Off Season....Off Ice....

The International Skating Center of Connecticut is committed to training on and off the ice. With our full gym on the second floor of our facility we feel that it is important to stay fit at all times. Our Ben Smith Hockey Camp is kicking-off next week which features a daily session of off-ice training. Hockey season has been over for a few months now, and will be beginning within the next two months. It is important to workout on a regular basis when you cannot get practice time on the ice. This week we will be reviewing a few ways to stay fit during the hockey off season to help you prepare the hockey season right around the corner and perhaps preview what you might find if you’re attending Ben Smith’s Hockey Camp.

An average hockey player plays roughly 15-20 minutes of a 60-minute hockey game per HockeyMonkey.com which means it is most important to do cardiovascular training. Cardiovascular training is a great exercise for anybody; however it is especially good for a hockey player because it builds stamina which is needed during a fast paced shift during a hockey game (usually less than one minute per shift). According to BodyForLife.com cardiovascular training can be done in a multitude of different ways, such as: jogging, running, biking, swimming, elliptical, stairs and even a jump rope. I recommend doing a cardiovascular workout four to five times a week for roughly twenty minutes as this is the amount of time you will be playing in a given hockey game.

The second recommendation for an off season type of workout would be to do a strength training exercise. Warning! This is not a weight bearing exercise. So then what is strength training? Strength training is: “using his/her body weight to provide the resistance” states HockeyMonkey.com. So if you can’t use weights, what should you do to become strong? Well  there is a ton of options. If you have ever seen the Biggest Loser, then you will know a lot of these. Examples of strength training consist of: wall sits, squats, lunges, push-ups and sit-ups. Again, I recommend that you do twenty minutes of this type of workout between four and five times a weeks. I guarantee that you will feel these exercises the next day so be sure to stretch out before and after each session. After your strength training is done you could also do a twenty minutes session of lifting weights. Do not go crazy though, most off season injuries are due to weight bearing exercise that is done too much and too quickly. The key here is to limit yourself and take it easy.

While we are talking about stretching, I am going to wrap up this weeks posts talking about how flexibility will help you in your hockey career. A hockey player lives and dies on his or her range of motion, so what should you do? The answer is to stretch your muscles prior to doing any workout and after every work out. According to USA Hockey Magazine, flexibility is achieved in two ways, “static stretching (after workout) is your resting range of motion while dynamic (before workout) stretching is your active range of motion.”

Sources:

http://www.usahockeymagazine.com/article/2008-09/four-weeks-better-player

http://www.hockeymonkey.com/article-staying-fit-in-the-off-season.html

http://bodyforlife.com/library/exercise/cardio