A Discussion with Joe Sawicki - LTAD, Academy Hockey, Testing. Pre-Season Testing.
Ben and I had the privilege of speaking with Joe Sawicki a few weeks back from Shattuck-St. Mary’s.
Joe has an awesome role and title of Director of Sports Medicine, and he clearly wears many hats. You can listen to our conversation here:
Shattuck is/was one of the first places in North America to implement a very successful hockey academy. It has a long history of incredible success, pushing out prominent NHLers: Sidney Crosby, Nathan MacKinnon, Jonathan Toews etc.
After talking to Joe, you can understand why there is a lot of success at that school!
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This past week I started back with one of the teams I help out with.
My resources that I have to collect data are limited. However, and more importantly, I want to take action on the basic info I am collecting.
I think Ben and I will likely have an episode in the coming weeks about the below stuff, but anyone that has spent a good amount of hockey players knows their lack of hip range of motion and how this could impact skating, c.o.d, hip function, pain etc.
It is unclear whether decreased rotation or total arc of motion predisposed these athletes to injury. A lot of these athletes, like other sports, will have decreased hip rotation and a decreased total arc of motion - is this simply a finding that indicates more significant (asymptomatic or symptomatic) CAM deformity in a posterolateral location and therefore predisposes these high-demand individuals to the development of hip-related issues?
Anyway, when I am doing my introductory assessment on new players, I am taking a look and just making sure nobody has 0 IR or ER, limited abduction, brutal knee to wall etc.
We know good skaters have greater hip abduction, and dorsiflexion etc than less skilled skaters, so what I have done is quickly stratified players into red, yellow or green areas. I only have a few mins to assess these guys and I am using my eyeometer instead of my goniometer. I have specific ranges that I have in mind. For example, if they have less than 15 degrees IR, they are in my red bucket.
From that I am of course going to help them with strategies to improve or maintain certain qualities. Nothing special.
Anyway, hope you’re enjoying the late stages of summer and look forward to any feedback you have my way or if you could send this to another hockey person or sport related clinician It would mean a lot to me!
Ref:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28298064/
https://ijspt.scholasticahq.com/article/116580-associations-between-hip-pathology-hip-and-groin-pain-and-injuries-in-hockey-athletes-a-clinical-commentary