Mental Training for Hockey

Start your hockey mental training today. Here is a follow-up on yesterday’s blog post with some simple techniques to begin training your brain.

At the elite levels of most sports, the competition is usually pretty tight, with most participants having a similar level of fitness and skill, and thus, the margin for victory is small.  Coaches and players are beginning to realize that in order to stay one step ahead of their competition, they need to practice more than just skill and technique, they need to train the mental aspect of their game. So when faced with similarly skilled competition, it is the team that is more mentally prepared, more poised, and more confident that will emerge the victor.

Concentration, confidence, composure and commitment are considered the primary mental qualities that are essential for successful performance in sports.  Collectively, these are known as the the 4C’s.

• Concentration: the ability to maintain focus
• Confidence: the belief in one’s abilities
• Composure: the ability to maintain emotional control
• Commitment: the ability to set and work towards pre-defined goals

The techniques of mental imagery, goal-setting, and focus can help athletes achieve the 4C’s.

With mental imagery, players imagine performing a specific movement or skill.  This technique helps activate the same neural pathways from the brain to the muscles that are used to perform the actual movement.  There is a plethora of scientific evidence that demonstrates the concept of mental rehearsal leading to an improvement in performance.

Goal-setting is a motivating technique that simply involves setting short-term and long-term goals for yourself. Think about an ideal future and then set incremental goals to turn your vision of the future into reality. You will learn to effectively use time and resource management to achieve short-term goals, which raises one’s level of confidence and leads to increased levels of motivation.

You can improve your ability to focus much like any other skill (ie. with practice and training). The simplest form of meditation can be used to achieve greater focus through concentrating on an object — study the object, focus completely on that object — what does it look like, its shape and color, how does it smell, what is its texture — learn how to control your breathing and focus your mind and energy on the simplest of tasks.

One of the biggest obstacles with mental training lies in overcoming the perceived “silliness and triviality” of some of the techniques used. But hey, this is something that can be done on your own time, in your own space, with no-one else around. Use this time wisely and correctly, and you will notice an increase in your performance, but like the development of any skill, mental training takes time and patient. Learn these techniques and many others by attending one of our summer college hockey camps.

Power and Speed Training: How-to incorporate plyometrics into your summer training.

Welcome to Part 5 of our Off-Season Training guide: Incorporating plyometrics training to develop power and speed.

Plyometric training for the sport of ice hockey can have a great impact on the athlete’s on- ice performance. Why train for explosive power and speed?

• Explosive power allows you to start, stop and react quickly to elude a defender or to stay with your check
• Fast accelerations allow you to capture or move to space on offense
• Fast accelerations and speed allow you to establish position and reduce space for better defense
• Fast accelerations and high speed give you a better transition game
• Higher speed gives you more momentum and an advantage in collisions
• Higher speeds can be transferred into greater shot velocity

Plyometrics bridge the gap between strength and speed. If you want to improve your athletic performance, the transition from strength training to power training will play an integral part in your success. Here’s why…Maximum strength takes 0.5 to 0.7 seconds to produce. Yet most explosive, athletic movements occur much more rapidly. Whether your objective is to accelerate faster, shoot the puck harder, move around the ice more quickly, jump higher or throw further… The key to improving your power and performance lies in generating the highest possible force in the shortest possible time… Plyometrics play a primary role in this training objective. Ideally you would first develop a high level of maximal strength before starting a plyometrics program. This gives you the greatest potential for peak power. The underlying principle of plyometric training is the stretch-shortening cycle. Very simply, as a muscle stretches and contracts eccentrically (lengthens) it produces storable elastic energy. If the muscle then contracts concentrically (shortens) this elastic energy can be used to increase the force of the contraction.

