Feature Story
Smart muscles – not just strong muscles
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
As a physiologist, if I could write only
one bit of advice it would be this...
Dryland skating practice is just as important as skating. Every
skater, from the oldest to the very youngest — the beginners who are just
learning to tie their skates — should include some form of dryland
training year-round.
Make it fun, of course. But that’s your
job, not mine. I have no idea what motivates these little rug rats. If planned
well, dryland training teaches good skating posture
and other habits that cannot be taught as effectively on-ice.
Every arena in the world should have an
area for dryland training. I don’t mean architectural
monuments that ruin the simplicity of a hockey arena — the gold-plated weight
rooms and fitness centers for profit. I’m talking about space — dingy, dirty
space — that can be used for skating, shooting, stickhandling
practice — dingy enough that the zoo-keepers won’t complain if there are a few
puck marks on the walls.
Remember...every time a youngster steps
on the ice, habits are being formed — good or bad. Consider how many months
beginners are allowed to develop poor habits before we do something to change
that. Fifteen minutes of dryland “skating
practice” two or three times per week will teach correct skating postures — the
number one fundamental. Exercises like wide lunges with a hockey stick in hand
will reinforce this position as the comfort zone.
Dryland skating practice also increases the kinesthetic feeling a
skater must have — the feeling of applying force from one leg through the
entire body. This is the same feeling one gets when jumping from one leg (knee
bent to 90 degrees) high and wide to the opposite side.
It is impossible to become a great skater
without good knee bend and without learning the feeling of efficient, powerful
extension — applying force from the ice through the entire body, extended in a
straight line. These positions and feelings are easily taught off-ice, so next
day on the ice, the habits being formed with each stride are good ones.
Certainly, the word “strength” for
a young skater means something totally different than it does for a college
nose tackle or an Olympic weightlifter. Strength in skating simply means the
ability to handle body weight on one leg with adequate knee bend — including
while cornering at high speed when centripetal forces are high.
“Loading up” body weight over a bent knee
must always precede a powerful extension. Anyone who doesn’t skate this way is
running...not skating — and even some
Efficiency means that strength or
explosive power is applied in the most effective way. Here is an example worth
visualizing, so it becomes obvious why we must train “smart muscles.” If we challenge the strongest athlete in the world to push a hockey
net the length of the ice — and if he isn’t as smart as he is strong and
applies the force off-center, he’ll get nowhere with brute strength.
He’ll just push the net in circles.
To move the net forward in a straight
line, he needs to apply force through the center of gravity. In the same way,
good dryland skating programs must “teach” the
feeling of applying force from one leg through the center of gravity of our
body.
Any strength program that fails to do
this — in Twist’s words — is developing strong muscles that aren’t smart. Of
course, we’re really talking about neuromuscular learning, not
muscular learning, because it is through the intricate
coordination between nerves and muscles that repetitions form habits or skills.
But it might be a good idea to adopt this simpler phrase...“smart muscles.”
It’s pretty descriptive.
The bottom line: Developing “smart
muscles” off-ice is nothing more than executing repetitions to form habits of
(1) good skating positions and (2) efficent, powerful
skating movements. In order to transform novices — who run around the ice like waterbugs — into efficient skaters we need to add hundreds
of dryland skating exercises done with quality
execution, not mindless repetition.
What are dryland
skating exercises? Strength movements like squats, plus
explosive jumps, each having these characteristics: (a) the range of motion
starts from (or includes) a perfect skating position — knees bent, shoulders up
at about 45 degrees or more; (b) some are two-legged, but eventually there are
many more one-legged exercises, just like skating; (c) for many of the
repetitions, force is applied somewhat
to the side, so it looks and feels like skating; and (d) force is applied through the center
of gravity — the entire body (not just the leg) is extended in a straight line
at the moment of peak force.
This teaches the kinesthetic feeling and
posture that is common to all efficient, powerful skaters. In other words, this
is not just developing strong muscles, but smart ones.
Jack Blatherwick,
Ph.D., is a physiologist for the