Hockey coaches focus on helping players develop hockey specific skills (skating, shooting, body contact) along with the individual and team strategies and tactics required for success. A sport conditioning coach focuses on the development of athleticism whereby they improve an athlete’s physical tools that support hockey skill execution. Enhancing athleticism comes from the development of the secondary characteristics of fitness including: balance, agility, speed, power, coordination, body awareness, reaction skills.To have the greatest i...Read more

Professional hockey players are serious about their sport and focus on the training and development of their “physical machines” year round. Sport conditioning has evolved into big business with the development of branded shoes, clothing, equipment, print and TV media that profiles the training programs of pro athletes. If the pro athletes train this way, shouldn’t every serious athlete do the same whether they are 8 or 18? Parents who are passionate about their children and their hockey are fueling a new segment of the sport ...Read more

Children cannot be simply treated as miniature adults. Those of similar chronological age may vary significantly in their progress toward the mature adult form. Even within the same age group, kids are at different stages of readiness for training. To understand what can be trained when, training guidelines are linked to the phase of growth and maturation.Pre-pubertal children are those that have not yet gone through their adolescent growth spurt, or their period of most rapid growth (peak height velocity). Pre-pubertal children are often less ...Read more

IntroductionThe focus for training athletes at Twist Conditioning is to be progressive, innovative and creative. With each new day we learn more about how best to train athletes to achieve the desired results, improve performance and push our knowledge further ahead. The complexity of the human body should never be underestimated and when it comes to developing effective conditioning programs attention to details produces greater results.Many conditioning coaches do not modify their training programs when coaching female athletes, but the body ...Read more

As physically active individuals we all take mobility for granted when every day our mind commands our muscles and they easily comply with just the right type of movement and appropriate force production. At Twist Sport Conditioning this is called Smart Muscle®. With each repeated action, our mind to muscle communication pathways strengthen and like building muscle, each successful action that our mind commands, our physical confidence grows.Physical confidence is the assurance that when your mind commands your body to move, your muscles co...Read more

Over the last 20 years concern for athlete safety has increased as more females have become involved in sports. Females are statistically 4 times more likely to sustain a serious ACL knee injury compared to males. These injuries are most frequent in high risk sports that require jumping and cutting (i.e. Soccer or Basketball). Another interesting trend is that female athletes are most often injured in a supervised setting (64% of injuries) compared to males who are most often injured in an unsupervised setting (55%). This information prompts us...Read more

Developing strong balance is an asset for all athletes as it creates smart muscles and an efficient mind to muscle link. With a lower center of gravity, women have an advantage in balance drills. Single leg exercises are a great way to decrease this stable base of support, create a greater balance challenge and strengthen the entire lower body. A simple, yet very important balance exercise for females is a single leg squat. The challenge is to perform the exercise correctly with proper knee tracking. As a coach, focus most of your athlete cues ...Read more

Wow! Recent BOSU DVD shoot was nothing but hi-octane with Twister, Durkin, Shiels, Mylrea, Roberts, me and the team...BOSU Balance Trainers, Ballast Balls, Slingshots, Smart Toners, lines of pull everywhere...rocked out 9 DVDs and NEW BOSU "mystery" accessory product for 2010...Twist Conditioning and BOSU...coming at you full speed...Are you ready?Watch for the release of the new BOSU DVD's in 2010!by: Douglas Brooks...Read more

Many female athletes have lower body strength but do not have matching strength in the upper body.  Strength improvements can be maximized with the development of whole body movements that link muscles together sequentially.  Linked System™ exercises allow the transfer of force generated in the lower body, through the core and finishing in the upper body.  The result is a lift that requires more muscle activation and core stabilization that transfers well to many sport skills. Back Lunge to Single Arm Slastix™ Row:Set...Read more

Strong movement skills are the foundation of athleticism and teach the body to move sequentially through the kinetic chain to create efficient motor patterns, a mind to muscle link as well as the ability to generate greater force.  Teaching athletes to decelerate is a critical skill to build speed in multi-directional sport while reducing the risk of injury.     Diamond Multi-directional Sprints to Coaches Cue:Set up: -    place 4 cones in a diamond pattern -    the athlete starts in the mi...Read more