Lessons and Stories from 20+ Years in The NHL With Lorne Goldenberg
Lorne Goldenberg, Mike Potenza, and David Rosales – February 28, 2021
Episode #99 of the Hockey Strength Podcast marks something a little different. Mike Potenza and I begin our “SCAPH Alumni Series” podcast episodes, where we interview a former NHL strength and conditioning coach.
In today’s episode, together Mike and I interview Lorne Goldenberg. Lorne has over 20 years of NHL experience, ranging from 1986 to 2010. He’s an award-winning S&C coach, bestselling author, and the President/Owner of Strength Tek Fitness & Wellness Consultants.
Links mentioned:
Goldie on Twitter: @LorneGoldenberg
Goldie on Instagram: @LorneGoldenberg
Goldie’s company: StrengthTek.com
Goldie’s article on aerobic training: My Thoughts on Aerobic Training and Hockey After 30 Years
Listen on Apple Podcasts
Listen on Spotify
Full Episode Transcript
(Note: All “quotes” are paraphrased, as obviously human memory is not perfect. Nothing in quotations should be misconstrued or misattributed.)
David Rosales: Welcome everybody to the Hockey Strength Podcast. Today is episode #99, and we have Mr. Lorne Goldenberg here along with Mike Potenza so we have three generations of strength coaches. Mike who’s around Gen X, I’m the baby, and Lorne, who probably saw the Germans march into Paris. I don’t know. So we have a lot of fun discussion up ahead. Lorne, thank you so much for being here, how are you?
Lorne Goldenberg: Hey I’m great. I’m really pumped to be with you guys here and I’m really impressed with what you guys are doing with this whole project in hockey and strength and conditioning. It’s not unlike something Peter Twist and I had thought about way back in the early ’80’s and you guys have really taken it over the top.
Mike Potenza: Thanks for being here. Lorne, you’re one fo the guys when I was in the field and interested in hockey training I would follow you, I knew that you were in Florida and Ottawa and it’s kind of cool looking at all the places you’ve been, with so many teams and obviously it’s a credit to what you do, know and can share with hockey players on the performance side. You and Peter Twist, and Mike Boyle, and Matt Nichol was the younger guy who I followed when I was at Wisconsin so it’s pretty special to have been on a podcast with you and Scotty Livingston and then to have you here and pick your brain a little bit and discuss some fo the differences and similarities between what’s going in [in the NHL].
But hey postgame pizza is still here so that hasn’t changed.
Lorne: And back then it was [some French word] and hot dogs.
David: Well Lorne I’ll start us off. Just looking at your LinkedIn, a long time ago you worked in the NHL before being an NHL strength coach was even a thing. I’m curious, what was it like getting your first NHL strength coach job? What was the process?
Lorne: Well there was no email or internet back then. It was a matter of just trying to get mailing addresses of all the hockey teams back then at the time. And back then you would dial the area code and say “I’d like the phone number for the administration office of the St. Louis Blues. I literally went through the whole league at the time, verbally get everybody’s address and sent letters out to absolutely everybody.
You figure you gotta get lucky with one of those things. At the time, I was working fo the Ottawa 67’s and Gary Roberts. There were some guys I was working with who were starting to make their way into the NHL, so people were slowly hearing about me. Then, it was a funny thing, I was working at Carleton Unversity here in Ottawa and Don Johnson, the head of the sports medicine clinic, came into the facility and he said, “Hey I think you might be up for an NHL job.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” he goes, “ Jacque Martin from the St. Louis Blues called me yesterday.
The next day the football coach Ace Powell comes in and goes, “Goldie, I think you’re up for an NHL job.”
Nobody had called me to this point. I’d never heard this before and they’re calling references before actually talking to you. Anyways, a couple days after that I got a phone from from Jacque Martin and ended up speaking to him for over an hour on the phone about my background, his background, the Ottawa connections, hockey, and he said, “Look I’m a real big believer in off-ice training and how it can contribute to player development.”
He went on to tell me to keep an eye on the playoffs — they were playing the Leafs that year — and he said if they lose, then there was a good chance they’d bring me in.
A couple nights later they lost, then I got a phone call, and a couple days later I was on a flight from Ottawa to St. Louis and I got my first job. It was cool. When you think about how guys get jobs now, it’s very similar, but that was one job where I didn’t know anybody. It was a cold letter. And I think because I was an Ottawa guy — he actually coached Gary Roberts in junior — there was a bit of a connection.
