Coaches must understand three principles to off-season training: the Consolidation of Stressors, the High-Low Model, and the Short to Long Approach.

It’s Sunday night and you are vigorously typing as you scramble to get a plan together. You worked so hard during the hockey season then BAM, just like that, the off-season snuck up on you. Tomorrow, Monday, is the first day of the off-season and you need to have a plan for your players to maximize their development – but you’re stressed and overwhelmed!

Now most coaches have thoughts and ideas on what they’d like their players to be doing on and off the ice. But how do you put them all together? Then, it hits you. Suddenly you remember the recommended practice structures in an article on The Coaches Site titled The Perfect Hour of Hockey Practice, which discusses highs and lows, and you wonder if that concept will work in the off-season.

The answer is that to maximize your off-season, you must have every aspect accounted for on and off the ice.

Welcome to The Complete Hockey Off-Season Template.

Make Better Hockey Players

In the off-season, skill coaches, power skating coaches, team coaches, and weight room coaches are all competing for time and energy. My goal is to have this template act as a resource for coaches, players, parents, and guardians to get them to think of development holistically, rather than all of these different traits in silos.

My biggest inspiration for this template has been witnessing the on ice development of players for the last four years. Many college hockey summer skates are player led. And most if not all of these skates were opposing, contrary, or inhibiting to the work the players just put in, on the field or weight room.

The goal with off-season training is simple and must always be the focus: make players better at hockey. That’s it. And while individual differences abound and resources are always at a discrepancy, there are basic, physiological training principles that may be applied to any player or team, at any level.

This template will be designed for five days a week. Remember, a template is simply a guide or outline that may be modified to fit players or teams. A template is principles based and not carved in stone.

Before laying out the template, let’s look inside a typical player end of year meeting and lay out three principles that the template is formed around.

Player Development. How to Get it All

Many player end of year meetings sound something like this, “Get bigger, smaller, fitter, stronger, faster, better hands, harder shot, quicker release, better edgework, better decision making, better vision, etc. etc.”

Coaches make requests of players to do too many things and spread their focus. What players end up doing is trying to combine all aspects into one week or one day of training and end up pulling themselves in too many directions.

To combat this ineffective method of training (everything all at once), coaches must understand three principles: the consolidation of stressors, the high-low model, and the short to long approach.

Consolidation of Stressors

I first read about this principle over a decade ago, from an article with the same title, Consolidation of Stressors. The idea from the article is to, “… consolidate the most intensive training stressors to the same sessions/days, to allow for improved recovery on the other days.” In other words, have some days that are high intensity (harder on the central nervous system) and some days that are low intensity (not as hard or fatiguing on the central nervous system).

For example, sprints versus jogging or lightly skipping rope. Sprints are hard or fatiguing on the central nervous system and jogging or skipping rope is not. Rather than doing both on the same day, consolidate the stressors and place them on different days. See the tables below.

Table 1. Example of opposing stressors being performed every day. In addition, when everyday has elements of high intensity, recovery is not prioritized and output (speeds, effort, intensity) goes down.

Table 2. Example of opposing stressors being consolidated on different days.

This leads next into the High-Low Model.

High-Low Model

The High-Low Model, popularized by Canadian Sprint Coach Charlie Francis, is really just an example of consolidating stressors. Francis took his Olympic caliber sprinters and broke a week of training down into three “high” days and two “low” days. An example may be seen in Table 2.

In the model, a high day is always followed by a low day. Two back-to-back high days are possible, they can be done. However, in the long run, in an entire off-season, this will not be optimal. High days must always be followed by low days.

A quick note on the High-Low Model: Just because it is a “low” day, does not mean it is an easy day. A low day simply implies the exertion of the central nervous system. Effort on each day is always 100% whether the exercise be a sprint or jog, or blueline-to-blueline sprint or a stick handling drill. Always 100% effort and focus, not always 100% intensity or speed.

The Short to Long Approach

The short to long approach was also popularized by Charlie Francis.

From an on ice development perspective, you work shorter duration drills to longer drills. From a physiological perspective, you may perform more reps of shorter duration drills versus long duration drills in a practice. Shorter drills, say under 10 seconds, will not fatigue the player as much and allow for higher quality repetitions. Longer drills create more burn and more fatigue. Reps of longer drills may become sloppy after a while, negating the good habits the drill was intended to establish.

With this approach, the early off-season would build a tremendous base of skills such as passing, shooting, skating, and stick handling, which later in the off-season may be combined with game specific preparation or in other words, longer drills.

In addition to drill times going short to long, on ice sprints would follow the same short to long approach. Every end-to-end, dazzling play from Connor McDavid starts with a quick burst or acceleration. Therefore, throughout an off-season on ice sprints will progress from shorter in length and duration to longer in length and duration.

Armed with an understanding of key principles for player development, let us now turn our attention to improving the technical, tactical, and physical traits of a hockey player or team through the Complete Hockey Off-Season Template.

Complete Hockey Off-Season Template

This template is written for teams that train on and off ice five days a week in the off-season. It may be modified depending on a player or team’s schedule. Even though on and off ice activities may not line up as well as in this template, do your best to keep in mind the consolidation of stressors. In other words, don’t mix a bagger of an on ice session with a speed and power day off ice in the weight room or field.

Table 3. A 5 day a week template for hockey players or teams to follow in the off-season. Template addresses both on and off ice activities. On ice will be expanded in sections below.

