Another month, another post full of random thoughts that have been going through my head. Hope it sparks a little thought in people and you enjoy!
Diaphragmatic breathing is probably the simplest and easiest thing we can perform with our athletes when it comes to changing and improving movement and performance – and I am the first one to admit that I don’t do nearly enough with the teams I work with.
Treat an athlete like a person first, athlete second.
“Minimum dose. Maximum benefit.” – This should be a rule that every single strength coach or performance coach lives by.
The best ability an athlete can have is availability.
Credit goes to Anthony Donskov for bringing this to my attention over the last year or so, but isometric work is very underrated. Depending on the time of the year I think there is a strong case for having some sort of isometric work in the strength program at all times.
Consistently timing 10 yard sprints is one of the best additions to our off-ice program that we’ve ever made (thanks Tony Holler & Michael Boyle). We’ve always performed acceleration work, but the intent has improved (a night and day difference) when the athlete is sprinting versus the timer.
Dumbbell Rows have to be the hardest ‘easy’ exercise to teach people/athletes how to perform.
Understanding human behavior can potentially make you a better strength coach, yet many strength coaches put little effort into developing their ability to tap into human behavior. FYI, for those who want to work on this aspect of coaching, Brett Bartholomew has done a TON of great work on this stuff.
Working with hockey players has made me realize one key thing…hockey is a sport that is played in constant hip flexed position. Therefore, in order to do everything you can to keep hips healthy, I think its critical to train hip extension often in-season through sprinting, sled marching, 1-leg deadlift’s, slideboard leg curl’s, and 1-leg bench hip lift’s among other lifts/movements.
Volume in the weight room is a killer, especially in-season. I would be willing to bet that most athletes aren’t over-trained, most are actually under-recovered.
Each and every athlete I work with with will get very used to the med ball side toss for a handful of reasons:
✅ Transfer power from the ground, through the core, and out the hands
✅ Teach/train the hip rotators to develop power in a sport specific manner, like taking a shot in 🏒, the🏌️ swing, throwing a ⚾️, or hitting a 🏐
✅ Power is plane specific – if you want to be powerful in any type of rotational manner, you need to train it
Our Progression goes something like this 👇
1/2 Kneeling Side Toss
Split Stance Side Toss
Standing Side Toss
Stepping Side Toss
Cross Behind and/or Shuffle Side Toss
We typically program 2-3 sets of 3-5 reps each way depending on the time of the year and sport.
Happy Monday! Here are a few thoughts bouncing around in my head after a week of reading, podcasts and other continuing ed. Enjoy!
Power is sport specific – I don’t think it matters how strong and powerful you are if you can’t express it in the right direction. Learn to change direction. Develop more power in a horizontal manner not just vertically. Throw med balls in various planes.
I’m not completely there yet, but I am starting to treat hockey players like an overhead athlete when it comes to pressing. This past year we have focused all our pressing on more ‘shoulder friendly’ movements like landmine presses, dumbbell bench (incline as well) press variations instead of using a barbell, push ups, etc. We’ve also tried to make sure we are always doing more pulling then pushing (approx. a 2:1 ratio) and really pushing to get strong on the chin up.
One of my goals going forward is really doubling down on diaphragmatic breathing and trying to tie it into more and more of what we do, whether its traditional crocodile or 90/90 breathing, adding it into our stretching, or adding it into our activation work. This may be one of the few things where more is probably better.
Another week, another group of podcasts and articles to read and listen to that I have dived into. Like every other week, there was a ton of content out there both in written form and through podcasts.
For podcasts, I enjoyed listening to Dr. John Rusin on the CVASP Podcast. Dr. Rusin is very active on social media but I haven’t listened to him speak very often and it was nice to hear – lots of good things.
For articles, Zach Dechant knocked one out of the park with his article on making mistakes as a coach. A must read.
Training female athletes is no different then training male athletes. All bones are the same. All muscles are the same. Therefore, they should be trained the same.
What is different? Many coaches have lower expectations and because of that don’t get near the results they could. Don’t be afraid to push female athletes. Don’t be afraid to expect a lot out of them. You’ll be pleasantly surprised how badass and 💪 they’ll become.
If you are anything like me then your body doesn’t respond well to heavy spinal loading through front or back squats, which leads me to performing a healthy dose of Goblet and 2KB Front Squats, which then leads me to play around with some alternative ways to load them.
Kind of like this one for a couple reasons ⬇️
🔷 Bilateral squatting is important and the movement should be consistently trained in some way, which this allows me to do
🔷 Zero spinal loading or compression, something we probably want to start limiting as we age
🔷 Bands give a unique accommodating resistance
🔷 Lower system load then but still get a training effect
🔷 Pain free – can smoke the quads without any joint pain the following days
Happy Monday! Here are a few thoughts bouncing around in my head after a week of reading, podcasts and other continuing ed. Enjoy!
One the last Strength Coach Podcast (#244), Fergus Connolly spoke about how continual learning is what separates the good coaches from the bad coaches. That the really great coaches aren’t afraid to change their minds because of the material they are consuming, because the only thing that matters is doing the best job possible for the people you work with. And I couldn’t agree more – spot on!
The best form of athlete monitoring is having great relationships and talking to the athletes you work with on a daily basis. Chances are they’ll tell you everything you need to know and can work from there.
Staying on the podcast theme, Kelly Starrett was recently on the Leave Your Mark Podcast. He mentioned that people are going to routinely live the 100 years of age going forward, and because of that we need to constantly be working on our movement hygiene if we want to enjoy those last 30-40 years. More mobility work on a daily basis!
