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BenBreeg

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Posts posted by BenBreeg

  2. Posted · Report reply

    Gotcha.  While I don't have any insight internally, I have done new product development for over 20 years as an engineer, human factors lead, and product manager.  I teach it for certifications and speak to college classes on it.  

    I would think there are activities happening in parallel depending on a longer term roadmap rather than simply jumping from one model to the next.  It depends on the requirements, but also the priority of the requirements.  There are always tradeoffs.  Durability at the expense of weight, etc.  You are always getting feedback, whether it is from customers using current products or internally.  So you can be testing and developing things in the "lab" to maximize a certain aspect of performance.  As you look toward the next product, you can start incorporating new learnings and iteratively test and build, test and build.  Then you start to see how things work together in combination and again, iterate until you are confident in a final product.

    Most of my career was in Class 2 and 3 medical devices, so not only did we have to iteratively test (driven by regulatory requirements based around risk), we had the time and budget to do so.  But there are still approaches when you have fewer resources.  As for testing, people don't have to know they are testing a specific model, and NDAs are pretty straightforward to do.

    So I don't know how they actually do things, but the process for iterative development is pretty well-understood.

  4. Posted · Report reply

    1 hour ago, MyBoxersSayJoe said:

    Correct, the name of the game is usually long-term health and pre-hab to avoid injury.  Funny you mentioned Joe DeFranco, I used to go to his gym to train with my friend who maintained a large portion of the clients when Joe relocated.  And yes, never bench pressed anything, a lot of functional strength work, weighted body work.  Seen lots of NFL, NBA, MLB with successful and long careers come through that gym.  The occasional NHLer.  Always have to be learning and evolving.

    Not to derail but Joe D just did a podcast where he revisited an article he wrote 18 years ago.  Some things still held true, some things he does differently now.  I've been following Louie Simmons (RIP) and Westside stuff since I was in college.  I came home one day and my brother told me he just got off the phone with Louie.  45 minutes the guy spent on the phone with my brother, who was like 19 or something at the time, after he just cold called him.  The guy was all about sharing knowledge.  Check out the Westside vs. The World documentary if you haven't already.

    • Like 1

  6. Posted · Report reply

    7 minutes ago, Sniper9 said:

    True never had the comfort edge for their full customs. And you don't need it. The top edge of their customs are soft and have no hard plastic in them so they are essentially comfort edges without the stupid print of comfort edge on them. Up until the most recent skate releases from ccm and Bauer, the comfort edge did very little anyways. Look at the vapor and as1s comfort edge. They were pathetic. 

    Yeah, but given they never had them it stood out that their "tailored" skate now did but they didn't add it to the full custom.  Looks more finished if anything.

  9. Posted · Report reply

    Some of this assumes everything is linear, that they don't start working on the next thing until finished with the current one.  In reality you would have research and prototyping happening all the time, hoping through that iterative process you will identify processes, designs, or technology that you can leverage in future generations of products.  For a physical product, while feedback from the market is important post-launch, there are certain things I should already have confirmed before launch.  As I said before, we really don't know what their process is like, what data they have available, and how they are thinking.  It could be bonkers or they could be getting the results they want.  But I do think the small number of players in the equipment world is not good for consumers.

  10. Posted · Report reply

    51 minutes ago, krisdrum said:

    I know a long standing strength conditioning guy in the show and another who does a lot of work with D1 guys and some strong prospects (and pros in another sport).  I can ask, but I can't imagine either one of them would find much merit in these.  Heck, I mentioned Gel STX to them a few years ago and they basically laughed me out of the place.  @BenBreeg hit the nail on the head.

    Heck, one of the guys tells a story of a D1 hockey coach tossing the incoming recruits a basketball on day one of practice and saying "go for it".  The guys who couldn't play pick-up didn't make the team.  Obviously there are hockey specific skills, but there is a lot you can take from general athleticism.

    Think about it, it may not seem obvious but the S&C coach's #1 priority has to be keeping guys on the field/ice.  If you are explaining to coaches why guys are hurt or banged up from the weight room, you aren't going to be working for long.  

    Check out The Hockey Strength podcast, tons of NHL and NCAA S&C coaches on there talking about their experiences and approaches.  Yeah, they are 100% always open to learning and trying new things, but managing workload, stress, etc. is always in the equation.  Guys like Joe DeFranco and Jim Wendler hardly ever squat or do straight bar deadlifts with their guys, either because they are training vets who are so beat up from years of playing and training, or because they learned new things.  Wendler coaches HS kids now.  He said he switched them to TB deadlifts, and when they would periodically test their squats, they were going up.  So he is increasing whole body strength in a way that doesn't have the risk of a traditional back squat.  This is coming from a guy who was an adherent to Westside, so that tells you how open minded you need to be.

