Use of Full Size Hurdles

[Cubanpuckstopper]

Recently I posted this at GP Community TV

http://www.goaliepro.com/fi/yhteiso/com ... d=14793082
The video is the work of Harri Hakkarainen of Espoo. In it there are examples of jumping over full size hurdles, as well as hurdle walk throughs.

By contrast, in a special edition of The Hockey News,


Petri Matikainen, also from Espoo, specifically as a coach for the Blues, states:

We will do a lot of hurdles, but we don't jump them, we walk them to get the hips and those things open. We walk them backwards, we walk them different ways, we don't jump them because they are too hard on the knees."

My impressions are that jumping hurdles is one of the better ways to create explosive muscle. I've atteneded clinics where jumping them was a part of the dryland.

I will agree that certain people will need to work themselves into being able to jump hurdles, and everyone needs to understand how to land.

I don't expect that, we will get a concensus, but what are the feelings of other Goaliepro Forum members?

[Jani]

Well, hurdles are very versatile for a multi-purpose training. You want to walk the hurdles through to warm-up, increase you range of motion and muscle coordination. However, to increase explosive power, elasticity and muscle-nerve firing rate, jump hurdles is the way to go.

I agree with coach Matikainen, that jumping is indeed harder for your knees over walking, but hockey players are athletes with good level of muscle and joint strength, and therefore jumping the hurdles serves a good maintenance purpose for explosive power and elasticity throughout the long season. Today's hockey has high demands for powerful, explosive yet elastic movements, and jump hurdles does a good job here to improve these features.

A word of caution though; any jumping training should not be performed should the body and/or muscles be tired and not recovered from a previous training session. This is an all-out exercise which is simply waste of time from a training perspective if not performed at 100% output level. Preferably you should be well rested with fresh mind and ready for your best output.

[beaver]

I also agree with Matikainen. The high hurdles are goof for coordination, dynamic stetching etc. If you do explosive power training, remember the age of athletes. Plyometric training is the way, that we have have avoided.
So, our guys have no problems with knees,heels and so on.
We have to be very careful with the boys of age 15-16.

[Jukka Ropponen]

I have been doing various hurdlewalks with goalies for years as with right execution it is really good way to strengthen prioper muscles and also expand the hip area range of motion for goalies.

Jukka