Sam Kelvey - SAWperformance

23/05/2025

Great to be part of this rehab double whammy with and Gemma Hilton, helping .a.hay and Sarah Lamb get back on stage for Romeo & Juliet

27/09/2024

17/09/2024

🚨 Tickets are now on sale for the women’s Olympic Qualifiers as Great Britain face Netherlands, Spain and Latvia at the Bauer Arena in iceSheffield from Thursday 12th to Sunday 15th December.

🎟 Click here to buy tickets and for more details → tinyurl.com/WomensOQTickets

09/07/2024

After a painful Worlds last year, and GK put in the work to get back from what turned out to be some very naughty ligaments to compete at the highest level, and put in some heroic performances across domestic and international competition

"In a warm-up game before the 2023 World Championships I picked up a knee injury, but nursed it through the tournament. After a few weeks I'd lost huge amounts of strength and muscle, and couldn't train at all due to the pain. After some testing, Sam put together a full rehab and training program. In just a few months the difference was huge - back to squatting and training pain-free. By the International games this year, I was performing without pain or weakness. I'm back to 100%, feeling more confident and and comfortable on-ice than ever"

14/06/2024

Supporting perform at the highest level as Captain

"Sam has worked with the GB women’s team for the last couple of seasons now, helping players reach their personal performance goals in preparation for major tournaments"

Jodie has made huge jumps this year physically, going into the international season far fitter than ever

Want the same preparation? Get in touch

18/04/2024

IH WARM UP

It takes far longer to warm up *properly* for a game or training than you think. It's not as simple as 'getting a bit hot' and a 15min game of 1-touch. Yeh I said it.

3 key systems have to be ready to go -
- Physical (structural)
- Physiological (energy systems)
- Neural (strength, coordination)

and they're all prepared in different ways and at different rates.

A steady 'raiser', followed by structured mobility, drills, and relevant movements are all key, but that's where some warms stop.

With the amount of time between off-ice warm and game start, you have plenty of time to recover from some maximum effort sprint starts or jumps, and a hard run for ~30s that primes the physiology for the acid bath it'll get in the game. Take that a step further, and your on-ice warm should also include short bursts of hard skating for a similar reason

Want to create a genuinely effective warm up specific to you or your team?

13/04/2024

In training athletes for speed, Plyometrics are the regular go-to for increasing their capacity to deal with huge forces very fast. Whilst a combination of strength & plyos has been shown to improve skate speed, it's also suggested that the plyometric capacity of an athlete is only responsible for ~1% of the variation in high speed skating.

Skating speed is hugely dependent on repeated positive impulse, with limited contribution from the stretch-shorten cycle that most athletes depend on.

What this means is traditional Plyo's offer undoubted benefits that other training methods can't offer, BUT it's not a direct and major transfer to on-ice speed..🧐

If you want to make the most of every off-ice session over the next pre-season and make next season your best ever - get in touch.

📸

11/04/2024

Have some limited availability for coaching; for sports performance, big events, or simply for some structure to your training.

Currently working with international athletes, football prodigies, future Ice Hockey stars, recreational runners and weightlifters - want to join them?

Please share!

11/04/2024

Relatively rudimentary as a measure in SpSci terms, but Heart Rate gives us a practical idea of how athletes are coping with game load and their capacity to recover from bouts of ~45-55s in the Severe/Extreme domains. Over 20% of the entire game time - inc period breaks - is spent at >90% HRmax.

We usually see a slight upward drift too. A combination of effort and accumulative heat stress that ultimately starts to limit output

Balancing effective conditioning off-ice is crucial to supporting this and avoid burning out by the 3rd - just playing the game isn't enough to get fitter for the game at the top level.

Commit now and make next season your best ever

(HR trace isn't from the athlete pictured)
📸

09/04/2024

Invited down to Univ. by .emery.7 to deliver a lecture on my work with , how S&C & Sports Rehab works together, and about finding solutions to various training and preparation problems using real-life examples of practice. Cheers Ali!

04/04/2024

A pleasure to be working with the Women's team, and what a brilliant bunch

2 games left, let's bag the medal we deserve

27/02/2024

It’s not just a high-intensity sport

Hockey is undoubtedly a *very* high-intensity sport. Heart rates regularly hit >95% in a single shift, with average across a whole game sitting at over 80% - and that’s with spending ~2/3 of the entire game time sat on the bench.

Assuming that any given shift will demand a maximum effort, Anaerobic capacity is the obvious, and arguably the easiest, bit of the puzzle to address. One trap that many fall into is making your conditioning *look like* a shift pattern. It’s missing the mark and will not develop the underlying physiological capacity that backs it up, allowing you to work at the same intensity repeatedly *for the whole game*…

And so, Hockey is just as much a *recovery* sport

How fast and well your can recover between shifts is the thing that lets you keep on performing over and over, on fresher legs. Reduce the fatigue, and you also improve coordination, timing, decision-making, and mental acuity later in the game.

Put simply, you can train to have an overwhelming work-rate, and run your opposition into the ground

Commit now to your next off-season training and get 10% off a full physical profile and complete training plan