Train athletic movement – not isolated muscles
By Jack Blatherwick
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
SKILLS and ATHLETICISM. This is where NHLers are superior, and this is where your time and effort should be spent.
Note, however, in this article I am referring only to physiological attributes, not mental qualities. Rink sense and competitiveness, for example, are much, MUCH more important than the physiological attributes we’ll discuss here.
In the last two articles I suggested that the weight room and isolated core exercises have become somewhat over-rated. They are only a piece of the development puzzle — an important piece at some ages — but just one small aspect of a plan to become the best player you can possibly be.
Even at high school and college age, where strength training with heavier weights becomes an important tool, we have a tendency to exaggerate its importance. It’s all too common to equate “a workout” with weight training.
However, if you are serious about striving to be a great hockey player, your time and energy must be focused on three areas: (1) learning to play the game, gaining exceptional rink sense; (2) hockey skills like skating, shooting, stickhandling and receiving passes; (3) athletic qualities like speed, quickness, coordination, dynamic balance, agility, leg power, strength and endurance (as a byproduct of all the other training).
Is strength an important building block for these attributes? Yes. Is it important to have core strength and stability? Absolutely.
The only question is: How can these be achieved most effectively — in a way that allows for practicing skills, sprinting, jumping and learning to play the game — a full-time project of its own?
What does “strength” and “core stability” really mean for a 10-year-old, or a seven-, or 15-year-old? Obviously, no one is advocating heavy weight training at the youngest ages, so “strength” means something completely different than it does for an NHL or college player.
I would also suggest that “core training” is totally different for youth hockey than it is currently practiced in the NHL. Kids are (or should be) playing active sports and skating year-round. These sports, and activities like sprinting, jumping, agility exercises and shooting pucks are excellent core exercises.
This is not an opinion. It is verified by a great deal of scientific research which has shown that in any movement of the limbs, the first muscles to be activated are the deep core muscles of the back and abdomen (Dr. Paul Hodges has been a leader in this research. For more on this subject, start here: ).
Paraphrased in everyday language, this means that any athletic movement is an excellent core exercise.
You couldn’t find better stimulus for core muscles than skating, sprinting, running hills, jumping, etc. The twisting movements of shooting pucks or swinging baseball bats or throwing balls are at least as effective as twisting exercises in the gym with a medicine ball.
Jack Blatherwick, Ph.D., is a physiologist for the Washington Capitals