Should You Be Taking a Probiotic?

Should you take a probiotic? Evidence seems to be mounting that gut health may be more important than we ever thought. Celiac disease, Chron’s Disease, inflammatory bowel disease? These are all things that seem to have developed in our lifetime? I wonder about the widespread anti-biotic use in our food and by doctors? People run off for a Z-Pack at the first sniffle? I know I get criticized for my Mercola articles but, he makes me think.

Your Microbiome May be a Key Factor?

from Michael Boyle’s Strengthcoach.com Blog http://ift.tt/1BMjjiJ

Have You Seen Functional Strength Coach 5?

Originally posted on Michael Boyle's Strengthcoach.com Blog:

Every once in a while it pays to ask. Have you seen Functional Strength Coach 5? Take a look at what one of our former MBSC Mentorship attendees had to say about Functional Strength Coach 5.

In an information age that can easily confuse and overload (as well as break the bank of) the less experienced coach/trainer, Functional Strength Coach 5 is 7 hours of information that will simplify the process. It will put the less experienced on a path of Mike Boyle’s philosophies that have proven to be successful on every level. You will find yourself saying “this stuff finally makes sense” and gain more confidence in your abilities to train others. Even though I have studied and implemented Mike’s system for 13 years, I found many more tweaks that will make my coaching better. I also found myself motivated to “stay the course” and realize good fundamental philosophies…

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from Michael Boyle’s Strengthcoach.com Blog http://ift.tt/1MA47Ko

The Road to College

Parents are being mislead. Yes, all the tournament and camp organizers are deliberately misleading you. Parents shell out thousands of dollars for exposure camps and exposure tournaments for their son’s or daughter’s. The organizers tell you that attending a certain camp or playing in a certain tournament will improve your chances of making the team or of getting a scholarship.

The bottom line is it’s not true. Four days of camp will not change your child. Neither will a weekend tournament. Parents make a critical error at the wrong time. The most critical time in a young athletes career is the summer. This is when a young player needs to train to prepare to have a great season. However, instead of preparation, parents of athletes with potential often choose exposure. The result is usually the same. The athlete goes to 5-6 “exposure” camps to be “seen” by college coaches. Instead of training and preparation the summer is about travel and “exposure”. The final result is that the athlete is not physically prepared for the season and ends up either getting injured or having a sub-par year. Coaches that might have had interest suddenly disappear. Sure things turn into maybes. Suddenly all the time spent on exposure seems wasted as there is no “product” to expose.

The road to college sports should go right through a weightroom. I know this sounds old fashioned but, it’s true. If your child’s goal is to play college sports, then, get ready to play. Don’t spend all summer trying to convince coaches how good you are. Spend the summer trying to get better so coaches will notice you. You can’t network your way into college sports and even if you can, in these days of email etc., send an email and a video.

Every summer I discourage the parents of some of the best high school players to forgo the five camp plan and train. Instead focus on the 1 or 2 camps that have the most value and, focus the rest of the time on training. The results are always outstanding. The players who train are clearly improved and the players who were seniors are all going to the college of their choice.

 

It works out exactly as I said it would because our plan makes sense.

The ideas of athlete development and athlete exposure are almost polar opposites. The key is to balance the need to be seen by and meet college coaches with the need to train to be able to impress coaches during the critical senior year.

 

Every sport has entrepreneurs and organizers who swear they know the answer. The problem is they have a vested financial interest in you and your child. They need you to make money. The truth is, so do training centers and sports performance centers. However training centers and sports performance programs help young athletes do exactly what professional and collegiate athletes do in the off-season, train. Most summer training programs are intentionally modeled on the programs that have helped high school, college and professional athletes succeed for decades. The programs are not flashy or sexy. In fact they are difficult and demanding. However, they are designed around a successful formula, not a quick buck strategy. This summer you have a decision to make. You can try to show everyone how good you are in a few camps or tournaments or, you can actually work at getting better and preparing for the seasons that really matter.

from Michael Boyle’s Strengthcoach.com Blog http://ift.tt/1FXgk7X

Will My Kid Fall Behind Without Playing Summer Hockey?

THIS IS A MUST READ FROM MY FRIEND MICHELLE AMIDON AT USA HOCKEY!

