News

By Josh Levine
Let’s Play Hockey

Not too long ago, players didn’t have a lot of training options. They skated with their youth association in the winter, took the spring off for baseball and then went to the local summer clinic, often run by high school coaches. As training options have proliferated, parents have been saturated with information, much of it conflicting. The problem has morphed from a lack of options to players being pulled in too many directions. 

When looking at an annual training calendar, it is important to consider periodization. Periodization in training programs can vary, but essentially it is the idea of cycling through different phases of training while incorporating rest and recovery stages. If you apply the same stimulus (the same training) every week for a year, you will have diminished training gains and often negative results. Ideally, the training is varied so that the body is continually forced to adapt, change and improve. 

I’ve seen athletes take months off after the winter hockey season and return to the ice better skaters. How did this happen?! If you believed the year-round early specialization folks, this would be impossible. You would fall behind everyone else because you took some time off. Instead, players mentally re-charge and are given the proper amount of time to recover their strength. To be the best of which you are capable, rest and recovery is key! 

Periodization should also occur monthly and weekly. Consider intensely working on a given set of skills for a few weeks rather than trying to master a bunch of skills over months. Every few weeks, you can change the skill set you are focusing on the most. And within weekly training plans, it is important to vary the intensity and volume of training. It is impossible to train at 100 percent every day. You need days where the intensity is low and you need days completely devoted to rest and recovery. 

Is your athlete getting this? Remember, no one gets paid to have your hockey player sit at home and rest. You have to take ownership of the rest and recovery of your athlete!

Finally, training should be done with a progression. Exercise complexity and intensity should increase over time. The problem, however, is that athletes are doing so much that they are unable to execute anything 100 percent. The most important athletic attributes for a hockey player in high school are speed, quickness and explosiveness. You can’t build these attributes efficiently by training in the gym at 90 percent because you’re tired from having played too much hockey. There is an opportunity cost to doing too much. 

What can you do to make sure your athlete is getting the best training and doing so in a safe manner? Sit down and map out what they are doing on an annual basis. When do they get time ENTIRELY away from the rink? When do they play games and have team practices? When are they able to work on their stickhandling and shooting or skating? When do they have so little going on with hockey that they can actually work on developing speed at the local track? 

If you answer these questions, you’ll see that a lot of the current training you do probably overlaps with other training and leads to a lot of time wasted. The good news is that sound training science, if followed, leads to more efficient training, less time at the rink and more time for family, academics and other extracurricular activities.