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| Train Fast
To Play Fast |
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It has become clear to even
the oldest among the old-school hockey community that training
is an important part of the game. Improving your body to handle
the demands of an athletic, anaerobic game has become an
accepted and encouraged task for the young hockey player. Last
month we revealed how we would test your strengths and
weaknesses relative to how the game is played. Armed with this
information, how should we proceed? What makes up our core
beliefs and philosophy with regards to training?
Let’s make this as simple as possible: Train fast, play fast.
Your training should mirror the speed with which you will play.
Far too often, athletes train at a speed far slower than they
play. This negatively affects your performance and contributes
to a pattern of injury. A common scenario usually consists of a
player running five miles twice a week to get in shape. The
athlete’s belief is that by staying active for 30 to 45 minutes,
he or she can handle the fitness aspect of hockey.
Unfortunately, this is wrong on many levels.
First, let’s discuss what happens. Hockey is a sport of speed
and sprints. You need to be fast and you need to demonstrate
that speed again and again. The muscular demand of sprinting
asks your muscles to stretch and shorten very quickly. After
these intense sprints, your cardiovascular system works hard to
help you recover and drops your heart rate and buffers the
lactic acid your muscles have produced. The heavy, thick feeling
your legs have after sprinting is due to lactic acid build-up.
The nature of the game also includes opportunities to rest and
recover as lines change. In a normal game, this equates to about
20 shifts for a forward/center on a team with three lines and 25
shifts will slightly more ice time for a defenseman. There are
20 to 25 sprints of 30 to 60 seconds followed by two or more
minutes of rest. This information should dictate how you train.
Interval training involves working hard and allowing time for
your body to recover. Work-to-rest ratios are usually 1-to-3 or
greater. If you sprint for 30 seconds, then you would usually
recover for 90 seconds and the more intense the work, the longer
the recovery period. In this manner, you condition not only the
cardiovascular system the way it will work when you play, but
you prepare your muscles to contract as fast as they will when
you play. You also reduce the amount of muscle pulls and strains
you suffer by training properly. Polymeric work – the training
that develops sport-specific power – and strength training
should go hand in hand with interval training. Interval, or
anaerobic training, accurately reflects how you should prepare
to play hockey. Aerobic, or steady state training, takes you
back to your 45-minute runs and a slow rate of muscular
contraction. Although we will occasionally train in an aerobic
fashion, the best way to get in great aerobic shape is with an
anaerobic workout.
Finally, there are some genetics involved. Your parents dictate
to a great degree just how athletic you are going to be. You are
born with a certain amount of fast-twitch muscle fibers, a
certain amount of slow-twitch muscle fibers and a great amount
of intermediate fibers that combine both types. Fast-twitch
fibers are for sprinters and athletes in explosive, dynamic
sports. Slow-twitch fibers lend themselves to endurance sports.
The intermediate fibers will reflect whatever you do most often.
You will influence these fibers to be more explosive by doing
more anaerobic, polymeric and sprint training. Conversely, if
you train slowly, these fibers will become more slow-twitch in
nature. The polymeric exercises you perform, the lifting you do
and the sprints you run will contribute to you maximizing the
potential of your body.
Train fast; play fast is the motto that will help you become a
better athlete and a better hockey player. |
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