Physical Preparation for Ice Hockey: Biological Principles and Practical Solutions

This book was written for both hockey player and coach. Hockey has been a passion of mine since early childhood. Born and raised in Canada and relocating to the United States in 1990, hockey has been the fabric of our family tree. From youth hockey to having the opportunity to play at the minor professional level, I have enjoyed this great game and the life lessons it has instilled along the way. It was during my career in university where coaching became a passion. I loved the weight room, the preparation, and the process. It was, and still is, a place of solace for me--a classroom. My love for strength and conditioning was born in the sweaty confines of the Miami (OH) strength and conditioning facility located in Oxford, Ohio, and run by then strength and conditioning coach Dan Dalrymple. Coach D instilled pride, work ethic, and belief in his athletes. Our two-thousand-square foot weight room was a place of preparation, competition, and embodied the "team first" spirit. At that instant, I knew my calling was to serve as a coach. I owe much gratitude and appreciation to Coach D. He was a mentor to me! Thanks, Coach, your imprint has left an indelible mark.

ISBN-13: 9781524651220

Media Type: Paperback

Publisher: AuthorHouse

Publication Date: 12-27-2016

Pages: 264

Product Dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.60(d)

Anthony Donskov is the founder of Donskov Strength & Conditioning, Inc. (www.donskovsc.com) located in Columbus, Ohio where he serves as the Director of Sports Performance. He currently oversees all facets of physical preparation including: assessment, program design, exercise protocol, testing, and continuing education. Donskov earned a Masters Degree in Exercise Science from Cal U of PA and his BSc at Miami (OH) University. Anthony has served as an assistant strength coach for the USA Women's National Ice Hockey team (2010-2014) and has participated as a guest coach for several National Hockey League development camps. Donskov is a Head Instructor/Director of off-Ice Training at Donskov Hockey Development. DHD (www.donskovhockey.com), is a family run hockey school with a renowned reputation for developing youth athletes. Anthony played two years of minor professional hockey (2001-2003) for the Lubbock Cotton Kings of the Central Hockey League. He was named the 2003 Central Hockey League's "Man of the Year" for his leadership on the ice and in the community. Donskov played his collegiate hockey at Miami (OH) University (1997-2001), where he served as an assistant captain his senior year. Anthony is certified through the National Strength and Conditioning Association (CSCS) and the National Academy of Sports Medicine (PES). He resides in Columbus, Ohio with his dog Cossack. Facebook: Donskov Strength and Conditioning Twitter: @Donskovsc

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Physical Preparation for Ice Hockey

Biological Principles and Practical Solutions

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By Anthony Donskov

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2016 Anthony Donskov
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-5246-5122-0

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CHAPTER 1

Long-Term Athletic Development (LTAD)

Most of the problems that exist in youth sports result from the inappropriate application of the win-oriented model of professional or elite sport to the child's sports setting.

— R.E. Smith (1984)

The difficulty lies not in the new ideas, but in escaping from the old ones.

— John Maynard Keynes

In the logical progression of motor acquisition and sequential learning, you must first learn to crawl before walking or attempting to run. Movement literacy serves as the foundation for technical and tactical application in higher-level sport. In order to perform at high levels, one must have a basic framework of motor competency. These building blocks provide the athlete with the appropriate foundation to further develop and become successful on the ice. Behind every complex skill lies a basic motor program. Hockey is not an early specialization sport. In order to develop the qualities needed to excel on the ice, players need to be exposed to multiple stimuli at early ages both on and off the ice.

The answer to enhanced skill development, including strength training, does not reside in playing more hockey games, specialized physical training, or placing adult values on childhood activities. The long-term athletic development (LTAD) model seeks to maximize athletic potential while sustaining passion and life-long love for sport. Fundamental movement literacy is the bedrock for long-term athletic success in the sport of ice hockey. Furthermore, adult values, like the need to win at all costs, should never trump development and the early emergence of lifelong love for sport. This may compromise the learning process and lead to undesirable outcomes, such as burnout, chronic injury, and premature developmental issues.

Movement literacy, foundational human movement, such as kicking, jumping, throwing, receiving, catching, bounding, tumbling, and skipping, that serves as a foundational prerequisite for advanced activity.

The long-term athletic development model seeks to take advantage of biological training windows and introduce skills during the optimum point of physical development. The model, pioneered by sports scientist Istvan Balyi, creates a solid framework for young aspiring hockey players.

The long-term athletic development model is used to maximize athletic potential and create lifelong physical activity.

Fundamentals

Ages Six to Nine

This is an important period when emotional ties to sport are developed. Fun is the name of the game. This is accomplished through small area games, multiple repetitions, and authentically learning skills through a trial-and-error process, without being overcoached or tied to rigid structural regimes. Children are encouraged to enjoy the game in adult-free play and learn through self-imposed cause-and-effect, trial-and-error experience. Agility, balance, coordination, and the first biological window for accelerated speed adaptation occur during this period. Speed adaptation is not alactic (highly neurological speed work consisting of six- to ten-second intervals coupled with adequate rest) in nature. In other words, it is not trained directly by engaging in pure speed training for an underdeveloped youth athlete. It is the reactive component of speed, which can be acquired by playing games that incorporate agility, change of direction, and quickness. This window occurs in females at approximately six to eight years of age and in males at approximately seven to nine.

