Athletic Performance Podcast
The Athletic Performance Podcast: we discuss all things performance-related, with a focus on pushing the boundaries of speed, power, and strength.
Athletic Performance Podcast
021 - Rich Thaw on Speed & Stamina in Hockey Athletes
Welcome Rich Thaw to the Athletic Performance Podcast. He is the owner of Empower Fitness and Sports Training in Montreal, Quebec. Rich has an impressive track record working with athletes at every level, from youth to professional, including the NHL's Montreal Canadiens.
In this episode, Rich shares his pragmatic approach to developing speed, power, and strength in hockey athletes. We take a deep dive into the nuances of speed, exploring the differences in sprinting progression on ice versus ground. Rich breaks down the force and velocity characteristics that define elite speed and discusses the unique nature of the hockey stride.
We also tackle the injury challenges specific to hockey, like groin pulls, and how Rich is proactively vaccinating his athletes against these common issues.
Plus, we get into the unique conditioning demands of hockey and how Rich prepares his athletes to perform at their peak on the ice.
This conversation was incredibly insightful, helping me appreciate both the similarities and differences in hockey athletes.
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It may not seem like much, but it helps us spread this information to other coaches who might benefit.
You can follow Rich on instagram at @coach_richthaw.
Follow us at @coachryanpatrick for updates and more speed training insights.
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Welcome to today's episode. I'm coach Ryan Patrick, and I'm excited to bring you an incredible conversation with Rich Thal, the owner of Empower Fitness and Sports Training in Montreal, Quebec. Rich has an impressive track record working with athletes at every level, from youth to professional, including the NHL's Montreal Canadiens. In this episode, Rich shares his pragmatic approach to developing speed, power, and strength in hockey athletes. We take a deep dive into the nuances of speed, exploring the differences in sprinting progression on ice versus ground. Rich breaks down the force and velocity characteristics that define elite speed and discusses the unique nature of the hockey stride. We also tackle the injury challenges specific to hockey, like groin pulls, and how Rich is proactively vaccinating his athletes against these common issues. Plus, we get into the unique conditioning demands of hockey and how Rich prepares his athletes to perform at their peak on the ice. This conversation was incredibly insightful, helping me appreciate both the similarities and differences in hockey athletes. If anything in this show resonates with you, please help us continue to produce this podcast and share the great information our guests provide. There are a few ways you can do this. First, please subscribe and review this podcast with five stars. It may not seem like much, but as a new podcast, this helps us grow our reach greatly. Secondly, please like, and share this episode either directly with someone who would benefit or on social media to find out more about me or the guests on this show, please follow me on Instagram at coach Ryan Patrick.
Ryan Patrick:I have a rich show today, man. Um, you know, we go way back. We've been You know communicating on instagram forever We obviously got to meet through the unicorn society when I was a member of that And uh, we kind of maintain this relationship, which is really cool, man Because I know you're doing great things and I do miss having the opportunity to see you on a more regular basis So at least you get to see your pretty face Um, but for those that, that don't know you, man, uh, start by telling us a little bit about yourself.
Rich Thaw:Um, me name is Rich Thal, grew up in Montreal, uh, Canada, uh, grew up playing hockey and that's pretty much my path into the sports performance realm was, um, looking for a leg up on the game. I had the Skill set enough to be like good ish, but not good enough to make the next level. So I fell upon sports performance, um, fell into the likes of, uh, X Os and Verstegen and Boyle and MBSC, and I kind of dove deep into their work, um, found out that I was just as passionate about the why behind sports performance and increasing insert valuable metric than I was the outcome. The outcome was awesome, but also the why behind it was like really drove me. So I just dove deeper. And as I, what moved up in the leagues, obviously my friends were better than me and went farther than me. So I ended up training them, applying those tactics, tactics and techniques and seeing that it actually worked. So then just kind of furthered my drive. And I guess, I mean, admittedly need to know more. It's not want, it's need. Then internships at Boyles in the States, and then came back, started The athletic performance program here ran internship program for 10 years and a mentorship program. Um, and then fast forward four more years and then I opened up Empower.
Ryan Patrick:How long has Empower been open now?
Rich Thaw:This is year two. So like January 23 was day one.
Ryan Patrick:Oh man, I feel like it's been longer than that. You're doing, you're killing it. That's it. A couple years in, man. Thanks man. Thank you. It's definitely a lot of work, right? Owning a business is, uh, there's, there's many not glamorous things on the side. It just, it'd be so nice to just come in, uh, do some coaching and then go home, but writing programs can, can be a little exhaustive. Yeah, what's that? Like, right. Okay. So let's talk about a power and let's talk about some of the athletes you work with. So I want to start, start really broad here and, uh, we'll, we'll probably navigate some, some different tangents and stuff, which I think can be really exciting, but I know you as a guy who works with a lot of hockey players. Uh, what other athletes are represented because you're in Canada, completely foreign, literally foreign to me in terms of what guys are doing up there and more specifically. When these athletes are coming in, uh, what is your assessment process look like for them?
