The Off-Season

This time of year, many colleges are wrapping up their academic years with final exams and graduation ceremonies. Many high schools across the nation will be wrapping up in a matter of weeks, and so will all of the sports seasons.

Of course, many of you reading this will be playing on a local club team and beginning practices for fall sports in a few weeks. Or, you might be going to a camp for your sport at a university, but those camps are often just a weekend or a full week at most. There are things the athlete can and must do during the off-season months to stay in shape mentally and physically.

Physically: Coaches often give conditioning assignments for the summer to returning athletes. If your coach doesn’t do this, do some of the warm up and cool down exercises you do at a practice. Cycling, swimming, and running are each very healthy and successful summer activities that will help keep you in shape for your sport. Additionally, if you can afford it, join a local gym or take advantage of local park districts offering open weight room hours. For some science behind why the off-season conditioning is so critical to performance, click here. And, as another article states, doing nothing in the off-season may cause one to actually regress.

Mentally: This is the hard one. You might think to yourself “how can I keep in competition mind set when I’m not competing?” Well, aside from club teams and camp atmosphere, keeping the mind active is often one of the hardest things to do. School is out, and wanting to do anything other than hang out with friends, go on vacation, or simply relax. Crossword puzzles, sudoku, reading for fun, and yes, even some video games can help keep your brain in shape. Setting physical goals will keep you mentally in shape as well. (For example, today the goal is a one mile run, and keep upping that goal to 5 miles, if you’re working on endurance). You may also want to work on visualization techniques. Keeping motivated to work out and stick to your work out regimen will also help you stay in shape mentally and physically, even though finding that motivation to stay competitive might be difficult.

EXACT can also help with the mental aspects of summer or general off-season (for example, a football player in the winter) athlete.

Related articles

• Mental Imagery & Visualization – How Can it Improve Your Game? (exactsports.com)

Principle of Overload: Are you training progressively?

Welcome to Part 4 of our Off-Season Training guide:  The Principle of  Overload

The overload principle states that in order to keep making gains from an exercise program, you must find some way to make it more difficult. This is because bodies adapt to exercise. The problem is that once your body adapts to a given workload, it will not continue to adapt unless the workload is increased somehow. If you do not continue to adapt, then eventually you will plateau and regress. Having stated that it is necessary to make conditioning programs more difficult, one caution should be kept in mind: you must observe specificity when applying the overload principle. Performing a set of  twenty might be a way of making the workout more difficult, but if you need to enhance the phosphagen energy system then you are violating specificity. There are a number of ways to apply the  overload principle to a strength and conditioning program:

• increase the weight lifted
• increase the volume of work
• change the exercises employed
• modify the order of the exercises
• alter the rest periods

Increasing the weight that is lifted will make the workout more difficult. Heavier weights will force your muscles, connective tissue, bone and nervous system to adapt. Lifting heavier weights will also cause you to initially perform fewer repetitions with the weight.

Increasing the volume of work—either number of sets, number of repetitions, or some combination thereof—will result in your body having to adapt to it. This is one of the main ways to elicit larger muscles and connective tissue adaptation from strength training. One should be careful with this method of applying overload; a volume that is too great will train the wrong energy system.

Changing the exercises employed is a way to increase overload that many individuals are reluctant to use. Many people feel that the exercises they are performing are the only ones that can elicit certain gains. This is not so. Changing the exercises has a number of benefits, including keeping the workouts interesting and requiring your body and nervous system to adapt to resistance imposed in a totally different way. There are many exercises that train the same movement and the same muscle groups, this means that you do not have to rely on one exercise to train a given area.

The order that exercises are performed is another way to provide overload. By changing when exercises are performed, you make some exercises more difficult to perform and others easier. For example, in your current workout your exercise order may look like this: bench press, incline press, dumbbell flies. Now, let’s change the order of exercises so that the new workout looks like this: dumbbell flies, incline press, bench press. The result of this change is that you will be able to lift more weight on the dumbbell flies and incline press, because they are performed while you are fresher. You will lift less weight on the bench press, because it will be performed while you are fatigued. Not only will you become stronger on the first two exercises, but you will also keep your workouts interesting and this will also help your body to adapt in a different manner because you are focusing on the first two exercises instead of the bench press.

A final way to provide overload is to modify the amount of rest. This must be used carefully to ensure that you are observing specificity. By increasing the amount of rest in between sets, you allow your body to recover more completely. This means you will be able to lift heavier weights with a greater number of repetitions. The benefit oft this approach to training is that it allows you to increase your strength on exercises. Conversely, if you shorten the amount of rest in between sets, you do not allow yourself as much recovery. It becomes more difficult to lift a given amount of weight. While this does not do as good a job of increasing strength, it does force the muscles to grow to adapt to the rest period.

Overload is not something that only needs to be applied on a daily basis, it must be applied over a lifetime of training. The final principle deals with the importance of applying overload logically over time.

Hockey Off-Season Training: Aerobic v. Anaerobic Training

Welcome to Part 2 of our Off-Season Training guide:  Aerobic v. Anaerobic training, which should I focus on?

