Should Hockey Players Train CrossFit – Part 3
PART 2 OF SHOULD HOCKEY PLAYERS TRAIN CROSSFIT?
If you haven’t read the first two parts of why hockey players shouldn’t train CrossFit I would suggest doing that first. Here are the links for Part 1 and Part 2.
The first two parts of this series of articles shouldn’t have been overly complicated and the concepts should have been fairly easy to grasp. Over the next two parts, I’m going to get into the specifics of power, strength, and conditioning and why you need to STOP doing CrossFit and that this style of training is preventing you from becoming the best hockey player possible.
Let’s dive in!
POINT FOUR: Power development
Both the Olympic lifts, the hang clean and power clean are great exercises to develop power. Typically hockey players who are more powerful are also faster skaters because they can produce more power with each stride thus creating more propulsion on the ice. It’s imperative for hockey players to add these exercises or similar ones to their training program if they want to become faster skaters. But when you look at the complexity of these Olympic lifts, it can actually take a long time to learn how to perform them in a safe but effective manner. That’s why high-level Olympians take years to learn the movement before they actually start to load them.
When it comes to CrossFit, not only will they start to perform these complex exercises too soon they’ll also perform them with a high number of repetitions. And due to the technical nature of Olympic lifts and their effectiveness to develop power, it’s actually counterproductive to perform these exercises with high volume (lots of repetitions) and more importantly extremely dangerous. What starts to happen is that the proper sequencing of the proper speed and timing of the muscles start to alter. When this occurs, the benefit of developing power from the use of hang/power clean or a similar power exercise is virtually eliminated. This alone should make you want to stop performing these exercises with high volume and reconsider the style of your training because, at the end of the day, you should want to become as powerful as possible on the ice.
POINT FIVE: Too much risk
Continuing with the detrimental effects of performing high repetitions of the Olympic lifts and other power exercises (like the box jump) and why it’s not the most intelligent way to train. We need to understand that every exercise poses some type of risk when performed incorrectly. Each time we train and decide to do a certain exercise we must weigh out the risks and the rewards of that given exercise. After the decision is made of what the exercise will be and how many reps and sets will be performed the rewards better outweigh the risks by at least 10 fold. When we look at CrossFit and how they prescribe their Olympic lifts and other power exercises, they choose to perform them with very high repetitions. In point four you learned that power development is completely negated when high reps are performed.
With performance aside, let’s look at the risk this style of training imposes on us. It doesn’t matter how big, strong or powerful you are if you’re getting hurt along the way. You cannot perform at your best, whether that be on the ice or in the gym if you’re hurt or even battling small nagging injuries. It’s pretty simple to know what happens when performing any exercises for too many repetitions. Fatigue sets in! And when this happens with lifts like the Clean, Squat, Deadlift, or any other complex lift it causes deterioration of lifting form and thus increases the probability of disc bulges and herniation due to the extra stress placed on the spine.
Another thing to think about is how CrossFit sessions are set up. A lot of times the athlete will perform a set of burpees (click here to watch) before a complex lift like a Clean, Squat or Deadlift. While this may seem fine on the surface it’s actually detrimental on two levels. The first reason is that it has caused fatigued prior to a very complex exercise. This fatigue alone will increase the chances of a possible injury. The second reason and a little more complex is what the burpees will do to the spine. The burpees will replace disc toughness with flexibility and also soften the matrix holding the collagen fibers together. This combination will result in a more potent injury risk scenario due to less stiffness for the spine. Combine the decreased stiffness in the spine and the fatigue caused by the burpees and we have ourselves a high-risk situation.
The next risk factor is something that happens to the body at a global level. When we train longer than 10 seconds for one set of exercise we start breaking down glucose (sugar) for energy. In order for this process to happen the body must have oxygen present. With the presence of oxygen and the breakdown of glucose the body starts to create and accumulate harmful by-products (i.e., free radicals). When we don’t allow the body to fully recover between sets, this accumulation of by-products inhibits the body’s ability to balance the oxygen and the free radical ratio which may cause damage to the body and this is classified as oxidative stress. Don’t think that it’s extremely harmful and we should never train this way but when every training session causes this to happen it can lead to too much breakdown of the body and the results will be a decrease in performance and increase in the possibility of injury down the road.
Like I just said, this style of training is an important part of a holistic development plan, especially during certain times of the year. But it’s only a part of the equation and you’d be missing large pieces of the performance puzzle if it’s all you choose to do when it comes to your training.