Relationship between hockey skating speed and selected performance measures

and K.G. Anderson. Relationship between hockey skating speed and selected performance measures. J. Strength Cond. Res. 19(2):326±331. 2005.—The objective of this study was to deter-mine the relationship between specific performance measures and hockey skating speed. Thirty competitive secondary school and junior hockey players were timed for skating speed. Off-ice measures included a 40-yd (36.9-m) sprint, concentric squat jump, drop jump, 1 repetition maximum leg press, flexibility, and balance ratio (wobble board test). Pearson product moment correlations were used to quantify the relationships between the variables. Electromyographic (EMG) activity of the dominant vastus lateralis and biceps femoris was monitored in 12 of the players while skating, stopping, turning, and performing a change-of-direction drill. Significant correlations (p, 0.005) were found between skating performance and the sprint and bal-ance tests. Further analysis demonstrated significant correla-tions between balance and players under the age of 19 years (r 5 20.65) but not those over 19 years old (r 5 20.28). The sig-nificant correlations with balance suggested that stability may be associated with skating speed in younger players. The low correlations with drop jumps suggested that short contact time stretch-shortening activities (i.e., low amplitude plyometrics) may not be an important factor. Electromyographic activities il-lustrated the very high activation levels associated with maxi-mum skating speed