Ice hockey requires enormous energy and time in training, as any sport does. Many skills, such as puck handling, shooting, skating, passing, and positioning, need to be improved, but there is more than that. Several people ignore that hockey athletes need to train as much as any other athlete does, which means off the ice training. Let’s understand what the importance of hockey training is.
A properly designed training system for hockey can do wonders for your body, like:
· Improve mobility
· Improve flexibility
· Improve strength
· Improve speed
· Improve agility
· Improve balance
· Improve conditioning
· Improve body composition
· Decrease fatigue time
· Decrease risk of injury
Even though all items listed are more than enough to convince you to do off-ice training, there is more. Exercise is essential to maintain good health and gives you enough strength and even security to try new techniques on the ice. Besides, it makes you able to endure more. Good training results translate to many different game elements, making you a better athlete. Of course, hockey training is more than doing weightlifting at the gym.
Your improvement will be much faster since you will be working harder. Let’s imagine a routine where you have a game a week and make one or two practices per week. That makes you busy for three days, right? If you use the last two or even three days of the week, if you are willing to do training on the weekend, you will be developing your skills for six days instead of three, which is a great way to improve yourself faster and safely, since you will be working on all your body correctly.
If you ever felt burned out during your hockey practices or even games, especially near the end, you probably need to improve your stamina. Although it is normal to feel tired after a hard day of training or gaming, off-ice training makes it harder for you to feel exhausted since you will boost your stamina and condition your body.
Hockey is a mixed sport (alactic-aerobic), using both sides of the energy system perspective. Therefore, it is an excellent practice to go further and train your body in a way that hockey alone doesn’t.
Off-ice training has become a habit for many professional hockey players, which is very positive for their body health. It gets easier to do the training once they feel part of your routine, and you may even start to miss them when you get used to them.
Also, many hockey players don’t do off-ice training, so you will be ahead of the game if you start to do it. All the benefits it brings will be yours while the rest of the players will be behind you.
Click here for more information if you want to have a proper hockey training routine that integrates innovative science and technology with high-performance hockey development. Check out our services at Apex Skating to become a better hockey player.
