Objectives of the Off-Season Dryland Training Program
1) Develop the Aerobic Endurance Base
- Each time you perform high power bursts or generate high strength, you use up energy stores in the muscle.
- The high power work produces lactic acid which brings about fatigue quickly.
- In order to flush your muscles of this waste product and to supply fuels and oxygen to be used to replace the high energy stores in these muscles, you need a well-developed central cardiovascular system.
- This system also helps to dissipate heat and adjust to the stress of travel
- This “aerobic” fitness is not very important in the energy supply for the high power bursts on ice but is crucial for optimal recovery between shifts, periods, and games. It is also the fundamental base upon which you can do more strength and power training.
2) Improve General Flexibility
- Flexibility is important because when muscle tendons and joint capsules are properly stretched they are less prone to injury.
- A properly lengthened muscle can apply more power because it can contract through a complete range of motion.
- Properly stretched muscles also can help conserve energy. If a muscle is not lengthened, it will resist the activity of the opposite muscle group, and requires this muscle to work harder at its range.
3) Reduce Body Fat
- Body weight is a combination of fat and fat-free components, and over-weightiness is a result of an excess of the former.
- To look and perform best, fat component should be within a range of 8% - 12%.
- By measuring the fat, it is possible to determine the total amount of fat on the body. From this information, you can work towards your ideal body weight.
4) Improve Skating Speed, Acceleration & Agility
- Although skating speed and acceleration are considered important, agility and cornering ability (turns) are the most important of all skating attributes.
- One of the consequences of the high speeds that you attain while skating, is the increased centrifugal force that is created while cornering.
- To compound the problem of this large force on the legs, you must bend your knees more as the forces get bigger, because a torque is created by the outward (centrifugal) and inward (centripetal) forces. To reduce this torque, you must lower your center of gravity.
- Simple physics of cornering forces shows us that strength training must supplement on-ice skating in order to correctly develop the skill of cornering at high speed.
- Hockey players must train for a low center of gravity at a young age.
5) Develop Muscular Strength/Hypertrophy
- Strength is needed in muscles to protect against injury, to provide a solid base for man-to-man combat and maintenance of territory, and to generate dynamic strength for the production of power.
- Training must challenge both the muscles and nerves sufficiently.
- This is the dual role of heavy resistance training.
- Improvement in strength and power results from 2 changes
- Muscles get bigger (hypertrophy) when overloaded on a consistent basis. Each muscle fiber (fast twitch) becomes larger because it contains more contractile elements (myofibrils). Training, rest, and nutrition, build more protein elements for muscle contraction.
- Nervous system “learns” from chronic overload to recruit more muscle fibers and to have them fire more frequently.
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