Rich Thaw:So, okay, so we don't only work with hockey players, although that is in the limelight because hockey is such a popular sport. Also, I grew up on the ice, like, ice in my veins, you know, like, so I know the sport very well. Um, I also have a lot of contacts in the sport from growing up, everybody I played with either. Or is coaching or went somewhere with hockey. So, um, hockey is the main sport that we train here. However, we also train some pro level soccer teams, um, women mostly, and then also skiers and, uh, basketball. But they're much less, they come second to hockey. Let me just say it that way.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Tell me about your assessment process when they come in. Like, what are you guys going through? What does this look like?
Rich Thaw:Uh, it's pretty straightforward to be honest. I mean, I have really gotten away from table tests, although I do see the value in them only because it's almost as if like, okay, you put them on a table and you move them one way, then you get them standing in the entire system. Changes in just call it tone or like the way you the muscle in this just to keep the simplicity High in this this aspect here. Um, so I just generally take them through a lift and i'll watch how they move I'll watch how they sprint i'll watch how they squat i'll notice how like they have certain biases And patterns that just pop up because they are them and they've developed certain strategies to get to the level that they did, um, with some people watching them sprint or jump or throw a med ball, you can tell, like, are they just like a gorilla, so to speak, or are they like a kangaroo, are they super springy or they're like slow and strong as shit, um, or do they just need all the things, um, we have, we have some tools that we use, uh, the. plyo mat, um, which can measure vertical jump and ground contact time. Um, we use the laser sprinters. Also the lasers, we have a Brower here, um, which I usually track the 10 yards, 10 yard dash. And I'm just looking at like, I don't cue it other than like, put your foot in the laser. You hear the beep go. And I purposely don't cue it just to watch what their strategy, what their projection strategy is. Um, and I'm kind of jumping the gun here, but hockey players are notoriously shitty spreaders. I don't really care. I just want to see like, how do, can, do you have the requisite hip flexion? Um, what happens to the femur and the foot when you're trying to go through that like, um, stride cycle in the first couple of strides? Um, and then with regards to like upper body stuff, I'm like, alright, let's do a chin up, like show me a med ball slam, like something where they don't really think about it, they just go, that'll tell me a lot about their upper body health. And then obviously when they're rolling, when they're lying on their back, I look at their ribs, um, and ask them about their neck and all that stuff, and that's pretty much it. Nothing super rigid, but definitely, um, checkpoints along the way that I do make a point to look at during the session.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, you know, that's something that's been finding more valuable because I have some athletes come in and, you know, we'll go through, let's just a body weight series of exercises or a split squad and they look, you know, they, they show me a lot of compensatory strategies, right? Things that are just moving, maybe not in the ideal way, but with many of these athletes, we can make just some small modifications and training and all of a sudden they look exceptional, right? So we change the constraints or we change. Uh, the way that we're loading to just impact how their, their self organization is, and almost everything becomes an assessment because it's like, we can, we can modify this on the fly and, you know, more and more. I'm just wondering what the utility of some of these table tests are with some of these, uh, kind of entry level tests are for high performers. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, totally.
Rich Thaw:I don't, I don't think there's, I mean, like, there definitely is a carry over if somebody is pain or some sort of negative consequence from training. Absolutely. That's, that's, that's literally not in my realm. Like, I know enough about it to be dangerous, like, the physical therapy side. But I wouldn't go ahead to be like, all right, cool, this table test says this, so we have to do these manual exercises. I think, like, us as the. People on the performance floor, we got to be mindful of, okay, how can we use the tools that we have, legit, like lifting to be able to get the outcomes that we seek. And then understanding that like with every outcome or like position change that we're able to make, there's also, there is positive consequences, but there's also negative consequences. Like with one thing, you lose another. The way I was explaining to an athlete yesterday, I was like, look, I can, I can get you to squat all the way down. Um, but like, do you need that? And I was like, if I give you that, you may also be less explosive. Like, you may not be as shifty on the ice. Like, we can go down that pathway. I don't want to. But if you want it, we can go. And don't blame me if we get that later on and you lose the shiftiness, you know? But I don't know unless we do it. But I don't want to touch it. Fine, don't touch it. Okay, we're not touching it. We're going. Let's go. You know?
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, we're ultimately assessing the wrong thing. The goal is not to get, you know, three on the FMS squad. It's to make you more explosive on the ice. So are we chasing the right rabbit? And the other thing, and I don't know that a lot of coaches really want to hear this, but I feel like our job is pretty fucking easy and many times. Many times we go down these intellectual rabbit holes to stimulate our brain, to engage ourselves in what we're doing. And I think there's a ton of value in justifying our practice, understanding the nuances of anatomy and biomechanics and biochemistry for whatever your objectives are. But at the end of the day, if you're in the PRI room, for example, and Uh, no, no shade to PRI because they have some excellent practitioners out there. We will get a coach who all of a sudden is a quasi wearing their quasi PT hat, doing the same three exercises executed very shitty, just because we need to be intellectually stimulated and many of my clients, they don't give a fuck how many split squats I've watched this week. But I just don't need to coach them to do a split squat. Well, even though it's the same, same shit I've seen all week long, and that's a hard pill for some people to swallow, to just do basic things at a really brilliant level and, and not conflate it with all of this. Uh, tertiary context that's really taking away from what the objectives are.
