Strength Built From Experience. A System Built For Hockey
13 years at the NHL level. A playing career that started at age six. And a belief that every serious hockey player deserves access to training built on real progression, not guesswork.
The Story Behind Elite Hockey Lab
Derrek Douglas did not stumble into strength and conditioning. It found him in a high school weight training class, and it never let go.
The progress was immediate. The confidence that came with it was something he had not expected. The connection between what he was doing in the weight room and what was happening on the ice became obvious quickly. From that point forward, the direction was set.
He pursued it through college as a student intern working with varsity athletes across multiple sports. From there he earned a position at the United States Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista, California in 2008, where he trained Olympic hopefuls in Track and Field, Rowing, Kayak, BMX Sprint, Archery, and Field Hockey. These were athletes for whom physical preparation was the difference between making a team and going home.
After the Olympic Training Center he moved to North Dakota State University as a Graduate Assistant Strength and Conditioning Coach, working with football, track and field, men’s golf, and women’s basketball. Then came two years at Velocity Sports Performance in Mahwah, New Jersey, a company built on the speed and strength training philosophies of elite track coach Loren Seagrave. That foundation in acceleration mechanics and structured physical development shaped everything that followed.
In 2011 he received an interview with the New York Islanders. He got the job. He spent the next 13 years working directly with NHL players through full professional seasons, designing and refining the training systems that kept professional athletes performing at the highest level of the game.
He Also Played The Game
Derrek grew up in Michigan and started playing hockey at age six. He played at every level including recreational, AAA, junior, and college before suiting up for five professional games in the Central Hockey League.
That playing experience matters. The training system he built is informed not just by what the science says, but by what it actually feels like to skate, compete, and develop as a hockey player at every stage of the game.
NHL Strength and Conditioning Coach
13 Years with the New York Islanders
Nearly 20 Years of Experience
Why He Built Elite Hockey Lab
After 13 years at the professional level, Derrek saw a pattern that repeated itself year after year. Prospects and draft picks were arriving underdeveloped. Players who had been identified as having elite hockey potential were not physically ready for the demands of professional training. Many of them needed years of foundational work before their bodies could handle what NHL-level preparation required. The talent was there. The physical foundation was not.
That gap does not close overnight. It closes through years of structured, progressive training that starts early and builds correctly from the ground up.
Most off-ice hockey training does not do that. Developing players are handed generic fitness programs relabeled as hockey training, or intensity-first workouts with no underlying progression logic. Neither approach prepares an athlete for the junior, college, or professional level. They just create the appearance of training without the substance behind it.
Elite Hockey Lab exists to change that. Every program in the system is built on the same principles used at the professional level. Structured progressions, movement quality before intensity, and a long-term development arc that prepares athletes for each stage of the game before they get there.
The players who start this process early, and do it correctly, arrive at tryouts physically prepared in a way their competition is not. That is not a minor advantage. At the highest levels of development hockey, it is often the deciding factor.
Today Derrek is focused on his family, serving as an assistant coach with the Long Island Royals AAA program, and building EHL into the most credible hockey strength and conditioning resource available to developing athletes.
Ready to Train the Right Way?
Start with Phase 1: Foundation, the first step in the Elite Hockey Lab Performance System.