Research has shown that athletes with groin pain lack stiffness in change of direction tasks. This is thought to add strain on the groin eventually leading to groin pain.
Today, I’m going to share my approach to restoring lower body stiffness in athletes with groin pain.
Most hip and groin rehab misses this valuable part. Lower body stiffness is important in hip and groin rehab for hockey players. It plays an important role in stop and go tasks for return to sport performance after hip surgery. It might also reduce the risk of chronic groin pain we often see in hockey players.
Unfortunately…
Rehab professionals feel lost once they get past goblet squats and kettlebell deadlifts.
They also feel they lack the knowledge to:
- Progress from strength exercises to plyometrics
- Progress from low-load to high-velocity plyometrics
- Train plane-specific plyometrics
- Load plane-specific plyometrics
How do I know this? I was that rehab professional not that long ago. If you can relate, you’ll be happy to know that I’m about to share my lower body stiffness progression principles.
Here’s how, step by step:
Step 1: Restore movement quality
Hockey players need to move well to perform well.
The biggest issue I see when treating hip and groin pain in hockey players is a lot move poorly in the frontal plane. I see a lot of them using a lot of groin to pull laterally rather than pushing with the back leg. I think this plays a big role in a lot of overuse groin pain.
I work a lot on lateral weight shifting, lateral stepping and dry skaters to retrain them to push laterally rather than pull.
Step 2: Deceleration
Next, I add some eccentric load (assuming they have already built adequate strength to handle eccentric load)
When changing direction, braking is an important component. Research has shown that athletes with groin pain tend to have longer contact times than those without pain in change of direction tasks. This is likely due to a lack of stiffness and ability to slow down, which also leads to higher loads on the hip and groin.
I’ll then progress to lateral hops focusing on landing. To add load, I’ll add bands/cables or medicine balls.
Some may also prefer exercises like box drops, which are more sagittal plane but still train lower body stiffness.
Step 3: Accelerate
Finally, I add acceleration.
I’ll start by giving a continuous lateral bound where they decelerate and hop back to the pushing leg. This adds a very small acceleration in the opposite direction. I’ll progress to a lateral hop with a vertical jump and step back med ball throws to add load. And finally, progress to change of direction drills.
The goal of these drills is short contact times. I like to cue them to get off the landing foot as fast as possible.
There you have it! Hope these help!