{"id":313,"date":"2011-02-14T09:42:14","date_gmt":"2011-02-14T15:42:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/69.195.103.127\/health\/2011\/02\/14\/belmont-university-school-of-physical-therapy-helps-the-nashville-predators-improve-their-shot\/"},"modified":"2012-12-26T12:58:26","modified_gmt":"2012-12-26T18:58:26","slug":"belmont-university-school-of-physical-therapy-helps-the-nashville-predators-improve-their-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/2011\/02\/14\/belmont-university-school-of-physical-therapy-helps-the-nashville-predators-improve-their-shot\/","title":{"rendered":"Belmont University School of Physical Therapy helps the Nashville Predators improve their shot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Belmont University’s School of Physical Therapy has been consulting with the Nashville Predators hockey team this season to help players perfect their slap shots. The work of PT faculty members Dr. Kevin Robinson and Dr. Pat Sells, using the school’s Motion Analysis Lab, was featured during an in-game report on Fox Sports South when the Preds hosted the Detroit Red Wings on February 5. The video can be viewed below.
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\nBelmont’s consultation with the Predators is ongoing and will continue with additional research later this year in the Motion Analysis Lab. In November, Dr. Robinson’s work with the Predators Shea Weber was featured in a story in Canada’s National Post<\/em>. The story is available online at National Post’s website<\/a>, and is reprinted below.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nSean Fitz-Gerald, National Post \u00b7 Monday, Nov. 15, 2010
\n\"SheaWeber2.jpg\" As a clinician and a professor of biomechanics who has worked with golfers and baseball players, Dr. Kevin Robinson was eager to apply science to a growing hockey legend. And that interest only grew after watching Shea Weber step into his first few slap shots after a recent practice.
\nIt is a shot that ripped through an Olympic hockey net this year, leaving behind what one news agency described as \u201cscorch marks\u201d on the mesh. It moves with the ferocity that has reportedly broken bones in no fewer than four teammates while elevating Weber, a first-year captain of the Nashville Predators, into an object of childhood wonder.
\n\u201cWith that guy on skates,\u201d Robinson said, \u201cI was a dwarf.\u201d
\nRobinson, who teaches at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., analyzed Weber\u2019s shot last month with help from a digital camera and a computer program. He asked the 6-foot-4, 234-pound defenceman to take about a dozen shots in open ice, and asked the same of Predators teammates Jordin Tootoo and Cody Franson for the sake of comparison.
\nAfter taking the top of each player\u2019s backswing as a starting point, Robinson assessed the speed with which each player met the puck. Weber and Tootoo had similar mechanics in their shots, with their sticks perpendicular and their left arms parallel to the ice at the top of the top of their swing, and each took about 0.2 seconds to get down to the puck.
\nThe difference?
\n\u201cOne of them is 5-foot-8, and the other one\u2019s 6-foot-4,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cOne of them is swinging a bigger stick, so the angular velocity is much faster.\u201d
\nAngular velocity is a measure of speed, of which Weber showed in abundance. Robinson recorded the 25-year-old with a speed of 715 degrees per second \u2014 which suggests that, if his torso was able to spin like a top, Weber could rip through two full rotations of his shot in about a second.
\nTootoo was clocked in at 668 degrees per second with Franson in third, at 405.
\n\u201cWhat that speaks to is the tremendous amount of core strength, the strength of his abdominals, the muscles that stabilize his trunk,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cThat\u2019s the only way you can pull that off.\u201d
\nWeber, the son of a mill worker in the British Columbia interior, began to find fame with his shot during the NHL all-star weekend last year. He fired a shot that hit 103.4 mph during the skills competition, finishing second only to the Boston Bruins\u2019 6-foot-9 defenceman, Zdeno Chara (105.4 mph).
\nIt was at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver where Weber\u2019s ability began acquiring some of its mythical proportions. He sent a shot screaming in from the point in the second period of Canada\u2019s qualification game against Germany, opening a hole in the back of the net and forcing officials to consult video review to confirm what they had missed.
\nCanada won in a romp, and Canadian fans found their new favourite weapon.
\n\u201cI\u2019d never seen anything like that happen on a stage like the Olympics,\u201d Weber said with a chuckle. \u201cIt\u2019s pretty neat to have kids come up to you when you go home and bring that up.\u201d
\nIt was at home, in Sicamous, B.C., where Weber first developed his shot. He always loved to shoot the puck, and spent countless summer hours hammering shots into a second-hand net off a sheet of plywood laid on the grass outside his home.
\n\u201cI would wreck my sticks before anything else,\u201d Weber said. \u201cAnd Dad wasn\u2019t too happy about that. Just try to put an extra bit of tape on it after that.\u201d
\nHe said he usually goes through at least one composite stick a game with the Predators, even though he estimates he really only gets an opportunity to unleash the full fury of his shot once every three or four games.
\n\u201cIt might come a bit in spurts,\u201d he said. \u201cIt might go in back-to-back games, where you get an opportunity to really blast it, and then you\u2019d go a few games where you don\u2019t really even get a chance to shoot anything.\u201d
\nWeber had never put much thought into the physics of his shot, focusing instead on the mechanics of his delivery. He used to position his hand closer to the blade when he was younger, but moved it higher as he grew older and stronger, to the point where it is now mostly muscle memory.
\nHe takes at least 100 shots a week in practice.
\n\u201cThe biggest thing for me is weight transfer,\u201d Weber said. \u201cObviously, it\u2019s got to be in sequence with everything else: from the weight transfer to how you\u2019re distributing your power from your back foot to your front foot and, obviously, leaning on your stick to get the stick to torque and whip.\u201d
\nHe has taken 50 shots through Nashville\u2019s first 15 games this season, second to Atlanta\u2019s Dustin Byfuglien (66) for most by a defenceman in the league. Weber has two goals and five assists, but struggled to regain his dominant form while defence partner Ryan Suter was sidelined for nine games with a lower body injury.
\nBeing known for his shot can also work against Weber, when teams scheme to pin someone higher on the point when the Predators have the man advantage. That forces him off a shooting lane and into passing mode, where he has to defer to an open teammate.
\nAnd he has to be mindful of those teammates in practice, when he consciously dials down the force of his point shots, conceding he has \u201chad some unfortunate luck over the past few years with hitting guys on our team.\u201d
\n\u201cHe\u2019s using what God gave him, his height and his strength,\u201d Robinson said. \u201cThat\u2019s what separates him there.\u201d
\nThat core strength comes from the abdominal muscles, which can be strengthened with a diet of crunches and work with a medicine ball. Muscles in the hindquarters also help to stabilize the pelvis, which \u2014 in baseball and golf, as well as in hockey \u2014 should move first in the series of movements leading up contact.
\n\u201cIf those are in sync,\u201d Robinson said, \u201cthen what you have is a really efficient delivery of force.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Belmont University’s School of Physical Therapy has been consulting with the Nashville Predators hockey team this season to help players perfect their slap shots. The work of PT faculty members Dr. Kevin Robinson and Dr. Pat Sells, using the school’s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chs","category-physical-therapy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1546,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313\/revisions\/1546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forum.belmont.edu\/health\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}