Advice: Increasing Endurance

[Fanned On It]

Hey guys… haven’t posted here in about a decade BUT, aside from a bit during COVID, I have not stopped playing.

I’m now 35 years old and at the moment, I’m skating twice a week. One medium-speed pickup and one men’s league game a week. The main issue I’m facing is ENDURANCE. I find that I get gassed WAY quickly and it ruins my skating form, puck-handling ability, everything… I’m talking like, my legs start burning halfway through the 1st period of a men’s league game.

As for me physically: I’m 6’2 and about 188 lbs which is admittedly more than my body was used to carrying in my 20s where I was like 175.

So I’m basically looking for tips/exercises I can do to both increase my wind but more importantly keep my legs from burning out so quickly. Right now I’m not doing any exercise outside of hockey.

Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance!

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[Yukon Joe]

Someone will come along with much better ideas than I, but first thing that comes to mind is interval training. I know it more from running (and interval running itself could be just the thing) - after a warm-up run at a high intensity (like 8o% of max) for 30 secs to two minutes, then job at low intensity for several minutes. Rinse and repeat. You can google for more specific examples.

It's extra beneficial for hockey as it is very similar to the flow of a game - moments of extremely high intensity, followed by a break (and unlike, say running long distances).

It's not going to make you a faster or better skater - but should help with endurance.

 

[Fanned On It]

Someone will come along with much better ideas than I, but first thing that comes to mind is interval training. I know it more from running (and interval running itself could be just the thing) - after a warm-up run at a high intensity (like 8o% of max) for 30 secs to two minutes, then job at low intensity for several minutes. Rinse and repeat. You can google for more specific examples.

It's extra beneficial for hockey as it is very similar to the flow of a game - moments of extremely high intensity, followed by a break (and unlike, say running long distances).

It's not going to make you a faster or better skater - but should help with endurance.

Yes I’ve thought about that! I’ll try it out.

I am also curious about whether or not actually training my legs/core will help with endurance.

When I actually HAVE energy, I can skate quick enough for the level I’m playing at. It’s just that once my legs start burning, my form falls apart and my strides are sloppy.

 

[Yukon Joe]

Yes I’ve thought about that! I’ll try it out.

I am also curious about whether or not actually training my legs/core will help with endurance.

When I actually HAVE energy, I can skate quick enough for the level I’m playing at. It’s just that once my legs start burning, my form falls apart and my strides are sloppy.

As I understand it (and someone better please come along...)

The burning you feel is from the buildup of lactic acid. As your body burns energy it uses oxygen. When working hard your muscles aren't getting as much oxygen as it needs through the blood supply, which leads to the buildup of lactic acid, which is the burning feeling.

"Cardio" is short for cardiovascular. When you work on your cardio through things like interval training you're training your heart and lungs to get stronger, thus supply more oxygen to your muscles through the blood supply, thus preventing the buildup of lactic acid - and thus giving you more endurance.

It depends on what you mean by "training my legs/core". Because you can't work your cardiovascular system by itself - you need to use other muscles as well. So if you're doing some kind of HIIT (high intensity interval training) that works your legs and core then yes that should help endurance.

If you're just doing a lot of squats or sit-ups - that will definitely help you in other ways but I don't think will do much for endurance.

 

[puckpilot]

I started running during covid. Got upto 5-6 times a week and lost 25lbs. Now, I'm on the ice 2-3 times a week. I run 2-3 times a week for three miles. The route I take makes it so I'm constantly going up and down hills for the first 2 miles and the last mile is flat.

With one of the running sessions, it's straight steady pace running. With the second running session, it's sprints on the uphill portions followed by slow jog on the downhill portions and regular jog on the flat portion. The third run I only do depending on how my body feels. If I feel good, I do a sprint-jog run. If I'm just feeling OK, I take the steady pace run. If I need a rest, I skip this run.

On top of that, I just started doing Bulgarian split squats every night. It's been about three weeks, and I'm feeling like I'm able to get lower in my stance when skating again. I'm in my 50s so it's a battle just to keep what I got. I'm not doing anything crazy. For each leg, two sets of 5 for warm up, then two sets of 10, and then a set of 20 to finish it off. I give myself plenty of time between sets to recover. I'm not trying to kill myself for now. I also do 20 push ups and 20 sit ups, and then I stretch.

