USA Hockey Adult Hockey

The obstacles facing adult hockey leagues and participants are hardly breaking news to those who play the game.

At various points in this space over the past couple of years, we’ve discussed the difficulty of eating properly before and after a game, the toll it takes on a body to be playing at all hours of the night and plenty of other hurdles the players who love the game are used to clearing as if they’re second-nature.

Today, let’s tackle another issue: ensuring you get a proper warm-up before a game. In an ideal world, of course, you would have plenty of time to do this. In the real world, many adult hockey players are rushing to the rink from a job or from squeezing in some quality family time. And when they arrive, ice time is already at a premium.

John Stenehjem, who helps run an adult league in Anchorage, Alaska, probably speaks for a lot of folks: “I’m lucky to have a team of guys dressed and ready for the opening faceoff. It seems as though our best warm-up drill is just getting to the locker room on time.”

That said, there are some quick and easy things you can do both individually and as a team to get ready to play. If it can reduce your injury risk and potentially give you an edge on the ice, a good warm-up must be worth it, right?

As an Individual

Doug Crashley, who helps develop top-level athletes at Crash Conditioning, offers several good exercises to do before even hitting the ice – ensuring that once you’re all laced up and ready to go, your muscles are as well.

“The biggest mistake we make is jumping into things,” Crashley says. “We need to get muscles warmed up, and activated correctly.”

To that end, he recommends:

• Single-leg squats. Crashley says doing 5-15 reps, which shouldn’t take you much time at all, followed by a simulated skate stride, is a great quick way to loosen up.
• Glute bridge: If you have enough space, this quick warm-up is great for the hips and back. Lying flat on your back with your knees bent and your heels as close to your glutes as possible, lift up and flex your glutes. “Try to keep everything in line and drive your hips to the ceiling,” Crashley says. For a good example of what this looks like, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bbE64NuDTU.
• If you’re really pressed for time, do some side-to-side steps or high knees. “If you only have time to do one thing, maybe it’s a leg swing while you’re standing against a wall,” he says. “That helps quite a bit for a lot of people.”

As a Team

Once you hit the ice for what will likely amount to a few minutes of pregame warm-ups, maximizing your time is even more important. Here’s a good, quick shooting and skating drill that will get forwards, defensemen and goalies involved:

• Have your forwards spread out three across along the blue line, in as many groups as you have on your team. They should be facing the center red line, where defensemen are positioned facing the forwards and also spread out three across.
• Your first forward on the right initiates the drill by passing a puck to the defenseman across from them and skating in their direction. Once they reach the defenseman at the red line, they do a hard stop and skate back toward the blue line, and the defenseman passes them the puck on the move.
• The forward takes the puck and skates around the other forwards in his or her row on the board side before taking a shot on goal from around the faceoff dot. That forward then moves to the middle the next time around. Repeat this with the first middle forward and first left side forward, rotating through all forwards. If time allows, go through the whole cycle multiple times.

It’s a pretty basic drill used by a lot of teams, and there’s a great visual of it here: http://www.icehockeysystems.com/ice-hockey-drills/pre-game.

The benefits of this drill are many: forwards work on skating, stopping, passing, puck possession and shooting in a short amount of time. Defensemen get to receive passes and work on breakouts. Goalies get to not only feel shots, but also see them from a bunch of different angles.

And even if it seems like getting to the locker room on time is your best warm-up drill, a few extra minutes can go a long way.