Idiot vs. the elements

My training ground

You’re not supposed to lie down to recover from the exertion of running hard. I’m not sure why, but that’s what I was taught by former coaches and phys-ed teachers. So it’s with a slight pang of guilt that I’m lying on the snow-packed road in my subdivision, panting hard and gazing up at a sky matted with brilliant stars.

I’m recovering from my most recent round of wind sprints, which remain every bit as agonizing as they were three months ago when I first started training.

Due to a bout of extreme busy-ness that recently infected my life, this is my first workout in 10 days. It’s also my first attempt at training under bona fide winter conditions. It’s about minus seven degrees Celsius (19 degrees Fahrenheit).

Even here in Canada, where winters are cold, white and long, many hard-core distance runners maintain their habit year round, making sub-zero forays onto streets and trails in their form-fitting, technical garb. If that’s a look you’re picturing in your mind, get rid of it, because I’m not looking anything like that.

I’m dressed as if I’m out for a round of tobogganing: felt-lined boots, ski gloves, toque, ski jacket, shell pants. Beneath this outer coating are sweat pants and a sweatshirt preceded by a neck-to-ankle encasement of moisture-wicking underwear.

I’m 20 minutes into my workout so I’m warmed up. My face and neck feel fresh from the cool air but all my other parts are nice and comfortable. Overall, the cold isn’t a factor.

I do, however, feel ponderous and heavy under all the layers of clothing. My boots are particularly unwieldy, feeling as cumbersome as snowshoes, but they provide the traction I need for sprinting. It’s tough getting my legs moving with all the extra bulk attached to them but I feel that this increased resistance will lead to increased strength.

I loll about on the ground for a couple of minutes then I’m back on my feet and finishing up my sprints. Then I’m off to the garage for a quick blast of the thighs with the barbells. This has become the core of my workout routine: sprint then squat, sprint then squat, every day or two.

Back for more

About 48 hours later I’m in the house preparing for another workout. Outside it’s dark and snowing, the wind whistling wildly as the treetops whip around like Medusa’s hair. I decide to restrict my activities to indoors, but as I prepare to head to the garage for some footwork and weight training, I feel disappointment and guilt welling up inside me. While I want to avoid the discomfort of going outside, I feel that I should do my sprinting, as I view this as the most important component of my workout scheme.

So, despite my powerful desire to stay inside where it’s warm and dry, I find myself outside in the swirling elements, bundled up in one-piece lined coveralls and moving like an astronaut on a space walk.

It’s not overly cold, just a bit below freezing, but the wind is gusting furiously, fanning the falling snow into a frothy airborne frenzy.

After a bit of footwork to warm up my legs, I take off down the road for my first of six sprints. My eyes involuntarily blink like windshield wipers on the fastest setting but still I can’t keep up with the deluge of flakes pin-pricking me in the face.

For my second sprint set I try alternating my blinking – left, right, left, right – as quickly as I can, so I have one eye open and one eye closed at all times. This is a bit more effective, and a great workout for my eyelids, which I now realize I’ve been neglecting since I started this training kick. I also realize, a bit too late, that my wife has a pair of ski goggles that would have come in handy in this situation.

At any rate, despite its assault on my eyeballs, this blizzard workout is a success. My only niggle is that, by the time I’ve completed six rounds of running, I’m just roasting inside my full body suit. Off I go to the garage, where I peel off the coveralls, releasing a puff of pent-up steam. It’s squat time.

Round three

Two days later I’m back at it yet again, and back to wearing my shell pants and ski jacket. This time the mercury is wallowing in -18 territory (about zero Fahrenheit).

The air is plenty cold but my saving grace is that it’s very still, which makes a huge difference. Once my body is warmed up, I’m nice and toasty under my layers of protection. The only exposed skin is my face and it’s leathery enough to be bothered little by the benign bite of cold.

Surprisingly, this third winter workout is also a success, but I don’t think I’d want to venture out if it was any colder. I make a mental note to adopt -20 as the cutoff temperature for outdoor exercise.

So there you have it, three outdoor winter workouts in drastically different conditions, and all three a resounding success. I guess that puts to rest the doubt I had in my mind about the viability of continuing my training regime through the winter months. This is excellent, as I’ll be able to madly sprint my way toward beer-league glory all winter long.

On the downside, I have no excuse not to keep working out ... all winter long.

The flight of the bumblebee

In previous blog posts I’ve compared myself to the following creatures:

- A gopher

- A Canada goose

- A cross between a fattened bull and Bambi

- A wolf

- A caribou

- A wet dog

- A square dancer

- A thoroughbred

- A stallion

Obviously, my similes and metaphors are already horribly mixed, so there shouldn’t be further harm caused by the fact that I now view myself as a bumblebee. We’ll get to that in a moment. But first I want to pick up where I left off with my previous blog post, in which I assigned grades to my training scheme based on the four rules I laid out in the beginning. I now want to move beyond those grades and assess this project from a broader, more holistic viewpoint.

