Here is a link to a video of the Skating Treadmill in case you havent seen it before. As the hockey season comes to a close and off-season programs begin I will inevitably be asked what I think about the skating treadmill.
It’s big, flashy, expensive and a really hard workout, but is it really helping or hurting the athletes. Let’s take a close and objective look at a few of the popular claims and then weigh the pros and cons of the treadmill and see where we end up.
It’s a really hard workout:
Pro: It is just that especially on an incline. When junior comes off dripping with sweat and losing his lunch it’s hard to say he didn’t work hard.
Con: There is however a difference between good work and hard work. One of the most important elements to designing a hockey training program is to understand how the natural mechanics of the skating stride affect the hips of the skater. Let’s analyze the lower extremity movements of the stride: with the hips and trunk flexed (bent): extension, abduction and external rotation of the leg causes forward propulsion. Flexion, adduction, and internal rotation recover the leg to the neutral position. The results of these movements repeated thousands of times annually are a multitude of imbalances in both strength and flexibility of the hips. The typical hip profile of the hockey athlete’s flexibility will show tight hamstrings, hip flexors, I-T Bands and hip internal rotators. Regarding strength imbalances they will often exhibit stronger hip abduction (muscles on outside or lateral part of the thigh) relative to adduction (the groin muscles on the inner part of the thigh). This imbalance is significant; a 2 part study that I was involved in while I was the Strength and Conditioning Coach with the New York Islanders was published in the American Journal of Sports Medicine. It found that athletes who were able to correct the imbalances and gain equal strength between their adductors (groin) and abductors (outside of leg) were 70% less likely to sustain a groin injury.
Part 1
Part 2
Ok so now that all the technical stuff is out of the way what exactly does that have to do with the treadmill? Well the typical hockey player skates for approximately 9 months per year competitively. Let that sink in for a minute……why then would we want to, put athletes onto a machine that further increases all those imbalances. Why do NHL players hang up their skates in the off season and not lace them back up until about 8 weeks out of camp. The reason is that they spend the summer correcting muscle imbalances, and improving their bodies overall physical abilities. Sometimes the best way to improve your skating is to give your body a break from skating and get stronger, more balanced, more powerful etc…..
It allows you to improve your skating mechanics:
Pro: It does provide skaters the opportunity to work on posture, balance, and edge control.
Con: In order to make the workout harder the machine is either inclined or sped up. The treadmill loses all benefits of improved mechanics in the elevated position as it changes the way the blade rockers on the surface due to the inability of the ankle to dorsi flex (pull toes to your nose). Since the boot is rather restrictive at the ankle most athletes must substitute this lack of ankle mobility by shortening up the return phase of the stride. In other words with the treadmill inclined the ankle cant flex up enough to maintain proper blade contact, so the athlete shortens the stride by not coming back to the same midline position as it would on a flat surface. Also in the flat position mechanics are changed at high speeds as the athlete tries to “keep up with the belt” this action results in much the same shortening of the stride. Remember the skating treadmill functions just like it’s cousin the running treadmill where the machine drastically minimizes the horizontal propulsion of the athlete by providing it for them. That is why you can run on a treadmill all winter but gas easier when you go back outside. It is harder to create propulsion than it is to keep up with it. Some units like the Woodway actually have the option to allow the athlete to create the propulsion. This is great in that it minimizes the shortening effect when trying to keep up with the belt as it forces the skater to push in order to propel. The downside to this is that the extra pushing only serves to increase yet again the imbalances caused by the stride.
Some machines allow you to stick handle while skating improving on ice puck control:
Pro: Having the ability to stick handle while skating is very time efficient from a practice standpoint. It allows the athlete to train hand eye coordination while skating.
Con: If you have mastered the skating stride and are technically flawless then this is a fine way to integrate stick skills into your training. If however you are using the treadmill to improve your stride mechanics (see previous paragraph) then adding a stick will almost certainly have a negative effect on the quality of your session. The reason is that improving your skating technique is essentially motor learning, and there are 4 stages of basic motor development.
1) Unconscious Incompetence: not knowing what you are doing and probably doing it wrong.
2) Conscious Incompetence: being aware that you did something incorrectly.
3) Conscious Competence: doing something correctly when you can focus on it directly. Add an external stimulus though and you are likely to revert back to level 1.
4) Unconscious Competence: commonly referred to as muscle memory. Once you have hit this level addition of an external stimulus will be appropriate.
Think of it this way try learning to ride a unicycle…then while you are still refining your ability to ride, try and juggle 2 tennis balls. If you can do this I am really impressed by the way. Realistically however I think we can all agree that the element of focusing on an external stimulus would more than likely impede your motor skills and make it harder to ride. Same idea with skating and stick handling, absolutely they are both critical elements to a hockey player but when you are learning or refining them you will have greater motor development when focusing on one at a time.
Summary:
Ok so after all that here is verdict, the treadmill is a tool. And like any tool it has its place and time to be used effectively. You wouldn’t use a sledge hammer to build a birdhouse! The problem comes when the treadmill is utilized as it is so often as a tool to get people into shape. Go harder, go faster incline it more, go, go, go. Training like this will absolutely improve your conditioning; but at what cost. Improving performance is not just about improving conditioning. In order to truly improve performance one must improve all of the bio-motor abilities (the physical qualities that apply to sport) Speed, Power, Agility, Balance, Strength, Flexibility, Mobility, Energy Systems (aerobic and anaerobic) and Neuromuscular Coordination. Again sure the treadmill will improve your Energy Systems but so will doing shuttle run sprints and sprinting does not exacerbate the imbalances created by the skating stride.
So why did I take all this time to point out the cons of the machine only to turn around and say it isn’t completely useless. I have a friend, who is a physician, and every year during cold and flu season people come in to him with viruses and beg him for antibiotics. Well antibiotics don’t treat viruses. That however doesn’t seem to register when people feel miserable. What he said to me was “It would take me 10 seconds to write the prescription, it takes me 10 minutes to explain to them why I won’t and why it wouldn’t work if I did”
Maybe it would be easier for me to just hop on the bandwagon and buy a treadmill, but I am just not a big fan of fads. I see the athlete and realize that in order to improve his performance I must correct imbalances and increase stability while I am working to improve all of the biomotor abilities. And while the treadmill has a place in the toolbox of the strength and conditioning coach for me the negatives simply outweigh the positives.
