Programming "Athleticism" Into Your Off-Season

One key performance index (or KPI) that's often overlooked in off-season programs is how to incorporate athleticism in our athletes' programming.

Over my 11 years working as an NHL strength and conditioning coach, I've seen more and more young hockey players struggle with foundational athleticism and move with less “flow.” It seems young hockey players are becoming increasingly robotic.

Being challenged with a new athletic movement requiring considerable coordination has been a steeper learning curve than I feel it should be for some young athletes.

This can be attributed to many reasons, the biggest in my opinion is that today's young athletes are often single-sport athletes.

With a new model of youth hockey expected to have a duration of the full calendar year, we are seeing a rise in injuries relating to overuse in addition to psychological burnout. This was not as prevalent as recently as 10 years ago. As a strength and conditioning professional, I feel there is a need to combat this trend.

How to Combat Declining Athleticism

What can we do to change this? Is it as easy as pulling our young athletes out of the gym and off the ice during their off-season to play multiple sports? Obviously not if our athletes' KPIs are expected to become stronger, faster, improve conditioning, and build tissue resiliency. Is there a way we can achieve both? I think there is.

For example, if you have a young athlete that's strong, stable, and has training experience, but who needs to improve movement efficiency, we can do one of two things as a performance coach.

We can continue to program their existing competencies, or, we can complement their training routine with elements for which they're in need of improving.

One solution could be to challenge our athletes with movement and processing games as part of their warm-up or active movement.

Athletic Movements Keep Players Engaged During The Season

Through the dog days of the NHL season, I often search for ways to keep our players engaged and energized. Rather than consistently prescribing a steady-state warm-up on a stationary bike or similar, I like to get the players moving with a game of pickleball, spikeball or a version of soccer volleyball, before we transition into the prescribed corrective warm-up and workout.

Accelerating, decelerating, multidirectional footwork, and hand-eye coordination is a different approach to “wake” the nervous system while creating competitiveness before we ask the group to focus with intent.

It's not a coincidence that the NHL's top players are often the best athletes on their respective teams.

Their ability to think and move at a high pace while on the ice, in addition to possessing a high level of athletic intelligence, is a big part of what makes these athletes special.

I firmly believe that elite players who had the opportunity to play different sports from a young age resulted in only a positive impact on the elite players we see today.

Post-Workout "Free Play"

How do we program these ideas into our off-season? In most cases, we guide our players for 60 to 90 minutes five-six times per week as a pairing with their on-ice commitments. In addition to programming energy system development, especially in the early stages of their off-season, let's consider an approach of prescribing 20 minutes of free play following their workout.

Allowing players to think creatively with a racquet or a soccer ball will allow them to partake in hidden conditioning, and force them to think and move while breaking up mundane tasks to which they're accustomed during the season. Cross-training over a weekend could potentially consist of playing tennis or soccer with their training group.

Our athletes are bound to structure both on and off the ice for eight to ten months per year. Providing them with an ability to be creative while inserting some athletic free play into their training may feel like a breath of fresh air.

Adding competitive athleticism into athletes' off-season training should lead to increased movement flow which should result in improved athleticism, and ultimately, becoming a better hockey player. I think we can all agree that this is our primary goal as strength and conditioning coaches.

Rob Mouland

Head Strength and Conditioning Coach

Ottawa Senators Hockey Club