Let’s begin by discussing motivation. From the time I was a youth up until my mid-20s or so, I enjoyed taking on physical challenges, pushing my body and feeling it respond. I derived satisfaction from the exhaustion that followed. This desire to prove myself physically waned gradually over the years. By the time I hit my 30s, it was just a memory. When I first started this training, I found it to be quite exhilarating and felt a resurgence in the thrill of engaging in physical exploits. Motivation wasn’t a factor. It was just present in an endless supply.

In recent weeks this rekindled interest in physical conquests has withered away to nothing once again. And having experienced less drastic improvements to my hockey performance than I would have liked, I’m now finding that my motivation levels are drooping a bit. I’m still getting out there for my workouts but I’m not bounding to them like I was in the beginning.

The weather is another drain on the motivation. When I started training at the end of August there was a nice heat wave going, so even when I ventured outside for late evening workouts it was still warm enough for shorts and a T-shirt.

By mid-October I was faced with layering up to venture out into temperatures that were sometimes flirting with the freezing mark. It was a bit tougher to muster the energy for that. Now there’s snow on the ground, ice on the road and the mercury seems like it’s dipped below the freezing mark for good. I haven’t yet ventured out into these icy environs but I will try. I’m not looking forward to it but I don’t have much choice as I have nowhere to go for indoor training sessions.

I think a good way to assess my training exploits would be to apply a simple cost-benefit analysis, weigh the physical gains I’ve experienced against the amount of energy I’ve expended. Since I’m lacking the capacity to do this with quantitative measures, I’m left with my gut feel as a measuring tool. The conclusion is rather grim, I’d say. 

This is where the bumblebee analogy comes in. Most of us are probably aware of that old yarn about the bumblebee being physically incapable of flight, scientifically speaking, due to its large girth and feeble wing span, but it flies anyway simply because it’s just not that into science. 

Well, in this analogy, I’m an aged, decrepit bumblebee and flight is my fitness level, but in my case it’s looking like the scientists have a point.

With my hockey training, I worked my tail off to become airborne and now I feel like I’m expending a ton of energy just so I can hover slightly above the grass. If I ease up at all, by missing a workout for a few days in a row, I’ll come crashing down to earth with alarming speed. It’s as if age has increased the earth’s gravitational pull on me by at least 30 per cent.

The bottom line for me is this: my workouts have become a chore, a means to an end. Yes, they are making my hockey-playing experience more enjoyable, but they are not enjoyable in and of themselves.

My beer-league hockey hobby would be much more enjoyable if it involved simply playing more hockey. But I don’t have the time or money for that.

I feel like I’m at a crossroads, with two distinct paths lying before me: either accept an endless string of drudgerous workouts just to remain aloft, or succumb to the laws of physics and accept that I’m destined to become slower and more lethargic.

If I choose option two, I might as well also embrace 4 p.m. suppers, hotly-contested cribbage matches, and yes, shuffleboard ... sweet, sweet shuffleboard.

Report card time

Well, I’m approaching 60 days into this thing and I think it’s time to step back and assess how it’s going. For starters, let’s have a look at the rules I laid out in my second blog post and assign some grades.

Beer league training shall:

1) Cost no money

I haven’t spent one dime on this new hobby, although this may have to change soon as my running shoes are on the verge of falling apart. Also, I think a powder blue track suit would be just the thing to take this to the next level, fashion-wise.

Grade: A

2) Be a one-man show

Apart from a couple lapses during which I used my kids as barbells, I’ve avoided dragging anyone into this personal journey of mine. There have been some secondary repercussions due to the time I now spend time outside most evenings rather than inside with my betrothed discussing politics or viewing the latest television serial.

Grade: A-

3) Fit into my current lifestyle

As I’d planned, I’ve cut out my nightly Xbox habit and have slipped in hockey training. In that sense, it’s been a seamless transition. However, there’s more to it than that. My video game time used to come at the end of my evening, as my reward for having done my various duties. With the new routine I’ve established, my hockey training is the first thing I do when my personal evening time kicks in, since it requires energy and is mainly done outside – I don’t want to leave it too late. This shift in timing has, in effect, elevated my new hobby to top priority status whereas other tasks like doing the dishes or organizing the garage should maybe be in that spot. 

And yes, my training has become somewhat of an obsession and it’s a challenge keeping it to 30 minutes a day. The workouts leave me feeling tired – a deep, radiating fatigue that causes snores to emanate from the very core of my bones – which means I don’t always accomplish anything concrete afterward. Call this a work in progress.

Grade: B-

4) Not include guilt

There have been a few times when I’ve missed a workout and have felt pangs of disappointment that were trending toward guilt, but I’ve kept those feelings in check. Now that I’m working out regularly, I feel like I’m entitled to my other indulgences, such as eating too much munchies and consuming too much soda, so I’m feeling less guilty about those things than I did before. Aha, there are side benefits to getting in shape!

Grade: A

Averaged out, when assessed based on these rules, the success of my hockey training endeavour comes in at about an A-. That ain’t not bad, to borrow a line from Bart Simpson.

However, as we’ll see in my next blog, there are other criteria that call into question the long-term viability of this whole scheme.

