The days of players spending the offseason lounging on a beach or eating as poorly as possible are in the rearview mirror for junior hockey. Nowadays, players are expected to have put work in over the summer, and the Brandon Wheat Kings certainly seem to have done theirs.
The Wheat Kings wrapped up their fitness testing and got a nod of approval from team athletic therapist Zach Hartwick, who said he was pleased with the shape players showed up to camp in.
“A lot of the guys work with their own personal trainers, but we have our own program we provide them with if they don’t have anybody,” he added. “A couple of times during the summer, we check in and see how everything is going. We do a little bit of testing during the summer just to make sure guys are staying on track.”
Some players packed on weight, others used the time to get quicker, and some players did a bit of both. Carter Klippenstein was one such player, who turned in the best ever performance by a Wheat King on the VersaClimber.
“It’s a vertical machine where your legs and arms are pushing and pulling,” Klippenstein explained. “We do 500 meters. It’s definitely not the easiest thing we do, I can tell you that much.”
Klippenstein almost made it look that way, however. Although he had never used the machine before, he still set an impressive new benchmark. According to Hartwick, the team views a time of 2:30 to be a solid time. Klippenstein was nearly 40 seconds ahead of that.
“We had most of our guys around the 2:15 or 2:10 mark, which was nice to see,” Hartwick said. “Klippenstein did it in 1:52.”
It was the culmination of a summer of pushing himself in the gym for the draft-eligible Klippenstein. He already had an enviable 6-foot-3 frame and used the offseason to add some weight and strength to it.
“I thought it was by far one of my best summers so far,” said Klippenstein. “I put on ten pounds pretty quickly and then focused on strength. I seemed to do pretty well in fitness testing so I guess it showed.”
The exercises in any given fitness testing session might seem only tangentially related to hockey, but there’s a reason players go through them. A strong foundation off the ice not only helps with strength and endurance on it, but keeps players from missing time as well.
“They go hand-in-hand, the weight room and the ice,” said Hartwick. “A lot of times, guys work on stuff in the offseason that keeps them strong and makes them less injury-prone during the season. They go together to keep them safe on the ice.”
The Wheat Kings wrap up their exhibition schedule this weekend in a home-and-home with the Regina Pats.
