My thoughts on Aerobic Training & Hockey After 30 Years, Considerations for Preparation

Much of the banter and discussion regarding sports performance on the internet, at conferences, and on podcasts seem to have a strong focus on speed, power, and strength.  These components of physical preparation are obviously very critical in the development of high-performance athletes.  The game of hockey certainly depends on players having high levels of these characteristics to bring it all together for success in the sport.

When I first started working in the NHL for the St. Louis Blues in the late 1980's with Coach Jacques Martin, I was informed that as a team we needed to improve all of those areas, but there was a strong emphasis placed on the improvement of our cardiovascular conditioning.  The organization wanted to see improvements in players aerobic capacity, and they were going to have their max VO2 measured with a metabolic cart prior to training.  In the 1980's this was considered to be “Hi-Tech” for the time and the players were concerned about doing well.  This attitude prevailed for much of the 1980's and 1990's until more emphasis was placed on the assessment of strength, speed and power.

With this history, cardiovascular conditioning is one area that I always dedicate much thought and program development. Like the aforementioned physical qualities, this is one that also creates much controversy and debate in the S&C field. This article will provide you with an overview of what I consider to be one of the forgotten variables in this whole puzzle. With that, the following are my opinions on the topic based on 30 plus years in the field, and the literature that has been published.  Although I am going to reference the sport of hockey, I believe the concepts can be applied to many sports.

Elements of the Game to Consider When Devising a Plan

Ice hockey is typically defined as an anaerobic sport.  Here are a number of the fundamental facts about hockey and physiology that need to be considered when developing any kind of program.  These have not changed in many decades:

• The game is 60 minutes in length

• Shifts are made up of 30-60 second intense efforts

• Average play/player - 20 minutes or less

• Energy system usage - all 

• Atp-pc - limiting factor in 5-10 second bursts

• Lactic acid - 9-11 mmol/l observed during games

• Aerobic - the higher the players vo2 max, the higher the aerobic contribution and the lower the anaerobic one.

When devising a plan to enhance the cardiovascular component of hockey, I believe it's important to look at the energy systems that support each other (ATP-PC, Lactic Acid, anaerobic & aerobic), and by enhancing this with a specific focus, I can thereby enhance the whole system.  

The particular issue that I see as a common problem in the training field is that many take the concept of sport specificity too far.

For example, since shifts are generally made up of 30-60 seconds of 5-10 second repeated bursts, training should be entirely focused on intervals in this range, and more specificity can be achieved by manipulating the rest periods to achieve the energy system goal.  I.e.. 10 sec max effort with 50 second rest could be defined as a focus on the ATP-PC system, while 10 sec hard effort with 10 seconds recovery repeated 20 times would be aerobic.  Same interval different energy system focus.

The above example could be considered very sport-specific to hockey as it matches up the short bursts we typically see on the ice. In my experience, I am not convinced that being so sport-specific in this particular instance is the optimal method to train. 

Why I Think Conditioning Should NOT Be Too "Sports Specific"

The game itself is as stated earlier, is anaerobic in nature. So, if we take an NHL pro for example, his season will begin in September with training camp, and could last until mid-June if he reaches the Stanley Cup final. This would be almost 10 months of anaerobic focused work. This can be extremely fatiguing in addition to the stress of performing at such a high level. If you add to this volume of yearly work (yes playing and practicing is work & volume to the body) high-intensity sprint interval training, then you are asking your body to adapt to anaerobic work year-round. There is a potential negative cost to the body with this kind of continual stress placed on it such as overtraining, injury, mental fatigue.

Full Breakdown of an NHL Calendar Year.

