Jack Blatherwick

Another look at quick starts

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Last Updated on Sunday, 27 May 2012 23:31

By Jack Blatherwick

Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

Regarding quick starts, Diane Ness and Cal Dietz wrote a great article two weeks ago, and I’d suggest you find that publication of Let’s Play Hockey and re-read it carefully. There is a lot to be learned from these two. After all, they’ve helped hundreds of players improve — many of whom are now in the NHL.

Their advice is to lean the entire body in a straight line — not bent at the waist in a “pike” position — and apply as much force as possible into the ice. 

I’ve included a photo of a world-class sprinter and skater together to show that the most explosive athletes are also the most efficient — that is they apply force in the most effective way. The extra sketch of the skater in a bent or “pike” position demonstrates the inefficiency.  Force is not directed through the center of gravity, because that C.O.G. is shifted forward, outside the body as the skater bends at the waist.

The skater is Troy Riddle, who spent hours improving leg strength under Cal’s direction in the Gopher weight room. Troy also spent hours improving off-ice sprint speed, and after two years in high school track reached times in the 100-yard dash that placed him close to the fastest in the state.

Troy’s skating times improved right along with his sprint times, and by the end of his senior year, his quick start on the ice placed him in the top 10 percent of all NHL’ers we’ve tested.

Diane and Cal suggest a drill on-ice to learn this efficient body position — having a partner hold you up while you lean in a straight line — then letting you go.  Two things are important at this instant: applying great force with each stride, and moving your feet quickly.

Track coaches use the same drill for sprinters, and this is why every hockey player should practice quick starts off-ice as much as on-ice.  Do it with or without a partner: Lean to the point of almost falling (don’t bend at the waist) — then explode!

In testing 5,000 players over the years, we’ve seen the same results consistently: the quicker you sprint, the quicker you’ll skate. Bet your hockey life on it.

Jack Blatherwick, Ph.D., is a physiologist for the Washington Capitals.

Planning an overspeed practice

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Last Updated on Sunday, 27 May 2012 23:31

By Jack Blatherwick

Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

Perhaps the most challenging, yet important responsibility for youth coaches is to provide each player the greatest opportunity to improve skills. This is also one of the most rewarding aspects of the job, but since it’s easier to draw X’s and O’s, team systems often take up too much practice time in youth hockey.

All coaches could learn a valuable lesson about development from Herb Brooks. His job in 1979 was to plan for the nearly impossible task of beating the Russians, who were the fastest, most skillful team in international hockey. 

The 1980 team committed a major portion of their on-ice practice time to overspeed skill training. This was the tactical philosophy and also the nuts and bolts of the conditioning program. Brooks knew from his days as a player in the Olympics, that for every shift the entire game, you had to perform individual and team skills and to compete intelligently and hard — at the fastest possible pace.

This, by the way, is the definition of a well-conditioned team at every level of hockey.  It incorporates words like “fast, skillful, compete,” and has nothing to do with long, slow aerobic workouts, nor slow, unskillful skating drills, dragged out beyond the point of fatigue.

This uncomfortably fast practice tempo was the training philosophy of the Soviets, and their practices established a back-breaking comfort zone, in which opponents would attempt, but fail, to compete for the entire game.

For at least two or three practices a week, the main objective of the U.S. team was elevating the comfort zone, because Brooks knew too well that with adrenalin flowing and effort raised to a maximum, the Soviets could pass, shoot and handle the puck comfortably the entire game. They’d done it that way their whole life.

Puck control and skill determine the outcome in the Olympic Games and since the re-acquaintance with the rule book, it is this way in the NHL. Interference and hooking are no longer effective defensive crutches. To win, you have to skate, pass, shoot and play high tempo defense better than your opponents.

Kind of a novel way to determine the winner, don’t you think?

To prepare for 21/2-hour games, the 1980 team had many 21/2-hour practices at a tempo that simulated the fastest games of the year. Even though the level of skill is vastly different from youth hockey, the purpose of these practices is the same, and the basic interval structure should serve as a model.

• Players are told in advance their job is to attempt each drill at a pace that is uncomfortably fast.