Mike: And you were with the 67’s at the time, too. That’s awesome. What was the climate like? How many strength coaches in the league were there at the time?
Lorne: There weren’t a lot. Me, Doug McKenny, [and a few others], and I wasn’t aware a few others at the time. There might have been [more] but my only sources at the time were media guides. You know those media guides?
They used to come in a big box and they were lined up on everybody’s shelf.
Mike: They were 8.5 x12 thick binders with spiral rings. Some listeners might not know what those are, but we do. They held up a lot of desks.
Lorne: I used to go through every single one of those because I was curious. And I can only remember like 3 or 4 other teams [with a strength coach.] And the environment was so different. I was kind of like the evil guy. Like “oh fitness guy I don’t want to talk to you.” The only people that wanted to talk to me were the coaches at the time, and even the medical trainers had no interests in what I wanted to do.
I was a threat to them. I remember getting toured in the old stadium in St. Louis and I walked into this gym which is underneath some stairs. I mean, I have a better gym in the basement of my house right now than the St. Louis Blues had in 1987. It took a while for them to come around and make some investments.
I remember battling — We had an old leg extension and a bicep curl machine, and some rusty dumbbells — getting VCRs so they could watch tapes and TV in the gym, but there wasn’t hardly enough room anybody to be in the gym. I remember being like, give me that money from the VCRs and I’ll buy some equipment. So it was always a tough go back in the day.
Mike: Did you always have as much support from the guys or coaches like Jacque who were coming up? To have someone that could support you in that manner when training was so foreign is a gift in that job.
Lorne: I was really lucky. As the job started to evolve in the late 80s to mid 90s, a lot of the strength coaches got kind of piled in with the medical training equipment staff. And I know that those [medical guys] saw as kind of another person to help them with their job. They never helped us with our job — they never put weights away or counting reps or spotting — but you were a help there [to them]. I was really fortunate that I was always more on the coaching staff side early on.
I was talking about players, where they are, where they need to go, how they’re gonna get there. And that was tough because I was seen as more of an outsider to the equipment and medical guys more than anything else. I remember one thing I learned in my second job with the Chicago Blackhawks — and Mike Keenan was a huge fitness guy — I was only working as a consultant with the Blackhawks so I was in and out of town all the time. And he Brough me in he said, “I want to talk to you, I think we have a full-time job here for you.”
I said, “Okay, I’ll talk to you in a couple of weeks.”
So we’re going through training camp, he comes into camp, he brings me into his office, and I’m like, “Tell me about the job.”
And he says, “Okay, well you’re going to do strength and conditioning, and then you’re also going to go to the airport to pick up the visiting team’s bags with a truck. At 2 or 3 in the morning.”
I was 27-28 years old. I’m like, I’m in. I just wanted to move into Chicago and get out of Ottawa. And Mike was a weird guy sometimes. He literally stopped mid-sentence, he stopped looking at me and he’s looking at the ceiling, and he comes back and he says, “you’re not doing that job. You didn’t go to school and get a degree to go pick up bags at an airport at 2am. We’re going to keep it the way it is right now. We’ll figure it out.”
That just kind of kept on with whatever team I ended up going to. I ended up being more not he coach side versus the medical or the equipment side.
David: What about for the players? What was your perception of getting them to understand the role of strength and conditioning early on?
Lorne: Well with the younger guys it was a lot easier. With some fo the older guys — they’d been in the league 12-15 years… I remember one time Brian [Sutter] came into a workout in our first training camp and he said, “Hey Goldie, I’ve been here 15 years, just pull it back a little bit because there’s nothing that I’m gonna do right now that’s gonna keep me in the league any longer.”
Mike: And his workouts were on the farm probably. Some training, that’s for sure.
Lorne: 100%. So you know, there were learning experiences like that. I remember in Chicago, we had a really good team, and Dennis Savard was one of the leaders. He was a super skilled guy. And I got along pretty well with him but I remember at training camp we were doing two-a-days that nobody really wanted but agreed to. And we were on the bikes after the second practice and they had to ride at certain level, on one of those old Monarch bodyguard bikes. And Dennis Savard kept turning the tension down on the bike.
And I said, “Savvy, come on,” and I turned the tension back up on the bike. Then I’d walk away. Then after the third time he said, “Goldie, come here for second. We really like you. We think you’re a good guy and you know what you’re doing. But sometimes you don’t have to be Keenan, and just give us a bit of a break.”