    • Like 1

  11. Posted · Report reply

    Qualifying something as bad or good is subjective.  Sustaining radical innovation is almost impossible, incremental innovation is the lifeblood of most companies.  It is not uncommon to cede market share in the long run, it's sort of the basis of, along with serving existing customers, the Innovator's Dilemma.  You need to find the blue ocean, the areas to innovate in where others aren't playing.  Easier said than done.  Eventually the entire ocean may become red in which case something becomes a commodity and competes on price alone.

    • Like 1

  12. Posted · Report reply

    The thing about training is there is GPP, General Physical Preparedness, all the way to SPP, Specific Sport Preparedness.  Every exercise doesn't have to be, nor should it be SPP.  There is a lot that goes into program design and exercise selection for athletes.  Risk/reward is one.  You can't have a high ratio of risk:reward and expect to have your athletes available for what matter, the sport itself.  Most people don't have the technique to perform the bigger lifts correctly, now you are adding instability into the equation?  Every exercise doesn't have to be everything.  It is about applying load in a way that helps achieve your goals.  If you are doing a heavy, bilateral lift like a squat or TB deadlift, you are probably using it in your program to build overall maximal strength.  Doing it on skates takes away from that.  Unilateral work allows you to load the limb with less weight, which can be used for introducing a greater stability component and managing the load on the limb vs. spine (this was the impetus for Mike Boyle going to so much unilateral work).  Then you can do on-ice work which is very specific in translating all of that previous work into skating.  There is no shortcut.

  13. Posted · Report reply

    If acceleration is a weak point of his, why not examine his skating mechanics and training first?  I would guarantee there is more potential there than with messing around with blade profiling. If I had a kid who claims he needs more acceleration, strength, explosiveness, and skating mechanics are the places I would be focusing on.

    • Like 2

  14. Posted · Report reply

    Mmm, as a product manager I have a hard time criticizing because I have no data that the hockey companies have.  I also get sick of people with the tired "marketing" attack.  It's marketing's job to try and present any given product in a certain light, period.  You can't say it doesn't work.  All I hear are people insisting that stiffer boots are better, arguing the minutiae of stick feel when 99% have hands like me, bricks, that .0007 oz heavier shin guards are antiquated.  I would say in a lot of sports, with the way people are into gear, it's the people are driving things. 

  15. Posted · Report reply

    4 hours ago, nutters said:

    Like how Bauer gets flowers for the ER Spine, but STX did it better with the PureGrip shaft before them.

    If you can't drive it to the market, you aren't going to get credit.  People invent stuff all the time that goes nowhere, you need more than invention to be successful.

  16. Posted · Report reply

    You said you tried a new profile.  The first question is, why?  What were you trying to accomplish with the +2 to begin with.  If it is affecting his balance, why assume the pitch is correct and the skater needs to adapt to it?  The proper setup should work with the skater.  There is very little data available for picking profiles, BTW.  

    • Like 1

  18. Posted · Report reply

    3 hours ago, Paluce said:

    I just read this from a while ago… I have a real problem with Bauer going with such a tight radius on 7-10year olds skates.  They are very unstable with such a round basically banana’d blade. Kids also loose top end speed and as we all know, Young hockey players love to burn the other team by just blowing by the the other teams D. 
     

    I have my boy on a custom 7’ toe smoothly blended to a 12.5’ heal. 221 size steel. It’s a Blackstone OMNI Profile. Like an elipse where it’s continuously changing, except I can pick what radius the profile starts and ends with at the heal and the toe.  Way better!   I skate on an OMNI 0.5 myself. 8’ toe -> 13’ heal. 

    Which come with which?  Some are listed with the Balance profile, 13', which is what my son's 3X came with, size 2.5.  At least with that you have a good base for further profiling.  The other ones you are going to remove a lot of steel if you want to flatten it out.

  20. Posted · Report reply

    9 minutes ago, Hills said:

    I think the actual idea is being able to make the hole sizes smaller so injuries like Kuemper don't happen. The reason cateyes exist is to keep the bars out of the eyes which opens up protection holes. Smaller "bars" like these, with smaller overall holes aim to keep the same or better vision than cateyes while removing the gaps.

    But he states the goal is visibility.  He never once mentions reducing the opening size.  He's an engineer, and understandably, focuses on the solution, assuming he knows the problem.  Modern product development has shifted dramatically toward deeply exploring the problem space and the solution follows.

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