Building and Leading High Performance Teams (with Mike Potenza)

In this episode of the Evolving Performance Podcast, Kevin is joined by Mike Potenza, Director of High Performance for the San Jose Sharks. Mike oversees the strength and conditioning, nutrition, and medical staffs for both the Sharks and their AHL affiliate, the San Jose Barracuda. He previously spent 16 years as the Sharks' head strength and conditioning coach and two years as Director of Performance with the Golden State Warriors.

They explore how high-performance departments have evolved in professional sports, what Mike looks for when hiring across different disciplines, and the importance of character and culture fit. Mike shares impactful lessons from his time in the NBA—including personalized programming and tendon health strategies—and how those insights have changed his approach in hockey. The conversation covers comprehensive athlete profiling through blood work and range of motion assessments, recovery strategies that actually move the needle, and game day preparation techniques to maximize player energy and mental clarity.

This episode provides valuable insights for anyone working in or aspiring to work in professional sports, offering a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to support elite athlete performance.

Topics Include:

• The evolution and expansion of high-performance staffs in professional hockey
• What to prioritize when hiring strength coaches, nutritionists, and medical staff
• Why character and culture fit matter more than technical knowledge
• Lessons from the NBA on personalized programming and return-to-play protocols
• Comprehensive athlete profiling: injury history, range of motion, and blood work
• What blood panels reveal about nutrient deficiencies in elite athletes
• Tracking hormonal changes (testosterone and cortisol) throughout the season
• In-season training philosophy: maintaining capacity while developing skills
• Recovery strategies that work: sleep optimization, massage, and contrast therapy
• Game day supplementation protocols for energy and mental clarity
• Travel management and sleep scheduling across time zones
• Why practice times should adjust based on late-night games and travel

📲 Connect with Mike Potenza:
X: @mike_potenza

📩 Contact Kevin:
Follow and suggest future guests, topics, and questions: @KevinNeeld
📺 Watch the videos: @NeeldPerformance
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📬 Email: KN@KevinNeeld.com

⏱️ Timestamps

[00:00:00] Introduction and Guest Background 

[00:01:50] Episode Overview and Sponsor Highlight 

[00:05:32] Staff Expansion and the Director of High Performance Role 

[00:09:59] Roles, Responsibilities, and Hiring Philosophy 

[00:18:34] Athlete Profiling, Range of Motion, and Performance Metrics 

[00:21:37] Advanced Blood Work and Biological Monitoring 

[00:31:06] Lessons from the NBA and Tendon Health 

[00:36:50] Modern Recovery Strategies 

[00:45:34] Game Day Preparation and Supplementation 

[00:49:45] Travel Cocooning and Logistics

Transcript

[00:00:00] Introduction and Guest Background

Kevin: Welcome to the Evolving Performance Podcast. Today, I'm excited to welcome Mike Potenza as a guest on the podcast. Mike is currently in his second stint with the San Jose Sharks, serving as the Director of High Performance, where he oversees the strength and conditioning and nutrition staffs and serves as a liaison to the Sharks medical staff to ensure a streamlined collaboration between the performance and medical staffs for both the San Jose Sharks and their AHL affiliate, the San Jose Barracuda.

Kevin: Mike had previously spent 16 years as the head strength and conditioning coach with the Sharks, but returned to the organization after spending two years with the Golden State Warriors as their Director of Performance. In that role, he was responsible for the management of performance testing, implementation of player-specific training programs, and collaboration with the Warriors coaching staff to maximize the efficiency of training and practice schedules.

Kevin: During Mike's tenure in San Jose, he also served as vice president of the Strength and Conditioning Association of Professional Hockey, which has recently transitioned to the Professional Hockey Performance Organization. Mike served in that role from 2015 to 2019, and served as the president of the association from 2019 to 2022. Prior to joining the Sharks organization, Potenza served as the strength and conditioning coach for the University of Wisconsin men's and women's hockey teams, both of which won NCAA national championships in 2006.

Kevin: Potenza also had responsibilities with the wrestling and softball programs at Wisconsin away from the rink. Mike worked with the United States Air Force para rescue teams based in California and Alaska, consulting on the implementation and design of their Human Performance program. Additionally, he's the co-founder of Metabolic Elite, a supplement and education company specifically supporting the needs of high performers.

[00:01:50] Episode Overview and Sponsor Highlight

Kevin: In this episode, we discuss Mike's role as the Director of High Performance, both specifically in terms of his position and more broadly in terms of how staffs have evolved over the course of his career and why these roles have become so important. We talk about what Mike looks for when hiring people for the various roles within the departments he oversees.

