Month: June 2022

Speed Training: Alternating Crossover Run

The Alternating Crossover Run is an exercise I’ll integrate into our pre-practice prep and as a main exercise in speed development blocks.

 
 
 
 
 
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It’s a great option to teach:

1️⃣ Hip/shoulder separation
2️⃣ An aggressive push-under
3️⃣ Introductory single-leg deceleration.

The goal here is to cover a lot of ground laterally, while turning the hips in the movement direction, but keeping the shoulders square to straight ahead. This hip/shoulder separation comes into play in most transitional patterns, but is especially helpful for situations where your eyes need to track the play away from the direction you’re moving.

Great option for athletes that don’t have a lot of space for their speed work.

Typically performed for 3 sets of 3-5 reps per side.

Feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. For comprehensive hockey training programs to improve your speed AND repeat sprint ability, check out: Speed Training for Hockey

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

 

Speed Transfer: Horizontal Force Production

Improving lower body strength is the foundation for being able to adopt lower skating positions and generate maximal power with each stride.

The Forward Sled March is an effective option for developing lower body strength while also emphasizing:

✅ Single-leg strength
✅ Concentric “push” dominant pattern
✅ Horizontal force production (pushing “back”)

These are all key characteristics of the early acceleration phase of skating (i.e., the first few strides).

When our goal is strength, we’ll generally build up to the heaviest weight the athlete can push while maintaining a “tall” posture and smooth forward progress.

Typically performed for 3-6 sets of ~10-yards (< ~8 seconds).

As I described in a previous post (see “Building a Base”), heavy sled marches are another exercise we may use as a conditioning strategy to emphasize the aerobic development of high threshold motor units (including fast twitch muscle fibers). In this case, we’ll typically start with 2 rounds of 6-8 reps of 6s-8s (~10 yards), starting on the minute, with 2-3 minutes between rounds.

Feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. For comprehensive hockey training programs to improve your speed AND repeat sprint ability, check out: Speed Training for Hockey

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

Mobility Work: Long Duration Holds

If general warm-up and mobility work doesn’t open up sufficient range of motion, it’s possible the athlete needs to “create” motion by adding length to the tissue.

A key stimulus for adding sarcomeres in series (i.e. length to a muscle) is to hold a stretched position for 2+ minutes.

The “Box Quad PNF” allows players to add length to the quadricep group, including the rectus femoris which also acts as a hip flexor.

 
 
 
 
 
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To perform the exercise:

✅ Lean forward to fully extend the hip, and then push back until there’s a big quad stretch in the back leg.

✅ Hold the stretch for 10s, then push the foot into the box, building up to max tension for 10s.

✅ Push back into a deeper stretch for 10s, and repeat this process for multiple sets of 1-2+ minutes.

Opposed to just sitting back into a stretch, alternating periods of actively pushing the foot into the box also helps:

1️⃣ Inhibit protective tension in the quad to open up more range of motion
2️⃣ Creates a sense of neural control and strength at end range

This is an important strategy in the early off-season to help restore full hip extension range of motion, but also a position that can be worked into daily routines throughout the year to help combat the loss of motion associated with repetitive hip flexion common in most team sports, and prolonged periods of sitting.

Give these a shot, and as always, feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it (or tag a friend that needs some hip mobility work) so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. For more information on how to assess movement and integrate specific strategies to improve mobility and movement quality in training, check out Optimizing Movement. Don’t have a DVD player? Send me a note through the contact page after you checkout here Optimizing Movement and I’ll get you a digital copy of the videos!

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

 

Building A Base

We often hear about the importance of building an aerobic base early in the off-season to help establish an ability to better tolerate higher training volumes moving forward.

The reality is that the characteristics of the “base” should be specific to the athlete AND to future training phases.
For example, the “aerobic” base for a marathon runner should look very different than the aerobic base for a hockey player.

Further, in team sport athletes where speed and power development are clear priorities, the training methods used to develop those qualities need to be introduced and logically progressed. In other words, a team sport athlete’s “base” should include work that prepares them to tolerate high intensity training methods (sprinting, jumping, etc.).

The image above shows the heart rate response from performing 20 sets of 5 Kettlebell Swings, starting on the minute.

The KB swing, performed correctly, is a movement that emphasizes power development through the posterior chain.

Picking a moderate load, and performing a low volume of reps each set at max effort allows the athlete to accumulate higher volumes of high intensity work, emphasizing high threshold motor units, while keeping the overall training stimulus aerobic.

There are many different variations of this strategy both in terms of exercise selection and set/rep schemes, but the goal here is to keep the movement quality high and HR low (< mid 80s as a rough estimate) throughout the series. With KB Swings, when the athlete starts to fatigue, the movement will look less “bouncy” out of the bottom, and they’ll start to “muscle it” – which typically coincides with the HR climbing to higher peaks. When we see this, we’ll build in a break of a few minutes to reset before continuing on.

Take Home Message
When we talk about building a base – we need to think of building a base across multiple systems (including tissue tolerance), and specific to the individual needs of the athlete AND the training program.

Feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. For comprehensive hockey conditioning programs to improve your speed and repeat sprint ability, check out: Speed Training for Hockey

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

 

Hip Injuries in Hockey

A 2013 study from Philippon et al. found that over 1/3 of 10-12 year old hockey players have a structural change in their hips that limits hip flexion range of motion. Roughly 1/2 have hip labral tears.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. For more information on how to assess movement and integrate specific strategies to improve mobility and movement quality in training, check out Optimizing Movement. Don’t have a DVD player? Send me a note through the contact page after you checkout here Optimizing Movement and I’ll get you a digital copy of the videos!

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!