Physiological Demands of Ice Hockey

There are many ways to analyze the physiological demands of a sport, but tracking heart rate (HR) is the most commonly used.

When looking at the HR response during shifts of male Canadian university players, forwards had higher peak and average HRs compared to defensemen. This is consistent with my experience, and speaks to the faster playing speeds and greater number of high intensity efforts forwards accumulate during a typical shift (mentioned in previous posts).

Hockey is often described as a “lactic” sport. When analyzing post-shift levels, Noonan (2010) found that players’ blood lactate ranged from 4.4-13.7 mmol/L. 4 mmol/L is traditionally referenced as the “lactate threshold”, which means thinking of hockey as a lactic sport isn’t wrong, but the wide range of values highlights the individual, positional, and game-demand variability.

Further, it raises questions about whether we should be training players to more heavily rely on lactic metabolism or maximize aerobic power to minimize the amount of work that crosses that threshold.

Feel free to post any comments/questions below. If you found this helpful, please share/re-post it so others can benefit.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. Get your off-ice training programs here >> Hockey Conditioning Programs

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

Analyzing Game Demands of Ice Hockey: Positional Differences

Four separate studies looking at different levels of competition across different time periods share common findings.

Defensemen log more minutes, but their shifts are characterized by significantly less high intensity work and sprinting compared to forwards.

The natural question that arises here is “should defensemen spend more time doing longer aerobic work?”

Short answer – no.

Just because defensemen accumulate less sprinting throughout a game does not make their speed less important.

This information does, however, mean that the energy system contributions to their work will differ from forwards.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. For in-season and off-season hockey conditioning programs, click here >> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

Analyzing Game Demands of Ice Hockey: Sprinting Emphasis

In a professional hockey game, players perform around 7 high intensity skating efforts per shift, including 1-2 sprints around 20-30m, accumulating over 2000m in high intensity skating throughout a game.

These sprinting efforts often have an impact on possession, scoring opportunities, and ultimately the outcome of the game.

Ice hockey is a repeat sprint sport, and as a result, hockey conditioning programs should be built around an understanding of the limiting factors to repeat sprint ability.

There are two other important considerations:

Positional differences
The impact of body position and contact during “slow to moderate speed” skating

Analyzing Game Demands of Ice Hockey

In an international hockey game, the average shift length was ~86s, which was split in half between playing and stoppage time. Players spent ~18% of their playing time in high intensity skating.

The big take home here is that the ice hockey requires bursts of high intensity skating interspersed by periods of lower intensity skating and stoppages.

Shifts are followed by LONG recovery periods on the bench.

This is significantly different from the 40s of work, 1:3 work to rest ratio commonly used to describe game demands.

The longer you go, the slower you go.

So recognizing that the game is comprised of peaks and valleys in movement speed/intensity (higher highs and lower lows), opposed to 40s of continuous work, should have a significant impact on how players condition.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. For in-season and off-season hockey conditioning programs, click here >> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!

The Biggest Mistake in Hockey Conditioning

There are many ways to break down the demands of the game to gain insight into how to best prepare. In ice hockey, it’s common to look at shift length and work-to-rest ratios as an indicator of game demands.

At most levels of hockey, a typical shift is 40-60s and teams carry 3-4 forward lines and 3 d-pairs. Following this thinking, “hockey-specific” conditioning would involve work bouts of 40-60s with a 1:3 work-to-rest ratio.

While seemingly logical, this is one of the biggest mistakes in hockey conditioning.

Legendary track coach Charlie Francis is often referenced as saying “Watch the player, not the game.”.

When you do this in hockey, a very different pattern emerges. For the individual player, a typical shift consists of intermittent maximum effort bouts interspersed with brief periods of rest.

Over-emphasizing 40-60 second work bouts, particularly on the ice, will compromise speed in 3 key areas: 1) speed of skating, 2) speed of skill execution, and 3) speed of decision making.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll share some of the available research highlighting the demands of the game, limiting factors to hockey conditioning, and specific training strategies.

If you have any specific questions or comments, post them below and I’ll address them throughout this series.

To your success,

Kevin Neeld
SpeedTrainingforHockey.com
HockeyTransformation.com
OptimizingAdaptation.com

P.S. For in-season and off-season hockey conditioning programs, click here >> Ultimate Hockey Transformation

Enter your first name and email below to sign up for my FREE Sports Performance and Hockey Training Newsletter!