Pre-Season Hockey Training: How to Prepare Your Body Before the Season Starts

1. Build Lower Body Strength

Strong legs are the foundation of powerful skating.

Focus on exercises that build strength through the hips, glutes, quadriceps, and hamstrings, including:

• Squats
• Split squats
• Romanian deadlifts
• Step-ups
• Single-leg balance exercises

Single-leg strength is especially important because skating requires producing force one leg at a time.

There isn’t a one size-fits-all strength hockey training program for players. Michael emphasizes the importance of choosing exercises based on the individual athlete and their specific needs. This is something our Physiotherapists can help assess and tailor to your individual needs during a Physiotherapy appointment at GRSM.

When working with hockey players, he particularly focuses on foundational movement patterns, including a squat pattern through movements such as squats and lunges, and a hinge pattern through movements such as deadlifts. These exercises help stimulate the demands of skating while placing the athlete’s body in familiar positions.

2. Improve Hip Mobility

A hockey stride places significant stress on the hips, groin, and lower back. Limited mobility can reduce skating efficiency while increasing stress on surrounding muscles and joints. Adding a few minutes of mobility work several times each week in your hockey pre-season training can improve movement quality and prepare your body for practices and games.

Focus on:

• Hip flexor mobility
• Adductor mobility
• Thoracic spine rotation
• Ankle mobility

Michael emphasizes that, similar to strengthening, there is no single mobility routine that is appropriate for every hockey player. Athletes have different mobility needs depending on their sport, training history, and individual movement patterns. This is where a Physiotherapist at GRSM can help identify your individual needs and develop a plan tailored to you.

For practices and games, he recommends focusing on a dynamic warm-up rather than relying on static stretching. A warm-up can gradually increase in intensity, starting with light jogging, progressing to dynamic movements such as high knees, butt kicks, hip openers, and lunges, and then  moving into sprinting progressions. Light stretching can be added afterward as needed once the body is warm

3. Train Your Core for Stability and Power

A strong core does much more than improve your balance. It helps transfer force between your upper and lower body during skating, shooting, checking, and changing direction.

Include hockey-focused exercises such as:

• Dead bugs
• Pallof presses
• Side planks
• Farmer carries
• Rotational cable exercises

Core training should focus on stability and control, not just abdominal strength.

4. Don’t forget conditioning

Hockey is an interval sport. Players repeatedly perform short bursts of high-intensity skating followed by brief recovery periods. Rather than relying only on long-distance running, include conditioning that better reflects game demands.

Examples include:

• Sprint intervals
• Bike intervals
• Shuttle runs
• On-ice skating
• Rowing intervals

Michael recommends gradually progressing both on-ice and off-ice training toward higher-intensity, game-like scenarios as the season approaches. This means incorporating short bursts of high-intensity activity that reflect the demands of hockey, such as shuttle runs, sprinting progressions, and controlled scrimmages.

For hockey pre-season training players can work toward conditioning that stimulates the demands of an approximately 30-45 second hockey shift, helping prepare the body for the repeated high-intensity efforts required during practices and games.

5. Gradually Return On The Ice 

One of the most common mistakes players make is trying to return at full intensity immediately. Instead, gradually increase your skating volume over several weeks by:

• Building up the number of ice sessions each week
• Allowing recovery between practices
• Listening to soreness that doesn’t improve within a day or two
• Avoiding adding games and intense training all at once

Michael emphasizes that players should pay attention not only to how much they are skating, but also to the intensity of the drills they are performing. As training camp approaches, players can gradually incorporate more cardio-focused drills and game scenarios to better simulate the demands they will face during the season.

Progressively increasing both training volume and intensity gives the muscles, tendons, and joints time to adapt while helping players transition more safely from the off-season into full hockey participation.