Hockey Training

Hockey Training

Hockey Strength & Conditioning

This is the first in a series of many hockey strength & conditioning interviews. First up, New Jersey strength coach Jason Ferrugia of http://J1Strength.com

Given Jason's busy schedule, I couldn't believe how much info he is giving away in this interview...it must have taken him an hour to write this...and an hour of his time is probably worth close to three hundred bucks in the gym...so check out this incredible interview below.
Jason is one of the most highly sought after professional fitness coaches in the entire industry. For over a decade he has provided hundreds of clients with cutting edge training programs that never fail to produce outstanding results in record time.

Jason has trained over 500 athletes from nearly 20 different sports and is renowned for his ability to rapidly increase speed, strength and overall performance.

Here’s what one of Jason’s pro athletes had to say about him…

"Training with Jason has literally taken my career to the next level. After having to sit out an entire year due to a serious elbow injury, Jason helped me return to the pitching mound for a standout senior year which resulted in my signing with the Oakland A's. If you want to be the best, you have to train with the best and Jason is definitely the best."
Joey Scott, Oakland Athletics

All right, let’s get started and grill Jason on his secrets for building the ultimate young hockey player.

CB: Where should an adolescent player look to start their off-season training?

JF:
Craig, I believe the biggest mistake a young kid can make is focusing on one sport and one sport only.

Early specialization is the worst thing a kid can for his or her athletic career. Kids are better off playing as many sports as possible and not looking to specialize until somewhere around senior year of high school. Their training should reflect that and therefore the workouts any young athlete does should be designed toward making him or her a better all around athlete, not a better pitcher, wide receiver or goalie.

Having said that I believe an early off season training program should focus on unilateral training, correcting any imbalances that may have developed over the course of the season and rebuilding any lost muscle mass.

CB: Is there anything a teen should be able to do before they start lifting, ie. a set number of pushups or bodyweight squats/lunges?

JF:
Not really. I always look at things as a realist Craig, and while having a set formula or a group of standards that must be met looks good on paper, it doesn’t really work out in the real world.

For example if I have an eleven year old come in to train and he weighs 170 pounds I can all but guarantee you that he can’t do one pushup. This is where the bodyweight standards thing falls short.

People fail to realize that not all kids, due to a variety of factors, will be able to do one pushup, one chin up or even one bodyweight squat so you can’t really have set numbers to use as your standards.

According to people who use these guidelines to tell them when a kid should start lifting weights, these kids will not pick up a weight for quite some time. That’s fine, but here’s the problem. What if a kid can only do three bodyweight squats? Believe me this is a possibility because I have seen it with my own two eyes. That is basically heavy max effort training. Are you just going to have him do heavy triples all the time?

You can argue that that’s a bad example because you could have him do low step ups and floor work which I agree with but what about if he can’t do a chin up or inverted row?

Will he perform no pulling exercises whatsoever until he is strong enough to do either of those exercises? That’s gonna be a long time, I promise you that.

What about pushups? Sure you can elevate the bar in a power rack and have the kids do them like that but that is only one exercise and doesn’t leave you a ton of options.

Kids get bored quickly and need variety. For these reasons I have no problem with a kid lifting weights before he can do a certain number or pushups, squats or chin ups.

A lot of times it is actually a lot safer. Instead of doing a one to three rep max on a chin up or inverted row with horrible form I would much rather have a kid do some one arm rows with a ten pound dumbbell.


Part 2 tomorrow of Hockey Strength and Conditioning

CB