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Hockey-Specific Goals of a Resistance Training Program

This is an excerpt from Strength Training for Hockey by NSCA -National Strength & Conditioning Association,Kevin Neeld & Brijesh Patel.

The SAID principle can sometimes be misinterpreted as the goal of resistance training instead of as a guideline. This has led to an abundance of off-ice “hockey-specific” exercises and training programs that mimic the movements athletes execute on the ice but fall short of delivering meaningful changes to on-ice play. More accurately, the intent of resistance training is to serve the overall hockey performance model by creating physiological adaptations that have positive transference to on-ice preparedness and performance. Gym-based resistance training is general by nature because it is several degrees of separation away from the complex environment of game play. Despite this, multijoint compound exercises that may be considered general are incredibly capable of transferring to a wide variety of on-ice tasks because they overload one or multiple qualities that support sport-specific performance. For example, a development-level athlete who lacks strength may improve skating speed primarily by enhancing lower body maximal strength via general exercises.

Strength and conditioning professionals must determine the primary limiting factors of an athlete’s on-ice performance and address them systematically with the appropriate training means. Like a Formula One driver attempting to race in an old minivan, hockey athletes with deficiencies in general strength qualities may have their upper level of performance constrained in certain on-ice tasks. Although extremely skilled drivers can make up for vehicle deficiencies, upgrading to an elite car with excellent components provides more tools to win a race and the opportunity to fully realize performance potential. This race car analogy can be extended to help highlight the positive effects of developing different strength abilities for a hockey athlete:

• Maximal strength places a bigger engine in the car. It provides an athlete with a higher ceiling of force-generating potential.
• Mechanical power adds horsepower to the engine. It improves an athlete’s explosive performance.
• Eccentric strength creates a better braking system. It supports an athlete’s ability to rapidly stop and change directions.
• Hypertrophy reinforces the frame and exterior of the car. It adds muscle mass to support maximal strength and improve structural tolerance.
• Rate of force development introduces a more reactive gas pedal. It enhances an athlete’s ability to produce force quickly when time is constrained.
• Torso and joint stability align the tires and improve the car handling. They aid in force transfer through the kinetic chain and reduce the amount of unfavorable joint loading in certain areas.

Overall, developing the listed strength qualities has potential to transfer to two main areas of hockey performance: enhancing physical abilities that underpin on-ice tasks and improving injury resilience.

Improving the ability to apply force in various manners through resistance training provides more force-generating potential to support the execution of different hockey skills. There are certain considerations that can guide expectations around transfer of resistance training to specific on-ice tasks. Decontextualized skills such as linear skating speed, change of direction (COD) ability, managing physical play, shooting speed, and puck handling demand varying ranges of coordinative skill that require both physical abilities and technical execution. Each skill exists on a physical–technical continuum that represents the proportion for which the performance outcome is determined by the physical elements versus the technical elements. Of the categories listed, linear skating is the least technical and most strongly dictated by general physical abilities, such as maximal strength and power, meaning gym-based training has a high probability of positive transference to faster skating. Puck handling is on the opposite end of the spectrum. Proficiency requires highly technical motor skills, suggesting that task performance can only be minimally influenced by general strength or power improvement. By using this theoretical continuum, strength and conditioning professionals can identify the greatest opportunities for transference, select appropriate training targets, and program accordingly.

In parallel with properly planned on-ice load exposure, resistance training also contributes to a hockey athlete’s preparedness by pushing the ceiling of structural tolerance to a level that exceeds a predicted-level of tissue stress exposure. Tissues are injured when the force demands exceed their load-bearing capacity, whether acutely or chronically. As such, stronger athletes tend to get injured less often (25). By increasing the strength of ligaments, tendons, joint cartilage, and fascia, hockey athletes are more likely to be able to withstand the multifaceted structural demands the game places on their bodies. Furthermore, resistance training that addresses movement dysfunctions within certain patterns may lessen the risk or severity of acute and overuse injuries to the lumbo-pelvic-hip complex that are prominently found in hockey athletes.

Long-Term Athletic Development

Program objectives and prescribed training methods are largely driven by a hockey athlete’s stage in the long-term athletic development (LTAD) pathway. Following the principles of LTAD prepares a hockey athlete for long-term success in the sport without sacrificing physical health and function after the sports career. Strength and conditioning professionals can use these as overarching concepts to ensure that their programming for hockey athletes respects longitudinal performance growth and durability, as opposed to exclusively short-term gains.

