Rule #1 Of Off-Ice Performance
Years ago, I created my professional mission statement that still holds true today:
To provide an environment for athletes to learn, grow, and develop physically, mentally, and spiritually that will have a lasting impact far beyond their sport.
With that mission statement, it can be broken down in to “how” I would accomplish this for each of the subdivisions – physically, mentally, and spiritually. For the sake of this article, I want to talk about the physical piece of that mission statement, also known as my training philosophy.
It’s my impression that a lot of performance coaches hold a similar basic training philosophy to mine, broken down into rules:
1. Reduce the chance of injury
i. Do no harm
2. Improve all athletic abilities
i. Better athletes are better hockey players
3. Build life-long health and well being
i. Education on the who, what, why, where, and how
The most important component of any training philosophy is to reduce the chance of injury, which is why it’s at the forefront of any coach’s philosophy. The best teams need their best players to play to win. If those players are injured to the point that they can’t participate in the game or they’re able to play, but not perform to the best of their abilities, the team is leaving valuable performance on the table.
Hockey is a high speed, collision sport. Unlike contact sports like basketball, soccer, etc., hitting in hockey is a skill of the sport and not just a consequence of physical play that is likely to be penalized. And unlike another collision sport like football, the speed players reach is much higher due to the coefficient of friction on the ice, causing all collisions to occur at a higher speed. Imagine a car crash occurring at 40 miles per hour vs. 20 miles per hour and you can understand the impact this can have on contact injuries.
Paired with high speed, rotational leg movement that occurs with every push off that’s unlike any other sport and it’s easily understood why the prevalence of injuries in the sport is so high, with a wide variety of injuries occurring.
The simplest form of reducing the chance of injury is, by the subcategory, doing no harm. Nobody should ever get injured during one of your training sessions. This means choosing exercises that have less of a likelihood of causing injuries. Here are some of my staples:
Trap Bar Jump > Clean
- Most players wrists have been jammed many times going into the boards. Catching heavy loads with the wrists fully extended can exasperate those issues.
Landmine Press > Overhead Press
- Most players have shoulder flexion limitations that don’t allow them to get full clearance from their upper arm behind their ear without flaring their ribs and arching their low back. Pressing heavy loads overhead without the requisite overhead mobility will cause a break down in a compromised position. Landmine presses allow players that do have full flexion to press fully overhead, but players that are limited to press in a more inclined position.
Cable Pulldown > Chin Up
- On the same page as pressing, many players not having shoulder flexion makes programming chin ups a questionable decision. Like landmine presses, performing cable pulldowns allows players with adequate mobility to pull from straight overhead while players with limited flexion can pull in a diagonal pattern.
Front Squat > Back Squat
- Due to the repetitive nature of the skating stride, research has shown that over 90% of hockey players have femoracetabular impingement (FAI). FAI is caused by the head of the femur hitting the rim of the hip socket, limiting range of motion, and causing a pinching hip pain. Because the load is in front of the body on front squats, this creates a slight internal rotation at the ribs and posterior tilt at the pelvis by pushing the center of mass backward. In that position, the femur slides posteriorly in the socket, allowing for more range of motion and less pinching. Putting the bar on the back pushes the center of mass forward, thus causing the ribs to flair and pelvis to tilt anteriorly. This position feeds into FAI, limiting range of motion and increasing the potential of pinching.
- To properly hold the bar on the back for back squats, the shoulder needs to get to at least 90 degrees of external rotation. Many players can’t achieve this position without compensating with excessive anterior glide of the shoulder, so performing a cross-arm front squat grip is a more appropriate position.
Every exercise has some ratio of cost and benefit. The key is trying to get the highest benefit with the lowest cost that you feel comfortable with. As players get older and their training and injury history increase, the ratio of these costs and benefits should be swayed appropriately.
If you’re checking the box to minimize the risk of the players getting injured during their training sessions, the next step of the process is to mitigate the chances of overuse injuries by reversing overuse patterns and filling physical qualities that don’t get filled on the ice.
