Late Off-Season (early August) Workout

Maria Mountain

I wanted to share a slightly different approach to workouts that I used this year with some of the higher level hockey players I work with. These players train with me three times per week and then complete supplemental workouts on their own. The workout I will describe below was used in early August when the players were not yet skating on a daily basis - still just skating 2-3 times per week.

This is representative of a 'strength day' where the focus of the initial lift is on force production. Then for energy system training we worked through a metabolic circuit which included some rapid response work and dynamic stabilization. The idea being that during any shift a player will be required to skate, but also hit, stabilize, push and maybe get pummeled. Here is the layout:

Foam Roll x 5-minutes
Static Stretch Circuit x 5-minutes
Dynamic Warm-Up x 5-10 minutes

Strength Portion

Rear Foot Elevated Split Squat - 4x4 reps
DB Incline Bench Press - 4x4 reps
BB Reverse Lunge - 4x4 reps
One Arm DB Row - 4x4 reps
- The players worked from one exercise to the next with 30-60 seconds of rest between exercises. This allowed the upper body to rest during lower body exercise and v.v.

Metabolic Circuits - the timer was set for 15 seconds and ran continuously - so no rest between stations - actual amount of work per interval was roughly 9-10 seconds or 50 seconds total during the 75 second time frame. The players were then given 120 seconds rest between sets and we completed 6 sets of the circuit.

Metabolic Circuit #1 - video of these included - sorry to the boxers out there - I am sure my heavy bag technique is nasty.

Single Leg Hurdle Hop - rapid response
Stability Ball Hand Walk - shoulder and anterior torso stabilization with hip flexor utilization
Wall Strider - have players maintain a low skating position while getting rapid tempo
Indo Board Stability Squat - stabilize while executing a dynamic movement with fatigue
Heavy Bag Rapid Fire - torso stabilization with upper body perturbation

So the goal of the workout was to build strength during the first portion (I also use a similar format but put power exercises in the first portion). Then during the second portion I wanted to train the anaerobic lactic energy system by including lower body cyclic patterns, but also upper body exercises and those requiring stabilization.

So this is the first season I have used this format and what I found was that the players still built strength through this phase, comparable to where they were in other seasons. I had to make sure the players stayed on-top of their nutrition because some of the very lean guys were losing too much body fat.

This is just a snap shot of one day during this phase of training which is part of a larger overall plan, but I thought I would share it with you so you can take the elements that you like.

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