Feature Story

Training pieces must fit into skillful package

 

By Jack Blatherwick

Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

 

Imagine an assembly line in Detroit that has no idea what the final product is supposed to be.  Thousands of skilled employees — each one an expert in his own area — but no one has given them a picture of the completed vehicle.

Are we making a sports car?  An SUV?  A truck?  No one knows, so each employee just does his own thing.  Even an auto-maker who can lose $12 billion  in a year couldn’t be that dumb. But development of young hockey players in the United States just might be.  We have thousands of experts chomping at the bit to make a contribution, and they’re each very good at what they do.  But they haven’t been given a picture of the final product.  This is obvious by the outcome: the advice for young players is compartmentalized — separate workouts — each expert emphasizing his own thing.

The final product in hockey should be very clear.  Just go to the NHL.com website, look at the leading scorers, and say to the outside expert, “OK.  I want my son/daughter to be a Sidney Crosby or Vincent Lecavalier with Ovechkin-like power — rink sense like Hossa and Thornton, with a shot like Heatley and quick-hands, quick-feet, quick-mind like Savard or St. Louis.”

Or… if you’re worth your salt as a personal trainer, please build a defenseman who skates, thinks, and handles the puck like Scott Niedermeyer.  We don’t need more examples; he’s the model.

Without this guidance from the hockey community in our country, we’ve turned the experts loose to do their own thing.  Some are into aerobic distance training, so their clients run around lakes.  Some are good at building strength, and apparently believe that Crosby and Ovechkin look like nose tackles.  Some prefer Pilates; others would like hockey players to stand on balance boards and juggle medicine balls.

In the last decade, “Core stability” has become fashionable, so it’s now a given that so-called “functional” core exercises are absolutely essential before someone can skate with speed and power.  Never mind that Bobby Orr was the speediest, most powerful skater in history and never saw a core exercise with someone balanced atop a beach ball. 

Actually, the most up-to-date scientific research regarding core stability shows that some of these core exercises might actually cause the injuries they were intended to prevent. Stuart McGill is a professor of spine biomechanics and has done extensive research on physiological characteristics of elite athletes as well as patients with low back problems. McGill has published 200 scientific articles and several books, the most recent cautioning that mis-use or over-emphasis of these training concepts can be dangerous and would certainly result in loss of athletic power (McGill, SM.  Ultimate back fitness and performance: Separating myth from fact. 2nd Edition. 2006).

That is the point. Mis-use or over-emphasis of a training concept is not only dangerous, but highly counterproductive in developing athletes. Please understand, I believe that aerobic fitness, strength, power, core stability, and (dynamic) balance are important pieces of a large puzzle that represent the development of a young hockey player.

But they are just pieces, and must be fit into an athletic, skillful package.  Experts with no picture of the final product might tend to over-emphasize their own area of expertise.  Core exercises designed for middle-aged patients with back problems might not be necessary for young kids involved in athletic activities, if those athletic activities are also an excellent way to develop core stability. 

Aerobic distance workouts for fat, sedentary adults might not be the best use of time and energy for hockey players who need to develop skills and quickness.

What has been missing in the development of American hockey players is that list of priorities — most important ones at the top — because if we just turn our kids over to an outside expert, the development will be compartmentalized at best.  Worse yet, it will probably over-emphasize that expert’s compartment. For some reason this has happened to hockey more than any other sport.  Imagine if Tiger Woods would have been the victim of un-focused expert advice — if when he was a youngster, he had to run distances, ride a stationary bike, lift weights, balance on top of balls, train the core muscles individually — and go to school.  When all this was done, he could work on golf skills.

Fortunately, Tiger gained many of these qualities in an integrated, athletic way — playing and practicing golf.  Later he added workouts for strength and endurance to his arsenal of skills.

The first project in planning for development of hockey talent is to identify the priorities.  Make a list;  and if skills and athleticism are at the top, the next questions are important.

Can aerobic endurance be gained while practicing for athleticism and hockey skills?   Strength training at a very young age is obviously best done using body weight, doing athletic things like sprinting, jumping, skating and playing other sports.  Can strength training later during adolescence also be done mostly outside the traditional weight room, working on athletic qualities that are essential for hockey? 

Are core muscles being strengthened in the most effective way while we practice hockey skills and athleticism?  Or, while participating in other sports?  Are balance, coordination, agility, and rhythm gained as well?

Compartmentalized training is unlikely to result in a highly athletic, skillful hockey player.  Isolated strengthening of any muscle — core muscles as well — is unlikely to enhance performance or reduce injuries.  The more athletic the training, the more athletic the final product.

Separating speed or agility workouts from hockey skills will increase the difficulty of putting them together — quick hands and feet — in a package like Savard or Ovechkin.  Separate endurance workouts make little sense, when endurance, skill, speed, strength, agility, balance, and vision are all required in the same shift of every hockey game.

Look closely at the young superstars of the NHL — their skills, athleticism, and rink sense — and it is obvious where the time and effort should be spent.