Kevin: Impactful lessons he learned in his two years working in the NBA, and how it's changed his approach coming back to San Jose. Recovery strategies Mike has found most effective with his athletes and game day strategies to help maximize player energy and mental focus. Whether you're currently working or aspire to work with professional athletes, or just want to learn more about all the efforts that go into supporting the performance of athletes in a professional setting, this is a great episode that I know you'll enjoy.

Kevin: Before we dive in, I want to thank our sponsor, Metabolic Elite. If you've been listening to this podcast for a while, you know I'm a huge fan of Metabolic Elite. The company was founded by James Laval, who is an internationally recognized clinical pharmacist and board-certified clinical nutritionist, to provide supplements and education to help support the health, performance, and recovery of high performers.

Kevin: Each product is formulated using research-supported ingredients and dosages, using the highest quality ingredients, so you can be confident that every product you take will deliver the maximal benefit and effect. In the past, I've discussed the benefits of one of my favorite products called Synapse, which has significant benefits for focus, mental processing, and decision making. Areas of cognition that will not only have an impact on sport performance, but are also beneficial for anyone navigating busy schedules, experiencing poor sleep, or changing time zones.

Kevin: Today, I want to highlight one of my other favorite products, Enduro 2. Enduro 2 uses a compound from Rhodiola, which has long been recognized as a powerful adaptogen that improves exercise performance and the body's ability to adapt to stress. The specific active compound is called Salidroside, and it has been shown in a placebo-controlled study to improve oxygen utilization during high-intensity exercise and to reduce muscle damage following resistance training.

Kevin: It does this through several different mechanisms that promote improved glucose utilization, mitochondrial function, and oxygen transport, as well as reducing inflammation and sparing glycogen, which is the body's carbohydrate stores that support high-intensity efforts. On a personal note, I've experimented with taking Enduro 2 before several hard, high-intensity interval conditioning days where I can actually track my output, and my paces are consistently higher after taking Enduro 2 compared to days when I don't.

Kevin: It's rare for a supplement to have an immediate and significant impact on performance and reduce the recovery costs of that output in terms of minimizing muscle damage, which is why Enduro 2 is such a powerful option to improve both training and game performance. I've been taking Metabolic Elite supplements for over a year now , and one of the cool things about the line is that many of the products are made using a liposomal tablet delivery system, which is just a chewable tablet.

Kevin: The LPT technology significantly improves the bioavailability of the supplement, or how much of the product is actually available for your body to use, and the chewable tablets are really easy to take for people that don't like swallowing pills. There's a lot of great information about Metabolic Elite's products, the LPT technology, and other important tips to help you optimize your performance on their website. So go check out MetabolicElite.co. That's MetabolicElite.co, and you can save 15% off all products using the code NEELD15. That's N-E-E-L-D-1-5 to save 15%.

[00:05:32] Staff Expansion and the Director of High Performance Role

Kevin: Now please welcome Mike Potenza to the podcast. Mike, thanks so much for being here.

Mike: Thanks for having me. Always love chatting with you.

Kevin: You know, I want to kick things off by talking about your new role. So you're back in San Jose after spending a couple of years with the Golden State Warriors. Now, as the Director of High Performance with the Sharks, can you talk about your role now and how it differs from what you were doing previously as the head strength and conditioning coach?

Mike: Yeah. Previously it was really more performance-based. I kind of wore many hats, as you know, and dealt with nutrition and making sure that was all set up. Had a heavy hand in the RTP process, designed the workouts on the floor, coaching, and then that was kind of the big heavy lift there. And I also oversaw our strength coaches in the American League.

Mike: Now it's overseeing medical, overseeing nutrition, overseeing both teams' performance and medical departments. So rather than being in charge of two people at the time, now I've come back to be in charge of like 13 to 14 people, you know, in two different teams and have more conversations, I guess deeper conversations, higher-level conversations with management and the coaches. There's always been the planning piece with the coaches, but I think we've elevated that here and now with Coach Rosovsky and his staff; they want to know workloads, they want to know on-ice plans and the schedule. So yeah, it's been a lot. It's been still a lot of hats to wear, but different hats, if you will.

