Catch your interest?

Type II Diabetes is characterized by low insulin sensitivity and is largely the result of a diet packed full of simple sugars and a lifestyle of inactivity.

Take home message: It’s completely preventable!

Hockey-related hip injuries are usually the result of under-preparation or overuse.

Take home message: They’re almost completely preventable.  I say almost because there’s always a possibility of a collision-related injury, which are harder to protect against (on the upside-you’re unlikely to have a high-speed collision give you type II diabetes, which is more likely to kill you than a hip injury).

I’ve spent the last month outlining exactly how I screen/assess and train hockey players to prevent hip injuries on my site.  In my experience, most athletes/coaches simply don’t have the time or patience to go through an in-depth assessment of everything, which I completely understand.  There are a couple things that are easily implementable in both an individual and team setting that will definitely help prevent hip injuries:

1) A 10-minute dynamic warm-up before every practice, game, and training session. In general, most hockey players will benefit from exercises that lengthen the hip flexors, activate the glutes, and involve multi-directional movement.  Lunge variations are my favorite warm-up exercise, as they serve all the above purposes well.

2) Core stability training.  Planks and bridges are relatively easy to master, simple to coach, and do a lot in the prevention of hip, lower abdominal, and lower back injuries.  Most hockey players take several dozen shots every practice.  Think about this regarding the number of repetitions in that pattern of rotation.  This can lead to an imbalance among the anti-rotators, notably the obliques.  As a result, many athletes may find that performing a side plank is more difficult on one side than the other.  If this is the case, it’s better to perform more sets on the weaker side.  Sometimes unbalanced programming is the best way to create balance. 

As a shameless pitch, I’ve spent a lot of time and effort to detail appropriate warm-up and core training exercises and progressions in my new Off-Ice Performance Training Course.  I honestly believe it’s the best resource for youth players and coaches that are looking to take their off-ice training to the next level.  There’s no better time to invest in your development than today…

If you haven’t yet, pick up a free copy of “Strong Hockey Core Training” on my site.  It details a few dozen equipment-free exercises and appropriate progressions.

After reading that you might be wondering two things:

1) What if I have equipment?

2) What’s next after I follow all those progressions?

My answer is similar for both: Medicine Ball Training!

I love med ball training.  It’s a great way to teach/train core stiffness and reinforce efficient force transfer from the hips to the upper body.

I think the transfer to hockey is huge, but just as importantly (especially in a team setting), it’s a lot of fun.

Three great exercises to start with are:

1) Overhead Floor Slam:

2) Side-standing Shot Put:

3) Underhand Toss:

As a quick side note: those videos were all filmed at Cressey Performance in Hudson, MA.  You can’t tell from the video, but the white brick wall only goes up about 12 feet.  At the end of a training session there last Summer, I mustered above just enough energy to underhand toss a medicine ball as hard as I could…straight over the wall.  For safety purposes, I recommend using a wall that goes very…very high.

The next level of progression for core training is to combine explosive force transfer with reactive stability.  Take a look at these two videos:

1) Overhead Floor Slam:

2) Overhead Perturbation:

Combine these two exercises so that you perform 2-3 slams, then catch the ball and hold it overhead while a partner lightly taps the ball for 5-10s while you resisted all movement.  Then immediately perform 2-3 more slams, and repeat the overhead perturbation, cycling through this process 2-4 times.  Training for periods of alternating explosive force transfer and reactive stability will have the greatest on-ice transfer, but it’s not for beginners.  Follow the progressions outlined in “Strong Hockey Core Training” before moving on to these types of exercises.