A good example is jumping…If an athlete jumps vertically they will invariably dip down just before takeoff. Quickly lowering their centre of gravity stretches the working muscle groups allowing them to contract more forcefully for the jump. In essence a muscle stretched before it contracts will contract much more forcefully. What role does plyometrics play in all of this? Plyometric training places increased stretch loads on the working muscles. As the muscles become more tolerant to the increase loads the stretch-shortening cycle becomes  more efficient. The muscle stores more elastic energy. It can transfer from the eccentric or stretching phase to the concentric or lengthening phase more rapidly. This is the key to generating peak power. Lower body based plyometrics should be the dominant part of your training program as more of the power needed in the sport of hockey comes from the lower body. The hips, gluteals, quadriceps and hamstring areas must be strong and flexible to maximize performance and implement a hockey plyometric program. It is these muscle groups that are key to developing a strong powerful skating stride. In summary, plyometrics are exercises that enable muscles to reach maximum strength in as short a time as possible. In other words, these exercises develop power.

Playoff Goaltending: Skill vs. Mental

Plenty of critics will tell you that goaltending is 90% mental. Is it really?

Any skilled performance has a mental component. At the elite level in any sport, the difference in skill between Player A and Player B is probably minimal, so what makes Player A more successful? If skill levels are equal, then the mental component can be the pivotal difference, perhaps even enough to overcome a disadvantage in skill.   No better example exists than goaltending in the playoffs. Reporters cling to the teams with the “hot goalie” and every year there seem to be prime examples of goaltenders bringing it in the playoffs (Halak with the Habs and Anderson with the Avalanche are current examples).

In Patrick Roy’s words “For goaltenders everything is playing between your ears. If you can believe it, you can do it. If you’re not confident when you start, it makes a difference.” As a young goaltender, how do you develop this confidence? How do you become mentally tough? How can you put yourself in the zone? These are the types of questions we (at EXACT Sports) continually ask ourselves. Our mental diagnostics are designed to provide a unique portrait of who you are and help you learn more about how to improve the psychological aspect of your game. We designed these tools and they are currently used by the NHL and over 100 NCAA programs (Read about EXACT and the sport psychology done at the NHL combine). EXACT’s new summer college hockey camp program (National College Development Clinic) brings these same tools to high school athletes across the country.  In addition, all camps will be led by current NCAA college coaches. Over 25 different NCAA college hockey programs committed to instruct at our hockey camps this summer, including coaches from programs such as Mercyhurst College, Syracuse University, University of North Dakota, Amherst College, Gustavus Adolphus and many others.

Most players I know spend hours everyday working on their physical skills, but very few (actually none really), give much thought on mental training. The main reason is they probably have never been taught how to develop the mental aspect of their game. Now is the time to start! If you want to surpass the player next to you,  you need to start training your brain too. Start your hockey mental training today.

Principle of Overload: Are you training progressively?

Welcome to Part 4 of our Off-Season Training guide:  The Principle of  Overload

The overload principle states that in order to keep making gains from an exercise program, you must find some way to make it more difficult. This is because bodies adapt to exercise. The problem is that once your body adapts to a given workload, it will not continue to adapt unless the workload is increased somehow. If you do not continue to adapt, then eventually you will plateau and regress. Having stated that it is necessary to make conditioning programs more difficult, one caution should be kept in mind: you must observe specificity when applying the overload principle. Performing a set of  twenty might be a way of making the workout more difficult, but if you need to enhance the phosphagen energy system then you are violating specificity. There are a number of ways to apply the  overload principle to a strength and conditioning program:

• increase the weight lifted
• increase the volume of work
• change the exercises employed
• modify the order of the exercises
• alter the rest periods

Increasing the weight that is lifted will make the workout more difficult. Heavier weights will force your muscles, connective tissue, bone and nervous system to adapt. Lifting heavier weights will also cause you to initially perform fewer repetitions with the weight.

Increasing the volume of work—either number of sets, number of repetitions, or some combination thereof—will result in your body having to adapt to it. This is one of the main ways to elicit larger muscles and connective tissue adaptation from strength training. One should be careful with this method of applying overload; a volume that is too great will train the wrong energy system.

Changing the exercises employed is a way to increase overload that many individuals are reluctant to use. Many people feel that the exercises they are performing are the only ones that can elicit certain gains. This is not so. Changing the exercises has a number of benefits, including keeping the workouts interesting and requiring your body and nervous system to adapt to resistance imposed in a totally different way. There are many exercises that train the same movement and the same muscle groups, this means that you do not have to rely on one exercise to train a given area.

