Inline Hockey Performance

How many of you have seen in a Muscle and Fitness magazine something along the lines of, “Try out ‘Insert Famous Professional Sports Figure’s Name here’ Lifting Program to get a Rock Hard Body like his!”? Even better, how many of you have seen advertisements on TV for “Get Ripped Quick with ‘Insert Awesome Sounding Get Ripped Quick Product here’”? Although some of these articles and products can give you decent ideas and some fitness results, it is important to know that what may give great results for one athlete or person doesn’t always reciprocate for another. The goal of this article is to explain why it is VERY important to diagnose or test before we prescribe exercises in order to prevent injuries and increase your playing career.

The Importance of Diagnosing before Prescribing:

Imagine the following scenario: Your eyes have been bugging you when you read, so you go see an optometrist. When you get there, you explain your situation to the doctor; he listens briefly, and then removes the glasses from his face, hands them to you and says:

“Here, take my glasses. They have given me incredible results for years now and my eyes have never felt better. I have an extra pair at home so you can keep these.”

You take his glasses, put them on your face and everything is much worse. You exclaim, “This looks terrible!”

“Well what’s wrong?” he asks. “They work great for me, try a little harder.”

“I am trying my hardest,” you respond. “It’s not working!”

“What’s wrong with you?” he responds. “Maybe glasses don’t work for you, try laser eye surgery.”

How would you feel about this doctor? Would you believe anything he said? Any good optometrist would know that each persons’ eyes are different and glasses should only be prescribed after proper screening, testing, and a diagnosis. You can’t just use what works for you for everyone, because everyone is different.

I’m sure this concept makes sense to you when related to vision; but, a lot of people have trouble seeing the relation to exercise and training. How would it make any sense to find a program that has been working for one person and expect it to work for another when individuals’ body structures, body types, body composition, muscle composition, mobility, stability, compensation patterns, and neuromuscular patterns can vary so much? Sure we all have the same muscles and bones so there are some exercises/movements that we use to create optimal movement patterns; but, because of differences we possess in varying muscular weaknesses, we compensate at other joints to product movements. For instance, for varying reasons hamstring extensibility can vary greatly between individuals leading to different muscle recruitment patterns during various movements. Let’s use this fabricated example: Sydney Crosby and Mike Richards perform a Barbell Dead Lift from the floor. Richards has normal length hamstrings while Crosbys’ are short. Richards performs the lift from the floor without a problem. Because Crosbys’ hamstrings are short, he does not have the range of motion at his hamstrings to bend down and pick up the bar, so he compensates by curving his lumbar spine to further his range of motion and complete the movement. This compensation not only leads to lesser weights achieved than Richards and further shortening of the hamstrings, but it can also lead to lumbar disc degeneration if not corrected. If Crosby wants to continue a long and healthy hockey career, I suggest he elevates his starting point on blocks so that his lumbar spine is not rounded during the lift and gradually works down to the floor while stretching his short hamstrings and correcting the hamstring movement pattern.

Diagnosing:

In the medical world, there are screenings and tests to diagnose most conditions. Some of these conditions include High Blood Pressure, Triglycerides, HDL and LDL Cholesterol levels, etc. If you measure “high” on 3 or more of these tests and/or have a known Cardiovascular Disease, you are considered “High Risk” for developing Heart Disease. After a proper diagnosis has been made, the Doctor is able to prescribe different medications to help treat the issue.

In the strength and conditioning world, there are also screenings and tests to diagnose what are called movement impairment syndromes, or just the inability to produce certain movements correctly. Developed by Physical Therapists Grey Cook and Lee Burton, the Functional Movement Screen was developed to assess a baseline of movements at each joint and assess how well your joints can coordinate movements together. If you score below a 15 on the screening, you are considered at “High Risk” for incurring an injury.

After this screen is administered and the scores are recorded, the Strength and Conditioning Professional is able to prescribe the appropriate exercises to address possible risk factors. You might be wondering, “What Risk Factors? Am I going to get a heart attack if I can’t coordinate my joints to move correctly?” Absolutely not; but, you may have risk factors for a serious injury which could lead to the possible termination of your hockey career.

Prescribing:

Now that we have covered diagnosis, we can now prescribe exercise. Here at Inline Hockey Performance, we have many free videos posted on YouTube. We use these videos with our clients that are not close enough to train with any of our IHP Performance Coaches to show them how to do the exercises correctly. Although we are not able to use the Functional Movement Screen on our online clients, we do assess them by having them fill out certain questionnaires that give us information about injuries, commonly tight or tweaked areas, and movements that currently hurt them, along with having them perform a few tests in the weight room so we can track progress. Although this isn’t the ideal situation, it is enough to effectively prescribe exercises to increase playing performance and decrease the risk of injury.

Wrapping it up:

Although a high level of athleticism can be achieved without optimal movement patterns, it is important to not put performance on top of dysfunctional movement patterns because it can result in later injury, decreased playing career (let’s face it, we all would play the rest of our lives if we could), and decreased performance. Next time you see “Get your Chest Ripped!” or, “Z40XTreme DVD set”, remember that everyone is different and has different movement impairments to address in order to prevent injuries and increase performance. So, do you want someone elses’ glasses so you can walk around blind? Or do you want your own prescription?

Questions? Shoot us an email at InlineHockeyPerformance@Gmail.com.

Warm Regards,

Eric Keene

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