Rich Thaw:Agreed. I, I, I think that Brilliant's kind of, I mean, this is kind of, I mean this with the utmost respect, not blowing smoke up the butts of, um, with every person, they have a different strategy for split squat. So like one cue that you give to one athlete or one gen pop client or one athletic adult will be wildly different as a corrective cue than another. Right. Thank you. And the skill lies in to know what cue to give what person within, like, the first one. Like, you give the cue, it doesn't work, you change up right away because you see it just didn't, didn't resonate, you know? Um, I think that's where the mastery is. It's understanding what cue resonates with the right type of person. And identify the type of people right away.
Ryan Patrick:It's hard to develop those without actually practicing it. Because I've given people cues. That I'm like, hold up, just like, forget what I said. Let's go back 10 seconds in time. Don't even do that. But when you give somebody cue it and I'm still guilty of this because I do like to talk a lot and I'll explain things to athletes in a way that I think Is intended to get them to buy in, but if you have to understand a Q really is interference, we're interrupting, you know, what their normal processing is, right? So I have this intention of what I want to see. So I've got a model of what this thing is supposed to look like in my head. I understand what their individual variants or strategy is, how it might deviate from that. And then I'm trying to change their motor output, so they have to process what I'm saying. Change internally the way things are executed and they get the outlook that, that I want to confirm this, right? So there's, there's many steps to this that I think people can, especially inexperienced coaches can miss. So you can learn the knowledge, you can learn the ins and the outs. And there's, there's kids in their early twenties who haven't been coaching. 5 years who know the language and speak very fluently, but they can't coach themselves out of a wet paper bag now.
Rich Thaw:Yeah, I've seen that many times over. It's, it sucks that the revenue is so simple as I can just get a coach mark, get more reps. Like, it's nothing more complicated than that. Just like, use it and be intelligent enough. Okay, cool. That doesn't work. Let's try something else.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, when we came up, or at least when I came up, because you've done these internships, you've, you've been all over the place. I didn't have the luxury, or I chose not to do internships, so there are many things that I had to just get experience with and kind of learn on my own and glean what I could from the Mike Boyles, the Eric Cressy's, the Mike Robertson's, you know, XO's, uh, when Mark Verstegen was in there, or whoever, Lee Teff. I did some stuff, you know, uh, where it just required me to get a lot of reps, to just get my hands dirty, put it in a little elbow grease, make some mistakes. And I feel like there are many people who try to shortcut this process. Like you can, you can learn the. Education and the knowledge, getting the experience to deliver the right thing at the right time. I think that's only afforded to the people who really put in the work.
Rich Thaw:Yeah, it's tough to swallow, but yes, you're very right. As soon you kept realizing, realizing you just need more reps is the time when they'll start working and cooking.
Ryan Patrick:So I want to shift gears, man. I don't want to get too far off track here. You talked about hockey players sprinting. They're notoriously shinties, shitty sprinters and shitty sprinters. So I don't know a lot about this. So I'm a speed guy. I like to study speed. Um, but what do you look for when it comes to hockey players? Because to me, there's, we think about the context of what they're doing. They've got a boot that limits their ankle mobility. Their, their interaction with the ground is a tiny blade on a surface. That's completely foreign to me and the athletes that I work with the angle of force application is the stride, which to me is more of like a medial lateral force, right? So pushing wide and, you know, how does this like, so when it comes to developing on I speed. How do you do this inside of the training room? Is it like typical sprinting? It's just fast, fast. Are there other things that we should be thinking about? Okay,
Rich Thaw:from the beginning. So a couple things to note about sprinting on on ground versus on like on ice. So the stride on ground essentially long, powerful strides. So it's increased ground contact time to decrease ground contact time. So think of the acceleration where it's like bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang. And it fucking fly, sorry. Frickin flying. Um, whereas on the ice you can't do that. It's the exact opposite. So it's. It's quick steps. At first. And there's long powerful strides as you go through. So as, as you accelerate, you almost see like crossover pop pop pop three or four steps. I don't, the stride really opens up. And then they're also gliding. So, um, in terms of propulsion, we're using, I mean, when we train that here, I mean, here, like in the facility, I don't really care so much about their strategy, like their arm swing. Although I would like some sort of like eye socket hip pocket scenario. Same thing with like how they push off. I will purposely set them up instead of like straight on. I'll set them up at 45 degrees sometimes, or we'll do half kneeling, um, where the outside leg is up. So they have to push off of like the inside edge of the medial aspect of their foot to propel them out that way. Heck, I'll even do it the other way. Just to, Um, force them to cross over and get used to accelerating out of like a weird because it happens in the game. Like, I'm not going to replicate everything, but I think it's important to expose them to scenarios like that. So going back to the ground contact time thing. I don't care so much about the, how, how the sprint pattern looks. It doesn't need to be perfect. And it needs to be good enough because what we're training isn't the technique. We're training the qualities of sprint performance. So can you drive really freaking hard for 10, 15, 20 yards and accelerate quick? And then once you've reached quote unquote top speed, it's not really top speed. Once you've reached quote unquote top speed, can you maintain that cadence or that power output projecting you forwards? Because the two similarities of off ice and on ice is just like, it's legit poor projection. And yes, they'll have skates, but more or less, it's The same muscles that protect you forward so like a sprinter is like hamstrings and glutes and then quads to some degree So it's like very sagittal plane esque whereas like skating is more of I Would you legit say just transverse plane? Because one skate is gliding forward on like the flat edge or if you didn't give a shoe the flat part of your shoe The other one is inside edge Or like medial aspect or arch. And then your whole leg ERs externally rotates and you're driving out. So it's like glutes, lateral quad, crazy. And you see a lot of groin pulls because lateral quad and glutes are a shit ton stronger than the groins. Plus being bent over in that like, uh, I don't know, forward position, which puts that groins on stretch. So a stretch muscle is like a weak or a muscle is put in like a disadvantaged position, a weak muscle, so to speak. Um, so glutes versus stretched groin, like groin pull every day, like nine times out of ten. So that's, that's a big concern with the beginning of the off season, right through where I call it like the post season right through to the pre season. So I call it post season, off season and pre season. Almost as like help the guys and gals who come through here, uh, recognize the different phases of stuff we're doing. But essentially we're looking at the types of sprints and the vulnerability to like groin pulling, it's not really pulling, but like the potential of groin pulls, so like, for example, a flying 10 or a flying 20, a lot of higher potential for like hamstring pulls than would be a 10 yards from like a dead stop, you know, like, cause it's really hard to pull something in 10 yards, it's like five, six steps tops, you know, like
Ryan Patrick:if you're
Rich Thaw:not doing, um, but yeah, so, so getting off my high horse here, um, my podium, the, the sprinting. On the ground is very similar to sprinting on the ice, solely in the aspect of projection and, uh, we're talking about hip flexion, hip extension, and then everything else is pretty different, but it doesn't really matter because those qualities transfer.
