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How To Best Prepare for the Upcoming Season.

By: Mike Gempeler
RMHS & USJDP Director

Mike is a 15-year hockey school veteran who is the founder/director of Rocky Mountain Hockey Schools and the U.S. Junior Development Program, as well as founder/creator of the CamperReg Online Camp Management System and Hockey Editor for RINK magazine. He has spent time as a youth hockey coach, private powerskating instructor, private stickhandling coach, youth hockey director, and youth hockey association consultant.

Mike is also a Senior Consultant and Founding Partner with Global Sports Management & Consulting, Inc., a worldwide sports consulting business that focuses on the development and management of youth and adult sports programs. Among the services GSMC provides is tournament direction, rink and pro shop management, youth association management and development, turn-key operations, charity events, and coaching/motivational seminars.

Can you believe it? Summer is almost over! It istime to get ready for another hockey season. Some of your players may be nervous about the upcoming season, or more to the point, they may be nervous about tryouts. Maybe it is what team they will be on, moving up an age group, being out of shape, or even being concerned about checking for the first time. Whatever it is, they have to realize that they will get out of the game what they put into it. Although hockey is a team game, each member of the team must be prepared as well as available to help the team reach its utmost potential. Whatever their concern may be, there are things they can do to alleviate them. But they have to start now!

Some of the training styles discussed below are expensive and need a training partner, some can be done anywhere while others need a field, and still some need tools, but all of them will produce results.

PLYOMETRICS
This is the most popular, as well as the most convenient, training style there is. What I mean by that is these exercises can be done in your backyard, your basement or even your garage, and they (most of the time) do not need expensive training devices. Most hockey schools, college teams and professional teams are starting to incorporate this type of training into their daily routine.

Not only are these drills becoming more and more widespread in their use, but they are guaranteed to produce results as well. The dynamic nature of hockey itself dictates that successful hockey players be physically strong, supremely conditioned, and extremely agile athletes. Properly executed plyometric exercises will help develop all of this. They increase speed, quickness and strength at the same time. The idea behind these types of drills is to develop a player’s quick twitch muscles. These muscles provide the explosiveness, quickness, and agility needed for starts, stops, lateral mobility, transitions, and cross-unders.

Basically there are hundreds of different types of plyometric exercises. No two are alike, and none are perfect. There are dozens of books out there that can help the players, or they can create them themselves. As a rule of thumb, most plyometric exercises can be grouped into leaping and bounding drills. To help a player determine which ones are best suited for themselves and the kind of workout they want, keep in mind the following four criteria.

1. What are your training preferences?
Do you like to train on hills for power? Do you like two-legged stairs vs. one-legged because you have a bad knee? Or do you like to train indoors vs. outdoors? Each person and each body are clearly adept at some exercises and not at others. I encourage every player to start with their strengths to get the hang of plyos, and then slowly work into their weaknesses.

2. Where do you plan on training?
The beauty of plyometrics is they can be done almost anywhere, from the backyard, to a nearby park, or the basement. Unless the player is using a training device that needs more space, such as the bungee cords for overspeed training, they can do most exercises in a confined area. Remember, be creative.

3. What training devices do you have at your disposal?
While this is a moot point for most collegiate and professional players as they generally have access to full time athletic trainers, it is very relevant to the rest of us. But that is no reason to become discouraged. There are a couple of excellent companies out there that provide world class training apparatuses at reasonable cost. You can purchase plyometric ladders, speed chutes, bungee cords, weight sleds, and the like to help in your training. I recommend Greater Performance, Inc., as I have used their products and have been very pleased with the results I have seen in my clients.

In the absence of these sometimes hard-to-find and costly training devices, many plyometric exercises can be done with little or no outside influences. All you need is a hill, a set of stairs, an old hockey stick, and a small set of children’s building blocks. With these you can do lateral hops, hill climbs, hill speed descents, box sprints, stair lunges, and any multitude of exercises you can create.

4. What do YOU need to work on?
When establishing a training program, this is the single hardest thing to factor in because what one player may want to work on could be different from what a training partner may need to work on. Also, what they need to work on may not fit in with the training devices or locations available to them. A player needs to take a look at his or her own weaknesses and set up a program that will allow them to legitimately address these shortfalls and work to improve them. Do you practice lateral hops because you need to develop your quickness? Or squat thrusts because you want to be more powerful?

CONDITIONING
Now as everybody knows, conditioning is a very important part of any pre-season fitness program. Sometimes, it is the difference between making the team and being cut. The reason for this is simple. Even though you may be a better player than another person trying out, you will not perform at your best in tryouts if you are sucking wind. It is a proven fact that the body reverts back to the path of least resistance while trying to conserve energy when tired. What that means is simple: A player’s stride will get sloppy, their shot will get slower, and their hits will be less substantial when they are tired. This may persuade a coach to take another player instead of you. Don’t let this happen!

