Hockey Treadmill Workout

This article was taken from HockeyTraining.com, a website that has a ton of great articles, videos and other resources that can come in handy, especially given the current circumstances we are dealing with. The website has articles covering on and off-ice hockey skills and skating training, strength and conditioning, speed and explosvieness, etc. We are going to continue to supplement the article below going foward with additional running and cardio workouts, but there is some really good information for hockey players concerning the importance of cardio training as well as the proper types of workouts for hockey player. We're not trying to turn you into skinny distance runners who can run for days, but instead we want to help you train in such a way that it maximinzes your ability to go hard for short intrervals while on the ice, improves your speed and explosiveness and helps you recover quicky on the bench in between shifts.

Nothing fitness-wise is really quite the same as being in "hockey shape;" you are competing is hard as you can while skating and wearing 15 pounds of equipment for between 45 seconds and a minute in an ideal world. We hope to show you cardio workouts that will most effectively simulate what you will be doing on the ice and prepare you to be near your peak whenever you do get back on your skates again. That may be even more important this year given that most of our readers my have been off the ice for almost four months by the time rinks open. Unfortunately, with tryouts having been delayed and coaches needing to pick their teams, many players might be thrown into competitive situations pretty quickly, so the more you do now to make sure you are in good hockey shape, the better off you will be in terms of both on-ice performance and avoiding injury.

The article below not only includes a great workout, but also provides a lot of good information for young players to understand. Keep in mind that if you don't have a treadmill you can do the workout outside at a track or in your neighborhood. It actually helps you learn your maximum level of exertion and how far you can push yourself if you are not relying on the treadmill to push you. As you become more fit you also can include some small inclines and eventually steeper hills to challenge yourself more whether you are using a treadmill or running outside. 

By Dan Garner - HockeyTraining.com

In this article, I’m going to explain how the treadmill can be used to your advantage on those days where you can’t make it outside—and I will also give you an exact workout that will improve your hockey performance. 

The treadmill should ideally be used with the aerobic energy system in mind. Since the anaerobic system is best trained with all-out sprints and jump variations, it isn’t exactly conducive to an effective workout on the treadmill, as speed and explosiveness both become limiting factors. But that’s not a barrier to training the aerobic system—so that is exactly what we are going to do. 

Hockey athletes need a balanced energy system profile, and I wrote about hockey conditioning demands extensively in this article if you want a complete breakdown on it.

Benefits of Aerobic Training for Hockey

Even though most hockey coaches and players know that training the aerobic system is important for hockey, very few of them understand what’s happening underneath the surface to easily explain why it’s beneficial for hockey. 

I want you to try and remember this as “3 sets of 3,” because they are very important to know so you can comprehend the effectiveness behind this workout.

Improved Oxygen Supply

• Enhanced cardiac output
• More dense vascular networks
• Greater oxygen delivery to working muscle tissue

Improved Oxygen Utilization

• Increased size and density of Type 1 muscle fibers 
• Improved oxidative capacity of Type 2 muscle fibers 
• Increased number of enzymes required for oxygen absorption 

Improved Nutrient Availability

• Enhanced efficiency of aerobic metabolic pathways 
• Increased storage capacity for aerobic fuel
• Hormonal regulation 

This is a very short list of the physiological benefits hockey players can gain from appropriately training their aerobic system. In short, if you want to enhance your conditioning out on the ice, improving your aerobic capacity is a must. With my hockey athletes, I have found they especially notice the benefits within the recovery time between shifts.  

Since we are training the aerobic system, a hockey treadmill workout is going to have a major positive impact on the heart itself (yes, it is a muscle that gets trained too) as well as your vascular networks. The treadmill workout I recommend below explains how to set up aerobic intervals, which quite literally strengthen the contractile tissue in your heart that determines how much blood the heart is able to pump per beat. 

This aerobic workout also increases contraction strength (the beats of the heart) without increasing the size of the chamber in the heart (which can also be trained, just not with this method). In addition, his type of workout can improve the heart’s conditioning during high heart rates so you can maintain your physical exertion for a longer period of time without fatiguing. 

Since we are impacting contractile force and heart rate conditioning, this type of workout/benefit is related to improving performance as intensity increases out on the ice. During periods of lower effort (like walking on the ground or gliding on the ice), the strength of the heart really doesn’t matter much because oxygen supply is not a limiting factor. But, as you increase exertion, the demand for oxygen grows—as does your reliance on the heart’s endurance/contractile force ability. 

For hockey, it’s important to have a strong heart that is capable of sustaining contractions as long as possible at high heart rates—this is what keeps you fresh going into the third period. 

Luckily for us, using this method is very straightforward. 

Hockey Treadmill Workout

1. Warm up with a speed walk for five minutes 
2. Run for 60 seconds at a self-perceived 90% of your maximal output
3. Rest for two minutes or wait until your heart rate comes back down to 120 (whether it has been two minutes or not)
4. Run for 120 seconds at a self-perceived 80% of your maximal output
5. Rest for two minutes or wait until your heart rate comes back down to 120 (whether it has been two minutes or not)
6. Repeat steps 2–5 until you complete four rounds of each output (four rounds of 60 seconds running and four rounds of 120 seconds running) 
7. Cool down with a speed walk for five minutes 

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