Another week, another group of podcasts and articles to read and listen to that I have dived into. Like every other week, there was a ton of content out there both in written form and through podcasts.
For podcasts, I really enjoyed both of the Pacey Performance episodes, one with Keir Wenham-Flatt and Michael Boyle. Rob’s podcast is definitely one of my favorite podcasts out there – always good stuff.
For articles, for coaches that spend a lot of time on the floor working, the article by Movement as Medicine on shorter but more dense workouts is great. They are something that I have incorporated into my weekly lifting schedule and have really enjoyed.
I had this Friday off so I decided to put together a quick little brain-dump on in-season training with hockey players. Nothing new or outside the box, but some good reminders for other coaches working with hockey as well as a lot at what we are doing on a weekly basis.
#1: Don’t Underestimate the Importance of Diaphragmatic Breathing
“If breathing isn’t normalized no other movement pattern will be.” Karl Lewit
This is simple: diaphragmatic breathing is probably the simplest and easiest thing we can perform with our athletes when it comes to changing and improving movement and performance.
Proper respiration leads to better posture. Better posture leads to an athlete that is more resilient to injury and leads to better performance. More resilient + better performance = better athlete. Don’t miss out on the low hanging fruit.
#2: Consistently Sprinting On and Off Ice
Acceleration is king in most sports and hockey is no different. Winning chases to loose pucks and stops/starts are all acceleration based. If you want to be fast in short distances you need to consistently working to improve being fast over short distances.
Consistently timing 10 yard sprints is one of the best additions to our off-ice program that we’ve ever made (thanks Tony Holler & Michael Boyle). We’ve always performed acceleration work, but the intent has improved (a night and day difference) when the athlete is sprinting versus the timer.
With the way our week is set up we have been able to consistently time 10’s off-ice every Monday. We have done some timed sprints on-ice this fall but not as consistently as we’d like or probably should. In a perfect world, with our current weekly set up, we’d like to time 10’s off-ice on Monday’s and on-ice on Wednesdays.
#3: Anti-Extension for Hip/Groin Health
We perform a lot of things year round to help maintain hip/groin health. Some are smaller ‘prehab’ type things we’ll perform as part of our daily warm ups (tissue quality work, Cook Hip Lifts and other bridge work, different Foam Roll/Pilates Ring groin squeezes, various hip flexor strengthening/function work, etc.) while others are training staples like anti-extension core work with movements like rollouts, fallouts, front plank variations and body saws.
Long story short, our goal is to create balance;
– overworked/tight hip flexors can pull the pelvis into an anteriorly tipped position
– creating stiffness through the anterior core with anti-extension core work does the opposite, pulling the pelvis into a more superior position
#4: Training Power Outside the Sagittal Plane
Hockey is played in different planes, so we train power in different planes. Do we Olympic lift or perform loaded power exercises? Sure. We still hang clean, dumbbell snatch and do jump squats with the trap bar, but we also spend just as much time training power outside of the sagittal plane. We throw med balls in various planes three different days (Monday/Wednesday/Thursday) over the course of each week.
#5: More Hip Extension
This is pretty straight forward: hockey is a sport that is played in constant hip flexed position. Therefore, in order to do everything you can to keep hips healthy, I think its critical to train hip extension often in-season through sprinting, sled marching, 1-leg deadlift’s, slideboard leg curl’s, and 1-leg bench hip lift’s among other lifts/movements.
This year we’ve taken it a bit further and tried adding a little more hip extension throughout the course of the week. On our Day One (Monday) lift we’ll typically do some timed 10’s (2-4 sprints), 1-leg deadlifts (generally 3 sets of 5), and slideboard leg curls (2 sets of 5-8). On our Day 2 (Wednesday) lift while getting in some sled marching (3 sets 5-10 steps each) and 1-leg bench hip lifts (2 sets of 8-12) on our day 2 lift. So far, so good.
#6: Purely 1-Leg Training
Piggybacking off the previous thought, at this point in the year all of our lower body strength work has been transitioned into single leg through 1-leg squats, split squat variations, 1-leg deadlifts, etc.. We perform bilateral lifts like Trap Bar Deadlifts and Goblet Squats in the off-season, but I’m of the opinion that during the competitive season, spending too much time training bilateral strength as well as in the sagittal plane, could potentially have the tendency to lead to imbalances of the hip adductors/abductors. With the additional benefit of potentially more carry-over to the sport of ice hockey/skating, it seems like an obvious choice at this point of the year.
#7: Chin Up = Our #1 Upper Body Strength Movement
We push chin ups and we push them hard. It isn’t often that we go a week without performing some type of chin up or chin up variation. In sports where there is a chance for potential collision-related shoulder injuries, whether it be a collision with an opposing player or a collision with the boards in the case of hockey, pulling strength is hugely important from an injury prevention standpoint.
#8: Shoulder Friendly Pressing
Probably one of the big things we do different then other programs; we don’t bench press with a barbell in-season. Yes, we still bench press, but its more of an off-season movement for us. Most hockey players don’t tend to have the best posture in the world and live in that classic shoulders rolled forward posture, in large part because of the sport demands.
Because of that, in-season we tend to focus more on what we would consider more shoulder friendly pressing movements; landmine press variations, dumbbell bench press, 1DB and alternating dumbbell variations (flat and incline) and push ups. When the season ends and we spend much less time on the ice we can clean up posture we’ll bench with a barbell more often, but in-season its a simple risk > reward scenario for us.