The rise of the 150-pound stallion

An ice pack becomes my bosom buddy for the next couple of days. I clutch it to the back of my leg at every opportunity: in the car, at my desk at work, at the kitchen table, on the couch.

The first day after the injury I’m very sore and limpy so I take a break from all forms of training. On the second day the leg feels well enough for some footwork drills but is too sore for any sprinting.

The third night is a game night. My leg doesn’t hamper my performance but I feel a bit like my old self: sluggish and slow. Oh well, it’s only beer league.

The next day my leg still feels fine so, come evening, I’m ready to try an all-out sprint session. After my warmup, I let ‘er rip and my leg holds up fine. I complete a full complement of sprint intervals and all my limbs remain intact. Yes! I declare the injury overcome. This brings great relief as I’d initially worried that the injury was much more serious.

I then repair to the garage for some squat exercises with a barbell across my shoulders. I do 10 reps with 110 pounds on the bar then venture up to 120 pounds for four more reps.

These squat exercises I view as my main tool for addressing one of my greatest conditioning shortcomings: poor leg strength, which translates to poor speed on the ice.

A couple days after declaring my injury cured I try squatting 140 pounds, which is just 10 pounds shy of my body weight. This is heavy work for me but I handle four reps without incident. Based on previous conversations with hockey conditioning experts, my plan with these squats is to focus on big weight and few reps, probably every second day or so, to allow the muscles to rebuild in between. This is what sprinters do and I’m essentially a sprinter in training, given that a hockey shift is basically a series of quick, powerful, explosive movements.

As I progress in my development of a sprinter’s body, I’ve noticed that I’m also starting to develop a sprinter’s attitude. During the rest periods between wind sprints I’m starting to chuff and strut like a high-strung stallion, my rump stuck out haughtily to the rear and my chest puffed out to the front. As I move, my arms and legs bow out wide, away from my body, as if to accommodate some massive bulk. The natural progression of this machismo-laden peacockery is that my great chest gets repeatedly thumped and my arms find reason to repeatedly point this way and that, as if I’m hailing supporters in the crowd.

This is all imagined, of course. My blown-up bravado is visible only to shadowy thickets of trees. But that doesn’t matter. When you’re a strutting stallion, it’s not about the crowd, it’s about the proud.

A setback

My first two games have revealed that my quickness and speed are lagging behind the other aspects of my conditioning.

I’m in better shape than I have been in years, so I’m able to turn in solid shifts and recover quickly afterward, a dramatic change from how it’s been for a long time.

But what hasn’t changed much despite my training is the feeling that I’m wearing lead-plated skates when I’m on the ice. Well, perhaps I’ve upgraded from lead-plated to mahogany veneer but skating still feels labour-intensive.

Given this, I’m jacking up the intensity of my footwork drills, sprinting intervals and the squats and lunges that are aimed at building leg strength, all in an effort to develop more quickness and speed.

My guide book (Complete Conditioning for Hockey by Peter Twist) states that training for hockey is supposed to be done at a greater intensity than is experienced during the game itself. This isn’t easy to achieve, I’m finding, as the intensity that naturally ensues when you’re embroiled in competition is difficult to replicate, let alone surpass, when you’re exercising by yourself.

But I can see now that my further development depends on pushing myself harder. So now when I’m doing my footwork drills, I’m committed to moving my legs and feet absolutely as quickly as I possibly can. The same goes for my sprinting intervals.

This means I’ve stopped doing footwork on my lawn, where the footing gets slippery late in the evenings. I’ve taken the show back to the subdivision road, which is mostly paved. My knees, which were once very sore from the pounding they were taking on the pavement, have settled down, so I’m managing with this venue change so far.

Most evenings I can now be found out on the pavement flashing my feet like a square dancer dodging psycho cowboy bullets. And when I do my sprinting, rather than accelerating in a careful, gradual fashion (which I’d been doing to spare my aching knees and to avoid pulling something), I’m now concentrating on taking off like a thoroughbred released from a starting gate. For my squats and lunges I’ve moved my old barbells from the shed and into the garage and have started to pile on more weight. The days of executing squat exercises with a young child on my shoulders are behind me.

Good momentum

After two days and two workouts executed with this renewed focus, I feel like I’m building some good momentum toward some exciting future results. But the third day brings a setback.

I’m out there cranking out 30-second wind sprints, my legs churning with all the power I can muster, when I feel a sharp electrical shock in the back of my right leg, in the hamstring area. Instantly I’m doing the one-legged sprinter’s hobble as throbs of pain erupt from back there. 

My first impulse is to ignore the pain and resume my rapid-fire running, as if I could pretend this damaging incident hadn’t happened. I take a few gentle, loping strides to test my leg and it’s having none of it. I can still walk and run but there’s no getting around the pain emanating from back there. Something is damaged, and if I push it further, it will be damaged even more. I know it would be foolish to do this, despite my great desire to keep soldiering on.

So I hobble home, the very picture of melancholy. It feels like all the work I’ve done and all the gains I’ve made are in danger of being wiped out. How serious is this injury? How long will it be before I can resume training? How far will I regress during that time? These questions swirl in my mind.

