On Frozen Blog

How exactly does an NHLer spend his summer preparing for the rigors of the NHL’s 82 games-plus season? We know vaguely that many of them retain the services of personal trainers, that they skate a fair bit with other NHLers in informal gatherings at rinks across North America, and that few sit around indolent all summer chugging beers (hockey bloggers fill in capably in that task). Specifically, though, how do these remarkable athletes train and prepare for their lengthy immersion in the planet’s fastest, roughest, and, come playoff time, most grueling team sport? It’s a question I wanted to pose to a Capitals’ player this summer, and with the help of Capitals’ Director of Media Relations Nate Ewell this week, I was able to.

When I first learned that Boyd Gordon had arrived back in D.C. in the first week of August, I was startled. Western Canadian Caps have historically trained back home in Western Canada and arrived in town much closer to the start of September’s training camp. But far from cutting short his offseason training regimen, Gordon told me that he’d completed a demanding training schedule in Vancouver, of fully three months, in British Columbia’s mountains and at a fitness facility among the likes of Trevor Linden and Kris Beech. Now he was back in D.C. to continue his preparations for the upcoming season  largely because so many of his Caps’ teammates want to start skating together well in advance of camp. Beginning next week, Gordon told me, a healthy contingent of Caps will be skating together out at Kettler Capitals five times a week, in “hour-and-a-half, maybe hour-and-forty-five [minute]” conditioning stints featuring “drills, scrimmaging . . . and then the [serious] skating.”

I got fatigued just listening to Gordon’s description of “running mountains” in Vancouver for three months and then getting serious on the ice out at Kettler this month. On Wednesday Gordon was giving Caps’ broadcaster Craig Laughlin a hand with the instruction of 25 or so summer camp Mites on the Kettler ice. I began my inquiry of him wondering when he individually transitioned from the rest and relaxation NHLers needed after completing the bruises-and-bone-battering slate of last season to the get-serious-about-next-season training regimen.

“I don’t usually take that much time off from working out,” he told me. “I had surgery on my ankle at the end of last season and took off four weeks. The ankle feels great,” he claimed.

“So about four weeks off with the surgery, but then I get stir crazy.”

Vancouver has some pretty serious mountains and hills, and apparently Gordon views their variety and severity as a training lure. He is also drawn to British Columbia’s temperate summers.

“It’s cool, you don’t have to get up early to go running and stuff. Every day’s different. You go five days a week, sometimes four depending on how early in the summer [it is].”

The fatigued-from-listening blogger interrupted to inquire about the possibility of training-free weekends. Beers with buddies . . . a furlough from the fitness frenzy. Weekends, Gordon assured me, are for recovery and a bit of a mental break.

“Every guy’s different [in specific fitness routine], but June [workouts], it’s almost exclusively off ice,” he explained. Gordon spent his June pumping his legs up the British Columbia peaks and working with equipment and weights at a Vancouver facility frequented by pro hockey players. Summer’s schedule for NHLers appears designed to deliver them to September training camp emerged from fitness routines that improve their overall strength and conditioning but also address areas of need in their physical development. But the programs also have to guard against training extremes that could burn out or injure the players.

Gordon, like most contemporary NHLers, followed the fitness guidance of a professional trainer out West. “The guy I worked with in Vancouver is really good. It was a good way to start the summer, get strong,” he told me.

But Caps’ players also follow a specifically designed training program from Jack Blatherwick, the team’s physiologist. Caps’ fans who’ve attended training camps in the past will recognize Blatherwick as the torture taskmaster when it comes to skating, and early July is when many NHLers will incorporate skating into their fitness routines.

“It’s a good program, designed for hockey, it works out really well and gets you in good shape,” Gordon explained of Blatherwick’s summer fitness requirements. “We got something we follow, and try to incorporate into it different [training] things.”

July is the month Gordon and many of his NHL colleagues blend their off-ice routines with regular but relatively modest skating programs. August is when they transition to full-out, rigorous work in their Bauers while also completing gym workouts afterward.

“I’ll be skating here in the morning with the guys then go work out in the afternoon,” Gordon told me. He said that Kettler’s state-of-the-art amenities for training were definitely a reason for his early return to town.

Olie Kolzig, Gordon told me, is leading the recruiting effort to get as many Caps’ back in town for as early as possible a startup of daily on-ice workouts. Kolzig’s having success, too, because, beginning next week, there will be guys enough to scrimmage five days a week for nearly three weeks this month.

If training camps for pro athletes a generation or two ago were sweat sessions to get back into shape from summer sloth, that model has been obliterated by the paces today’s pros put themselves through. Listening to Gordon detail his committed and grueling summer of sweat Wednesday, I got motivated to salvage my own summer with some health-oriented discipline. Thursday morning I’m going to sip coffee while watching Denise Austin lead aerobics and yoga on television.

It’s a start.