Feature Team of the Week: Men's Hockey

Feature Team of the Week

Men's Hockey

1. What BUCS League do you compete in?
    We compete in BUCS Premier North.

2. You also have a link with a National league programme?
    The club has a link with SHC (Sheffield Hockey Club) to which they play in the Men's Hockey League Conference North.

3. What is your training schedule?
    We have 2-3 pitch sessions and 2 S&C sessions a week with the additional optional stretching session.

4. When are games?
     We compete for Hallam on Wednesday's and SHC on Saturday/Sunday's, so it is a physically demanding schedule.

5. What kind of training do you do in S&C? 
    We come in and go through about 15 minutes of Prehab and dynamic stretching as a team. We then work off our programmes, which usually last for 4 weeks in each training block. We started off with quite high volume training and now there is a huge focus on strength and power within the programmes.

6. How do you feel S&C has helped you develop as athletes?
    S&C has helped everyone to develop physically, but the group sessions have provided the opportunity for the team to stick to a routine and remain disciplined with training. 

Andrew Langford, the Lead S&C Coach for Men's Hockey says:


"With the Hockey programme we use a ‘5 repeated jump test’ to monitor power output. We use an unloaded 20kg bar and perform 5 continuous, maximal jumps straight after the warm up on a Monday. This allows us to track progressions in power expression throughout the year and gives us an indication of daily fatigue. This opens up further discussion with the athlete and give us a live update on their physiological abilities.

The graph shown here is for the whole of last season. You can clearly see the changes in power output throughout the year, with sharp fluctuations when the emphasis of training is adjusted. There is a large spike towards the end of the year when we focussed on power/speed aspects of training in preparation for major competitions.”

"Below is the training programme we have used since the players have returned from Christmas break. We used an exaggerated linear periodisation method to establish a week of high volume work, aiming back towards maximal strength in week 4. The next block will be focused on power expression."