 

Q: Will my kid fall behind without playing spring and summer hockey?
A: Likely not, and more importantly, your child will enjoy greater success in the long run if they avoid playing year-round hockey now.
Even NHL players and Olympians take extended time away from the ice in the summer. It’s an essential component of their recovery, development and maintenance of high-level play. For children, that time away from hockey is even more important. Year-round hockey programming harms young skaters emotionally, physically and athletically, yet, many parents and coaches claim that early specialization is necessary to become an elite hockey player. It’s simply not true. USA Hockey, the United States Olympic Committee, countless high-level coaches and numerous physiologists will tell you that early specialization actually limits and damages prospective hockey players, reducing their chances of becoming the cream of the crop.
So what exactly is early specialization? It’s when a player, prior to puberty, focuses all of his or her time on one sport in hopes of increasing or accelerating skill development. It may sound like a logical route to more skill development, but research and anecdotal evidence indicates the contrary.
Young kids have short attention spans that limit the amount of time they can focus and perform repetitions correctly. Participating in multiple sports allows these young athletes to learn a variety of motor skills, hone them efficiently and increase their physical literacy. It teaches them diverse movement patterns, varied skill sets and cognitive understanding of game sense. Taking a long-term holistic view, it also puts them on a path toward a lifetime of real-world physical fitness, because they’ve developed the ability, confidence and habits to be competent in multiple physical activities. For the 99 percent of youth athletes that don’t become professional athletes, this varied fitness foundation helps them enjoy the camaraderie and health benefits of an active lifestyle in adulthood.
Another benefit of playing multiple sports is a reduction in overuse injury risk. Sports medicine doctors are seeing a substantial increase in overuse injuries among children and early specialization is a major contributor. These players are getting injured before they even have a chance to develop physically. Calls for change are coming from the hockey world all over the sporting community, including from Major League Baseball and USA Baseball, which recently launched a Pitch Smart initiative aimed at reducing these kinds of injuries brought on by early specialization and overuse.
Early specialization is also increasing the psychological burnout rate among children, eliminating many from the game before they even hit their athletic prime. Among those who hang on despite the burnout, there’s an indifference to their game that caps potential.
Adults get caught up in allowing or pushing their little ones to play one sport for a number of reasons. They might be scared that their child will fall behind. They might push them simply because the kids are good at it and see immediate skill improvements and love the results. However, athletic development is a long process, and sport-specific skill development is only one piece. In order to be a great player, one must be an athlete first. And it’s important to remember that, especially in hockey, the “great” 10U player won’t automatically be the “great” player in years to come, when it actually matters and the stakes are higher. Skills and sense transfer from sport to sport. Overall athleticism matters. Hunger matters. Energy matters. Recovery matters. Early specialization impairs all of this, limiting athletes’ potential for long-term success. The goal should not be to produce the best 10-year-old, but to cultivate healthy children instead, and give them an opportunity to thrive in high school athletics, college athletics and beyond. It’s hard to trust it as a parent, when those around you seem to be submitting to early specialization, but take heart in the following:
The U.S. Olympic Committee recently published a report based on a survey distributed to nearly 2,000 Olympic athletes. The results indicated that the vast majority of Olympians did not specialize in their sport until very late in their development, and even then, some continued to participate in other sports.

Average number of sports played among Olympians (by age)
Age                                   Average Number of Sports Played
10-and-under                3.11
10-14                               2.99
15-18                               2.2
19-22                              1.27
22-and-older                1.31

These findings indicate that Olympians were involved in an average of three sports per year until age 14, which contradicts the notion that early specialization is critical to long-term athletic success. Multi-sport play appeared to be beneficial to these Olympians.
Similar findings come from the NHL. When asked, “How old were you when you started to specialize (only play and train) in hockey?” here is what some of our American NHL players reported:
Player                              NHL Team                 Age of Specialization
Craig Anderson              Ottawa Senators             High School
David Backes                  St. Louis Blues                18
Beau Bennett                 Pittsburgh Penguins       15
Dustin Brown                Los Angeles Kings           16
John Gibson                  Anaheim Ducks                15
Jimmy Howard             Detroit Red Wings          15
Trevor Lewis                  Los Angeles Kings          15
Jonathan Quick            Los Angeles Kings           17
Brandon Saad               Chicago Blackhawks       15

