This Pro Hockey News feature from 2012 takes me back to a period when a significant part of my coaching work was focused on preparing ice hockey players for the season ahead.
Having spent years playing the sport myself, I understood that simply being strong in the gym wasn’t enough. Players needed strength, conditioning, speed, power and the ability to repeatedly produce those qualities when they got back onto the ice.
By this stage, I had already built a close working relationship with Bracknell over several seasons, supporting individual players with their physical preparation.
For this particular off-season, I put together a much more structured programme for a mixture of Bracknell Hornets and EPL players who wanted to arrive at pre-season in the best possible condition.
Building the players from the ground up
The programme was split into two distinct phases.
We began with an eight-week off-ice conditioning block focused on building total-body strength and fitness.
That was followed by a further six-week phase where the emphasis moved towards preparing the athletes to return to the ice, with more explosive work, sprinting and plyometrics included.
Looking back, the terminology and some of the training methods I would use today have obviously evolved, but the principle remains familiar.
Build the physical foundations first.
Then gradually make the training more specific to the demands the athlete is preparing for.
A demanding off-season
The sessions were deliberately challenging.
Players worked through sprinting, hurdles, loaded carries, tyre work and other conditioning drills as we tried to build both physical capacity and the mentality required to keep working when fatigue started to set in.
One of the players featured heavily in the article was Grant Rounding, who was returning from an injury-disrupted period and wanted to rebuild the physical side of his game.
Grant spoke positively about the programme and the motivation of training alongside other players who were all trying to gain an advantage before the season began.
That environment was important.
Everyone knew why they were there.
They wanted to arrive at camp stronger, fitter and better prepared than they had been before.
Seeing the physical changes
The programme also produced some significant physical changes.
By the end of the off-season, Grant had added just under a stone of functional mass, while Lewis Turner had added around a stone of lean mass before moving up to the EPL Bees.
For me, though, the important part wasn’t simply making players bigger.
Any increase in strength or muscle had to contribute to what they needed on the ice.
That meant thinking about speed, power, robustness, conditioning and the ability to tolerate the physical demands of a long season.
Using my playing experience
This was also one of those periods where my background as a player and my developing career as a coach came together particularly well.
I knew what the sport felt like.
I knew what it was like to be tired late in a game, to battle physically along the boards and to have to react quickly when the play changed direction.
That experience helped shape the way I thought about off-ice training.
The gym work had to have a reason behind it.
We weren’t training simply to get better at exercises. We were trying to develop qualities that would help the player perform when they put the skates back on.
Looking back
Pro Hockey News described the programme as part of Bracknell’s preparation for the new season and highlighted the commitment of the players who took part.
Looking back more than a decade later, this remains an important chapter from the performance side of my coaching career.
It followed several seasons of working with Bracknell players and gave me the opportunity to design a complete off-season preparation programme rather than simply individual training sessions.
My coaching has continued to evolve significantly since then, but many of the principles remain the same.
Understand the athlete.
Understand the sport.
Build the foundations.
Progress towards the specific demands they need to meet.
And make sure the training ultimately helps them perform better when it matters.
Read the full article HERE.
Joseph Webb.
