Play Your Game.com - Peter Twist

      Summer Choices
      Hockey-Specific Cond...
      Prevent Ankle & Knee
      Yr-Round Train. Sched.
      Post-Season - May 31st
      Quickness & Agility
      Balance Training
      Improving Player Dev.
      Flexibility for Skill
      Overload Skating
      Proven Training Tips
      Anaerobic Running
      Youth Strength Training
      About Peter Twist

Camps

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SportConditioning.ca

By Peter Twist
MPE, BPE, CSCS

© 2004 Peter Twist

Peter Twist is President & CEO of Twist Conditioning Inc and the former Coach of Conditioning & Player Development for the Vancouver Canucks. He has authored dozens of articles on athlete development in scientific journals, written two books on conditioning and is currently finishing a third on core stability. Peter Twist runs weekly sport-specific conditioning camps for professional athletes, high school students, and adult recreational athletes, as well as one-on-one training and team clinics. He can be contacted through www.sportconditioning.ca or 604-904-6556.

Each spring some NHL teams sit in focused meetings examining their opponents in great detail, discussing every single player on the team they will face. They study their opponent's PK, PP, and each players' tendancies - focused on a drive to the cup. But they still share a commonality with players from NHL teams who did not make the playoffs - they are all inquiring about summer conditioning programs, looking ahead to set up their summer schedule. Pro players like Markus Naslund have come to rely on the summer as an exciting time period to improve their skills, such as skating power, wrist shot velocity, offensive creativity and sprinting endurance.

It is not just a time to get fit and strong, it is the time to have fun improving your hockey skills and abilities. The bottom line is the players who can move the best, can control their body the best, and make the best decisions are the ones who will rise to the top.

But how is this best accomplished? Historically, playing numerous sports developed the best athletes and well rounded fitness. Players learned foot-eye coordination and agility through soccer, how to roll off checks from lacrosse, and so on. Then these top athletes, at an older age, decided to focus on hockey. Today, kids play and practice hockey year round at the expense of other sporting opportunities. The result is less athletic ability and poor movement skills from too much and too early sport specialization.

But spring hockey, summer camps and hockey-specific training are a reality, here to stay, and bring many benefits that transfer well to the ice. However, without excellent athletic skills, players do not have the physical foundation to capitalize on sport-specific training. Even better is a few different activities that do not receive the same focus (as hockey) but serve to give more well rounded development. Confused? Many are. Michele Drake of BLAST - Balanced Living Active SportTraining - and her team of coaches train young hockey players in the summer. Coach Drake's philosophy is to train athleticism through fun and challenging drills which challenge both the mind and muscles. BLAST coaches build athleticism through scientifically designed drills to replace the experience of multiple sport exposure. Then BLAST coaches add in drills that have particular utility for ice hockey skills and excellent transfer to the ice. Younger players do not need specificity and specialization, rather they need to develop an improved base of overall athleticism. BLAST coaches (www.123blastoff.com) apply this concept successfully to young athletes of a variety of multi directional sports. It is key.

Even NHL stars such as Dan Cloutier, winning + 30 games each of the last three season, will do very specific exercises to build hockey fitness and very specific drills to improve game-like movement abilities, yet also integrate well rounded general athleticism drills into the program. Coaching Cloutier last summer, I certainly prescribed hand-eye drills, reaction drills, post-to-post movements and structured patterns of save responses into strength and quickness drills. But I also focused on well rounded athletic skills. These are attributes a player can simply never be too good for. Younger players need less specificity and specialization, rather they need to develop an improved base of overall athleticism. Older elite players need more specificity, but their training style should be very athletic oriented, with whole body lifts and varied quickness movement patterns.

When training this summer, simply keep in mind that you need to train like an athlete, as opposed to a health club where the emphasis is on machines and isolating muscles. Train movement not just muscles and you will be on your way. If you have the opportunity to attend a leading edge camp, or get guidance from a conditioning specialist, look for sport-oriented education credentials. These include the National Strength and Conditioning Association's Certified Strength & Conditioning Specialist designation (www.nsca-lift.org), and Twist Conditioning's Sport Movement Performance Specialist and Sport Strength Performance Specialist designations (www.sportconditioning.ca/certs). Personal Trainers should show evidence of sport knowledge, coaching experience and sport conditioning education.

Reprinted from OMHA Rinkside