When watching the Russians play hockey, especially when we first paid very close attention to them in the 70’s, it was said that it appeared at times like ballet on ice. The truth is that Russian coaches, trainers and doctors specifically designed ballet to train their hockey players. It surprised the hockey world when it was learned that Russian ballet was one of the secrets to the Soviet player’s extraordinary skills.

Ballet originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century. Anatoli Tarasov, known as the “Father of Russian ice hockey”, was the Soviet coach who integrated the two among the many sometimes unusual training techniques he employed to build his hockey program. Tarasov saw hockey as an athletic artistic expression that required grace, sincerity, and passion, not just a game of brute strength.

When you think of ballet, images of graceful dancers in tutus immediately come to mind. The societal perception of the dance form is primarily seen as feminine. However, ballet is a rigorous and demanding form of dance that builds strength, flexibility, balance, and coordination – all crucial attributes for any athlete and not just for those looking to perform on stage. Many elite male athletes, like the “Great One”, Wayne Gretzky, and Bruins’ goalie, Jeremy Swayman, have incorporated ballet into their training regimens to enhance their performance.

Over the years, a number of NHL teams, like the LA Kings and Anaheim Ducks, have used ballet to improve the grace, flexibility, strength, and performance of their players. Indeed, the practice has spread throughout the hockey world and special programs have even been developed by ballet academies especially for hockey players.

It would come as a great surprise to many that way back in the 1950’s, the 1958 season to be exact, the RI Reds’ visionary owner, Louis A.R. Pieri, looking for a competitive edge while also promoting attendance at his games, investigated ballet as a tool to provide his players with more leg and core strength, better balance, and faster footwork. He collaborated with Rhode Island’s NBC television affiliate, WJAR TV 10, to produce a special ballet segment as part of the station’s daily “The World Around Us” program, which always stressed the value of fitness.

The segment featured several of the Reds’ most high-profile players (Mr. Pieri knew how to showcase his stars) – defensemen Camille Bedard and John Hanna, along with high-scoring forwards Bruce Carmichael, Ted Hampson, and the tough, irrepressible fan favorite Jimmy Bartlett.

In full game regalia, sans ice skates, they were put through their lessons imitating the graceful movements of ballet instructor, Judith Maxwell, learning the basic steps to enhance their on-ice performances – plié (bending), tendu (stretching), relevé (rising), sauté (jumping) and pirouette (turning).

Ms. Maxwell stressed that movements needed to be performed very slowly, creating a solid base and strong, stable muscle memory. Slow also significantly prevented injury. In full uniform, the players struggled to execute the movements, looking awkward at times at the beginning but soon got the hang of it.

The objectives of each step were to keep every muscle in alignment and balance in order to generate maximum power when exploding from a dead stop, shooting or moving the puck. Hampson noted, “I feel like the ballet movements engaged different leg muscles that I haven’t used before.”

The segments were short-lived, certainly not long or intense enough to make a noticeable improvement in their play that season. But for a brief, fun and somewhat productive time, Mr. Pieri, always the promoter, put his players in the spotlight on a medium not yet equipped or ready for primetime hockey programming.

Now, many decades later, the game is a staple of the most exciting televised sports entertainment and ballet has become one more component to enhance the game and the player performance we tune in for.

By Vin Cimini