In Part 3 we learned about our body’s own motion capture system called “proprioception”.  This allows your body to feel where all of its parts are in space.  We also considered how, when performing most sports actions at game speed, you wind up tuning out this proprioception system and the feedback it can give you to help you improve.  Therefore, if we slow things down, we can do much better self-correction.  In this part, we will look at a way that we can force a young Hockey player to slow things down so they can take advantage of the improvements which can be made using slow motion practice.

Resistance training is a well-worn path in sports improvement.  Sports that have been late to the “weight room” game such as Baseball and Golf, where coaches were worried that too much strength could bind up people’s swings have come around with targeted training that provides the benefits without the risks coaches were concerned about.  Most resistance training is targeted at making people stronger.  By adding resistance to a motion, the body adapts in order to produce more force, and this is the benefit that most resistance training shoots for.

Yet, we do see resistance training in skill development.  Movement skill development is about learning to apply the right forces at the right times in order to produce (as efficiently as possible) an output that matches the outcome the athlete was shooting for.  Being able to produce more force seems like it would help with that.  Yet if we build a habit of producing more force in one part of a movement, it could throw the rest of the movement off.  So adding resistance in skill development has risks.

I suggest that when people add in resistance during skill development, they are looking to kill two birds with one stone.  They want to work on the skill and add strength at the same time.  This probably can lead to an efficient use of time as long as it isn’t overdone.

But if you look at it purely from a skill development side, there is another reason why adding resistance could be a great asset.  When you add resistance, the same amount of force produced will lead to lower velocity.  In this way you can get the benefits of letting your proprioception really hone in on your performance and tell you what went right and wrong while at the same time working at a maximum or near-maximum exertion level.  In slow motion execution without added resistance, it is on you to slow things down, so you cannot be anywhere near maximum exertion level.

One still has to be careful about how they add resistance.  For example, adding ankle weights to running or skating stride training really does nothing to resist the “extension” part of the stride as your leg is actually pushing against the earth during extension.  Instead, it adds resistance to the “recovery” part of the stride.  This can lead to injuries and can create poor timing.  Further, it is not always the case that recovery speed is a limiting factor, so adding strength there can have dubious benefit.  One must be smart about adding resistance to any skill technique and understand those risks.

Resistance can be a part of skill development, but it should be used periodically in a laser-targeted way to add to the training process.  A steady diet of resistance in skill development will neglect many other useful skill development exercises.

To conclude this part, remember that slow motion technique execution should be used during a skill development process to give an athlete time both for proprioception to provide accurate and useful feedback and for the brain’s attention system to control the technique in just the right way.  Both of these are limited at full speed where we tend to be overwhelmed by everything happening almost at once.  And this does not mean that we are limited low effort levels during slow motion training.  By adding resistance periodically, the benefits of slow motion execution can be had at high exertion levels.

One of Minnesota's premier hockey trainers, Andy Blaylock joins the YHH Staff to write about the dynamics of training, both on ice and off.  Andy is the General Manager of Competitive Edge Hockey in St. Louis Park. His content will emphasize the importance of high quality in-season and off-season training. In addition to running his own private clinics and camps, Andy has trained several organizations including Andover, Anoka, Edina, Hutchinson, STMA and Wayzata.

Andy can be reached via email at Andy@compedgehky.com