A New Look at Hockey Conditioning

Hockey conditioning is all about training your body to work at a high intensity for extended periods of time and then recover rapidly. Basically, conditioning in any sport comes down to delaying or minimizing fatigue.

Fatigue is truly an amazing thing. Few people realize how complex fatigue can be. To really wrap your mind around what causes fatigue, it’s important to understand that fatigue is movement specific (direction, involved musculature, type of contraction, intensity, etc.) and involves every major body system: nervous, muscular, endocrine, and cardiorespiratory.

Over the weekend I spent some time reading Neuromechanics of Human Movement by Roger Enoka.

Static Contraction Fatigue

One of the things that stuck out in my mind is how different the cause of fatigue can be between isometric and dynamic contractions. For instance, during isometric contractions fatigue can result from occlusion of blood flow to the working muscle, that results from an activity-induced increase in intramuscular pressure. This both impedes nutrient delivery, and activates Group III-IV afferents (muscle receptors) which can decrease motor neuron excitability (think less force production).

Dynamic Contraction Fatigue

This differs from dynamic contractions, which do not result in the same amount of occlusion of blood flow as isometric contractions. Compared to isometric contractions, dynamic contractions result in a more significant depletion of energy substrates such as Phosphocreatine and ATP, lower blood pH to a greater degree and produce more blood lactate.

Hockey Conditioning

If you’re not interested in the underlying science, stay with me. The take home message here is that fatigue mechanisms are different for static (isometric) and dynamic (concenctric/eccentric) contractions. Hockey involves both. Even when players aren’t actively skating, many times they’re gliding with their knees and hips flexed. Goalies can sometimes spend minutes in a “crouched” position. While nothing in hockey is as cut and dry as the strictly dynamic or strictly static contractions that are used in neuroscience labs, we can still learn from the light those studies have shed on our understanding of fatigue mechanisms.

In order to improve your capacity, you need to create an overload. Regarding “dynamic conditioning”, hockey players should use a mix of shuttle runs, slideboards, and sled drag variations. What many programs lack is an integration of “static conditioning”. This can be done in the form of squat, split squat, or back leg raised split squat iso-holds, progressing both in time and with weight. As your training progresses, you can begin to combine the two forms of conditioning by alternating static holds with explosive actions.

For example, a goalie could stand by the edge of a slideboard and hold a squat for 15 seconds. Maintaining a good squat position, they would then explode back and forth on the slideboard 10 times, then return immediately to the static hold positions for another 15 seconds. Cycling through this 3 times (15s hold, 10 rep slideboard, 15s hold, 10 rep slideboard, 15s hold, 10 rep slideboard), would constitute one repetition. As your off-season progresses, start to add static contraction conditioning to your ice hockey training program. You’ll be thankful you did when the season starts!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

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Integrated Shoulder Training for Hockey Players

I wanted to share one of my new favorite exercises with you that I’m using in my hockey training programs. This is a TRUE rotator cuff exercise, that emphasizes the collective role of the rotator cuff musculature in creating dynamic stability of the humeral head in the glenoid cavity. Because you’re leaning forward into the ball, there’s a pretty significant core stability component as well.

You can progress this exercise by moving the ball lower on the wall, moving the ball to the ground, or by adding a perturbation (as demonstrated at the end of the vide0) to any of the above positions.

1-Arm Wall Stability Ball Hold

-Kevin Neeld

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Fitness Research Review Service

Those of you that have been following me for a while know that I do my best to stay current with the research. Yes, I frequently browse research articles for fun. I’m fully aware of the various categories of uncool this places me in.

Recently I’ve found myself so swamped with work at Endeavor and completing my most recent Hockey Development project (I should have more information for you about when this will be released by next week), that I haven’t had as much time as I like to stay current on everything.

This problem seems to be common amongst most people in the human performance industry (training, rehab, nutrition, etc.). Until recently, there wasn’t really a great solution. My friend Shawn Thistle has put together a truly unbelievable resource for busy fitness professionals called Fitness Research Review Service.

The concept behind the site is simple: Create quickly-read, easily digestible summaries of relevant and important research articles so busy people like us can get all the info we need, quickly. The site is LOADED with articles on all aspects of sports performance, from injury prevention to periodization training models to nutrition.

When Shawn first told me about the site, I knew I had to be a part of it. I’ve been an author on the site now for several months and have been blown away by the quality of the content from other authors on there. I love the site because I can sign in once every week and catch up on 5-10 articles within an hour or so. Can’t beat that!

