Hockey Training Part 3

Hockey Training, Strength & Conditioning

Part 3 of this incredible interview with Jersey Strength Coach, Jason Ferrugia.

Check out his site: www.j1strength.com

One more part to come tomorrow...

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CB: What type of off-ice speed, quickness, agility type training transfers best to on ice performance?

JF:
Again, I don’t like to do anything too sport specific and try to mimic the action of skating by doing something else.

I believe that during the first half of the off season, hockey players should stay off of the ice as much as possible. I would only recommend one short on ice speed workout consisting of a few sprints.

The reason for keeping them off the ice is because we want to build muscle and correct any imbalances that have developed; skating all the time will allow neither of those to happen.

The only reason I don’t say stay off the ice completely is because if you get significantly bigger and stronger and then come back 16 weeks later 23 pounds bigger and twice as strong, you will feel like a totally different person on skates and it may be difficult to find the groove and you may actually be more susceptible to injury. Therefore just a small amount of skating should be kept in for maintenance purposes and to learn how to transfer your new strength and speed to the ice.

As the season approaches this will obviously change, and you will be spending more and more time on the ice.

I have always been a big fan of sled dragging for hockey players; forward, backward and sideways. Just plain old flat ground sprinting always works.

Plyos are great for any athlete to develop explosive speed and quickness provided they are not overdone. I like to periodize my use of plyos since the training effect is not seen until after you stop doing them. This is known as delayed transformation of gains.

So we will hit them for a number of weeks and then go into a phase where we only perform very low intensity jumps or totally cut them out completely for the next few weeks.

I usually do plyos at the beginning of a lower body workout, such as a few sets of box jumps or depth jumps and perhaps again at the beginning of a sprint workout later in the week. You do not need a high volume of plyos to achieve the desired effect.

Aside from including plyos in the weight room I also like to use medicine ball throws, Olympic lifts and dynamic effort squats and box squats for the development of explosive speed and power.

As far as change of direction training goes I like to use random change of direction drills rather than predetermined cues. For example, a hockey player may skate full speed straight ahead and then immediately have to decelerate and change direction.

For this reason, deceleration is of the utmost importance and should be stressed but the thing is, he will never know that he is going to have to sprint to a predetermined spot on the ice and then immediately have to go left or right or the opposite direction.

For this reason I like to employ change of direction drills where you have a variety of cones set up and the athlete must listen for or watch for visual cues that tells him which cone to sprint to.

This is more “sport specific” in that on the ice you never know which way you are going to have to go next so by watching or listening to a coach or partner shout out which direction you should be going in or watching for some kind of visual cue. This kind of training will simultaneously be training your reaction time as well as your change of direction speed.


CB




hockey training, plyometrics