The "midsection", or trunk, is an important area of the body for hockey players.  The trunk must be both strong and lean, or performance will be greatly reduced, and the risk of injury significantly increased. Unfortunately, many players neglect training the trunk, instead choosing to work primarily on "beach" muscles, such as the biceps and pecs (chest muscles),  neither of which is very important for sucess in ice hockey.  The trunk muscles are frequently the weak link of the body, often limiting performance and success in hockey players of all ages.

The trunk muscles (abdominal, hip and low back muscles) combine to make up the "core" of the body.  It is here where the body's center of gravity is located, and where body movement initiates.  Strong trunk muscles are essential in maintaining balance, during skating and during physical battles with an opponent.  The trunk muscules also provide about half of the force in shooting the puck, and in skating down the ice.  A weak torso is a major cause of inefficient or wasted movement, as well as the cause of many injuries.  When the trunk muscles become tired, a player will skate in a hunched over, or "slouched" position, rather than with the back arched and shoulders pulled back.  When the torso is in this hunched over position, a player can not move near as quick, and he or she is also much more likely to injure the low back.

The trunk muscles are very important in injury protection.  When the abdominal muscles contract, they act as a sheet of armor to protect internal organs of the body.  The stronger the abdominal muscles the greater the chance that they will not be overloaded or strained, via a blow from an opponents stick, or from a quick, powerful twisting movement, as when shooting the puck.  Many hockey players experience low back pain periodically.  In most cases, low back pain is a result of weak back muscles becoming strained from not being strong enough to handle the stress put upon them during a game or practice.  Strengthening the low back muscles with resistance exercise can alleviate most cases of low back pain, and can prevent many low back injuries.

Another concern about the trunk area for hockey players is having excess body-fat, much of which is stored in the midsection.  While muscle protects the body and provides the force to move the body, fat slows the body down.  Gaining ten pounds of fat in the off-season is just like trying to skate while wearing a ten pound weighted vest.  Not only does the excess fat provide more resistance for the leg muscles to move, thus slowing the athlete down, it also reduces flexibility.  Excess body-fat, much of which is stored in the mid-section, also forces the heart to have to work harder, thereby decreasing endurance.  Exercise will allow you to burn calories and lose body-fat, which in turn will make you skate faster.

How should hockey players train the muscles of the trunk?  There is much confusion about training one of the three muscle groups of the trunk, the abdominal muscles.  First of all, as athletes rather than body-builders, hockey players should be concerned with the strength and power of the abdominal muscles.  Two common abdominal training methods of body-builders are not appropriate or very effective for hockey players.  The first is isolating the "abs" with crunches, often with the use of some device or aparatus.  While isolation exercises that work one muscle or group of muscles may be appropriate when rehabilitating an injury, correcting a weakness, or in body-building, a healthy athlete should train primarily by performing exercises that work many muscles at the same time.  Never during a hockey game will a player contract only the abdominal muscles, or any muscle by themselves.  Training many of the muscles of the body to work together, as required in skating and shooting, enhances muscular coordination as well as strength, and results in gains better transferable to on-ice situations.  By simply adding a rotational motion during a crunch, or by performing a full sit-up, other muscle groups become involved in the exercise, making it more sport-specific and more beneficial.  Forget what you may have heard about sit-ups being a harmful or "bad" exercise.  It is true that sit-ups may be too strenuous for a novice, someone who is extremely out of shape, or someone with an existing low back or neck problem.  As a hockey player, however, if you can not perform a sit-up without straining the neck or low back, you should not be on the ice, as a more serious injury will occur there as a result of an obvious weakness or problem.

The second common body-building method of training the "abs" that is not appropriate for hockey players, is performing a drastically high number of repetitions per set.  A set of 50 or 100 repetitions increases muscular endurance, not muscular strength.  To increase strength, which is more important to hockey players, it is necessary to increase the resistance, so fatigue sets in somewhere between 8 and 20 repetitions.  Resistance can be increased by simply holding a weight plate during the exercise.

Another misconception regarding abdominal training is the belief that working the stomach area with either crunches or sit-ups will reduce body-fat in the abdominal area.  Even though many abdominal gimmicks advertised on television attempt to mislead you into believing so, there is absolutely no such thing as spot reduction.  In other words, working the abdominal muscles in training will simply strengthen those muscles, it will do next to nothing for the fat in the area.  Just as arm curls strengthen the biceps muscles rather than reduce the fat around the muscles, abdominal exercises strengthen the muscles under the fat, not reduce the amount of fat.  To get rid of excess fat in the abdominal area you must burn calories.  Activities that burn the most calories are; cardiovascular exercises like running, skating and biking, and weight training.  The greater the intensity of the exercise, and the more muscle mass involved, the more calories will be burned.

Some exercises for hockey players that are excellent for strengthening all three trunk muscle groups at once are; seated or standing trunk rotation (trunk twists), sit-ups or crunches with a rotation or twist at the top, and back extensions with a rotation or twist at the top.  Lower body free-weight exercises, such as the squat, dead lift and lunge, work all three muscle groups of the trunk as well, and are extremely beneficial for hockey players.  Even many upper body free-weight exercises, such as the military press and bent-over rows, require stabilizing action from the trunk muscles.
 

 Ed Kubachka is an exercise physiologist and certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS).  He currently teaches fitness classes at West Chester University, and runs a privately owned business, Optimum Performance Training.  He works with athletes and teams from the mite through professional level in the areas of performance enhancement and injury prevention.  He currently lectures for USA Hockey, and has produced two videos and a manual on conditioning for hockey.  You can visit his website at optimumpt.com, or e-mail him at info@optimumpt.com.  Feel free to send him questions at P.O. Box 395 Uwchland, PA 19480.  He may answer your question in an upcomimg issue.