Your body has different energy systems that work together to fuel your hockey performance. Although hockey is primarily an anaerobic sport, a strong aerobic base allows you to work longer and at a higher intensity by postponing fatigue and allowing a speedy recovery. The aerobic system provides energy for low- and moderate- intensity exercise and helps the body recover from fatigue. For example, a 1-hr bike ride at a comfortable pace is fueled mainly by the aerobic system. Hockey is characterized by repeated bouts of high- intensity action interspersed with periods of moderate activity and rest. The aerobic energy system supplies only a small portion of the energy needed during  moderate activity, but it is critical for efficient recovery between play stoppages and during time on the bench.  Aerobic conditioning can be improved through submaximal continuous exercise and through high- intensity, intermittent exercise. Submaximal continuous exercise at 75-80 % of your maximum heart rate for 30 to 60 minutes will improve your heart’s ability to deliver oxygen to the muscles for energy and will allow the body to recover more quickly from intense efforts. Intermittent aerobic condioning, using a series of 2-3 minutes if higher intensity exercise interspersed with 2 to 3 minutes of rest builds up the aerobic supply system and increases the muscles ability to extract oxygen from the blood.

There are two different types of programs to build aerobic fitness:

1. Continuous, moderate intensity, long duration programs
2. Intervals of high intensity work followed by easy recovery intervals of 1,2, or 3 minutes grouped into various packages of time

For interval programs, the training load can be increased in a number of ways:

• Increasing the duration of work intervals from 1 to 2 to 3 minutes
• Increasing the intensity of each work interval
• Decreasing the time of the recovery interval
• Increasing the intensity of the work interval
• Increasing the number of work/recovery intervals

On the other side of things, the anaerobic systems produce energy very quickly to meet the demands of intense action, such as the slap-shot, sprinting on a breakaway, or stops-and- starts while penalty killing. These systems utilize the ATP-PC (phoshagen) system and the glycolytic system for energy. In hockey, although the game itself lasts for about an hour, the players are usually only on the ice for high- intensity shifts of approximately 30 to 45 seconds (ideally). Most teams have 3 to 4 lines, allowing for a 1:2 or 1:3 work-to-rest ratio. However, depending on the situation (e.g., penalty killing, power plays or missing player), key players often work within a 1:2 or 1:1 work-to-rest ratio. Due to the nature of hockey, it is important to train anaerobically.

The ATP-PC system provides immediate energy, in the form of ATP, for short-term, high- intensity activities for up to 10 seconds. The glycolytic system provides energy for longer high- intensity activities ranging from 10 seconds to 2 minutes. This level of training corresponds directly to the physiological requirements of the game. To develop anaerobic energy systems, we will utilize sprint interval training. These involve full-out, high- intensity, high-speed intervals followed by rest or active recovery. We will use sprints ranging from less than 10 seconds to around 30 seconds, with a 1:2 or 1:3 work-to-rest ratio. [For example, a 1:2 work-to-rest ration involves sprinting all-out for 30 seconds, active recovery for 1 minute, then sprinting full out again.] Towards the end of the training program, you should make an attempt to progress to 1:1 work-to-rest ratios, especially if you are a defenseman or part of the special team units.

Hockey Off-Season Training: Using your time wisely

To understand hockey strength and conditioning you have to be aware of the unique demands placed on an ice hockey player. In order to be successful in hockey, besides having exceptional skills, players should participate in a program that will enhance their strength, power, speed and agility. Ice hockey has a number of unique features. During the game, players must accelerate and decelerate rapidly in shifts that last 30-45 seconds on average. The game is played in shifts and the player rests sitting down. In addition, hockey players must endure extremely high force collisions due to the high speeds attained in skating.

Although many so-called authorities will tell you the energy supply for hockey may be primarily aerobic, the trained observer may draw a different conclusion. Forwards generally play in a rest-to-work ratio in the area of 3:1, while defensemen use a rest-to-work ration of 2:1. Most sports can be classified somewhere between low intensity and high intensity activity. Low intensity activities can continue for long periods of time. However, high intensity activities can proceed only in short spurts interspersed with regular rest intervals to facilitate recovery. Using these definitions, hockey places towards the high intensity end of the scale.

The off-season strength program should focus on preparing both the muscular system and the neuromuscular system. Exercise selection should include explosive weightlifting movements, multi-joint lower body exercises, upper body pulling and pressing movements, and a full range of trunk movements.

The off-season conditioning program should focus on speed development and interval training. We tell our athletes: “train slow, get slow.” Conditioning, speed development, and strength training should be specific to the sport of ice hockey. Speed training on land, using similar intervals to the game, but some conventional aerobic training should also be done.

There are two phases to building fitness for hockey:

1. Improving general fitness or getting “into shape”
2. Hockey-specific conditioning

Getting in shape means improving aerobic power, flexibility, strength and diet while decreasing body fat and increasing muscle mass. The second phase requires conditioning specifically for the demands faced on the ice. Exercises and drills are selected and completed with specific exercise prescriptions so that your physical and physiological development best suits the game of ice hockey. We are going to work on developing a good base of strength and conditioning before moving onto the development of sport-specific attributes.

Over the next couple of weeks, I will continue to add blog posts expanding on the principles of designing an effective summer training program, the benefits of attending specialty hockey clinics and hockey camps, and the things you need to do to become a college hockey player.