Boston Sports Medicine and Performance Group, LLC Blog

Attention Hockey Performance Coaches

Join the leaders in Sports Medicine and Performance Training this May 15-16th in Boston for a multidisciplinary seminar that has more hockey content available than you can waive a stick at! Your greatest challenge will be deciding which breakout session to attend throughout the two days!

Keynote Sessions

Dr. Robert Sapolsky: Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers – Stress, Disease and Coping

James Anderson: Realizing Tri-Planer Performance through the Respiratory Diaphragm

Al Smith: Helping People Be Their Best – A Journey From Specialism To Systems Thinking

Vincent Walsh: Sport – The Brain’s Greatest Challenge?

The Canadian National Basketball Performance Team:  Developing a Performance Team - A Look Behind the Curtain

Breakout Sessions

James Anderson: The lateralized Foot and Ankle Pattern and the Pronated Left Chest

Al Smith: Lost in Translation – The Appliance of Science in High Performance Sport

Sam Coad: Elite Athlete Monitoring Systems – Methods and Techniques for Assessing Recovery in Athletes

Charlie Weingroff: Utilizing a Movement Profile Into Your Neural Net

Eric Oetter: NeuroImmune Plasicity – The Substrate of Performance

Andy O’Brien:  TBD

Roman Fomin: Windows of Trainability

Sam Gibbs: TBA (Believe us it will be awesome)

Mike Davis: Bridging the Gap Between Rehab and High Performance

Mike Davis: Using Micro-movements to Manipulate Massive Movements

by Carl Valle

I decided to interview Rob Shugg from Kinetic Performance after hearing a few new definitions of what power is, and felt that we needed more sport science tools to help the performance community understand how to develop power in team sports. Track and field is very objective, but the methodologies tend to be cloudy. I wanted to get Rob's opinion on the matters of true development and monitoring of elite sport as he has many years with the Australian Institute of Sport and in the private sector with technology and performance. The BSMPG is the first conference in the US to promote Gymaware and Kinetic Performance as technology and data is becoming more and more important to help teams find the winning edge. 

Most of the US professional and college teams are familiar with linear transducers for measuring power, could you expand on the differences between Gymaware and the Tendo system, specifically with the advanced analytics and cloud benefits. 

First I’d like to give your readers a quick outline of the GymAware components:GymAware Power Tool - A linear transducer that connects via bluetooth to an iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone. 

iOS apps: 

GymAware Lite App - a stand-alone weightlifting analyzer app withextensive training, feedback and plotting functions. 

GymAware App - a cloud-connected weightlifting analyzer app offering online data and athlete management. 

GymAware/Kinetic-Athlete cloud analysis server - a web based account for managing and analysing Power Tool and other athlete performance data.So as you can see, while the Power Tool and the Tendo weightlifting analyser are both linear transducers, only GymAware offers a complete athlete performance stack, from data collection to athlete performance management. You canstill use the Power Tool like you use the Tendo unit to motivate and train athletes, but in addition you can start to look at[other variables] like dip and lift profile to improve technique. 

The GymAware Power Tool has evolved through 5 different models over the last 10 years with each new release improving accuracy and usability. There is a good comparison [here] between the latest Power Tool and the Tendo Power and Speed Analyzer. To talk about the benefits of the cloud server and advanced analytics, you first need to look at system accuracy as this is fundamental to the success of the advanced features.The high accuracy of the Power Tool opens up new opportunities in preparing athletes for competition. With high accuracy you can look for more subtle changes over time that give you real insight into the state of the athlete. 

Power is often pursued by teams, could you look at how power can act as a marker of both performance and fatigue with team sports? Currently Benchmarks and profiling seem to be important for individualization. 

There’s no doubt that power is a key factor in producing game winning performances, and power profiling to optimize power training plays a vital role in any professional team. But recently in Australia, regular (3 to 5 times per week) power and/or velocity monitoring has proved to be a very reliable way of monitoring for fatigue. At last year’s ASCA conference Dr Kristie Taylor suggested that we should 

Other performance managers have reported to us that the Power Tool measurements are so sensitive that they can see slower power recovery after games played at a particular stadium known to have a hard playing surface. Regular monitoring with GymAware adds a completely new dimension to the knowledge available to the sports performance professional. 

Kinetic Athlete is not new to player monitoring, why does Kinetic Performance's experience make you a leader in player management? I think to answer this you need to look at environment that lead to the development ofGymAware. 
 

Click HERE to continue reading...

Learn more about this new technology along with the most advanced health and performance monitoring tools currently available at the 2012 BSMPG Summer Seminar - May 19/20th.

Readings from last week.

Enjoy!

Cold-Water Immersion for Preventing and Treating Muscle Soreness After Exercise  

Predictive Factors for Ankle Sprain  

Assessing the SI Joint   

Don't forget to sign up for the 2012 BSMPG Summer Seminar featuring Dr. Craig Liebenson along with 14 other leaders from the worlds of sports medicine, performance and hockey/basketball specific training!

The hard part (one of them)

A guy asked his friend, the writer David Foster Wallace,

"Say, Dave, how'd y'get t'be so dang smart?"

