I don’t know any hockey players who want to waste their ice time, but if you are not performing a proper warm-up that is exactly what you are doing.
I know the feeling before the big game, maybe you are a little nervous, maybe your stomach feels a little queezie, maybe you want to conserve your energy for the game, or maybe you just don’t want to stand out from your teammates. Any one of these may be the reason why you still do the exact same pre-game warm-up.
Putting on your equipment does not count as a warm-up. Skating three laps of the ice and then firing slapshots at the net does not count as a warm-up. Think about how you spend most of your time on the ice. You spend your time flexing and extending your hips, lengthening and shortening the muscles of your hips and groins, stopping and starting, changing direction and reaching for that pass. Now contrast that with the amount of time you spend skating in open ice and taking slapshots. With your current warm-up which elements there are helping you perform these tasks?
What if there were a way you could get your legs, hips, torso and upper body ready to perform explosively right from the second the puck drops? It is easy to do and will only take about 10-15 minutes. Don’t worry about looking a little different from your teammates, once they see how you play and how you seem to get injured way less than anyone else, chances are they will start copying you. You see, you don’t want to blend in with the team, you want to innovate and look for ways to stand out as an athlete.
If you are not completing a dynamic warm up, you are losing at least 10-minutes of peak performance on the ice. If you are only getting 17-minutes of ice per game, then you are spending more than half of your ice time getting warmed up during the game.
Your dynamic warm-up should be performed at a steady pace and leave you sweating lightly. Include exercises like:
- Walking quad stretch
- Walking knee hug
- Lunge walks
- Lunge walks with rotation
- Lateral steps
- Lateral hops
- Changes of direction
You can see a sample dynamic warm up here:
Watch for the NEW Ultimate 12-Minute Dynamic Warm-Up for Goalies coming soon!