The stages of LTAD can be broadly categorized as youth, development, high performance, and elite (table 4.2). Hockey athletes in each stage have different performance needs that require altered programming strategies in order to address them. The magnitude of improvement athletes achieve from resistance training and the extent of transfer to game performance also depend on where they are on the LTAD pathway. There is a direct relationship between trainability and the transfer of training that should be considered when setting training-related goals and expectations. Trainability is the athlete’s capacity to grow and improve from the training stimulus (11). Athletes in the earliest stages of the LTAD pathway have low training ages and correspondingly low levels of general physical abilities. As a result, their trainability and potential for transfer is at its highest. Improving basic strength levels has a profound impact on their hockey performance; they skate faster, shoot harder, become more effective during physical play, and fatigue less quickly.

As youth athletes progress though the developmental, high performance, and elite levels, their trainability reduces along with the degree that general strength improvement significantly transfers to improvement in on-ice tasks. This does not diminish the importance of resistance training at higher training ages. Instead, high training age hockey athletes require more individually directed programming to continually accumulate marginal gains throughout the latter portions of their careers. Consistent resistance training supports their on-ice performance by optimizing their systems to generate high force outputs at high speeds and builds structural tolerance to create short- and long-term injury resilience.

As a whole, resistance training is a foundational component for LTAD and must be programmed in a manner that considers the relationship between trainability and transference. Resistance training programs and their expected performance outcomes should reflect athletes’ LTAD stage. Programs for high performance and elite hockey athletes are more individualized, more intensive, and less variable than those for younger cohorts, who need a more general training stimulus, less intensity, and more exposure to a variety of exercises to build movement competency. Prescribing advanced programming for developmental hockey athletes should be avoided because the athletes do not have the general physical abilities to realize the full potential of the stimulus, future exposures to the stimulus may be less potent, and their future trainability may be reduced prematurely.

Physical Performance Profiling

Physical performance profiling is an effective practice to shape the training goals and subsequent strength programming for athletes who have progressed to the later phases of LTAD. Previously identified KPIs can act as anchors to create simple profiling decision trees that objectively categorize athlete needs. For example, KPIs for a trained hockey athlete may be a relative 3RM trap bar deadlift, countermovement jump, and 30-meter (33 yd) sprint to represent relative strength, lower body power, and speed, respectively. Since maximal strength underpins power, it has the most potential for a trickle-down effect to other physical abilities. Thus, it represents the top layer of the decision tree. High performance or elite hockey athletes who lack maximal strength should address this deficit first. If strength levels are acceptable, the next layer is lower body power, followed by speed. The long-term goal is to have athletes who are above average at each level of the KPI tree, which should eliminate any significant general performance deficits that may be a limiting on-ice outputs such as linear acceleration or change of direction.

At the elite level, many athletes meet these physical performance thresholds, meaning that more in-depth individualized profiling is warranted. Advanced assessments such as load-velocity profiles, reactive strength index tests, sprinting profiles, or skating profiles can provide more granular information on an elite athlete’s physical abilities. Load-velocity profiles can be particularly advantageous because they can improve the precision of load prescription during training. Importantly, they also objectively evaluate the unique adaptation response an athlete undergoes as a result of the training stimulus. Exposure to different training regimes affects the line in a manner specific to the stimulus. Case studies displaying the changes in trap bar squat jump load-velocity profiles in response to training for two elite women’s hockey athletes are displayed in figure 4.1. Maximal strength improvement tends to move the bottom of the line to the right (figure 4.1a), whereas high velocity or RFD training is more likely to move the top of the line to the right (figure 4.1b, light gray to dark gray). The longitudinal goal is to shift the line up and to the right such that the athlete is moving each load faster (figure 4.1b, light gray to black).

Lastly, consulting with individual athletes to identify specific areas of game or physical performance that the athlete says are deficient is a highly valuable practice to engage veteran athletes in the programming process. This may potentially help to create targeted programming that can transfer to specific areas of need that may not be captured with most performance assessments.

More Excerpts From Strength Training for Hockey

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