Cutting Edge Preparing the pros for action or most North Americans, the idea of exercising leads to fi tness, which in turn has the benefi t of reducing or maintaining a healthy weight, increasing your overall health and well-being, and providing an opportunity to better enjoy recreational activities with your friends and family. For competitive or elite athletes, the demands they place on their bodies are much higher. In years past, professional hockey players would play a lot of golf over the summer months, and go to their training camps to “play into shape.” However modern-day ath- letes no longer view the training camps as an opportunity to get into shape, but rather the key as to whether they will make the team or be cut. Nowdays, professional and elite athletes continue to train throughout the off-season, as the athletic world has become very highly competitive. F The Lateral Cable Lunge exercise Over the years, fitness and con- ditioning for elite and professional athletes have become more spe- cialized and very functional from a sports-specific perspective. Typically, athletes now work with a team of professionals, which not only includes a sports chiropractor and other health-care professionals, but also training staff who are very specialized in developing an appropriate train- ing program. Andy O`Brien is one such individual who has de- veloped a very practical protocol with the focus on functional con- ditioning in professional sports, especially the National Hockey League (NHL) players. ANDY O’BRIEN – ONE COACH’S CORNER Today’s NHL hockey players face a variety of challenges in preparing and maintaining their bodies. On the ice, players need to be fast, powerful, agile, and have great endurance from a variety of energy systems. Developing these qualities, and maintaining them over a gruelling schedule, requires a multifaceted, holistic approach to training. Surprisingly, the biggest challenge in achieving all of this might be overcoming the effects of regular movements associated with the game. Skating requires players to produce forces horizontally through their lower body while maintaining acute hip angles. When handling the puck, players hold their spines in a laterally fl exed and rotated po- sition. Finally, shooting requires players to create rotational forces in one direction for thousands of repetitions each week, with very few in the opposite direction. Not exactly a series of movements the human body was designed for! The end result is a player who has a variety of muscle imbalances and unnatural motor patterns. Eventually, their athleticism becomes limited, and they end up with decreased performance and chronic injuries. That, in a nutshell, sums up the modern-day profes- sional hockey player. When a player comes off the ice to train, it is almost certain they will be moving inef- fi ciently. The body will twist and pull itself into compensatory positions to avoid using weak muscles, over-rely on strong ones, and accommodate limitations in range of mo- tion. The more dynamic the movement, the more compensation will occur, and the more www.canadianchiropractor.ca CANADIAN CHIROPRACTOR | JULY/AUGUST 2008 • 27 Currently the conditioning coach for the NHL Florida Panthers, Andy O’Brien has developed a unique conditioning approach with many professional- and elite-level ath- letes. Dr. Seaman is a Fellow of the Col- lege of Chiropractic Sports Sciences (Canada) and is a member of the Sports Medicine Advisory Commit- tee of the Canadian Sports Centre Atlantic. Brian Seaman, DC, FCCSS(C), FICC Andy O’Brien feature
Chiropractic + Naturopathic Doctor July-Aug 08: Page 27