The football world also weighed in with evidence contradicting the perceived benefits of early specialization. ESPN surveyed 128 NFL quarterbacks – 73 active, 55 retired – and 95 percent of them played multiple sports in high school. Nearly 70 percent of them played three sports or more. There were only five active NFL quarterbacks who reported that they were single-sport specialists, and each of them was a backup quarterback.
Bottom line, mounting evidence shows no benefit to young athletes specializing in a single sport. Even more alarming, they have a greater risk of repetitive-use injury, they experience more burnout and they miss out on the advantages that playing multiple sports can give them.
So, encourage your kids to try different sports and to have fun while they are doing it.

from Michael Boyle’s Strengthcoach.com Blog http://ift.tt/1FyW78v

A Former NHLer’s Take on Youth Hockey

Former NHL star Ray Ferraro was asked to talk to parents of a  club that was going through a tough time, with parent expectations at an all-time high.

This is what Ferraro told the parents.

– Minor hockey is out of control in terms of Parents chasing the dream for their kids instead of kids deciding on their own how passionate they are for it and how bad they want it.

– In the last 10 years only 21 kids who either played at NSWC or BWC have appeared in at least ONE NHL regular season game. Point is if your banking on your son collecting an NHL pay cheque to solidify his and yours financial future you seriously need to stop and come up with a new plan and now.

– The odds of going pro are extremely low but the odds of having to find a career and a job to pay bills and be a husband and father are extremely high and it’s not dictated by if you played AAA hockey

– Parents need to enjoy the ride while you have it … your son’s minor hockey days end too quickly and often times people end up regretting what they did not know then and what they ending up missing because they were focused on everything but their kid having fun

– As a parent who devotes time and money to your son, the only right you have to ask is they give it their best … not how much ice time they get, if they play on the PP, who is their winger or D partner

– Don’t pay for power skating, dryland training, skill development and expect your son to score 50 goals, if you decide to invest in extras do it because your son asked for it and wants to improve and has a smile on his face each and every time … too many parents decide what they want their kids to do instead of their kids asking to do it.

– 12 month hockey is wrong … organized skills sessions, tryouts, spring hockey is too much and too taxing … kids can shoot pucks, stick handle, play street hockey but they need out of the mental insanity of a hockey rink and need to be engaged in something other than hockey … the time away reinforces the passion to want it

– Coaches are coaches we all know the game and think this should be done a certain way … how come we never tell our kids math teacher how to teach calculus but we think as parents we have the right to tell a hockey coach how much ice time and with whom and when our kids should play.

– When you evaluate your kids season, never base it on how many banners they won, what provincial they won, what tourneys they went to and won … ask yourself what improved from September to April, what did he learn or improve upon including non-hockey stuff … evaluate the season besides wins and losses but gains and improvements.

– I have a son who is going through the rigors of pro hockey in the AHL. Hockey is a tough racket. Growing up, my dad never talked to me after a game or practice, I did that with my kids. Just let them play, learn and develop. Pressure is high enough, no need to make it worse.

from Michael Boyle’s Strengthcoach.com Blog http://ift.tt/1Mkaamm

CFSC at the Perform Better Summits

Just wanted to let everyone know that we’ll be doing our Certified Functional Strength Coach Certification on the Thursday before each Perform Better Summit.

You can get the Summit dates here

Register early as these will fill fast. There will only be 60 spots at each seminar and we won’t be able to add a second day.

PS- You must be registered for the Perform Better Summit to register for the CFSC.

To register go to www.certifiedfsc.com

from Michael Boyle’s Strengthcoach.com Blog http://ift.tt/18lEUUN

10% of CFSC for BodyByBoyle Online Members

For the month of March we are giving BodyByBoyle Online members 10% off of registration for Certified Functional Strength Coach Certifications.

We only have about 6 spots left for

March 28 – Perform Better Functional Training Institute (Warwick, RI) [6 Spots Left]

May 16 – Park Center Health and Fitness (Chicago, IL) [4 Spots Left]

You can sign up for these events at our website: http://Certifiedfsc.com and use the code at checkout.

the 10% Promo Code is:

BBBONLINE

If you have any questions you can send them to support@certifiedfsc.com

from Michael Boyle’s Strengthcoach.com Blog http://ift.tt/1zItBfE