Evolving Performance

Episode 1: Speed Training for Hockey with Vicki Bendus

• Kevin Neeld • Season 1 • Episode 1

Share episode

In this episode, Vicki Bendus shares incredible insights into speed training for hockey, including:

  • Key findings from her research on identifying the most impactful physical factors and related off-ice tests for on-ice speed
  • Speed profiling strategies to identify where a player ranks relative to their peers and what qualities they need to improve to maximize their speed
  • Specific training strategies players can use to improve their speed
  • The difference between acceleration and max velocity, how each impacts the game and different training methods to improve each
  • Important age-specific considerations and how to maximize speed in older players
  • Impactful strategies to improve speed during the season

Evolve with Vicki:

Supporting High Performance
Metabolic Elite's entire line is designed to specifically support the health, performance, and recovery of high performers. Each product is formulated using research-supported ingredients and dosages using the highest quality ingredients, so you can be confident that every product you take will deliver the maximal benefit and effect.

Check out why Metabolic Elite's Liposomal Tablet delivery system is a game-changer: LPT White Paper

Save 15% using the code 'neeld15' at checkout here: Metabolic Elite

My personal go-to's:

  • To improve focus, decision making, and coordination: Synapsin
  • To improve inflammation and recovery: Tetra Cur
  • To support the immune system and weight management: Viraxall
  • To improve digestive health: Max 12 Probiotic

Contact Kevin:

Thanks for listening!

Kevin Neeld (00:05)
Cool. Well, Vicki, thanks so much for doing this. I'm really excited to have you on.

Vicki Bendus (00:10)
Yeah, no, thanks for having me. It's quite an honor to be here. I'm excited.

Kevin Neeld (00:13)
you know, I've, obviously we've gotten to know each other pretty well over the last few years. I've had an opportunity to see you present now a few different times, including, last year at our NHL conference. And, you know, I think you do a great job of balancing the academic exploration as some of the underlying factors that impact speed with, you know, more of the coaches eye and the practical applications of how you then use that information to impact your programming and to better prepare the players. So, you know, I want to dive right in and just start.

by asking you about your PhD work and some of the things you were looking at there related to some of the tests and some of the factors that impact speed development.

Vicki Bendus (00:52)
Yeah, and that really was kind of the goal of me undertaking a PhD in the first place, was to try to make it as applicable as possible. It was selfishly for me trying to figure out how to make my athletes faster and hopefully through that, you know, pull out some usable things, you know, that us as practitioners could be using with our athletes. So the overarching theme of my PhD is trying to identify what those key performance indicators of skating speed are.

And there's a few projects in the works right now and some ongoing, but our first kind of bigger project was trying to build off of the current body of literature that's out there on identifying what those off -ice KPIs are for skating speed. And there's a lot of studies out there that are using relationships and correlations and modeling. And so what we did to try to build on that was we tried to really grow the sample size. So we had over a hundred athletes included in the study.

And then we tried to control for some of these confounding variables that might have introduced some error or variation in the model. So we controlled for a player's age, their competitive level, their height, weight, their level of strength, anything that might have taken away from some of the accuracy of the model. And then after we ran that, the kind of main take homes were first,

Kevin Neeld (01:59)
Thank you.

Vicki Bendus (02:12)
our office tests that represent our general physical abilities are highly predictive of a player's skating speed. So our model is able to explain upwards of 80 % of the variation in skating times we saw. And for us as practitioners, that's pretty empowering knowing how much of a player's skating speed is explained just by these very basic office tests. The second thing that we found,

Top speed sprinting represented by our 20 to 30 meter split time in our sprint test was our strongest global predictor of 30 meter skating time. And when I say global predictor, I mentioned that we control for all of these covariates and confounding variables. Well, a global predictor meant that it was the most predictive for everybody. So it didn't mean if you're tall or short or old or young, heavier, light.

that was going to be the most indicative of a fast skater if you were a fast sprinter within that split time. So for me as a practitioner, I'm pulling out two usable pieces out of that. First, as a training stimulus, it might be something pretty potent for us that we can use to impact their speed qualities on ice. And I think for practitioners in the strength and condition world,

Kevin Neeld (03:14)
and I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. First, I'm going to put a piece in this, and then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it.

And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I'm going to be able to use the piece of it. And then I

Vicki Bendus (03:29)
A lot of us are

doing a lot of really good acceleration work and maybe less are kind of pushing into more of that, that max speed type of training stimulus. So it kind of encourages that that might be a good opportunity for us from a, from a programming standpoint. And then it serves as a really nice proxy test for us off the ice. On ice testing can be very logistically demanding. I've done hundreds of sessions and it's always challenging. There's always a lot of things that pop up and it's time demanding as well.

