MOVE-Every Day!

Strength Training is Movement Training

Strength training is movement training. There are many elements that must come together to execute strength training technique besides simply moving heavy weight up and down. If you cannot perform a movement properly in the first place and you load it and try to move it, injury is inevitable. Establishing proper strength training movements allow you to reinforce the athletic foundations required for skill execution when it comes to speed, power, and explosive sport performance and building a resilient athletic body that can produce and absorb force when you need it.

Executing proper movement patterns and muscle firing patterns are essential to a progressive strength program. People love training the beach muscles (arms & chest) but don’t spend enough time training the stabilizer muscles (Core, Shoulder girdle, hamstrings, Upper back) that support and leverage athletic movement and protect the body from injury. Squatting, lunging, pushing, pulling, jumping, running, are all movements that make sport and life performance better and that get better through strength training. First, learn to move properly, then you can load, lift and challenge the movement in different ways.

Eat. Sleep. Recover

No matter how hard you work, recovery is when the magic happens. Getting enough rest, getting enough sleep, and fueling your cells with proper nutrition and hydration help maximize digestion and allow enzymes, hormones and all of the organs in your body run efficiently. This is what allows us to adapt to exercise, deal with stress and continue to improve our health and fitness. You can’t outwork poor nutrition or poor sleep patterns. This is when the body adapts, re-charges and gets better. Recovery means you can get up and move again and keep getting better.

Repeat

No diet, lifestyle changes, or training program will work for the long term if it is done is short doses. Our bodies and our brains crave routine and function best when we have consistency in our patterns of exercise, sleep and nutrition. Developing a purposeful and consistent routine allows our systems to stabilize and focus on performing at the highest level possible every day. When this happens health and performance will take care of themselves and we can focus more on being in the moment, having fun and enjoying the journey along the way.

Now that 2023 is here, set your sights on what you want from your training program, get up, get out and get moving, every day.

Is Getting on your toes the best focus for explosive take-offs?

more of our inside edge of the blade on the ice which will allow that sharp pressure that can now push directly backwards with no slip and send us off forward with full force.

If you have visualized the look of this in your head and if you were to get into this position with your knees out and squatting low, even off ice, it is a very awkward and difficult position to hold. Your hips will naturally want to turn back in and allow your foot to return to straight, making this an unnatural movement. Hence, why it requires lots of training and practice to gain the ability to override our natural tendency.

You think of a player like Sidney Crosby and his infamous use of the mohawk in game. This is possible for him because of his ability to open his hips and get full pressure on his inside edge in the same way it is needed for a powerful take off.

Thinking now, is getting on your toes incorrect? Definitely not. It is an important skill to get good knee bend and get our weight towards our toes to allow us to lean in the direction we want to continue to go. But is it the most important focus for players trying to instill good habits and learning abnormal ways to move…. I think not.

In practicing take-offs with our students, we always start off by giving the kids an explanation of the technical details they should focus on when completing the skill. I was teaching a group of 10-year-olds and at the end of the explanation a kid piped up and said “is this physics class?”

We had a laugh but the student was right, players need to learn a very simplified version of the physics of movement to understand how to do movements properly. Here is how to think about it in the case of a take-off; if it was a running sprint, you would just push directly behind you from your toe and blast forward. The same is not true on the ice, if you were to keep your foot straight and push right backwards, your blade would just glide behind you and you would look like you’re practicing the Michael Jackson ‘moonwalk’.

In hockey, we need to take advantage of the two sharp parts of our skate which we call our inside and outside edge. I have students who may not look like Michael Jackson when they take off but they do have a subtle slice in their take-off because their skates are not angled properly to give them a sharp enough edge, to dig harder enough in the ice, to propel directly forward. This is where players need to be very mobile in their hips and inner thighs; players need to be able to get their blade completely sideways on the ice to use the sharpest part of their inside edge to get the traction for a strong take-off.

So, what is more important? Getting on our toes or emphasizing getting our knees pointing out to the sides to be able to turn our feet out to get

Being able to open our hips and getting comfortable on our inside edge is of more importance at our Scary Skate programs than is learning first to get on our toes.

We might not all become Sidney Crosby in our lifetime but using him as a reference point when thinking of these ‘physics’ (as my 10-year-olds students would say) is a great place to start. Open our hips, use our skates’ edges to our advantage and practice the fundamentals until it becomes habitual.

“It is not the beauty of a building you should look at; it’s the construction of the foundation that will stand the test of time” - David Allan Coe

Until next time Scary Mary says I will see you at the rink….

Monday Nights Spring/Summer Technical Power Skating - May 29th

Summer Semi Privates Skating/Skill Development

Tuesday/Wednesday/Thursday mornings July 4th, 5th, 6th

Wednesday Nights Elite & AAA Rep level Skating/Skill Development June 28th

Defense Specific Classes - May/June/July/August

Shoot to Score Classes - May/June/July/August

Tuesday Nights Skill/Shooting Development - July 4th

Thursday night Beginner Hockey Program - July 6th

Rep Battle Half Day Camp - August 8th

Full Week Rep Hockey Camp - July 24th

Team Training Sessions - July/August

New Spring/Summer Classes that will be offered through Scary Skate from February onwards