Put REAL Muscle in Your Hockey Shot!

When I was a kid my dad turned me on to the old strength guru, Charles Atlas. And, as I recall, Atlas' routines mostly used body-weight exercises or ones performed with commonly available items. So, when I was trying to think of a way to REALLY develop great hand and forearm strength in my hockey players, I recalled something I'd seen Atlas do. Picture this, if you will... The famous strongman grasped a kitchen-type chair by one leg (and far down on the leg), and he proceeded to lift the chair off the floor and then wiggle it a bit. Now, any of us can easily lift such a chair; the weight isn't all that much. However, with most of the chair's weight cantilevered out away from Atlas' hand, this method of lifting poses quite a challenge. In other words, the further away the weight is from the hand, the heavier it feels. Anyway, I thought for awhile about combining Atlas' idea with a hockey player's specific needs for strength in the hands and forearms, and I soon arrived at something I dubbed the StickWag. So, take a look at my grandson performing a few "wags", and I'll return below the video to provide a few ideas on making and using your own StickWag device... http://coachchic2.s3.amazonaws.com/StickWag.mp4 If you can picture that cantilever concept -- whereby the weight is a greater and greater challenge the farther it is from the hands, you should then be able to appreciate how the 10-ish pounds of weight represents quite a chore for Anthony Chic to wiggle around. In fact, what I'll ask my Lab students to do is to try to isolate their forearm muscles and really make them pop and burn. Notice also that the movements he is making -- wiggling and wagging that weight -- are a lot like the forceful movements he has to make in his sweep, backhand and snap shots. Better yet, while standing still and practicing shooting might be okay for technique work, a real goal-scorer is able to pull the trigger in all sorts of unbalanced positions, or even with a defender draped all over him or her. Come to think of it, Anthony has scored numerous goals while needing to shoot with only one hand (either the left or the right), and I attribute most of those to his work with the StickWag and another device I'll show you at a later date. Now, the gadgets I ultimately made for The MOTION Lab are adjustable, so that a weight can be moved either closer in (for ease of lifting) or further away (for a real challenge). But my initial models were simpler, and easy enough for you to make and use at home. - For the earliest StickWags, I took a stick-shaft, put nails through the end of it, and then I sunk that end -- with the nails -- into a large juice can filled with concrete. Of course, you might want to adjust the weight (or size of the can) according to the intended user's strength. And the user could move his or her hands up and down the shaft to make the wagging exercises easier or harder (but always aiming to move the weight further and further away). - I later made another -- adjustable -- model. For this one, I again used an old stick, and I drilled holes along the shaft to accommodate pegs. I next found a barbell weight with a hole large enough so that it could fit on and slide up and down the shaft. With that, I could set the weight at a certain distance, and then hold it in place with a peg inserted just above and just below. When doing explosive type movements, it's a good idea to work at maximum intensity for only a brief time (maybe 10- to 12-seconds of wagging). Hockey players might rest twice as long (maybe 30-seconds) before performing another set. Oh, and one final point -- and something you should ultimately come to appreciate about me... I happen to believe that a kzillion dollar device doesn't make a player better; what does make him or her better is the use of whatever means are available. So, whether wiggling and wagging a chair or an old shaft and juice can, it's the doing that's going to put REAL muscle into a hockey player's shot!