I know you are doing your cardio wrong

I had a funny question (more of a statement really) about one of the energy system workout in one of my hockey training programs.  It made me laugh and I will tell you about it in a second, but first I want to tell you that finally – we had an awesome sunny day yesterday!  We went running in our shorts…and it was WARM!

Paul took the snow tires of my vehicle (so probably in for a snow storm today) and we are ready for spring.  Hopefully the snow in Nova Scotia is melting as well – I am pumped to be heading out to give five (yes 5) presentations at the Spring Sport & Athletics Conference in Bridgewater, NS.

So hopefully I will get to meet up with some of you there.

Tabata Training For Hockey Too Easy

I will often give athletes I train at RevCon extra workouts to do on their own.  We all know that training for hockey twice per week is not going to be enough to get them where they need to be and many of them cannot participate in the five-day per week HockeySTRONG program.  So we give them homework to do on their own.

I will often slide in Tabata-style workouts – if you cannot remember what those are, I wrote a post on Tabata training for hockey HERE.  When the player comes in for their next workout, I ask, “How did the energy system workout go?”.  My eyes get wide with excitement if they give a little shrug and say “Not bad”.   Oooooohhhhhhh – you are SO busted!

I love it because the suggestion is, ‘I am so fit, that workout wasn’t very hard for me’.

This is a full out sprint people – it will never, ever, ever get EASY – you will just cover more distance as you get faster and fitter, but it will never be easy.

Do you think Usain Bolt finds it easy to sprint 200m at full speed because he is the best in the world at it?  In fact, it might be harder for him because he knows how to tap every single ounce of energy out of his system and into his legs.

The Email…

So when I got an email the other day from one of you telling me the energy system in one of my hockey training programs was ‘too easy’ for you, so they doubled the work interval to make it harder, I couldn’t help but bust their chops!

Going full out, is just that, as hard as you possibly can.  If you don’t feel like you are going to throw up at the end of the high intensity interval training, then you simply are not going hard enough.  Some of you may not have the capacity to push yourself into that ‘zone of desperation’ – don’t worry, you will get there.

I also see the other side of the coin where players and goalies email because the energy system workouts are not getting any easier and they have been training consistently for a month or two, but they still feel really tough.  That’s good; they should!  That is how I know you are doing it right.

Again, a full out sprint is a full out sprint, you can never go at 170% of VO2 max (or as we call it as hard as you can possibly go) and have it feel easy.  Impossible.  So if your high intensity intervals are getting easy, you know you are taking your foot off the gas.  Your legs should be jello each and every time.

You can see examples of some high intensity interval workouts for hockey HERE (they are free – no opt-in required)
Enjoy! Cheers,
M

off-ice hockey workouts

A New Hockey Specific Workout Each Month For Under $20. CLICK HERE.