The feverish pace of playoff hockey means that the grinders – those who play the hardest – dominate the speed of most games. There is less room – less time – than in regular season games to execute skills.

Herb Brooks knew the only chance his young college players had in the 1980 Olympics was to practice at an uncomfortably fast pace – every drill – two hours a day – for six months. We called it, “overspeed conditioning,” meaning the entire practice built the endurance base. Brooks skated behind the forwards on rushes, constantly prodding, because he knew the Russians would bury any team that couldn’t keep up.

“Hockey endurance” should never have been planned from a physiology textbook or laboratory, because Greek-Latin words disguise the real process. Why? Words like aerobic, anaerobic and cardiovascular fitness must be taught separately, but in a hockey game they all function at the same time, and should be trained that way. These concepts are important background information, but in the practical world of coaching, “hockey endurance” is the ability to execute skills, win puck battles, play defense and compete at the same fast pace near the end of a game as at the beginning.  

Anatoli Tarasov was the brilliant Soviet coach who developed their game from its beginnings in the 1940s to dominate international hockey for 40 years. In his plan, endurance meant, “quick hands, quick feet, quick mind” for an entire game. The word “SLOW” doesn’t show up in any practical definition, yet slow endurance training is much more common than fast interval training.

To be a winning strategy, long, slow endurance training does not fit the needs of a hockey team. “Cardio” or “aerobic training” is a good choice for middle-aged folks trying to maintain a healthy lifestyle. But it is counterproductive for young athletes, where thousands of slow repetitions are memorized by the brain and spinal cord – to be repeated in games at just the wrong time.  

You become what you repeat most often. Slow movement and mechanical inefficiency are printed into the nervous system, even though that is not the intention. Skating (and sprinting) should be done with the best possible mechanics whenever possible.

The good news is that by training with quality short intervals to improve speed, you also build endurance – both aerobic and anaerobic endurance. Forget the laboratory language – fast-pace endurance training is the only way to prepare for the Olympics and the most important playoffs. Watch closely this season and you’ll see the teams that execute skills, get to loose pucks and play defense at the fastest pace are the winners.

Photo: Douglas Ball/AP