One thing I know for sure is that I won’t be missing my next game, which is just three days away. My philosophy is, if I can walk, I can play. But I do wonder how well I’ll be able to perform and how badly the rigours of game action will aggravate this latest hurt. All this uncertainty has me feeling as forlorn as a wet dog in a wind tunnel.

My evening ends with an ice pack clutched to the back of my leg as I convalesce on the couch, tears lingering at the corners of my eyes and whimpers building at the back of my throat. I refuse to cry, however. Even with all the beer league lines I’ve crossed in the last 30 days, that one would be too much.

The wolf versus the caribou

Hockey games, once they’re over, usually yield just a handful of snapshot memories, with the overall game fading to a blur shortly after its conclusion.

For me, it’s usually a few little plays that I remember: the odd trivial thing that I did well or wish I could try again.

My second game of the season yields one such memory that stands out above the others, a measuring-stick moment that illustrates where I am in my development.

We’re on the power play* in the opposition end and I’m at the right point when the puck comes loose in my general vicinity. I race in a few steps and take possession of the puck as an opposition forward comes out to challenge me. This challenger is their best player – a good skater, puckhandler and passer – not a guy to whom I want to turn over the puck.

As I gather up the disk along the side boards, I ascertain that I have a little bit of space and three options: 1) slide the puck around the boards in the hope that one of our forwards can get it in the corner or behind the net, 2) retreat with the puck back to my point position and orchestrate a play from there, or 3) carry the puck down the wall myself.

The old me would have played it safe and dumped the puck around the boards. However, the new and improved me wants to be more proactive, so I maintain possession and drive wide against the onrushing forward, skating hard to see if I can get around him along the boards.

You see this all the time in advanced levels of hockey. A team with a man advantage will rush the penalty killers, testing for a weakness that will allow penetration through their defences. It’s like a wolf testing a herd of caribou, putting them on the run to test for a weak member.

For the last few years, when I’ve had the puck on the powerplay, the situation has been reversed, as if the caribou on the other team would look at me and conclude, “Man, that wolf can’t run and he gots no teeth!” One or more of them would unceremoniously swarm me, take the puck and leave me in a quivering heap on the open plain ... or ice, I mean.

On this night, when I make my offensive dash, the opposing forward cuts me off, so I execute a tight turn toward the boards and retreat hastily, focusing on quick strides toward a pocket of open ice where I can take refuge.

This routine manoeuvre represents significant progress for me. Their good guy pressured me but I totally had enough leg juice to get away. Ha ha!

Unfortunately, I follow up this small victory with a slightly larger defeat. I pass across to my defensive partner, thinking he’s wide open, but he’s got a guy on him in an instant. My pass eludes him and slips out over the blue line, forcing our whole side to exit the zone and regroup. Oh well, it’s only beer league.

My takeaway message from this moment, and the entire game, is that my training is helping me develop the physical tools required to maintain possession of the puck at times when I would previously have felt compelled to get rid of it. However, I clearly have work to do to hone this developing ability so I can apply it effectively in pressure-packed beer league competition.

In honour of this newfound insight, I’ve coined a new hockey saying. Please pass it along to all your buddies and feel free to work it into your casual conversations with your co-workers, friends or spouse: 

“That’s hockey ... sometimes you’re the wolf; sometimes you’re the caribou.”

* Power play: When one team has a player in the penalty box, leaving the other team with one more player on the ice.

The moment of truth

It’s about 20 minutes to game time and I’m tying my skates in a corner of the dressing room. Idle chatter bounces around the room as other players arrive and begin dressing. There are groans and mutterings as bags are unzipped and long dormant gear eyed suspiciously. The general theme of the conversation is that tonight is going to be painful due to a summer spent away from skates and exercise.

“I didn’t do much dryland training,” deadpans a teammate named Mike.

A round of laughs follows his well-timed understatement, the unspoken understanding being that no one has come close to doing any dryland training. I laugh along with the others but also suppress a private grin. I alone know how naughty a beer leaguer I’ve been in the last three weeks.

This is a new team for me. I played just three games with them near the end of last season. I’m still getting to know these guys and I’m not about to divulge that I’ve been engaged in hard-core training.

As is the case before any game, I’m feeling a range of muted emotions: nervousness, dread, anticipation, excitement. On this occasion, due to the special circumstances surrounding this season debut, all these emotions are heightened by approximately 17 per cent.

From down the hall we get word that the ice is ready. I make my way with my teammates through the tunnel toward the ice, proudly clad in my just-acquired tan socks and uniform bearing our team name: Hillbillies.

I stash my water bottle and extra stick on the bench, step onto the ice and start circling around our end with slow deliberate strides. I know from experience that the warmup will tell me very quickly what I’ve got for legs. I notice right away that my feet feel a bit heavy. I gradually pick up the pace, but I put off the true test, already suspecting that it won’t go as I’d hoped. Finally, after several moderately-paced laps, I force myself to take off as fast as I can go, trying to explode to top speed within a few strides.

It’s a laborious chore. Though my legs feel strong and solid, they’re also slightly leaden and unwilling to move quickly. With a fair amount of effort I get myself cranked up to a decent speed but there’s no explosiveness going on here.

