Feature Story
The importance of muscular endurance
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
How important
is it to learn to skate with “correct” technique? A rhetorical question
certainly, because no one’s arguing that it is better to skate with poor
fundamentals. This leads to an interesting followup
question, though: How important is it to skate with good technique for the
second half of each shift?
Consider this
fact: after 20 seconds of all-out effort, skating
muscles are fatigued to the point that good technique is almost impossible.
It’s true. From testing thousands of players at all levels, we have not found
one who could — after 20 seconds — maintain good knee bend, quick feet,
powerful extension and efficient skating posture.
In these
stop-start skating tests, lactic acid levels were as high as it gets, so the
muscles simply could not function powerfully or in a coordinated way. This
means that toward the end of the most intense shifts in a game, players are
unable to skate as efficiently as they do at the beginning. “Great skaters” are
reduced to hacks as lactic acid builds up.
The most
obvious changes as a player experiences this anaerobic fatigue are changes in
basic skating posture. This is not a function of cardiovascular fitness — or
“cardio,” a term that is common among fitness gurus. This has nothing to do
with “aerobic” endurance. It is anaerobic endurance — but more specifically, it
is anaerobic endurance in skating muscles in a very specific range of motion.
Consider another sport with a similar need. Basketball
coaches are adamant about knee bend and body posture for playing good defense —
shuffling sideways, backward and forward to play one-on-one defense. Like
skating, this requires muscular endurance in a specific range of motion, and
jogging or riding a bike for hundreds of miles will not address this need. Nor
will running sprints with stops-and-starts, because while these “shuttle runs”
do increase endurance, it effects the wrong muscles in
a different range of motion.
The improved
endurance will not help skaters maintain knee bend and good posture. There are
anatomical and biochemical changes which occur in muscle cells from anaerobic
interval training. However,
if an athlete trains in one position and competes in a different
one, these changes are of no value.
So the
basketball player may “run the lines” and hockey players might do dozens of “Herbies,” but if it is not done in the correct range of
motion, there is no increased ability to keep the knees bent. In fact, bad
habits are likely to be formed. Muscular endurance does not equate to
“metabolic training” — the name given by fitness gurus to interval training
that matches the length of shifts in a hockey game.
Twenty-, 30-
and 40-second interval training is incredibly tough. Lactic acid buildup is
painful. Therefore, if this kind of training is to be utilized, it should be
highly productive. If we want players to skate with good knee bend for an
entire shift, the interval training must be done with good knee bend.
Eric Heiden won all five speedskating
gold medals in the 1980 Olympics at
To acquire
this endurance, they used skating-specific dryland
exercises, and trained with intervals that allowed Eric to maintain perfect
form and posture, but pushed him to the edge. They gradually lengthened the
intervals to match the times he would need in competition.
Among the skating-specific
exercises were slide boards, dry skating, skate-walking or running, skate jumps
and squats on one or two legs — each emphasizing knee bend and skating posture.
Heiden developed such great muscular endurance that
he could put a heavy sand bag on his shoulders and skate-walk around a golf
course — maintaining good speedskating posture the
entire distance. He and Diane could sit in an isometric squat position for a
half hour while they read the paper.
Try 30
seconds of this, and you’ll get some idea of the muscular endurance and pain
tolerance Heiden needed to win every event at the
Olympic games.
Besides
SPECIFICITY in range of motion, there is another key to improving anaerobic
muscular endurance … QUALITY.
Start with
short enough work intervals — and long enough rest intervals — so that
execution is perfect. With each repetition, you are reinforcing correct
fundamentals, not acquiring bad habits. Then, for older athletes in sports
where endurance is critical, gradually lengthen the work intervals in order
to maintain perfect technique for a longer time.
I emphasize
the term, “… for older athletes,“ because it is
critical in youth hockey to develop correct skills, quickness and agility at a
young age, while the rate of neuromuscular learning is very high. Endurance is
nowhere near as important at this age, so it should be a byproduct of skill and
quickness workouts. Training for endurance should never compromise quality in
skating skill.
Is
cardiovascular fitness (or aerobic endurance) important?
Absolutely. This is what
allows us to recover between shifts of a game and start the next one without
fatigue. The only debatable question is how to acquire this — by long, slow
distances or by anaerobic interval workouts. Interval training for quickness,
agility, skill,
and muscular endurance can also produce incredible improvements in
cardiovascular and respiratory fitness —
often attaining greater levels and faster results than by distance training.
On the other
hand, long-distance aerobic workouts to increase the efficiency of the heart
and lungs are of little value if skating muscles cannot perform after 20
seconds. If you’re spending time and energy doing distance workouts, you need
to go back to the top of the page and read these facts again.
Jack Blatherwick,
Ph.D., is a physiologist for the