The expert throughout is Glenn Turner, a former Australian international who now owns a gym and coaches at club and academy level.
Ask most coaches what a tired player looks like and they'll picture someone bent over the fence, hands on knees, cooked. Glenn Turner says that's the wrong thing to watch for. "What I see as a coach is you didn't make that extra step to make the chop on your forestick, or you meant to pass it to someone and you missed by a meter because you're starting to fatigue." Poor conditioning shows up in the skill errors long before anyone's gasping on the sideline.
Glenn's argument in this masterclass is refreshingly blunt. We make hockey conditioning far harder than it needs to be.
"I think it's a lot simpler than it can be made out to be... I think we overcomplicate things through the strength and conditioning world."
What follows isn't a plan to copy. It's a way of thinking about the physical side that any coach can adapt, whatever the level and however little kit they've got.
TL;DR:
Glenn reckons most hockey conditioning is overcomplicated. Train the aerobic engine first, because hockey is a running game. Get movement right with simple bodyweight work before you go anywhere near a heavy bar. And make it consistent rather than heroic, because a little done every week beats the occasional brutal session. Three ideas below.
The full session, Hockey Conditioning Made Simple with Glenn Turner, is on The Hockey Site.
Hockey is a running game, so train the engine
Glenn keeps coming back to one point that's easy to forget once the gym looks impressive. "Hockey is an aerobic game. Like first and foremost it's an aerobic game, you have to be able to run, and that's for me a lot more important than how strong you are at your five-rep-max squat or bench press."
There's a reason that matters beyond just lasting the game. When a player runs with their heart rate pinned in zone four or five, the skills fall apart. "You get the ball and you mistrap it," as Glenn puts it. The fitter the player, the lower their heart rate while they play, and the more of their skill they can actually use. Aerobic fitness isn't the boring bit you get through so you can play. It's what lets the hockey happen.
The trap he sees everywhere is dressing all your fitness up as small-sided games and shuttles. It feels like conditioning, and it's more fun than running, so it's tempting. But his warning is worth sitting with: "You can get away with hiding somewhere and doing something. But if you're just running, you can't hide." Games hide effort. Honest running exposes it, and builds a base games can't.
What most club sides are missing is easy running: slow, steady, zone-two, at a pace you could hold a conversation at. It builds the engine and, counter-intuitively, helps players recover so the next hard session is better. For a side you only see once or twice a week, Glenn turns that into a standing "homework" run and takes the fear out of it: "This week it's a 3k run. I don't care about your time." No times logged, nothing to dread, just done, and often shared in a group chat so it builds its own momentum.
Movement before muscle
This is the line that'll stick with you.
"If you can't do 50 body weight reps at a good depth, then in my opinion you probably shouldn't be progressing to the next stage anyway. Because 50 body weight reps at a good depth is way more beneficial for your hockey than three big reps of squats."
Glenn isn't against strength. He's against rushing to load a body that can't yet move well under its own weight. He's honest that he learned this the hard way, with hip and back problems of his own, and he's watched it end careers: "I've seen too many injuries in hockey, ruining careers as well, by programs that [are] designed for different things. Not designed to run around a hockey field for 60 or 70 minutes."
There's a nice bit of logic in why he wants depth on squats and lunges. Train the full range slowly and deliberately, and when a player throws out a long lunge to make a tackle in a game, they aren't suddenly loading a range they've never prepared. You did that work already, calmly, before it mattered. And none of it needs a gym or an S&C coach:
bodyweight squats, lunges, push-ups, planks, and where you've got them, bands for a bit of resistance without the total load. So before you add any load, quietly audit movement. Can your players squat to depth, hold a proper plank, do a clean push-up and lunge? Build that base first; it's the cheapest injury prevention you'll run.
Consistency, and recovery as part of it
If there's one phrase to take from the session it's this: "Consistency beats perfection." A little, done reliably, changes players; the odd heroic session doesn't. Glenn's way in is almost too simple. Get players to turn up ten minutes early and do a short bodyweight block before they touch the pitch: "Two minutes push-ups, two minutes squats, two minutes lunges, maybe shoulder push-ups or plank." Keep it light and a bit social. On its own a single week does nothing; repeated across a season, it quietly rebuilds a team.
The other half of consistency is recovery, and it's where Glenn is sharpest. He describes the Dutch habit of two sessions a day where the "easy" one quietly turns into deflected corners and a mini-game, and nobody actually recovers. "You need to work hard and you need to recover hard." Rest, for him, is a session in its own right. If players are stacking club and rep hockey, or coming off a tournament, that's the moment to pull intensity down, not push it up, so pick one day and protect it. And the payoff isn't only physical: teams that can feel themselves getting fitter, he says, "are walking, their shoulders back, they're feeling good, and they're hard to beat."
Take it to your next session
Add a ten-minute bodyweight block before training. Same handful of movements every time: squats, lunges, push-ups, a plank. Light, repeatable, a bit of fun.
Set one easy homework run a week. Twenty to thirty minutes at talking pace, no times recorded, just done. A shared thread keeps everyone honest.
Pick one day and protect it as recovery. Walking, stretching, or nothing at all. Treat rest as part of the plan, not a gap in it.
Watch the full masterclass
The article above is the whole idea, yours to use. If you want to see how Glenn actually runs it, the full session goes further: how he builds his warm-ups, how he tests and progresses players without it feeling like punishment, and how he manages load across a long season. The first 12 to 15 minutes are free for everyone, so you can have a look before deciding.
The full video sits inside a Coach subscription, 99,99 euro for the year, or 9,99 euro a month if you'd rather start smaller. Pre-season is when this stuff actually matters, so if you're building your physical base for next season, it's a good place to start.
Watch Hockey Conditioning Made Simple in full here:
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Ernst Baart
