In this article, I’ll explain the importance of ankle stability and mobility for hockey players and provide exercises to enhance edge work on the ice.
- Why ankle stability and mobility is important for edge work
- How a lack of ankle mobility can lead to hockey injuries
- How hockey players can test ankle mobility
- Ankle exercises to improve your edge work
In hockey training, much emphasis is placed on explosive training, agility drills, and compound strength movements; but if you don’t have good foot mechanics, you won’t get nearly as much out of these drills as you otherwise would.
Think about high-performance race cars for a moment.
Do you ever think the driver and crew just throw any old tires on there?
Or do you think they respect that the tires bear the vehicle’s load, need to generate enough friction with the road to prevent slippage, and need a long enough lifespan to last a race?
If you compare a race car tire to a transport truck tire, they differ dramatically in design because their functional needs vary.
Different material and shape qualities lead to different desired outcomes from your tires.
Your ankles and feet are your tires.
They are the first thing that comes into contact with the ice, and they need to be able to handle their jobs at a high level or else you will not meet your hockey performance potential (just like a race car wouldn’t).
Why Ankle Stability and Mobility Is Important For Edge Work
When you skate on an inside or outside edge, your ankle bears the weight of your entire body (sometimes at extreme angles).
If your ankle doesn’t have the stability and mobility to handle that, it simply won’t let you perform the movement.
And that’s why many hockey players continue to struggle with edge work no matter how much money they fork out for skating lessons.
If you want elite edge work as a hockey player, your ankles need to be:
- strong enough to handle heavy loading at high velocities
- flexible enough not to restrict level changes
- stable enough to keep your balance
- mobile enough to get optimal angles of edge work
And they have to do all of the above while simultaneously being responsive enough to perform all of these tasks as quickly as possible.
We will get further into the mobility side of the equation below when we look at some research and outline a plan of attack for both assessment and application, but for now I want to dive a little deeper into the importance of stability.
The Importance of Ankle Stability in Hockey Performance
Elite hockey athletes must create stable balance around the ankles because the greater amount of force the ankles can safely absorb and produce improves their ability to transfer that force into better edge work and overall skating.
In addition to lower-body force production, strengthening the stabilizing muscles around the ankle helps prevent chronic issues associated with high-velocity motion, such as shin splints and tendonitis.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, increased ankle stability improves proprioception.
Proprioception is the body’s ability to realize its place in space (think of having better “body awareness” out on the ice).
If you’re skating and can’t stabilize the ankle joint structure, the body sends alert signals to the brain, warning that the tissue structure is in danger.
You can think about it like how your body warns you before you drop down too low into the splits — it lets you know, “Hey! You’re going to get injured if you go further than this.”
Proprioception limits optimal ranges of motion because this safety measure the body has in place will prevent you from creating deep angles on your inside/outside edges, and thus, reduce your skating potential.
Elite skaters like Crosby don’t have these warning signals because their ankles can absorb and redirect very high levels of force; as a result, you regularly see him hit excellent edges at a moment’s notice and slip in and out of mohawk turns like they are nothing.
Ankle stability leads to superior proprioception, and superior proprioception leads to superior balance and awareness during high-speed movement.
Although you train ankle stability with basic compound movements and plyometrics in the gym, some muscles exist solely to stabilize the ankle.
These muscles may not need to be isolated for the average person looking to get healthy, but they are absolutely required for any hockey player looking to take their skating to the next level.
I’ll show you some of my favorite ankle stability exercises at the bottom of the page, but first we need to discuss the importance of not just stability, but mobility as well.
How Lack of Ankle Mobility Can Lead To Hockey Injuries
What should hockey athletes do to get strong?
Lift weights, of course!
Strength training is a vital component of any complete hockey training program design.
The two biggest compound movements in the game are squat variations and deadlift variations.
Most hockey players never think about their feet during these two movements, yet I would challenge you to think about dorsiflexion (think of the shin moving over the top of the foot during a squat) as one of the most critical factors in maximizing performance in these lifts.
If your ankle isn’t mobile enough during any flexion movement (basically all bilateral and unilateral lower-body exercises), your body will always find a way to compensate to get the range of motion you want out of the exercise.
This compensation typically leads to the heel rising off the ground as they get lower in a squat, or the knees/feet pronating inwards, which can lead to injuries in hockey players.
