The dumbest exercise in history.

[Pioneer]

@Charlie_Francis

Apparently, you haven’t been watching what passes for Hockey training these days.
“You need to train on unstable surfaces because you need balance on the ice.”
“You need to train on one leg because you compete on one leg.”
I had the misfortune of having to deal with this with an NHL player.
The first season I had him he went from middling to winning the fastest skater competition for his team. The next season, things got tougher because my guy was under pressure from a player he greatly admired to work with a hockey guru who believed in all this shit.
This guy turned up with the usual trained seal balancing act and insisted on training my guy with front squats. My guy had trained with med balls his whole career, developing tremendous explosive power (ask some of the many guys he knocked out!) and had never lifted in his life. He started complaining of a sore back.
I finally lost it and said:" Hey! I like weights. If he was 16 I’d have him doing them - but he’s 30, has never lifted before, he’s getting a sore back lifting 80 lbs and he got 8 weeks to get ready. What do you think you’re doing?"
The guy brushed off the remark and started to explain the benefits of plyos to me! (Does this guy read???)
The guy showed up a week later for another dog and pony show, front squats and all - and again my guy’s back got sore.
I pulled him aside and asked: “You’re two for two with this clown. Have you had enough?” He said yup.
Ironically, the player who promoted this came out to train with my guy one day close to the season when I was away and pushed my guy to do a weight session with him:
3 x (10 x 225, 10 x 205, 10 x 185 with short breaks)
My guy, who’d never benched before did the whole series without a problem while the other guy crapped out before finishing!

Can’t say I’ve witnessed any of that kind of elite training before.

It seems that often something difficult to do is automatically assumed to be a superior method to others that are more easily managed. People go on and on about drills, exercises being tough so therefore they must be also effective.

Is this(the hockey player) related to the story in the first set of Vancouver tapes?