Author: Steve Volek (University of Minnesota ice hockey strength and conditioning intern)
Intro: Dustin Roux
So let’s go over a basic workout real quick. Let’s say it’s Monday, and it’s your Lower Body day (remember, we as hockey players don’t body part splits except under rare circumstances/injuries). Your workout consisted of some heavy squats, a Romanian dead lift to hit your posterior chain (basically the group of muscles running from your calves to your back, functioning as a kinetic chain), then you moved onto a nice single leg exercise like lunges and finish off with some calf work for the ladies. Now, we typically want to do our abs training on leg days, but what do we do for abs, how many sets/reps, what exercises give us the most bang for our buck? Well.. Steve Volek (our guest blogger from the University of Minnesota) is going to fill you in below.. Enjoy!
Chances are that at least one time you’ve gone to the gym with a friend or teammate and experienced the following situation: It comes time to do abs and what happens next is a series of what seems like 500 crunches, maybe a plank or 2 for about 1 minute each, and if your lifting partner has read a Muscle and Fitness magazine, some Russian twists or maybe some of those sissy flutter kicks. If you consider yourself an elite hockey player this is not what your ab routine should look like. And not to crush anyone’s egos about your “ab routine,” but you should not even have one. What you should have is one or two ab exercises placed in your actual workout. There are many reasons for this, but the most important would be that it saves you time. You don’t need to spend 20 minutes at the end of your workout doing strictly ab work. There is nothing wrong with deciding one day that maybe you just want to blow your abs apart, that’s fine, but just not every single workout (remember, when it comes to strength training, most things are good in moderation, few are good all the time). You simply do not need that much ab work by itself if you do things correctly. Baffled by this? Continue reading and you will understand what I mean.
FUNCTIONAL ANATOMY
I feel it’s necessary for everyone to know a little bit about the muscles they are training before they design a program or do any exercises. So, for our purposes and to avoid confusion, we will stick to the main 4 muscles of the your core and go into each of their functions briefly. These 4 muscles include the rectus abdominus, the transverse abdominus, the internal oblique, and the external oblique. Quickly read over this section before we get to the fun stuff.
* Rectus Abdominus: Used for flexion and lateral flexion of the trunk. The rectus abdominus is the abdominal muscle closest to the surface of your skin. These are the muscles that people are referring to when they say they want to get a “6 pack.”
* Transverse Abdominus: This flat muscle is used to compress your abdomen. This muscle is deeper into your abdomen lying between the internal oblique and an underlying fascia or depression called the transverse fascia.
* Obliquus Externus or External Oblique: This muscle is also used for lateral flexion of the trunk and is on both the left and right sides of your trunk. It is the outermost muscle covering the side if the abdomen.
* Obliquus Internus or Internal Oblique: Located on the left and right sides of your trunk, this muscle is used for lateral or side flexion of your trunk. It is triangular in shape and is smaller and thinner compared to the external oblique which overlaps it.
Whew! Now the boring part’s over, so what now?
The abs are the most popular muscle on the advertising market in today’s world, and for good reason. One, a nice six pack will do a lot of things for you including picking up sorority girls as well as giving you a little self confidence you might not usually have. Two, they are EXTREMELY important when it comes to living a long healthy life. The CORE, as it is called so often in all these magazines, is what will help determine your daily posture. It can keep your low back healthy for years, which is great because I’ve read statistics showing up to 85% of Americans will experience low back pain sometime in there lives.
So, why do they give you better posture and save you low back, along with all the other benefits? Well, they function in so many ways we could write 8 articles about them… In fact, we will be selling an eBook in the next month focuses on abs training for hockey. The main reason we love the abs so much is because they provide you with stability. There’s no way you would be able to play any contact sport, especially hockey, at a high level if you did not have the stability of your abs to help you absorb hits and stay on your feet. Now prepare yourself for what is coming next. I am going to go over my top two exercises for your abs and they probably are not what you would expect.
1) Squat: I am not talking about body weight squats and I am not talking about pistol squats (which are great for posterior chain work, but that’s for another day). When I say squats I mean load up the bar, get after it, heavy squats. The reasoning for this is quite simple. If you want strong abs you need to do movements that place a heavy load or a great amount of stress or contraction on them; which isn’t accomplished by doing 1000 crunches. When you go down into a squat position, the load on your shoulders wants to come forward towards down the ground due to gravity. Now, there will be some stress placed on your lower back, but because the load wants to come forward, as I just mentioned, your abs need to work overtime and contract as hard as they can to help prevent the bar from dropping you to the floor. Or in simpler terms, whose abs need to contract and work the hardest? The 200 pound guy squatting 135 or the 200 pound guy squatting 400? If you continue to do heavy squats for a certain amount of time, you will see improvement in your abdominal strength as well as overall stability.
Are you gonna tell me his abs aren't getting worked over right now?
Now if you are a hockey player who is in season, heavy squatting is not always the best option due to the high demands placed on your body. So that is why the heavy squats come in most handy during the off-season, to strengthen your core for the grueling season ahead. And to help maintain your core strength throughout the season, which is where the accessory work comes in.
2) Deadlift: If you were still in your chair after my first top ab exercise, there is no way you are sitting down after this one. So you are probably saying. “Deadlifts? Doesn’t that just work your hamstrings and low back?” Yes, it does work both of those, but like the squat, that’s not all it works. Think about how your setup looks for your deadlift.
Flat back, head up, bar along shins, arms tight = Good form
From the start position of a deadlift you need to make sure your feet are flat, your arms are straight, you have a flat back, big chest, and are looking straight ahead. But you also need to make sure that right before you pull that you contract your abs as hard as you can. Why? When looking at the diagram, from the pull position, your trunk is leaning forward in an angle less than 90 degrees, which normally would put anyone at a disadvantage for trying to pull any type of weight straight off the ground. However, if you contract your abs right when you push through your heels and pull the weight up, the abdominals prevent you from simply falling forward. The heavier the load, the harder the abs have to contract.
Similar to the squat, if you are a hockey player in-season, you won’t be able to perform heavy Deadlifts on a weekly basis because of the grueling season.
Arnold using good form, heavy weight, and going barefoot
Check back on Monday, where we will feature part 2 of this article. It will cover all the accessory exercises you need (not that many) and how to properly fit them into your weekly program.
Dustin Roux is a strength coach and a student at Penn State University majoring in Kinesiology. To contact him email dcr5044@psu.edu or inlinehockeyperformance.com
Steve Volek graduated from Penn State with a degree in Movement Science and is currently a strength and conditioning coach intern for one of the most historic collegiate hockey clubs ever, the University of Minnesota. To contact Steve for questions email smv5014@psu.edu
Popularity: 3% [?]
Very awesome writing! Really!