Ryan Patrick:Okay, so if, uh, I take two hockey players. And one is a faster skater, does, does that mean he's going to typically be the faster person on ground in a regular shoe?
Rich Thaw:At what part of the, like this is it the acceleration at the top? Are we talking like coast to coast, like goal line to blue line? Are we talking like, uh, is like a, I guess that's fair. Okay.
Ryan Patrick:Let's say, let's talk about 10 yard sprint. If I have a guy who is a faster accelerator on the ice, is he also the faster, typically, is he the faster guy on ground in the acceleration? Probably, yeah. Okay. So the transfer is like. It's pretty
Rich Thaw:close. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. It's, but again, it's, it's their strategy. So like on the ice, there's a bunch of, it's the same with sprinting. There's a bunch of different strategies, um, that people use to skate, but you'll notice if you, we take like the most popular hockey players, the McDavid's and the Bedard's, like they have, like, there are similar stride patterns and those, those players who've excelled or the top of the game in certain, whatever kind of athlete you want to talk about. Like they have similar strides. People are very shifty and they can accelerate quick. You can see they're low and they drive their leg all the way out. And they can maintain that low position even when changing directions. So you'll see that very similar strategy on ice to how they sprint in the gym. Like they, they, they, pretty much a one to one and I won't even touch that. The only thing I care about is like, all right, dude, like all I, all I care about is like when you're cycling through, forget the butt kicks. We go like knee. Punches up in front of you instead of like push harder backwards because like on the ice It's like push harder backwards, right? so for sprinting I'm like I want that knee coming up because with that like the reciprocal nature of sprinting or running or skating Like I want that knee to punch up and if that knee punches up in front it will punch back So come talking about like a hip health standpoint. I'm just looking like can we get your hip flexors and groin? Which so as with hypers, can we get those muscles strong enough to maintain the volume and stresses that we're going to see during the postseason, offseason, and preseason? And more importantly, can you maintain that during the year?
Ryan Patrick:Interesting. I have 1 question I wrote down, you, you talked about the, like, I'll just call it like spatio temporal variables. Right? So, in a sprint, I think there's, you know, 4 big ones. You got like airtime ground contact time stride length frequency. In a sprint, like an on ground sprint, the ground contact is longer early on and it gets shorter as you go. Was that clear and understanding that the ground contact time is initially a little bit shorter in a skate because they're trying to rapidly get turnover and then as they gain speed the ground contact is going to increase a little bit? Yeah, it's the opposite. Interesting.
Rich Thaw:So think about it, like, um, you have to have some portion of glide. on the ice. Um, if you would look at, I don't know if anybody's ever watched speed skating or like watched any, any version of hockey where people do stop hard. It's a quick crossover, pop, pop, pop. And then it's like a longer, like more accentuated stride. But the first couple of strides are really quick. Like you need to turn, you get to accelerate quick. Um, That's that's pretty much it and the science behind that is irrelevant.
