Take a good look at the photo above.

Can you notice what I’m referring to with the arrow?

If not, don’t worry, I’ll explain it. And to make things easier, I’ve added a video to give you a great visual of what I’m talking about.

I’m sure plenty of you like doing walking lunges because either your coach told you they’re good for your skating muscles or you feel it’s important to work on your single leg strength because hockey is a sport (like many) that require us to be strong on one leg at a time. Both of these are great reasons, BUT this exercise is only effective if you can actually perform the walking lunges correctly.

I’ve seen way too many hockey players in the gym doing walking lunges poorly. Although their intent is in the right place, their execution is far below average.

If you think about when you were first learning to ride a bike, you didn’t just start riding the 2-wheeler right away. I’m almost 100% positive that you started with the tricycle, then a bicycle with training wheels, and finally progressed to the 2-wheeler. If you had started with the 2 wheeler it would’ve been too dangerous and the chances of you injuring yourself would’ve been high. Now apply the same idea to exercising. You have to start with the most basic exercises first and then progress to the more challenging ones.

As far as the walking lunge goes, here is the progression you need to take:

(Only move onto the next exercise once you’ve mastered the technique)

The first exercise is the Goblet Squat.

Then you’ll move onto the Dumbbell Split Squat.

Finally, you can start performing Walking Lunges.

Watch the video below so you can have a better understanding of what I’m talking about.

Incorporating single leg exercises like the Walking Lunge into your workout is a great way to develop the strength needed to have a powerful stride on the ice. But if you’re not doing them correctly you’ll actually end up delaying your strength and worse, increase your chance of injury.

So make sure to start with the most basic exercises first and then progress to the more challenging ones. This will give you the greatest opportunity for improvement.

Stop Using The Tire!

Whether you’re slamming a sledgehammer off the tire or flipping it, you need to stop using this piece of equipment today.

Yes, slamming a sledgehammer against a tire or performing multiple tire flips will increase your conditioning but at what cost?

I’m not trying to say that using a sledgehammer and smashing it against a tire isn’t hard work or that it’s not going to improve your conditioning. What I am saying is I feel there is a better way to improve your conditioning than slamming a sledgehammer down on a tire (way too many risks involved).

Don’t get me wrong, there is a risk with every exercise we perform in the gym. There’s no getting around it. But some exercises have a much greater risk factor than others do. Just like some exercises provide a greater benefit than others do. When choosing which exercises to perform in the gym we need to think about the risk/reward of each exercise. We need to perform exercises that will give us the greatest amount of benefit with the smallest amount of risk. And I don’t think using the tire does this for us.

For example, let’s say you’re at the end of your summer training program and you have your big tryouts coming up in 2 weeks. You’ve been working your ass off all summer to try and make this new team. You’ve done everything possible this summer; you’ve gone to bed early on Friday nights while your friends went out to party because you had Saturday morning training. You’ve paid attention to your diet and made sure you didn’t eat any junk this summer while your friends were devouring McDonalds every day. You’re literally in the best shape you’ve ever been in. And now you’re only 2 weeks away from proving why you deserve to make this new team. It’s Monday morning and you’re using the tire to perform some sledgehammer smashes and all of a sudden you miss the tire and smoke yourself in the shin and break your tibia. It’s extremely unfortunate and now you won’t be able to display your skills and showcase your hard work at the upcoming tryouts.

So you have to ask yourself, was it worth using the tire?

Ok, so you’re reading this and thinking to yourself, I don’t use the tire in that way. I use the tire to flip it over (like the picture below) because it works on my leg strength and endurance and it’s safe because there is no risk in breaking my tibia with the sledgehammer. While this may be correct there is a different type of risk involved when flipping tires. Most hockey players are extremely tight in the hips and can’t keep their back flat (or slightly lordotic) when getting into a deep enough squat to get their hands under the tire to flip it properly. What ends up happening is they don’t use their legs to flip the tire (the whole point of the exercise) but they end up using their lower back to perform the exercise. Over time using these poor mechanics will cause an extremely sore back and possibly injury. If you look at the picture below, you can see that the person trying to flip the tire has a very rounded back because she doesn’t have the mobility in her hips to get deep enough to get her hands under the tire. As fatigue sets in, this form will only get worse and the chance of injury will increase greatly at this point.

So what I’m trying to say here is be smart with the exercises you choose to perform in the gym because each exercise comes with risk factors. We want to minimize as much risk as we can while trying to maximize and achieve as much benefit as possible.