St. Louis Blues: Hockey Easiest And Hardest To Come Back From Break

The St. Louis Blues are in the odd position of trying to stay in shape for a season that may never restart. The interesting thing is hockey is both the easiest and the hardest to keep prepared.

Like all NHL teams, the St. Louis Blues are in this hellish limbo. They have to do their best to stay in shape for if or when the league season/playoffs resume.

However, what makes hockey so interesting is that it is the easiest to stay in shape for. It is also the most difficult.

Hockey presents the athlete with an odd dichotomy. You don’t need a gym full of equipment to get into hockey shape. On the flip side, you do need very specific equipment and a set of circumstances to get fully ready to play the game that is beyond anyone’s control.

Why it is easy

The main reason hockey is easy to stay in shape for is because it is largely a cardiovascular sport. You don’t need tons of weights or machines to get into that kind of shape.

It is oversimplifying things, but a hockey player can easily stay in shape with a few exercises at home and be ready to go, from a certain standpoint. There are lots of things they can do at home without the need for fancy gyms.

Running is the most prominent one. While they would need to be careful of the surface they run on – nobody wants any impact injuries – running is the tried and true cardio exercise.

You can do sprints. Players can run for distance. For hockey, both would be important because you want that quickness in short bursts the sprints can provide as well as the cardio endurance that a distance run would give you.

There is also HIIT training or high intensity interval training. Yes, I know that means technically I used training twice, but it’s the same concept as UMB Bank being University of Missouri Bank Bank. I digress.

More from Editorials

• St. Louis Blues Need Kasperi Kapanen To Be On Best Behavior
• Hayes’ Debut And Other Bold Predictions for the St. Louis Blues
• St. Louis Blues Captaincy Is Suddenly A Huge Problem For 2023-24
• St. Louis Blues National Games Cause More Problems Than They’re Worth
• St. Louis Blues Brayden Schenn Has To Be An Impact Player In 2023-24

HIIT training is basically what it implies. They are shorter bursts, followed by rest and then repeat.

This covers a wide variety of possibilities. You can do mountain climbers, burpees, sprints, high repititions with weights if you have some or any number of workouts, such as spinning or biking. These focus on exactly what hockey players would need which is speed, mental focus and precision for their short shifts.

There are also a lot of lateral moves you can incorporate into workouts. Whether that be hip mobility exercises or the wide variety of lunges, all designed to keep the legs strong but not exactly bulky.

Core workouts are another hockey necessity. Regardless of body type, hockey players have some of the strongest hips or cores out of any athletes in pro sports. Much of that can be done with body weight alone and at home.

Of course, professional hockey teams have some of the most modern equipment available. They all also have barbells for squats or deadlifts and dumbbells for rows or chest. However, the point is those are not completely necessary.

The vast majority of NHL players are not jacked. Their arms are often thin and they have varied amounts of tone in their midsection.

These guys aren’t pounding heavy weight in the gym, looking to get swoll. They don’t need to set new personal records the way a football player or even some of today’s baseball players would.

Some players are fortunate enough to have home gyms.

However, they are not absolutely necessary.

While hockey is probably the ultimate team game, personal skill can still be done at home too. These guys all have their own sticks, so even if you don’t have ice or those skill sheets you place on the floor, you can still do stickhandling with a tennis ball or work on hand-eye coordination in various ways.

The point being, in a certain regard, hockey is the sport that can stay the most like when you were a kid. If you stay in good cardio shape and keep your stick work up, you’re not that far behind the curve.

Why it’s the hardest

The simplest reason hockey is the hardest to stay sharp for is because it’s on ice and you need skates. During the winter months, some guys might have land big enough that they could flood and form a small rink to get out on.

However, even in the northern parts of the NHL, such as Minnesota, Edmonton and Winnipeg, the warmer temperatures are creeping in. That would make maintaining any ice extremely difficult, if not impossible, without a cooling mechanism such as in rinks.

The issue is there is no real way to simulate the game. Hockey absolutely requires ice time. The closest thing might be if you got on roller blades, but that still requires a space big enough to at least resemble a rink.

Even then, it might not be quite the same. The problem you run into is you can do side lunges and jump lunges and all sorts of mobility exercises, but you simply cannot quite equal the exact muscles used or the balance required to keep your edges, makes those sharp turns or stop on a dime when on ice skates.

In baseball, if you don’t have a pitching machine, you can still get a family member to throw you a ball. You could also get one of those swing trainers that wraps around a pole.

In basketball, you just need a ball and a hoop to keep your shot on point at the very least. In soccer, you can run, set up cone drills or at least juggle.

Even in football, there are various things to be done. Heck, Dick Butkus supposedly used to bash his forearms against trees to toughen himself up against blockers.

In hockey, you need ice, skates, a puck, a net and a stick. All things might not be available to all people.

Alex Ovechkin has a net at his place.

However if Giannis Antetokounmpo does not have access to a basketball hoop right now, can we really figure every player in the NHL has a home net?

Also, goaltenders are truly at a disadvantage unlike any other position in any other sport. Quarterbacks can throw through tires. Wide Receivers of baseball players can get their wives or girlfriends or kids to throw to them. Pitchers can throw at a square drawn on the wall.

Goaltenders can’t really do anything right now. You could put on some street hockey pads and take some shots if you have someone to shoot on you or throw a tennis ball at a wall to catch. But, you can’t work do your edge work or get used to sliding. There’s only so much room on a driveway to work on angles too.

Hockey just has too many variables that are hard to mimic given the fact the game is played on ice.

Ultimately, every sport will have its difficulties in trying to stay sharp. Simulation is just not the same as actual practice with a team and games.

However, other sports have certain things available that hockey just doesn’t.

Football is the closest in terms of difficulty, but even then you can study your playbook and keep in good cardio shape, even if weights are hard to come by. Hockey almost requires the ice to truly be on your game and without that, there is something missing.

Hopefully we will be able to return to sports, regardless of which ones, sooner rather than later. Stay safe Blues fans and Let’s Go Blues!