From the Trainer’s Room

Balancing your offseason

We have reached an exciting time of year.

The NCAA Frozen Four produced wonderful games. Major inline tournament circuits are in full swing. The NHL playoffs are into the conference finals, and the draft is just around the corner.

Unless you are living under a rock, every hockey fan probably knows who is expected to be drafted first overall. Memes are going viral over the skill set that this kid has. “Toe drag release like Bedard!”

Now every hockey player is out there doing forearm workouts and shooting hundreds of pucks to try to recreate his shot. But what is the consequence of this if left unchecked?

Muscular imbalance is the answer.

I was fortunate enough to work many great players while working for professional teams. One such player was Paul Kariya. I was always amazed when he would grab a stick of the opposite hand (he was a lefty and grabbed a righty). He would spend several minutes every practice doing stickhandling drills with the non-dominant hand until he could do them just as well as his dominant side.

Why? Balance.

If we spend hours on the forehand shooting slap shots, snap shots, and wrist shots without just as many backhands for balance will create a muscular imbalance that can leave a player in a twisted posture of the upper body to the forehand side. A common side effect of this can be low back pain and/or a lateral tilt of the spine towards the bottom had side of the body and a rotation of the spine towards the top hand side of the body. bit hole of stick technology… Train properly to add strength and stability. Balance the workload between the dominant and non-dominant sides of the body. Train the core for rotary strength to both the forehand and backhand.

Immediately following the end of the season is a great time to begin the process of correcting this imbalance. For the younger athletes, hide the hockey bag and go play another sport. This does not mean switch to roller hockey from ice or vice versa. Go play a totally different sport for a while to develop athleticism and balance.

For those players old enough to train in the gym, we use many unilateral exercises. This means using the extremities in isolation instead of together. An example of this is the dumbbell bench press instead of the barbell bench press. Or think of the single-legged squat. We use these exercises so that the non-dominant and dominant limbs must carry the same load and do the same amount of work. The core is also trained with a series of belly press exercises and medicine ball throws with focus on the mechanics of the “backhand” side to restore balance.

A stronger and faster shot is possible without doing so many wrist curls and extensions that you get the forearms of Popeye (if you don’t know who this is, look him up and eat your spinach)!!

It’s all in the hips

I once heard a world-famous sports coach tell his pupil, “It’s all in the hips.”

Mike Hannegan

We also use corrective and rehabilitative exercises in the athletic training room to treat any dysfunctions that might be found so that the athlete has the proper foundation to train in the gym.

There is a myriad of ways coaches will tell you how to improve your shot. Technique and accuracy are not we are addressing here today. And don’t get me going down the rab-

Of course, this was fictional golf legend Chubbs Peterson during the movie “Happy Gilmore” in 1996.

Although a comedy about golf, these are wise words when it comes to hockey skating performance.

The hockey player’s hips are their engine, but sometimes can also be their detrimental issue. An understanding of proper hip mobility can go a long way in enhancing performance and possibly preventing injury.

Many people confuse flexibility with mobility. Flexibility is the ability of a muscle or muscles to lengthen passively through a range of motion. Mobility is the ability of a joint to move through desired a range of motion.

The hip joint is a ball and socket joint that allows for joint movement in all three planes of motion. Although flexibility is a part of joint mobility, our goal is to train the hockey player to enhance active mobility, which is the ability of the athlete to control the joint through a range of motion.

Working with the hockey player, we understand the importance of mobility/range of motion for the hip, as deficits can be risk factors for pathologies such as femoroacetabular impingement (FAI), groin pulls, and core muscle injury.

Research shows that most hockey players have some degree of bony impingement in the hip joint. Program design must take great care not to force increases in range of motion that may not be realistic due to anatomical restrictions. Diagnostic imaging may be required if an injury or dysfunction is reported. We can then instruct in manual or self-joint mobilization exercises.

Please note that those athletes with a hyper mobile hip (excessive range of motion) should be training with hip stability exercises to control