It’s clear that a miraculous return to 1998 is not going to happen. On the plus side, my legs aren’t turning to Jello midway through the warmup, which has been my experience in the recent past.

Game on

As soon as the game starts our young opponents start flying around the ice like randy mustangs. We withstand their relentless attacking but it’s clear that they’re the faster, more skilled team.

My first few shifts are uneventful. It’s clear that I will not be dominating the play from my defenceman position. There will be no end-to-end rushes or fancy dangling from me.

As my effectiveness has waned in my advancing years, I’ve adopted an increasingly simple, stay-at-home game as a defenceman. If this league was the NHL I would be Steve Staios (before he retired): not flashy, not fast, but competitive, sound defensively (more or less) and always trying hard.

As the period unfolds my fitness status becomes more clear. My right knee emits some slight groans from the slight MCL sprain I suffered back in July, but it’s holding up. Overall, I’m moving not too badly. My quickness, while a bit lacking, has improved over where it was last season.

The defining play of my game comes in the second period when I deflect a puck past a defender and find myself at our blue line with a potential breakaway. The 28-year-old version of me would have employed a few quick strides and been gone like a jet taking off. The current version of me, suddenly feeling like a cross between a fattened bull and Bambi, feels a quick flash of dread.

“Oh no, now I gotta try and race all the way to their goal without getting caught,” I think.

I don’t think I have a chance but, out of a sense of duty, I force my legs to churn as fast as they can go and I get myself going at my top cruising speed.

I hazard a glance around. To my surprise, there are no opponents around to catch me. I’m still on a breakaway. As I grind toward the net a teammate catches up to the play and heads for the far post for a pass while a defender tries to fill the passing lane and cut off my angle to the net.

I want to pass to my teammate, who happens to be our most skilled forward, but I don’t like the look of it. Everyone in the rink, including the goalie, can see that I’m thinking pass. Changing my mind, I skate in and pound the puck at the net. It’s a skill-less shot that smacks the goalie right in the middle, effectively squandering the scoring opportunity. Oh well. The old legs and the old hands both lived up to their historical precedents.

The game is tied at two in the closing minutes and our team presses hard for the go-ahead goal. We maintain good puck possession in the opposition’s zone and I participate in the barnstorming by directing a few shots toward the goal from my point position. I’m not a hard shooter and these shots are mostly attempts to get the puck to a position where one of our forwards can get a deflection or a rebound. We come close but can’t get that next goal. The game ends in a 2-2 tie.

Post mortem

My assessment of my performance is that it was definitely better than it otherwise would have been had I not done all that training. My training virtually eliminated the perpetual fatigue that has plagued me in recent years. I felt fresh every shift and this freshness endured to the end of my shifts. Even at the end of the game – when I usually feel like I’ve emptied my guts onto a battlefield – I wasn’t tired at all. I felt ready to play another game.

Casting aside the fatigue allowed me to be a more effective player. Though I stayed within my usual role as a stay-at-home defenceman, I did manage to more actively participate in the offensive aspect of the game.

The one conditioning element that is clearly lacking is first-step quickness, the ability to go from standing still to skating at top speed. I’ll have to review my training modules and plan out the next few weeks to address that issue.

My parting thought: my training has brought significant benefits but I still have much work to do to get to where I’d like to be.

No fear

Well, here I am, I’ve closed out my third week of training and have arrived at the eve of the season’s first game. I’ve done all the work I can to be prepared for this first ice session. Today is a scheduled rest day, as I don’t want my leg muscles to be in recovery mode tomorrow night. I want them to be in “go” mode. All I can do now is wait.

For this third week I focused more on sprinting and less on general aerobic fitness, in an attempt to really firm up my legs for their upcoming test. Every evening this past week I’d slip out into the cool darkness, do a bit of a warm up then dash off my wind sprints – short interval sets one evening, longer ones the next.

This shift in focus had an immediate impact, but not in a good way.

Suddenly my knees decided they didn’t like this sprinting at all. When I ran, each knee felt like it had a dagger stuck in it. I pushed through the pain for a few days in a row but I finally had to take a couple evenings off from any kind of running or footwork. The rest allowed the throbbing to ease and I resumed my schedule, somewhat tentatively, two evenings ago. It was OK. But ice packs on the knees are now a regular feature of my post-workout protocol.

I kept up with my footwork exercises throughout the week and felt like they were helping me to move around with greater ease. Rather than subjecting my knees to the hard road, I did these exercises on our front lawn, which has a long, narrow section that’s flat and obstacle-free and thus safe to run around, even in the dark.

I continued to do squats and lunges regularly, soon reaching the point that I needed to add weight for the exercises to have any effect. I started with 10-pound dumbbells because we had a set just lying around. They weren’t really adequate, but luckily I found a 38-pound weight that was also just lying around: my four-year-old boy.

He quite liked getting a shoulder ride while I squatted down then up, down then up. I added a few hops with him still in place on my shoulders, as I’d seen TV footage of NHLers jumping in the air while holding barbells across their shoulders. Glee ensued from him and from me, even though this was technically a violation of my rule No. 2.