So if I'm working with an organization or a coach is working with an organization that they might not be open to honest testing or you just logistically might not be able to execute it very often, I can use this 20 to 30 meter split time as a pretty good proxy to get an idea of where an athlete might fall relative to the peers in terms of skating speed and to use to track long -termly over time. Our second main global predictor was countermovement jump height, which...

you know, checks the box of lower body power, which we know is really important for skating speed. And then the last thing that came out of it, which was kind of an interesting one that I found, we only had one cohort specific factor that came out, predictor that came out, and that was relative breaking that impulse. And relative breaking that impulse from the counter movement jump was predictive for skating speed only in weaker athletes, not in stronger athletes.

And so the way I kind of navigate that is if you think of the skating stride, it goes through phases of weight acceptance to full support before you're getting into propulsion. And if you have an athlete that's weak, shown in a lower breaking that impulse on a jump, that might suggest it just takes them a little bit longer to get from that weight acceptance into being able to produce effective force into the ice to propel them forward.

versus a stronger athlete where they're gonna be able to navigate that a little bit more quickly, get into propulsion a little bit more quickly. So those are kind of the main findings from the first study. But like I said, we've got a few ongoing and the goal hopefully for a couple of those is to pull out more usable pieces for us as practitioners in terms of finding ways, the best ways to test our athletes for skating speed, profile them and then build training and interventions off of that.

Kevin Neeld (05:26)
Just

real quick, can you explain for if there are listeners that aren't accustomed to looking at force plate data, what breaking that impulse?

represents in the counter movement jump.

Vicki Bendus (05:58)
Yeah, so if you look at the counter movement jump, there's gonna be different phases of it. There's gonna be when the athletes, you know, descending into the jump. There's a transition when they're gonna be, you know, propelling themselves upward. So breaking is when you're putting force down into the place to slow yourself down. So you're dropping down, gravity's taking you down, and you're gonna have to start producing force into the force plates to slow yourself down before you can propel yourself upwards. So it's really gonna represent kind of some of our eccentric strength abilities.

Kevin Neeld (06:27)
Yeah, it's interesting. I, you know, I think anytime you measure something, you learn something, right? Whether it's confirming some assumptions that you had going into it or really challenging, some assumptions you may have been making. And, you know, that finding that the 20 to 30 meter split time in the off ice sprint was the best global predictor of on ice, skating speed in a 30 meter test is a little surprising to me just because of how unique the running pattern becomes.

through that distance range specifically and how different it is from the skating pattern. But, you know, certainly, that's why you go through some of these analytical processes to better understand, you know, some of the data you have access to and, and how that impacts what you're looking at on the ice. And, you know, I think that that, is a good transition point to kind of talk about this speed profiling idea. And, you know, you often get questions from players about.

you know, where, you know, not just am I fast, but you know, where do I stand speed wise compared to the other players on our team or other players in my age group? or, you know, for players that are ascending ranks and looking to compete at the next level, like where do I stand compared to them? So, you know, I guess on both of those fronts, if a player's looking to better understand, if, if they're fast and, you know, where are they?

what they need to do to get faster, for example, you know, there's that kind of aspect to speed profiling. And then there's the, you know, where do I kind of rank relative to everybody else? What's your process look like for providing that feedback to the players?

Vicki Bendus (08:08)
Yeah, so for us, my kind of on ice testing battery gives some of the information in terms of their speed profile, but it's really kind of the 30 meter skate that I lean on the most. So our full on ice testing battery, when I'm able to do it all, we have a 30 meter skate with split times at a 10 meter and then we get a 20 to 30 meter split. So I'm getting an idea of both their acceleration and their max velocity.

If I have time and space available, I'll also do a true 10 meter fly where they're able to build up speed around the net and hit 10 meters in the neutral zone as fast as possible. And then the last test is a five meter change of direction. Very simple, just a five meters out and back. And from that, I'm able to kind of get our big rocks of skating abilities, acceleration, max velocity, and change of direction. In terms of figuring out where people fall,

I've been really lucky to work with a lot of different organizations through my coaching career and do a lot of honest testing with different groups, different age levels, men's teams, women's teams, kids older. And from there I've been able to build up a relatively robust database of skating times from these different groups. And then from there I've created standards and there's lots of different ways you can create standards if you have a good kind of robust set of normative data.

