Feature Story

Play sports to develop athleticism

 

By Jack Blatherwick

Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

 

As spring arrives, serious hockey players should plan for off-ice training that will produce the greatest results —the most bang for your buck. This does not mean that training should start right now or that it must be in the form of structured workouts. Playing fun sports that are explosive and athletic would be a great way to invest your energy this spring. This is a feature of the USA Hockey program that is excellent advice.

Lacrosse, soccer, track, basketball and tennis require, and therefore develop, athleticism that transfers to hockey: quickness, agility, speed, coordination, strength, explosive power, endurance, body control, core stability and dynamic balance. Keep this list in front of you while you plan, because NHL stars have an incredible combination of athleticism and skill, and most of them developed this playing other sports.

Unfortunately, after they are established in the NHL, their off-season training is not as athletic as when they were young, unless they train in Moscow. Too often, they start losing these qualities before they should. This shortens careers unnecessarily and exposes them to muscular injuries that may not be an NHL epidemic if players trained less on a bike, less in the weight room, and played more explosive sports like tennis, racquetball, squash and handball.

For your own sake, do not mis-interpret my words. The weight room is an important part of the summer program for NHL’ers; and it should be part of your development at the right age. But it is a small part of the overall program; yet the trend is to spend too much time in the weight room, and not enough on integrated athleticism and skills. Most NHL’ers did it right to get where they are, but once they are established, training takes a serious nosedive, even though they work very hard.

INTEGRATED ATHLETICISM: this is the dynamic result when athletes put all the elements together at once, the kind of athleticism we saw on the basketball court when Michael Jordan dominated. It’s the kind of integrated package we see in a Kobe Bryant, a Randy Moss, Larry Fitzgerald, Pavol Datsyuk, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, Jenny Potter, Krissy Wendell, Natalie Darwitz or Marta Vieira da Silva.

Some, who know basketball believe Michael Jordan was the greatest of all time. He wasn’t the greatest shooter, but he could really shoot. He didn’t have the greatest vertical jump or fastest sprint time, but darn close. His greatness was in his ability to integrate all his athletic qualities with his skills, and make sudden, unexpected adjustments in the midst of moving obstacles — monsters like Shaq, for example. The greatest hockey players do the same thing while maintaining puck control and getting off shots in situations that average players cannot.

In other words, they put all the pieces together at once. That’s integrated athleticism, and the more your workouts are integrated, not separated (compartmentalized), the more likely your results will be athletic and skillful like Jordan. Close your eyes for 10 seconds, and picture your favorite athlete in a game; then make plans to move your training more in this direction.

Of course, there are elements that need to be separated at times to really increase the intensity of the stimulus. For example, this is where the weight room is important for strength — or sprinting for quick feet. However, it’s doubtful that an over-emphasis on compartmentalized training could ever produce a Michael Jordan or Alex Ovechkin. It certainly never has.

Unfortunately, compartmentalized training is what the ‘experts’ recommend, because one or another of the compartments happens to be their expertise. This is why NHL’ers fall into this trap once they become wealthy, because there is a lot of money to be made selling each piece separately.

Imagine this extreme example: machines are invented, so that someone can sit practically motionless and strengthen muscles without the integrative involvement of areas in the spinal cord and brain that are critical for coordination of Jordanesque movement — as if strength, not athletic movement, is the objective.

There is a lot more to moving your body quickly and with poetic athleticism than simply making each muscle stronger, especially if the muscles are not moving your body during training the way it moves in games. Do not fall into this trap at a young age. It really doesn’t hurt NHL players much between the ages of 20 and 30, except for their groin/hip injuries. As they get older, however, they should be training the way they did as kids — not like middle-aged potbellies at the fitness centers.

This is why kids (and their parents/coaches) should not ask an NHL player how he trains. What you want to know is how he got there.

Make sure your strength is integrated into athletic movement — that your endurance matches the metabolic demands of a game. Don’t buy into the compartmentalized endurance workouts that ‘experts’ recommend, workouts that are isolated as either aerobic or anaerobic training, but not both at the same time.

As a parting note that will really upset the ‘experts,’ I believe core training for youth hockey players should be integrated as quick, explosive, agile activities like tennis, or soccer, lacrosse, football or basketball, not the fads that are sold as core training.

In other words, participate in other sports.

 

Visit Jack's website at www.overspeed.info.

 

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