I remember backing off of that and trying to be a little sensitive at the same time.
David: Do you think that in the long run, going easy on the guys helped build that relationship?
Lorne: I would certainly think so. I mean, Mike you’ll know. This business is all about relationships. You can’t be best friends with these guys, but I really think they need to like you first. And then if they like you and you can build that relationship then you can get them to buy-in to what you’re selling.
Mike: Oh I agree. You gotta know when to pull the rope, to use the stick and the carrot, if you will. Most of the time the coaches are driving them pretty hard so you have to know when to back off, but know when to get your intensity in too.
What do you see differently now. Well, if you were to go back into your files, your 3-ring binders of workouts and see what you wrote in the late 80s, early 90s, how would you program it differently? Or your last few seasons in Montreal or being around guys in Pittsburgh, what’s changed?
Lorne: Well I think I’ve learned that you can get a lot done in a short period of time if you’re coaching them up well. A lot of high quality over quantity. It used to be, you weren’t getting them to work very hard, and it was still a tough sell early on. You through everything at them hoping they were going to get some benefits. Now I think they understand that it’s part of the game, it’s part of preparation. So you can be more specific and lower that volume of work that we used to do.
That’s one of the biggest ones. Just getting guys to be real focused and dialed in when they get in there.
Mike: What are some of the big trends? You know if we use the example of like FMS coming into our world. It was really a time where everybody started to rethink about some screen, some assessment or things like that.
From your time what were some of the biggest trends in your world?
Were you always a strength-based, weight room program or did you go down the road of using the Nautilus machines, and Cyber machines as they kind of came into the fitness world?
Lorne: You know it’s funny you say that because I was a Nautilus guy back then. When I did work with at the Ottawa 67’s it was all Nautilus type stuff. And that evolved, integrating plyometrics, medicine ball work, Olympic-style weightlifting into it. I’m still big on Olympic-style weightlifting with the right volume.
But the trend that I saw as it grew was for me two things:
- The staffs changed.
It used to be one guy on the strength staff. Then it became one guy and an assistant, or even a volunteer assistant or an intern. Then all of the sudden there were two full time guys, and a sports performance guy. The staff has really become a real, sports performance staff compared to the 90s. I remember back in the 90s, if you want to call it the sports performance staff, it was made up of the professors from the University of Lavalle, the medical doctors, and the medical trainer. We were a team together but still working out in silos.
I did work with one physiologist at the university of Lavalle and he was really good and really helpful. But seeing how the staffs have evolve overall, that’s big.
- Spending more time with guys as the years went on doing deeper individualized assessments…
To find out who cares about their velocity It could be on a jump squat, or a vertical jump or how much they can bench. Let’s look at what are their restrictions in their hips, back, shoulders, thoracic spine that’s limiting their ability to move effectively and play.
I think that one is one fo the more significant trends I’ve seen over time.
David: Just one thing, looking at your resumé, you jumped around to a lot of teams. We already mentioned St. Louis, Chicago, you also worked for the Panthers. I can’t even list them all. Canadiens. Basically the whole league. Nordiques. Look at that, an extinct team. That’s pretty cool.
Lorne: Yeah, that was actually the team I was most proud of. I spent five years with those guys and saw them go from a last place team to winning a president’s trophy and really competing. Then, go figure, the year they move to Denver, and I tell them I’m not gonna take the job and move to Denver, and they win the Stanley Cup. I’m loosing my mind.
David: I’m sure you were happy for the guys.
Lorne: I was happy for the guys. I remember the last time Pittsburgh won the cup, it was in our facility and I got a picture with the cup right to Skip Allen’s name for that ’95 Stanley Cup win like this should be my name.
David: Why did you jump around to so many teams? Did you feel like that was a positive experience to get to work in different environments from different head coaches. Did you learn different things from someone like Mike Keenan compared to other coaches?
Lorne: Well you know, the big reason was they kept wanting me to score goals and I just couldn’t do it.
Mike: I hope they don’t ask me to do that.
Lorne: Hey Mike how many teams have players asked you ‘How many goals the barbell scored tonight?’
Mike: And I tell them, Doug Weight scored a lot of goals. If you really want to be technical about it.
