How to use Firstbeat data to guide ice hockey training, from live monitoring to post-session analysis

Three decisions from one practice: what the live view tells you during the skate, who needs a top-up afterwards, and whether the team is still getting fitter in season. 

Free 30-minute online session. Thursday, November 26, 2026, 12:00 GMT | 13:00 CET | 14:00 EET. 

An in-season practice in ice hockey is 30–45 minutes long, the next game is two days away, and not everyone on the ice played last night. The questions the staff has to answer are the same every week: how is each player responding to the skate, who left the ice without the stimulus they needed, and is the conditioning holding up behind three games a week. In this session Joel Wenning, Customer Success Manager at Firstbeat Sports, works through one practice day in the Firstbeat Sports Coach App and Cloud and shows where each of those answers sits. 

What we will cover:

1. During the skate: how is each player responding? Joel shows how the live view in the Coach App tells you, while the drill is running, whether a player is working harder or easier than usual. The comparison is the player’s own history for the same type of practice. If you are new to Firstbeat, or still deciding, the Reference Values view compares each player with Firstbeat’s men’s or women’s ice hockey ranges for the same session type, so you can see what the first weeks would give you before any history exists.

2. After the whistle: who got the stimulus, who needs a top-up? The practice report sorts the roster, and most days it sorts in the same order. Joel shows how to read it in under a minute: who sits where they usually sit, who has moved, and what the two players who did not play last night need before the next game. We will look at the same 45-minute practice for two players, one with high TRIMP and low Movement Load and one the reverse, and what each of them does next.

3. Fitness in season: is the team still getting fitter, or just getting through? With games three times a week there is no room for a maximal test. Joel shows how a four-minute Submaximal Fitness Test inside the warm-up tracks Peak %HRmax and Heart Rate Recovery against each player’s own baseline, where it fits in a Liiga, SHL or NHL week, and how much change is a real change rather than noise. 

After this session you will know how to see during practice who is responding as expected and who is not, how to find the players who need a top-up from the practice report and size that top-up, and how to run the SMFT in season and read the trend. 

Who this session is for 

Strength and conditioning coaches, sports scientists and heads of performance in ice hockey who are weighing up whether physiological data would change how they run the week: what it would show them that minutes and external load do not, what it asks of the staff day to day, and what the first weeks look like before any player history exists. Staffs who already use Firstbeat Sports are welcome too and will get a closer look at the views they use least. Head coaches and return-to-play staff are also welcome: scenario 2 is the healthy-scratch and return-to-play question as well. 

Bring your questions 

The session is a live demonstration in the Firstbeat Sports demo account (a fictional roster built on real-world scenarios), followed by Q&A with Joel.

Can’t make the time? Register anyway and we will send you the recording. 

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