Bridge the Gap Lecture: The Art of Integration – Periodizing Speed, Power, & Strength in the Training Process

This article will focus on three common areas of injuries that occur with ice hockey players and some recommended strategies for the strength and conditioning professional.

This excerpt from Developing Agility and Quickness highlights the high-intensity, reactive agility hockey players require, and provides two agility drills that challenge that skill.

In this session from the 2015 NSCA TSAC Conference, Matt Wenning explains the sumo deadlift, a foundational exercise for maximal strength development and a tool that is essential to the tactical population due to its movement pattern. The ability to learn proper technique and progressions with this exercise can help to improve a tactical athlete’s performance and decrease the likelihood of injury because it trains major muscle groups and multiple joints at the same time.

This article provides medicine ball exercise progressions to help build athleticism in youth athletes.

By examining a practical approach to programming fundamentals based on a needs analysis and training objectives relative to the program, a foundational plan can be laid that may lead not only to the appropriate progression of a given officer but also to the mutual satisfaction of the trainer and trainee alike.

This book excerpt provides examples of quickness drills that may improve the ability to identify a specific stimulus and to respond quickly and appropriately.

The following article is an example training program that was built based on personal experience and research for an in-season soccer athlete.

Brett Bartholomew talks about the risks posed to athletes who are partaking in randomized and unstructured training practices often supervised by non-certified professionals. This session from the NSCA’s 2017 Coaches Conference will help you identify ways in which a “skills not drills” approach towards movement training design can not only lead to enhanced transfer of training to the competitive environment, but also better retention on behalf of the athlete as they progress through future training.

The hip hinge and squat exercises, and their variations, are used in many strength and conditioning programs to develop athletes of many sports. The listed progressions are examples of practical implications used to develop athletes, but there may be additional practical and effective methods used by strength and conditioning coaches for similar purposes.