Kevin: Mike, I want to kind of dig into that a little bit deeper. Feels like the staffs have grown significantly over the last decade or so. I'm curious from your perspective, one, what is kind of fueled the perceived need to expand the staffs? And this role that you're in as a Director of High Performance didn't really exist when you first got into the NHL. Why do you think that that role has evolved now to be not just more prevalent around professional sports, but really necessary?

Mike: I think a lot goes into that. I think General Managers and leadership of teams now were players who probably just got in with some of the best of the best "OG" strength coaches and started to train and get involved with strength and conditioning in hockey when it really broke into it with guys who were players training with Boyle, with Peter Twist, with all of those names. And now it was part of their life and culture, and they're bringing it into their teams and their team responsibility and management style. It's important. It's critical. So that helps with the expansion.

Mike: I think we as professionals see other leagues and what they're doing and try to evolve it to a higher level to say, "We need more resources," or "We're a data-heavy team, so we need more data analysts or performance scientists," or things like that. On the therapy side, we see other teams have two massage therapists or a chiro and two PTs on staff. It really helps with the return-to-play process and doesn't dilute the staff and make them chase their tails and really give only a "half-ass" service to players when they're injured. Because that is really critical.

Mike: And I think we're getting smarter in the fact that we're stopping banging our heads against the wall and wondering why we have headaches anymore. So it's like the coaching ratio, therapist ratio, or trainer ratio of one or 2 to 25. It's just you can get by, but it's triage, and you don't want to just be triage. You want to provide a higher-level service and create a higher-level program. I think you're going to see more of it, to be honest with you, but it's really positive.

[00:09:59] Roles, Responsibilities, and Hiring Philosophy
Kevin: You've alluded to this already, but can you just kind of outline what some of the different roles and areas are that fall underneath your umbrella—as far as who are the people on staff and what are their roles and certifications, qualifications, those sorts of things?

Mike: Sure. On the medical side, obviously we have our team doctors. They have first stake in the game of injury and diagnosing and setting the path forward for us in programming, therapy, treatment—all those kinds of things. That team has been in San Jose since, if I remember, 2012 or maybe 2013. So they've been great. And then the next layer is our athletic trainers. We have two of them, and we also have a student that comes in from University of Pacific. So that's a great piece to have for an intern who needs to log those hours to be able to sit for the ATC.

Mike: It's great to have another young professional climbing the ranks. Those staff members, as you know, are involved in the day-to-day immediate ambulatory care of the guys on the ice if anything happens. But in the RTP cycle, they're managing the surgery, the prescriptions, talking to the docs, applying treatment modalities on a daily basis, and providing any soft tissue therapy or range of motion assessment on the daily for our injured guys or guys that we earmark who have injury histories that we want to get a look on every day.

Mike: And then on the performance side, we have our head strength coach and our assistant strength coach. They're programming on the daily, monitoring and tracking Catapult and ClearSky on the daily. We kind of have a double duty for our assistant strength coach where he does a little bit of the data visualization from all of our performance scores, to include the Catapult data.

Mike: Nutrition-wise, we're kind of unique. We have a Registered Dietitian nutrition consultant who comes in once a month. She really sets the philosophy and the "meat and potatoes" of the program itself—what we want to do nutritionally. She has access to prospects all the way through the American League and obviously the NHL team. So anybody who needs a diet or meal plan designed, that goes through her.

Mike: And then we have a daily nutrition manager who has been there for four years now, but she started as a student at San Jose State in sports nutrition, a former athlete. And now she's actually getting prepared to sit for her Registered Dietitian examination. So we've kind of seen it come full cycle. But then on the day-to-day, it's the nuances of stocking fridges, ordering, making sure we've got supplies at both buildings, making sure our travel supplies are stocked and ready for a trip, and individualizing our supplement schedule for guys—especially our daily nutrients and vitamins based on the blood work that we do.

Mike: She too will help with the American League team, which is great, so they kind of have a double duty. And then massage therapy: we have a full-time massage therapist. We have a massage therapist who comes in at home; the second one does travel. But our first massage therapist has been with us for maybe 20 years now, actually. And this could be his 20th year.

Mike: And then on the physical therapy side, we have one lead physical therapist who's a great friend. I met him years ago working with other athletes in the local San Jose area. And so we know we really need a solid resource for this. He owns four clinics in the area now and has become a vital tool for us, especially in my philosophy, because that PT role and that strength and conditioning role end up really quarterbacking the RTP process and also the daily treatment for guys who have that injury history that we want to stay on top of.

