Herb Brooks once said, “You don’t have enough talent to win on talent alone.” Essentially, if you don’t work hard on and off the ice, you will quickly fall behind your competition. If you want to be at your best for your first game, you need to continue your workouts despite a heavy on-ice practice schedule (check out Henrik Zetterberg’s Kettlebell Split-Lunge).
Pre-season hockey training closely mimics in-season training. It’s all about maintaining your performance and staying healthy. Grueling tryouts and pre-season practices take a toll on your body. So your workouts must look a bit different than your off-season program or you will hit a wall and your performance will suffer.
Your pre-season hockey-training program should focus on maintaining muscular strength and endurance, while your practices provide a conditioning component. Workouts should be shorter and feature multi-joint movements that target large muscle groups to get a bigger bang for your buck with each exercise. Perform the exercises with lighter weight for fewer sets and more reps, so they will be challenging, but won’t fatigue your muscles too much.
The hockey-training program below switches up the sets and reps each week so your muscles don’t get too comfortable with the workout and continue making gains. Follow the set and rep schedule below with all exercises unless otherwise specified. Perform grouped exercises in superset fashion.

Sets/Reps Schedule

• Week 1: 3×10
• Week 2: 3×12
• Week 3: 4×10
• Week 4: 4×12

Day 1

1A. Bench Press
1B. Wide-Grip Lat Pulldown
2A. Seated Military Press
2B. Single-Arm DB Row
3. Plank – 3×30 seconds

Day 2

1. Squat – 4×8
2A. Bulgarian Split-Squat
2B. DB Calf Raises
3. Side Plank – 2×30 seconds each side

Day 3

1A. DB Lateral Raise
1B. Dips
2A. Tricep Pulldown
2B. Hammer Curls
3. Reverse Crunches – 3×15
For more information on hockey training, click here.