Lorne: The moving around from team to team was really more of a function fo the game and how quickly things change in management. There were certainly a job or two that I got let go that I thought were good reasons for me standing up to whatever the issue was at the time. And if it were to happen again I’d do the same thing. That’s just the way I am.
But when a coach gets fired or the GM gets fired, and this game’s all about relationships, you just kind of go where they go, and that’s just the nature of the game.
The last job that I had with the Canadiens, that’s just when Gary Roberts was starting up his company. He was just retiring. It was the summer of 2010. We had one guy in Montreal and everybody else had left, and the GM said, “we really need you to stay in Montreal and work with this one guy.”
This one guy was not going to be a difference maker for the Canadiens. My kids were in Ottawa, and I knew I had this opportunity to kind of grow with Gary and I just said, “I’m good. Let’s just move it.”
David: Is that something you’re cynical about with the NHL industry, the coaching industry? That it’s just so volatile? Or is that just something that you accept that’s part of the job if you want to be an NHL strength coach or NHL coach period?
Lorne: I think so. You’re hired to be fired in sports. And it’s just the nature of the beast. Mike is so lucky. I think think Mike’s longevity speaks to his skill set, his personality because he’s survived a lot of coaches on that team.
Mike: I just know where to hide when the shit hits the fan. I’ve got some good hiding places. I found those my first year. But David, it’s the same for me and Lorne. You know it’s not going to end well, if it has to come to an end. If you can walk away on your terms, then great, that’s icing on the cake.
Right now we have a lot of guys in the league that are — this is my 15th season but Sean Skahan’s got 17 seasons and Reg Grant had almost 20, David Good has 20, Roger Takahashi in Vancouver has got close to 20. Mark Nemish has got 20 between Washington and Nashville. I know I’m leaving out probably someone else but yeah, it’s pretty cool to look back on how long they’ve all been around.
David: Maybe this is just the young optimist in me but maybe that is a sign that teams are starting to understand that strength coach in place long term can have more benefit than having a new face in the weight room every 2-3 years.
Mike: Well not just one. You have your strength coach with the philosophy and that was one resource that was totally understaffed. But now you build these big performance departments, you gotta keep that intact. You can’t just change the performance department all over again. I don’t see baseball doing that with how deep their system goes with minor leagues.
Because once you change the strength coach then you’re changing what the AHL is going to do, and how you assess and evaluate and then develop and things like that. Lorne is that fair to say?
Lorne: Yeah, I would agree with that. And it’s a big deal when they do that. And I know the Pittsburgh Pirates in baseball just decided to clean house and start from scratch but at the same time they have a reputation in the city and I think the league as a team without a lot of direction. I know the guy who got fired there was a very experienced guy, great guy, people liked him. He’s been around long enough to know that’s just the nature of the beast.
Mike: What were some of the most rewarding experiences for you? I saw a glitter in the eye there for the Nordiques. What were a couple of the most rewarding experiences in your career as a hockey performance coach?
Lorne: The Nordiques thing was huge. It was probably my proudest day when we won that Presidents’ Trophy. We were a young team. It was Mark Crawford’s first year coaching and we had a lot of really good young guys. I remember going into New York, and we were favored against the Rangers, and we lost.
You know, and everybody said that this team was done. So it was a kind of happy-sad thing at the same time. So I’d been with them for five years and seen them go through such bad times, such poor losing seasons, but it got use the opportunity to draft some pretty good young guys there at the time.
That was really rewarding even though it didn’t end really well. I gotta say my last year with the Montreal Canadiens was unbelievable.
The Montreal Canadiens are like the New York Yankees of hockey. They’re just iconic. And all the Maple Leafs fans listening, I’ll put them a rung up the Toronto Maple Leafs. What they have going on in the dressing room, the respect and history for it, is crazy. But we made the playoffs on the very last day of the season. I wanna say we tied our last game.
Then we went on a run that was just incredible. We beat Washington, Pittsburgh, and then we lost to Philadelphia in the conference finals. We were three wins away from the Stanley Cup Final. And I guess we went in there by the seat of our pants. But I guess the intensity, and the grind of that playoff was something to be excited about and proud to be apart of.
Mike: I’m sure it was fun to see that group just get so much closer, right? You don’t do it without that locker room being close.