Having trained for many years and being an avid outdoorsman, I have tried many things to get into, or stay in, shape to varying degrees of success. Unfortunately, skating uses a very specific group of muscles that are not commonly used in other athletic endeavors. This limits the number of conditioning exercises that will actually help you prepare for the upcoming season. Ever had a sore lower back, stiff neck and heavy legs your first day of training camp? This is what I am talking about. Even though you may have trained heavily over the summer, you may not have trained the correct way.

Biking is a great way to keep your anaerobic threshold high, but sadly it utilizes different muscle groups than a skating stride does. Same with running, but sprinting is excellent for quickness development, especially up and down hills. Other conditioning exercises that are better suited to skating preparation are roller blading, stride boards (discussed below), hill sprints, field sprints, and stair climbs.

WEIGHT LIFTING
The benefits of weight lifting are obvious. Hockey is a contact sport where pure muscle strength and power often give a larger player the edge over an opponent of smaller stature. Every person has an opinion on weight lifting, when to start, how often, what muscle groups to focus on, etc. While all of these people are eminently qualified, I believe the answer comes down to each individual. The best advice I can give is to consult with your local physical trainer to develop the best training regime for each individual player’s body, age, and what they want to, or feel they need to, work on.

Now, a few simple facts to help you get started. One of the more important parts of the body to develop for a hockey player is the trunk. The trunk, or stomach area, provides the body’s stability and connects the two distinctly different halves of the body, increasing fluidity, stamina, and strength. It is important in a physically demanding game such as hockey where you are constantly banging and leveraging your body in a battle for the puck to have a strong, stable mid-section. I also do not believe in weights equal to more than one’s body weight for players under the age of Bantam. This is a big growth age and excessive weights can cause some growth issues within their growth plates and may hurt the body over the long haul. They will have plenty of time later in life to work with weights.

Along with weight lifting and plyometrics, there are many other training regimens that will greatly help a player prepare for the upcoming season and develop the skills necessary for increased productivity in the game of hockey.

STRIDE BOARDS
Stride boards are silicon-laced, plastic sliding platforms on which a player strides back and forth between two blocks. This enables a player to focus on stride development and perfection. Done in front of a mirror, these stride boards are excellent for working on the necessary mechanics of each player’s individual stride. While it may be hard to stride yourself into a really good workout, these boards are still excellent for keeping the body in skating shape. A side benefit of the stride board is it will help to alleviate the aches and pains associated with the first day of camp that may affect your performance at the tryouts.

OFF-ICE STICKHANDLING CIRCUIT & SHOOTING PYRAMID
I have discussed, at length, what to do to keep your lungs, muscles, and legs in shape for tryouts. But what about your hands? Many people do not work their hands during the off-season other than to hold a golf club. While I do believe in the merits of golf and the effect the sport has on the softness of your hands (as well as your sanity), it does not substitute for the handling of a real puck. There are a couple of simple things you can do to keep your hands as soft as butter.

Off-ice stickhandling circuits are an excellent way to keep your hands puck-ready, and at the same time improve your overall stickhandling abilities. These drills can be done year-round, are easy to set up, take up little space, and require very little other than a stickhandling ball, a stick and some tape.

Start by creating a stickhandling ball by cutting up a tennis ball and stuffing it inside a baseball- sized whiffle ball. These balls are ideal for these drills because they do not bounce, closely imitate the size and weight of a puck, and even handle easily with a taped stick. Next, use pieces of tape to create the following designs on the floor of your garage or basement, and complete the stickhandling drills for each one. I recommend completing the circuit three times per session, 3 to 4 times per week.

1. Figure 8 Exercise
Put two pieces of tape the length of your stick apart. Practice stickhandling around the tape in a Figure 8 fashion. First left to right for 120 seconds, then right to left for the same. Lastly, stand at one end and Figure 8 away from your body and back for another 2 minutes.

2. Straight Line
Put the tape pieces 10 to 12 inches apart, about 10 feet long. While straddling the line, stickhandle in and out of the dots as fast as you can while walking, and then running, down the line. Go through 5 times in succession, each time gradually getting faster.

3. Triangle
Create a triangle the size of a trash can lid to simulate stickhandling in and out of a defenseman’s legs and stick…the Attack Triangle. Move the ball in any direction around the triangle without hitting the tape for 2 minutes.

Another great training tool for a players’ shot is a shooting target. Either set up a net or create a net on a wall or garage door with tape. Then, using a plastic chair mat from your parent’s office as a shooting platform, shoot at the target with real pucks. Start with 10 shots every day for a week, and then increase that amount weekly, thus creating a Shooting Pyramid. This will allow you to track your shots, set goals for yourself, and increase your shot speed and accuracy. My father rues the day he put a tape net up on the basement wall, and will probably never let us forget the 2 sets of wall paneling my brother and I went through, but it did do wonders for our shots.

Taking the time to prepare for the upcoming season and tryouts is very important. It will help players get off to a great start, keep them safe from injury, improve their skills, and hopefully, get them selected to the team they are trying out for. We play because we love the game, and every athlete will enjoy the game more if they prepare more thoroughly for each season. Work hard and good luck!