I find the trick is to do this stuff in front of the TV while watching a show, so I don't necessarily have to find the time for it. It's watch TV and do a few exercises and stretch instead of watch TV and eat chips. :p

 

[The Crypto Guy]

Hills

 

[MeHateHe]

Hey guys… haven’t posted here in about a decade BUT, aside from a bit during COVID, I have not stopped playing.

I’m now 35 years old and at the moment, I’m skating twice a week. One medium-speed pickup and one men’s league game a week. The main issue I’m facing is ENDURANCE. I find that I get gassed WAY quickly and it ruins my skating form, puck-handling ability, everything… I’m talking like, my legs start burning halfway through the 1st period of a men’s league game.

As for me physically: I’m 6’2 and about 188 lbs which is admittedly more than my body was used to carrying in my 20s where I was like 175.

So I’m basically looking for tips/exercises I can do to both increase my wind but more importantly keep my legs from burning out so quickly. Right now I’m not doing any exercise outside of hockey.

Sorry for the long post and thanks in advance!

Distance runner here. You need more reps, and longer reps. You will not build endurance by skating, even with intensity, twice a week. First off, you’re likely going hard for a couple of minutes at a stretch and then resting, so you’re working your long-twitch muscles but not your short-twitch muscles, and it’s the latter you rely on for endurance activities.

So, add in some significant cardio activities, at a constant pace, for at least 30 minutes, at least three times a week.

The upside is that endurance is actually easier to maintain at older ages (to a limited degree), so you don’t need to run or cycle for hours to build that endurance, and if you fall out of the habit, you can get it back quicker than it developed in the first place. So I’m not saying you have to run marathons (though if you want advice on that, I’m your guy) but you have to do some groundwork.

I came into marathons in my mid-40s, and I found that I almost never had the kind of residual stiffness from skating you describe. It may be a result of better overall fitness, or better overall hydration habits, which was a necessity for me after I started running.

 

[EdJovanovski]

Do you have ball hockey/dek hockey leagues around you? I play both that and ice hockey and from playing that I have by far the best cardio on my ice hockey team even though it’s below average on my ball hockey team. It’s a very tough sport when it comes to cardio and it mimics ice hockey in how you’re taking shifts on and off and similar movements except you have to sprint everywhere

 

[Yukon Joe]

Distance runner here. You need more reps, and longer reps. You will not build endurance by skating, even with intensity, twice a week. First off, you’re likely going hard for a couple of minutes at a stretch and then resting, so you’re working your long-twitch muscles but not your short-twitch muscles, and it’s the latter you rely on for endurance activities.

So, add in some significant cardio activities, at a constant pace, for at least 30 minutes, at least three times a week.

The upside is that endurance is actually easier to maintain at older ages (to a limited degree), so you don’t need to run or cycle for hours to build that endurance, and if you fall out of the habit, you can get it back quicker than it developed in the first place. So I’m not saying you have to run marathons (though if you want advice on that, I’m your guy) but you have to do some groundwork.

I came into marathons in my mid-40s, and I found that I almost never had the kind of residual stiffness from skating you describe. It may be a result of better overall fitness, or better overall hydration habits, which was a necessity for me after I started running.

But hockey isn't like running a marathon. At all. It's still a sport where you get on the ice, work your ass off for 45-60 seconds, and get off, and not where you plod at a steady pace for 2-4 hours.

So as I understand it doing that kind of endurance training is really sub-optimal for hockey.

Marathon training is more likely to be useful for something like soccer, where you're constantly on the field but not going at 100% and you need to maintain a steady speed.


Now for @Fanned On It as a 35 year old, if he's not really doing any other training, doing long distance training certainly won't hurt and will almost certainly help with his hockey endurance (as well as general health). But from the training sessions my kid has gone to I don't think long distance running is a part of training for hockey (other than maybe as a cool-down / stay limber kind of exercise).

 

[oldunclehue]

I played hockey all my life and at a pretty decent level. The best way I've found to simulate endurance in hockey is actual mountain biking. Not downhill and take a chair lift back up but actual up, down, around, over and through type mountain biking. Otherwise at the gym HIIT seems to be a good means with Tabata mixed in.

 

[Our Lady Peace]

Some kind of zone 2 or 3 cardiovascular activity, 2-3 times per week. Zone 2 here would be "Cardio Endurance". I think "Hard Core Training" is a bit dramatic but it stretches your performance level if you push that zone regularly

I really like the elliptical machine with handles or the air bike as the pedalling motions combined with the handles give the rib cage an oscillating motion to work with. I would recommend practicing breathing through your nose during your cardio sessions too