Youth Training – Part 4

Strength training is often thought of as just massive muscles and throwing heavy weights. However, the goal of strength training for our Spartan athletes is primarily to be able to perform essential movement patterns without any compensation occurring from other body parts. Yes, this will obviously lead to a more powerful skating stride, a harder shot etc, but developing strength is also an amazing way to reduce overuse injuries. Let’s take a hamstring overuse injury for example, occurring during the season. The hamstring muscle in this case has likely received a lot of stress that was eventually too great to overcome, leading to injury. If we train this muscle to withstand more force progressively in training, it will be able to take a lot more trauma repeatedly on the ice, reducing the risk of any injuries. *Reduce….not prevent. No exercise in the world can guarantee injury prevention*