Lorne: No. It was fun. Moments too like getting the job. Mike, you wouldn’t know because you’ve had your job too long. When somebody calls you for a job. You guys know I work for Ben Roethlisbeger now, as his sports performance director if you will. And I remember getting a call from his agent. And I was running the facility for Pens Elite in Pittsburgh with Gary Roberts and the guys like “Yeah, I’m Ben Roethlisberger’s agent. He lives up in the area, he needs somebody to help him out, your gym’s kind of close, tell me what you do.”
I say I kind of tell him. And he says, “tell me you background.”
And we got talking and he goes, “Really?” He said, “Let me tell you what I’m really looking for.” And we got into this discussion that he wanted an exclusive guy and really help Ben with his nutrition and his training and what have you.
I was just blown away because I always joke that I’ve always been a football guy trapped in hockey. So this was kind of like a dream job. When you get those jobs, those calls, they’re really kind of proud moments. Credit to everybody who helped me get to wherever, the players, the coaches, the GMs who brought those experiences to me. They’re certainly all a part of that.
David: On the flip side what we some difficult experiences being a strength coach in the NHL?
Lorne: Well early on communicating and getting buy-in was a bit of a challenge. I mentioned earlier the relationships, the medical trainers, equipment guys, and strength coaches, it was — I don’t want to call it volatile — but I’ll tell you this, I won’t tell you what team or who was involved.
We had a player who suffered a grade 2 or 3 MCL sprain. He went out away form the team to see a doctor for a second opinion. And he came back, and the doc said to get going, but the team, the medical staff, didn’t want him to do anything for a week.
And he called me, ti was like a Sunday at 7pm and we were off. He’s like, “Goldie. Meet me at the gym. I need your help.” I’m like okay.
So we get there and I do some work on him and got his knee moving, and got him doing things he hadn’t been able to do in almost a week. And he felt amazing.
Anyways, the next day we’re in the medical room and I come walking in and the trainer looks at me and he goes, “Goldie, I can’t believe how good he looks today. He looks good, he feels good. What did you do to him?”
And I kind of went through the steps of what I did, and I’ll tell you guys what I did, it’s not a big deal. We went through some ART, some soft tissue work above and below where the strain was. And that released enough tissue to allow him to move and got him some mobility and stability and he just felt good.
When I mentioned that he went off his rocket. He goes no no no, you can’t do that. I just sorta lost my mind. I started poking him in the chest. I said, “Are you —“
Can I swear on this thing?
David: You can swear. It’s a hockey podcast, come on.
Lorne: I said, “Are you fucking kidding me right now? Do you hear what you just said to me? He looks better and he feels better?” And I just walked in my office. I couldn’t take it. Anyways. That was in the old days, some of the things I had to deal with. And I’m sure that wouldn’t happen today but that stuck in my mind. At the end of the day we’re all just trying to help guys.
I’m not like “Goldie got him off the injury list.” I’m just trying to help the players with whatever skill set that we have.
Mike: Absolutely. And one of the things you said is that you have to take time to have those conversations. It’s with players, managers, scouts, coaches. We don’t talk about that in our profession enough.
You know you get the job, you have all these certifications and you know all this periodization in your mind, and all these exercises brewing. But when shit hits the fan, how are you going to communicate with that coach?
You’re going to have to take your lickings, but you also gotta know how to back your program up and understand how you’re going to communicate why you’re doing what you’re doing. You could do that beforehand, but you still have to have difficult conversation.
Lorne: I was lucky, I was a bit older too. A lot of guys go home, they’ve got their own strength coaches they work with in the offseason. Having been around a long time I know a lot of guys. And so if so and so is working with Matt Nichol in Toronto or Scott Livingston in Montreal or Chris Schwarz in Ottawa, they can say, “Oh yeah, Goldie’s a good guy. Do what he says because he’s not going to do you wrong.”
That was always helpful also. And some of these guys knew the players I’d worked with in the past. I was lucky to work with some high profile guys over the years. So when you do that in the private sector also, it gets you a little buy-in.
Mike: I’ve always wanted to ask you, when you went from St. Louis to Montreal in your NHL career, what were you doing collaterally? Did you have a group of private clientele that weren’t hockey players? Did you have other clientele that weren’t hockey players? Female athletes? Track and field?
Lorne: I always had something going. I started a company called StrengthTek fitness and wellness consultants. And we did workplace fitness and wellness. We had at one point in our hay day in the early 2000s we had 14 corporate facilities across North America. We had contracts in San Jose. Nortel was in San Jose back in the day.