• Coaches plan practices that encourage quality repetitions — work intervals short enough and rest intervals long enough to allow recovery. This is the most important coaching guideline if practice is to have a positive impact on skills. There is no skill which can be improved once fatigue sets in.

• Each drill might take about 8-20 seconds with rest intervals three or four times as long. The simplest way to do this in youth hockey is to start a new drill every minute — allowing longer rest as needed.

• For the Olympic teams, colleges and professionals, endurance is an important consideration, so players must often push themselves beyond the first stages of fatigue. For youth teams, skill and speed are more important than endurance, and intervals should be adjusted to reduce the chances of lactic acid buildup.

• On overspeed days, coaches explain new drills within a short rest interval, never longer than one minute. There isn’t time for standing around, and coaches should learn to teach on the move during the drill.

• The performance of skills deteriorates as practice gets longer, so the difficulty of the drills must be adjusted. It is impossible to learn skills — especially difficult, multi-tasking skills — when tired. Secondly, as the ice gets cut up, puck skills will suffer. Finally, as players begin to get tired, their focus is often lost and skill development is compromised. 

• Therefore, the earlier drills in an overspeed practice should be the most difficult and creative. These can be flow drills with a lot of passing or competitive drills like 3-on-3, 3-on-2 or 1-on-1 — usually with extra skating.

• As players lose focus, and along with it, the ability to make quick decisions and perform difficult skills, the coach should switch to drills with fewer passes. At this stage, simply carry the puck around corners and shoot at high speed.

• Get rid of the pucks when there is no longer enough concentration or the ice is too cut up to maintain tempo and skill. The end of the practice should include timed skating intervals, without pucks, where the objective of each drill is speed, quickness, agility and improvement of mechanics. For college and Olympic teams, this portion might be 30-60 minutes. 

• At any time when skills are not performed with concentration and speed, start a new series of drills at the next easier level of skill.

Improvement requires three mindsets: Players always strive for high tempo and improved execution of skills. Coaches create the right environment by allowing adequate rest. Failure is re-defined. 

There will be many times when players lose the puck or wipe out attempting a fast corner, but this must be accepted by teammates as an effort to improve.

In an overspeed practice, the only failure is to stay within your present comfort zone.

Jack Blatherwick, Ph.D., is a physiologist for the Washington Capitals.

The winter of ‘65

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Last Updated on Sunday, 27 May 2012 23:31

By Jack Blatherwick

Let’s Play Hockey Columnist

The word around local hockey circles is that some communities are planning to build outdoor rinks with artificial ice plants. Bad plan. Use your money wisely. Arenas with down-sized ice sheets can be built for much less than architects will tell you.

To illustrate why I oppose outdoor artificial ice, I’ll recount a bit of weather history, because some readers might have difficulty remembering the winter of 1964-65. Actually, it’s pretty simple really. It snowed every day.

Sorry, I exaggerate. There were days when we actually saw the sun, but after school, we were either shoveling last night’s heavy snowfall, or the combination of wind and cold made it almost unbearable conditions for outdoor hockey. 

Almost unbearable, however, meant that we did practice. As Dave Peterson put it decades later, “We didn’t have wind chill in those days.”

Coach Pete was speaking to members of the Olympic team he coached, who were reluctant to walk through the wind and cold to get to the nice warm indoor practice site.

“We never missed a day of practice in the old days,” he continued.

He was speaking about the years he coached Southwest High School, and one of his major jobs was to ensure that the outdoor rink was shoveled and flooded.

Ah, but the old coach was wrong. In the winter of ’65, practices were more often about shoveling snow than learning hockey. I coached at Breck that year and got so adept with the tractor, I almost changed careers. After all, teaching math didn’t pay as well as shoveling snow, because unions were just barely getting started in educational circles. They’d been advocating for laborers since the days of robber barons.

It’s not as if tractors flipped the snow over the boards and groomed the ice perfectly for practice. The heavy wheels of the tractor left snow compacted on the ice, so hockey was impossible until we shoveled by hand and flooded with the hose.  That’s why our first choice was to leave the tractor in the garage, and for players and coaches to shovel, so we could practice on good ice once the chores were completed.