Mike: This is kind of an evolution of it, Kevin, like you said. We're getting ready to hire another PT—I got the approval from management to hire a second. So when that second comes in, that one will travel; our lead PT here will stay back. And when we're in market, we'll have two resources so we can spread the wealth for guys. Now if we go on the road and the player is left back, it's just the responsibility of the second PT to update the first PT on what they've got to do—easy handoff.

Mike: Other resources that are just contracted and not full-time: we have a chiro that's local as an office and she comes in three or four times a week for a few hours. We have a gentleman who specializes in dry needling and acupuncture; he comes in a couple of times a week as well. But we have full access to the office in San Jose, which is great.

Kevin: But Mike, I'm curious: you mentioned that there's over a dozen people now that kind of fall under the high-performance umbrella. And it seems like you guys have a really good system for introducing young professionals early on into the pipeline and allowing a path for people to continue to grow. Potentially there's an avenue there where if somebody else leaves the organization, there's an opportunity for some of the people coming in to potentially continue to scale their role up.

Kevin: I get a lot of questions from students and young working professionals that want to work in professional hockey or professional sports—I'm sure you get a bunch of those, too. What do you look for when you're hiring people within your department? Is it skills, experience, education, personality, character? How heavily are you weighing personal references? What does that look like for you?

Mike: Yeah, it's funny because it's one of the biggest parts of my job coming back. When I came back, I had to hire five people. So I was like, "Oh, okay, this is not new, but it's really a lot more than I had to do in the past". And it was outside in different domains: I had to hire athletic trainers, another massage therapist, and all that, and redo contracts. You put down performance and you put down this leadership/management type position like, "Okay, how am I going to go through this and what questions am I asking?"

Mike: Honestly, I would say the person first and character are Number 1 or 1A for me. I don't care what they know; if they don't fit, it's going to go completely to shit. I wasn't trying to rhyme that together, but it really is true. I've seen great therapists be with teams or organizations, and if they're not great people, it's not going to jive. So that's Number 1A. Number 1B is definitely leaning a lot on personal references and where they've been—the connections. That's part of your network and why you build it during your career.

Mike: As a professional, it's being able to lean on other professionals who maybe know this type of person or have an insight as to where they were and what they did. So those are really critical for me. Number two is we do want them to have a strong basis of education and be able to have the competency to do the job and understand the role. But they're going to learn a new step probably 90% of the time—they're going to learn a whole new system from every team. Every team is unique; every sport is unique. So all of those layers when compounded together... it's going to be a whole new experience for them. They'll take what they know and apply it, but it's going to take a little bit of time to do that.

Mike: Next in line for me is obviously their work ethic. There's a lot that goes into it. Even though you have more roles, it doesn't mean you have less work. So the work ethic is going to be really key for them. Pro sports is really difficult, whether it be especially with the travel. So you've got to be... it's not a full-time job, but it's an all-the-time job. You've got to wrap yourself around it and understand that it's going to take a lot of time, especially in the off-season too.

[00:18:34] Athlete Profiling, Range of Motion, and Performance Metrics

Kevin: Managing an apartment that has so many resources—from the nutrition to the training to the rehabilitation and treatment side of things. Can you talk about some of your assessments or screens the organization uses to help identify which areas you can best support an athlete's needs? Because I imagine part of the process is trying to understand what each individual athlete needs to best help them on a day-to-day basis. And it might be different for a guy that's been in the league for ten plus years versus a guy that's 18 or 19 and just coming in for the first time.

Mike: Yeah. Our profiling really, truly is—if you're going to go in order—we review this as a staff review: every single player on the NHL side to know what the profile of this player is. And it starts with injury history. If we have a record of what injury history they have, everybody needs to understand and make note of that. You can't forget about it just because it's healed; you don't know if it's completely resolved or if it's been a reoccurrence on that same side where it keeps coming back because it wasn't planned for or programmed for. It was just kind of like, "All right, it's healed. It's done".

Mike: So injury is just critical. The next step in the process of intake or what we track year-to-year is range of motion. And that's from, like they say, toenails to fingernails. Specifically, ankle range of motion all the way up to cervical range of motion. I've come to believe and always thought that cervical range of motion is going to be really critical when they're coming back from concussion, or if they don't have a prerequisite level of cervical rotation, they may be vulnerable on the ice. Not having that visual span or horizon-type span of, "Where am I on the ice? What's coming at me? What do I not see that can be problematic?"