 

Time of Year	Energy System Focus
September-Training Camp	Anaerobic
October-April - Regular Season	Anaerobic
Mid-April – June - Playoffs	Anaerobic
Mid-April -August (players who do not make playoffs)	Anaerobic or rest of energy system work for a period. Focus on Strength/Power
July-August (typically back on the ice)	Anaerobic.  Focus on Strength/Power

 

If you take into account that all of the strength and plyometric training that a hockey player will endure, this adds to the volume of total yearly anaerobic work. In a study by, Parra et al. he showed that only 2 weeks of daily sprint interval training increased citrate synthase (an enzyme responsible for the initiating the first step in the krebs cycle) maximal activity, and did not change “anaerobic” work capacity, possibly because of chronic fatigue induced by daily training (Acta Physiol. Scand 169: 157–165, 2000). There is a possibility of this kind of chronic fatigue setting in for a hockey player also. Realizing that the study was only 2 weeks long and work was every day, I am extrapolating what might happen with a hockey player's volume of work.  

 With the above yearly outline and reference cited, I would ask you, should the anaerobic energy system be the entire focus when you are creating a periodized program for your hockey athletes?  Typically, do you change your exercises? sets? reps, speed of movement? And volume of work? Of course, you do!  And as such the same concepts should be applied to energy system work.

The NHL Old School Example - Chicago Blackhawks 1989/90

Let me provide a real-life example of why this is so important. I will take you back to 1989/90 hockey season when I was with the Chicago Blackhawks.  Mike Keenan was the coach, and he was at the time, overly obsessed with aerobically fit hockey players.  His nickname Iron Mike, was understood by all who attended Blackhawk training camps. We tested aerobic capacity, 30 second Wingate tests, 5-mile bike test for time, and a number of strength/speed assessments.  

 

Coach Keenan's practices were short and intense. 45 minutes of up-tempo drills with constant movement, skating, and technical drills. The practice was often followed up with more conditioning on the bikes.  I have included a picture from the old Chicago Stadium workout room.  As you can see it is dominated by cardiovascular equipment.

 

 

The Blackhawks had a very successful season that year. We finished 1st in the Norris Division and eventually lost out to the Edmonton Oilers in the conference final. What I would like to point out in the table below, is some testing data that might have indicated there was a problem. The table shows our top 5 scoring players, along with their Wingate peak power scores for September 1989 and February 1990.  There is also a team average comparison on the last line. You can see some significant decreases over a 6-month period. The average drop for our top 5 was 16% and as a team, we dropped our peak power by 21%. 

 

Interestingly enough our 80-game record for the regular season is broken down in the following 20 game segments:

Segment	Win	Loss	Tie
Oct 5-Nov 11 1989	13	6	1
Nov 12-Dec 30 1989	9	9	2
Jan 1-Feb 20 1990	12	7	1
Feb 2-April 1 1990	7	11	2

Back in 1989/90 we were not looking at data as we are now.  Decisions on rest were left to coaches' intuition.  Gameday skates were mandatory and one day off a week was a luxury.  The coaches were certainly not as focused on rest and regeneration. The theory that grinding the players was viewed as a method of keeping them tough and fit.  If we knew then what we know now, after the February testing my recommendation would have been to back off of some practices, work on regeneration methods and try to provide a training stimulus to optimize power as we went through the final segment before the playoffs.  But this did not happen.  We went into the playoffs with our worst win/loss record based on 20 game segments and what seemed like a downturn in our fitness.  How could we possibly keep up?

Well, as history shows, we had a successful playoff that year. The Blackhawks beat both the Minnesota North Stars and the St. Louis Blues in long 7 games series and then lost in the Conference Championship to the Edmonton Oilers in 6 games. Reviewing our testing results and the final 20 game segment, you would not have surmised that the team would have gone as deep into the playoffs as they did. This is where I feel that hockey differs than other sports. The psychology of an NHL dressing room through the playoffs is certainly high pressure and stressful. Hockey players have always had that great inner drive to persevere and ignore fatigue when the puck is about to be dropped.  Whether this is a psychological driver overcoming and directing the physiological is beyond the scope of this article. A great overview of this is provided in  “Stress in Academic and Athletic Performance in Collegiate Athletes: A Narrative Review of Sources and Monitoring Strategies Front. Sports Act. Living, 08 May 2020. They note that “Excessive fatigue can impair decision-making ability, coordination and neuromuscular control, and ultimately result in overtraining and injury” I believe with hockey, it is something that should be considered when planning the volume of specific energy system training you want to utilize.  Most importantly, in my opinion, this psychological stressor adds to the anaerobic load over the whole year.

