Digging deeper

Hockey season starts in about a month and as far as I can tell I’m on track to be in peak form when the puck drops. This is despite an inauspicious start to my off-season training.

In the early going I struggled to address the strength and cardio components laid out in my guide book while also providing my muscles with sufficient recovery time.

One thing that was tripping me up, I eventually realized, was that I was misreading my body’s signals. What I interpreted as muscle fatigue caused by the workouts I was doing actually turned out to be plain old weakness in my leg muscles. As a consequence, I wound up resting my legs, thinking they needed time to recover, when I should have been working them more regularly to make them stronger.

A more thorough reading of my book supplemented by some Internet research and some simple trial and error helped me to sort through my confusion and I put together a solid plan for the summer.

This plan involved dividing the off-season into three segments. The first segment focused on building my basic cardio capacity through regular runs and Xbox boxing sessions, with a secondary focus on building leg strength and beginning to develop the anaerobic energy systems in the legs, which is accomplished through timed sprints.

The second segment dialed down the frequency of cardio workouts and increased the frequency of anaerobic workouts. The third segment, which I’m just beginning, will continue to build strength and power in the legs, as well as overall cardio capacity, but will concentrate almost exclusively on hockey-related movements to achieve these goals, so the results translate as much as possible to the hockey rink.

Key change

A key adjustment I made this off-season was changing how I’ve performed my 30-second anaerobic intervals, which are a critical element in priming the leg muscles for the dynamic demands of hockey. Last year I approached this element by sprinting in a straight line but I’ve since realized that this type of movement has little relevance to hockey so I switched to doing hockey-related movements like lateral footwork, crossovers, leaps and pivots.

These exercises really make the leg muscles burn, which signalled to me that I needed to focus on them, since they mimic what my legs must endure during a hockey game. By doing these exercises regularly at a high intensity, I’ve been able to gradually increase the interval work time to 45 seconds and decrease the rest time from two minutes to 1:10. By the time the off-season is over, my aim is to have the work time up to a full minute followed by a minute of rest. This will closely approximate the shift-rest cycle I typically experience during a beer-league hockey game.

Need for speed

A key component of the latter half of my off-season has been a concentrated effort on exercises designed to boost my skating speed. This is achieved by making the legs stronger through squats of increasingly heavy weight, lateral leaps and sprinting against some form of resistance.

My book says that before undertaking serious speed training, a player should be able to perform several repetitions of deep squats of his own body weight. I started the off-season squatting 140 pounds, which is 10 pounds less than my body weight. I gradually worked up to 150 pounds and within a couple sessions was able to comfortably perform three sets of 10 squats.

This was my cue to start undertaking serious speed training, which I’ve been doing for the past month or so. This speed work is key, as speed used to be my hallmark as a player and its departure is what I’ve missed the most as I’ve aged.

I’m not sure how much of my lost speed I can recover, but I hope to be fast enough to keep up with the fast, young guys who populate our league. I’m emboldened by the fact that, when I was in my late 20s, I played regularly with some older guys and the fastest guy on the ice was this 44-year-old guy who was about my size.

The reason that this guy – let’s call him Brian – was able to be so fast at his age was that he took care of his body. I think of him often when I’m out training and visualizing what I hope to achieve this upcoming season. As a formerly fast player who’s now trapped inside a 44-year-old body, my dream is to be able to step on the gas and have my body respond.

Wheeling and dealing – Part 1

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I’ve realized that I require additional equipment if I’m to take my training to the next level. One of the items I placed on my must-acquire list was a whole whack of pucks for shooting practice.

Like any schmoe who plays hockey, I had some pucks kicking around the house, like 10 or so, but I knew this paltry number wouldn’t do if I was going to work seriously at improving my shot. I needed to take a significant number of shots every day but also wanted to minimize the amount of time spent retrieving pucks. The solution, I figured, was to have enough pucks that I could shoot the entire batch once, then retrieve them afterward and be ready for the next day.

The number I settled on was 200. This may seem crazy, but it isn’t.