Learn to Train (70/30 Percent Practice-to-Game Ratio)

Ages Nine to Twelve

This is a period where motor coordination can be introduced while the prior skills of the LTAD are maintained. Activities such as throwing, receiving, balance and basic unloaded patterning, such as squatting, hinging, pushing, and pulling can all be learned during this stage of physical maturation. A larger movement database allows the young athlete to reflexively respond to changing stimuli without hesitation and prelearned habits that may hinder response time. "If fundamental motor skill development is not developed between the ages of eight and eleven and nine and twelve for females and males, a significant window of opportunity has been lost." Coaches may introduce a dynamic warm-up, focusing on movement economy, stability, and dynamic mobility. The focus still resides in playing multiple games and multiple sports while simultaneously increasing movement variability. Movement literacy is developed during the first two blocks of the athletic-based pyramid. It serves as the foundation of sport specificity and long-term participation. Failure to take advantage of these biological development windows compromises future development and may hinder long-term skill acquisition. During the final portions of this period, athletes will start to undergo changes in body composition and initiate puberty. As strength and conditioning professionals, it is wise to understand that weight training is not advised during this time.

Train-to-Train (60/40 Percent Practice to Game Ratio)

Ages Twelve to Sixteen

This period commences with an increase in anabolic hormone profiles, including testosterone and growth hormone. During this window, structured strength training and conditioning may take place. Aerobic exercise may also be introduced. The cardiorespiratory system is now prepared for greater demands, as growth of both the heart and lungs accelerates and blood volume expands. "Optimal aerobic trainability begins with the onset of peak height velocity. According to Hollmann, the greatest increase in heart volume occurs at approximately eleven years of age for girls, and approximately fourteen years of age for boys." Special emphasis is also required for flexibility training because of the sudden growth of bones and this effect on tendons, ligaments, and muscles. Many times, the skeletal system grows at an accelerated rate compared with soft tissue. This may place certain soft tissue structures in tight, facilitated states. During this period, players can select a late-specialization sport. This should typically occur between the ages of twelve and fifteen. It is wise to choose one winter sport and one summer sport with noncompeting schedules. This allows the athlete to further refine biomotor skills without schedule conflict. From the experience of the author, the later this decision can be made, the better.

Train to Compete (40/60 Percent Practice-to-Game Ratio)

Ages Sixteen to Eighteen

The focus now shifts from general to specific in terms of development. Periodization and position-specific training should be introduced as such structured ebbs and flows in the training process begin to take shape. Periodization simply means training in periods and provides the coach with structure, dividing the annual plan into transition, preparation, and competition blocks, each block representing various dates within the annual plan. Without a foundation of physical literacy, specificity may become compromised, as poor skill development may expose the athlete to inefficient and compromised performance.

Train to Win (25/75 Percent Practice-to-Game Ratio)

Ages Eighteen and Older

This period seeks to maximize all performance abilities. Physical preparation, psychological preparation, and technical and tactical abilities are all coached on a solid platform of retained biomotor abilities. Practice-to-game ratio is noticeably reduced, providing the athlete more time to focus on his or her specific skill set.

Active for Life

There is a better opportunity to be active for life if physical literacy is achieved before the training-to-train stage. Playing multiple sports at an early age enhances the probability of an athlete developing a lifelong love for physical activity.

(Slide courtesy of www.donskovhockey.com.) Technical skills, such as skating, shooting, puck handling, and passing are paramount in the development process of the hockey player. In order for a player to use individual and team tactics, fundamental technical skills must exist — the more skill, the more variability of specific tactics. The same rationale holds true when focusing on off-ice athletic preparation.

Factors Influencing the Model

Ten Factors Influencing the LTAD Model

1. The ten-year rule

2. Fundamentals

3. Specialization

4. Developmental age

5. Trainability

6. Physical, mental, cognitive, and emotional development

7. Periodization

8. Calendar planning

9. System alignment and integration

10. Continuous improvement

Ten Thousand Hours

There are ten factors that influence the model and its ability to impact motor competency. For the sake of brevity, the author will discuss two such factors. One of the major factors influencing the LTAD model is the ten-thousand-hour rule. Research has shown that it takes ten thousand hours of deliberate practice to reach the pinnacle of any profession. For a player, or a coach, this translates into three hours each day of practice for ten years. This is the time needed to harness physiological, psychological, and neurological development. The base of this development is anchored by physical literacy. The structure of a pyramid is only as strong as its foundation. Without a strong, structural base, implosion will result. This can be in the form of poor skill levels, burnout, chronic injury, and an eventual loss of passion for the game. You can't shoot a cannon out of a canoe. The process of building strong, powerful hockey players cannot be attained without first building appropriate requisite skills; playing more games does not accomplish this goal. Skill acquisition is accumulated through constant repetition, deliberate practice and the appropriate use of free time.