A Bit More Science on Conditioning 

The concept is also backed up by Dr. Andrew Flatt one of the foremost experts in HRV research and application.  He was a guest on the Rugby Renegade Podcast #39

Although the podcast had a rugby focus on it, he made the following statements about the biggest mistake rugby players make regarding strength and conditioning (this can be applied to hockey):

• With an HRV spin on it, the biggest mistake is not building up sufficient work capacity especially in terms of aerobic fitness

• S&C went through a phase of only wanting to do anaerobic conditioning or HIIT, afraid of the possible interference effect. This has done a disservice to athletes.

• Looking at many teams and how their HRV responds and adapt to training.  The athletes who respond and adapt the BEST are the ones who are aerobically fit.

• These athletes handle the change in training load very well. Less likely to get sick and manage lifestyle issues better.

• One thing he would recommend is develop work capacity.  Not by hours and hours of running or cycling.

 

So where did this focus on anaerobic interval work come from in hockey? Back in the day, hockey players were working on a farm and jogging a few miles to get in shape for training camp.  Clearly, we have progressed from the 1970's but I believe this issue may have started with a great paper that McMaster University Professor Martin Gibala completed  Short-term sprint interval versus traditional endurance training: similar initial adaptations in human skeletal muscle and exercise performance. J Physiol 2006, 575:901–911.  His conclusion stated, “that for young healthy persons of average fitness, intense interval exercise is a time-efficient strategy to stimulate skeletal muscle adaptations comparable with traditional endurance training.”  This study although extremely beneficial does NOT address the impact on high-performance athletes and has been in my opinion taken out of context by many in the fitness industry with the proliferation and strong focus of HIT circuit style training. It is also my belief that those who are just beginning an exercise program are not structurally capable or physiologically ready to handle high-intensity exercise. You would never program max lifts in a prep strength cycle, why do max intervals for the sake of saving time? 

The other fact from a reference point of view that I would like to make has to do with the concept of training impacting either a peripheral or central adaptation.  In a great review article by Dave Docherty A Proposed Model for Examining the Interference Phenomenon between Concurrent Aerobic and Strength Training (Sports Medicine 2000 Dec 30 (6) he discusses whether exercise stimulus can affect the body peripherally or via a central adaptation.  It has been proposed that peripheral adaptations are stimulated through the state of hypoxia experienced by the muscle during high intensity, aerobic interval training, or high-intensity strength training with reps at 10 rm's or over. Other adaptations include increases in muscle capillarization, mitochondrial enzyme activity, and myoglobin content.  Central adaptation in those associated with lower intensity training that is associated with changes in the cardiopulmonary mechanisms. As training intensity increases the location of adaptation appears to shift to the peripheral components with changes in muscle capillarisation, oxidative enzyme activity, mitochondrial volume and density, and myoglobin.

 

The illustration below details this process.

 

While this article looked at the interference models for concurrent strength and aerobic work, it alludes to this zone of interference that I believe can cause problems for hockey players and other athletes who focus too much high intensity interval training year-round.  There are clearly, important adaptations that appear to occur with low-intensity continuous training that are not observed with mixed or high-intensity training. In his review Docherty states “While the immediate effect of low-intensity high-volume training on intense exercise performance can be difficult to assess, it would appear that the insertion of these low-intensity training sessions has a positive impact on performance, despite being performed at an intensity that is markedly less than that which is specifically performed at during intense exercise competition. It is often purported that these periods of relatively low-intensity, high training volumes may provide the aerobic platform needed to facilitate the specific adaptations that occur in response to the high-intensity or specific workouts.”