I estimate that a hockey player, while practicing his shooting in much the same way as a golfer practices at a driving range, can fire a puck every two to four seconds. So working through 200 pucks would take anywhere from 400 to 800 seconds (seven to 14 minutes) – a manageable amount of time to spend every day. Plus, I think 200 pucks would be manageable space-wise and lead to improvement if shot every day.

So I set about finding 200 pucks. About the cheapest place around to buy pucks in my part of the world is Canadian Tire, a department store. It sells brand new pucks for 98 cents each – not a bad price but much too high when you’re looking at buying 200 of them. (I wasn’t prepared to spend $200 on this acquisition).

Turning to the Internet, I learned that 50 cents a puck is about the best price you can get. On Kijiji I found a guy in my area offering 200 pucks for $100 – right in my wheelhouse. We agreed on the price via email and I awaited a response about a meeting time and place. Meanwhile, I got a text response from another seller I’d contacted. It was a fellow acting as an agent for his eight-year-old kid, who collects pucks around outdoor rinks each spring. I told him I’d already settled on a deal.

Then seller No. 1 emailed back with meeting instructions.

“I usually meet my buyers in the Co-op parking lot. Look for a black Honda,” he told me.

Whoa. This guy regularly makes deals in parking lots? And he drives a black Honda?

I realized that I was about to do business with a deadly Asian triad that specializes in stolen hockey gear!

I could see exactly how it would play out. We’d be conducting our business and would start up an innocent discussion about a random beer-league topic – the relative merits of dumping and chasing, perhaps. But he’d be pro and I’d be con, and with the suddenness of a Kansas tornado, our disagreement would turn violent. In the end, the evening news would relate how my lifeless body was found stuffed in a Co-op shopping cart with a wad of hockey tape jammed in my mouth and a jagged chunk of composite stick protruding from my neck.

I texted the kid’s dad and asked if he’d sell 200 pucks for $85. The kid went for it so I gingerly backed out of the deal with the triad guy.

So I’m happy to report that I now have 200 pucks in my garage. I haven’t shot any of them yet because I need some more stuff to complete my shooting gallery, which is in the works.

For those of you who are curious, 200 pucks weigh in at about 70 pounds and nearly fill a large plastic storage container, displacing about 1.6 cubic feet, or 45.3 litres, of volume. 

Beyond conditioning

Years ago, and for several consecutive years, I traveled with my beer-league buddies each spring to a weekend recreational tournament in the resort town of Banff. One of the perks of this hockey getaway was that a video replay was screened in the arena lounge following each game. This provided us weekend warriors a rare opportunity to see ourselves play on TV. We took full advantage.

Seeing my hockey-playing self on video was both encouraging and discouraging. On the encouraging side was the instant impression of, “Wow, that guy’s pretty fast.” But almost immediately came the question, “Why doesn’t he do something?” You see, I fit the stereotype of the small speedster who looks dangerous as he races around accomplishing little.

The problem was that I lacked the puck-handling skills and the confidence required to maintain puck possession when challenged by an opponent, so whenever I had the puck I got rid of it at the first sign of pressure, either passing it to the nearest teammate or just dumping it to a safe area.

This spring, when I decided to train seriously for the upcoming season, one of the deciding factors was the realization that I could take my training beyond conditioning by also working on hockey skills like stickhandling, shooting and skating.

All these skills can be improved in a dryland setting and I’m in the process of either doing that or getting set up to do it. This is taking some doing because, in order to take a solid run at these issues, I’ve concluded that I need to acquire some equipment.

A quick Internet search will turn up a plethora of stuff that’s available to help hockey players improve their game, not to mention empty their wallets. (This site is one I’ve consulted on numerous occasions: http://www.hockeyshot.ca/). Navigating the hockey training marketplace to distinguish the useful from the frivolous has been a time-consuming chore, but I’m close to completing a list of select items that I believe will help me develop my skills. Soon it will be time to crack open the wallet and go on a bit of a spending spree.

This will be a direct violation of my hockey training rule No. 1 but I’ve done a serious rethink of this rule given that I’m dedicating this summer to taking this hobby to another level. 

And besides, what good is a hobby if it doesn’t involve buying stuff?

At the crossroads – To Margueritaville or Beerton?

