Early in the off-season our major focus is fixing the athlete as they come out of a long in-season period. We look to facilitate the inbibited/weak muscles or patterns due to a long season and fix sport related issues so that we don’t hurt them in training.

As a result, we started programming Nordic Hamstring Curls early in the off-season this year after re-reading some of Anthony Donskov’s work. As Anthony states in his book, during the hockey stride the proximal areas of the hamstring take on more of a dominant role during hip extension, yet while during sprinting the more distal areas of the hamstring are relied upon during deceleration. Combine this with extremely tight hip flexors as a result of the hockey stride and you may have a recipe for injury post-season if you jump straight into sprinting, giving us another reason as to why we ease our way into sprinting in the off-season and primarily use tempo runs in the early off-season.