 

In another good review by Olivier Girard titled Repeat Sprint Ability (RSA) Factors Contributing to Fatigue Part 1 & 2, he states that research has shown that subjects with a greater VO2 max have a superior ability to resist fatigue during RSA (not unlike hockey), especially during the latter stages of a repeated-sprint test when subjects may reach their max VO2.   This suggests that improving VO2 may allow for a greater aerobic contribution to repeated sprints, potentially improving RSA. 

Summary & Suggestions

 With all of this information, I want to be clear that I am not advocating that you train hockey players like marathoners or a Tour De France cyclist. They do not need to be running or cycling for 2-3 hours at a time, this would be not advantageous for strength and power development.  But I believe there is enough evidence to advocate the use of aerobic training in a range of 30-45 minutes, working at heart rate intensity of 75-85% for a period of time before the more specific energy system work is to be done.

Typically, I like to use aerobic work very early in the off-season training cycle twice per week.  In addition to the reasons, I have stated above, I believe that this fundamental fitness characteristic provides safe base level training, especially for young athletes, in addition to re-introducing cardiovascular training to the more experienced player after time off from the competitive season.  I believe that 3-4 weeks of this kind of cardiovascular conditioning, placed on the appropriate days 2-3 times per week depending on the athlete will only enhance his base fitness levels.  This in the end will provide a better foundation for the intense work and recovery that is necessary for high-performance sport.  Additionally, as everyone is aware, hockey is a game that keeps everyone indoors for 9 months in a cold hockey rink, constantly being coached and pushed.  The mental health benefits of being outside for a run or cycle, without a coach driving the workout, cannot be understated, this is rarely discussed in the planning for optimal physical development.

I hope you found this article interesting and thought-provoking.  It may not be the perfect model, but it is a concept that I have used for many years with relative success.  The world of sports performance research is evolving constantly, with that I have not doubt, I could re-write this article based on the exclusive use of high intensity intervals.  The papers are there to support both views.  As a coach YOU have to make a choice as to what might bring about results in an efficient and safe method.  This is what has worked for me.  Feel free to debate this or ask questions on Twitter (@lornegoldenberg) or Instagram (@lorne_goldenberg).  I look forward to comments and questions.

About Lorne

(Swiped directly form his LinkedIn)

Award-winning strength and conditioning coach and best-selling author, Lorne Goldenberg, is the President/Owner of Strength Tek Fitness & Wellness Consultants, a corporate fitness company that has provided wellness and fitness solutions to over 20,000 people in North America. He holds an honours degree in Physical Education from the University of Ottawa and is certified by the National Strength and Conditioning Association as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. He is also a Certified Exercise Physiologist (CEP) through the Canadian Society of Exercise Physiology.

Sought out by professional and prospective players in the NHL, CFL and OHL, Lorne brings over 30 years of experience of training athletes at a high performance level. Throughout his distinguished career, Lorne has also worked with the Florida Panthers, Ottawa Senators, Ottawa Rough Riders, St.Louis Blues, Chicago Blackhawks, Quebec Nordiques, Colorado Avalanche, Windsor Spitfires, Owen Sound Attack, Ottawa 67's and the University of Ottawa Football Team.

In addition to co-authoring the best-selling book Strength Ball Training, published by Human Kinetics, Lorne has had a numerous articles published in journals and magazines such as Men's Journal, Physical, and Ironman. Strength Ball Training, co authored by Peter Twist, is now in its 3rd edition and has sold over 100,000 copies worldwide.

As a conference presenter Lorne has established himself as one of the key sources for the major fitness and health conferences in North America. He has presented for such organizations as Hockey Night in Canada, Can Fit Pro, American Fitness Professionals & Associates, Dalhousie and Yale University, National Strength and Conditioning Coaches Association, Twist Conditioning, SWIS, Perform Better and IDEA