I tend to use percentiles for mine, but you can use things like standard deviations, whatever you as a coach are most comfortable with. But for me, for example, if an athlete falls between the 40th and the 60th percentile, you're kind of falling in my average bucket. If you're from the 60th to the 80th, you're going to be above average. If you're above the 80th, you're going to be in the excellent or elite skater bucket. If you're from 20 to 40%, you're below average and then below 20 % you're on.

a needs improvement. So it's really easy for me to take their 30 meter skating time, which is my anchor test, plug it into there and see based on the percentile, whether we're putting them in that kind of, that fast or that slower bucket. And as I said, I've been fortunate to be able to test a lot of different groups and have this normative data from different levels. So not only is it really useful for me to be able to compare the athlete to their peers,

Kevin Neeld (10:03)
It's pretty easy for me to take, you know, a quick little scan, to run through the pictures in the paper, to just put the end of it in a scene, based on the process of the whole thing.

Vicki Bendus (10:29)
And because usually that's the first thing that they want to see, how they compare to their peers. But what I can also do is compare them to what athletes are skating at the next level. If we have one of our under 18 women's development players, under 18 players, for example, and we get her 30 meter test and we kind of plug it in, we can compare her to the rest of the under 18 cohort. But I can also compare her skating time against our development team and our senior team and see how many degrees of separation.

there are for that athlete that she still needs to kind of get to to be able to skate at the pace of that level. Or maybe we find that she's already skating at the level of the development team and that can be a bit of a confidence boost for the athlete and maybe even the coach if they're trying to make some decisions around an athlete that they're really able to kind of keep up to the pace of the game if all the other hockey pieces are in place, the hockey sense, the hockey skill, and then the other factors that go along with it.

Kevin Neeld (11:30)
Yeah, no, I think that's a really important point, both in terms of developing your own database. I think, you know, that's one of the other. One of the issues is not everybody, you know, across certainly youth sports, but then even at higher levels in terms of college and, you know, even some minor league pro levels that not everybody has access to the same resources. So, you know, it's not always possible for people to even allocate the ice time to do one ice testing. So people are looking for.

these other proxy measures that may inform, not just, you know, helping to identify, you know, is this player fast or not, but you know, KPIs that you can track over time that will, help provide some feedback on if they're trending in a positive direction for qualities that would support their on ice development. And, you know, I think you, you alluded to you being able to create a really robust, data set yourself and all the, the athletes you've had access to. And.

You know, I think that's really important, regardless of what environment you're in, that the best data that you can use to compare your players to is the one that you develop internally using, you know, consistent testing equipment and consistent testing methodology. And, you know, a lot of times that can, that can send a clearer message and be a more, a truer test of where an athlete stands more so than, you know, maybe somebody asking, you know,

what are some of the times that you guys got in this on ice test or off ice test, because some of the, subtle, seemingly subtle differences in the testing methodology can actually make a really big impact on the, the times and the scores that players get. So, I think that that's really important. And you know, your, the ability to, you know, particularly with national team players to look at, you know, how the U 18 players and how they compare to the over 18 and.

you know, I, I have noticed, in my time working with the U S women's Olympic program. and then my time with the Bruins that there's not, there's definitely substantial leaps in skill, with, with each level that, you know, when you're, you're playing on an Olympic team or you're playing on the NHL team, those are the highest skilled players in the world. But there's also really noticeable and significant physical differences too, that.

You know, the players tend to be bigger. They definitely are stronger. They tend to be faster. They create more power. You know, a lot of times, you know, there's a lot of different ways to look at conditioning, but a lot of times their conditioning is better too. And I think that's an important message for players, particularly, you know, in the high school years where it's so easy to make progress from a training standpoint. And at the same time, you know, a lot of players, if they're

in consideration for a U18 team or, you know, if they're a draft eligible for the NHL, a lot of times those players have spent the bulk of their childhood as the best player on their team or one of the best players in their, their area, their region. And it can be easy in those situations to overlook the importance of the additional, you know, performance training and the physical development side of things. But.

You know, what happens sometimes is you have players that have skill levels that could transfer to the next level, but physically they're so far behind that it actually holds them back from competing at that level. So, you know, I think hearing that message and, you know, starting to work on the physical things to narrow the gap between, you know, where a player may be starting now and where they need to get to, to, to fit in at the next level is really important.

Vicki Bendus (15:11)
Yeah, no, definitely. And, you know, there, as you progress through those levels, it's bigger, stronger, faster, and better, better at hockey, you know, each, each level that, that you go up and, you know, you said it well. So if you, if you have a younger athlete who is quite talented, because they're really good at hockey, they can kind of get away with, get away with not addressing the physical development side until they can't anymore. so it's at every level, you have to be continuing to push all of those things.

and keep refining and developing so that you're not getting caught from behind from other athletes that are taking that stuff a little bit more seriously.