In a study done by former NHL Coach George Kingston in 1976 he found that the average player in the Canadian system spent 17.6 minutes on the ice during a typical game and was in possession of the puck for an astonishingly low 41 seconds. Kingston concluded that in order to get one hour of quality work in the practicing of the basic skills of puck control, (that is, stick-handling, passing, pass receiving and shooting) approximately 180 games would have to be played.

More games = < skill development, < skill development = < fun, < fun = < participation, < participation = > sedentary youth

In the construction of ten thousand hours, deliberate practice, small area games, free time, and early exposure to varying sporting demands are all more important than the games themselves or the outcomes of the games. Games should be adapted to fit the skill level of the athlete where basic skills, multiple puck touches, quick decision making, and skating mechanics can be challenged in a tight, confined, fun environment. It is during these formative years that the pillars of athletic achievement are harnessed. In addition, the ten-thousand-hour rule seeks to exploit motor efficiency by creating unconscious competence, whereby the athlete performs with precision and accuracy in response to changing conditions on the ice without conscious thought.

The goal of motor acquisition is to respond to a change in stimulus with a plethora of movement-based options. The more options the nervous system possesses, the more choices it has in reaching the appropriate response efficiently.

At an early age (birth to twelve years), exposure to a variety of movement is paramount. Kicking, running, jumping, throwing, tumbling, catching, receiving, decelerating, changing direction, skipping, hopping, maintaining balance, and refining motor coordination are a few of the activities that can be introduced early through small area games, playing multiple sports, and the adequate use of unsupervised free time. This period also sets the stage for developing the requisites required to initiate strength and conditioning protocol during the train-to-train period. If the athlete is unprepared physically when he or she reaches this biological period, progress will be stalled and development compromised.

Adapt the sport to the athlete, not the athlete to the sport.

— Anthony Donskov

It is during the early stages of athletic development when free time and multiple exposures to various sports establish a large database of movement literacy. The larger the database, the more options may be utilized during the demands of sport where decisions are not memorized and creative response leads to superior performance outcomes. Ken Dryden sums it up quite eloquently:

It is in free time that the special player develops, not in the competitive expedience of games, in hour-long practices once a week, in mechanical devotion to packaged, processed, coaching-manual, hockey-school skills. For while skills are necessary, setting out as they do the limits of anything, more is needed to transform those skills into something special. Mostly it is time unencumbered, unhurried, time of a different quality, more time, time to find wrong answers to find a few that are right; time to find your own right answers; time for skills to be practiced to set higher limits, to settle and assimilate and become fully and completely yours, to organize and combine with other skills comfortably and easily in some uniquely personal way, then to be set loose, trusted, to find new instinctive directions to take, to create.

But without such time a player is like a student cramming for exams. His skills are like answers memorized by his body, specific, limited to what is expected, random and separate, with no overviews to organize and bring them together. And for those times when more is demanded, when new unexpected circumstances come up, when answers are asked for things you've never learned, when you must intuit and piece together what you already know to find new answers, memorizing isn't enough. It's the difference between knowledge and understanding, between a super-achiever and a wise old man. And it's the difference between a modern suburban player and a player like Lafleur. (Ken Dryden's CBC-TV series, Home Game)

Trainability Windows

Another major factor influencing this model is the idea of biological training windows, or sensitive periods in athletic development. "The sensitive periods are periods in human life when the organs and systems that determine a given ability are under development."

"Developmental age refers to the degree of physical, mental, cognitive, and emotional maturity. Physical developmental age can be determined by skeletal maturity or bone age after which mental, cognitive, and emotional maturity is incorporated."

As we can see in the LTAD pyramid, fundamental basic skills, such as agility, balance, and coordination can be provided at an early age (six to nine years) through the use of fun and games. This can take place after practice or during the summer months. Basic motor coordination can be attacked during the learn-to-train block. This is a window of opportunity to introduce a dynamic warm-up or games focusing on quickness and change of direction. It is only after the development of balance, agility, and basic motor coordination that the strength and conditioning practitioner may safely address basic strength, suppleness, and stamina without compromise.

The bottom line is that hockey players need a variety of unsupervised exposures in ever-changing learning environments without early specialization or preprogrammed sport-specific drills that focus on the outcome (winning) rather than the process. Winning should not be stressed. The early years of an athlete's career are when passion, love, and emotional ties are set for lifelong love of sport. The weight room is a highly structured, preprogrammed environment of controlled stress application. Prior to commencement of the weight room, a solid level of physical literacy is paramount.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Physical Preparation for Ice Hockey by Anthony Donskov. Copyright © 2016 Anthony Donskov. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Chapter 1 Long-Term Athletic Development (LTAD), 1,
Chapter 2 Assessment, 13,
Chapter 3 Preparation, 35,
Chapter 4 Bioenergetics: Energy System Demands, 66,
Chapter 5 Power Training for Hockey, 98,
Chapter 6 Acceleration, 121,
Chapter 7 Strength and Conditioning, 130,
Chapter 8 Sample Off-Season Weight Training Programs, 183,
Chapter 9 Short-Term Competition, 216,

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