In-Season Hip Health – Changing the Tires on a Moving Car
I recently viewed an Instagram post by baseball fitness professional Eric Cressey.
Boy, does he hit the nail on the head. My response back to Eric’s post was: ”Well put. Same with the hips in ice hockey.” The volume of games and practices at the AAA level is comparable to Major Junior hockey. It’s a professional hockey season on growing bodies. A good off-season addresses limitations and acts as a tune-up. Yes, a tune up! Hip health, range of motion, strengthening serve to fill buckets and enhance performance. Expecting to address this during the season is a dangerous game as the velocities, magnitudes and frequency of on-ice touches taxes the hip considerably. The hip in ice hockey, is the shoulder in baseball. Throwing year round and expecting “shoulder health” without a proper tune up is a fool’s errand.
Once the off-season starts, great coaches take a systemic, integrated approach to hip health. I have a chapter in The High-Performance Hockey Masterclass dedicated to hip health and how we program during this time frame. Here’s a brief overview based on first principles (assuming no pain).
ROM: Hip IR/ER -90/90 progressions, hip scour
Strengthening: Short to long, Isometric-concentric-eccentric-reflexive eccentric
Patterns – General to Specific
Speed- Slow to fast
Frequency: low magnitude/high frequency (3-4/week)
From my experience, trying to increase the performance measures on the above during the season, is the equivalent to changing the tires on a moving car.
Thanks Eric, for the beautiful analogy.