Kevin Neeld (15:50)
Yeah. So I want to transition into the actual training aspect of, you know, players want to get faster. I think, you know, a lot of times players think I want to get faster. I'm just going to run sprints and, you know, again, obviously there's an on ice requirement here too, that, there's opportunities to improve skating and edge work and, and to do some on ice speed development work. But, you know, I'm, I'm.

there's a lot that goes into improving a player's speed and depending on, you know, where they are from a physical standpoint, there may be some opportunities to make significant improvements in speed without just sprinting. So, you know, I'm curious if player comes to you and you know, they have a key goal of improving their speed, you know, where do you start in approaching their program and you know, maybe

speak to what some of the other components are of the program in addition to sprinting, which is obviously important to help improve their speed.

Vicki Bendus (16:45)
Yeah, sure. I would say, especially when working at the development levels, that's the majority of athletes that come to me. And I'm sure this might be your experience as well, that athletes tend to want to get faster. Just knowing what we just talked about, how at each level that the pace does increase. So it's always an area of need.

For me, once I've done the on ice piece, if I'm able to get some of their profiling there and get an idea if they're falling into that fast or slow bucket, then I start to look at strategies. I have three buckets of strategies that I look at where if I'm using some of them, I can make an impact on a player's skating speed. I can look at physical, I can look at skating speed stimulus, and then I can look at technical. In our physical bucket,

We've got developing those general physical abilities. So speed, strength and power off the ice. We can look at body composition and body weight here. So getting an athlete leaner and later is definitely going to make them faster for the most part. We can look at their capacity for movement there in that general bucket. The next one is our on ice speed stimulus. And this is probably the one that's the least used or least leveraged. If we want to get athletes skating faster, we have to give them opportunities to skate fast.

And we know in practices and games, they're not getting, and they're not hitting true maximal outputs, both they're not hitting maximal acceleration, they're not hitting maximal velocity. You know, in a game at best, they're hitting kind of between probably 80 to 90 % of their max speed. So to be able to bridge that gap between what we're developing off the ice and them actually skating fast, we need to give them opportunities to do that with on ice speed training, both.

addressing acceleration, max velocity, change direction, our big rocks. And then the technical bucket. So this is probably the one that I lean on the least often. For me, if I have an athlete who is checked all the the off ice boxes, they're really strong, they're really powerful, they're fast. So there's a lot of force potential there, but they're still a slow skater, then I might start to look at is it a technical issue where they're not able to able actually

to actually use the force that they have available to them. So that's an area where an athlete might have such poor technique, where they're just leaking energy left, right and center. And that would warrant more of a technical intervention. But for me, I'm gonna lean more on those first two boxes, knowing what a large impact I can make there. The technical box, I tend to use less. With our on -ice speed training, I've noticed that just...

Kevin Neeld (19:27)
.

Vicki Bendus (19:29)
giving them chances to skate fast, without the complexity of pucks or drills or a lot of turns or anything like that with a little bit of queuing, you can actually make some technical changes over time, but the goal of the on a speed training is still the stimulus more than anything. So those are gonna be the strategies that I pull from and then how I decide which strategies that I pull is gonna depend on the athlete, their training age and their office profile. So if I have an athlete,

I'm going to do our off -face testing and lean on a few key anchors that are going to tell me their sprinting speed, their power, and some indicator of relative strength. So for sprinting speed, we do a 30 meter sprint with split times. For lower body power, our countermove jump is going to be our main anchor test there. And then for relative strength, that test changes a lot depending on the training age of the athlete and the environment that I'm in.

for an older, more developed athlete that might be a 4RM trap bar deadlift, that might be an IMTP for a younger athlete that might be chin ups. It just kind of depends. As long as I can kind of get an idea of whether they're strong or weak relative to their body weight, that's really kind of all I need to need there. And then I just try to go kind of systematically through those and find where their biggest deficiency is or the biggest limiting factor is. So if you're weak...

That's where we're gonna start. That's gonna be our lowest hanging fruit. We need to make sure that we check that box there. If you get them stronger, you're gonna get them faster, and you're gonna get them better at multiple things in the game of hockey. If they're strong, but they're lacking power, it's gonna be a power -based program. If they're strong, they're powerful, but they're slow sprinters, it's gonna be a little bit more of a speed -based program. And then, as I said, if they check all those boxes, then I'm gonna have to be a little bit more detailed or specific.

with how I go to both things. So then I would kind of check their technique, see if an intervention is needed there. And then I'm gonna probably look a little bit more closely at some of their on ice profiling. So that's when I would dig a little bit more closely into, are they a good accelerator? Are they a good, you know, top speed skater? Are they good at changing direction and find where their biggest area of need is there, and then program a little bit more directed around there. But we wanna make sure that we're taking care of those off -ice pieces.