The arrival of the off-season at the end of March was a shock, so focused was I on delivering a peak playoff performance that I wasn’t prepared for what came next.

As I dealt with life without my weekly hockey game, I felt like I was at a crossroads and neither of the two choices before me were palatable. The first choice was to keep putting myself through the physical rigours that are involved in competing against 20-somethings as a 44-year-old. The upside of this option was that it contains beer. The second choice was to retire to a leisure life of golf and pinnocle, lubricated by some sort of out-to-pasture beverage like pina coladas or margueritas or something. Those were my options as I saw them – either waste away in Margueritaville, as the song says, or toil away in Beerton, as it were.

Part of me felt it was time to retire. But another part recognized that I was staring at a glorious six-month window of opportunity, a chance to take my training to new heights and “awesome-ize” myself in time for next season. After all, last fall’s three-week cram session of training had produced some improvement, hadn’t it? (Yes, it had.) I was curious what six months of focused work could achieve.

As I considered my options, I jumped right into exercising, to start tuning my body just in case I decided not to retire. Within a couple weeks of my last game I was devoting time every evening to performing leg-strengthening exercises in the form of jumps and lunges, all in the comfort of our living room as the NHL playoffs unfolded on the TV.

My daily regimen quickly had my legs feeling firm and sprightly. At work I’d bound up the stairs two at a time and displayed tremendous first-step quickness whenever word spread that doughnuts were waiting by the coffee maker.

Around this time I also began twice-weekly physiotherapy sessions to address a knee that complained whenever its routine was interrupted by any type of bump and a hip that launched darts of torment with my every move. The therapist zeroed in on some muscle weakness that was contributing to my woes and taught me some exercises to shore up those areas. The exercises became part of my daily routine.

After a while I started to take my workouts outside. This gave me a slap-in-the-face dose of reality. Here I’d thought I was getting in pretty good shape but it turned out that, when it came to propelling me around in a sustained fashion, my legs were still as weak as wet noodles and my lungs had the air exchange capacity of solid wood duck decoys. I spent more time doubled over trying to catch my breath than I did moving my feet and legs.

By the end of April the aggressive kneadings of the physiotherapist, coupled with the improved strength that she was injecting into my body (figuratively speaking), caused my hip pain to subside. This in turn relaxed my angst about my physical condition and swayed my decision.

I would not retire. No, I would train full bore this off-season so I could give ‘er in beer league next season.

This decision necessitated a reassessment of where I was with my training, given my laboured attempts at shuttling my body around. A careful review of my training book (Complete Conditioning for Hockey by Peter Twist) revealed the importance of a high level of aerobic fitness as a base for the later development of strength, agility and quickness. With this as my focus, I sat down and charted a plan.

It’s been going well. With July now here, I’ve put in a fairly solid first half of the off-season and have a plan for the rest of the way. I’m turning in solid, focused workouts almost every day. I can engage in sustained effort without losing my breath. My legs are feeling strong and are getting stronger every week, gaining the strength required to produce quick, powerful bursts of movement. With more than two months to go until the season starts, my physical abilities are taking shape and my hopes are high.

But so too are my antennae of caution. My greatest fear is that I’ll somehow fall off the wagon or miscalculate in my planning or execution, thereby failing to take full advantage of this precious time, arriving at next season in semi-decent shape but basically the same as before – just a slow, unskilled plugger toiling away in Beerton.

With all the work I’m putting into it, if I fall flat with my attempts to transcend my age and skill level, I may yet wish I had chosen Margueritaville. At least then I could claim that there was a woman to blame, as the song goes. Something to keep in mind next time I’m at the crossroads.

Done like wings 'n fries

Among the things I enjoy in life are:

1) beer

2) chicken wings

3) French-fried potaters, and

4) lounging in a state of semi undress after playing a hockey game.

Never have I experienced all four of these elements at once ... until now.

With our last game of the season having finished, we’re sitting around in our dressing room, some of us dressed only in towels, others still stewing in smelly hockey gear. Despite the late hour the arena concession people have stuck around and are sending regular food shipments into our room, and refusing to accept payment in return. And contrary to the norm, not a single member of our team has gone home, even though the game has been over for half an hour.

