There are bunch of different injuries that occur in every sport. If you look carefully at the injuries in each sport you’ll notice that there are injuries that are common in each one of them. In fact, you could probably identify 3-4 different injuries in a given sport that you keep hearing about from athletes. Hockey, like every sport, has its common injuries. Before we go any further in this injury prevention discussion, it’s important to acknowledge that there are 2 different types of injuries:
Trauma injuries (e.g. shoulder dislocations, concussions, etc) that usually happen with some type of contact. These injuries are not really preventable (the only thing you can really do is beef up the surrounding muscles to limit the effect of the impact).
Overuse/Under-recovery injuries (e.g. tendinopathy, muscle strains, etc) . These injuries are largely preventable and can become pretty much completely absent if taken care of the right way.
Unfortunately, nothing you can do to prevent that.
Knowing that there is little we can do to prevent trauma injuries, we’ll focus on the preventable injuries. Appropriate training and recovery methods can almost always prevent those injuries. If we want to help prevent those injuries, we need to know what they are in the first place. In hockey players, the common preventable injuries are:
Adductor/Hip flexor strains
Hip labral tear
Sports hernias
If you are a hockey player or train hockey players, you’ll know that these injuries are VERY common among the hockey community. The nature of the sport and the large amount of stress placed on the hips can explain in part why those injuries occur. But it’s also important to understand that common doesn’t mean that it’s OK and that we shouldn’t do anything to prevent them.
To prevent the injury, you need to understand the injury mechanism. In hockey the hip abductors (glutes) get a lot stress from the skating motion. Conversely, the adductors and hip flexors are elongated with every stride of the skating motion. That certainly creates imbalances across the hip musculature; some muscles get weak, some muscles build up a lot of adhesions and trigger points and some muscles are just overused. Re-establishing that muscle balance in your training program is crucial to keep your athletes healthy.
Getting some soft-tissue work done on your glutes and adductors, stretching your glutes, strengthening your adductors in a shortened position and re-establishing neutral pelvic position (getting out of anterior tilt, which is way too common among hockey players) are just a couple of examples of strategies to help restore muscle balance across the hips for hockey players.
Kevin Neeld has a full chapter in his book Ultimate Hockey Training dedicated to those common hockey injuries and how to prevent them. If you haven’t already, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy of his book.
Guys, this is just a quick blog post to let you know that my good friend Kevin Neeld is still offering his Ultimate Hockey Training book at the introductory price (which, unbelievably is less than 35$!). If you haven’t already, I strongly suggest you pick up a copy before Kevin decides to bump up the price of the book.
If you ever buy strength and conditioning resources, you know that the books and DVDs that are sold usually don’t sell for less than 50-100$. Kevin set up that intro price to make sure that it could be available to anyone who wants to read it. Think about it. He refused to put more money in his pocket because he wanted as many people as possible to afford it.
Take advantage of his generosity before it’s too late!
Single-leg exercises like reverse lunges, rear foot elevated split squats and 1-leg squats can have great value in a training program as it improves your strength, your stability and your balance on 1 leg, which is the way most sports are played. Whether it is when you run, when you change direction, when you skate (if your sport is played on the ice) or when you decelerate, all of these actions take place on one leg at a time.
For these reasons, single leg exercises might be more “functional” than 2-legs exercises like squats. Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love squats, but they might not transfer as much as single leg exercises when it comes to developing strength, speed and power in a sport context. You just need to know which one to use and when.
Athletes still need to be able to squat as it is one of the most primitive patterns that the nervous system should control and master at a very young age. You could be surprised to see how many athletes have a hard time squatting properly. It can be because of mobility restrictions, stability or motor control problems, or other reasons, but it’s still a movement that an athlete (and any person as a matter of fact) should own.
If this isn’t textbook form….unfortunately I might lose this skill as he ages
That being said there is a strong neural relationship between single-leg strength and its carryover to sport’s performance. And these can be used as a main lower body lifts just like a squat or a deadlift. On top of being very beneficial in the transfer to sport’s performance, single-leg lifts can be great to reduce spinal loading (because you’re usually using less weight than double leg exercises) and to establish symmetry between both sides. Also everything changes from double leg to single stance; more stabilizer muscles are engaged, core muscle activation is increased and the foot’s proprioception is challenged to a much greater extent.
