The Edge School’s Director of Sport Performance was recently named to a prestigious list.
Andy O’Brien was selected to The Hockey News’ Top 40 Under 40: Hockey’s Next Lions list, highlighting “the next generation of movers and shakers” in the sport, in the magazine’s Jan. 17 issue, part of its 12th annual 100 People of Power and Influence edition.
The list also includes Scott Salmond, the director of hockey operations for Hockey Canada, Bauer Hockey’s Director of Design Philippe Jean and Columbus Blue Jackets assistant coach Bob Boughner, a former NHLPA executive vice-president and two-time Memorial Cup winning coach.
“Some of the people on that list are great people, with a lot of influence on the game of hockey,” said O’Brien, 33, the director of sport performance at the Edge School’s Duckett Performance Centre. “To be mentioned in the same breath as some of those other people is very flattering.”
O’Brien, who has been the personal strength and conditioning coach for Sidney Crosby for nearly a decade, spent four years, ending in 2009, as the strength and conditioning coach for the Florida Panthers.
He also works with New York Yankees star slugger Alex Rodriguez, elite Canadian figure skater Patrick Chan, and consulted extensively with American swimmer Dara Torres leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where she won three medals at age 41.
“It comes as no surprise to me that Andy was recognized in this way,” said Brent Devost, the Edge School’s founder and president. “He’s been instrumental in the development of the best hockey player in the world right now. To have Andy’s model for athlete development at Edge School truly gives our athletes an advantage that is just not available to minor hockey players, let alone pro, junior, or collegiate programs.”
O’Brien, a Charlottetown, P.E.I. native, has worked with more than 100 professional and 50 Olympic athletes, whose resumés include five major-sport MVP awards, 40 world championships and 22 Olympic medals.
“Over the years, I’ve developed a bit of a niche for understanding movement efficiency in athletes – being able to evaluate flaws in movement,” he said. “The vast majority of injuries nowadays come from repetitive overuse in motion. Speed, for example, is about efficiency. There are a couple of biomechanical factors that are associated with first-step efficiency. It all comes down efficiency, conditioning, body readiness, and the ability for the nervous system to respond and react.”
The 9,200-square-foot Duckett Performance Centre, which opened with O’Brien at the helm in the fall of 2009, is rapidly building a worldwide reputation as a premier training centre for high-performance athletes.
The centre offers the latest in sport science and human performance measurement, including high-speed motion analysis, posture analysis, maximal oxygen uptake, gait analysis and sport-specific measurement of dynamic power and flexibility.
All of the Edge School’s 320 students have DPC privileges, whether they’re on the Mountaineers prep boys’ or girls’ hockey teams, the soccer team, the golf team, or in the dance program.
“My trainers and I have a uniform philosophy that applies to all of our students,” O’Brien said. “We believe in building fundamental principles of movement efficiency first, before we develop specialization in certain areas.”
“A lot of people aren’t aware yet that Andy is running his model out of our world-class Duckett Performance Centre, because he’s such a humble, down-to-earth guy,” Devost said. “But now that the word is out, we’re getting an influx of families wanting access to what Andy and his DPC team have to offer.”