Mike: And then on the performance side, before that, baseline hip assessment, strength assessment with dynamometer with the force frame—let's add adduction in three different positions. We're now getting into hip flexion, hip extension, internal and external rotation to get a full hip battery. And they're all looking at outputs, but we're also looking at asymmetries. We're not—I don't look at rate of force there just for safety reasons. Like, I don't need them to do our warmup and then all of a sudden snap right into the actual exercise—it's a little bit risky, it seems for me at this moment.

Mike: But then we'll go into the performance metrics: we have jumps on the force frame. We have 1080 sprints off the ice, we'll do a 1080 assessment for sprint profiling on the ice, and then we'll do Wingate. We've gotten away from the VO2; I think because of COVID we got away from it and it hasn't been brought back since. I'm kind of toying with the idea of bringing it back now that everybody can use the same mask without any concern.

Mike: Part of that, too, is our blood work profile and our body composition profile. We'll do body composition every month with a couple of times sprinkled in there with DEXA—a mobile DEXA for our guys. And then blood work is three times a year: beginning, middle, and end. And if anybody wants to do any advanced or additional blood work in the summer and they're in San Jose, then we get that done. That's the way we kind of dig into each player. And then the whole other piece is, okay, what do you do when you have all this information? That's probably a whole other podcast, but there is a strategy for that, too.

[00:21:37] Advanced Blood Work and Biological Monitoring

Kevin: You're one of the first that I'm aware of to start integrating more comprehensive blood work into a player's screening. And traditionally, the population that you work with would be considered young and healthy by most medical professionals. The level of granularity of looking at comprehensive blood panels may be viewed as not really necessary because they are young and healthy. What have you learned from looking at blood panels over the years in these athletes? And because you're testing multiple times throughout the year, what changes do you see throughout the season?

Mike: Great question. I started really kind of... my gateway was InsideTracker. Because I felt like there was something to these athletes—they just can't replenish everything with food because you almost get tired of having to eat as much. They're healthy individuals, there's no doubt about it, but that doesn't mean they're not deficient in some things. So InsideTracker was my gateway in there, and then I just kind of kept doing a deep dive into it. And then that led me to our good friend Jim Laval, obviously, who we know really well but also learn from in a lot of his education that he's provided to the NHL and in our seminars here in San Jose.

Mike: And then so I kind of shifted to Metabolic Code and using that comprehensive platform, which is blood work but a platform on steroids, if you will. It gave me a picture of who's deficient in what nutrients. How can I really specify rather than just throwing a daily pack out there—what additional nutrients does the player need? And then kind of why and what can it affect. The common things that will increase in dosage are Vitamin D, trace minerals, magnesium (especially for some guys), and then the Omegas. That's pretty much the general ones that we're constantly having to tweak for guys.

Mike: I was surprised to see trace minerals be so low in guys, and in consulting with Jim, he was like, "Yeah, well you guys are anaerobic and anaerobic animals". "You're going to burn through trace minerals—they support energy system performance". So I was like, "Okay, that makes sense". So instead of just having a daily vitamin, we have a trace mineral addition to our daily pack for guys.

Mike: Body composition was a great insight with the blood work and with our food panel that we attached to that as well. Who needs whey protein? Who's reactive to whey protein? Is beef protein a better resource? Is plant-based protein with additional aminos a better route? Does it help with body composition? Yes. Does it help with gas and bloating? Yeah, absolutely. So we were able to spearhead those types of problems that arose.

Mike: And then the other thing is the hormonal levels and how they change during the year—what's testosterone and cortisol doing throughout the year? And if they're crushed and if they're starting off low in preseason, it's not a good thing. You want them as high as possible, as we know we're coming off an off-season. But if they're starting off low and they're just skidding throughout the rest of the year, there's a lot of concern for that. The dog days become the dog days of the year when? January, February. When your adrenals are shot.

Mike: You're highly fatigued, you're bruised and sore, and you've gone through 60 games and you still have the highest concentration of games to come. So how can we get some adaptogens, botanicals—things that are pro-recovery or pro-hormone regulating—into them at that point of the year where it helps them recover a little bit more? It gives them a little bit more stamina or it gives them a little bit more energy, if you will. Not like caffeine energy, but truly like, "Okay, my hormones are in check. I can still get through the craziness of travel and time change and late-night flights and late-night games".

