Month: January 2010

Off-Ice Ice Hockey Training Part 3: Speed, Agility, Quickness and Conditioning

Most youth hockey programs get 1-2 hours a week for off-ice training. In the last two articles I’ve gone over dynamic warm-ups and core training, the most important two forms of training that every hockey player should be doing. Taken together, the warm-up and core training generally takes the first 15 minutes of each session. That doesn’t leave much time for everything else. This makes it that much more important that hockey players don’t waste their time with garbage training.

While speed, agility, and quickness training and conditioning are generally viewed as separate entities, they can be combined in the interest of saving time. The key is to really understand the demands of hockey. Speed is one of the most important skills of the game, but top speed is rarely reached and when it is, it’s almost never maintained for very long before a player will need to change direction. As a result, the abilities to start explosively, stop quickly, and change direction rapidly are much more desirable than simply being fast in a straight line. To be overly simplistic, hockey-specific speed is really just well-designed agility training.

When designing hockey-specific agility drills, you’ll want to:
1) Include what I refer to as proactive and reactive drills. Proactive means that the path and direction changes are pre-determined. The player must move through the drill as quickly as possible. Reactive means the player’s movement is in response to some other stimulus, usually in the form of a partner (mirror drills) or coach (command drills).

2) Include movement changes specific to hockey. Hockey players often have to transition between forward, backward, diagonal and lateral movements. Agility drills should reflect these movement changes. For instance, you could design a circuit of agility drills that involve a 5 yard back pedal to a 5 yard sprint in the diagonal forward direction (45° turn); then a 5 yard back pedal to a 5 yard sprint in a lateral direction (90° turn); then a 5 yard back pedal to a 5 yard sprint in the backward diagonal direction (135° turn); etc. You could also mix in shuffling, crossover steps, and different starting positions (forward, backward, lateral, push-up position) to maximize the on-ice carryover.

3) Include speed changes specific to hockey. While I made it a point to acknowledge that top speed isn’t maintained for long, it’s important to understand that many of the direction changes in hockey occur at near-top speeds. Also, many max effort sprints don’t begin from a stationary position. Your off-ice training should reflect this. Include longer range accelerations (20-30 yards) with a quick deceleration and direction change (similar to a pattern a wide receiver may run). Include agility circuits that start with a speed build-up. This allows the athlete to practice accelerating from a moving position, which is usually the way it happens on the ice.

If you consider all of these things while designing your agility drills, you should be able to maximize the effectiveness of your speed, agility and quickness training while minimizing your training time. Switching gears a bit, a lot of these same concepts can be applied to a hockey specific conditioning. Again, analyze the demands of hockey. Do hockey players skate at a low or medium intensity for several minutes at a time? Not if they’re any good! Most players and coaches recognize that the average shift is 30-60 seconds, followed by AT LEAST twice that much time of rest. This means that hockey specific interval training would involve work to rest ratios of 1:2 at the low-end and 1:6 at the high end. However, while a shift may last 60 seconds, shifts almost NEVER involve maximal effort skating throughout the entire duration. Usually there’s a quick sprint, then a glide, then lighter skate to a new position, then another quick sprint, etc. In other words, most shifts are characterized by multiple short, high-intensity sprints followed by brief resting periods.

To maximize the hockey specificity of your conditioning, high intensity multi-directional movements should be used. As an example, I’ve used 10-yard repeat sprints from a push-up starting position as a conditioning exercise. The athletes explode up from a push-up position, sprint 10 yards, then walk back and immediately repeat for 4-6 reps. Then they take a few minute break before repeating the interval. That’s just an example. You could also use a partner mirror drill as a conditioning tool. Have one player be a leader, another a follower. The leader can move within a pre-determined area or along a pre-determined path and the follower must mirror the movements exactly. Let them go for 15 seconds or so, rest 15 seconds, then switch roles for an interval, then rest for a couple minutes before repeating everything again. Depending on the length of the work intervals, I generally keep conditioning down between 3-8 work intervals. I may use 3 work intervals for something like a 300 yard shuttle run with cones at 0 and 25, and 8 intervals for something like 20s lateral mirror drills (4 repetitions as the leader and 4 as the follower). Starting to get the picture? The idea is to build a higher work capacity by maintaining a high workload, while still providing adequate rest to maintain a high intensity. Usually conditioning should last about 10-15 minutes.

If you follow all the principles outlined in this article, you can effectively improve hockey-specific speed, agility, quickness, and conditioning in less than 30 minutes. By incorporating a well-designed dynamic warm-up and core training program, you can drastically improve on-ice performance in less than two hours a week. Now with all the tools, the only missing ingredient in the success formula is your unparalleled determination to outwork your opponent. Keep working hard. Your results will speak for themselves.

