Fittest players of all time?

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Grabner is seriously jacked.

I remember looking at his Instagram a while ago and he did seem like a fitness freak, which surprised me because his name is never brought up when it comes to these things.

It kind of makes sense, though. Grabner's thing is his vertical speed, right? Unlike a lot of other hockey skills, straight-line speed comes down to some really simple mechanics. The only way to get as fast as Grabner is to have a completely ripped lower body and a lack of "drag" in your upper body (plus a lot of work on technique, obviously) and the only way to get there is fitness.
 
Why not repost this one?:
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How did he get that body from eating donuts?
 
And back then, they didn’t lift weights. They went and worked regular jobs. Like farming, or in Guy LaFleur’s case: construction.

Dear god, Im trying to imagine that face in a hardhat :laugh:

pavel bure was ridiculously fit. his soviet olympian dad, who went to three olympics and won four medals, and later was a strength and conditioning coach for multiple teams in the NHL, probably had been training him since he was a baby. my theory for why he and valeri both broke down so quickly is because possibly almost no kids have ever been trained as hard from as young of an age as those two. that can't be good for the longterm health of growing joints.

and from my understanding, the soviet training regime was built for maximum short term gain before they threw you away for the next young guy.

there's a famous story of when he arrived in vancouver for the first time and linden's like, this is the guy? because he was small with a skinny build and had the face of a saved by the bell character. but every year he blew away everyone else on the team in their strength and conditioning testing, including raw strength. imagine, that 5'10, 175 lb kid could lift more than odjick, momesso, babych, murzyn, linden, antoski, dirk, sandlak, and all those other gigantic pat quinn-era canucks.

Any specifics on what that training regime would have looked like in the areas that werent built for sustainability?

Ray Bourque could supposedly go all out for a 60 second shift and his heartrate would be back to normal within 10 seconds. Heard this during a Flyers/Bruins game and coming from the Flyers broadcast team.

Lafleur was something similar, he had a resting heartrate on par with world-class cyclists, and Bowman would frequently exploit this by shifting him back to back. Lafleur comes back to the bench, hops off then right back on again, completely screwing the other team if they had a vulnerable line out there.

that's superhuman. reminds me of howe, i can't remember what exactly it was but in one of the howe threads someone pointed out something about him physically that was flat out beyond all other humans. but i have no memory of what that thing was.

Per some of my recent reading on Howe Sr, one of his sons noted his ability to physically hold off opposing players in board battles (think the recent videos of Crosby shoving his butt into checkers and dancing around in the corner like that for 60 secs). Supposedly Howe Sr could sometimes hold off two at a time in the WHA.
 
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Dear god, Im trying to imagine that face in a hardhat :laugh:



Any specifics on what that training regime would have looked like in the areas that werent built for sustainability?



Lafleur was something similar, he had a resting heartrate on par with world-class cyclists, and Bowman would frequently exploit this by shifting him back to back. Lafleur comes back to the bench, hops off then right back on again, completely screwing the other team if they had a vulnerable line out there.



Per some of my recent reading on Howe Sr, one of his sons noted his ability to physically hold off opposing players in board battles (think the recent videos of Crosby shoving his butt into checkers and dancing around in the corner like that for 60 secs). Supposedly Howe Sr could sometimes hold off two at a time in the WHA.

According to his book, no hard hat.
 
Rod 'The Bod' Brind'Amour and Chris Chelios come to mind as well as Big Z.

Gordie Howe apparently called Tim Horton the strongest player in hockey. Would think he would know.

Ive done a bit of reading on the subject in the past and Hortons strength was reputed to be freakish

Some relevant info on the subject here, jump ahead to 6:00 to get past the irrelevant stuff



note the part where Keon mentions him throwing around railway ties like they were toothpicks,

How much does a railroad tie weigh? Is it standard? - Quora

estimated to be between 200-250lbs
 
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