Gorilla News - October 2022

At Elite Athlete Training Systems, we are 100% committed to supporting the development of athletes.As such we are continually learning, growing, and adapting our programming to best support our athletes. Our community of athletes is epic and we wanted to be sure that everyone stays up to date on what happens here at the Gorilla Compound.

September and October are a little slower around the Gorilla Compound as many of the athletes that train with us during their off-season have headed back to their teams for their winter seasons. Other athletes are busy heading back to school and taking partin tryouts/evaluations for our local sport teams.

‍What Have We Been Doing?

• Brad completed his Functional Range Conditioning Certification.
• September 24, 2022 Brad was hanging out at Spruce Grove’s Strongest Competition hosted at the Tri Leisure Centre.
• September,we welcomed back Parkland Student Athlete Academy. Both the Jr. Crew and the HSCrew have grown in numbers.
• October we welcomed back our Parkland Athletic Club (PAC) teams for the 4th season of team training.
• October we welcomed the Spruce Grove Heat, U16A Ringette Team to the Gorilla Compound.
• We got some new equipment!

‍What’s Next?

• Big news coming before the New Year.
• Online store coming soon.
• Small Group off-season training packages coming soon.

‍In-Season vs. Off-season Strength & Conditioning

We want parents, coaches,managers and most importantly athletes to know what to expect in a comprehensive in-season strength and conditioning program. The role of a strength coaches is simple;serve the needs of our athletes. The overall health of our athletes is always our primary responsibility. The needs of athletes change over time, as athletes grow and develop their strength and conditioning program needs to change and evolve with them. Where an individual athlete is at in his competitive season also influences his strength and conditioning program. The needs of an athlete in-season are different than the needs of an athlete during the off-season.

Off-season training is all about growth and development. Our priority in the off-season is simple;train hard to get stronger, more powerful, more explosive, and better conditioned for the demands of the hockey season. Generally, this allows the strength coach to program far more load and intensity during the off-season.Off-season strength and conditioning programs typically have a higher frequency of sessions (more sessions per week), work up to heavier loads and include longer and more intense conditioning work. While loads and intensity increase during the off-season, a quality off-season strength and conditioning program cannot be full speed ahead every day. That’s just not the way our bodies work. An effective off-season strength and conditioning program must still be periodized allowing the athlete to rest, recover and finally to develop physiologically.

When it comes to planning an in-season strength and conditioning program beyond the overall health of the athlete, game day performance is the priority. Anybody can program a tough training session that leaves the athletes gutted. Quite frankly our staff is more than capable of having your son not walk for a few days afterwards, but that would be ridiculous and certainly not effective in having him compete at the highest level on game day. Let’s simplify things a bit. Picture a gas tank. The fuel inside the tank represents the energy available to meet the demands of life:school, work, friends, family, and hockey. An athlete with an empty tank simply will not be capable of performing in life and certainly not on the ice. There are many things beyond hockey that compete for and drain fuel from an athlete’s tank. Games, stress, travel, schoolwork, extra-curricular activities, friends,family, and work. Add to this nutrition, hydration, and sleep, which all impact how much fuel an athlete has in their tank. Our bodies have a finite ability to respond to stress so we as coaches must choose and manage stress wisely. Our goal, during the hockey season, is to keep the fuel tank as full as possible while getting stronger.

When it comes to the in-season, we focus on structural maintenance and/or slow and controlled progression. As we have stated the end goal is to allow the athlete to perform maximally on the ice, while maintaining and increasing baseline strength levels. This is both an art and a science for the strength coach. The “Law of Competing Demands” states that if too many stressors are acting on the body adaptation, growth, and development are compromised as is game day performance.As strength coaches we are always chasing the minimum effective dose of stimulus.  We want our athletes to continue their growth and development while training in-season with as little gas being emptied from their tank.

We strongly believe that movement is the single most important quality of any athlete in any sport.While we acknowledge, moving on the ice is significantly different than anything that can be done in the gym. We know that the more proficient an athlete can move in the gym the more able that athlete will be to acquire sport specific movement skills. As such movement forms the foundation of all ourin-season training programs.

Strength is another characteristic of paramount importance to athletes. An athlete’s absolute strength influences their power, speed, explosiveness as well as their overall resiliency and health. Unfortunately, the Law of Competing Demands, specifically the intensity of the in-season schedule, makes maintaining strength in-season near impossible. However, decreasing the amount of strength loss is very possible. As such lifting heavy weights is a significant part of our in-season programs. Generally, our in-season program shave our athletes continue to lift heavy loads (near max effort, when appropriate for the individual athlete) but with less volume (fewer reps and sets).

What changes most significantly in our in-season strength and conditioning programs is the volume and intensity of the conditioning or general physical preparation work our athlete perform. While our athletes will still perform some conditioning work (GPP) in-season that work looks very different than in our off-season programs. In-season we tend to focus on trunk stability work as the basis for our conditioning work (GPP). Additionally, our hockey athletes can maintain their work capacity with their time on ice in practices and games.

Athlete health is always a priority. As such mobility work is the cornerstone of our in-season programs. Our athletes are consistently performing mobility work based on principles from Dr. Andreo Spina’s Functional Range Conditioning (FRC) methodology. The FRC work performed by our athletes is not simply about increasing or maintaining their range of motion but more importantly earning more control through more of the range of motion they possess. Beyond mobility work our in-season programs include both soft tissue and connective tissue work. Connective tissue work typically comes in the form of high-volume low intensity band work. While soft tissue work includes foam rolling and Body Tempering.

Communication is paramount to the success of any strength and conditioning program. Communication between strength coaches and team managers, sport coaches and of course athletes is essential in ensuring that a team’s in-season strength and conditioning compliments the team’s overall season plan.

‍TRUST YOUR HARD WORK. IT’S UNLOCKING DOORS YOU CAN’T SEE YET.