Expectations

I’m not sure what to expect for tomorrow night’s game. Will I feel a complete transformation? A slight improvement? Will I feel like I’m 17 again?

I’m trying to keep my expectations in check but I’m very curious. I’ve never before trained with such regularity nor with such a focus on hockey-related muscles and movements.

What I’m really hoping to experience, and what I think is a realistic expectation, is to feel less of the perpetual fatigue that’s been my shadow for the last few years. This, in turn, should allow me to actually play the game instead of spending my ice time trying to avoid being too much of a liability.

That’s my real hope, that I can play the game in enjoyment rather than in fear. I invented a slogan that sums up this mind set: “No Fear.”

I think it could catch on.

In the groove

So I’m lying face down in the ditch next to the road that goes by my house, and as a passing headlight beam splashes over me, I’m realizing that I’ll be in a real dilly of a pickle if I’m spotted.

This is the scenario I’ve feared since I first started doing late-night road work in my subdivision. I’d rather not be seen running around on the road after dark, not that I’m doing anything wrong, but it may appear that I’m doing something wrong ... or weird at least.

So when I was out there doing my thing and saw headlights approaching from around the bend, I instantly dashed for the ditch and hit the deck. I thought I’d be completely hidden but the sweeping light illuminates my shoulder and sleeve.

Can the vehicle occupants see me lying here? If they can, and they stop, what could I possibly say?

“My name’s Forrest ... Forrest Gump?”

Strangely, the fear of discovery isn’t my main concern as I lay inhaling dusty grass dander. I’m supposed to be keeping my heart rate up for a full 30 minutes but I can feel it slowing to a restful state!

Fortunately for me, the vehicle passes, turns a corner and continues to a driveway down the road. I get up and resume my activities.

Settled in

After two weeks I’ve settled into a solid training routine, alternating between aerobic and anaerobic workouts, and working in the various other exercises as I can. In each of these first two weeks I’ve been able to work out for 30 to 45 minutes on six of the seven days.

For the aerobic workouts I’ve done away with running. It’s too boring and too hard on my knees. Instead, to get my heart rate elevated for the required 30 minutes, I work on the various footwork exercises outlined in the Twist book. These are aimed at boosting quickness, agility and balance but I’ve noticed that they quickly get the heart going. By using these exercises for my aerobic modules, I’m working on my conditioning but also my skating skills.

All this sprinting, leaping, hopping and shuffling is starting to yield results. My legs are feeling very firm. In the mirror my legs still look like hairy white toothpicks but from the inside of my body they feel like muscular pistons that are poised to chase down any cheetah that should happen to go streaking past.

My new regime has me feeling like I’m developing the rump of a female Jamaican sprinter and I suspect I will soon have to find a tailor for a bulk order of custom-made pants, as I expect that –any day now – my standard sized units will start bursting like popcorn.

These developments have me feeling quite positive about my foray into pro-style training, but my adventure hasn’t been all rosy tea and apple cobbler. A steady supply of aches and pains have maintained a constant presence throughout my project. In the first few days, every new activity, whether it be running or jumping, cycling or boxing, made me stiff and sore the next day.

More recently, my left hip has been grousing loudly after every workout, as if it’s dying to be put back in its socket, or perhaps removed ... I’m not sure.

I’m eager to begin week three, the last week before my first game on Sept. 24. The schedule I’ve drawn up include more sprinting and less aerobic work in this last week before I hit the ice, in the hope of getting my legs tuned up for game action. I’m already getting excited and nervous about taking to the ice on my new legs.

Leaps and bounds

A hockey player spends 45 seconds to a minute on the ice before going off for a rest. In beer league, shifts tend to drift a bit longer. During his shift, the player engages in many short sprints and changes of direction. There are also physical battles for positioning and puck possession, and sudden bursts of explosive movement when shooting.

The conditioning exercises in my book are designed to equip the athlete for all these requirements. Because skating is such a crucial part of hockey, there’s particular emphasis on developing the legs and core muscles for the sudden bursts of speed and direction changes that are inherent in the sport.

The type of training I’ve adopted is meant to unfold over the course of an entire summer off-season. After a summer of dedicated training, an elite competitor would arrive at training camp in top physical condition. The book states that the rigours of a hockey season will actually erode this player’s strength and power, because of the daily practices and quick succession of games.

In my case, my season will only feature one game a week and no practices, not enough to keep me in shape or wear me down, so I can continue my training between games throughout the season with the aim of improving my conditioning and raising my performance as the season progresses.

As promised in my last post, below is a list of the exercises I’ve pulled from the book, based on my self-imposed criteria that I must be able to do them by myself and with only equipment that I already own.

Base conditioning

Continuous aerobic conditioning

       - Exercise for 30 minutes, keeping the heart rate around 75 to 85 per cent of maximum.

Intermittent aerobic conditioning

- Exercise for two minutes, heart rate five beats below maximum, rest for two minutes, complete six to 12 reps.

Adenosine triphospate phosphocreatine (ATP-PC)

(The system that provides energy for 10-second bursts)

       - Run full out for 10 seconds, rest for 50 seconds, eight reps.