Kevin Neeld (21:47)
And

Vicki Bendus (21:49)
And we're supporting that all the way along the process with exposing them to an on ice speed stimulus, giving them opportunities to skate fast so that we're getting that bridging of the gap and transfer from off ice into on ice.

Kevin Neeld (22:02)
from an office standpoint, do you is there a hierarchy to how you prioritize those qualities? So I think you, you mentioned this, but

you know, we're used starting with, let's make sure that they're strong first, and then let's make sure that they're powerful. And then let's progress. If those boxes are checked, then we're progressing on to, you know, really prioritizing, more of the velocity end of the forest velocity continuum, as far as, you know, lighter load work at maximum velocity or more resisted sprint work and that sort of thing.

Vicki Bendus (22:34)
Yeah, well, I think prior to prioritizing is a good word for it because in terms of programming, you know, for most athletes at any point in the program, they're all going to, they're going to have components from each one of these things. But in terms of the, the amount of, you know, volume and intensity that we dedicate to a certain aspect of their program is just going to change a little bit depending on, on where they need to develop the most. But, you know, every athlete is going to be.

you know, sprinting every athlete is going to be doing strength training. Every athlete is going to be exposed to power tasks, but just the amount of stimulus that we're trying to get out of each one depends on what type of adaptations I'm trying to get.

Kevin Neeld (23:14)
Well, that makes sense. And you know, the idea of, of skating efficiency is really interesting because sometimes you see players that look like good skaters, but don't skate fast in other players where their, their stride might be a little less refined, we'll say, but they get from point A to point B really quickly. And you know, that that's an interesting part of this profiling process too, because if you have a player that

is, is fast off the ice and demonstrates, you know, higher than, higher power for their peer group and they're strong, but they're not skating fast. It really is important to then find an on ice solution for them in terms of a skating coach or, you know, whether that's you or somebody else that can work with them on the ice to help improve their efficiencies so that they're better able to utilize the capacity that they have and have developed off the ice and.

You know, the opposite though is also interesting where you have a player that off the ice is maybe a little less remarkable, but moves really well on the ice. And I think when you get a player like that, because the efficiency is so high already, if you're able to make some even small improvements off the ice, a lot of times that can have a big impact on their game on the ice.

Vicki Bendus (24:34)
Yeah, no, definitely. Well, I think it's there's lots of different scenarios that you can have when comparing like technique versus what their what their physical abilities are. And when you're looking at both of those things like there, there's always an area to toggle, whether it's the on ice piece or the office piece. But, you know, you don't want pretty but slow skaters because they're because they're weak and because they lack power. Like that's a, you know, an easy indication that you need to develop those qualities and then.

If you have the scenario where you have an incredible skater, that's telling you that they're really good at, you know, effectively putting force down into the ice. And if you give them more force generating potential, then, you know, that should allow them to elevate that even more.

Kevin Neeld (25:19)
So I want to talk about the difference between acceleration and max velocity, because you often hear players will say things like, I just want my first step or my first few steps to get faster. And, you know, that's a little bit different than being caught in open ice. And, you know, so I talk a little bit about how you view the importance of those two different qualities to the game itself. And then, you know, also,

If you're prioritizing one of those over the other or you know how you're how you're making that decision on what a player would benefit the most from and how that's impacting your training approach.

Vicki Bendus (26:02)
Yeah, I mean, those first three steps, you hear athletes talk about those all the time, and that's kind of more of our smaller space type of acceleration pattern. So acceleration is going to be more of like our in -zone type of skating. So racist to pucks, the majority of racist to pucks are going to be, you know, three to 10 meters or so.

So that's going to be more of our initial acceleration type of ability. Then if we're looking at more of our open ice type of skating, skating through the neutral zone, transitional skating, full ice fore checks, full ice back checks, a lot of those types of moments happen after mistakes, the crap moments.

is when athletes tend to skate pretty fast. So that's when you're going to get a little bit more toward the max velocity end of the spectrum. But again, knowing that they're probably not hitting true max velocity, it's going to be percentage points below that. So different components of the game demand different skating requirements. And positionally too, it is something that you consider.

acceleration is probably going to be a little bit more valuable for a defenseman who spend more time in the kind of those small space skating type of areas. But the games also changed a lot as well, where I think early on in my career, if you're profiling forwards versus defensemen, it was very rare to see a defenseman at the higher end of some of those speed tests. And now we see it commonly. We have some defensemen that are just...

unbelievable skaters. So the game is changing based on just the speed of it and how positions are played. So it's not generally as easy to bucket players based on their position. At any given moment, the athletes could need to pull out a full ice skater to be a little bit more dynamic in small spaces.

