The days of skating yourself into shape just before a hockey season starts are long gone.

By the time Denver’s players began their captains’ practices, which commenced with the start of school earlier this month, they were already well conditioned. It’s a process that Matt Shaw and his staff began not long after the Pioneers’ season ended in late March.

In Part 1 of this series we looked at some of the Pioneers’ biggest success stories and why their alumni return to campus each summer. Now we’ll take a peak at how the returning players and newcomers prepare for a season that is just weeks away.

Transition time

On the ice, DU thrives on a strong transition game. It’s no different off the ice under the direction of Shaw, the school’s director of sports performance.

“We’re in a unique situation. We’re still on the quarter system, which is a major positive,” Shaw says. “We have extended amounts of time after to the season (to work with hockey players).”

Typically the Pioneers will take two weeks off to “unload” after the season. This is down time in the truest sense, an opportunity to give their bodies – and minds – a break after a grueling six-month season.

This is where the academic calendar does the program and its inhabitants a solid.

“When we start training back up, we’re able to take them through four to six weeks of training as they return to the gym,” Shaw says. “We’re able to work on individual things, whether it’s range of motion or how the total body is recovering from the end of the year. … We’re able to look at fitness, we’re able to look at tissue tolerances.”

The spring is part evaluation and part re-programming, he added.

“They get so adaptive to the stress they see during the season, that early offseason is really about re-establishing that range of motion, getting back to the more aerobic fitness, way higher levels of strength and work capacity.”

From there, Shaw and Co. drill down into more specific applications revolving around force and how the athletes respond to that at varying velocities. He wants a handle on how they respond to high velocity workouts (sprints, for example) and low velocity ones (strength training).

Building toward the season

Finals haven’t even been taken when preparation for the season already is underway in earnest.

“We’re getting things from very general to very specific to movements on the ice, to the range of motion, to the fitness they’re going to experience,” Shaw says. “We’re not just peaking them for a game, but preparing them for a week of practice and games, and a season’s worth of those weeks.”

In its quest for every imaginable advantage, Shaw’s group has turned to some forms that were unimaginable a generation ago.

“We’re working in more technology to monitor the players,” he says. “Catapult – inertial measure, heart rate monitors, these provide baseline measurements. These show how much stress they’re under, not just in one session or one day, but what a full week of stress looks like.

“We can map out our increase in stress throughout the offseason and make sure that going into the preseason they’ve already fully adapted to that amount of workload and we’re not overextending them.”

And what about the freshmen? Many, though not all, begin taking classes during the summer, meaning Shaw has roughly six weeks to assess their fitness levels and get them into a strength and conditioning program before their late-summer break before school begins.

MORE INSIDE STORIES

Part 1 of Building Better Hockey Players

Keeping DU well equipped

A peek at a week

Once the season begins, the Pioneers will lift weights on Mondays and Wednesdays before practice. That follows a recovery session that includes soft tissue work, often with foam rollers. A dynamic warmup precedes the lift.

“A lower volume workout that might involved strength work or power work, or a little bit of speed work,” Shaw says. “It’s all dependent on what’s going on with practice and the retention of certain qualities throughout the year.”

There is a master plan behind this. The coaching staff looks at the season as a whole, then breaks down the practice and training schedules based upon whom the Pioneers are playing, where and when. They determine all the physical qualities they want the team to retain during the season.

A big assist comes from the fact college hockey is so structured. With few exceptions, games are on Friday and Saturday nights, often in the same location and always in the same proximity. This element of consistency is huge for hockey players, creatures of habit if ever there were any.

Tuesdays and Thursdays in season are dedicated more to recovery and range of motion work. Intricate stretching sessions follow every practice.

Shaw also provides the coaching staff with data-driven feedback on how players are responding to the physical demands of the week.

“That way we can discuss what potential adjustments we need to make for the next day and look at the week as a whole,” he says. “Where do we want to reduce stress or drive stress (to prepare) for the upcoming game.”

Game days typically include extra recovery and range of motion work before and extensive stretching and recovery work after.

“After a little bit of foam rolling, then we use PNF (proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation) stretching, which is a little more aggressive, which can get them into end range where they actually contract against the ground or a band,” Shaw says. “Certain joints we’ll do sustained stretches for a much longer duration. … We do things for a reason.

“We’ll go through progressive relaxation and breathing and try to drop their heart rates down post game, get them in a recovery mode.”

Increasing roles

The increasing visibility of college sports performance coaches has been notable recently, and there are many reasons for that. The biggest is they often have more access to and interaction with athletes than the players’ own coaches do.

“(In addition to the offseason work), we’re involved with in-season lifting and recovery, we’re at practices and assisting with monitoring stress,” Shaw says.

One of the most vital roles Shaw and his staff can play are helping Pioneers coaches understand practice stress and how to manager that daily and weekly. They’re also meeting with athletes.

This is part of the holistic approach that DU’s Sports Performance department embraces.

“We’re around the athletes a ton,” Shaw says. “Whether it’s being there for them psychologically during the season or helping them understand how to deal with stress or finding ways they can gain more recovery or relaxation time away from physical stress.

“It’s the same thing with (equipment manager) Nick Meldrum or (athletic trainer) Aaron Leu, it’s not just how we support the team from our jobs, but it’s also the psychological side of it, helping the team develop long term.”

The process

The process for Denver hockey involves many things, and Shaw says it affects nearly every area of a Pioneers player’s life.

“Nothing that you’re going to do in the college environment or in athletics is going to have immediate satisfaction,” he explains. “It’s areas that are long-duration habits, the things you do day-in and day-out that add up to that goal, whether that’s study habits, whether that’s lifestyle management and nutrition, whether it’s the stress they place themselves under in here in the weight room or out there on the ice. Everything that goes back the process and habits.

“One thing that gets discussed is the season is long. It’s not about how you start or about the first 10 weeks or even the middle 10 weeks, it’s about how you make progress day-in, day-out. Those things add up longterm. Our best teams are the ones that end up learning lessons across the season. They may go through adversity during different time periods.

“(It’s ) your ability to learn and continue to progress no matter how much adversity you face.”

If the year working with hockey players sounds demanding, it’s because it is. But for Shaw, and the rest of the DU hockey staff, the rewards are bountiful.

“I think it’s working with all the different personalities and the challenges that come up,” he says. “There’s a huge amount of creativity involved working with certain athletes, certain personality types, working with certain physical limitations, certain strengths and weaknesses of athletes. So you’re constantly thinking on the job.

“It’s fun to go to work every single day and be challenged by who you’re working with, what they’re capable of and pushing the boundaries of their own strengths and weaknesses and progressing toward something bigger. … We all have a piece to play in that goal.”

©First Line Editorial 2017-18