Mitch Marner is one of the most talented rookies in the NHL.
He’s got speed, skill, dedication, and the hustle. He’s also young, 5’11, and 170-180lbs, which means he has an insane potential to get bigger, stronger, faster, and more powerful.
The offseason is here, and it means it’s time to address these things. Here is my proposed Mitch Marner offseason plan if I were his strength coach.
Hypertrophy
As of right now, Marner is scheduled to play for Team Canada in the World Hockey Championships from May 5 to 21. This means, his off-season hasn’t quite begun yet.
This means he’s losing a full month that could be dedicated to building strong, functional muscle. This is ok though because muscle can always be built in the next off-season, but the experience and skill development Marner will get from winning this tournament will be very valuable. It’s worth the trade-off.
With the 2017-2018 NHL Season starting in October 2017, and the pre-season starting in September, it means Marner only has June, July, and August for his off-season.
Obviously, one of our biggest concerns is to get some size onto his frame. This extra muscle will give him the much-needed bodyweight to throw his body around and not get knocked off the puck as much. On top of this, it’ll give him some “body armor” for when he’s getting body checked and hopefully protect him from injuries.
The big problem here is that we want the size gained to be predominantly muscle, and we want that muscle to be functional; meaning pound-for-pound, he needs to maintain or even increase his strength. I’ll talk about strength in a second, but first, let’s address how much muscle he can realistically gain.
On average, the speed of muscle growth is about 0.25 – 0.5lbs per week, or about 1-2lbs per month (in a drug-free individual). At this rate, Marner would only be able to gain about 3-6lbs of muscle in the offseason. The caveat here is that muscle gain is quicker when you have less of it.
On top of this, muscle growth speed depends on how many years you’ve been lifting seriously, and how far along you are into puberty. For example, a newbie trainee can gain 20-25lbs of muscle in their first year, 10-12lbs in year 2, and 5-6lbs in year 3+.
Judging by his frame, Marner probably started out at around 155lbs, thus already gaining his potential muscle from year 1, so within a year, he has the potential to gain 10-12lbs. On top of this, in my experience, muscle growth doesn’t happen in a linear fashion, it happens in bursts. Knowing all of this, I feel that Mitch could add 6-8lbs of muscle, and possibly 10lbs of total weight, bringing him up to 180-190lbs, a respectable size for a sophomore NHL player at his height. This amount of muscle gain could increase if he trained twice-a-day.
But this size won’t help him if he cannot translate it into strength and power while maintaining his agility and quickness.
Strength
As I said before, the muscle the Marner will gain in the offseason needs to be functional. With the added muscle means he needs to add strength.
For instance, if he can bench press 225lbs at 170lbs bodyweight, then it’s a success if he can bench press 238lbs at 180lbs bodyweight. If his strength-to-weight ratio stays the same or increases as he gets heavier, then we’re golden.
Knowing this, most of his hypertrophy workouts will be within the 6-10 rep range and have a higher volume (more sets and reps). I would also use strength-only workouts (3-6 rep range) in order to build strength. Combine this with a higher calorie diet to support muscle growth, and you’ve got a recipe for strength and mass. But again, this means nothing if he cannot be powerful.
Power
Power = Force x Speed. Increasing force is accomplished by getting stronger. Unfortunately, if you neglect speed and only increase force, many times you will lose the speed, thus losing power. The good news is that this can easily be prevented.
First of all, most repetitions need to be performed with an explosive tempo and a controlled eccentric. This means that if Mitchy is bench pressing, he will lower the weight to his chest under control (2-4 seconds), briefly pause touching the bar to his chest, and then pushing the bar away explosively.
On top of this, I would include some power training using lower reps (2-5) and training them explosively, as well as Olympic lifting and plyometrics for explosiveness.
Speed, Agility, and Quickness (SAQ)
Watching Marner, there is where he shines. He has excellent SAQ.
Even though it’s one of his strengths, SAQ will definitely need to at least be maintained during the off-season, especially if he is adding size. After all, he needs to train his brain and body how to use this new found size.
It’s comparable to when you first hit puberty. You grow larger, but you become clumsy because your brain hasn’t figured out how to move efficiently. This is where SAQ will be crucial with Marner.
Conditioning
This is pretty self-explanatory. We don’t want Marner to be leaning over, huffing and puffing, skating in the back of the pack when the team is doing laps during pre-season practice. Leave that for Phil Kessel.