I had that going, which was different than the hockey. Then in 1998 I opened up the athletic conditioning center in Ottawa, it was like the first sports performance place. We actually didn’t allow — if you weren’t an athlete, you couldn’t train there. And I saw a lot of athletes from football, hockey, skiing, soccer, basketball thought that facility.
A lot fo my ex-NHL guys from Ottawa use to come in and train there in the offseason also. I was lucky. Mike I think you’re probably working 11.5 months out of the year. It’d be tough to have a business on the side.
Mike: In the offseason we have local kids come in who want to train. Young hockey players or some high school athletes. Working for Mike [Boyle] early on, I always kind of enjoyed that and I enjoyed my time in college based on the age work you deal with.
I always ad small group of like five kids in the summertime, whether it be hockey or field hockey, or female soccer, or now baseball is big in San Jose, California.
David: Yeah and Lorne you’ve done so much besides just coach teams. You mentioned StrengthTek. You’ve written books. What other skills outside of the technical strength and conditioning skills set have most valuable whether in business, communication, or otherwise?
Lorne: I’m an expert in CFL football history.
Mike: There’s your football strength coach trapped in a hockey strength coach.
Lorne: I always like to kid about that. I grew up with the CFL. That’s my game. All my friends and people and Ben are like ‘You’re working in the NFL now, why do you want to watch the CFL?’ Because that’s what grew up with, that’s what I looked up to, that’s my sort of passion.
I remember in Quebec, they have the football pool on Sunday, and I was always go up and write the CFL games so everybody could get their CFL picks. And Joe Sakic goes “nobody watches the CFL.” I said, “Joe, come on, you’re from BC, I know you’re a BC Lions fan.”
David: There we go. The biggest CFL fan in the world is Lorne.
Mike: Well Ryan Getzlaf’s brother — didn’t he play in Saskatchewan?
Lorne: Oh, yeah, yeah. Chris Getzlaf.
David: I didn’t even know Ryan Getzlaf had a brother.
Lorne: What year did he win a Stanley Cup in Anaheim?
David: 2007
Lorne: ’07. Same year his brother won a Grey Cup. You know I prefer — drinking from the Grey Cup, it’s pretty impressive. I’ve actually drunk from both cups.
David: All right well you can go start the CFL strength podcast if you want. It might be a very niche audience but I think you could pull it off. Let’s look ahead to the future, the present tense now, what are you focused on? I know you mentioned Ben of course. What other skills are you focused on developing? What’s your day to day right now?
Lorne: Personally what I really focus on more than I have in the past are just more treatment techniques. Rehab, recovery, regeneration. Just methods to help guys recover from games more effectively because we spend a lot of time doing that. And football is an easy sport to deal with that in because we only play once a week. In hockey you’re regenerating and you’re training to maintain some strength, speed, and power at the same time. It’s a tough go.
So I do a lot of reading and course work. I was on Mike Boyle’s winter seminar. Mike had a great show there. There were some really great people there. So I highly recommend that to anybody who’s looking for continuing education. Now with COVID and StrengthTek shut down until 2022, I’ve jumped on the bandwagon with Bridge Athletic and started making my programs through that app now and I’m hoping to be able to market if you will those programs to minor hockey kids. With the internet I don’t have to mail anything anymore, we just send it through the app. I’m trying to get my old body as technologically sound as a can.
I will say, the Bridge Athletic guys have been great with me, I’ve always done my programs on spreadsheets, and there’s a part of me that wants to keep going back there.
Mike: I’m a bridge guy too, they probably told you that. I have that itch too.
David: I hope you know a young person who can help you with tech stuff.
Lorne: I’ve got a 25-year-old son and a 22-year-old daughter. I have a tough time posting to my story on Instagram.
David: Is it really that hard? It’s pretty intuitive.
Lorne: It is that hard. It never works properly.
Mike: I think through COVID there’s been this great influx of education in the hockey world. On the podcasts and the different coaches. Anthony Donskov jumps into my mind of getting a big group together to discuss new trends. What trees do you see us barking up that may not be the best ones? What are some good ones where you think ‘hey we need to look here’ to look out for the health and performance of our hockey players? Is there something out there that we should give more thought and focus?