There’s a jovial, festive atmosphere in our room and in the room down the hall. Some of the opposition players are mingling in the hallway with some of our players, amicably rehashing the two-game final series. We’re one big, happy family even though one team is the league champions and the other isn’t.

I think we knew deep down that we weren’t going to win. We clung to the fact that these opponents, despite their superiority in speed and skill, needed overtime to beat us when we met them in the preliminary round. But in the final two games they didn’t leave much room for hope, beating us 6-3 and 3-1.

Our two 20-something players, one fresh out of junior B and the other a stalwart at the senior AA level, were more than capable of competing with those guys. But for the rest of us it was a stretch. They were simply faster, more skilled and better organized.

The loss is disappointing but there’s also satisfaction in the knowledge that, by reaching the final, we overachieved significantly. A decidedly mediocre team during the first half of the season, we went on an 8-2 tear to end the regular season. Then we took our team, a squad that’s relatively old, lacking in high-end skill, not particularly fast and not particularly great at passing, and made it to the final, eliminating some pretty strong teams along the way.

Our strengths were our workmanlike tenacity, a commitment to a structured defence and a solid young goaltender. It’s the best finish this team has ever posted in its history, which dates back about 20 years (this was my first season with them).

On a personal note, I found our playoff run to be exhilarating and fun, though I was disappointed to find I was no longer in very good shape as the season wound down. In the days leading up to the final two games I engaged in some workout cramming in an attempt to elevate my physical status. It helped a bit but there’s only so much you can do in a few days.

After our resounding loss in the first game of the final, I decided to abandon my strictly defensive style, recognizing that our team needed more offence. In the last game I let it all hang out, racing up the ice to join in our offensive attack, trying to do more with my chances to skate with the puck. These efforts didn’t generate any tangible results or affect the outcome of the game, but competing more on the edge like that made the game more fun.

As the party in the room continues, I’ve forgotten all about the physical pain I’ve endured during the past few weeks. I suppose these issues will fill the coming days with thoughts about my ability to continue playing at this level. But, for the moment, it’s time to savour what was a pretty fun ride.

A magical playoff run

Stock photo

I’m at work, sitting at my desk doing routine desk stuff but the day is anything but routine.

My body is buzzing with electrified dread and my stomach is a ball of writhing vipers. It’s game day.

My team in the midst of a solid playoff run despite having entered the post-season in fifth place in our 12-team league. Our Cinderella story could end tonight, however. Whoever loses is done.

I know that our opponents – let’s call them the Posies – will be eager to beat us, not only to keep their own playoff run alive, but to exact revenge for a bitter defeat we handed them two games ago.

These playoffs are set up as a double-elimination tournament, which means you play a different opponent each game and are eliminated if you lose two games. For our first matchup we beat the fourth-place team by a single goal in a fast and intense game. Next came the Posies – the first-place team – who we also beat by one goal in a game that was even more intense.

During this game, the Posies’ No. 19 was constantly taking runs at our players, being careless with his stick, berating the referees and generally behaving like he could snap at any moment.

The situation escalated during the handshake session after the final buzzer sealed our one-goal victory. One of my teammates, whom 19 had violently assaulted with his stick in the game’s waning seconds, refused to shake hands, causing 19’s perpetual frown to deepen noticeably.

When it came my turn to shake 19’s hand, it didn’t go well. You see, I had recently had my right hand crushed during an end-of-game handshake session. Whether or not it was intentional, I’m not sure, but I was determined to avoid a repeat occurrence.

So when it came my turn to shake 19’s hand, I made sure to get my hand right in there and I dialed up the PSIs to prevent him from overpowering me. I even adjusted my hand position mid-shake to ensure I was fully engaged. I’ve learned from experience that the most vulnerable position to be in is when you don’t get your hand in there all the way, leaving only your fingertips for the other guy to grab.

Anyway, as this handshake tête a tête unfolded, 19 thought my defensive posturing was an attempt to crush his hand. This lead to an exchange of glares and F-words, then some general milling around and arguing involving members of both teams.

After a few minutes of this, and having grown weary of the proceedings, I loudly reminded the Posies that the game was over and suggested they get off the ice.