But if you're looking at a player's skating profile, you can certainly have ones that are better accelerators or better at max speed. And I use my 30 meter to kind of get an idea of that. For example, if we have an athlete that's a good accelerator but poor top speed. So this could be like your little water bug athlete. They can get going pretty quick, but they just don't have the horsepower to continue to accelerate and get up to higher speed. So I always kind of picture things on a velocity time curve.

Kevin Neeld (28:05)
So, I was kind of interested in what they're also doing

Vicki Bendus (28:22)
So

Kevin Neeld (28:22)
here. So, it's going on the bottom and the hustle and the rush. It's not going to be a very steep and accurate, but that's what they're also doing.

Vicki Bendus (28:22)
if you got time on the bottom and velocity on the y -axis this athlete would have a really steep incline of that velocity slope But then it kind of plateaus pretty early. So for this athlete I'm probably gonna address kind of more of their maximum strength and power off of the ice and then on the ice try to support that With an on ice stimulus that's gonna push a little bit more of that later acceleration and max speed so doing more things like build -ups

30 meter sprints, 10 meter fly, stuff like that, that gets them working through those higher speed ranges. And then you could have an athlete that's the opposite of that. So if you look at their velocity time curve, you see a really small slope of the line or a gradual slope of the line at the start. And then once they're able to get going, they're able to hit a pretty high speed. So they hit a higher max speed than the other athlete. It just takes them a while to get there. And the kind of...

I guess archetype that sometimes falls into that box. I think if you're like big lumbering, do your big lumbering forward, where they're just, they're not fleet to foot. It takes them a while to get going, but once they get going, they're like a freight train because they can get a lot of force down into the ice and then like, you don't want to run into them because they're going at a pretty good clip. So for them.

I'm addressing a little bit more speed qualities off ice. I'm probably going to be working a lot on teaching them how to accelerate, like the skill of acceleration, being able to get your center mass moving in the direction that you want it to go. So things like resisted excels, working on the technical side of things, working a lot on like reactive strength, stiffness, stuff like that, because hockey is kind of different than sprinting in that, in sprinting the ground contact times go from longer to shorter.

So if I'm trying to develop an athlete's acceleration qualities off the ice, I'm working with a soccer player, for example, and I need to get them to be better at acceleration. I might work a little bit more of the max strength side of the continuum. And then if I need to get an athlete a little bit more faster at the top end, I'm probably going to address a little bit more reactive strength qualities and stiffness qualities. But hockey is kind of the opposite because our ground contact times or our stride times get longer as you go. So they have more time to put force down into the ice as you get up to higher speeds.

So early on, they need a little bit more reactive strength and stiffness to be able to navigate those first couple steps. So for a big kind of lumbering player that can't get off the line quickly, doing a little bit more reactive strength stuff and stiffness work is going to probably transfer into the first couple steps of acceleration on the ice more than kind of the max strength type of stuff. And then for them supporting it with the...

the proper on ice speed stimulus. So working a little bit more on acceleration on the ice, you know, five to 10 meters sprints, resisted, unresisted, just a lot of different opportunities to practice that.

Kevin Neeld (31:12)
that's good stuff. I, and you know, I want to kind of lean on your experience with the Canadian national team program here, but you know, I, you have players that go from, making a U 18 team potentially to now needing to make the U 40 team or, you know, however old the oldest player is that's, still in the program. And, you know, that's obviously a pretty significant.

gap, not just in the age of the players. And obviously there's some personality and lifestyle maturation that occurs in that window. But from a physical standpoint, you know, players tend to slow down with age, but they also tend to have a larger training age and a larger training history. So they, you know, most of, most players when they hit their thirties have a really good foundation of strength. They have, you know, a decade or more of, of strength training experience. you know, so I'm curious, how are you making,

assessments on, you know, when, when is a player strong enough? And, you know, cause for some players, if they've been training since they were 12 or 13, maybe that said 17 or 18, you know, 19, 20 years old for others that don't start until later. Maybe it's not until they're late twenties or, you know, they're, they're pushing 30. And then, you know, do any of your strategies from a training standpoint or, or the, the point of emphasis that you place on certain training strategies change as players age.

