With injuries such as groin pulls, muscle spasms, hip flexor strains and more it makes absolute sense to agree that pre-game training is a necessity.
The old adage of a jog and a stretch before a game is absolutely not the correct way to prepare a player for high intensity on-ice activity. In fact it is a detriment.
The Dynamic Warm-Up as developed by Athletic Director of Endeavour Sports Performance Eric Neeld, BSc, MS, CSCS revolves around a series of exercises designed to increase blood flow, body temperature, joint range of motion and neural drive to the working muscles.
Setting up our Dynamic Warm-up program we take into account the following:
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Skating takes the knees and hips through a full range of motion in all directions
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Stickhandling and Shooting takes the shoulders through a similar range of motions
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Hockey involves forward, backward, lateral and diagonal movements
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The muscles around the knees, hips and shoulders are the most important to decrease injury risk
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Thus Core training is an important function of the pre-practice, pre-game warm-up ensuring that the athletes put in maximum effort in this area.
The Warm-up
There are 15 elements involved in the off-ice warm-up centering around:
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The knees, strength and flexibility
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Groin, hamstring, (lateral, backward and forward movement,) straight legged march
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Speed of foot and legs, stride length, flexibility and sprints(two speeds) from push-ups.(back pedal and forward acceleration)
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Shoulders, strength, reach and flexibility
This dynamic warm-up is performed in a thirty minute period prior to the players getting ready for their on-ice activities.