Why you should NOT play through Pain or Injury in Hockey

This article details why I believe a longevity approach is WAYYY more important than the classic mindset that hockey players have when playing through injury.

Your career as a WHOLE is important. Maybe you gotta put it all in for your championship game. Or maybe you got to look at the long term like what we talk about here:

Hockey players are known for many things — no teeth, big hits and fights, and (only sometimes) scoring goals. One thing they are notorious for, especially when you spend your time watching the game for years, is that many players will play through injuries for their teams.

Commonly, the main reason players give for doing this is because they, “may never get another shot again at a championship or (even worse in my opinion) get another shot at making the team.” There is some truth to this. The NHL has 32 teams now with a 24 man roster, not including extra players. So you have at least 760 players in the league, playing in the top 0.1% of all hockey players, meaning you’re already in rare company by making the NHL. But to then win the Stanley Cup is even rarer, as only 1 team of those 32 teams gets to win. And there are 104 Stanley Cup Champion teams, with multiple players winning multiple cups, making this even more an issue that the top percentage of the top percentage of players get the most success in the league (pareto distribution). That’s how rare this is.

To win a championship at all costs I don’t believe is anything new in sports; if it is true that sports were created as an alternative to war, then it makes sense that people would sacrifice their bodies for their teams in the same way that people would sacrifice their bodies for their countries.

That doesn’t make this any less stupid or deteriorating for your body, or unable to continue with life after your career is over.

I’ll link an article that details more so how the culture inside hockey is to blame for the “playing through the pain” problem. This is slightly different from what I’m talking about, but I still discuss similar factors that the writer here did a brilliant job of laying out.

Pride Over Body: Playing Through Injury Needs to Stop

NHL players have been pushing through injuries since the league started. It's time for that to stop, and the NHL to put…

The average pro-athlete career out of the big North American sports (soccer/football, American football, basketball, baseball, hockey) is 5 years or less. If you’re projected to live to 80 years old, this means 75 years of your life is not in professional sports; 75 years of your life is not done in professional hockey.

To me, this is a problem of longevity versus instant gratification, and it’s a hard problem to solve.

We discussed the problem of how rare it is to win a Stanley Cup. But what happens when you win at the cost of your body, and then can’t play the next year because of that injury you played through?

What happens when your performance drops due to this new weak link in your chain, making you lose out on bonus millions of dollars you could have had if you were healthy?

What happens when you win once, and then can’t win again because of a chronic pain?

“Oh but hockey is a team sport, it’s all about the team.” Well the team does a damn good job at performing and losing when you’re the star player who can’t perform and help the team win. In other words, no it’s not about the “team”. A team isn’t a team, it’s individuals collaborating with many other individuals. And the individuals all need to perform their agreed roles so that the team can succeed. This is why teams struggle if the star player gets hurt and there’s no “depth” to help the team stay at a top level. The same exact pareto distribution works here: a small number of players produce the most amount of points on your team. Not everyone produces points or can produce points at their current ability. Obviously with some work, anyone can change that ability, but in the moment if you can’t produce when your star teammate is out with an injury, you’re likely not helping your team.

I believe this is why players need to adopt a longevity approach to hockey.

Your career matters.

Your ability to play matters.

Your life matters.

All of those get affected when you interrupt the body’s recovery process by trying to “play through pain.” Your body is telling you something important when you have those chronic groin and hip flexor issues, or your shoulder is out of its socket from a big hit, or your foot swells from a one-timer to the foot, or you tear your knee out from a cheap hit that the opposing player should have been suspended for. This isn’t “pain is weakness leaving the body.” This isn’t “no pain no gain.” If you have a weakness in your structural chain, how can you expect to perform at the level you know you can?

Recovery is delayed or worsened when you push through pain, and you know this. This is exactly why I think it’s stupid to play through pain.

The Hockey Hacks System embraces the longevity approach for all players. None of the exercises permit you work through pain. You make progress when working at your pain free ability. So anyone can get into regressions of any exercise I prescribe. The body’s connective tissues, which includes the fascia, tendons, ligaments, and muscles (not just one of those) take time to heal. If you tear a muscle, that will heal quicker than a tendon, which will heal quicker than a ligament. This is exactly why we take our time with movements, even if you have a deadline. We go at the speed of trust with you and your body while giving you the gift of longevity so you can play for as long as you want.

When I was researching how to fix my hips after training for hockey for hours and hours every day, this system is what I wish was available to me at the time. Knowing that it’s a matter of improving numbers like a math equation, that all I needed to do is get stronger in specific exercises, would have saved me tons of time and pain myself. Hockey Hacks is designed with that intention; to unlock elite performance through training weak links.

There’s no question that playing hockey is a risk, whether you’re taking contact or not. But, would you like to play for 5 years, or for the rest of your life which is much longer than 5 years?

Yours in Hockey Hacks,
Mason