We’re engaging in the home stretch of the youth hockey seasons for most kids in the country. All my athletes within Team Comcast have worked extremely hard all year, and most of them have made very good gains even though it’s in-season lifting, where our main goal is to make sure we don’t lose strength.
At this time of year though their schedule is getting a little crazy. Club team practices, club team games, high school team practices, high school team games, and school on top of their own family and personal lives. Not sure many of us would last long with that type of schedule!
Crazy schedule…just like what CM Punk’s new t-shirt says.
That being said, because of all that craziness going on this time of year, we often opt out of the scheduled lifting session and switch that to a recovery workout. This doesn’t need to be fancy, but most importantly it needs to stay short. My goals with these workouts are:
Get the blood flowing while keeping the intensity pretty low
Work on range of motion, which seems to be lost for a lot of players as the season goes
Include some soft-tissue work
Include injury prevention strategies
Keep it short
Keeping these goals in mind, here is what a sample recovery session might look like with one of my youth hockey teams:
- Foam roll
- Dynamic warm up
- Short circuit;
A1- Lacrosse ball on posterior hip 3 x 30sec/side
A2- Glute bridge squeezing foam roller 3 x (6 x 5sec)
A3- Seated psoas lift 3 x (4 x 5sec)/side
A4- Lateral miniband walk 3 x 10/side
- Static stretching
This seems pretty short, and quite frankly it is! The whole workout may take about 25 minutes including warm up and everything, and that’s exactly what they need sometimes. It will help recharge their battery, while still gaining some mobility and preventing injuries.
Give this type of circuit a try in-season with the teams you work with; you’ll see that it’s very beneficial, and the kids appreciate it a whole lot when they feel beat up.
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No matter athletes from what sport you train, chances are their strength training will all have similarities. After all in the weight room you’re training qualities (speed, power, strength), not sport-specific movements. Sure there should be differences whether the sport is more linear, lateral, or rotational in nature, and there should also be differences in injury prevention strategies and conditioning. But overall there might be more similarities between programs for different sports than most people would think.
That said, training hockey players requires some very unique considerations because of the nature of the sport. Don’t get me wrong, hockey players still do reverse lunges, RFE split squats, deadlifts, chin ups, and chest presses. There are however things you should know when designing hockey strength training programs and training hockey players.
1. FAI. That stands for femoroacetabular impingement. This is something I have wrote about in the past, but is worth mentioning again. It’s basically a bony overgrowth of either the the femoral head or the acetabulum that restrict the range of motion, especially in hip flexion and internal rotation. It looks like this:
There are 3 types of FAI as you can see in the image above; Cam, Pincer, or mixed. Cam is when the overgrowth is on the femoral head, Pincer is when the overgrowth is on the acetabulum, and mixed is when there is a combination of both. The reason why this is so important is that it’s a limitation in range of motion that is non-modifiable– unless you get surgery. And it’s not like this is something uncommon; a previous study revealed the presence of FAI in over 70% of asymptomatic professional hockey players. You read that right, 70%! It’s over 2/3 of the whole hockey population at the professional level. If you train hockey players, and ignore this, or simply don’t know anything about it, you’re putting your players at greater risk of injuries. Athletes with FAI who force range of motion that they don’t have risk serious labrum damage. This is why assessing your players, and modifying their program accordingly is one of the top priorities.
2. Concussions are growing into an epidemic in hockey. I have also written about this in the past, and have wrote a full blog post on the subject, so make sure you check it out HERE. Not having any data to support this, I would guess that concussions are the number 1 most common injury in hockey players. Most concussions are largely unpreventable since it’s a traumatic injury. Concussions often times get worse and linger around for way longer than they should. One of the reasons: the neck. The poor posture (forward head) that most hockey players walk around with, which creates overly tight occipital muscles, and weak and often inhibited anterior neck flexors is a perfect set up for recurring headaches following a concussion. The rectus capitis minor specifically attaches to the lining that encapsulates the brain, and can be a very probable source of headaches if it’s overly tight. What’s the take-home from this point? Address the posture of your hockey players, and spend some time working on anterior neck strength and deep flexor stability.