Ryan Patrick:Sure. So when we're talking in Max B, so now I'm speaking to a flying 10, what is the, without any coaching, what does that, that technique look like as they transition from the eyes? Do they, because in, in on ground spinting, you're going to have very short ground contact times at higher speed, which is the opposite of what you're communicating. Do you see some, some nuance to their strategy when they're trying to sprint? Yeah. Absolutely. At maximum
Rich Thaw:velocity. Oh my God. Yeah, absolutely. But to the point I made before, like, I don't much care about the strategy. I just want them to be able to project forward. I want that, like some sort of like, I'm not coaching them to be amazing sprinters. I'm just coaching them to be as efficient as they can within the short window that they have. So like at the end of the day, I'm like, okay, how much do I really want to stop? Walk them through analogies, video them, coach them on it. I'm like, no, let's, let's just like, let's move. Let's let's fucking move through space. Like build up to build up to a top speed. Um, so for example, we did some flying tens today. We just started with flying fives, sorry, a flying 10 to the five yard lead in. This phase was a flying 10 with a 10 yard lead in. And the next phase we're going to probably do a 15 yard lead in with a flying 10. Um, just to be able to really touch on top speed stuff. I don't ever think there'll be able to really reach that unless you go and coast to coast on the ice. However, it's important to quality for them to maintain is like, this is what Thompson feels like. This is what it feels like for a max effort over a quasi short distance amount of time. So all I'm going to coach is like, I would love to see that knee punch up. On each leg and I want to see you like, almost like, um, we're doing the power skips if anyone's familiar. So I was like, look, I would like you to be like a rock skipping on water where you just whip it. And it's the first two steps. Like, I want to see every step being powerful. And I want to see you like covering a lot of ground every step. That's all I care. I'll never kind of like foot contact thing is like, I don't care. It fixes itself, you know.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, so seems like exposure is the inoculation
Rich Thaw:pretty much going back to coaching, like, just do more of the thing and you get better with the thing I
Ryan Patrick:do. I do have 1 additional question, uh, with them being stuck in a boot. What is do you see, like, because a lot of sprinting is going to be this 4 foot contact. How much yield do they have through that ankle, or is their Achilles calf, you know, soleus complex, is that pretty rigid? Are they able to hit the ground with a decent amount of stiffness, or do you find that's in deficit because they're constantly in a skate?
Rich Thaw:Uh, it's not as, yeah, it definitely isn't deficit related to some, like, a soccer player. For example, you can definitely see right away, if you recall, like the rudimentary series from like Altus there, like the soccer players are much more stiff and springy, so to speak, than the hockey players. But then again, like the hockey players, they go back to a boot. So they don't really need to be able to like, be super springy in nature. We do add a lot of that stuff early on in the post season, um, and then keep up in the Or sorry, solely wrapped with the volume during the offseason, the preseason. But it's more of a, let's keep their lower limbs healthy and teach, reteach their body the ability to co contract from the foot all the way up to the hip. Um, because we're going to be doing a lot of plyos, we're going to be doing a lot of like changing direction stuff and sprints, stuff that are like lower limb heavy, so to speak. So, but in the boots, um, the boots are engineered to have some sort of like forward lean. So the heel is higher than the toe.
Ryan Patrick:More or
Rich Thaw:less. Um, the angle depends on the skate and also the player's preference, but there's also another strategy where players don't tie their skates all the way up to the top. What they do, they just leave the top couple of laces loose. So it allows more, like, ankle mobility and more forefoot touch. Um, and then touching on the acceleration, there will be more on the front of the blades. When they're like, it's almost, I mean, those who aren't really watching the video will be able to see this, but you almost look like the toe ish, toe like midfoot for the first couple of steps. And then you go full blade to stride to get more of a, and there's, I mean, like going deeper down the rabbit hole, there's different cuts to the blade. Which are meant more for like, um, turning and then meant more for a top end speed. And there's another one that's, I mean, there's a pretty much two, there's like different versions diving deeper down those rabbit holes.
Ryan Patrick:Now, this is fascinating to me, because I just, I know so little about this, then, I mean, if I can put a neat bill on it, especially for the listeners, it just, it sounds like, yeah, you have to give them a little bit of these things that they don't have, so they can train the skill without getting injured. But beyond that, it's. Give them the, the, the exposure again to, to accomplish the task at hand.
Rich Thaw:I mean, even at that, like I have, um, a player this summer who came in, who legit got label surgery, um, day one. Like, he came in, he goes, yeah, I did my surgery two weeks ago. I, I just got the green card, like, green card. You know, I got the card to go play, uh, like, train. Um, the, so I was like, okay, well, we can't sprint. Like, he's, like, holding his arm up in, like, a quasi cast. I'm like, alright, we can't sprint, but, like, what else can we do that can elicit the same performance qualities as a sprint that won't let him bounce around? Alright, we'll bike sprint, I guess. Like, will he have the lower limb ground contact time? No. Will he have the stresses? Like, no. But at least his body will be able to train similar, uh, sensations as if you would be on the ice. Like, bike's very quad y, if you want. And then hockey is a very quad y sport. You might just call it, like, quad y. What it is. So if I kick, oh, that's as close as we can get without putting him in pain. We're doing that until he can do something else. Then we'll slow drip the other stuff into it. Right now, we're in a phase where he is sprinting again. He's feeling great again. He's moving the arm again. But we had to kind of bring him up with some extra homework to make sure his lower limbs were able to handle insane jumping volume of like, let's call it plyos from 0 to 100. Or whatever the number was, is to many, I
Ryan Patrick:thought you were talking about a, a hip, uh, labrum at first, which I know is a huge problem in, in hockey players. So I kind of want to, I would like to go down that rabbit hole too, which I think would be really valuable. You talked about, uh, the skating pattern, this heavy external rotation with. You know, the glutes and everything that's going to E. R. that lower limb. And you talked about the forward lean and how much eccentric stress is on those adapters and groin. So what are some of your strategies for managing this kind of stress that they have so that your hockey players have healthy hips?