Complete Off-Season – Daily On Ice Emphasis

If Table 3 provides a 50,000 foot view, the below sections will be a closer look at each day. Modify things if you feel a certain method belongs on different days, but before you do, run it through a filter with the questions provided in a below section.

Tuesday and Thursday, low intensity days, will be the most challenging and overlooked for players and coaches. Low intensity?! Not on my team!

However, five high intensity days a week would lead to fatigue, lack of skill acquisition, slower speeds, and eventually injury. Low days are essential to player development.

Tuesday and Thursday

• No sprints or high speeds
• Minimal change of direction
• Closed drills with predetermined outcomes (where or how to pass, skate, shoot)
• Flow drills
• No systems or tactics discussed or emphasized
• Stationary skills (pass, shoot, stick handle)
• Full ice, low intensity edgework or skating mechanics
• No body contact with boards or other players
• Position specific drills (specific for defensemen, forwards, goalies, or wingers or centermen)
• Players should rarely if ever feel burn in legs or lungs

Video 1. Low intensity skills stations. Ice split into thirds. Stationary passing drill. Predetermined outcome, shooting drills.

Video 2. Low intensity, full ice edgework skating drill.

Video 3. Low intensity, stationary shooting drill.

Monday and Friday

• Short sprints (blue to red, blue to blue)
• Stops and starts and change of direction
• Open drills without predetermined outcomes (utilize OODA loop)
• Small area or gamelike drills (start with shorter durations early off-season)
• Systems or tactics may be emphasized
• Full speed/intensity skills (hard skate, receive a pass, change direction, and a shot on net while skating)
• Start, acceleration, tight turns, or change of direction power skating drills
• Body contact with boards or other players (progress intensity and duration through off-season)
• Zone, system, or situation specific drills (O zone entry that is played out for 10-20 seconds)

Video 4. Single skater, performing a high intensity skating, stick handling, and shooting drill. Notice the speed they are skating. Notice the stops and starts. This makes the drill high intensity. This video is edited to only show the action. However, after each rep, the skater has to take breaks from fatigue.

Video 5. Single skater, resting in between reps of a skating, stick handling, and shooting drill. Warning: this video is just the player standing or skating around. The emphasis is in between reps the player is pausing. They are recovering. They are thinking and waiting. This is an indication that the drills being performed are high intensity.

Video 6. Short sprints. Blue line to red line and blue line to blue line.

Video 7. 3v3 small area games. Zero predetermined outcomes, lots of stops and starts, making contact with other players and the boards.

Wednesday

• Long sprints (goal line to red line, far blue, full ice)
• Stops and starts and change of direction
• Open drills without predetermined outcomes (utilize OODA loop)
• Full ice or game like drills (MUST emphasize shorter durations early off-season)
• Systems or tactics may be emphasized
• Full speed/intensity, full ice skills (Taking outlet pass, keep feet moving during O zone entry)
• Full ice, top speed power skating drills
• Body contact with boards or other players (progress intensity and duration through off-season)
• Zone, system, or situation specific drills (Breakouts, forecheck, backcheck)

Video 8. Long sprints. Performed during skills stations or after on ice warm up, when body is most able to adapt to this stimulus.

Video 9. 5v5. The key takeaway is the duration. Short, 0:20. Keeps intensity high, but does not allow for sloppy, fatigued reps. Great example for start of the off-season. Duration may progress as pre-season approaches.

Is This High or Low Intensity? Questions to Consider

Inevitably there is a drill or method that was not addressed. As written above, if you feel a certain method belongs on different days or there is something I did not include, here is a filter of questions you may ask to find the right day to place it on.

Table 4. 10 questions to ask, when attempting to determine which day to place a drill.

Modifying The Complete Hockey Off-Season Template

A template is simply a guide or outline that may be modified to fit players or teams. It is not carved in stone. Not all players or teams will have five days a week access to the ice or a weight room like the college hockey players I work with.

When modifying the template, remember the three principles discussed above. Below are a few modifications that may be made.

• 4 days a week on ice: High, low, high, low. Two high days should follow a Monday and Wednesday outline to work short and long sprints and drills.
• 3 days a week on ice: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. All high days. Tuesday and Thursday perform off ice, stationary, stickhandling and shooting.
• 3 days a week on ice: Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. Monday and Thursday would be high days. Tuesday a low day. Or Monday is a low day and Tuesday and Thursday are high days.
• 2 days on ice, both in a row such as Tuesday and Wednesday. 1 day should be high, 1 day low.
• 2 days on ice, with a day or two in between such as Monday and Thursday. Both high days. Remember, speed is the most important and most difficult physical trait to develop. Must utilize ice times properly.
• 1 day a week on ice: High day. Unless playing another sport, that will depend on that particular week. Consolidate stressors. If a low day in another sport, on ice low day. If a high high in another sport, on ice high day.
• If playing another sport in the off-season (football, baseball, track and field, etc), stick to the principle of the consolidation of stressors. Competition days should always be viewed as high intensity days. Practice days will likely be high intensity days as well. Off days will be low days. Plan on ice training accordingly.

What is Part 2?

Part 2 involves me breaking down off-ice training, specifically in the weight room or on a field. READ IT NOW!

Rest assured, off-ice training follows the same principles of the Consolidation of Stressors, the High-Low Model, and the Short to Long Approach.