Importance of aerobic capacity in hockey

As you probably already know, hockey is a very intense sport. The game is played over 3, 20 minute periods and each player’s shift typically lasts 45-60 seconds. Hockey players change on the fly and every once in awhile there is a stoppage in play for an icing, offside, penalty, and a goal. With everything going on, the rest between each player’s shift can last anywhere between 90-120 seconds.

This type of cycle between flying around on the ice and resting on the bench waiting to get back out on the ice classifies hockey as a very anaerobic sport.

So, do hockey players really need aerobic capacity?

When performing a high-intensity exercise like a game of hockey a lot of physiological things are taking place. There is a depletion of adenosine triphosphate phosphocreatine (ATP-PC), an increase in inorganic phosphate, accumulation of hydrogen ions, increase in lactate formation, and a decrease in pH. With all these physiological changes happening to the body, an athlete will start to feel fatigued and they will notice a decline in power output. It is thought that restoring all these metabolites to normal levels will result in a full recovery.

What is the best way to restore the metabolites to normal levels?

Let’s start by stating that the greater capillary density we have and the more Oxygen our body can supply to our fatigued muscles, and as a result, the faster our muscles can recover.

To simplify, the greater our aerobic system is the faster we can recover. So to answer the question “Do hockey players really need aerobic capacity?”, YES!

Now that we know that we need some level of aerobic capacity, we need to know how much is the right amount…

I believe this is up for debate because hockey is a very anaerobic sport by nature and we need this system to be very efficient in order for us to be successful. But without a strong aerobic base, we might not be recovering to optimal levels between practices, training sessions, and most importantly games.

From my own personal experience playing professional hockey and changing up my off-season training I can honestly say that the summers I performed more aerobic training, I felt fresher during the entirety of the hockey season.

The most important time of the off-season to perform aerobic training is in the first 4 weeks. During this time, it is smart to get in 1-2 aerobic training sessions per week. Then over the next 4 weeks another 1-2 times. And over the last 8 weeks of summer training, performing aerobic training 1-2 times should be adequate because when training our anaerobic system we still improve the capacity of our aerobic system. As you can see, we want to start our summer training by building a good aerobic base and then as the summer progresses we can start to decrease the amount of aerobic specific training and transfer into more anaerobic style training.

It’s still very important to keep up our aerobic training during the hockey season but with games, practices, and weight training sessions it leaves us with a minimal amount of time for our aerobic training. So during the hockey season, it is important to dedicate at least 2 aerobic training sessions per month and no more than 4.

Since most hockey players have poor running mechanics I recommend my athletes to use the bike to develop their aerobic base.