Kevin: Yeah, I think you hit on a couple of things. One of the big take-homes for me is that you can't really make assumptions about what you would find with each individual player because you don't know if you're not looking for it. In some of the markers for inflammation, the Omegas, Vitamin D... some guys may be fine, some guys may be deficient, some guys may be okay but then trending down throughout the year. There's a lot of value in taking a peek behind the curtain on all those players and making sure that you're supporting what they need as individuals to not just survive the season, but to feel good and maximize their energy throughout.

Mike: Yeah. And a couple caveats to that... but when we did it in the preseason, our docs looked at it and obviously Jim looks at it, and Jim is kind of cool to learn about your season and learn about how the whole year goes coming into this preseason. There's a taper; every coach obviously has it. But we had some elevated kidney markers—not dangerously low, but up. Jim's like, "Jeez, everybody's kind of elevated". I'm like, "Well yeah, at the time we took the blood, we were in the middle of a seven-to-ten day taper to lead into preseason". "We've been training hard, we're in a work capacity type day". So would that go hand-in-hand? He's like, "Oh yeah".

Mike: In November when we did it again, they were back down to normal. Testosterone was the shocking one. Early on when I started looking at it, guys coming in pretty good for their age and then just tanking—we got like a 400-point swing from preseason in middle of September to December 1st. I was like, "Man, that's not right". These guys are too young, but their jobs are demanding again, burning really hot for healthy individuals, but running the race car with no gas until the wheels fall off.

Kevin: Just two quick follow-up questions on that. One is: what are the players that are experiencing those declines telling you that they feel as they're going through that? And then the second one: do you notice that there's any tendencies for that type of decline to be experienced more by either younger players or older players, or players whose roles may be a little less stable? In other words, the players that are fighting for jobs or fighting for more ice time in an already stressful season. Are there any trends there?

Mike: Yeah, I didn't see it as much with fourth-line guys in and out of the lineup, guys with very limited minutes. They're practicing and training a lot, but you kind of can control that model of what they need to do. The younger guys—I did see a little bit in the younger population like our rookie guys—they would have a downtick but not as much. If they came in at 900 on a free testosterone total start score, they would go to 700 or 750. So it wasn't too alarming. The drop is obviously... you never want a drop. But I think their biology is young enough where they can bounce back and they're still "made of plastic," so they can just keep winding them up and go. They still benefited from what we did from a protocol standpoint.

Mike: And then the older guys who had a lot of minutes and years in the league... yeah, they would completely be in the tank. Those are those bigger swings—a lot of minutes, a lot of stress (whether physical, mental, or media-driven), and years and years on their bodies. Those are the guys I wanted to really try to keep in the fight and get them to feel really good in February and March when we knew we didn't have a good block of off-days or an All-Star break to recoup energy.

[00:31:06] Lessons from the NBA and Tendon Health

Kevin: I'm curious: you spent well over a decade in the NHL, then transitioned and worked in the NBA for two years. What were some things that you learned in your time in the NBA that maybe has changed your approach or that you've brought with you now in your second stint with San Jose?

Mike: There's a lot. Two things that stand out: one, I really appreciated focusing on the different injuries. If you had an ankle or an Achilles in hockey, it's because you either got cut or you took a slapshot off the ankle. But the ligamentous and tendinous type injuries that those NBA guys experience all the time made you program differently and use a tendon program—which we had in every day for knee, Achilles, calf, all that. That was awesome.

Mike: I didn't see a lot of adductors at all. The pathology in the back and the spine were more compressive type forces from big, massive men pounding on a hardwood surface—rather than a rotational component from hockey players shooting a lot, or falling, and the mechanisms in hockey. You didn't see a lot of shoulders, either. So understanding how to manage those was great.

Mike: I really appreciated the way they created gameplay scenarios for return-to-play guys and the healthy scratch guys. You could take four players who weren't playing that night, and you could take four or six development coaches and have a game. The development coaches can still play—some of them are one or two years removed from high-level European or G League basketball. So they still have some juice.

Mike: I thought that was awesome: if you have a rehabbing player, he needs half-court work, full-court work, three-on-three, two-on-two individual work, and then a five-on-five game. You can plan it through Catapult with the workload and time on court. I was like, "Man, we've got to do this in hockey rather than the traditional 'touch every line' bag skate bullshit". It's hard in hockey, though. You don't have the coaching numbers, and sometimes the coaching age isn't young enough to still go and play. And it's tough to get the numbers—you only have two or three extra guys on the roster. But very much if you can tap into it and create that environment to at least get a two-on-two or three-on-three, that's a step in the right direction.