Many mornings, however, after a heavy snowfall, the tractor was the only answer. There was so much snow that winter, we had to pay twice for a front loader to move our snow piles away from the boards, so we could shovel some more. After all, we could only throw it so high.

How high is that? When you skated down the near side of the rink, you couldn’t see the adjacent gymnasium. In games, the players who were resting for a shift, had to slide down the bank and over the boards to get back in the game.  Needless to say, standing in the snowbank was a drag, so we normally suited up only two lines and four D. The backup goaltender wore boots and a huge parka.

As a player in the years before that, I always enjoyed flooding the rink after practice, trying to make the ice like glass.  “The best in the state,” we gloated.

The entire team shoveled the snow from practice, and would pick a group of three players to flood. This took a couple hours, and as you turned out the lights, there was a sense of pride that your group had made the smoothest ice of the week.

However, if snow started falling while you were driving home, your heart sank, because you knew the next day’s practice would not be held on good ice — if you practiced at all. It doesn’t take much snow to ruin the skills of hockey.  That’s why, on days when it didn’t snow, you would never call off practice because of a little cold and wind.

So I ask the advocates of expensive compressors and pipes under the ice, how many days in a Minnesota winter — global warming having failed to reach our state yet — are the conditions good for outdoor hockey? How many days will snow ruin the practice? Or, now that we calculate things like wind chill, how many days will that north wind allow for safe, comfortable hockey?

And, you might not realize that on sunny days, the reflection of the sun off the boards on the north side of the rink will make the ice dangerously soft — even with the compressors working overtime. When someone stops quickly, they could fall headfirst toward the boards.

Last winter, the Washington Capitals held a practice at a private golf course, where outdoor artificial ice was maintained by the ground crew. It was a beautiful setting, great boards and plexiglas surrounded by the golf course, snow, and a huge stately clubhouse. The grounds crew of six full-time employees kept the rink in good condition for youth hockey. 

Compressors froze the ice from late-November on; a Zamboni groomed it after two tractors and six employees shoveled; and rosy-cheeked kids had a great time. That is, they had a great time when it wasn’t snowing and the wind wasn’t blowing.

They don’t have super-cold temperatures in Washington D.C., but they still keep kids inside when the wind chill factor is dangerous. They also have sun, and along the north side of the rink, on a sunny day, the ice melts. Washington money can’t trump nature.

It’s just a five-foot wide path, but it is always soft on a sunny day — even when the ambient temperature is below freezing. So, the Capitals’ coaches — not wanting to lose an Ovechkin for the season — planned practice drills that used the other 90 percent of the rink.  And since Oly Kolzig was the second goalie to get on the ice, he had to defend the end with the bright sun in his eyes — another one of those annoying facts of nature.

But I digress. In the winter of ’65, it was our good fortune that one of the player/shovelers came from a wealthy family that decided to build a covered arena — thinking perhaps that their son might be a college hockey player someday if he spent more time studying and practicing hockey — less time shoveling.

We had natural ice for the next 10 years — no compressors to freeze the ground — just plenty of doors and fans to control the temperature in the arena. You closed the doors on warm days and opened them to let cold air in at night. 

How did the cover work? The varsity and JV never missed a practice or game in ten years.  And, on only nine percent of the days from December 1 until mid-March, was it too warm to rent the ice at night.

It was bitter cold inside some days — for spectators who came in high-heeled shoes or coat and tie. However, on those cold days, players never mentioned the temperature after a good warmup — I mean a hard-skating warmup. Cold without wind is not a problem once you warmed up.

Wind chill, snow and sun became a thing of the past. However, on artificial outdoor rinks these elements are a much greater problem than anyone with a short memory might imagine.

Jack Blatherwick, Ph.D., is a physiologist for the Washington Capitals.

Smart muscles – not just strong muscles

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Last Updated on Sunday, 27 May 2012 23:31

By Jack Blatherwick

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 NHL’ers get it done in this less efficient way. However, explosive skating strides require leg strength that is efficient. To quote Peter Twist, one of the true experts in this field, who used the phrase in another context, “We need to train ‘smart muscles,’ not just strong muscles.” 

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 Washington Capitals.