Vicki Bendus (32:37)
Yeah, so I think when we look at our older kind of versus our younger athletes, you certainly hope by that point in their careers that, you know, when they're in their thirties that they have like check that strength box and.

I go back and I kind of lean on my testing standards to determine that and make sure that they are at above average level of relative strength by that point. So if you're looking at younger versus older athletes, the degree of transfer for strength training is just going to be more for our younger athletes and our older athletes that have a good base of strength. But that doesn't mean that we don't continue to address it really consistently for these older athletes.

I found for in season, for example, with athletes that have a good basis of max strength, if we go too long without giving them a higher force loading opportunities off the ice, they just start to feel kind of flat, flat, like they've got no pop. And then when we return to it, we get them those exposures consistently. Again, they start to feel better. And then off off season, same thing, we're kind of addressing it and rebuilding our max strength reserves going into the following year. I just.

Max strength is just too important for so many components of our game not to continually address it, even if we have an athlete with higher levels of strength. The amount of volume dedicated to it is going to be less than a younger athlete, but it is something that is a big rock of the programming at different points in the year. If we want to continue to ensure that these older athletes are

are skating fast and there's a couple different ways and a couple different things that we want to address. Because certainly with older athletes, they do tend to lose a step. And when I'm watching it happen or when I see people and hear people talk about it, I always kind of wonder to myself, how much of that is just natural aging? We know as you get older, you're losing some fast twitch muscle fibers. And how much of it is because...

you know, maybe they've moved away from some of the training methods and modalities that got them to be fast in the first place. So with athletes that are getting later in their careers, maybe they're a little bit compromised from a health standpoint. They might've accumulated quite a few injuries by that point. They might be just a little bit less interested in training in certain ways. If they've been doing formal strength training for decades, it's...

They just want to train in a way that makes them feel good, feel healthy, move well, and that's totally understandable. So for me as a practitioner working with these athletes, it's kind of a fun challenge because you're trying to have it all. You're trying to check all those boxes. How can I program for this athlete so they feel awesome, they're moving really well, they're robust, they're healthy, but also try to get them exposed to the stimuli they need to maintain or continue to develop some of these.

some of these speed qualities. So for me, it's a big collaboration process with those athletes. They know their bodies really well. They know the nuances of their game. So getting feedback from them is really important. For them, I think the on -ice speed stimulus becomes even more important. If we want to keep these athletes skating fast throughout the later stages of the career, we need to give them opportunities to do that. And...

That's the closest conduit to the game itself. So honest speed training is going to be a big part of it. I think collaboration with the skills coaches and the honest coaches is important there as well. If I have an athlete that is getting older, I want to make sure that whatever speed that they have available to them, they're using it as effectively as possible in the games. So that's the coach's expertise, but we want to make sure that...

that whatever they have available, they're using it to make an impact on the game. And then off the ice, we're just trying to find opportunities to get them exposed to speed and to be moving fast in ways that are safe for them and at volumes that are probably a little bit lower and more appropriate for them that aren't going to beat them up. So generally short acceleration work is pretty well tolerated. Short resisted work, you know, accelerations up hills.

stair bounding stuff like that where it's just a little bit less mechanically demanding but where they're still going to be going to be moving at a pretty good clip and get that get that speed stimulus that we're after. I guess the other piece of that is just trying to make sure that I'm you know being diligent with with measuring some of these qualities too for those older athletes so that I can kind of keep my finger on the pulse if anything is diminishing and they might need a little bit more volume or intensity in certain things at certain times of the year.

so that they're not losing that step. But it's challenging, but I think it's a fun challenge to try to give these athletes as much longevity in their career as possible while performing at their highest.

Kevin Neeld (37:47)
You're one of the things you mentioned is just the importance of integrating with the skills coach or the coaching staff to make sure that players are getting some of that some of those touches on the ice during the year. And I mentioned earlier that you gave a great presentation at our NHL conference last year to all the strength and conditioning coaches and

in, in that you had mentioned some research that you had done and looking at how speed changes throughout the course of the season. And then, you know, also proposed a few different options for how to integrate speed training on the ice into, into the schedule. Cause you know, obviously ice time is, is in high demand and you know, the coaches have a lot of things that they want to accomplish, with the time that they have available with the players. So, first, can you talk a little bit about.

what trends in speed you saw over the course of the season and why that may be. And then secondly, you know, talk about what you would recommend is kind of a minimum effective dose for players to continue to prioritize speed development in season.

Vicki Bendus (38:51)
Yeah, so when I first started kind of getting more interested in the speed side of hockey and the skating side of it, I just started to, before I started intervening with anything on the ice, I just started measuring it. So we did our on ice testing battery with our university teams at Brock. When I started, I would do it three times per year. So I would do it in the fall.