Lorne: I really think that trying to get away from the performance aspect of assessment for the guys on your team versus assessing what’s limiting their ability to play and move properly. I think that if learn to focus more on that, we’ll be able to bring more value to the players on the big team and bring awareness to the guys on the AHL team and juniors to get exposed it. You know you look at Becoming a Supple Leopard by Kelly Starrett, and he’s got his app (Mobility WOD) and Read State and thousands of hours of such applicable use for guys like us.
I think he’s hitting a broader audience. But look at competitive athletes and everything they could possibly do with a foam roller and some bands to enhance movement and our ability to assess it.
And Mike I don’t know if you’ve been exposed to it but I took Scotty Livingston’s Reconditioning Level 1.
Mike: That’s on my radar, it looks really good.
Lorne: It’s really good. It’s really all about movement and insuring that joints are healthy and that you set your athlete up in a position where they can be successful. That doesn’t mean a 250 kilo back squat. It just means movement, mobility, fluidity, health, longevity in the sport. I think with that we’re going to be able to bring value. I think that’s where our jobs are going to focus on as we keep moving forward.
Mike: Yeah that’s part of the art, isn’t it. You don’t always need to add horsepower to the engine. We’re the pit crew that guys come in for a tune up in a way to move better. Then they’ll be able to express their speed and power just by taking away some of the restriction.
Lorne: Right. How much stronger do they need to be? When you compromise what they really need to be able to do.
Mike: Did you get into the on-ice tracking at all towards the end of your time in Montreal? Do you even look at that now?
Lorne: No I have not. I don’t think anybody was using it back in 2010. Ironically Adam Douglas, who used to work for me at the Athletic Conditioning Centre in Ottawa, he’s the guru with regards to tech. If I ever got another job with another team he’s the guy who I’d want to bring in and work for me. But it’s interesting. I know the Steelers are big data guys. Everybody’s wearing Catapult. They’re tracking their speed, movement to the right, to the left, backward, and they’ve got it down to a science. They know if they get too close to what they call the red zone, there’s greater potential for hamstring injuries with their football athletes.
I think it’s something that’s evolving. I wish I were still with a team so I could get more involved with that because I think that’s the best environment to really be able to learn from it. And then in Pittsburgh I was really close with Andy O’ Brein and Alex Trinca and I followed Andy around a lot to look at what he’s doing with his data, how he’s collecting it and tracking it.
You just need a guy for that now.
Mike: Those positions are being developed for teams. A Sports Science guy. Even on the coaching side there’s unbelievable technology. With Sport Logic they can track stuff like battles won on the forecheck. You can take and correlate this guys battles won to his strength levels. And if you can bring it together and marry the two, it’s really interesting. There’s some deep hockey analytical data that’s just not plus/minus or Corsi or any of that. You know, how fast is this guys going off the rush and stuff like that.
Lorne: Yeah, it’s evolved. I’d almost be afraid to just kind of have to jump into that. I’d want to have somebody with me who’s an expert to translate it all.
Mike: You need a strength coach slash data guy who can pick the visiting team up at night.
David: Mike I’d love if you could include some resources on some of that data stuff.
Mike: Yeah it’s pretty cool.
David: Goldie, I’m calling you by your nickname now because I’ve caught on, I was gonna ask you about aerobic training but we covered that in a great article for our website. So if you haven’t read that, that’ll definitely be linked in the show notes. Instead I want to ask you a philosophical/conceptual question.
What advice would you have to a young, driven, already hard working strength coach? What common advice would you suggest they ignore?
Lorne: My advice would be — everybody has this dream of being in the NHL. And once you’re there and you’re established it’s a healthy place to be. But I think for a lot of people, and I don’t want this to sound bad, I think it might be unrealistic for some people and they can have a very successful, rewarding, even more impactful career, and be financially successful by not thinking about that dream of going to the NHL.
I’ve always had this dream of wanting to work for an NCAA team. I’ve always wanted to go back — I mean you can call it going back but —
Mike: I’d go back.
Lorne: Yeah, I would love to work for an NCAA team. And actually, not too many people know this, but I interviewed a job for the University of Nebraska Omaha, and I really wanted it, but I couldn’t make it work financially. You know I’m an old guy. I’ve got kids, expenses. If I were 25-30 I would’ve taken that job. What an experience that would’ve been. They have a brand new rink, a brand new weight room, to step in there and make an impact on those guys. Lead them, teach them, help them make that jump.
