Building Robust Athletes – Strategies for Long-Term Player Development

Marko Haverinen, strength and conditioning coach at Tappara, compares game and training load across the club’s men’s, U20 and U18 teams to show how to build a data-driven player pathway, for performance staff in professional and junior ice hockey.

About this webinar

Marko Haverinen is strength and conditioning coach at Tappara, the Finnish champions for the third year in a row, and director of the testing lab at the Varala Sports Institute’s high-performance training centre. His PhD at the University of Jyväskylä studies how training load, physical qualities and injuries interact in elite ice hockey players. He shows how Tappara uses heart rate data every day, then walks through a season of data from its men’s, U20 and U18 teams: game load and intensity by period, heart rate recovery, weekly training load and individual season totals. The Q&A covers playoffs, back-to-back games and the metrics he will add next. The session runs 74 minutes and was recorded on 8 May 2024.

What you will learn

How game training impulse (TRIMP) was 12% lower in U20 and 14% lower in U18 than in the men’s team
Why the gap to the men widens from 5-second to 45-second peak movement intensity, pointing to anaerobic capacity
How juniors trained more than the men while facing lower game demands
How Tappara orders speed, 15–20 second intervals and 30–45 second intervals across the off-season and preseason
Which five metrics Haverinen recommends for ice hockey, including 30-second heart rate recovery

Practical examples from the recording

1. Data in the daily routine. Players put the strap on when they arrive and wear it through off-ice and on-ice training. Staff split sessions into drills and games into periods, and add manual entries for players who missed a recording. The data is reviewed with the coaching staff every morning and afternoon, and Haverinen meets each player weekly to discuss stress and recovery. He credits those weekly talks for player buy-in. Coaches on the ice follow live load against each session’s goal.

2. Game demands by age group. The analysis covered 15,000 measurements from 31 July to 10 March, including about 6,000 game periods, using each team’s top 10th percentile. TRIMP rose from the first to the third period while movement load fell, which Haverinen reads as accumulating fatigue. Heart rate recovery over 30 seconds was higher in the men’s team and held up through all three periods; in U20 and U18 it dropped in the second and third. He links this to the men’s higher aerobic and anaerobic capacity.

3. Peak intensity shapes the off-season. In 5–10 second windows, juniors’ peak movement intensity was close to the men’s, but the gap grew towards 30–45 seconds, the length of a shift. On the 10 × 20 m skating test, U20 and U18 were about 5% and 7% slower than the men. Last season Tappara prioritized speed, power and maximum strength in May and June, added 15–20 second intervals later in the off-season and introduced 30–45 second intervals only in preseason.

4. Juniors train more than the men. Weekly TRIMP and movement load were higher in U20 and U18 than in the men’s team. Juniors do most off-ice conditioning running, while about half of the men use bikes. In a typical February week the men had hard days Monday and Tuesday, an easy Wednesday and built to Friday and Saturday games, while juniors’ hardest training days exceeded their games. U18 players trained as a group; U20 and men’s training was individualized. Haverinen concludes that junior loads must rise progressively to meet men’s game demands.

Questions answered in the Q&A

Do game and training loads change through the season?
Yes. TRIMP was high at the start of preseason, when players came straight into high-intensity team training, then decreased for the same work as they adapted. In the playoffs, game loads were higher than in the regular season.

How did Tappara average 2 points in back-to-back games?
Haverinen can’t say for sure. Other teams averaged 1–1.5 points. Differences in periodization and the rhythm of game day minus 1 to minus 4 may play a part, but many factors decide results, not only strength and conditioning.

Which heart rate metrics should an ice hockey team start with?
TRIMP for internal volume and TRIMP per minute for intensity, then acute load, chronic load and acute to chronic workload ratio. Those were Tappara’s five main numbers. Next season he plans to add movement load, 30-second peak movement intensity and heart rate recovery.

Which matters more: off-ice tests, on-ice tests or game data?
All three, says Haverinen, but if he had to pick one it would be game data. Off-ice tests show general capacity and on-ice tests game-specific qualities, but game data shows how those translate into play.

Who this webinar is for

Strength and conditioning coaches, sports scientists and heads of performance in professional and junior ice hockey, plus head coaches and academy directors planning how training load should progress from U18 to the men’s team.