Rich Thaw:The PRI folk are gonna love this. Hamstrings and groins, bro. Uh, the left hamstring, and the left ischiocondylar adductor. Uh, no, uh, but, but, but very seriously, like, uh, like, using the hamstrings and the abs to help put that pelvis in, like, A more neutral position or better. Yeah, huge quotations there. Um, in a position where they can have more freedom of movement, let's say it that way, because I don't really care about the neutrality of it. I care more about it. Can you get into the position? Is there pain? And also, can you get out of it, can you function in both ranges and not have any negative consequence with it? Like in this, if we just leave them to their own, whatever it is there, um, then chances are they have some pitches in front, they have some, whatever it is. Um, like there is a couple athletes here who notoriously have had some like hip pinching stuff, some FAI, femoral acetabular impingement. Um, and it's pretty common, especially for goalies who are just always like static in that position and even players. Um, with a sport that's so ER biased, like the quads get hot and the glutes get hot and they get huge, they get hypertrified, and then there's not much attention to groin work. So, putting in a lot of isos at the beginning, um, just like, okay, cool. The goal of the isos for us is like, do you feel them working? Don't move. Let them shake, let them hurt, because we need this foundation to be able to build up later on. And then we do, we'll do some sort of like side plank iteration, and then we'll just advance the progressions on there where we get some reps, we got some ribs moving, some side bending, um, and then essentially just like holding positions that strengthen the groins, and also put the pelvis, we're finding positions that put the muscles in a less eccentrically oriented state. Um, we're letting them work with discomfort, not pain. And then we're building up from there. We're eventually building up to reps of insert exercise. Like, we're now at lateral lunges, alternating sides. Which could be a really shitty strategy for somebody who has, like, FAI. Like, impingement in the front. But we've built up over time to a point where, cool, no one has any grain pain. No one has like, ah, the front of my hip. Because we've noticed like, hey, cool, hockey players don't have much IR. Because of the nature of their sport. They live in ER. Um, So like, to get more powerful and more range in ER, you gotta take from somewhere, so you take from IR. So like, is it really beneficial to give them insanely more internal rotation of the femur on the hip? Probably not because they need that like stiffness to be able to power out of, but also if they have pain, then we've got to take some away. So for two of the athletes, that's what we had to do is like, Hey, cool. You have pain. Um, when we go deeper in a squad or deeper in insert position, when we sprint, like your groin gets hot and your hip gets hot. Okay, cool. Let's interject a bit. Let's add some more of the detail oriented, um, new wants to work. Revolving around driving into rotation of the femur on the hip, more like drawbacks, more of a deduction, uh, more of release of the like psoas and the diaphragm on that side to be able to like allow more hip flexion and therefore IR and then we just. Go from there. If it works, just keep, if it's working, we dive deeper. If it's not working, then we change strategies, but everybody is like a unique snowflake to say nicely that everyone has different strategies.
Ryan Patrick:Okay, so in the early off season, we talked, you talked about, um, doing the ISOs and some stuff like that. Is this where you wanna start to get them some competency? I think that's a fair word in like a more concentric or shorter position because they spend so much time in ER and elongating that muscle. You know, probably coming off, uh, late season tournament, uh, congested play, lots of reps, uh, just very intense part of the season. Is that gonna be really where you start your focus?
Rich Thaw:Yeah, honestly, it's we start like sensation, like do you feel it working where it needs to work because I've tried in the past going straight to reps, like a higher rep range enough to just take a little feel it let's keep working through it. And at the. End of the off season, I found people like stuff just started popping up every year. When I did a postmortem of like, like the notes at the end of every day, I usually take right then every week. I'm like, Hey, what, who mentioned what, when I'm I was like, okay, there's been a lot of like hip or, or like groin stuff that's coming up like more than I'd like, not a lot, but like two or three versus zero. Um, I'm like, Hey, cool. Like then I, I missed something at the beginning if it's popping up like two months later. So I only really at the best case, I have three months with the best case. And typically I have like a month and a half, maybe two. So I got to be really diligent with the stuff I do. Um, and I got to take a lot of notes. But like with everything that's worthwhile, there's a delayed onset. Like what I'm seeing now in this phase is a direct byproduct of the previous phases work. So I didn't set them up correctly. They're going to start falling apart. So that's where the ISOs come in to play as, as helpful. I'd be like, cool. At the very least we're setting the foundation. Um, and we can always build it. We can always make ISOs more intense by lengthening the lever or simply holding a longer time or just like turning, turning into reps, which is like, Hey, you look good. Look through reps. You stay one more week on ISOs. Let's just like modify as we go.
Ryan Patrick:Okay. So when you talk about ISIS, this just Copenhagen planks or what other kind of stuff do you like for that?
Rich Thaw:Um, yeah, I like long lever hamstring stuff. That's, that's been in my game since, uh, David Gray came on radar, admittedly. Um, and, uh, Copenhagen. Yes, absolutely. Also doing some sort of like lateral hold, almost like an, like an ISO push on the wall. Um, I just holding that like one leg, almost like hockey stride esque position and just getting ISOs both on the. With the emphasis on the hamstring, on the groin, also on like the, what's called lower limb in its entirety, like floating heel type stuff, teaching the co contractions of the lower body. And also I'm, I'm starting to play with some upper body co contractions as well, people with wrists and elbow and shoulder shit, which happens all the time.