I would do it right before kind of our Christmas break, right before exams. And then I would do it again at the end of the season. So I'd kind of get three time points throughout the year. And very consistently for the first kind of couple of years that I would do that is they would be skating their fastest times at the start of the year. And then we would see some of those.

those feet qualities kind of drop off a little bit as you're going. At the start of the year, they're very lean, they're very fit, they've been training hard all summer and then as the season starts, just the volume of everything, both off the ice in terms of training, in terms of academic load, turn of social things, plus the volume of games and practices, which is kind of tap into their...

their recovery and you know they were probably you know losing some of their their physical qualities too so we see them slowing down toward the end of the season when really we want to see them skating their fastest. When I started to do some of the on ice speed training with these teams we were able to mitigate a lot of that and we're seeing them skate their fastest at the end of the year.

So how I kind of implemented it in that organization is we would do once a week, usually on Mondays, because Mondays were more of our skill development days. I would go out on the ice and start practice with the team. I would have the first kind of 20 minutes or so, and I'd warm them up. And then we'd spend 10 to 15 minutes doing on ice speed training. And it's...

It's very simple if people came and watched, like they'd be very unimpressed because it's so simple. But a lot of it is just skating fast in straight lines without pucks with a lot of rest periods. So we were able to accomplish a lot in that small piece of practice every week just by nature of.

of consistency. So I was very fortunate to have coaches that were that were open to it and willing to allow me to do it. But I made sure that I measured pretty consistently. So when I started doing that, I started measuring every four to six weeks instead of three times per year to get kind of my finger on the pulse to make sure if these coaches were giving me ice time and were allowing me to do this, I just I wanted to make sure that what I was doing was working to hold myself a little bit more accountable. And, you know, sure enough, we saw improvements in skating times.

with these athletes throughout the year. So it doesn't have to be like a huge crazy amount of ice time dedicated to it. You know, even five to ten minutes after a quick warm -up drill, you know, can you get in four to six high quality skating sprints in from, you know, 10 to 30 meters or maybe a couple flies in that. And for a lot of athletes, that can be enough stimulus if you're supporting it with the off -ice pieces to see improvements in their skating speed.

Kevin Neeld (41:42)
Well,

Vicki Bendus (42:03)
Thank you.

Kevin Neeld (42:05)
I think the simplicity is, you know, you're, you're right that sometimes when you see that play out, if you're watching, it's like,

this is it, this is pretty basic, but that's kind of the point, right? Is that it doesn't need to be fancy. It's, it's more about the consistency and making sure that, that you're having that exposure on a regular basis. And, you know, one of the things that I, I like about the idea of having it be as simple as possible is that it really removes the barrier of equipment and technology, as an obstacle for teams implementing this, even at younger ages, you know, you have.

Vicki Bendus (42:12)
Yeah.

Kevin Neeld (42:40)
a lot of youth hockey programs where they could definitely allocate five to 10 minutes to integrate some drills where they're just straight ahead linear sprinting or accelerating or, you know, like you had mentioned, working in some, some flying neutral zone sprints or red to blues or whatever the case is. And it doesn't need to take a lot of time. It doesn't require equipment. It doesn't need to be fancy. It just needs to be done on a regular basis to, to see a significant benefit over the course of the season.

Vicki Bendus (43:10)
Yeah. And I think too, like the, the fact that you don't even necessarily need a lot of space. So, I mean, a lot of, like youth organizations do skill development already. Like they bring in, you know, skill coaches and stuff like that. And, you know, I watched some of these skill sessions and they do a lot of like station work, which feeds right at like, we could, you can make a speed school station. You know, I've done that a lot where if you have the, even just the neutral zone, I don't need a net. I don't need.

boards, I just need a little bit of, I just need 10 meters worth of space. So you can have skill development going on in both ends and the speed school can be in the center. So it can definitely be integrated in a way that's not obtrusive, that just kind of adds, I think, to what a lot of organizations are already doing.

Kevin Neeld (43:59)
Well, that's a great point. Vicki, this has been awesome. Where, where can listeners connect with you and learn more about you?

Vicki Bendus (44:05)
Yep, so I have Twitter, I guess not X, I have X. It's just my name, Vicki Bendus, and same as Instagram, Vicki Bendus. So I'm not, I don't have a strong social media game, but if you DM me there, I'm happy to respond to anyone.

Kevin Neeld (44:22)
Cool. Vicki, thanks again. Appreciate having you.

Vicki Bendus (44:24)
Yeah,

absolutely. Thanks for having me, Kev.