3. Skating puts a tremendous amount of stress of the hips. It’s probably one of the most unnatural motions that the body can go through. And sure enough hockey players have a tendency to overdo it– showcases, clinics, summer leagues, etc. This is probably one of the reasons why structural problems such as FAI develop overt time. But even for players who don’t have FAI, it’s still very important to take care of the hips by foam rolling (and lacrosse ball), do a lot of mobility work, do prehab exercises and get manual work done on a regular basis to prevent further hip problems.
If you train hockey players and want to learn more, make sure you get Kevin Neeld’s book Ultimate Hockey Training. It’s by far the best hockey specific book out there.
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It’s been 4 weeks since the hockey seasons started at the youth level, and already 3 players on the U18 team I train came up with shoulder injuries. One of them suffered a grade 2 separation from a contact during a game. Another one dislocated his shoulder pretty severely during a senior trip (what a bad luck), and will most likely require surgery. And the last one mysteriously woke up with an AC joint pain, that “magically” went away after some daily soft tissue work.
At this point I still think hip injuries are the most common ones in hockey players, but shoulders might not be far behind, along with concussions. The thing with shoulder injuries is that most of them are contact injuries due to the nature of the sport; especially at the U18 level, guys are bigger, stronger, faster and they hit hard. Even though most non-contact injuries are preventable, there isn’t a whole lot you can do about traumatic injuries.
The fact that contact-based injuries are hard to prevent, doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do to minimize the incidental damage from a hard hit. Here are a couple strategies that might be worth applying to avoid another dislocated shoulder because of a hard hit.
1. Improve posture. The chance of the humeral head popping out after a hard hit is much higher if the player has a poor resting posture. Think about the direction the force is absorbed with a hit from the side if the scapula is anteriorly tilted and the humerus internally rotated.
The chances of the shoulder dislocating is much higher because of the alignment of the shoulder. If you spend enough time working on posture with your athletes, and more importantly educating them on the importance of having good posture throughout the day, it may reduce the risk of dislocating a shoulder after a big hit. When the alignment of the shoulder is optimal, the humeral head will be pressed in the shoulder joint following a hard hit, and the risk of dislocation will be reduced.
2. Shoulder and rotator cuff stability and strength. In line with the previous point, along with good posture goes good stability. If you don’t have good posture, you can’t have optimal stability. That means all the muscles surrounding the shoulder structures (scapula, clavicle, humerus) must be strong and stable. The rotator cuff in particular has to be very efficient in its role of stabilizing the humeral head in the glenoid fossa to prevent it from moving. A strong rotator cuff can also be very effective in keeping the shoulder properly aligned.
Great exercise to improve the stability and strength of the rotator cuff
3. Muscle mass. This might seem too broad of a strategy to be specific in helping shoulder injury, but I feel it’s an important one. When you get hit against an immovable board at high velocity, if you don’t have a lot of “meat” to absorb the impact, the chances of getting structural damage increases. The bigger and the stronger the muscles around the shoulders are, the better the capacity of the body at absorbing impacts. So make sure your athletes eat enough! It’s always a struggle for me with some of my smallest players to get them to understand that they need to eat more in order to gain muscle mass, but the higher the level they play, the more important it becomes.
Again, traumatic shoulder injuries are usually pretty hard to avoid in hockey, just like in other sports, but with the few tips above you will at least put all the chances on your side of limiting the risks and the damage of some of these contact injuries.
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The in-season training with our elite youth hockey organization started a couple of weeks ago. Endeavor is responsible for the in-season training of 9 AAA hockey teams from the Comcast organization. We do everything out of the rink located in Pennsauken, New Jersey where the organization is based out of. This is our third year with this program helping them develop their hockey players. To say that it’s been a work in progress would be an understatement.
We started this program with no facility, no equipment, and we had to run the sessions in the hallway next to the snack bar between tables, and parents hanging out. Last year we had a major upgrade because we were able to rent a small room in the rink, which used to be a party room, to run all of our sessions. We were then able to get some equipment in there. We had a dumbbell rack (up to 50lbs), a chin up bar, 5 homemade slideboard, a couple stability balls, a couple of Olympic bars, and a bunch of weight plates (but no racks). It’s not much, but it’s about all we could fit in there. Even if this was a major upgrade from the previous year, this wasn’t optimal in part because we had this one and only room to train 9 teams who almost all had practice on the same nights. But we made it work.
