What is the opinion on dry land speed training for hockey players? Obviously, due to lack of ankle in skating, plyos need to address hip power. Charlie, I know you work with some NHL’ers. Any tips on the most effective types of training I should prescribe?
Train em like sprinters.
idealimage,
I know Bompa has done quite some work too with NHL players, I think he might have also published a book on preparation or’conditioning’ for NHL players?
Charlie (… or anyone else …),
I know this is a little off the track here but for sports such as nfl, rugby, aussie rules etc. just a few questions on agility please …
- How do you suggest including agility work in your programs?
- Do you use speed days to develop pure speed only or do you also include speed-agility on speed days?
- Do you see any benefit in doing agility drills at <100% to teach balance, change of direction and weight transfer?
When doing agility or other drills in which balance or technique is important, you have to learn to perform the drill with proper technique first and then you can gradually speed it up. Doing agility drills at 100% with poor balance/technique is just going to reinforce bad habits or even develop new bad habits.
All posititons? (except goalie of course)
Michael Boyle (who has worked with lots and lots of hockey players) says like Charlie, to be fast on the ice you have to be fast on the ground. As a matter of fact, I know that Charlie is Michael’s strongest influence on speed development.
Tudor Bompa has a book out, it is pretty good. Also get Peter Twist’s book. It’s been said that fast sprinters are fast skaters. With my guys, I do a lot of VERY short sprints to work on explosiveness. In my thinking, most of the important battles are 15-25 foot sprints to loose pucks from a standing or coasting situation.
Training 'em like sprinters is definitely the way to go.
The power generated and the explosiveness of the athletes is very impressive.
My biggest problem though is trying to balance the aerobic capacity of the athletes.
Also the problem with overweight athletes is that they never seem to drop substainial body fat when doing sprint work exclusively and as a result stamina is always seems to be a problem.
Trying to set up your yearly program is always difficult. It depends on what level you are coaching, how much time you have with your athletes, and how much access you have to them in the off-season. For conditioning, I basically have them running 400s with 1:2 work to rest ratios and then try to decrease the rest. This is done in the month before tryouts for the guys I have access to and then we move into sprinting and plyos once the season starts but the stress is on skill development at this point.
True - The yearly program is difficult to plan
Sorry for my ignorance - what do mean by try-outs?
Do the 400’s drop much body fat for you?
Is 400 not a little long for Hockey?
What volume do you (a) start at (b) work up to … for 400’s in the sessions?
Do you work down then through 350’s, 200’s etc to the shorter stuff?
Try-outs at the beginning of the season where people try out for open spots on the team. As for the 400 meter distance, it’s convenient as it’s once around the track. I’ll sometimes set it up where in the course of the 400 meters, they do 2-3 sprints and the rest mid tempo or stuff like that to keep the boredom to a minimum. I don’t work down, I just use that as conditioning and the rest is quickness/speed work. I also use sled dragging sometimes for conditioning work, so you could say we do some shorter distances conditioning.
As for bodyfat, I don’t monitor it. I don’t have any guys that are really overweight. I want them in shape and there are guys in the upper ranges of bodyfat that can skate circles around some of the lighter guys in the third period.
As a frame of reference, I coach D2 club-level college.
Christian Thibadeau is real big on 400m training for his hockey players (see “Running Man”) article. I think he incorporates it once or twice a week.
In his latest newsletter he does short sprints one day and 2x400 2x300 on another.
How about form. A lot of my athletes that are hockey players run like they are skating. Do you try to make them run like sprinters or do you just let them go becuase they are not training for track?
<<< Have two friends who run like this when we play flag football … both ex-hockey players… Having them do some A’s and Skips cleared that up very nicely…
Just let them go. When an a athlete sprints the first 10m (roughly) his feet go side to side instead of just forward. This seen with many beginners and is a very natural thing. The feet evert on the landing phase in this intitial 10m phase afterwards (say 30m to be on the safe side), the feet then invert on the landing phase. Besides since they are hockey players it would be natural for them to sprint this way.