Even if spinal loading is not as great as with regular squats, you can still get a tremendous effect out of single-leg training and gain a lot of strength. If you’re not convinced, just check out this video of one of our hockey player at Endeavor doing Reverse Lunges with 255 pounds for 6 reps!
Even Coach Jorts from CoachJortsTraining.com can’t squat as much double leg! (barely 225! Pfff, those jorts don’t even make you stronger)
In all seriousness, my friend Kevin Neeld just released his Ultimate Hockey Training book last week and he goes into great details on the benefits of single-leg lifts. Make sure you get a copy; he’s still selling it at the introductory price (less than 35$!!)
After a long awaited launch, here it is! Kevin Neeld just released his new book Ultimate Hockey Training! This book is one like you’ve never seen before. This will raise the bar for any hockey training product forever!
He’s offering a ridiculous discount and throwing in some great free gifts from some of the world’s top experts in hockey development and performance training. When he told me he was gonna sell the book for under 30$, I thought he had brain damage! But he wants to make it affordable so anyone can buy it. You’ll have to hurry, though. This offer won’t be around for long…
Kevin isn’t just an “internet expert” that bases his recommendations on random theory or what he used to do as a player. He ACTUALLY trains hockey players for a living, and has been incredibly successful at it. Ultimate Hockey Training reveals Kevin’s entire hockey training system. I highly recommend you go pick up a copy now! At the price he’s offering the book, you would be crazy not to!
As I mentioned last week, my friend and colleague Kevin Neeld is releasing is Ultimate Hockey Training book this upcoming Wednesday! This will be a book on hockey training like you’ve never seen before. Most of the hockey products out there are pretty outdated as the majority of them were written or produced in the late 80′s-early 90′s and the information contained in them is flat-out outdated.
Kevin worked really hard (trust me, I know; we share the same office) to put together the most recent information available, combined with his many years of experience training hockey players to bring you the most comprehensive hockey product to date. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the information contained in this book will completely blow your mind away! One of the things Kevin covers in great details in his book is hockey-specific conditioning. To give you a sneak-peak, Kevin put together a free hockey conditioning webinar that describes:
Common problems in current hockey speed training
3 types of hockey speed and off-ice training strategies for each
Why “agility” training will NOT make you a faster skater
How speed training fits into a comprehensive off-ice training program
How to alter your speed training depending on the time of year
Again this is a completely free webinar that will open your eyes on hockey conditioning. And the whole chapter on conditioning in Ultimate Hockey Training, by itself, is worth the price of the book! Stay tuned on this website for details on the launch of Ultimate Hockey Training on Wednesday! Here’s the link for the free webinar again:
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I just wanted to write a quick post today to let you know that my friend and colleague from Endeavor, Kevin Neeld just posted a free webinar on transitional speed for hockey players. Kevin will be releasing his long awaited book, Ultimate Hockey Training next week, and he put up a webinar about speed training for hockey for you to watch completely free. This video will be leading up to his book launch next week. In the webinar Kevin discusses:
· Why most hockey players are doing the right speed training for the wrong sport
· Why hockey players shouldn’t do “agility” training ever again
· How to progress speed training exercises to make them more hockey-specific
· How speed training fits into a complete training program
You can check out this FREE webinar by clicking on the link below:
I’m working with Kevin on a day-to-day basis, and I can tell you he put an incomparable amount of work in the writting and publishing of his book. The results will speak for themselves when you see the book when it comes out next week. It is something like I’ve never seen before when it comes to hockey training. It will definitely raise the bar in terms of hockey products out there. I’ll just put it this way: the information you’ll find in that book will blow your mind away!
