Tag: balance training

Core Training Exercise for Balance

While the previous two videos (see: Integrated Core Training for Dynamic Stability and Core Training Variations for Dynamic Stability) help reinforce elements of low-position control important for skating, the Single Leg Stance Med Ball Figure 8 is more of a traditional balance exercise.

The goal is to stay tall and centered over the foot.

When someone is performing this exercise, there are several things I’m looking for:

Foot stability: Do they maintain 3 points of contact with the heel, ball of the foot and 5th metatarsal (base of the pinky toe)? Some movement is expected, but the foot shouldn’t collapse inward or roll so far to the outside that the big toe peels off.
Hip positioning: As the ball moves, does the pelvis rotate, sway excessively side to side (this can also drive the foot to roll in or out), or dump forward?
Core control: Does the rib cage stay stacked above the pelvis? Most typical deviation from this position is to allow the pelvis to tip forward and rib cage to flare up, which is a sign of an posterior (low back) stabilization strategy, but some will also excessively crunch/brace which will cause them to “lose height”.
Head/Neck position: Does the head stay stacked above the rib cage and pelvis or does it drift forward?

Positioning and control in all of these areas are inter-related, (e.g. a foot collapsing inward can drive a hip tilt and loss of rib/pelvis stacking), so it’s important to observe up and down the chain.

As with the other variations, this can be progressed by adding range of motion to the “8”, adding speed, or adding load. In certain cases, I’ve also progressed athletes to doing this with their eyes closed, to remove the visual contribution to balance.

Give this a shot, and post any questions/comments below!

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

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Challenging Balance and Stability

Before we jump into today’s content, I just wanted to take a quick second to thank those of you that have contributed to the Endeavor Athletic IndieGogo Campaign. We’re very excited about both the performance and designs of our first line and appreciate your support!

We’re also running a Twitter contest to be entered to win a signed Johnny Gaudreau jersey. To enter, all you have to do is Tweet out this link: http://igg.me/at/EndeavorAthletic/ and use the hashtag #OneDayBetter. Each entry will be counted as a separate submission so the more you tweet out the link, the better your odds!

If you missed last week’s post, you can read about it here: Support Endeavor Athletic

Challenging Balance and Stability

Last week I gave my annual pre-season presentation to the Flyers junior team I work with. The goal of the meeting is to outline expectations, explain our philosophy and provide information about off-ice habits (e.g. sleep, nutrition, etc.).

This immediately preceded our season opening weekend, where the team went 2-0 with 5-2 and 7-2 wins. There’s still a long season ahead of us, but they’re currently on pace for a 44-0 season. Just sayin.

In talking about our assessment process, how they should interpret their results, and how it all ties in with our programming, the concept of stabilization feedback/strategies came up.

Understanding this idea is important, as it can help explain why someone has difficulties with balance (or joint stabilization in general) and what needs to be done to address it.

Simply, your body relies on a combination of feedback from 3 systems for feedback about where it is in space:

Proprioception
Vestibular
Visual

Proprioception

The proprioceptive system includes joint, ligament, and muscle/tendon receptors that provide feedback about position, length, and load. As an oversimplified example, if you close your eyes, hold your hands straight out in front of you, and then move them apart, it’s your proprioceptive system that is providing you feedback about where your arms are.

Vestibular System

The vestibular system, involves three semicircular tubes positioned in different directions in your inner ear. Each tube has fluid in it that shifts when your head is moved in different planes of motion (e.g. flexion/extension, side bending, or rotation). This combination of fluid movement provides feedback about where “level” is, just as the bubble in a level tells you whether the picture you’re hanging on the wall is even.

Not quite this simple, but similar idea.

Challenges to this system are one of the more difficult concussion-related complications to address.

Visual System

The visual system also plays a HUGE role in balance and stability. This is easily demonstrated with the Single Leg Stance test that we use with a lot of our assessments. To perform the assessment:

Stand up tall with your eyes open
Lift one leg so your knee is in front of your hip
Hold that position for as long as you can up to 20 seconds
Document your time for each leg

Most of our athletes and general population clients nail this, and can go 20s without any issues. The next step, though, is much more challenging.

Now after you lift your leg, get your balance and feel stable, close your eyes and see how long you last on each leg. With the visual system removed, the other two stability feedback mechanisms are relied upon more heavily and things tend to fall apart.