This article was originally published at ezinearticles.com

Kevin Neeld, BSc, MS, CSCS is the Director of Athletic Development at Endeavor Fitness in Sewell, NJ and the author of Hockey Training University’s “Off-Ice Performance Training Course,” a must-have resource for every hockey program. Through the application of functional anatomy, biomechanics, and neural control, Kevin specializes in guiding hockey players to optimal health and performance. Kevin developed an incredible ice hockey training membership site packed full of training programs, exercise videos, and articles specific to hockey. For a FREE copy of “Strong Hockey Core Training”, one of the sessions from his course, go to his hockey training website.

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Off-Ice Ice Hockey Training Part 2: Hockey Specific Core Training

There’s nothing more frustrating than spending countless hours working toward something, only to realize you haven’t made any progress. Actually, there is one thing: spending countless hours working toward something, only to realize you’ve actually been progressing in the WRONG direction! In the world of hockey training, crunches, sit-ups, and partner leg throw-downs predominate as the most utilized forms of core training. Bad news for players that were actually hoping to improve their performance through training.

I could write a book on the reasons why these exercises are not only poor choices with regards to performance, but are actually dangerous! In the interest of time, I’ll summarize all the arguments against these useless exercises by saying that at no point do you need to rapidly or strongly flex your trunk (think crunch motion) during the game of hockey, and performing these movements over and over reinforce the poor hunched over posture that we spend way too much time in already (sitting at a computer, driving, sitting in a classroom chair, etc.).

To understand how to best train the core, we need to define the core musculature and its function. The core includes ALL of the muscles that attach to the hip. This is an important point. Only training the abdominals inevitably leads to muscular imbalances and leaves opportunities for improved performance untapped. The core musculature includes the abdominals, glutes, hip flexors and rotators, all of which should be trained using functional patterns.

The two primary functions of the core are:

1) To create a stable base for extremity (arm and leg) movement
2) Create trunk stiffness for efficient force transfer between the lower and upper body

Both of these functions revolve around controlling pelvic/hip movement.

The core needs to be both stable and reactive, and should be trained in that order.

Despite the potentially confusing structure and function of the core, the training is pretty straight forward. To establish a stable core, all hockey players should start with a basic core training circuit involving front planks, side planks, and glute bridges. Once they can hold each position for 3 sets of 30s with perfect form, they should progress to 1-leg variations to add in a rotation component.

This is when things start to get fun. There’s nothing stable about the game of hockey. In truth, core stability in an unchallenged environment won’t do a whole lot for a hockey player on the ice. The key is to train the core for reactive stability. In other words, the core needs to maintain stability while being exposed to some challenging force. On the ice, this force can from an external source, such as an opposing player, or internally, such as decelerating momentum from a shot. The key to making a core stability exercise a reactive core stability exercise is to add in a perturbation. In general, reactive core exercises involve one athlete trying to maintain a position, while another athlete provides slight challenges to this position in the form of taps or pushes. These exercises are usually performed for time (working up to 30s). A few examples would be:

Side Plank with Perturbation
Athlete sets up in a side plank position with his top hand reaching straight up. Partner lightly taps the athlete’s hand, while the athlete resists any movement.

Hockey Stick Partner Perturbation
Athlete stands in an athletic position holding a hockey stick in front of himself. The partner lightly taps the stick in all different directions while the athlete resists any movement.

Overhead Hockey Stick Partner Perturbation
Athlete stands in an athletic position holding a hockey stick straight overhead The partner lightly taps the stick in all different directions while the athlete resists any movement.

The latter two exercises can all be performed from a half-kneeling (lunge position) or tall-kneeling position (kneeling on both knees and getting as tall as possible). To increase the challenge even further, the athlete performing the exercise can close his eyes. This really challenges the body’s sensory system.

The next progression is into explosive medicine ball throws, to really train the core force transfer function. Before you transition from resisting movement to creating it, you need to know which areas to move from to maximize force transfer and minimize injury risk. As a general statement, you want to move at the hips and thoracic spine (think moving through your chest area), and minimize ALL movement around the lumbar spine (or low back). This is true for both linear movements (bending forward, backward or side to side), and rotational movements. Once you understand where to move, you’re ready to progress to throwing around some medicine balls. My favorite two medicine ball exercises are:

Overhead Floor Slams
Hold a medicine ball directly over your head. Then slam it straight down into the ground in front of your feet as hard as possible. Catch it on the rebound, rapidly return it to the overhead position, then slam it again…and again…and again.

