioning. Before speed, power, and most strength training, I want our athletes to be focused and recovered. I want concentrated maximal effort. I get that athletes need to be able to focus and move efficiently when they’re fatigued, but the only way to improve their maximal capacity is to train them under well-rested conditions. My colleague Jim Snider, Strength and Conditioning Coach at the University of Wisconsin, recently said to me, “You can’t have speed endurance if you don’t have speed.” Point taken. There’s a time and a place for conditioning, but it should not be the entire focus of the training session. As an example, a typical training session at Endeavor may look like: Dynamic Warm-Up (Joint mobility and muscular activation work): 10 mins Speed Training (Linear and Transitional): 10-15 mins Power Training (Jump training, med ball throws, and Olympic lifts): 10-15 mins Strength Training (Lower Body, Upper Body, and Pro- and Anti- Linear and Rotational Core Training): 30-45 mins Conditioning (Shuttle Runs, Slideboards, Sled Drags, and Work Capacity Circuits): 10-15 mins In 10-15 minutes of conditioning, we’re able to improve our athlete’s ability to perform at a high level and recover rapidly between efforts (the ultimate goal of conditioning). THAT is when your athletes should look tired, not during the speed work in the beginning. Think quality, not quantity. To your continued success, Kevin Neeld, MS, CSCS Director of Athletic Development kneeld@endeavorfit.com (856) 269-4148 P.S. In-season, pre-season, off-season, it doesn't matter. Training is a YEAR-ROUND process. Call me today at (856) 269-4148 or send me an email to start training to take your game to the next level today!
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Eric Tangradi (’89) was recently called up from the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins to play his first NHL game for the Pittsburgh Penguins. On Sunday, April 11th. Eric faced off against he Islanders up in Long Island. In the game, Eric played wing alongside center Jordan Stall and Tyler Kennedy. Eric saw about 14 minutes of ice time during the game, including close to three minutes of powerplay time. He registered 4 shots and 4 hits in the game along with 4. Over the course of the game Eric got more and more comfortable, and created several great scoring opportunities. Hopefully this is a sign of things to come! From the Endeavor Staff, congratulations Eric! All your hard work is paying off.
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I’m going to start this one with a quick question: What is the primary function of the rotator cuff? If you answered external rotation (or internal rotation), you are wrong. Even if external (and internal) rotation is a function of the rotator cuff, it is not its main function. The primary function of the rotator cuff muscles is to stabilize the humeral head in the glenoid fossa. Your rotator cuff needs to stabilize the humeral head to prevent it from moving in the joint capsule when you press, row, throw, etc. Now let’s consider the type of exercises we use to train the rotator cuff. We all typically use some kind of external or internal rotation based movement at the shoulder to train it, right? Now that we know that the primary function of the rotator cuff is one of stabilization, we might want to incorporate rotator cuff exercises that will train this function. The most basic exercise for this purpose would be the supine dynamic stabilization with the help of a partner. The goal is to resist any random perturbation the partner is going to apply to your arm and try to prevent it from moving. (The perturbations the partner apply to your arm should be light pushes, they should be random to keep you from guessing which way he’s going to go next and there should be at least a second between each pushes so your shoulder has time to stabilize completely). There is a variety of progressions with this exercise alone just by getting your arm in a different position, changing your body position, or even by just closing your eyes (which will increase the proprioceptive challenge of the exercise since you can’t anticipate the perturbations). Here’s one variation in the half kneeling position with the arm abducted. And finally, the 1-Arm Wall Stability Ball Hold, that we use quite a bit at Endeavor with a lot of our athletes. Kevin Neeld actually came up with this one. At first you’re going to see the basic exercise, and then a progression we use by simply adding a partner perturbation to the ball or forearm. For a better understanding of the rotator cuff and how to train it for optimal performance, I would highly recommend you check out Eric Cressey and Mike Reinold’s new product: Optimal Shoulder Performance. I attended this seminar back in November, and I have to admit that the investment was worth every penny (I’m actually the big fat head in the red hoody we see constantly during the lecture parton the DVD!). -David Lasnier
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