In the meantime, Kevin is offering you a free webinar that will get you thinking about the speed and agility work you do with your hockey players. Definitely a must watch! Here’s the link again:
Mid-August just rolled around, which means that here at Endeavor, and for most hockey players training for the next season it’s the last stretch of the off-season. Different phases of an off-season plan focus on different goals. Early off-season usually focuses on recovery and regeneration and trying to undo most of the damage done during the season. The mid off-season, which is usually the phase most of players enjoy the most is the time to get big, fast and strong.
The late off-season phase focuses more on moving quicker (agility and transitional speed), work capacity and conditioning. The goal is to get guys in “game shape” as much as possible before they head back to camp. (On a side note, it’s interesting to see how the culture in hockey has changed in the last couple of decades, where players used to use the pre-season/training camp to “get in shape”. and now it’s the exact opposite; if you don’t show up to camp in the best shape of your life you don’t have many chances of making the team!)
What this means concretely from a program design standpoint is that:
- Your speed work is going to be comprised mostly of transitional sprints and drills
- Your conditioning volume is going to be much higher and as specific as possible to the game of hockey (energy system wise)
- The lifting part of your training is going to focus on work capacity, i.e. done mostly in circuit fashion.
So the lifting part of a lower body day (for a 4x/week program) might look something like this:
A1- KB swings 3 x 15
A2- Bunkie Side Plank (top leg only) 3 x 15sec/side
A3- 2-Way Skater 3 x (2 x 6)/side
A4- Split Squat Iso-Hold 3 x 30sec/side
A5- Stability Ball Knee Tucks 3 x 10
A6- 3-Way Split Stance Stability Ball Hold w/ Perturbation 3 x (3 x 10sec)/side
This is actually a circuit that comes from one of our late off-season program at Endeavor. The goal is really just to give an example of a lifting circuit might look like. The circuit concept would also apply for upper body days, just with different exercises.
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Kevin Neeld is definitely one of the smartest strength coaches I know; he has a lot of knowledge, he knows how to apply that knowledge and he really understands how to train athletes as he’s well aware of the demands and reality they’re facing from competing at a high level. Kevin is also an incredible person to talk to, and he is very generous of his time; he kindly accepted to contribute to my website and share his knowledge with you, my readers.
Knowing that groin injuries are growing at an alarming rate in the athletic population, especially in hockey players, I asked Kevin what 3 tips he would give to athletes trying to avoid groin injuries.
Enter Kevin:
“It’s a great topic and one that I think more athletes need to familiarize themselves with. I’ve written a lot about specific strategies on how both prevent and deal with these injuries, but over the last year I’ve discovered that there are a couple more basic messages that athletes need to understand first.
1) Take time off Most groin strains come about because of overuse, or probably more accurately, under recovery. The prevalence of groin strains amongst all athletes, but hockey players especially has drastically increased over the last 10 years. Not coincidentally, so has the emphasis on year-round sports participation and early specialization. It’s imperative that athletes play at least two sports WITH DISCTINCT OFF-SEASONS up through high school. Pairing up sports like hockey and baseball, football and lacrosse, or basketball and soccer allow athletes to benefit from the different movement strategies used in the two sports, force them to take a break from one sport while they pursue the other, and provide time for actual training (e.g. strength and conditioning) during the “third” part of the year.
Far better option for young hockey players during the summer instead of hockey summer leagues
Vladimir Issurin, world expert on block periodization and consultant to the Soviet and Israeli Olympic programs points out that we’ve replaced preparation time with competition time. No training and no rest is a recipe for groin strains.
2) Train Year-Round
This may seem counterintuitive based on the previous paragraph, but hear me out. Most groin strains come about as a result of a stiffness or an activation/strength imbalance across the hips. In the off-season, it’s important that athletes train to improve their overall athletic capacity (strength, speed, power, conditioning) to prepare for the demands of their sport. In-season athletes need to train to maintain (or continue to improve depending on the athlete) their athleticism. If athletes get weaker as the season goes on, then they will need to play at a higher percentage of their total capacity to maintain the same performance level as early in the season. Ultimately this means that athletes will have a diminished ability to perform at a high level at the end of the season, when perfect performance is most important. They also need to train in-season to REVERSE some of the undesired adaptations that result from playing their sport so much. As an example, as the season goes on some hockey players have a tendency to lose hip internal rotation ROM. An internal rotation deficit is associated with hip labral tears, and can put constant (and unnecessary) strain on the groin musculature.
