The Holy Grail of Movement: All Hail The Variability King!
Adding cross-training and movement variability into our daily routines and training regimens is one of the best things we can do to aid performance. And, not only aid performance, but limit injury risk by reducing chronic repetitive strain injuries.
Especially Specialized
The human body contains roughly 300 joints, and if we assume each joint can assume only two positions (which is far from true), the number of unique positions the human body can achieve is 2.04 x 1090. That's eighty-eight zeros to be precise. It's not a stretch to state the human body can contort itself into a seemingly infinite number of positions. But how many of those infinite positions do you achieve on a given day? We limit ourselves to the predetermined shapes provided to us by our chairs, the cars we drive, the desks we sit at, and the joint-specific positions required by the sports we participate in.
In this age of early sport specialization, excessive and repetitive loading is occurring at younger ages and contributes to rising injury rates. It is why the extreme loading of the body in elite athletes comes with the price tag of harm to joint health and movement quality.
Participating in a singular sport or performing the same workout routine ad nauseum is problematic. Executing the same limited number of movements repetitively is why a seemingly ‘fit' hockey player can injure their back picking up a pencil from the ground – a movement they may be completely unfamiliar with, even if their legs, heart, and lungs are finely tuned to the rigors of ice hockey.
What we seem to have lost over time, is the message that it's all human movement, only with different playing surfaces, different rules, different implements. When we specialize to the extreme, we begin to lose other movements. It's the law of specificity – we get really good at what we train. But the opposite is also true, and if we don't use it, we lose it. We become imbalanced, leading to chronic injuries and burnout, and while it may be counterintuitive, training less and substituting cross-training and movement variability is crucial in our quest for athletic excellence.
Cross It Up
Cross-training isn't complicated. It is simply training movement patterns different from the athlete's primary sport and intended to reduce injury and psychological burnout and improve performance.
By integrating other types of movement into your daily routine and taking a break from your normal athletic pursuits to train elsewhere, you close the gap between what you do a lot of, and what you don't do a lot of. It strengthens neglected areas of the body, works on different energy systems, and can reduce the monotony and repetitiveness of the standard training and practices normally repeated ad nauseam.
Cross-training is more than slightly different variations of the same thing. Cross-training for hockey shouldn't involve skating treadmills and slide boards. Cross-training for cyclists is not just indoor training. Cross-training for distance runners is not just variations of the primary competition distances and different intensity techniques. Cross-training must involve intentionally different movement patterns targeted to undo and unglue the damage your normal movements and sport imparts upon you.
While sport practices and training specificity are critical for success, the laser-like focus inherent to these practices means you are missing out on the loads of variability that can come from cross-training.
Variety (Variability) is the Spice of Life
Cross-training can be a useful elixir for athletes looking for performance and health improvements, but diving deeper, what we're truly seeking is movement variability, a lack of fixed patterns that will not only serve as a protective mechanism against injury, but as a method for training adaptability.
In his book, “The Practice of Natural Movement”, author Erwan Le Corre states that, “you want to be a well-rounded, unspecialized movement athlete who is physically and mentally conditioned in a ‘broadly specific' manner.” You want to be a generalist before becoming a specialist. Adding variability to your programming will better prepare you for the myriad of movement challenges in your athletic career.
Sport is a highly variable entity, even when it may not appear to be so. Striking a tennis ball seems like a pattern that should be practiced to perfection and automated into consciousness. A rote pattern executed identically each time it is called upon, but consider what tennis legend Rafael Nadal has to say:
“You might think that after millions and millions of balls I've hit I'd have the basic shots of tennis show up, that reliably hitting a true, smooth clean shot every time would be a piece of cake. But it isn't. Not just because every day you wake up feeling differently, but because every shot is different; every single one. From infinitesimal (sic) number of angles and speeds, with more topspin, or backspin, or flatter or higher. The differences might be minute, microscopic, but so are the variations your body makes – shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, ankles, knees – in every shot. And there are so many other factors – the weather, the surface, the rival. No ball arrives the same as another; no shot is identical."
Adding something as simple as controlled articular rotations (CARS) is a form of cross-training and movement variability aimed at moving you joint-by-joint, from head to toe, expressing the full degree of movement our bodies are capable of. CARs are meant to help you explore your full movement potential with a high degree of quality to prepare them for the infinite number of positions that will be required of them.
For a hockey player looking to add variability to their on-ice training, consider small-area games, something becoming more popular amongst coaches. Watch as a small area games forces players into small spaces, allowing for more puck touches, quicker decision-making and more changes of direction in addition to forcing creative, out-of-the box thinking. This type of practice, different from the typical 5-on-5 or special team practice, really follows the theme of variability that Nadal was referring to, similar to how Brazilian soccer players use Futsol to help train creativity with ball dribbling. Consider changing rules, changing the hands of the stick, making up random, seemingly innocuous rules and situations that can light creative sparks and prepare the player for situations that can only occur spontaneously and naturally, not within the rote repetitive structure of traditional practice.
From an off-ice perspective, hockey players have been conditioned to enter into traditional strength & conditioning programs. Weightlifting, sprinting, and more. All wonderful modalities, but all with their own set of limitations. A hockey player would benefit greatly from adding variability and cross-training to their off-season training. A combination of dance, gymnastics and martial arts training offers movement expression in manners that would never be encountered in gym-based sessions.
(Note from David: Games like Spikeball that athletes love definitely has a place here, as I discussed with Joe Sawicki on the podcast).
By adding variability and cross-training into their regular diet, an athlete will learn to move in ways somewhat foreign, but will have effects wide-ranging, from injury prevention, to opening up new options on-ice.
About Jason
Dr. Jason Izraelski is a board certified Sports Specialist Chiropractor and leading authority on sports injury management, strength & conditioning, and long-term athletic development.
A lifelong learner, he has completed a Doctorate of Chiropractic, a Master's of Science Degree focused on concussions, and long-term athletic development and is a Fellow of the Royal College of Chiropractic Sports Sciences (Canada).
Dr. Izraelski has worked with some of the best in the athletic world including professional hockey, football, baseball, and basketball players. Since 2010 he has served as the Team Doctor and Strength & Conditioning Coach for the North York Rangers Jr. A team. You can find him at Helix Performance in Ontario.