Side Standing Shot Put
Stand facing perpendicular to the wall. Load the ball in front of your back shoulder with your back elbow raised even with the ball. Drive off your back leg and throw the ball as hard as you can using a punching motion. Catch the ball on the rebound, rapidly return to the start position and throw it again. Switch sides and repeat.

Most medicine ball exercises are best performed between 8 and 12 reps. Any more than that and the movements lose their power.

The final core training progression is to incorporate reactive stability into explosive medicine ball throws. The way to do this is to perform a couple explosive throws, catch the ball and freeze in a position while a partner provides a perturbation. For example, if you were performing the overhead floor slam, you would perform 2-3 reps, then catch the ball and hold it overhead while a partner lightly tapped the ball for 5-10s while you resisted all movement. Then you’d perform 2-3 more slams, and repeat the overhead perturbation, cycling through this process 2-4 times. This type of training will have the maximal carryover to on ice performance, as you’re alternating between explosive power and reactive stability.

For hockey players to get the most benefit from their core training, they should begin with basic core stability exercises before progressing to reactive stability exercises. After spending some time working at these, players can advance to explosive medicine ball exercises and then to advanced exercises incorporating explosive movements with reactive stability holds. Following this progression will help guarantee that off-ice core training leads to on-ice improvements in performance.

In part three we’ll jump into speed, agility and quickness training, as well as the best way to condition for hockey. Stay tuned…

This article was originally published at ezinearticles.com.

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Off-Ice Ice Hockey Training Part 1: Developing an Effective Off-Ice Warm-Up

Hockey is the greatest sport on earth. Finally recognizing this, the number of youth hockey programs in the U.S. continues to grow rapidly. Characterized by rapid high-intensity movements, high velocities, and full-speed collisions, it’s not hard to see why off-ice training would be advantageous. With injuries such as “groin” pulls, hip flexor strains, sports hernias, and shoulder separations plaguing the sport, it’s not hard to see why off-ice training is a NECESSITY.

Whether or not to train for hockey is not a question. It’s a no brainer. Hockey players that train excel and dominate. Players that don’t fall behind and are at an increased risk of injury. Almost all coaches and players recognize that much. The question I receive the most is, “Where do I start?” That’s the right question to ask and the question I’d like to address. In this article series, I’m going to walk you step-by-step through the process of creating an effective off-ice training program.

Where to Start
Without a doubt, the best place to start is by adding a dynamic warm-up before every training session (off-ice AND on-ice sessions) and game. Trash the old jog around the rink and stretch as a team routine. Despite popular belief, stretching before high intensity activity doesn’t decrease injury risk. In fact, research suggests that it actually INCREASES the risk of injury! Believe it or not, stretching before high-intensity activity also leads to decreases in speed, agility, balance, and muscular strength and power. The jog and stretch may warm-up the body a bit, but it does nothing to increase functional range of motion around the joints you use during training or playing hockey. It simply isn’t effective in preparing the body for what is to come. The solution: dynamic warm-ups.

Things to Consider
A dynamic warm-up is a series of exercises designed to increase body temperature, blood flow, joint range of motion, and neural drive to the working muscles. Sound better than decreased performance and an increased risk of injury? When putting together a dynamic warm-up, you’ll want to consider these things:

1) Skating takes the knees and hips through a full range of motion in all directions (flexion and extension, abduction and adduction, internal and external rotation).
2) Stickhandling and shooting take the shoulders through a full range of motion
3) Hockey involves both linear, lateral, and diagonal movements
4) Hockey is a high-intensity, high-velocity sport
5) The hip musculature and scapular stabilizers (muscles around the shoulder) are important problem areas to address to decrease injury risk
6) Core training should be performed during the warm-up, ensuring that athletes put maximum effort into it and that the appropriate muscles are activated for the training to follow.
7) The dynamic warm-up should last around 10 minutes

Taking these 7 things into consideration, let’s take a look at a basic program I’ve used with high school and college players in the past.

Every one of these exercises should be performed for about 15 yards.

1) Walking Knee Hug with High-Knee Hold
2) Walking Lunge with Overhead Reach
3) Inchworm
4) Walking Inverted Reach
5) Diagonal Walking Lunge
6) Butt Kickers
7) High Knees
8 Side Shuffle Right
9) Side Shuffle Left
10) Carioca Right (Quick feet emphasis)
11) Carioca Left (Quick feet emphasis)
12) Carioca Right (Long stride emphasis)
13) Carioca Left (Long stride emphasis)
14) Straight-Legged March
15) 50% Sprint from Push-Up Start
16) Back Pedal
17) 75% Sprint from Push-Up Start
18) Back Pedal

Let’s take a look at how this warm-up addresses all the things I mentioned earlier.