The order that exercises are performed is another way to provide overload. By changing when exercises are performed, you make some exercises more difficult to perform and others easier. For example, in your current workout your exercise order may look like this: bench press, incline press, dumbbell flies. Now, let’s change the order of exercises so that the new workout looks like this: dumbbell flies, incline press, bench press. The result of this change is that you will be able to lift more weight on the dumbbell flies and incline press, because they are performed while you are fresher. You will lift less weight on the bench press, because it will be performed while you are fatigued. Not only will you become stronger on the first two exercises, but you will also keep your workouts interesting and this will also help your body to adapt in a different manner because you are focusing on the first two exercises instead of the bench press.

A final way to provide overload is to modify the amount of rest. This must be used carefully to ensure that you are observing specificity. By increasing the amount of rest in between sets, you allow your body to recover more completely. This means you will be able to lift heavier weights with a greater number of repetitions. The benefit oft this approach to training is that it allows you to increase your strength on exercises. Conversely, if you shorten the amount of rest in between sets, you do not allow yourself as much recovery. It becomes more difficult to lift a given amount of weight. While this does not do as good a job of increasing strength, it does force the muscles to grow to adapt to the rest period.

Overload is not something that only needs to be applied on a daily basis, it must be applied over a lifetime of training. The final principle deals with the importance of applying overload logically over time.

Principle of Specificity: Are you training right?

Welcome to Part 3 of our Off-Season Training guide:  The Principle of Specificity of Training

The principle of specificity is deceptively simple and it drives all the gains that one makes from a strength training program. Specificity states that the body makes gains from exercise according to how the body exercises. This  principle is important because applying it correctly will allow one to have a focused, efficient, effective program that will lead to the desired gains. Failing to apply it will result in wasted energy and time, and it will result in frustration as gains do not materialize.

When developing a conditioning program, you should consider the following:

• the movements to be trained
• the muscles and joints to be trained
• the energy system(s) to be trained
• the speed of movement

Strength and conditioning programs can be designed to enhance movements that are performed in athletics. This is important because this may improve an athlete’s performance. It may do this by strengthening the movement; it may also accomplish this by allowing the athlete to practice the movement with resistance. It is also important because it can maximize an athlete’s training time and be used to help prevent injuries in the athletic event. A number of  questions should be considered to help with this:

Is the activity performed standing?
What joints perform the activity?
Do the joints work together or sequentially? If sequentially, what is the sequence of movement?
What motions are performed by each joint?

Things like workload, rest, and intensity are driven by the energy system(s) that you want to train. Energy system training is critical to improving athletic performance. Often performance is limited by your energy stores and your ability to replenish them, both of which are trainable. You can design conditioning programs to enhance the energy system(s) that are used in an athletic event. To do this, consider the following:

How long does the event last?
Is the event performed continuously? Or does the athlete get to rest?
If the event is not continuous, how much time does the athlete actually spend moving before he or she gets to rest?

Energy system training is an important consideration because it helps to dictate how much weight to use, how many repetitions to perform, and the amount of recovery time. If you are interested in increasing the stores of ATP, then training will involve heavy weight, low repetitions, and lots of rest. Glycolytic training will involve moderate reps, moderate weight, and little rest. Aerobic training means lighter weights, many repetitions, and no rest.

A final consideration with specificity concerns the velocity of movement. The gains from exercise are specific to the velocities that the exercises are performed at. If exercises are performed at slow speeds, then we become stronger at slow speeds; however, there is little transfer to faster speeds. If exercises are performed at faster speeds, then we become stronger at faster speeds. This is important for athletics because few sports are performed at slow speeds.

If one is designing a conditioning program for a sport that is performed at high speeds, then one will need to include exercises that make athletes stronger at high speeds. These include things like the variations of the Olympic-style lifts (the clean, the snatch, and the jerk), plyometric exercises, and sprints.

The principle of specificity is important because it dictates what gains are made.