Ryan Patrick:It is a collision sport. Oh yeah. No, this is fascinating, man. Like hockey definitely has so many nuances. Yet the, the application of what you're doing is just brilliantly simple, you know, you're modeling, uh, some of the positions, the postures, the challenges that they're having and setting them up for success. And I, I hear your lamentations about not having enough time to work with people, because if you've ever worked with upper level, if you're listening and you've ever worked with upper level athletes. The time that you have to actually influence them is so minuscule. You'll read, uh, Tutor Bamba, Periodization, and they write these quadrennial or annual plans and they are just so, uh, incompatible with reality because you have such a limited time with these athletes. They're in collision sports, they're performing at a high level. You really just need to prepare them to do what they're doing. Like the idea of performance enhancement is so minimal because you don't have enough time to drive adaptation. But I really love Uh, what what you've communicated today about how you're approaching this. Thanks, man. It means a lot coming from someone who definitely needs a lot here. No, man, I told you I definitely have a lot of respect for you. Um, one area I want to finish up with is to start to dive into some of the conditioning demands of hockey. I've seen people use what's called like a hockey shift. In terms of an interval, I don't talk to me first about the physical demands of the game. Like what are the work to rest intervals like with hockey? Cause I don't fully understand that. And then what are some of the ways that you're actually incorporating this into their physical prep?
Rich Thaw:Uh, okay. So the, Typical shift can be anywhere from like, let's call it the coach doesn't want to take you off. And you run like until you're supposed to come off, which should be about 45 seconds, maybe a minute and change if you're stuck out there. Um, but it's like, it's go. And if you're an intelligent player, you go when you need to and just be in a good position. So you don't have to like buzz all over the ice. Um, but typically just call it like roughly a minute, like 45 seconds on, probably three minutes off, two and change off because there's three lines. So, and if whatever it is there, um, so it's a relative sprint sport and on during that time, you'll probably have a max effort sprint, uh, let's say a six second or seven second bout of max intensity for a twice. Three times. If you're like fucked, sorry, if you got caught and you say, got it, got to book it back, you know, like back check real quick. Um, so I will not touch that type of tempo work until the, until like now in the off season, I'll only kind of touch on it now. Um, but I'll do it a lot more in the preseason. If they're going to camp, if they got to perform, if you have tryouts or whatnot, otherwise I'll just stick to the schedule. So. Um, if anybody's familiar with the kind of like the conditioning and just develop a model where it's like you need to build a strong base or foundation of aerobic capacity, and then you could build on that. And the way I kind of sell it or communicate to everybody, both the athletic population that we train here, the athletic adults and the athletes is look, if you, the aerobic capacity or this bottom of this pyramid that you're like cardio, I just call it because that's. Thanks. Understandable for them. I was like your cardio has to be robust enough. Your gas tank has to be big enough that game to game. You couldn't recover or like week to week that you don't get run down and exhausted. So we have to take a long time. Unfortunately, it takes a long time to build up your aerobic base. So we're gonna spend some time during that. And then we're gonna build up the quality of gas in your gas tank. I mean, your gas tank big. Now we're gonna put the quality of gas in the gas tank. So we're gonna work on things like middle distance types first. So we're gonna do like one. Or maybe a minute, 30 type intervals where it hurts and you're going to be on there for a long time, at least in their realm, but like, we got to work on a spectrum. And then lastly, we're doing things like 30, like 20, 30, 40 seconds for us. But so right now in the office is where we're at is we're doing a 0. 3 on the eco bike, which is for the girls. It's about 35 to 40 seconds for the guys. It's about 30, 28 to 31 seconds. Yeah. Um, which is like good work, their legs are smoked, but the rest is four to one. So like, they have a good rest, um, and also the, the, it's preparing them rather like closer to the top of the pyramid or these max out max effort kind of, uh, energy system type activities.
Ryan Patrick:That's, that's wild. I, first of all, just going back to the beginning, I never, I've heard the like 45 second hockey shift. I didn't realize they were going to be. On a like one to four work to rest ratio in a game to me, like, especially with some of your best players, it seems like a long time to keep people out. So this is,
Rich Thaw:it's even more to be honest, like, so like it may even be shorter, like, so for, for some of the pro players who play in the show and also in the, uh, the HL or like the, the league below, whatever the professional league is, where they are, where they're at, they'll be on the ice for anywhere between like 15 to 45 seconds. And they may rest like for like 10 minutes. Ready to go. Yeah. Like depending on what might be really
Ryan Patrick:hard to just develop a rhythm as an athlete, to get in your flow. There's not another sport like that, that I can think of.
Rich Thaw:Uh, no, I mean, not, not, I say nothing I really can know of, but you got to be able to like, go and then just like, be ready, stay ready. You know, that's crazy.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah. You talk about conditioning. I think we have a lot of similarities here. So I always think of these 2 lines, like, starting wide and then kind of converging. Right? So you've got this, this aerobic side, you've got this, a lactic side, and then they kind of converge into what you're talking about is these. Yeah. Hellish middle zones, the glycolytic. So I'm very much aligned with that. And the work, the rest demands of what that sport is or why, because it seems to me that it's, it's very glycolytic in nature, yet it's almost, you need a huge aerobic system because you, you do have these massive recovery periods. So you have to be able to replenish, replenish ATP, which You know, so I guess it is the optimization process, uh, just getting more work within that glycolytic zone, gearing them towards, you know, how much output can you, can you get during these tiny work periods?