This is our first 700 square foot room located in the Pennsauken rink
This year was another major upgrade as we were able to rent a second room in the building and fit in some more equipment. On top of the small room and equipment that we still have, we now have another room that’s probably twice as big, and more equipment; 2 squat racks, dumbbell rack (up to 90lbs), homemade slideboards, stability balls, bumper plates, chains, bands, suspension handles, and more. We need a serious decoration makeover, but other than that it’s great! We’re very fortunate because we are in a very special situation with a unique setting for a youth hockey organization.
This year’s in-season training has been taking a drastic turn for the better with the 2 rooms and basically no equipment limitations (we train the younger teams in the smallest room, which has more than enough equipment). We have the equipment, we have the programs, and we have high level hockey players to train.
Like I said, we started the in-season training 3 weeks ago, and things have been great so far. I have been fortunate to be able to train the 3 oldest groups this year (U18, and two U16 teams). Workouts have been going well, but I still felt like there was something missing…
This past Thursday, one the kid from one of the U16 teams brought in his stereo system. Bingo! The team never trained that hard, and the energy during the session was unbelievable.
I know the importance music can have on training, but it’s always good to be reminded by a group of 16 year old kids that it’s not just important…it’s necessary!
I know I blogged about music before, and made some suggestions for your training playlists, but it’s always good to have new material to add to it. Here are a couple of my recent favorites:
Kanye & Jay-Z, Niggas in Paris:
Mac Miller, Knock Knock:
Foo Fighters, Bridge Burning:
If you’re into French rap, you’ll enjoy this one. Although I don’t share their political views, it’s a great song on my training playlist, and my kids at Endeavor seem to really enjoy it! Loco Locass, Liberez-Nous des Liberaux:
And lastly, this is my geeky wrestling fan side coming out, but great song that gets me pumped up. Living Colour, The Cult of Personality:
What’s on your training playlist? I’m looking forward to hearing your picks!
Continuing education is one of the most important things to pursue when you’re in the strength and conditioning industry. We are in an ever evolving industry, that quite frankly has a lot of gray areas. That means that a lot of things are changing, new studies come out every day, things you thought were true sometimes turn out to be not so true, and new training methods turn out to be more effective than old ones you were using for some time.
You get the point. Things change. You can’t be satisfied with your current level of knowledge because it will catch up to you sooner than later.
No time to sit back!
This is something that I’ve found especially true if you’re training hockey players. The nature of the sport puts a very unnatural stress on the hips (think about the skating stride for a minute; there’s a constant external rotation at the hips, combined with a hip extension and abduction. Then the recovery stride is going in the exact opposite direction; flexion, adduction, and internal rotation). Although a lot of high velocity sports like football put high stress on the hips, I don’t know of many sports that place such a “weird” stress on the hips, if I could say that.
Not exactly the most natural movement for your body
This exact skating stride is reproduced thousands, and thousands of times over the course of a season, year after year, and more often than it should be, all year round as well. That leads to structural adaptations taking place as the kids grow up. Some of those structural adaptations are bony in nature, and are becoming more and more common, as we live in a world of early specialization in sports. If you have ever heard of femoroacetabular impingement, or FAI, that’s exactly what it is.
The different types of FAI
The thing with FAI, is that not a lot of people in the hockey community, including strength coaches and physical therapists, are aware of what it is. It wouldn’t be a big deal if this wasn’t a common issue, but according to a recent study, 64% of asymptomatic hockey players present with some level of hip structural abnormality(1). Yes, you read right, 64%!! FAI usually limits range of motion in hip flexion, and internal rotation. From a practical application standpoint, this means that range of motion would be limited for a lot of lower body exercises including squat variations, deadlift variations, lunge and split squat variations, just to name a few. Think of the implication of not knowing about FAI and training hockey players for a living. You would pretty much be putting your athletes at risk of a serious potential season-ending injury! And still, only a handful of strength coaches are aware of FAI and its implications.
Believe it or not, this is not a post about FAI. This is just to make you realize how important it is to stay on top of new information coming out. Sometimes it’s more than just new training methods or a new revolutionary supplement coming out. Sometimes it’s about the health and security of your athletes!
The good thing is that with the age of the internet, it’s very easy to have access to high quality information. If you’re involved in the hockey community in some way, things are even easier. Some of the greatest minds in hockey run a hockey specific continuing education website. Sean Skahan from the Anahiem Ducks, Mike Potenza from the San Jose Sharks, Darryl Nelson from the USA National Team Development Program, and Endeavor’s own Kevin Neeld have joined forces to create HockeyStrengthAndConditioning.com.
