Even if hockey isn't your favorite sport, these workouts will make you slap-shot ready.
Improve your core and explosive strength with this hard-hitting workout! For the majority of sports fans, the NHL might take a backseat to the NFL, NBA and UFC. Sports fans should know, however, that hockey players might well be the most-conditioned athletes in the world.
Hockey increases the demands on areas of the body that most people never get around to training. So, if you're wondering why someone who has no desire to get cross-checked would want to know about hockey workouts, consider what parts of your body might be in need of some extra work. Below should give you a better understanding of the intense training that hockey players submit to and why Sarge pushes you so hard.
Traditional Interval Training allows you to beat the “stress adaptation response,” which is what happens when your body gets used to exercising at one level of exertion and stops improving. An interval workout includes a set where you perform at your maximum, followed by one of lower intensity, with the cycle repeated to achieve a cumulative effect. You can see by the graph below Traditional Interval Training allows you rest with spike of intensity. However, this really doesn't apply to Hockey. A shift in Hockey should be 45 seconds of hard intense skating then you may get a rest or the coach may call your number again. This means you have to go all out, recover quickly and go all out again!
MAX Interval Training, which replaces your moderate intensity exercise with maximum-intensity exercise, and your short intervals of intensity with short periods of rest. Adding high-intensity exercise, during which your heart rate increases to 80 percent or more of its maximum capacity, forces your body to use fast-twitch muscle fibers not normally engaged in cardio exercise. These fast-twitch fibers continue burning extra fuel even during lower-intensity exercise.
As you can see MAX Interval Training mirrors what hockey players do during the course of a game. It also forces the fast-twitch muscle fibers to engage making you faster on the ice!