Rich Thaw:Yeah, so that's I mean, I really finished my my analogy of like the aerobic than the elected and the glycolytic type zones, but essentially the. Um, the premise is straightforward in that you have to be able to build this really robust foundation to be able to. Last and recover between shifts between games and between weeks and months of training. And then these like super high intensity sprints, these glycolytic sprints where they just hurt the entire time. That's we're covering ship to ship. That's, that's super valuable. But like, if you have three games back to back days, you're done. You're so smoked. You can't recover from that. That's why you need these, like, uh, these, I guess you can say like these aerobic type. Intervals, whatever kind of range at the top upper end or lower end of that, be able to recover between those things. That's why they're so important. We spend so much time on them so much time. We spend like three weeks, so much time, um, developing these things, but we only have much time. So I kind of adopted, uh, an underlying type model where we work on different qualities, but space them space about different across the four days versus across like different phases. Um, I did a lot of sort of testing too.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, um, I believe it's, uh, Mladen, uh, I can't think of his last name, I got the book right here, he did the high intensity Interval training, um, manual. Gladden Yovanovich, I'm probably butchering that, um, stupid American. Um, but he talks in the, the, this manual about, uh, this kind of undulating model, and especially when you're on short time periods or you're a sport coach. Who has practice and other skills and drills and strategies that you're working on, you have to, you have to come up with a model that is as robust as possible. And the best way to do that is to have exposures to these different intensities and zones that your athletes are going to be to be exposed to, but you may not have the time to progress them in a phasic manner, like you're talking. So it's really interesting to me that just. Through working with them, like your intuition kind of led you to this, the same, same place that he communicates is like probably one of the most robust strategies available to us. Yeah, I mean, I didn't
Rich Thaw:think about that way. That's that's that's pretty cool. Um, I just, I was like, hey, what, what does it feel like? Um, and then what's the season like? And then I'm looking at, I read some research, uh, I believe I first found it through, uh, this guy, Anthony Donskoff. Uh, really smart hockey guy. He was talking to me about the amount of total meters that they skate in a game on average in the NHL. Um, and then working backwards from that as a base for conditioning. So like, for example, on the tempo days on there, like, uh, get the heart rate up and keep it up type of thing. Um, just like, like not suffer, but like get the heart rate around one 60, one 70, whatever it is. And just kind of coast there. So he's like the, uh, the amount of distance they have to cover is this. You can't just jump into that. It's a terrible idea. It's a lot of volume. So how do we hack it down and make it into more manageable bytes? So that's what they're conditioning. It's hard stuff. And the modality, like, whatever you use for conditioning, whether it's a bike or a rower or a runner, or like a versa climber, Jacob's out, whatever it is, like, use that, but just be consistent with the progressions. Because this is the total number they need to be at to be ready for that kind of volume come in season.
Ryan Patrick:Yeah, that's awesome. And I think for a lot of people, especially, uh, team sport coaches, they want to jump to that volume because trial is usually how weak for them, which
Rich Thaw:is, yeah, it's you can't man. Like it's like talking to dead horse, you know, it's like beating a dead horse. Sorry. Like you can't like, Oh, I did it this way. Therefore everyone needs to do it this way.
Ryan Patrick:We want to see who worked hard this off season. Yeah. So let's have a huge volume spike. And just become like, just be an orthopedic nightmare for these athletes because their tissues are not ready for this kind of magnitude of loading. You get injured. You're soft. Like, no, you just run them too hard. Have a little turtle and move on. Yeah. All right, man. Well, this, this conversation was awesome, man. I, I learned a ton about hockey and just your training thoughts in general. And I appreciate you coming on here and just riffing on this because we went way off track from the questions that I had. But I found it to be just a really interesting conversation, man. So, um, you know, just to keep it simple, like what's next for you?
Rich Thaw:First of all, thank you, man. This is, I mean, it's really cool. I didn't even think of like the set list that we had here. This is, this is, this is fun talking about it. Uh, next for me, I mean, keep, keep going. Just keep growing, keep doing. Uh, the plan is to be able to work with more sporting organizations in the area. Uh, like you mentioned at the beginning, just, I mean, year one and a half. So I definitely, when you think, uh, hockey performance training in Montreal, I want you to think in power fitness. Um, and being able to just be able to send a message to these young athletes and also the athletic populations within the area, like, Hey, look, like, you don't got to be this pro athlete to be treated and trained like one. There's definitely adaptations and things we could do around that can get you to where you need to be. They don't have to be super complex or just like, boring, basic shit. So that's, that's the path that we're on right now. Um,
Ryan Patrick:I'm going to keep on the path until it stops working. Awesome, man. So where can, uh, my listeners find out more about you?
Rich Thaw:I'd say Instagram is probably the most popular place. Seems like I'm a one trick pony there. TikTok I can't handle. Facebook is Facebook. So Instagram, uh, coach, underscore, rich thot. Or, uh, SimTower, I believe, two underscores. But you'll figure it out.
Ryan Patrick:I'll tag both, man. It's been an honor, man. Thank you again for carving time and, uh, look forward to getting this out and sharing with people. Take care. Thank you.