Acceleration Indiana

In Season Development, Effort and Expectations

By Gary Nelson, Acceleration Indiana

You’re now halfway thru the season and are hopefully seeing the benefits of the improvement efforts you did last summer and the preseason conditioning you did this fall.  Your coach has been spending lots of practice time teaching you to play as a team, how to play your position, how and when to pass the puck, penalty kill, power play, etc.  Also, you have probably had good input from your coach on things you need to work on; speed, quickness, passing, puck handling, shooting, backwards skating, etc.  A question I frequently get asked is: What can I do to help with development during the season?
 My answer is always the same!  The single most important skill for hockey is skating.  Everything you do in hockey becomes easier the better you become at skating.  First, let’s break down your skating stride into its basic elements and then discuss what you can do in-season to improve your performance.  Shooting, puck handling, passing, etc. also need attention, but we’ll save that for a future article.

1.  Skating Mechanics: 
 
Learning proper skating form is critical for speed, quickness, and stamina.  It is very important to get your strength and energy to the ice efficiently.  I’ve worked with young hockey players where improving their mechanics not only improves their speed significantly, but also their stamina.  They are simply wasting so much energy with bad mechanics that they tire out easily.  Typical areas that need work are too much forward lean at the waist, too much vertical movement of the upper body, too much side to side motion, improper arm swing, and insufficient knee bend.

Knee Bend:  Should be between 75 and 90 degrees of knee flexion.  That is the angle formed between a line drawn from your hip to your knee and a line from your knee to your skate.  When you are standing straight up, your knee flexion is at 0 degrees.  Now stand by a mirror and do a knee bend until you achieve a knee flexion of 90 degrees.  Your upper torso should also be flexed forward at about a 45 degree angle.  Remember that position!

Stride Length:  Your speed is dependent upon long, powerful strides.  Your stride length is dependent first and foremost on good knee bend (75-90 degrees).  If you are standing up with little knee bend you cannot extend you leg back very far.  However, if you flex your left knee 75-90 degrees, look in the mirror and see how much farther you can extend your right leg compared to standing up straight. 

Leg Strength:  To sustain a knee flexion of 75-90 degrees requires excellent leg and hip strength.  As a skater you are carrying all your body weight on a single leg most of the time.  In addition, when you make a sharp turn skating cross-overs and accelerate in the turn, you put a large additional load on that inside leg due to centrifugal force. (That’s the force you feel moving you side ways in your car when you go fast around a curve.)  Top college and NHL players will generate loads twice their body weight on that inside leg.  So you can see how important it is to develop strong legs and hips.

2. Performance Improvement:
 
So what can you do to develop increased leg/hip strength, stride length, knee bend, and therefore, improved skating mechanics and speed?
The most effective learning process I have found, in working with hundreds of hockey players, is the one on one instruction on the hockey treadmill in front of a full length mirror.  As a trainer/coach I can see exactly what the issues are with the player’s forward skating mechanics and convey that to the player where he/she can get immediate visual feedback from the mirror.  That information allows the player to concentrate on skating with the proper; knee bend, full stride extension, upper body position and movement, and arm swing.  Leg/hip strength is easily addressed by having to skate uphill at various elevations, consistent with the athlete’s development and ability.  Uphill skating allows additional load to be placed on all the lower extremity muscles while moving those muscles at actual skating velocities.  Thus you not only strengthen the leg/hip muscles, but they also learn muscle memory for the proper skating mechanics.  In-season you should do hockey treadmill training once/week for three or four weeks.  Then take one or two weeks off.  During this time focus on ice with additional stick and puck time where you can practice the proper knee bend while sprinting between blue lines and alternate with sprints thru the corners.  This is also a good time to get some one on one instruction on ice to work on forward and backward crossovers, transitions, and stops and starts.
Everyone can also work on their leg/hip strength either at home or in the weight room.  Younger youth hockey players should focus on body weight exercise and these can easily be done at home.  Push-ups and crunches should be done each week along with leg strengthening exercises.  Let’s look at making your leg strength program functional for your sport.

During a typical shift on the ice of say one and a half minutes, the young hockey player will make several sprints up and down the ice.  Each stride requires hip extension and leg extension similar to a deep knee bend exercise and during that time the player will do between 50 and 90 strides (or knee bends) on each leg.  That’s a lot of deep knee bends and illustrates why the legs get tired and why you need to work on strengthening you legs and hips.

3. Leg Strength at Home:

Start by doing double leg knee bends to 75-90 degrees of knee flexion to replicate what you want to be doing for good skating mechanics.  See how many reps you can do before your legs feel a burn/fatigue.  Rest for one or two minutes then do another set.  Record the number of reps and estimate the degree of knee flexion by observing yourself in a mirror.  Now do you double leg knee bends for 10 seconds, then jog in place for 5 seconds; repeat this procedure until fatigued or you reach 90 seconds of elapsed time.  Your goal is to increase the double knee bend to a full 90 degrees of knee flexion for 10 seconds followed by 5 seconds of jogging in place and work up to a total elapsed time of 90 seconds.  When you have accomplished this goal, it’s time to start on single leg knee bends.  However, to do these you may need a chair or table to stabilize yourself with your arm.
 Single leg knee bends should be done alternating between left and right legs for 10 seconds, then jog in place for 5 seconds, and repeat this sequence.  Your goal, again, is to work up to 90 degree knee bend for 10 seconds, alternating between left and right legs, jog in place for 5 seconds and continue this sequence until you can reach 90 seconds elapsed time.  Another important point when doing alternating single leg knee bends, is to extend the non weight bearing leg behind you to replicate the skating motion and to simulate proper balance positions.

Summary
 In season development of skating skills will progress much faster for you and your coach by including once a week hockey treadmill workouts.  Compliment these sessions with on ice practice of proper knee flexion, sprints and crossovers.  Get some one on one instruction on ice or at least go to stick and puck sessions to get additional on ice practice.  Finally, work on improving your leg and hip strength with some at home exercises described or have a trainer help you with functional strength training at your weight room.  Have a great season, work hard and put some extra effort into improving yourself to achieve your expectations and your coaches.  Have fun!  Acceleration Indiana offers a variety of training programs for hockey players.  For information, call (317) 842-2702.