Great Hockey Conditioning Ideas – Part 2

I think it’s important to mention a few things before actually showing you what we’ve been up to.

1. In order for this program to help my players, each exercise and its method of execution is going to have to be as close to their on-ice needs as possible.
2. My kids struggled a number of times when they were working at something that required fine motor skills — like their rope skipping.  So I advised them not to get frustrated…  I told them that their fine motor skills are the first to abandon them as they tire, and that they’ll be less and less affected by that as their conditioning improves.  (By the way, the fine motor skills involved in their game play would include eyesight, stickhandling, and their passing and shooting accuracy.  Ya, maybe a goaltender wouldn’t focus on a speeding puck as well as he’d like, and perhaps a skater might flub the puck or miss on a shot he’d otherwise nail.)
3. At one point during the upcoming video, you’ll hear me tell a player to “Keep going!”  Yes, I explain to my guys that they are forming habits of all kinds during their practices — even up in The MOTION Lab, so I advised them to keep teaching themselves to not stop and sulk for even an instant whenever they experience a problem — in a game or in a practice.

Okay, so what I’ve done is to design almost a simulated game for my high school guys.  Oh, they weren’t going to be playing, but they wer going to condition themselves in game-like fashion.

During our first week of doing this sort of thing, I told my guys to go fairly easy with the exercises.  “Hey,” I promised them, “by Thanksgiving you’ll be able to skate rings around everyone else!”

Once our warm-ups were accomplished, I started my guys with 7 exercises that were really going to tax them.

Rope Skip with Lateral hops – A player skips the rope at a good pace while also hopping from side to side.

Front Jumps to Box – Keeping their sticks low (when they have them) and holding a decent posture, each player jumps forward and up onto the box, back down, and so forth.

Lateral Jumps to Box – Like above, a player hops up onto the box, but from side to side (which simulates the push-off during skating).

Straddle Hops to Box – Again, a player hops up onto the box, but while performing straddle hops (which also includes some later pushing).

Continuous Rolls – This one is a real killer, as a player executes roll after forward roll.  Players usually become a little dizzy at the end of their turn (to which I’ll often say, “Good, now the game will be easy for you!”)

Coach Chic’s Up/Downs – Similar to the popular exercise known as Turkish Up/Downs, my version has a player holding a weight (and sometimes two weights or a sandbag) in both hands.  In this way I get what I want, which is for the player to get up and go down without the use of his hands.

Sit-ups & Dribble – I wanted my guys to do some sit-ups during this routine, but I thought I’d also get their minds off the core work while also improving their puckhandling.  So, as you’ll see in the video, my guy is dribbling a ball as he does quick sit-ups.

Following that pretty tough workout, the guys would cool and do static stretching in hopes they’d bounce-back quickly.

Okay, here are some video clips of that training I’ve strung together.  I’ll have some further comments to add at the end, as well as an even better description of how I run things… Loading…

(I hate to say it but, it’s pretty noticeable who is and who isn’t in shape at the start, just by observing the pace they work at.  Still, we do have several months to bring everyone along.)

Now, how did I arrive at those particular drills?  Really, what I was looking for were exercises that challenged the whole body.  So, while a number of them are hockey specific, I’m sure my members could come-up with a number of other really challenging movements that involve a player’s total body.

Then, as far as operation goes…

– My kids report to The MOTION Lab in small groups.  No matter, everything is based on us having three playing units in a game.  So, we simulate that same work:rest ratio — or, X-seconds work followed by 2X-seconds rest.  (On a night when we had only two players, we’d just pretend a third guy was there so we could keep the same 1:2 work:rest ratio.)

– I usually had a team dad watching the clock and calling out for the kids to “Change!” (so I could keep focused on the work area).  The players knew they had to make changes quickly — on-the-fly, and you can hear me in the video at least once pushing a youngster to hurry on the twitch.

– I think we may have begun with 10-second shifts during the first weeks.  However, I gradually increased the work times to 15-seconds and then 20-seconds.  The most we’d probably ever do these drills would be 30-seconds, although I’m not sure that’s necessary.

– To get a decent workout, we usually did two sets of each exercise (but that could be increased if we wanted to come even closer to real game length).

– Most of the above drills could be made even more taxing by adding weights or increasing the existing weight.  So, we could actually adjust both the time and resistance for a given movement and get a totally different training effect.  (I likely would lessen the length of a drill if I was going to add more weight.)

– We only did those Lab workouts once per week…

– Of course, this stuff had to blend with our other training sessions — at our other off-ice facility and during our on-ice practices.  So, the accompanying photo shows how a full team can be spread in an open area to do similar drills timed in similar fashion.

– As you may have gathered from some of my other writings, I’m not really a big fan of traditional type aerobic workouts.  What I do try to get is an aerobic training effect in all my practices — off-ice or on-ice.  For example, the routine you just watched — although mainly focused on anaerobic shift work — actually had a cumulative effect.  In other words, the players in that video are aiding their aerobic capacity (and more hockey related) because they stayed going for nearly 45-minutes per session.  And I look to do the same on the ice, pushing my players at a fairly rapid pace, from drill to drill to drill, with all that work adding-up over nearly an hour.

Finally, when I mentioned “youngster” up there somewhere, it reminded me to caution you about subjecting a young body (and even a youngster’s psyche) to a routine like you’ve seen here.

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