Inline Hockey Performance

Over the summer I instructed 40 ice hockey players from a local high school in the weight room 3 days a week. Initially I had a lot of trouble with this because only about 10 of the kids had ever weight trained, and most of them have played hockey there whole lives and no other sports (a big mistake IMO).

The majority of the kids couldn’t even run properly, so I had a lot of work to do. We started with Full Body sessions 3 days a week, and during this time I had them really focus on learning the techniques for the Deadlift, Squat, and Bench variations. But I didn’t have forever to teach them this stuff, 12 weeks is not overtly enough time, when none of these kids had any weight lifting experience. So we made the Lunge a key movement in the program.

But we didn’t stick to just a regular lunge. Not every lunge hits the same muscles, and we wanted to develop both the quads and glutes/hams. I tried to find some video’s of these different lunges but had no luck. For now, I’ll just describe them.

On Mondays we would hit the Glutes and Hams hard with a long lunge, so I made sure all the athletes fully lunged forward. On top of this we would have them hit some Glute-Ham raises and a few other movements after that.

Wednesdays were short lunge days, and these preferentially recruited the quads way more. These would be followed up with some other leg work, but squats still weren’t the main lift used in the first 4 weeks because technique was not there. I dont think any athletes should be performing full ROM squats (ass-to-calves) with the proper technique.

On Friday’s we usually had the kids change the lunge into more of a hockey stride movement and they enjoyed that variation a lot since it felt familiar towards actually skating.

Additionally we would often have the athletes stand on 2 different raised surfaces to increase ROM during the lunges, and of course all lunges were done with resistance, either dumbbells or with a barbell.

The hockey stride lunge definitely hit the adductors and abductors a little more I think. The increased ROM placed a little more stress on the muscles as well. I think overall the lunge is a phenomenal exercise, obviously its great for building strength and it’s also a great way to incorporate unilateral training while still being able to use a heavier load.

If your looking for more variations, there are plenty. Towards the end of the 12 weeks the kids were stronger and a bit more coordinated with the movement, so we begin to implement jumping lunges, reverse lunges, lunge-step ups and bulgarian split squats. The possibilities seem almost endless.

Take care,

Dustin Roux