Male Ice Hockey Player Body Composition During A Season And Relationships To On-ice Skating Performance

Literature supporting a potential association between body composition and performance in sports is limited, and no work has investigated this relationship during ice hockey games using wearable technology-derived skating measures. PURPOSE: To examine male ice hockey player’s body composition changes during three months of a season and evaluate the potential associations between body composition and on-ice skating performance measured during games using player-tracking technology. METHODS: Twenty-five male university ice hockey players (22.1 ± 1.2 y, 87.3 ± 5.2 kg, 181 ± 5 cm) underwent dual energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) scans during preseason (PRE) and at the mid-way point (MID) of the season to determine whole body and upper and lower segmental changes in fat mass (FM) and lean mass (LM). Selected on-ice skating speeds (medium, high, and very high zones and maximum speed) were measured via a local positioning system and averaged across 4 games within 30 days of the MID assessment. Dependent sample t-tests were used to compare PRE and MID assessments. Pearson’s correlations were used to examine the association between body composition parameters and LPS-derived measures. RESULTS: Whole body mass was maintained between PRE (87.4 ± 5.2 kg) and MID (87.2 ± 5.1 kg) measurements. Upper body mass and lower body mass were also unchanged between PRE and MID. PRE whole body FM was 17.5% (14.0 ± 3.2 kg) and LM was 79.2% (62.9 ± 3.6 kg) and both were unchanged at the MID time point. Upper and lower LM and FM were also unchanged over the 3 months of the season. There were no significant correlations between upper or lower body LM with any of the skating measures. However, whole body mass and lower body mass were significantly correlated with distance in the very high-speed zone (r = 0.46, p = 0.03; r = 0.45, p = 0.03) and maximum speed (r = 0.44, p = 0.03; r = 0.59, p < 0.01). CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrated that male university hockey players were able to maintain their body composition parameters during three months of a season. Local positioning system-derived measures of skating speeds during ice hockey games revealed few significant correlations with body composition parameters. PepsiCo and Mitacs