You trained all summer.

You hit the gym. You did the workouts your team gave you. You found programs online, followed along, switched it up when something felt off.

You were motivated. You put in the time.

And then camp starts — and there's a guy on the ice who looks completely different than he did last year.

Faster. Stronger. More confident. Something clicked for him over the summer.

You're standing there thinking: how? There's no way he worked harder than me. I was in the gym every week. I did the cardio. I didn't take the summer off.

What did I do wrong?

The honest answer? It's not about effort.

You spent the summer motivated but scattered. A team workout here. An Instagram program there. A different routine every two weeks because you weren't sure the last one was working. And underneath all of it, this constant low-grade anxiety: Am I doing enough? Is this actually building anything? Am I falling behind?

So you did more. More sessions, more volume, more cardio, because at least that felt like something.

But more without a plan doesn't compound. It just piles up.

By the end of the summer you weren't undertrained. You were overtrained, under-recovered, and no more explosive than when you started. Three months of running hard in circles.

The guy who "got lucky"? He didn't do more. He did it in things in the right order.

There are 3 "must-haves" in a off-season program

Before I show you the plan, there are three things I've come to believe every dangerous, fast, elite athlete needs to build their training around. You could do nothing else, and after a few weeks you'd be a different athlete. Everything in this program is built on top of these.

1. Ankle prep

Almost every injury you've seen on the ice traces back to a weak link somewhere in the chain.

Back injuries happen because something lower in the chain isn't strong enough to absorb the load. Groin pulls, hamstring strains, knee problems — same pattern. Your body compensates when something isn't holding up its end, and eventually something breaks.

The first link in that chain is your feet and ankles. That's the foundation everything else sits on.

Stiffer, stronger ankles don't just keep you healthy. They make you faster.

Every time you sprint, your foot hits the ground and you need to bounce off it as fast as possible.

Watch Usain Bolt's races in slow motion. Look at all the other sprinters. Their legs are moving at almost the exact same speed.

The difference between Bolt and the guy in lane 8 isn't leg speed — it's how hard they hit the ground and how fast they bounce off it. That's ankle stiffness. That's what sends them further with every stride.

Same thing happens on the ice. Same thing happens in every sport.

2. Isometrics and eccentrics

Most people don't even know these exist. They want to go heavy, go fast, and chase that feeling of a hard session.

But your tendons, muscle fibers, and joints need to be built before you load them with power.

Eccentric work — the slow, controlled lowering phase — rebuilds tissue and teaches your body to handle real load.

Isometrics — pausing and holding under tension — teach you to absorb and stabilize force at the positions where most athletes break down.

These two qualities are the base layer. Without them, the power you build has nowhere to go.

3. French contrast

This is where it all comes together. Heavy strength paired immediately with an explosive movement. A squat followed by a jump. A trap bar pull followed by a sprint.

The heavy lift activates your nervous system. The explosive movement right after forces it to express that strength as speed. This is called post-activation potentiation, and it's one of the most effective tools for converting raw strength into actual on-ice power.

The 8-Week Plan I Use With My Athletes

Now here's how we sequence all three into an 8-week plan.

One thing before you start: work backwards from your camp date. You want to finish this program 1-2 weeks out — not the day before. That buffer is where your body consolidates everything and you show up fresh, not cooked.

Weeks 1–2: Eccentric Phase

Every lift has a 5-second lowering phase. Slow and controlled on the way down. Ankle prep work built into every session.

This is where you rebuild the tissue. You're not trying to be a hero here. You're laying the base that makes everything else possible.

Skip this and you'll be building power on a cracked foundation.

Weeks 3–4: Isometric Phase

Same lifts, but now you're pausing 5 seconds at the bottom of every rep.

That midpoint is where most athletes collapse — in a battle for a puck, cutting hard, absorbing a check. This phase teaches your body to hold force and not fold under it.

Quiet training. Doesn't feel impressive. One of the most important things you'll do all summer.

Weeks 5–6: Concentric Phase

Now every rep is explosive on the way up. Max effort. Full speed.

You've spent four weeks making the body structurally sound. Now you convert that into power. Every session you're teaching your nervous system to fire fast — and it has real tissue to fire through.

This is where training starts to feel different.

Weeks 7–8: French Contrast

Heavy lifts paired with jumps. Sprints. Speed work. Everything at once.

This works because of what came before it. The ankle prep, the slow eccentrics, the isometric holds — they built the system. French contrast turns that system into on-ice speed, right before you go back to camp.

Done right, you skate into September feeling like a different athlete.

Structure beats effort every time.

Train in this structure and you'll get results. If you want to know exactly what workouts to do, every session mapped out across all 8 weeks, the Off-Season Program is out now.

Use code "OFF20" at checkout for 20% off.

​Grab the Off-Season Program Here​

Nothing to figure out. Just hop in and do the work.

Talk soon,
Tony