Kevin: Yeah, we need the assistant coaches to start dusting off their hockey bags, it sounds like. What about from a tendon health standpoint, Mike? You referenced that there are strategies in the NBA on a basically daily basis to help minimize risk of suffering an injury. Anything there that you've brought back to hockey as far as minimizing risk of hip and groin strains, or injuries around the lumbopelvic area?

Mike: Yeah. I would say the majority of the tendon stuff we do is in a yielding position. We don't get enough exposure, so overcoming—nor did we get it in the NBA. Going into a day off, we always use eccentric-type work so they have time to heal. We didn't want to use eccentric calf lowering or eccentric single-leg work or eccentric knee extension going into a game; we always wanted it to be in front of a day off.

Mike: Here we take the same kind of approach, but we don't use eccentrics too much here because of the wear and tear in the hockey position or being low and skating. Yielding is our biggest tool. It could be for adductors: long lever, short lever, or split stance with the foot elevated to get a "two-for-one" on the Achilles, calf, and patellofemoral joint. And hamstring would just be supine on the ground, foot on the bench with the knee at 30 or 60 and just holding to get some length. Not really a big position, more of a position for running, but still good hamstring health that guys should have.

Kevin: Are you implementing those strategies on a daily basis in hockey like you guys were in the NBA?

Mike: Yeah, a little bit. Steve, our head strength coach, runs all the programming. If we have guys who traditionally have patellofemoral pain, we'll use some of those. Spanish squat is a big one that we continue to use—I think we did that eight times a day in the NBA. The NBA opened me up to a lot of researchers like Jill Cook and Ebony Rio and everybody doing that tendon health deep-dive. Even from a nutritional standpoint: how can you fuel with collagen supplementation for better improvement of tendon health?

[00:36:50] Modern Recovery Strategies
Kevin: I want to switch gears a bit and transition into talking about recovery. Obviously recovery is such a critical element, particularly in a year like this with the compressed game schedule. There's never been more resources—and I would argue more distractions—with the number of companies athletes come across on social media with big claims about helping with recovery. What are some of the strategies that you lean on consistently that you think have value for your players?

Mike: Number one is sleep. How are they sleeping at home vs. on the road? What goes into that? Is it the temperature of the room? Do you need a specific pillow, a sound machine... what's your sleep environment, and are you sleeping ideally in every hotel? Because it's different. That's the most natural restorative form of recovery we have as human beings.

Mike: And that goes into do you need more sleep nutrients? How do you down-regulate from a nervous system standpoint—do you hold on to the game until the next day and it keeps you up at night, or do you have other stressors you can't shut off? I've always been a big fan of sleep nutrients because guys are burning through all those nutrients before and during the game. So how can we support them to relax and down-regulate through the use of nutritional products?

Mike: The other piece that is big is the hands-on massage. I think a lot of guys we find truly benefit from that. We do a lot more post-game "flush" now than we ever have because we have more hands to do it. I still think NormaTec is great if guys want to take it home or have one at home to get that drainage and blood flow.

Mike: But that's another huge tool. Not just after a game—we have at least three days a week where we have our we have two massage therapists, sometimes three in-house working on guys, and we give them massage therapy specifics as to what to work on the guys. But there is always that, you know, just need a massage to kind of let the system reset, you know, and if guys need longer, then we'll just schedule it longer it or that therapist will go to the house.

Mike: Hydrotherapy has always been big. Post-game cold tub... practice days like today, it'll be optional for the guys. But hot-cold contrast to get blood flow and nutrients moving—we still truly believe in that. The other piece is we're really pro-magnesium/Epsom salt soak. We have a relationship with Float in San Jose, so guys can go there and use our account anytime they want. Or guys can just take bags of recovery salt home that we stock up on. We bring it on the road, too. Hotels are pretty good with bathtubs, so guys take advantage of that before they go to sleep.

Kevin: Have you brought light therapy?

Mike: We partnered with Thorne—with our new remodel, we have a recovery room. They are the big sponsor of the room. We have red light boards in there, and in the coaches' change rooms for more privacy. We have three stations of red light. They've also provided PEMF mats which guys have taken home. We'll have NormaTecs in that room and two Shiftwave chairs.

Mike: The Shiftwave chair is unique in that it has sensors that help with blood flow and cerebrospinal flow to help recovery and nervous system down-regulation. The cool part is it's really a guided meditation that helps you breathe. Guys have used it after games and found it really helpful with cutting week-time after a game, so it gets them to sleep sooner. PEMF mats are just lying around to help recovery at the cellular level. There is a huge box of PEMF and then a coil that you lay on—which in my research is a very effective tool also from an injury standpoint.