The good news is that a lot of that conditioning will be addressed in SAQ and ideally with his skating coach, but the basics should still be covered in the gym.
Movement Quality and Muscular Imbalances
This is probably the most important aspect of any athlete’s training, but it’s also the least flashy and most boring.
If you improve movement quality and muscular imbalances, then you will decrease the risk of injury. It’s as simple as that.
If you’re injured, you can’t plan. If you’re injured a lot, you’re not playing at lot. If you’re not playing a lot, you can’t help your team win and it increases your chances of getting traded, going to the minors, or ending your career early. If Marner manages to play 82 games in the season, then the strength coach has done the most important aspect of his/her job. Obviously, sometimes you can’t help it (if they get hit too hard or get hit by a puck), so luck needs to be on your side as well.
Back in February, Marner had a shoulder injury getting hit after blocking a puck. If there was a movement dysfunction or muscle imbalance in his shoulder, then that increased his chances of getting injured and possibly could have been prevented, but I don’t know for sure because I haven’t assessed him.
Mitch Marner’s Proposed Offseason Training Schedule
May 5-21: World Championships
May 22-28: Take a week off to relax and recover.
May 29th: Off-Season Training Begins
Month 1
Starting off, we’d primarily focus on movement quality and addressing any muscular imbalances. Mitch will train in the gym 4-days per week and will be on an upper-lower split.
Here’s how a workout day would be structured:
Morning Workout
-Flexibility, Mobility, Re-Hab, Pre-Hab
-Core
-Plyometrics
-Speed, Agility, and Quickness Drills
Evening Workout
-Flexibility, Mobility, Re-Hab, Pre-Hab
-Core
-Olympic Lifting
-Resistance Training – Here we would use a variety of rep ranges (between 5-20) in all the basic movement patterns, building strength and endurance. We’d use a non-linear periodization approach where one day we use higher reps (endurance) and one day we use lower reps (strength). Volume (total number of sets and reps) will be low, and intensity will be moderate (approx 80-90%). The goal is for Marner to feel worked, but fresh after every workout.
-Conditioning – We’re going to build the heart’s work capacity by going 10 minutes hard on the Airdyne machine.
Month 2
After we’ve built a good base of movement quality, we will take this month to build functional hypertrophy. Marner will train in the gym 4 days per week using an upper-lower split with 1-2 days to work on conditioning and anything else he might need.
Morning Workout
-Flexibility, Mobility, Re-Hab, Pre-Hab
-Core
-Speed, Agility, and Quickness Drills
-Resistance Training – Morning workouts will be dedicated to building strength in all the big compound lifts. We will work in the 3-6 rep range, with a moderate to high volume.
Evening Workout
-Flexibility, Mobility, Re-Hab, Pre-Hab
-Core
-Plyometrics
-Olympic Lifting
-Resistance Training – Evening workouts will be dedicated to pure hypertrophy. We will work in the 6-12 rep range with a moderate volume.
Extra Day
-Flexibility, Mobility, Re-Hab, Pre-Hab
-Core
-Conditioning – High-Intensity Interval Training on the Airdyne, Sled work, etc.
-Anything else he might need to work on
Month 3
After a tough month of lifting twice-a-day to build strength and mass, we will then take the mass gained and apply it to building power, strength, and hypertrophy simultaneously. Marner will be training using an upper-lower split 4-days per week, and 2 optional workout days per week to work on anything else we deem important.
Morning Workout
-Flexibility, Mobility, Re-Hab, Pre-Hab
-Core
-Plyometrics
-Speed, Agility, and Quickness Drills
Evening Workout
-Flexibility, Mobility, Re-Hab, Pre-Hab
-Core
-Olympic Lifting
-Resistance Training – Since we are building maximum power, strength, as well as still trying to gain some size, we will use a Daily Undulating Periodization approach to training. We will rotate through 3 different days: Strength (sets of 4-6 reps), Power (sets of 2-4 reps done explosively), and Hypertrophy (sets of 8-10 reps).
-Conditioning – High-Intensity Interval Training on the Airdyne, Sled work, etc.
Conclusion
After these 3 months, this brings us to the end of the off-season and the beginning of the pre-season. Hopefully, by this time, Mitch will have added 8-10 lbs of functional muscle, be stronger, more powerful, and will have maintained his agility and quickness. Now it’s his turn to shine: claymore planted, head glitch, and the guy knows the map.
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