Reply To: Workout Plans

[DaveM]

Aberdeen,

Last year we used a workout that helped us with overall strength gains. It consisted mainly of some agility work, some sprint work, and some olympic style lifts (clean, squat, deadlift & bench press). The nicest part about it is each week players do a different set and rep routine (so that they don't plateau) and only repeat the pattern the next month. Players track their total weight for each week, and the following month they are pretty much guaranteed to see a significant increase in amount lifted over the last period of same sets & reps. The program is from BFS (Bigger, Faster, Stronger – http://www.biggerfasterstronger.com) and has been around a while. I purchased the book which was very inexpensive, and it teaches the finer points of the movements & safety precautions. The kids really enjoyed it too.

We had very few injuries last year, and players were noticeably stronger on their feet, but I didn't see a huge improvement in skating ability so this year I looked for something more hockey specific. I ended up finding some great information from Maria Mountain who works in the Toronto area and has trained many professional and college hockey players. She has a bunch of videos and articles at http://hockeytrainingpro.com/wordpress/hockey-training-articles/ . I ended up buying workout materials from her for a couple of reasons; they are affordable ($80) and really well-rounded with equal emphasis on speed, strength, agility, flexibility and mobility (as well as what she calls "energy system development"). The whole program is pretty complex, but also simple to follow since there are calendars that lead you through an 8 week prep period and detailed instructions for everything. Plus, Maria actually responds directly to emails with questions. I am pretty excited to put it to use and see the results this season.

Let me know if you have questions on either of these programs. They are a little tough to describe altogether here.

Hope this helps,
Dave