The 8 Vector Change of Direction Tempo Skate: A Multidirectional Conditioning Drill

This past summer I read Reverse Engineering Sport: The 8 Vector System by Jordan Nieuwsma and Nick DiMarco and immediately fell in love with their multidirectional concepts.

For those who are not familiar with their book, Jordan and Nick summarize it as follows: “The 8 Vector System is a streamlined method for ensuring you are developing your athletes for what they will experience in their sport. The 8 Vector System is a mental model that allows you to organize the vast amounts of movement variations in sport. The 8 Vector System prepares athletes for sport by physically preparing their bodies tissues to efficiently decelerate, withstand, and transmit force in all directions. By preparing the athletes with this system you will limit their risk for injury and tissue failure. Along with improving their performance by increasing power outputs in all directions. Most importantly it gets results!”

As a hockey strength coach, I began wondering how I could implement some of these multidirectional drills and concepts on the ice to prepare my teams for their upcoming season.

In years past, our preseason conditioning consisted of linear skating sessions, bike workouts and Triphasic GPP workouts, such as Contralateral and Super Endurance. These seemed to get our team's cardiovascular system ready for practice but, in my opinion, did little in building tissue tolerance in their hips/legs.

(Side note, I still performed these methods but swapped the linear skating conditioning for what I will discuss in this article.)

Enter the 8 Vector Tempo Skate

By following typical tempo run parameters, the 8 Vectors, the COD tempo runs discussed in the book and some help from my women's coach, Keith Maurice, we created a 9-station on-ice workout. We performed this workout with my women's team in the weeks leading up to their first practice.

The 8 Vectors

The 8 Vectors are broken down into 4 vectors per leg. Each of these equates to a cut in that direction.

• 0 Degree
• 45 Degree
• 90 Degree
• 135 Degree

As you can see in the diagram, we skated in more than just the above 4 vectors.

Within the book, they discuss progressions from using these vectors as a blueprint to coach cuts, jumps and conditioning to ensure we are preparing our athletes for all the angles of movement that will be presented to them in sport. During this period, we also began the 8 Vector COD jump progression. Specifically, we were doing extensive jumps before progressing to extensive hops and then to intensive later in the fall.

The Parameters

• Groups of 3 with 1 group at each station
• Preassign the groups, starting positions, and order to skate in.
• Each group had an upperclassman to help give them an opportunity to lead their small group. 
• 9 Stations. I had a team of 26 so this required me to have 9 stations
• 12 seconds on: 24 seconds off at each station
• 1 person in each group would work while the other 2 would rest
• 2 reps at each station with 1 in each direction
• Varying Rest between Stations

I had 4 heart rate monitors to put on athletes that guided the rest. I was trying to keep their heart rates between 130-160 so if my 3 skaters and 1 goalie were reaching numbers above, I would give them longer rest. If not, once everyone rotated and got to their next station we started.

• 2 sets with a water break between sets
• We asked the athletes to skate at 70% speed and to focus on technique
• This was their only workout of the day
• We did it once per week as a team and we encouraged them to do it a second time on their own during open ice time
• We slightly moved the drills periodically because the ice gets torn up

The Goalies

I did'nt see the need to have our goalies perform some of these drills so with the help of our women's team goalie coach, Jack Junge, we modified some of the drills. As you can imagine, the goalies were very appreciative of making it more specific to them and not just getting lumped into the majority.

*Not shown in the video, we also modified the Iron Cross*

My Takeaways

I have no empirical evidence that it has decreased injury or improved performance, but my athletes raved about it, which is a huge win. It's not every day a team is excited about conditioning. On top of that, (knock on wood) I have yet to receive an injury report with a hip/groin issue to this point. Needless to say, this will be a method I continue to use.

About Bill

Bill DeLongis is the Head Strength and Conditioning Coach at Trinity College and for USA Hockey's Women's U18 team. He is a CSCS and RSCC*D and holds certifications from RPR, FRC, and Precision Nutrition. He has a Master's Degree in Experiential Learning from Plymouth State University and a Bachelor's Degree in Fitness and Wellness from Winthrop University.

You can follow Bill on Instagram here: @billdelongis