Just Don’t Try!
In this post there are no specific hockey training tips, this post gives you a strategy that you can use to become a better hockey player, a better student or…
5 Must Do Exercises for Hockey Players: Part One
5 Must Do Exercises for Hockey Players – Side lying Clamshell This series of exercises for hockey players was inspired by my youth, you see when I was a kid…
Less than a month to hockey tryouts….now you can panic!
Hey Gang, Well, it has started, the flood of emails from panicked goalies and skaters alike who start off by listing about 7,000 reasons why they have not been able…
How to survive (and thrive at) your first OHL training camp.
Some of you will get drafted to the OHL and some of you won’t. In the end, it doesn’t matter the route that you take to the OHL. From my own experience of being a walk-on invitee, I am proof that you don’t have to be drafted to play in the OHL. What really matters is how you prepare yourself and execute when the opportunity comes.
Every year, hockey players make the jump to the OHL from many different avenues. Some come from Jr B, Jr C or Jr D, while others make the jump from AAA. Knowing what to expect and how to deal with certain situations is going to give you the edge when you head off to your first OHL training camp in August.
When you head off to camp you are going to have to adjust on the ice as well as off it. Moving away from home, living with another family and transferring to a new school are just a few of the major adjustments you will have to make, but don’t worry, I am here to help. I am going to give you 5 tips on how to make your transition to the OHL go as smoothly as possible.
This is legit – save 50% on Whole Food Optimizer
Hey Guys, I saw this pop up on a site I was viewing and it seemed too good to be true, so I went ahead and ordered myself 4 containers…
Embarassing confession…The Climb
The Climb: After getting asked this question for about the 27th time I decided to post it as a blog so when I get asked about it again, I can…
Beer League Goalie Basic Training
Just because you are no longer competing for the starter’s role on a junior team and you have let go of the dream that you will get the call from an NHL team any time soon, I know that does not mean that you have lost your competitive streak.
It’s okay, it is not a secret. You can tell your friends and family that you are only out there for ‘fun’, I think we all know what you mean by ‘fun’. Winning = FUN.
Sure, you might not smash your stick over the cross bar any more (with maturity you are painfully aware that those things cost money) after a loss. You are a little more gracious now, but you are still out there to win. You don’t mind at all when you steal a game for your team and your unbelievable glove save at 17:23 of the third is the main topic of discussion in the dressing room after the game.
Well guys and gals, this one is for you – it is Basic Training for the Beer League Goalie. If you have been away from off-ice training for a while – maybe you are carrying a few extra pounds around your middle; you are concerned that starting a training program may be too much. The last thing you want to do is hurt yourself by going back to the type of training you knew as a younger you.
You remember hitting the gym in college for some heavy squats, bench press, bench press, bench press and a few sets of curls. You picture those workouts now and your knees ache just thinking about the weight you used to put up.
While you may not be ready for heavy squats, I have put together this off-ice workout for beer league goalies that will address what you need the most – flexibility, stability and goalie specific strength.
You can split the workout into a Mobility day and a Strength & Stability day which will make each workout last about 10-15 minutes. If you do two Mobility workouts per week and two Strength & Stability workouts per week you will be shocked at how much better you feel on the ice.
You will be shocked by how much quicker your lateral movements feel. At how your legs don’t feel like they are filled by lead after the first two periods and you will be pleasantly surprised when your hips don’t ache the morning after every game.
Q&A: What Makes Goalies Tight?
Hope you are having a great week. You may know from reading my emails that I am a ‘routine’ girl. I like to have my routine – get up around the same time, have the same breakfast, do my work without interruption, go to bed early, etc. Well, this week my routine got all out of whack so I am still trying to get back on track.
My routine got ‘whacked’ for a good reason though. I was in the Boston area for Sunday, Monday and part of Tuesday to help at Brian D’Accord’s Goalie Consulting Group Prospects Week at Merrimack College. It was awesome to take 90+ of the top goalies from Canada, the US, Germany, Sweden and Russia through their off-ice training.
Travels there and back were great, although driving through Boston to get to the airport was a little wacky. My GPS looked like an Etch-A-Sketch there were so many roads going every which way. I have driven in Manhattan a few times and it is a cake walk compared to bean-town.
