I know what you’re thinking, “It’s the end of the season, Kim. How can players get hurt now?”

It’s very simple. It’s the change of seasons. And I don’t just mean winter to spring – although it is nice to finally get out from under the deep freeze here in Canada.

It’s the transition from hockey season to…

…Soccer
…Lacrosse
…Rugby

...or whatever sport players are now moving onto now that the hockey season is done.

I started my coaching career as a strength and conditioning coach working with hockey players and still work with players off the ice 20+ years later. And while we see a lot of in-season injuries from overuse and contact, we also see a huge number of injuries strike athletes as soon as they go from skating on the ice to running around on a field.

It’s not because the players are out of shape. Most of the players I work with have been skating five or more times a week and training off the ice with their teams for almost eight months by the time April rolls around. They are in great hockey shape…and that’s why they are getting injured.

Let me explain. Hockey is very much a LATERAL movement sport. Think about it – with every stride you take (or every push the goalie does to make a save), your muscles
are generating mostly lateral force. You might be moving straight ahead on your blades, but you had to push your leg out to the side in order to move forward. Hockey really is unique in that sense. Skating isn’t exactly the most natural movement around.

So while your body might be very well conditioned to generate and control force laterally by the end of the season, you haven’t been training your muscles and joints to move you LINEARLY for 8 months. Linear movement – running, jogging – may be something you do in your team warm-up or on a sprint or conditioning day with your team. But it isn’t specific to the sport you are playing for eight months of the year and therefore your body becomes much stronger in the LATERAL movement plane.

So how does this lead to injury?

Sports like lacrosse, soccer and rugby are based on mostly on LINEAR movement. While you absolutely need to have great lateral quickness in order to be shifty and excel at these sports, you aren’t generating nearly as much force as frequently in the lateral plane as you do in hockey. So when players go from mostly lateral movement to mostly linear movement, their muscles (especially around the hip and groin area) aren’t well conditioned in that new movement plane to make the switch seamlessly.

So you end up with a lot of hip flexor strains, quadriceps pulls, hamstring strains and groin pulls. These injuries can definitely happen on the ice as well, but they are increasingly likely to happen when you are asked to sprint full out in a way that your body hasn’t likely done very much in eight months.

Similarly, hockey players tend to experience a lot of lower leg and foot issues when they transition out of their ski boot like hockey skates into much flimsier running shoes. While skate technology allows for a certain degree of ankle mobility, the firm construction of the footbed of the skate means that players can’t “toe off” and activate their foot and calf muscles in the same way as they would in bare-feet or running shoes. So if you immediately transition out of eight months locked in to your stiff skates into high intensity running based sports, those muscles will be poorly conditioning which can lead to shin splints, foot pain and ankle issues.

So how do we fix it?

I’m sorry to say there aren’t any magic healing potions for this. Many of these strains and pulls could be avoided with proper warm-ups and stretching - in the off-season as well as throughoutthe regular season. Off-ice warm-ups have been a staple in most team’s pre-game routines, but spending more time with shoes off and/or doing exercises that address the “toe off” motion that is missing when we’re trapped in our skates, would both increase performance and decrease injury rates once the off-season hits. Some of these injuries simply a by-product of trying to go too hard too soon in a sport and movement pattern that you just aren’t very well-conditioned for yet. Ideally, there would be a training period where hockey players could transition back into their “running” sports more slowly and not have to go full-tilt right away.

It’s really no different than the transition we see back to the ice in August and September when players who have been focusing more on running sports get back on the ice without enough lateral movement training and end up with pulled groins, hip flexors and sore lower backs. Going from mostly linear movement to mostly lateral movement causes a lot of injury issues as well. That’s why I spend the last fourweeks of the summer focusing on lateral movement training with players to make sure they perform their best and avoid injury once they hit the ice in the fall.

So this spring and summer, make sure you warm-up properly before sprinting full-tilt and remember to cool-down and stretch those hip, groin and leg muscles after you play. I know they aren’t the most exciting things in the world to do, but they’ll keep you on the field and off the injured list.

Work Hard. Dream BIG. Play Safe.