1 & 2) The knees, hips, and shoulders are taken through a full range of motion throughout this warm-up (notably in the lunging, cariocas, and inchworm).

3) Forward, backward, side-to-side, and diagonal movements are all incorporated.

4) The warm-up involves higher intensity movements and increases in speed.

5) The psoas, a hip flexor commonly problematic in hockey players, is isolated and activated during the walking knee hug with high knee hold as you’ll hold the knee against your chest, then let it go, holding it using your hip flexors as high as possible for a second before moving into the next step. The other muscles around the hip are activated through the side shuffling and cariocas. Lastly, the scapular stabilizers and other muscles around the shoulder are activated during the inchworm.

6) When performed correctly, inchworms should effectively warm-up the abdominal musculature, and the walking inverted reach should activate the glutes. While this is far from sufficient core work, it’s a good starting point.

7) Lastly, this program can easily be performed within 10 minutes.

There are an infinite number of dynamic warm-up exercises you can perform. While I prefer moving warm-ups, it’s entirely possible (and sometimes better in the beginning) to sufficiently warm-up an entire team using stationary (not progressing over a distance) movements. Performing a dynamic warm-up before practices and games will save you valuable ice time as you won’t have to spend as much time on the ice warming up. Follow the guidelines in this article to design your own warm-ups and/or use the sample warm-up I’ve provided before every training session, practice, and game and you’ll be making the first step towards improved performance

Stay tuned for part two of this series, where I’ll go into why most of the core training incorporated into off-ice training programs does nothing to improve performance, and show you the most effective functional core training for hockey players.

This article was originally published at ezinearticles.com.

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Hip Mobility-Activation Pair for Single-Leg Stability

I hope you had a great weekend. Emily and I went to the Flyers vs. Penguins game yesterday to watch one of my Fitness Segments with Jim McCrossin on the JumboTron. Check out this picture my friend took with his phone:

Kevin Neeld and Jim McCrossin

The Flyers had been undefeated since our first segment rolled; I just assume it’s because of all the great training tips they’re getting during our first period video!

I’ve been getting a lot of great feedback about the mobility/activation dynamic warm-up pair concept that I learned from Nick Tumminello. A couple weeks ago I posted a new hip mobility exercise I’ve been using a lot recently. Below is the video of that exercise and a video of the Lateral Lunge->Reverse Crossover Drop Lunge that I pair it with.

This exercise pair is a great way to improve hip range of motion and immediately reinforce multi-planar single-leg stability. Let me know what you think!

Prone Hip Rock

Lateral Lunge -> Reverse Crossover Drop Lunge

-Kevin Neeld

P.S. If you like new and innovative hockey training exercises, check out the video library at my new ice hockey training site!

P.P.S. In the next two weeks I’ll officially be launching my OTHER new hockey training site, with a WHOLE list of incredible bonuses. Go over to HockeyTrainingExpert.com and register now. Everyone that pre-registers before the official launch is guaranteed to get ALL the bonuses, including the new Ice Hockey Speed Training Manual I’m writing!

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Push-Up Plus into Yoga Push-Up

Nick Tumminello recently posted a video of how he’s changed the way he does the “push-up plus” to get more serratus anterior activation.

For those of you that may not be familiar with that muscle, one of its major roles is to upwardly rotate the scapula (shoulder blade) which allows for more efficient overhead movement. Activating and strengthening this muscle through the push-up plus exercise is thought to enhance the muscles’ function and help prevention shoulder injuries related to poor upward rotation.

Nick has really opened up my mind to new training concepts and ways to progress/develop more effective exercises. My only problem with the push-up plus exercise is that it doesn’t actually upwardly rotate the scapula, which is the major function of that muscle. Since strength and neural control is range of motion specific, the push-up plus seems limited in its ability to improve upward rotation.

With that in mind, I used the “new and improved” push-up plus exercise in combination with a yoga push-up (which extends the hamstrings, teaches hip/lumbar spine separation, AND uses a closed-chain upper body movement to drive upward rotation of the scapulae).

Check out the exercise below:

If you haven’t yet, check out Nick’s post: Push Up Plus Exercise – A Better Way!

Train hard. Train smart.

-Kevin Neeld

P.S. For hundreds of innovative exercises like this, register for a membership at my new hockey training membership site today! I have a few special surprises for people that sign-up during this “pre-registration” period!

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