The labrum is the ring of cartilage that surrounds the hip joint socket. It prevents the femural head from moving out place.
By focusing on maintaining strength and balance across the hips, we can help maximize performance and minimize injury risk.
3) Don’t be a hero in the 1st half of the season When athletes don’t prepare or prepare insufficiently for the start of a new season, it’s pretty common for a few to suffer slight groin “tweaks” during pre-season camps and early on in the season. This is simply the result of a huge increase in the volume of high velocity movement without adequate preparation. These injuries tend to go away in a couple weeks if they’re handled the right way. By “the right way” I mean by taking time off from anything that causes it pain, stretching the glutes, doing psoas activation work, and strengthening the adductors in a shortened position using exercises like the 2-Way Med Ball Crush.
Preferably done with a shirt on…
I’ve seen too many athletes, high on their own enthusiasm, fight through the pain/discomfort and keep playing. I know how difficult it is to take time away from your sport when 95% of your body feels great, but it’s a necessity. Groin “tweaks” become mild tears, which become sports hernias if unaddressed. The time to fight through pain is the playoffs, not the first half of the season. An extra week off could be the difference between your tweak healing stronger or laying the foundation for surgery in the future.”
Thanks Kevin for your words of wisdom! Make sure to check out Kevin’s website HERE.
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For those of you who don’t already know, I’ve been writing articles for 2 different membership websites in the last couple of months. If you’re not familiar with these 2 websites, I highly suggest you check them out today, as there is a ton of great content on both of them. One is hockey specific and the other one is rehab oriented.
Hockey Strength and Conditioning is a tremendous resource for anyone who trains hockey player, whether you are an on-ice coach or a strength and conditioning coach…and actually it is a great resource for anyone who wants to know more about hockey training. The information that is available on this site is unbelievable. There are videos, audio interviews with some of the best people in the hockey training, detailed programs from NHL strength coaches, articles and much more. For me to be a part of Hockey Strength and Conditioning as a writer is more than an honor for me; having articles posted on the same website as Mike Potenza (San Jose Sharks), Sean Skahan (Anaheim Ducks) and Darryl Nelson (USA Hockey) is quite an honor. These guys know their stuff, and they stay on top of things, and when you see their programs and articles, it’s easy to tell. If you’re somehow involved on hockey, you NEED to check it out.
The second one, as I mentioned is more rehab and injury prevention oriented, but is just as good! On Sports Rehab Expert you can find articles, injury prevention and rehab protocols, new exercises, audio interviews and videos. There is some sport-specific material as well as more in-depth physical therapy protocols. With guys like Joe Heiler (who’s the founder), Eric Cressey, Charlie Weingroff and Gray Cook contributing to the site, you know right off the bat that there’s going to be some high quality information there. I still can’t believe that my articles are right there for everyone to read with all these smart guys! This is another site that you absolutely need to check out if haven’t before!
I’m on vacation this week (don’t worry I didn’t bring my lap top to the beach, I just wrote these posts last week!), so I will keep the posts short, but hopefully you can still something out of them!
About two weeks ago my colleague Kevin Neeld posted a video on how to assess for femoral anteversion and retroversion. The video why this type of assessment might be very important, especially for hockey players. Kevin also explains in detail how to assess range of motion at the hips. If you haven’t seen it on his website already, make sure you watch the video below!
Don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter! You’ll also get 3 FREE reports on speed training, soft-tissue work and injury prevention strategies for the shoulders!!!
Unfortunately, nothing you can do to prevent that.
Getting some soft-tissue work done on your glutes and adductors, stretching your glutes, strengthening your adductors in a shortened position and re-establishing neutral pelvic position (getting out of anterior tilt, which is way too common among hockey players) are just a couple of examples of strategies to help restore muscle balance across the hips for hockey players.