With every stride comes the shortening of the glute and lengthening of the adductor through hip extension, abduction, and external rotation on the stride leg. This hip action also occurs at high speeds, which is why adductor strains and MCL injuries are so common. To counteract that, soft tissue work and long duration stretching should be common practice for the glutes to release the tension in that muscle group. Paired with adductor squeezes, this becomes a recipe that any player can run through multiple times per week to maintain a proper length-tension relationship.
Due to FAI, many players lack full hip extension. This causes a lot of players to extend through their low back to achieve a powerful triple extension pattern. While this isn’t necessarily bad because it’s generating lots of speed and power, using this strategy constantly can create low back pain or could lead to more serious injuries like a sports hernia. Having a healthy dose of anti-movement core exercises can help maintain proper positioning. Anti-extension, anti-rotation, and anti-lateral flexion are all important and should all have a place at the table in your programming.
Another strategy that can help here is by increasing tone in the hamstrings as they attach to the back side of the pelvis. Due to that attachment point, by increasing tone (likely meaning causing a chronic shortening of the muscle), the hamstring can pull down on the pelvis, causing it to posteriorly tilt.
The last common area for injuries is in the shoulders with subluxations, separations, and AC joint sprains. Like the hamstrings pulling on the backside of the pelvis, the muscles of the posterior shoulder can pull the humerus towards the back of the socket. By increasing tone on the back side of the shoulder through horizontal pulling, reverse flies, and external rotations, the humerus can slide posteriorly, reducing the chances of subluxations and separations.
Bodyweight also plays a big part in reducing the chances of injury (specifically in the upper body) because the extra layer of muscle and fat surrounding the joints can be protective against blunt force from other players, the ice, or the boards. I aim to have every player at minimum 2.5x their height in inches for their bodyweight in pounds (thanks to Josh Heenan and the 90 MPH Formula for that one). It’s common knowledge that smaller players have a higher likelihood of contact injuries, so increasing body weight is a great strategy. This can be done with traditional “bodybuilding” type set and rep schemes for muscle groups in the upper body, providing that layer of protection in specific areas where it would be beneficial.
Knowing what not to do is just as important as knowing what to do. During the season, there is so much lateral and rotational movements occurring on the ice that it may seem beneficial to performance to include lateral and rotational exercises to improve those on-ice qualities. The downside to that is the muscle groups that are used to create these movement patterns are likely already overactive and adding any more volume could be the final straw. It’s more beneficial to remain in the sagittal plane off the ice during the season and periods where the on-ice volume is ramping up, like the end of the off-season.
Fatigue also plays a large role for injuries, which is why sports science and load management have become popular topics in the sports performance world. Although GPS, heart rate monitoring, etc. has become more common, the cost associated with the tools can make it hard to justify using them. A simple way to get a load score is to have a player rate the difficulty of a practice 1-10 and multiply that by the duration of the practice (in minutes).
So, a 60-minute practice, rated at a 5 difficulty, would have an associated load of 300, while a 30-minute practice, rated at a 10 difficulty, would also have an associated load of 300.
Then, planning out weeks ahead, or looking in the past at practices and games, a cumulative weekly load should never jump or drop more than 10% from week to week.
So, if week 1’s load is 2000, week 2’s load should not be more than 2200 or less than 1800.
This range of +/- 10% reduces the chance of spikes in workload that the player would not be prepared for, but also sets a floor for the load so that fitness isn’t dropping from week to week.
The GOAT of load management research, Tim Gabbett, has found that athletes with higher levels of strength and higher levels of aerobic fitness are more robust to spikes in workload. So, when in doubt, creating stronger athletes that in better shape will help reduce their chance of injury.
Following Rule #1 is important, but it’s equally important to not go too far in the conservative approach. The easiest way to make sure athletes don’t get injured during training is to not train, but that obviously leads to huge physical decrements. You could only train to fill the physical qualities that don’t get filled on the ice, but you’d miss out on lots of speed, power, and strength development by avoiding the exercises, muscle groups, and patterns that are important to the sport. And it’s simple to not get fatigued if you constantly practice less, but your fitness and skill will drop so significantly that you won’t be prepared for the game. That is the balance of the art vs. the science of off-ice performance and will likely always be a moving target for you as it’s always a moving target for me.