Anyway, today I am hitting you with a Q&A about what makes goalies tight and how to gain flexibility…
Special Guest Post…7 Ways To Play Hockey At The Next Level
Hope your week is chugging along nicely. Is it just me or does it feel like the summer is flying by. I cannot believe that we are quickly approaching mid-July. Back in the winter Brian D’Accord from Stop It Goaltending phoned to ask if I would be willing to come down to run a few off-ice sessions for his Men’s Prospects Camp at Merrimack College in Massachusetts (wow never realized how hard it was to spell that word!). I gladly volunteered to head down for a few days and at the time it seemed so far away. Well Sunday is the day I leave. Guess it is true – time flies when you are having fun.
Most of you have heard me mention the coach who has been working with me since February – Tyler Doig. He has been an amazing addition to the Revolution Team and I am impressed every week with how he has fine tuned his coaching skills. His attitude for coaching is exactly the same attitude that got him playing in the OHL (as a walk on) and ultimately playing pro hockey.
I thought it would be great for you to hear a different perspective from time to time and Tyler is keen to help any hockey player who is willing to do the work. He is a skater, so that is his primary area of interest (so if you are a skater and have a question, just post it in the comments section below and we will get to work posting an answer for you) but his guest post today speaks to all of you who are trying to make that next step. So check it out and be sure to “Like” it at the bottom of the post to show Tyler he did a great job.
Guest post from Coach Tyler Doig
Creating Your Own Chance to Play Hockey at the Next Level
I know some of you found yourself clicking that refresh button on your computer impatiently waiting for your name to show up during the most recent draft. Some of you will have to deal with the anguish of getting cut from the team all your friends are going to play for. Your friends and even your family will not know how badly it hurts because you will not let them see it, but I know it is devastating. I know because I have been there, and I have dealt with those feelings.
Going undrafted to the OHL I was one of those kids who was stuck in a world of my own clicking that refresh button waiting for my name to show up, it never happened. I went on to play two years of Jr B hockey before I finally got my opportunity to play in the OHL – and that is all it was – an opportunity, an invite to camp.
My story had a happy ending, after playing three years for the Guelph Storm I signed my first professional contract with the AHL’s Toronto Marlies. I played four years professional hockey before deciding it was time to take on new challenges in my life. As a strength and conditioning coach my new challenge is helping athletes get to their highest level.
My story is probably exactly the same as many of you – you think your dreams are crushed at a young age but let me tell you about how you can create your own second chance. I can sympathize with many of you who have went through (or will go through) this experience and I am going to give you a few secrets that will help you overcome this type of distress, disillusion and despair. I am going to show you how to create YOUR own chance to get to the next level.
Why Use Sets & Reps For Hockey Training
Hope you had an awesome weekend gang. It has been super hot in Southern Ontario for the last couple weeks (sorry to my friends on the west coast) so the hill run with my hockey group on Saturday morning was punishing to say the least. It was about 23C when I left home for the hill which is a very short bike ride away. That was at about 7:45am. By the time I got home just after 9am it was already 27C with lots of humidity.
A day at the beach.
We cut the workout in half and gave extra rest in the shadiest spot we could find and the group did awesome. I was really impressed with how hard they worked and the fact that not one athlete complained about the heat – not once. Amazing group.
After that it was home to cut the grass and then take my Mom out to run some errands and stop off for lunch – we had a great visit.
Sunday after working in the morning Paul and I headed up to the beach for some stand up paddleboarding – it was pretty windy and wavy at the beach yesterday, but the temperature had cooled a bit so it was a really pleasant 24C. The waves were so big that I actually surfed on part of the way in – it was a great time.
So now back to business and I am going to answer a question I had a few weeks ago from my friend Bill who asked me why we do sets and reps when we workout – why can we just do all of them at once? Does it matter?
Why We Use Sets & Reps For Dryland Hockey Training
I can answer this question very simply and then I will give you a little more detail. Simply, if you went to the doctor with a sore throat and your doctor wrote you a prescription for two weeks of antibiotic, would you take all of the pills at once? I certainly hope not.
Sets and reps are kind of like a prescription making sure you get the right amount of an exercise to give you the desired benefit. This will depend on the phase of training and the muscle groups you are trying to train. A rep is the completion of one single cycle of any exercise from start to finish, so if I am squatting, one rep is lowering down into the bottom of the squat and standing up again (returning to the starting position).
One set is the completion of the desired number of repetitions. So if my goal was 6 repetitions of squats; when I had completed all six, that would constitute one set. Typically a program includes 2-4 sets of any given exercise with a specific rest interval, which is also part of the prescription which should be followed.
If you are trying to build Max Strength (the phase of the off season right now) then for your big mover muscles (called prime movers) you should be lifting very heavy loads for only 2-6 reps with lots of rest between each set.
Let’s look at that in a little more detail…