Not as easy as it looks

This is important because it highlights an over-reliance on the visual system as a stability driver. This wouldn’t be an issue, except in sports (as in life), you can’t visually fixate on one spot to ensure stability; your eyes have to constantly track, analyze, and respond to the rapidly changing environment around you.

That said, you see people using variations of this strategy A LOT, notably when they stare at the ground while they walk or fix their gaze on a single point while they lift or jog. The tendency to visually fixate is inevitably worsening as a result of the amount of time we spend staring at computers and phones. The visual system is extremely adaptable; if we teach it stare at a fixed object within a foot of our face, it will become very good at that.

Training Implications

Training better stabilization strategies can be addressed with a lot of different methods, but these are a few of the ones we use are:

Exercises in half kneeling positions to teach proper pelvic stabilization in a single-leg stance pattern, progressing to more challenging positions (e.g. split stance or single-leg stance positions)
When proficient with eyes open, incorporate some of the above with eyes closed
Use single-leg exercises to expose and re-pattern bad stabilization and movement strategies
Encourage athletes to look forward and “around” as they locomote (e.g. don’t look down when you walk, run, etc.)
While performing certain submaximal lifts, move the eyes with the head (e.g. don’t stare at the same point throughout the lift)

In addition to these strategies, I also recommend looking up from your computer or cell phone frequently and trying to focus your eyes on something far away from you. This way your eyes are constantly visually fixated on something right in front of them, but maintain some flexibility in being able to focus on objects near and far, and transitioning between the two.

Wrap Up

Balance and stabilization are dependent upon an interplay of your proprioceptive, vestibular, and visual systems. Many people over-rely on their visual system, which can compromise effective movement patterns when visual input is removed or challenged by another stimulus (tracking movement in a sport setting). Try the eyes closed single-leg stance test described above, and if you struggle, incorporate the training strategies from this article into your routine.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingMovement.com
UltimateHockeyTraining.com

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Knee Injury: From Surgery to Hockey Training

Part 3 of the return to normal in-season hockey training following knee surgery…

If you missed the first two posts, check them out below:

Training Hockey Players with Knee Injuries

Hockey Training with a Knee Injury

Following the first 4 weeks of training (described in the previous two posts), the player visited Shattuck St. Mary’s so he missed a week of training. When he returned, he said he’d been doing loaded, full range of motion exercises on both legs at physical therapy. His brace had been removed and he was cleared to do normal full range of motion movements, just not jump or sprint work.

I was told he had two more weeks of physical therapy, then he’d probably need another month before he’s able to return to full speed running, cutting, jumping, and skating.

Phase 3 (Weeks 5-7): Upper Body/Non-Operative Leg (Heavy)/Operative Leg (Light)
Program Goals:

Improve upper body strength and power
Improve core strength and power
Improve strength/coordination of the non-operative leg/hip
Improve single-leg stability on operative knee while minimizing compression
Make him work hard so he still “feels” like an athlete
Use exercises that won’t piss off PT or surgeon

A sample training session would look like:

A1) 1-Leg Squat: 4 x 12/side
A2) DB Incline Chest Press: 3 x 8
A3) 4-Way Stability Ball Front Plank: 3 x (3×4)/side
A4) Scap Wall Slide: 3 x 8
B1) 1-Arm DB Row: 3 x 8/side
B2) Split Squat (Front foot on BOSU): 3 x 8/side
B3) Rice Digs: 3 x 60s
C) Lying Partner Multi-Planar Hamstring Stretch

The major changes in this program were the addition of single-leg exercises (A1 and B2) performed on BOTH legs. He told me his balance was terrible since the injury, which is why I went with higher reps on the 1-leg squats and added the BOSU for the spit squats. He really struggled with these at first, but made a ton of progress from set to set.

Multi-planar hamstring stretch
Lastly, this player has great range of motion everywhere except in his hamstrings, so we added a long hamstring stretch emphasizing hip flexion in a neutral rotation position, in external rotation and abduction (leg going outside of hip), and in internal rotation and adduction (leg going toward opposite shoulder).

I’ve had success training hockey players with knee injuries, both in terms of improving their strength/performance and minimizing/preventing knee pain or further injury. A lot of what I know about preventing and training around knee injuries I learned from my colleague Mike Robertson. He put together an incredible resource, Bulletproof Knees, that I HIGHLY recommend to anyone with a history of knee pain/injury or currently dealing with knee pain. Bulletproof Knees details exactly how you can figure out what’s wrong with you (it may not be a knee problem causing your knee pain!) and gives you the exercises to fix it. Check it out below:

-Kevin Neeld

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