minibands Archives - Kevin Neeld

Hockey Training Tip: When a player doesn’t have good single-leg stability, it is common to see his/her knee collapse in while in single-leg stance. This is important because when the knee collapses in, the players foot rolls in and puts more force on the inside edge of the skate blade. These players tend to ride their inside edge on their glide leg, and therefore “brake” against the propulsive force produced by their stride leg. This isn’t only inefficient, it also puts the player at an increased risk of injury.

In addressing this issue, it’s important to recognize that knee position is largely influenced by hip control. While the foot can also influence knee position (those with “flat” or overpronated feet also tend to have an inward collapse of the knee), training the muscles of the lateral hip and grooving a quality single-leg pattern seems to be the most appropriate strategy to help improve this movement impairment.

Bad knee position due to poor hip control

Better knee position with better hip activation

Poor alignment

Corrected

One of the exercises we use the most frequently to help correct this is a simple Lateral MiniBand Walk. The band acts to pull the knees in toward each other, which helps active the muscles on the outside of the hip to prevent this from happening.

Lateral MiniBand Walk

*If you don’t have them already, you can pick up a few MiniBands here: MiniBands

Naturally, this is just one step in improving this pattern. It’s important to reinforce proper alignment during all movements/exercises, especially those that involve single-leg stance.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld

P.S. Check out Ultimate Hockey Training for more hockey training strategies to improve single-leg strength and skating speed!

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On Saturday I had an opportunity to present at the USA Hockey Level 4 Coaches Clinic in New Jersey. I was fortunate to sit in on the presentations from John Riley, Kerry Fraser, and Ryan Walter, all of which were insightful and inspiring. It makes me miss being on the ice!

As is often the case during events like this, the schedule was changed a bit and I had about 40 minutes to get through 60 minutes of material. While I was able to get through most of it, I did have to skim over some of the slides and skip over a few videos, a couple of which I think are extremely beneficial for coaches to see (e.g. the dynamic warm-up and lateral miniband walk videos). As a result, I wanted to post a copy of the power point (in PDF format), and the videos to the presentation below, so anyone in attendance that’s interested has an opportunity to review the material and post any questions they may have below.

Also, I know there was a lot of interest in where to buy some of the basic equipment I reference in the presentation (i.e. foam rollers and minibands). You can buy some of this stuff at any sporting goods store, but I’ve found the quality is pretty poor. The only company we use is Perform Better. Their stuff is high quality, inexpensive, and they have the best customer service out there. For your convenience, you can access the foam rollers (get 1′ 6″ round rollers for your whole team), and minibands (I recommend the yellow ones for younger teams, and green and blue for peewees and above) here: Foam Rollers, MiniBands.

I’ll be posting Q&As and a couple points of clarification on important training methods and their application to hockey performance throughout the week, so please post any questions/comments you have below.

You can download the presentation here: Physical Development for the Hockey Athlete

Videos are below. I also included a few that were in the talk I gave at the USA Hockey U-14 Regional Camp in Colorado Springs earlier in the Summer.

Enjoy.

Foam Roll Circuit