His answer:

"I did the reading."

No one said the preparation part was fun, but yes, it's important. I wonder why we believe we can skip it and still be so dang smart.

Moving beyond teachers and bosses

We train kids to deal with teachers in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to work on. Figure out how to say back exactly what they want to hear, with the least amount of effort, and you are a 'good student.'

We train employees to deal with bosses in a certain way: Find out what they want, and do that, just barely, because there are other things to do. Figure out how to do exactly what they want, with the least amount of effort, and the last risk of failure and you are a 'good worker.'

The attitude of minimize is a matter of self-preservation. Raise the bar, the thinking goes, and the boss will work you harder and harder. Take initiative and you might fail, leading to a reprimand or termination (think about that word for a second... pretty frightening).

The linchpin, of course, can't abide the attitude of minimize. It leaves no room for real growth and certainly doesn't permit an individual to become irreplaceable.

If your boss is seen as a librarian, she becomes a resource, not a limit. If you view the people you work with as coaches, and your job as a platform, it can transform what you do each day, starting right now. "My boss won't let me," doesn't deserve to be in your vocabulary. Instead, it can become, "I don't want to do that because it's not worth the time/resources." (Or better, it can become, "go!")

The opportunity of our age is to get out of this boss as teacher as taskmaster as limiter mindset. We need more from you than that.

Congrats to the University of Wisconsin Badgers Women's Ice Hockey team for winning the 2011 National Championship in a 4-1 win over Boston University this past weekend. 

Hear UW Badgers Strength and Conditioning Coach, Jim Snider speak at this year's BSMPG Hockey Conference, June 3rd and 4th in Boston MA., as he discusses, "Hockey Specific Dry Land Speed Training".

Learn how this year's National Champions train in the off-season and what you may be missing in your summer hockey strength training programs. 

BSMPG is proud to announce the finalized speaker set for this year's Hockey Summit in Boston June 3rd and 4th.  This will be the third consecutive year that BSMPG has hosted the nations top Hockey Training Conference with this year boasting the most impressive speaker set yet! 

With Speakers representing Boston College, University of Wisconsin, University of Minnesota and Quinnipiac University along with the NHL's Carolina Hurricanes joining Keynote speakers which include Dr. Shirley Sahrmann, Tom Myers, Clare Frank, Charlie Weingroff and Pete Viterriti - this event is a must for anyone involved in the training and care of the hockey athletes.

I’ve asked a number of friends why they don’t include assessments as part of their screening process.  More often than not the answer is because they are “too busy.”

What takes more time? An initial assessment of your athletes on intake followed by some simple corrective strategies or a 6-month post-surgical ACL rehab?

If you are too busy to change today, how will you have time to fix it later?

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

I heard a story recently about a basketball coach that will “get lost” on his way back to campus from the airport after picking up a recruit in an effort to intentionally place the recruit in an uncomfortable situation.

Two things happen.

1. The recruit will sit quietly, put their head down and perhaps jump on their cell phone, text message friends, headphones in and wait for the coach to find his/her way back to campus.
or
2. The recruit will ask questions about general directions, look for street signs that may aid in their quest back to campus and even some will use their technology packed phone to locate their whereabouts on GPS and plug in the schools address providing the coach a clear and decisive path back to campus.

With all things being equal, which kid would you rather have on your team?

Are you worth being recruited to a better team or are you quietly sitting at your desk, minding your own business waiting for others to figure things out?

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.

Every four years, athletic administrations across the country conduct student-athlete exit interviews. It’s a time where student-athletes can reflect on their athletic achievements and make comments like how a pineapple-lemonade soda machine would have been helpful in the student-athlete lounge or a Swedish masseuse would have been nice during their training.  They hand it in, administration pats themselves on the back noting that the student-athlete didn’t make any “realistic” comments on problems that they could have fixed and then the paper is quickly crumpled and discarded in the nearest receptacle. 

The problem with these exit interviews is that they provide little opportunity for improvement.  First, the feedback is not asked in real time. Do you really want to wait four years to fix a problem that could have been addressed at the end of the first semester?

Second, the questions are never specific or thought provoking … it’s usually a formality put into place so that management can have a safety net to fall back on, claiming after a problem surfaces that they did their due diligence and asked for comments year after year, “how was I suppose to know that our cafeteria wasn’t open past our last practice time? I asked for general comments every year.”

Lastly, asking for general comments only ensures you of one thing: general, non-specific comments in return (read: vanilla).  If you are serious about making change, then your questions will reflect this. Asking specific questions regarding the hours of operation of your facility and if it meets the needs of your student-athletes will evoke a much different response then simply asking for comments about the Athletic Training Room or Strength and Conditioning Room in general.  Basically, specific questions generate qualified comments.

I once heard a story of a department that placed a suggestion box out for their customers to leave comments in.  They didn’t read them of course; but having customers leave suggestions made them feel as if they had a voice, they said.  Talk about a lost opportunity to tap into your customer base. 

Is your exit process an interview or does it provide opportunity?

Art Horne is the Coordinator of Care and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the Men’s Basketball Team at Northeastern University, Boston MA.  He can be reached at a.horne@neu.edu.