Strength Training For Ice Hockey Players

What Every Hockey Player and Coach Should Know About Lifting

Nov 13, 2009

A well-designed resistance training program is often the missing link between your current level of performance and fulfilling/maximizing your potential.

Unfortunately, lifting for improved hockey performance is incredibly misunderstood amongst hockey players and coaches.

What Age Can Hockey Players Start Training?

For years hockey players have been told they can’t lift weights until they are at least 13 years old (or some other arbitrary age). The proposed rationale is that growth plates are still open and inappropriate stress could prematurely close the plates and stunt growth (a hypothetical argument that has little to no real-world support). The other argument is that lifting is dangerous for kids. This is comical in light of the fact that soccer, which is played by the overwhelming majority if kids, has a DRASTICALLY higher injury rate than lifting weights. It’s also important to recognize that running, jumping, and skating (which all young hockey players do) are considered plyometric movements by nature and place unique, high levels of stress on the body. A well-designed training program can help improve the body’s ability to handle these stresses and prevent overuse injuries and muscle imbalances.

The truth is that kids can start resistance training as soon as they are socially mature enough to fully understand the importance of proper technique and movement patterns. In other words, as soon as they are coachable, they can lift.

Strength Training Considerations For Hockey Players

In general, the same rules that dictate effective resistance training for other athletes apply to ice hockey players. With that said, ice hockey players should keep the following things in mind:

1. Single-leg strength is more hockey specific. The skating stride requires single-leg stability with the other leg creating the driving force. Single-leg lower body exercises will results in greater on-ice transfer in strength and speed. In other words, traditional lifts like back squats and front squats can be replaced by more hockey-specific exercises like a reverse lunge, single-leg stiff-legged deadlift, and back leg raised split squats.

2. Ice hockey involves dissociated upper body movements. Dissociated upper body movements simply means that the arms are either moving in isolation of each other or in opposite directions. For example, while skating one arm reaches forward while the other drives back. This doesn’t mean you should scrap ALL your double arm movements (e.g. bench press, chin-ups, etc.), but it does mean you should include dissociated arm movements. One way to do this is to include more dumbbell work. This will allow you to do exercises like an alternate dumbbell chest press (Alternate reps of having one arm do a 1-arm dumbbell chest press while the other arm is fully extended). You can also include exercises with opposite arm actions such as a standing cable push/pull. Click here to watch a video of this exercise.

3. Quality hockey training should prevent common hockey injuries. Hockey players commonly suffer hip-related (groin and hip flexor strains, low back pain, lower abdominal injuries such as sports hernias) and shoulder-related (separations and dislocations) injuries. Specific exercises should be included to maintain proper strength and range of motion balance amongst the hip musculature and proper strength of the scapular stabilizers and rotator cuff muscles and movement quality of the shoulder. An example of a great exercise to maintain shoulder health is the standing dynamic Blackburn. Click here to watch a video of this exercise.

Countless hockey players have completely recreated themselves in one off-season of dedicated training. For many hockey players, not having a good training program is the biggest thing preventing them from taking their game to the next level. If you’re designing your own training programs keep the three considerations above in mind. If you have your program professionally designed by a hockey training “expert”, you can do a quality check by ensuring that your program includes the three above qualities. Remember that any program will only be as effective as the effort you put into it. Hard work is a prerequisite to success.

The copyright of the article Strength Training For Ice Hockey Players in Ice Hockey is owned by Kevin Neeld. Permission to republish Strength Training For Ice Hockey Players in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.