#1 Off-Ice Training Exercise For Female Hockey Players

By Kim McCullough, MSc, YCS

My favorite exercise to use with my girls hockey teams and training groups plays a huge role in improving players’ hockey-specific strength and preventing all kinds of injuries. It works equally as well for every player from 10 year old goalies and 17 year old forwards, and most importantly, it is fun.

My favorite exercise is called, “Single Leg Balance with Partner Pushes”.

Here’s a breakdown of how the exercise works:

Stand on one foot with your knee bent, hips back and chest up. You know that you are low enough when the knee of your non-balancig leg touches the calf of your balancing leg.  Think “knee to calf” and you’ll be in the right place.

Have a partner (teammate, friend, family member) walk around you while you are in this low position and have them gently tap you on your shoulders and back so that you have to fight for your balance.

They aren’t trying to knock you over - they are just tapping hard enough, and from enough different angles, that you need to work hard to keep you balance intact.

Start off holding this nice low balanced position for 10 seconds with taps and progress to holding for at least 30 seconds each leg.

The biggest reason “Single Leg Balance with Partner Pushes” is my most favorite exercise is that it is guaranteed to make all players better because it mimics what players are going to encounter out on the ice.  Girls hockey is a contact sport which means that players are going to get hit and knocked off balance.  Having great single-leg balance is absolutely essential to being strong and stable on the ice.  Without it, girls hockey players will be weaker, slower and more susceptible to injuries. Quite often, when girls are asked to balance on one foot, they stand up straight like a flamingo.  This forces the small muscles of the foot, ankle and calf to do all of the work. These small muscles are quick to fatigue, which causes players’ to lose their balance quickly.

Getting and staying low is hard work. Players may complain that their legs start to burn or shake. This happens because they have not yet developed the endurance in those larger muscles of the leg (quads, hamstrings and glutes) to be able to sustain a low balanced position for a long period of time. These larger and more powerful muscles are much better suited to be used to maintain a low position than the smaller muscles of the foot, ankle and calf, but they need to be trained.

This exercise is hard work, and it will make you better. It’s yet another example of a “little” thing that will make a HUGE difference in the way you perform on the ice.

© Total Female Hockey 2008

Kim McCullough, YCS, MSc, is a Athletic Development Specialist and founder of Total Female Hockey. In addition to training and coaching girls at all levels of hockey, from novice to the National team, Kim has also played at the highest level of women’s hockey in the world for the last decade. Kim’s female player development website features a state-of-the-art Complete Off-Season Training Program and her blog gives the coaches and parents of aspiring young players access to the most up-to-date tips and advice on how to help their players take their game to the next level. To learn more about female-specific player development, get your Free Report: The #1 Mistake Female Players Make in the Off-Season at http://www.totalfemalehockey.com