Because there’s one thing I remember, was when I had my athletic conditioning centre, there were times when I wasn’t working in the National Hockey League, there’s nothing more fulfilling than developing deeper relationships with these guys that you start coaching up in peewee, and bantam, and tier II junior, and junior, and he’s drafted. I did that with Zach Bogosian. And there’s a picture of me, Zach, and his brother at the NHL draft here in Ottawa. It’s so fulfilling to see that happen.
And that doesn’t always happen in the NHL. There’s so much player movement. So people who have that dream. You could live that dream and not make the NHL. I get guys emailing me and asking how to get to the NHL. And I want to talk them out of it.
Mike: Yeah I feel that way sometimes too. These college jobs are awesome. You have a set amount of time to be with the players. It’s not like they’re gonna get traded. You still have compliance to deal with. But some of these jobs offer a pretty damn good retirement too. So those jobs should never be overlooked and it’s a hell of a brand of hockey too.
I still have a bunch of connections from both the [Wisconsin] Badger women’s team and men’s team when I was at Wisconsin before here and we still have a great relationship and stay in touch. It’s also where I began my career in college working with all the athletic programs so it’s almost where I was raised.
Now that I have kids it would be cool, as fun as it is for them to come in the locker room and run around with Brent Burns and Patty Marleau and those guys and their kids, you get a chance at the college level, you have massive facilities they can run around.
Lorne: I don’t know if the deal is there where you can send them to the university.
Mike: Yeah it is there as long as you get in.
Lorne: So professional sports there’s a lot of glory and it looks great on paper. But younger coaches should consider alternatives, not because it’s a lower level, but because it might be a better fit from a life perspective.
David: Mike can I ask you the same question? What’s the advice you would give to a young, driven strength coach and/or what advice should they ignore.
Mike: I think you have to keep learning but you can’t get overwhelmed with everything that’s out there. If we did everything our thoughts would be twisted and we wouldn’t know which end is up. So you have to have a real good network to help you process the information too. What’s good? What’s bad? What’s out there that could be effective?
SO I’d say to that young strength coach, but you have to have a real strength philosophy of what you want to do. For me, look I was blessed, I worked for Verstegen, Boyle, Glenn Harris, and great friends and mentors along the way. I kind of molded my philosophy through the success of theirs, but I also learned form their failures.
I still do that.
To my fault, I think I lean on that too much and maybe don’t read as much as a should at times. I feel like I’m always behind with what’s on the internet and I feel like I have to temper myself to say, all right, I can’t keep up with all that stuff. But when you get to it, you gotta get to it. You gotta know what’s out there and not get stale.
Lorne: Don’t feel bad. I can’t tell you how many times I see a great study on twitter and I open it up and I email it to myself. I probably have 300 of those emails that I need to read. All great studies. It’s tough.
Unless you’re working in that university setting it’s hard to stay on top of all the research. Especially when you have a job.
Mike: And families and all that. I’d say the things the young strength coaches shouldn’t listen to is that because you’ve been somewhere that you should get this instant gratification. And look, I’m a Springfield grad I love Springfield. But it can be a culprit of it. Kids will finish and be like “where’s a job?” No no. You’re going to have to go through a bunch of other experiences until you become experienced and hardened until you’re fully prepared with different experiences.
I think through instant gratification sometimes it’s like, all right, I’ve worked for Mike Boyle, now I can go to the NHL. I’ve worked for EXOS now I can go to the MLS or MLB. No. You have to find value in all your experiences. If I didn’t have one of my experiences I wouldn’t be here. I think the combination of everything allowed me to get here and stay here.
David: Well I think that’s a great place to wrap up. Lorne I’m going to give you a chance for final thoughts, asks of the audience, places people can reach you and all that stuff.
Lorne: I’m pretty accessible right now, I don’t have a lot going on. Football season is over. I’m =not specifically working on hockey right now. Your people can reach out to me on Twitter, @LorneGoldenberg, same on Instagram, @LorneGoldenberg. Those are my two main sources where people can see me.
I want to see a line from Matt Price, he always says he’s more of a shopper than a producer. I love the aspects of social media and I’ll throw some comments out there, some ideas or exercises. You can always find out what’s going on in the CFL through my account also.
David: You found your niche. That’s you. Gentlemen thank you so much for sitting in on this conversation. It’s been such a joy to sit in on this and ask a few questions. Lorne, Goldie, I’m jut going to call you Goldie from now on, thanks for joining us we really appreciate it.
Mike: Thanks Goldie.