[00:42:45] Sleep Variations and Scheduling

Kevin: You mentioned sleep... one of the things that's been interesting to learn over the years is just how differently players respond to sleeping at home versus sleeping on the road. Certain players really prefer their bed and setup at home; others sleep way better on the road because of environment, pets, or young children waking them up. We joke that there are "five-star hotel injuries" where you lay in a really soft bed or use soft pillows and back or neck stiffness flares up. Interesting to hear you talk about changing the resources for the players in those different situations.

Mike: Yeah. And performance coaches have to look at the schedule, too. We're unique: we'll practice at 11:00 AM at home the day after a game where the guys went to bed at 2:00 AM, but we haven't changed the practice time to adjust for that. On a regular practice day, they go to bed at a normal time, so 11:00 AM fits. But going to bed at 3:00 AM doesn't fit with an 11:00 AM practice—it closes the sleep window.

Mike: Our daily questionnaire alluded to guys sleeping better on the road because as the visiting team, our practice time is automatically at 1:00 PM. You get extra sleep just because of that. So why can't we mimic that at home? Since I've been back, I've pushed for it and coaches were pretty good about it, but now our head coach is all about it. He's like, "It makes total sense".

Mike: The Warriors coaching staff and performance department really nailed it: if we got into a city with a certain time change and weren't going to do a shootaround, let them sleep in and have the meeting at 11:00 AM. We'll do a warmup and mobility session before the meeting so they've woken up a bit. They always say "read the side of sleep," especially when we change time zones and everything was pushed back because we knew their bodies would be on the previous time zone.

[00:45:34] Game Day Preparation and Supplementation

Kevin: In professional sports, I think full recovery is a moving target on a day-to-day basis. What are some strategies you guys use if a player comes in on a game day and just doesn't feel like they have their legs or doesn't feel mentally sharp?

Mike: Yeah. There's the physical piece: let's address mobility and any "parking brakes" that are making you stiff first and foremost to get you in a position to do a good warmup where you're actually awake. That's the physical piece. Then there's the other piece: can we change that direction with supplementation? Not just pumping them full of Monster Energy.

Mike: Focus-wise, Synapse Pro has been our go-to for guys who have to clear the fog out and need to be alert on a practice day or even... Our pregame formula is Enduro 2 and Synapse Pro. It allows us to get a cardiovascular effect with recovery through the Rhodiola, and then the Synapse Pro gives us that clarity and alertness. It's not a stimulant; it's driven through clearing the fog up in the brain and making sure cells are not contributing to a delay in processing.

Kevin: That's where supplements can be really powerful: the ones that are proven effective where you're not asking the player to do "one more thing". It's not that everything is a magic pill, but Synapse Pro is a pretty easy ask to add into a player's repertoire.

Mike: Yeah. And it's chewable too. We have daily packets specified for each guy based on their blood work. We also have an immunity packet for those times of year where we're exposed. Case in point: half our team and staff have kids. They hang out at home for Christmas break and the germ pool spreads out. Then they come back in January and everybody gets sick again. So the chewable side has been a good relief.

[00:49:45] Travel Cocooning and Logistics
Kevin: San Jose covers some of the most miles in the air; any things you lean on in-flight or post-flight?

Mike: Yeah. I'm a big Garmin fan—I think they're super effective. Every player gets travel socks and travel compression pants. I was also turned on to a hoodie out of Boston made of cooling material. It's a hoodie with a mask that can drown out noise, so you can get in this little cocoon—a safe place to rest and sleep on the plane. Guys actually really liked it; they felt they could relax on the plane.

Mike: We identify at the beginning of the year and monthly look at the schedule—if we're going from Philly to Toronto and it's cold and snowing and we get a delay, and before you know it you're grabbing your room key at 3:30 AM. You're completely screwed and have a 12:00 or 1:00 PM practice the next day. So we try to utilize "let's just stay in the city". What are we rushing to? We can skate in the city we just played in, or do a later skate in the next city. We avoid those disruptive late-night patterns like the plague.

Kevin: This has been awesome. If people want to reach out and connect with you, where's the best place to do that?

Mike: My Metabolic Elite email is best: MP@MetabolicElite.co. You can talk Sharks, training, or products.

Kevin: Awesome. Mike, I really appreciate it. Thanks, Mike.

Mike: Thanks for having me.