“You’re going to have a heart attack,” one of their players said to me, a reference to my advanced age of 43, I guess.

“Huh, what’s that?” I said.

“You’re going to have a heart attack,” the guy repeated.

I was just pretending I hadn’t heard him. Really, I was trying to buy time until I could think of a zinger comeback. I had nothing.

“Huh? I can’t hear you,” I said again.

Real smooth, I thought to myself. This guy’s grinding your gears about being old and you pretend to be hard of hearing. Yeah, that’s some good trash talkin’ right there.

As No. 3 and I glared at each other, a different comeback finally materialized in my mouth and I spit it out without thinking.

“I can’t hear losers,” I said.

Well, the face of my trash-talking counterpart sagged as if I’d killed his dog and insulted his mother.

“I can’t believe you’d say something like that, calling us losers,” he moaned.

I was confused. Isn’t that the point of trash talking, to insult the other guy?

Anyway, the melee finally dispersed and we retreated to our respective dressing rooms. As I replayed the episode in my mind, I started feeling guilty about having been drawn into the melodrama. At the core of my concern was the knowledge that we could end up playing this team again in these very same playoffs, and if we did, they’d be looking for revenge both on the scoreboard and along the boards.

Sure enough, we lost our next game and the Posies won two in a row to earn a rematch with us, with the winner advancing to the finals. Which takes us to tonight’s game and today’s game-day jitters – not just about the game itself, but also about the game within the game.

So like I says, there I am at my desk with the day crawling by at glacial speed. Then I’m at home having supper then I’m putting kids to bed, all through a fog of slow motion, until I finally find myself driving to the arena.

In the dressing room prior to game time, as I apply protective armour to my body, I’m working hard to keep the butterflies in check and my body relaxed. A few minutes later, as I walk down the tunnel toward the ice surface, I force myself to stride with purpose, with my head up and an artificial swagger in my derriere. If I’m walking to my doom at least I’m going to do it with dignity, I figure.

Within the short distance from the dressing room to the ice surface I jettison all extracurricular concerns, leaving only one thought: time to just play.

Fast and close

The game is fast and close. In the early going one of our young guns scores on a breakaway. A little while later the Posies respond. It goes back and forth like that. It’s an intensely played game that’s forcing us to skate and pass more quickly than I would have thought we were capable. Thankfully, we’re keeping up OK and the game is all hockey – no B.S.

We’re clinging to a one-goal lead as the third period winds down, but they tie it up, sending the game into overtime.

As I’ve done all season, I’ve concentrated on playing a safe, defensive type of game, leaving the offence to our more skilled and fleet-footed players. But during the four-on-four overtime session an opportunity to generate an attack falls into my lap as I suddenly find myself with the puck at our blue line and some open ice in front of me.

Even though my legs are feeling lethargic, I feel obliged to try to make something happen, so I race into the Posies’ zone with as much speed as I can muster (which isn’t so much speed as it is a less exaggerated form of slowness).

Back in the day I would have found another gear and gone blazing wide on the defender without hesitation, which may have afforded me an unfettered path to the goal crease and a chance to score (which I would have frittered away).

However, this is 2014 and what actually happens is a pretty feeble attempt to dart into shooting position followed by a more feeble wrist shot that the goalie easily deflects to the corner.

Out of gas, I retreat to the bench. Shortly thereafter the five-minute overtime session ends and we head into a shootout to decide the game.

The Posies send out their first shooter and our goalie calmly turns him aside.

Our first shooter is the young gun who scored on the breakaway. He casually deposits the puck into the net.

Their next shooter meets the same fate as their first, setting us up for the potential game winner. We send out our next best young stud. He strides toward the goal, makes a move to deke then quickly fires a shot from close range.

The goalie crumples in an attempt to close his legs in time. From my spot on the bench I see a black speck emerge from behind the folded legs and fling itself soundlessly against the twine at the back of the net.

“Yes!”

Our bench erupts in unison and empties onto the ice. We’ve beaten the hated first-place team and we’re off to the final!

Later, in the dressing room, the beer tastes extra sweet and the satisfaction of a hard-fought victory is soothing the fatigue in my body. There’s no feeling quite like winning.