Click the link below for more information!

Fitness Research Review Service

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Keep checking back here for more information on my new Hockey Development Coaching Program!

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Performance Implications of Muscultendinous Stiffness

On Monday, we went over the difference between muscle length and muscle stiffness. If you missed it, check it out here:

Muscle Properties: Short vs. Stiff

The big question I left you with is: Is stiffness a bad thing?

There isn’t a simple answer to this complex question. A few considerations:

1) Over the years, I’ve noticed that the athletes that seemed the stiffest were also usually the fastest. This actually makes sense since stiffer muscles would allow greater force to be produced in less range of motion, allowing rapid changes of direction and foot turnover.

2) A lot of people associate stifness with limited range of motion. If you recall back to Monday’s post, range of motion is only limited by stiffness if their is insufficient force to achieve a range of motion. Think of two 180lb athletes stepping off a 24 inch box and “sticking” the landing. Since they’re both the same weight and are jumping from the same height, the relative force requirements of the landing would be the same. Assuming they have an identical anatomical and neural make up (this is an absurd assumption, but necessary for this example), the athlete with stiffer muscles would not descend as far into a squat landing position as the athlete with less stiff muscles.

Since the force requirements are the same, and stiffer muscles require MORE force to go through a given range of motion, the stiffer athlete would probably land higher than the less stiff athlete. Consider the implications this has in stops and starts. The ability to reduce more force through a smaller range of motion would allow for a more rapid change of direction (as mentioned above).

3) Muscle hypertrophy leads to an increase in the number of muscle fibers in parallel. This, by definition, increases muscle stiffness.

4) Stiffness has somewhat haphazardly been accused as the cause of musculotendinous injuries. In reality, it’s a stiffness imbalance that results in the over-stretching or over-working of synergistic or antagonistic muscles.

5) Stretching prior to activity, long thought of as an injury-reduction strategy, actually increases the risk of injury. This is only the case if stretching is performed IMMEDIATELY before the activity. This can be explained by the results of a study by Ryan et al. (2009) demonstrating that decrements in musculotendinous stiffness last about 20 minutes following static stretching protocols. Not that static stretching is unviersally bad, but stretching and then immediately going into activity involving the same joints creates laxity around the joints and can lead to undesired movements.

Mobility exercises are more appropriate pre-training than static stretching

I realize this is a lot of information to digest. Increased stiffness itself is not a bad thing. In other words, increased stiffness won’t decrease your athletic performance. In fact, it likely improves your performance! The big take home message is that you want to avoid is a stiffness IMBALANCE between synergistic and antagonistic muscles. A common imbalance in hockey players is having stiffer glutes than adductors, resulting in excessive stress to the adductors (and potentially adductor or “groin” strains). I talked about this imbalance specifically in a previous post:

Does Flexibility INCREASE Your Risk of Injury?

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

P.S. If you feel the flexibility in your athletes is lacking, it’s important to recognize what might be limiting it. This is the system I use to do just that: Optimizing Movement

Reference:

Ryan, Beck, Herda, et al. (2009). The Time Course of Musculotendinous Stiffness Responses Following Different Durations of Passive Stretching. Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, 38(10), 632-639.

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7 Signs of a Good Off-Season Hockey Training Program

After the two previous posts about off-season hockey development, it’s clear that every player needs to follow a good training program!

Off-Season Hockey Leads You to Surgery?

Off-Season Hockey Training

With all the people/companies out there offering training programs, I thought I’d give you a list of things to ask about when considering your off-season training options. A quality hockey training program should include:

1) Soft-tissue work (foam roller, lacrosse/tennis ball, medicine ball) for the muscles around the hips, shoulder blades, and chest
2) Static stretching for specific hockey-related “tight” spots
3) A well-designed dynamic warm-up with multi-planar mobility exercises for the ankle, hip, and thoracic spine.
4) Linear and lateral speed work
5) Double-leg, single-leg, and full body power work
6) Strength training, including single-leg exercise, dissociated upper body exercises, and dynamic core exercises (in linear, rotational, diagonal, and anti-movement patterns)
7) Hockey-specific conditioning, using various implements (e.g. shuttle runs, slideboards, sleds, etc.), and following an interval training progression (avoid steady state aerobic exercise!)

If the training program you’re following has ALL of these things, you’re probably on the right track. If it doesn’t, sign in to HockeyStrengthandConditioning.com and ask everyone if they know of a good hockey training center in your area.

Keep training hard!

Kevin Neeld

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