Anaerobic glycosis or lactic system

(The system that provides energy for 30 to 45 seconds)

       - Run full out for 30 seconds, rest for two minutes, six reps.

Strength & power

Weight plate stickhandling

- Place a 10 or 25-pound weight on a board and stickhandle it with the butt end of a hockey stick. Alternate between figure-eight movements, side-to-side as wide as possible and side-to-side quickly.

       - Develops abdominal, hip, and low-back rotation strength.

Lateral dumbbell raise

       - Self explanatory.

       - Builds the shoulders.

Squats

- Typical squat with a barbell across the shoulders.

- Builds strength in the legs, glutes and back.

Hockey lunges                                    

       - Like a normal lunge but you step outward at a 45 degree angle to mimic a hockey stride.

       - Strengthens various leg and hip muscles.

Balance

Stability ball, hockey stick push ups

       - Place a hockey stick across an inflatable exercise ball and perform push ups.

- Develops full-body stability and shoulder stability as well as upper-body strength and power.

(There aren’t many balance exercises in the book that don’t require special equipment or a partner. Many of the exercises require a BOSU ball, which is like an inflated exercise ball that’s been sliced off at the top and a flat bottom installed on the hole. In the future, I may look at breaking my rule number one by getting a couple of these.)

Quickness

Ladder footwork drills

- A ladder is placed on the floor and various footwork patterns are executed by stepping in and out of the squares. These include crossovers, single and two-footed hops.

(The book uses a nylon ladder that’s designed to lay flat on the floor for this type of exercise. I don’t have one of these and using a real ladder would be treacherous so I just perform the footwork on the garage floor or outside in the absence of any markings, trying to be precise and quick with my movements.)

Backward depth drops into drop steps

- Stand on a box, drop down onto both feet then quickly turn and take a few sprinting strides in that direction. Repeat in the other direction.

- Develops explosiveness and improves movement skills specific to turning from backward to forward.

      

(I’ve been doing a ton of these because, as a defenceman, I’m forced to perform this manoeuvre many times a game. And as I’ve aged this is the manoeuvre that gives me the most difficulty. It makes me feel like I have the mobility of a river barge.)

Single leg drop

       - Same as above except drop onto one leg and use it to push off in the opposite direction.

Agility and reactivity

Two in, one out

- A lateral movement drill performed over two short hurdles placed side by side four feet apart. The athlete starts outside the hurdles, moves laterally in between them then steps out. The knees are kept high. Each foot steps in the middle then one steps out before the athlete changes direction and repeats the process.

       - This develops quick, light feet.

(It sounds complicated but it’s really just quick lateral steps with high knees. I do it without the hurdles because I don’t have any.)

All the other drills in this section require a Bosu ball or are designed to be done on ice, mostly with a partner.

Speed

      

Vertical jumps

- Stand in one spot, bend the legs then jump up with as much force as you can muster, driving the arms up.

        - Develops vertical leg speed and power.

(This can be done with resistance. The book shows bungy-type straps pulling the athlete down. I’ve seen footage of players doing this with a barbell across their shoulders.)

           

Zigzag lateral bounds

- Bound forward at a 45-degree angle, leaping with one leg, landing on the opposite one then pushing off in the opposite direction.

       - This builds stride length and power.

There, that was tedious but I wanted to explain the various exercises so you can better visualize what this is all about. It really is a lot of leaping, hopping, shuffling, and jumping ... kind of like what kindergartners do when they’re turned loose in the gym.

My next blog will summarize my second week of training and the results. Keep your eyes peeled for a humourous anecdote. Thank you for reading this post all the way to the end. You qualify for a draw for a free apple.* 





















* I lied. Providing free apples would violate my rule No.1

Fighting through the pain

Well it’s Sunday night in my living room and the fists are just a flying! I’m beating the heck out of some dude named Ben, gleefully draining his morale with brutish pounding to the body and taking delight in launching him airborne with great, violent uppercuts.

It’s day nine of my training regimen and poor Ben is the solution to a problem with which I’ve been grappling throughout my first week of training: how to achieve an aerobic workout while limiting the strain on my poor, distraught legs.

My answer on this evening is to cue up some boxing on the Xbox Kinect. So I’m standing in front of the motion sensor, wearing nothing but a pair of cycling shorts, and punching the air for all I’m worth.

The workout is doing what I want. My heart is pounding and I’m panting like a terrier as the sweat pours off me. But best of all, my legs aren’t complaining.

Two-pronged approach

At this point in my program, I’ve completed some form of training every day except one. All together, I’ve done more exercise in the last week than I’ve done in the last 10 years.

My training is being guided by a more thorough reading of the Peter Twist book (Complete Conditioning For Hockey) and two nuggets of information I’ve extracted from it.

The priority in these early stages of my training should be on raising my overall fitness level. This means doing exercises aimed at achieving two distinct objectives: 1) increasing my aerobic capacity, which is the ability to catch your breath after exertion, and 2) building up my anaerobic capacity, which is the energy found in the muscles.

