Inline Hockey Performance

Inline Hockey Weight-lifting: Free weights vs. Machines

Before I throw any thing at you lets lay out some common terms first. One term I will use quite often, will be sport specificity. This should seem pretty obvious to you right away, and what it means is that whatever we do in the weight room, or on the track, or even on the rink, should be sport specific.

So, the first thing that might come to your mind… how is anything other than hockey, sport specific? How can weightlifting and sprinting be sport specific? Well, inherently, nothing other than your sport is truly sport specific. But here is when that term comes into play.

Weightlifting, and sprinting/conditioning, will make you a better athlete, and if you can become a better athlete, you have the potential to be a better hockey player. That kind of sums it up. So if you are going to lift, and run, why not do it the right way? Much of what we know about weight lifting is wrong, so let’s not waste any more time doing the wrong stuff.

So, a good amount of you workout in the gym, or run outside, but do you follow a set program, or do you just wing it? Well, program design and progression are out of the scope of this post, but why would I want you to choose free weights rather than machines?

Well, here are some reasons…

Machines:

• Require no need for the athlete to balance or control the weight. The machine does that for you. This is fine for a recreational person, or even a beginner athlete, but not for anyone trying to become an elite hockey player.
• Most machines require you to sit and push a weight. During hockey you are always standing and pushing off with your legs, you are never sitting in a leg press pushing upwards or sitting in a chair pushing a weight with your arms forward.

Free-weights:

• More specific for athletes
• Require you to stabilize the load, unlike a machine
• Teach you movements!!!

This last part is very important. You might hear us often say that we are “Training movements, not muscles”..

Don’t take the saying literally, though. Sometimes we do train certain muscles, but athletes should never train like bodybuilders, and usually body part splits are not the way to go for athletes. It’s better to work on training certain movements, which will thus make you a better athlete.

We use the Squat, the Deadlift, the power clean, and many other movements that develop athletic movements and mimic the sport more than say, sitting in a chair and pushing a weight while you don’t even focus on the lift.

Check back tomorrow for part 2…

Best,

Dustin

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