It is the biggest hockey specific resource you’ll find on the web where all these great strength coaches post new information, videos, and programs every single week. There is also a lot of material from contributors (including me!), and great forum discussions that are just as valuable as all the articles on the site. Again, if you’re training hockey players, you need to get a membership for this site. It’s less than 15$ a month, and it’ll be the most valuable resource you’ll have access to!
(1)Silvis ML, Tosher TJ. High prevalence of pelvic and hip magnetic resonance imaging findings in asymptomatic collegiate and professional hockey players. Am J Sports Med. 2011 Apr;39(4):715-21. Epub 2011 Jan 13.
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Although an imminent lockout will probably delay the NHL season for a couple months (dammit!), hockey seasons at the amateur level are still getting under way all around the country.
The beginning of the new season also means performance testing for a lot of those teams at the youth level. Performance testings have been around for a long time as a way to monitor progress, and (whether it’s right or not) to compare kids to each other. The goal is to monitor the progress throughout the season, but also to monitor the progress the kids made during the off-season, assuming they have been tested on those same performance tests at the end of the previous season.
If you look a little more in depth at what “monitoring progress” means, we want to ask ourselves the question: what are we measuring in the first place? Performance is way too vague of a term in this situation to limit the answer to that.
This could be looked at from 2 different perspectives (and I’ll explain what I mean a little later).
The first perspective we can take is the one of the performance enhancement coach, which is the most obvious one for most of you reading this post. In this situation, what we measure is different factors, or qualities that affect performance. This is where we need to get more specific because this is ultimately what will dictate the actual tests that we’ll use. For example, one could decide that strength, power, anaerobic power, lactic power, and aerobic capacity are the most appropriate performance qualities to measure with a given team in a given sport.
Based on those specific qualities you’ll then want to choose tests that will give you data that will appropriately represent the qualities you are measuring. Once you have your system in place (performance qualities, and specific tests to use), the next step is to perform those tests on the players, and establish what intervals you want to test your athletes at. For example, you might want to test your athletes at the beginning of the season, mid-season, and at the end of the season every year. That would give you a good idea of the in-season, as well as off-season progress for all of the players.
After running players through the performance tests, the next logical step is to put together a periodization plan, as well as designing specific training programs to improve those qualities, since they are the ones you judged relevant to your sport. It’s a lot of work, and there are hundreds of ways to go about this when you take into consideration all the different periodization models, and training methods out there.
Periodization can look a little confusing at times…
It’s by trial and error that you’ll find out what works well for your athletes, what needs to be adjusted, and what needs to be eliminated from the program. As you get more experienced, you’ll refine your approach; that might mean changing the qualities to develop, the performance tests to use, the periodization model you’re using, the training methods, the exercises, etc, etc, etc.
This approach seems pretty simple. And as Dan John would put it: simple doesn’t mean easy. What I mean is that all you’re trying to do is improve specific, measurable performance qualities in your athletes. It’s a simple, but not necessarily easy.
The man. The legend.
Now let’s take it from that other perspective I was talking about earlier. This is often going to be the perspective of a coach.
You want fast, strong, powerful, and well conditioned players, but ultimately you want players who perform well on the ice! And this is when performance enhancement becomes a little more tricky. There are other factors who come into play when we talk about on-ice, or on-field performance. Your skill level, the players you play with, the role your coach gives you on the team, and the psychological factor are all important factors that directly impact the game.
So what exactly is performance enhancement? Is it improving specific qualities in the hope that everything will fall in place once the athlete steps on the ice, or the field? Or is it simply improving performance (goals, assist, touchdown passes, etc) in a sport-specific context?
In the end, this is what matters.
Realistically developing specific qualities will contribute to develop a better athlete that has more chance to perform well in a sport-specific context, that’s a no-brainer.
But what if you have a player who keeps getting stronger, and more powerful in the weight room, but doesn’t seem to be improving on the ice. What can you do as a performance enhancement coach? Is there something you can do to help your athlete? Can we bridge the gap?
Honestly, I don’t know what the answer is…My will to help my athletes make me not want to stop there and say: “oh well he needs to work on his skills (or his mental skills, or whatever); he got stronger, I did my job.” Ultimately I want all of my athletes to do well in their sport before anything else; I could care less that he can deadlift 450, if he’s a healthy scratch for a half of the season.