Research has demonstrated that a lack of dorsiflexion:
- Is directly correlated to ACL injury risk
- Increases pain in the knees and ankles during activity
- Reduces stability of the ankle joint structure
- Reduces your potential for squat depth
- Helps keep your knees in alignment when performing lower body movements rather than caving inwards
References: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 respectively.
Or, to put this another way, ankle mobility is crucially important for health, performance, injury prevention, and to be able to workout without limitations.
Conversely, correcting these mobility issues will help you improve performance on major compound movements (and feel less pain while doing them), making you a stronger, more stable hockey player.
I want you to start thinking of your hockey performance machine from the “ground up”.
Start with your feet and work your way up, because if your feet and ankles aren’t doing what you need them to do, you will always have a “ball and chain” holding back your hockey potential.
How Hockey Players Can Test Their Ankle Mobility
If you have trouble hitting squat depth or hamstring/low back pain during deadlifts, these are two great signs that your ankle mobility needs the most work.
Hockey players with mobility issues and those with a history of ankle injuries will often struggle with ankle dorsiflexion, but the pain is only sometimes felt at the Achilles tendon.
And often, that tightness will cause pain to travel up the kinetic chain and into the hamstrings and/or lumbar spine.
Strange enough, you may be able to get your heels decently low at the bottom of a calf raise, which can lead you to think your ankle mobility is fine.
But that’s the toes-to-shins mobility.
Your shins-to-toes mobility is a different sequence altogether even though both are classified as forms of dorsiflexion.
The Hockey Training Ankle Mobility Screen
If you think you may be suffering from ankle mobility issues, it’s important to confirm your hypothesis before doing a bunch of exercises you might not even need.
Take your shoes off, find a wall, and grab a tape measure.
Once you’ve got all of the above, follow these four steps:
1 – Stand with the big toe of your test foot about 10 cm from a wall, with your foot/toes pointed straight forward at the wall.
2 – Lean your knee straight forward towards the wall without allowing it to move from side-to-side. From here, try to touch your knee to the wall without allowing your heel to lift (this is critical; your heel needs to be planted).
3 – If you can’t get that knee to touch the wall, move forward a bit. If you can, move back a little. Try to find your maximum available range of motion here.
Your test score is based on the greatest distance you can touch your knee to the wall without lifting your heel and keeping your thigh pointed straight at the wall.
4 – Repeat the above three steps with your other foot and compare the two.
A score between 10-12 cm is considered normal and doesn’t indicate ankle mobility limitations.
If you fell below 10 cm, your ankle mobility is causing problems from the ground up, and it’s translating into increased injury risk, increased pain in the knees and hips, and a reduced overall hockey performance.
Don’t be surprised if you failed this test, because you spend so much time in a locked-in skating boot that ankle mobility can easily suffer; you will need to keep it in check with progressive dryland training and mobility circuits.
Here’s how we can help you become an edge work master by improving your ankle stability and mobility:
Ankle Mobility And Stability Exercises For Hockey Players
Funny enough, the ankle mobility test itself can actually help to improve your mobility as well.
Set it up as described above, then slowly and controllably touch your knee to the wall for 2-3 x 10-12 reps per leg.
As your mobility improves, increase the distance slightly over time. You can do this exercise 1-3x per week, depending on your knees.
Additional support exercises that I like to incorporate into my hockey athletes’ warm-ups, cooldowns, and training to improve ankle mobility and stability include:
Single-Leg Balance And Reach
T-Stands
Toes Elevated Squats
Deep Squat Hold With Toes Elevated
Cossack Squats
Ladder Drill Variations
Hurdle Drill Variations
5-Dot Drill Variations
Ankle Training Should Be Part of Your Hockey Training
The exercises above are a great place to start if you want to improve your ankle mobility and stability.
But I also don’t think ankle training should be treated as something completely separate from the rest of your hockey training.
Your ankles have to work together with your feet, knees, hips, and core every time you skate. That’s why we include ankle mobility, stability, and strength work throughout our Hockey Domination training programs.
Hockey Domination gives players of all ages complete hockey-specific training programs designed around the actual demands of the game. Depending on the program and time of year, that means working on things like strength, speed, power, mobility and the smaller areas that can easily get overlooked, including your ankles.
If you’re looking for a more complete training plan instead of piecing everything together yourself, you can learn more about Hockey Domination here.
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