4 Must-Haves for Your Hockey Bag
I don’t know if you remember these commercials from Capital One. But they would always ask at the end “what’s in your wallet?” I thought they were pretty clever.
So today my question for you is, what’s in your hockey bag?
Below is a list of 4 items that I believe are an absolute must for your hockey bag. Yes, there are other items that I could add to this list but I feel these 4 are the most important pieces in your bag (other than your equipment). These items will best prepare you for your hockey games. If you don’t already have them you can pick them up on Amazon.com by clicking on each photo.
#1 Foam Roller
There are tons of foam rollers on the market but I specifically like this roller. It’s called the Travel Roller. It’s compact and comes with 3 different density trigger release balls. The balls are great for getting into tough-to-get areas and do a good job releasing any knots in the muscles. There are many benefits to using a foam roller in your warm up. To read more about the importance of warming up click here.
Top 3 Reasons why you should foam roll:
- Foam rolling helps increase your range of motion. This will help you get deeper into your hockey stance and the deeper you can get the longer your stride can become. Having a longer stride while skating can help make you faster.
- By foam rolling, you increase the blood flow to your muscles. Along with more blood comes more oxygen. This increase in oxygen will help your muscles contract faster.
- Foam rolling helps activate the core muscles. Playing hockey places a lot of demand on your core. The core helps stabilize all of your movements. If this large area of the body isn’t warmed up properly then all of your other movements will suffer.
#2 Exercise Resistance Bands
These rubber bands are a great way to add resistance to your warm-up drills. In my hockey bag, I always have one small band and one large band.
The smaller band is for targeting and warming up the glutes. Having strong glutes helps us have a powerful skating stride but if those muscles are “sleeping” we will not benefit from their strength. The lying clam shell with a resistance band is a great warm-up exercise that targets and isolates the glutes.
The larger bands can be used for adding resistance to the front squat or back squat to a good morning. Both of these exercises will warm-up and activate the quads, glutes, and hamstrings.
The resistance level of the large and small bands is distinguished by the different colours (yes I’m Canadian). The darker the colour the more resistance the band will provide. I have a small black resistance band as I find it provides the right amount of resistance for the lying clam shell exercise. And for the larger band, I use a 2″ thick green one.
#3 Skipping Rope
Now that you’ve increased your range of motion and your muscles are warm you need to stimulate your fast-twitch muscle fibers. Hockey is a game of speed and the more explosive your legs are the faster you will be. Skipping for about 2-5 minutes before your hockey games will allow your fast-twitch muscle fibers to be stimulated and this will increase the speed at which they contract.
#Shaker Cup
Now that you’re completely warmed up and ready to play you need to provide your muscles the fuel they require to stay explosive throughout the entire game. By consuming a protein and carbohydrate drink 15-30 minutes prior to your games, you will delay the effects of fatigue. I typically could care less about name brands but in this case, I highly recommend the original BlenderBottle. I have never used a shaker cup that mixes as well as this one does. This particular cup also comes with a removable protein storage container on the bottom.
Now that I’ve shared what I consider to be the most important items in my hockey bag I want you to tell me, what’s in your hockey bag?