Except we haven’t really won anything yet. Next week we’ll engage in a best-of-three series for the league championship. Our opponent will be the team that has already beaten us once during these playoffs. And the series will unfold over the course of four days.

The prospect of playing that much hockey within such a short span is both exciting and daunting. It won’t be easy on my body, which has grown weary in the season’s late stages.

So, while I bask in the satisfaction of victory tonight, and take a day to recover tomorrow, I know that the following days will involve merging my butt with my training ground as I prepare for next week’s ultimate battle.

The aging Sea King

Source: National Post

Wow, the hockey season has flown by.

When I last checked in, winter hadn’t officially begun and the hockey season was relatively young. I had just proven that a middle-aged man can engage in outdoor, hockey-focused training even during harsh winter-like conditions. The table was set for a productive and transformational hockey season.

Suddenly four months have flashed past. It’s spring, the season is in its last throes and I’ve learned a couple things.

The first thing I learned is that, even though it’s physically feasible to venture outside on cold winter nights to engage in sprinting and other forms of goal-oriented torture, it’s not something I want to do regularly. Looking back at my workout log, it appears that I managed to do some sort of exercise about once every seven to 10 days, really just a scattering of token exercise attempts. Clearly the vein of motivation I tapped during last fall’s initial rush of conditioning ran dry.

I also learned that working out the day before a game is a bad idea, as this forces my legs to engage in strenuous propulsion activities when they are still recovering from the violence of the workout. Not a happy mix.

Overall I learned that playing once a week effectively removes three potential workout days from my weekly schedule: the day before, the day of, and the day after a game (for recovery reasons). And any of the four remaining days can be easily derailed by any number of issues: it’s a Friday and I’m tired from a grueling week of editing newspapers, I’ve worked late that day and don’t have the time or energy to work out, the moon is in a phase that’s ill-suited for exercise, there’s something on TV, the dog’s water bowl is nearly empty ... the reasons are many and some of them are flimsy, but there you go.

The result of all of the above is that my conditioning has gradually backtracked as the season has wore on. I’ve noticed lately that my legs are a little less strong, a little more rubbery than they were earlier in the season. Executing quick turns and sudden accelerations have become laborious once again. During games I’ve caught myself sneaking peaks at the game clock, hoping for the ends of periods so I can get an extra breather. And by the end of games I feel a little worn out, almost as much as I used to before I started training.

I think my attempts to get into shape did make me more capable of playing at the level of the men’s league in which I play, which features fairly fast and skilled action. Without the base of conditioning that I hastily built at the beginning of the season, I would probably have been a very marginal player. As it was, I gauge that I was a notch or two above marginal, but I was definitely not a game breaker. I settled into my role as a stay-at-home defenceman, a player who could be counted on to be solid defensively (in theory, at least) and offer next to nothing in terms of offensive punch other than the willingness and ability to move the puck efficiently to the faster, more skilled players.

Aches and pains

Apart from the conditioning side of it, my season has been marked by physical discomfort.

The knee I injured last summer has flared up a few times, confirming my belief that there’s something structurally unsound in there. I’m getting it checked out.

And one of my hips, which has been a nagging source of ache on and off for a few years, has become stiff and sore on a semi-permanent basis, to the point that it’s starting to hamper my on-ice mobility. I’m having that checked out too.

Which brings me to my latest analogy: the Sea King. These are large military helicopters used by forces around the world, including the Canadian Forces. In service in Canada since 1963, these units have been earmarked for replacement since 1983 but the government hasn’t quite gotten around to that yet. One oft-publicized stat is that these aircraft require more than 30 hours of maintenance for every hour of flight.

I can relate. Sure, I can turn in a solid hour of hockey performance every week, but in order to do so, my body needs to spend the rest of the week propped up on jacks with various cowlings removed so a team of dedicated service personnel can overhaul my weary innards. Of course the infrastructure and financing just aren’t in place for such rigorous maintenance so I’m making do by following up each “flight” by lubricating my innards with generous dousings of Budweiser and dashes of hope that the problems will just go away.

This is, after all, beer-league hockey and that’s how we drop the puck, so to speak.