I just know that there is more to developing an athlete than just developing his physical qualities. And I don’t want to sit there and wait to see what happens.
I would appreciate your thoughts and feedback on the subject. Please leave a comment below!
Hip capsule mobilizations can be an important part of the puzzle when addressing hip stiffness. If traditional modalities such as self myofascial release and stretching don’t seem to be doing the trick, it might be indicative of hip capsule stiffness.
There are a ton of different methods out there that work wonders to help loosen up the posterior hip capsule, such as the Mulligan mobilizations. The Mulligan concept uses different strategies in itself. One of these strategy that works especially well involves distraction of the femoral head.
Mulligan mobilizations require the help of a qualified practitioner. There is however a way to replicate the Mulligan concept with self mobilizations and the help of a super band to reap some of the benefits of the Mulligan mobilizations.
I learned this self posterior hip capsule mobilization from my buddy Anthony Vittese, whose a very smart physical therapist.
The goal is to have the band high up in your groin so it’s as close to the hip joint as possible and cause a bigger distraction. It’s worth noting that you need a band that’s super stiff in order for the mobilization to be effective; I don’t think the use of tubing or theraband would do it.
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Static stretching is an important part of any training program to help improve or maintain elasticity in muscles and range of motion around the joints. Depending on the sport you play, some stretching might be more important than others. In other words your post-workout stretching circuit might be different depending on what sport you play.
Hockey players, for example, usually have pretty stiff hip flexors (especially the TFL), posterior hip muscles (glutes, piriformis, etc), and posterior neck muscles due to the way they skate. These will be areas that you’ll want to focus on in their stretching circuit.
Here is the post-workout stretching circuit that we use at Endeavor with most of our hockey players at the end of every session:
1. Lateral Hamstring w/ Band
2. Prone Glute
3. Lying Knee-to-Knee
4. Rectus Femoris w/ Internal Rotation
5. 90 Degree Pec
6. Cross-Body Lat
7. Diagonal Neck
Notice how their is no groin, or adductor stretches. The reason is that it’s an area that hockey players are already overly flexible in. In fact, they need a little more tightness in the groin/adductors area, and more tissue elasticity in the posterior hip muscles.
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It’s this time of year at Endeavor where our hockey players are slowly coming back for the off-season training. During the next 2 months or so, we’ll progressively welcome back our players, and by the time June rolls around we should be at full capacity and be extremely busy throughout the summer.
In the meantime, the current phase of the off-season is what we call “the early off-season” for the guys that are already back with us. These guys have the advantage of having a long off-season and plenty of time to not only improve their performance, but undo the damage they’ve put on their body throughout the season. And God knows how much damage a long hockey season can put on your body, especially on your hips. That’s why our early off-season phase focuses a lot more on re-establishing balance than it is about improving performance.
Hockey is a rotational sport, just like baseball, football (for quarterbacks), lacrosse, tennis and golf. One thing to understand is that the rotational movements occur almost exclusively in one direction. Over the course of a season, this accounts for many rotations when making passes and taking shots during all the practices and games the athlete takes part in. Rotations in the opposite direction are almost non-existent, and if you want to ensure better symmetry and balance throughout the body, there is definitely a need for rotational work on the non-dominant side.
The core exercises in a training program can be a good tool to help re-establish better balance. Even though our exercises are not purely rotational in nature (actually they are just the opposite; anti-rotation), the movement pattern and the muscles recruited are the same; they just happen to work in an isometric fashion.
That being said, instead of working both sides equally, we’ll double or triple the volume on the non-dominant side for all the anti-rotation core exercises we’re using. Just about any anti-rotation exercise can be used, but 2 of my favorites are the Belly Press and the Chop, both in the 1/2 kneeling position.
I really like the 1/2 kneeling position, especially in the early off-season because you get some lengthening of the hip flexors and some hip stability in the end range of motion. We’ll usually do 3 sets on the non-shooting side, and only one on the shooting side.
The concept can also be expanded with the rotational power work, with medicine ball throws and the like. Adding more sets on the non-dominant side will help re-establish some sort of balance around the hips, the shoulders and the core.
The early off-season is a good time to work on major imbalances and the damage done during the season before getting into heavy strength and power work throughout the summer, so it’s important to take advantage of it.
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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.
Crazy schedule…just like what CM Punk’s new t-shirt says.
