Westside Methods in Hockey
I've had the privilege to make my living as a strength and conditioning coach for almost 10 years now. Much of that time has been spent training hockey players, among many other athletes, and I have utilized a lot of different training methods to get the most from them. Of all the different ideas I've experimented with, the Westside Barbell methods have likely had the greatest influence in my strength programs. At first glance this may not appear to be the case as back squats, deadlifts and bench pressing aren't part of my athletes' routines. Rather than use powerlifting to strengthen my hockey players, I've taken the periodization philosophies used at Westside Barbell and applied them a little differently.
As strength coaches many of us are familiar with Westside Barbell. It is a gym in Columbus, OH that is notorious for producing some of the strongest powerlifters in the world. Much of the credit to the gym's success goes to the owner Louie Simmons and the training system he's developed, known as the conjugate method. In this system, lifters focus on two primary components of lifting, maximum strength and maximum speed. Both components are addressed on separate days within a week called max effort (strength) and dynamic effort (speed) and are done with back squat, bench press and occasionally deadlift variations.
If this is new to you, I encourage you to read an article or two by Louie Simmons as this one only scratches the surface and is simply my interpretation of it (louiesimmons.com). In his system of strength training, participants have to perform a 1RM on max effort day of a different squat or bench press variation every week. By changing the exercise on a weekly basis, for both squat and bench press, the lifters are able to avoid overtraining, allowing them to train at higher intensities throughout the year. For dynamic effort day, the second day of the week, the focus shifts to moving lighter workloads at maximum speed. A predetermined weight is chosen, usually from 50-60% of the most recent 1RM, and the lifters now focus on ascending the weight as fast as possible. Heavy chains or elastic bands are often added as variable resistance to promote faster force production as well (Tate, 2001).
Moving on, it's important to note that the biomechanical needs of hockey players are different than those of powerlifters. The conjugate system was built around maximizing back squat and bench press numbers. However, it isn't my job to maximize back squat and bench press performance in athletes. It's simply to give my players the capacity to skate faster and more efficiently and lower body strength is a big part of that equation. Therefore, I feel there are more effective movement options for hockey players for maximizing hip and leg strength. Instead of back squaqts, I have used front squats, hex bar deadlifts, dead squats (starting from a fixed depth), elevated split squats, single leg squats, step-back lunges and assymetrical pin-pulls. Switching from barbells, dumbbells and U-bars creates more options by altering how the athletes are loaded. The more variations I can come up with for them, the better. For the dynamic effort, we have used mostly front squats, hex bar deadlifts and elevated split squats with the use of chains and bands and workloads of 50-60% at 8-10 sets of two.
Why do I challenge my athletes this way? Bottom line, it has worked very well! Athletes who I've worked with for up to 5 years continue to set personal bests every off-season with me. There are two primary reasons I feel conjugate training methods work so well at building strength. One, athletes have to lift heavy weight and are working above 90% on a weekly basis. Popular belief might say this will cause neurological burnout, but changing the max effort lift every week seems to do a great job of avoiding it. Two, it minimizes repetitions performed in a fatigued state. Both the max effort method of progressive singles and the dynamic effort of 2-3 rep sets avoid the biochemical and neurological limitations that inevitably arise from higher repetition formats. In other words, we're constantly working in the optimal rep range for neurological adaptation to occur (Prilepin's chart, Kontos 2007).
A few notes.
1) The only athletes I've allowed to train this way have considerable experience in weight training and are physically mature. Most of them have worked with me for at least a year and have progressed to handle maximal workloads through programs that gradually progress in intensity. Putting less experienced or underdeveloped athletes right into this type of training may burn them out or injure them.
2) I only employ conjugate training for lower body strength. Being that hockey is played in an upright position, I've never felt the need to maximize a player's bench press and therefore I don't have my players do it. We do an abundance of pushes and pulls for shoulder strength, stability, muscular balance and to promote an overall balanced body. (Santana, Vera-Garcia, McGill 2007).
3) I know my athletes well by the time I let them train in this system. I have players who think they are stronger than they actually are, some who don't know how strong they are and others with skeletal limitations that don't work well with certain movements. These are very important realities to be aware of when workloads get heavy. As soon as I feel the risks considerably outweigh rewards on max effort day, they're done with that part of the workout.
Sources
Kontos, T. (2007). Utilizing Prilepin's Chart. Article retrieved April 18, 2016 from
http://www.elitefts.com/education/training/sports-performance/prilepins-chart/
Santana, J., Vera-Garcia, F., McGill, S. A Kinetic and Electromyographic Comparison of the Standing Cable Press and
Bench Press. Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research. 2007. 21(4)/1271-1277.
Tate, D. (2001). Accommodating Resistance: How to use bands and chains. Article
retrieved August 16, 2008, from http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/
sports_body_training_performance/accommodating_resistance&cr=.