The book states that there are two anaerobic energy systems. One supplies bursts of energy for up to 10 seconds. The other, the lactic system, provides about 30 to 45 seconds worth of energy. This is the system by which lactic acid builds in the muscles, causing a player to run out of gas at the end of a shift.

The book outlines how to train for each of these aspects and lays out how many times a week I should focus on each of them: four times a week for aerobic and two times a week for anaerobic. As my aerobic capacity develops I will shift the focus of my training toward more anaerobic development, as this is most directly relevant to hockey.

I’ve drawn up a daily schedule for the first three weeks. My short-term goal is to be as ready as I can be for my first league game, which is scheduled for Tuesday, Sept. 24.

Working the systems

According to my guide, the way to work on the aerobic system is to exercise continuously for at least 30 minutes, keeping the heart rate at about 75 per cent of its maximum. As time goes on the athlete is supposed to gradually increase the workout length to 60 minutes.

Working the anaerobic systems involves wind sprints of varying ratios of running and resting.

The book also contains many exercises designed to increase strength, power, agility, balance and speed. Some of the exercises are done on the ice. Some require special equipment or a partner. I’ve gone through the book and have made a note of those exercises that I can do by myself with no special equipment or items I already have.

A future blog post will provide a summary of these exercises. But for now, here’s a day-by-day accounting of my time so far, in case you’re scoring at home.

Day 1

My very first impetuous foray into this training thing was an attempted aerobic workout achieved via a 20-minute Zumba dance workout on the Xbox. Some aspects of the routine got my heart rate going but others didn’t. So I supplemented that workout with a 20-minute run around the neighbourhood.

Day 2

I did my first wind sprint session around my neighbourhood plus another aerobic running session. I also delved into some footwork exercises in my garage.

Day 3

My legs were pretty stiff and sore so I stuck to strength and balance exercises that don’t tax the legs too much.

The first such exercise was pushups with a hockey stick placed across a large, inflatable exercise ball. This is a very wobbly exercise that’s supposed to develop full-body stability, upper-body strength and shoulder stability. I could feel it taxing all these elements.

Another uniquely hockey exercise called for the stickhandling of a 10-pound barbell weight, so I dug an old barbell plate out of the shed, slapped it down on a piece of plywood and stickhandled the thing with the butt end of an old hockey stick. I could feel the exercise working my entire body: shoulders, arms, hips, legs.

I also did some fast footwork drills in my garage.

Day 4

I was scheduled to do another general aerobic session and had to figure out a way to achieve this without taxing my legs too much, as they were experiencing what the book describes as “delayed onset muscle soreness”, or DOMS. Put more simply, they were stiff and sore from overexertion. I thought a brisk bike ride would do the trick.

The area where I live is relatively flat so I thought I could get my heart rate up by pedalling at a high RPM without having to power up hills and thus overtax my leg muscles. Before venturing out I removed the unneeded baby seat from the back of my bike. My youngest kid just turned four and he’s never ridden in that seat. That illustrates how sedentary I’ve gotten over the last few years. Anyway, the ride went fine. It got my heart going and only made my leg muscles scream a few times.

This situation with my legs illustrates a delicate juggling act that I’ve had to negotiate in these first few days … how to get my aerobic workout without taxing my legs to the point that I can’t move for two days afterward. This situation is particularly delicate because of my age. I’m hobbling proof of the well-known fact that the muscles of middle-aged people don’t recover from exertion as quickly as those of young people.

I also did some ball pushups and barbell stickhandling.

Day 5

I put in a real solid workout, starting with some very short sprint intervals designed to build capacity for the short, highly-intense bursts of speed that hockey players are called upon to display. On top of that, I did some squats and lunges with light weights, some agility footwork and two types of jumps (vertical and lateral) designed to increase speed.

Day 6

I was scheduled to do an aerobic workout but forgot to log my activity so I don’t know what I did. I know I did something. Honest, I did.

Day 7

I was scheduled to do an aerobic workout but I felt such a deep, overwhelming fatigue that I called it a rest day. I went to bed at the same time as my seven-year-old and slept for 10 hours.

Day 8

Did some wind sprints and was also scheduled to do an aerobic workout. Instead of just going for a run, as I’d been doing up until that point, I decided to achieve my aerobic requirement by performing the various footwork exercises that I’ve been learning. These are aimed at boosting quickness, agility and balance.

I’ve noticed that these drills quickly get the heart rate going, so I figured they were better than running for satisfying my aerobic component, since they involve movements that are more directly related to hockey.

I also did various jumps and lunges aimed at building strength and speed.

Day 9

I was scheduled to do a general aerobic workout. My legs were groaning from the previous day’s onslaught of bounding, lunging and leaping so I used Ben the Xbox boxing loser as a punching bag.

I also stickhandled the barbell weight.

Firm and fatigued

There, that’s the first nine days in a nutshell. It feels good to be doing something physical every day.

After nine days I’m feeling more firmness throughout my body, especially in my legs. I also end the day feeling deeply tired. It’s a largely satisfying fatigue that curls up like a snoozing cat at the very core of my muscles. After this type of feeling overwhelms the body, sleep is bliss. Another change I’ve noticed is that my appetite feels like it’s waking up from a long slumber.