What is the difference between internal load and external load?

External load is the physical work an athlete performs, such as movement load, meters skated and accelerations, measured with GPS or positioning systems. Internal load is the body’s physiological response to that work, measured with heart rate and TRIMP values. Both are needed because two players can complete the same external work with very different internal responses. At Tappara, Marko Haverinen’s staff monitors both to understand how each player is actually coping with training and games.

How can you monitor aerobic endurance during the hockey season without VO2max testing?

Maximal VO2max tests are too demanding to repeat during a busy game schedule. Tappara instead runs a submaximal fitness test every 4 to 6 weeks as part of the warm-up, taking only a few minutes. Heart rate during the submaximal test correlates with VO2max and with high-intensity skating efforts in games, which makes it a reliable way to track aerobic fitness in-season. The same test is used in return-to-play protocols after injury.

How does a heart rate based return-to-play protocol work in ice hockey?

After injury or illness, the player repeats the submaximal fitness test to assess aerobic capacity and readiness. Training load is then increased progressively, first off-ice, then on-ice individually, then in team sessions, until the player approaches pre-injury baselines. Because actual game demands are higher than training, Tappara ramps up the load carefully with continuous heart rate feedback before clearing the player to play.

What are the most useful metrics for hockey coaches and athletes to track?

Start simple. When Tappara began monitoring, the staff focused on just two metrics: TRIMP for training volume and TRIMP per minute for intensity. External load, movement load and heart rate recovery were added later as coaches became comfortable with the data. Firstbeat Sports also provides reference values from typical professional ice hockey data, so a player’s numbers can be compared to benchmarks instantly.

How do you make sure training intensity matches or exceeds game demands?

The principle at Tappara is “train harder than you play”. By tagging and analyzing drills, the staff has built a bank of exercises with known internal and external load, which makes it possible to select drills that match or exceed game intensity. Both average game demand and worst-case peak periods are tracked, with special attention to playoff demands, which are higher than the regular season.

How should training load be distributed across a week with three games?

Tappara uses a polarized approach. Games and hard on-ice sessions are the biggest metabolic load days of the week. In a three-game week, the days between games are kept light and used for recovery work and short, intensive sessions, and there is less time for team training, so the emphasis shifts to recovery and individual adjustments. This keeps players from becoming chronically overloaded and lets them peak at the right time.

Recorded Webinar – Recorded on 27 Aug 2026

Managing Individual Responses in Elite Ice Hockey

Marko Haverinen, head of performance at Tappara, shows how the Finnish club reads heart rate and movement data player by player to plan the week, bring players back from injury and correct load during the season.

About this webinar

Marko Haverinen is head of performance at Tappara in Tampere and works in the Tappara Performance Hub, which the club set up in May 2025. Tappara has used Firstbeat since 2016. Haverinen shows reports from the men’s team and the club’s U18 and U20 teams: daily training impulse (TRIMP) bars, acute load against an acute:chronic band, game load by period and drill-level practice data. He covers in-season fitness testing, return to play after surgery, reading internal and external load together and which few numbers to give coaches and players. The session runs about 66 minutes and was recorded on 27 Aug 2026.

What you will learn

How a single-load submaximal test, 4 minutes on the bike at 250 W or running at 12 km/h, tracks aerobic fitness every 4–6 weeks without a maximal test
What the four combinations of TRIMP and movement load mean when a player is compared with his own game day -2 baseline
How a weekly acute load of around 1,400 TRIMP became the return-to-play target for a player coming back from surgery
Why two forwards with the same movement load in a seven-period playoff game ended at 650 and 400 TRIMP
Why Tappara started with only TRIMP and TRIMP/min in year one, added movement load in year two and heart rate recovery in year three

Practical examples from the recording

1. A submaximal test inside the warm-up. Tappara used to run 3×3 minutes on the bike and running with lactate samples, which Haverinen found too heavy for the season. The plan now is one load: 4 minutes on the bike at 250 W, or running at 12 km/h, each with 1 minute of recovery. The heart rate response has to reach 70–90% of HRmax to be useful. The test runs every 4–6 weeks as part of the normal warm-up. With 2–3 games a week a maximal test is not realistic, and the response shows both recovery state and aerobic fitness.

2. Return to play after surgery. A player tested well in October against his preseason baseline, got injured in mid-November and needed surgery, then had 2 weeks with no sweating allowed. After a week off-ice and individual on-ice work, he joined team practice after the Christmas break. The target was his regular-season acute load of around 1,400 TRIMP per week and his own game day -2 and -1 values. He almost reached the baseline before returning in early January. His first game still cost more than his pre-injury game baseline; the submaximal test after it was back at his earlier level.

3. TRIMP and movement load on game day -2. For one player, a typical game day -2 practice gives 80 TRIMP and a movement load of 80. When he logged 60 TRIMP or lower with a higher movement load, Haverinen read it as high output at low cost: well recovered and adapted. Over 100 TRIMP with a lower movement load was low output at high cost, which led to a talk with the player and coaches about acute fatigue or longer-term maladaptation. Both values low can mean extra skating after team ice; both high is a reason to cut load, unless it was planned.

4. Two corrections in one season. In September, internal load in practice started to drop while the team was winning. Staff raised the load from October, and game day -2 TRIMP and movement load both rose through December. The team lost games after the change, but Haverinen saw a falling load as the wrong direction. In February, acute load climbed and fatigue was building, so they cut training load on purpose. They won the game after that easy week. Haverinen says neither change was a reaction to results.

Questions answered in the Q&A

Should hockey practice target average game intensity or worst-case demands? Both. Tappara’s rule is to train harder than they play. Tagged drills are compared with the regular-season game average to build a bank of drills that match game load, with the much higher playoff values in mind.

How polarized should the week be with three games? Clearly polarized. With games on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, the days in between are easy: recovery, aerobic work and mobility. On-ice sessions on those days can be intense but stay short.

Should sessions be tagged relative to game day? Yes. Tappara tags game day -2, game day -1 and game day +1 sessions to know what a normal practice on each day costs compared with a game.

How do you individualize load with a full roster? Team practice on ice is managed at team level. After it, some players skate more, some recover and others do skill work, so load is added or taken off player by player.

What changes when the schedule goes from one or two games a week to three? There is less time to train and recovery matters more. Haverinen expects more individualization, and staff have to choose carefully where to train hard and where to recover.

Who this webinar is for

Heads of performance, sports scientists and strength and conditioning coaches at professional ice hockey clubs who monitor load daily, and head coaches and return-to-play staff who turn those numbers into weekly plans and return decisions.

Speakers

Marko Haverinen Head of Performance at Tappara

Marko Haverinen is the Head of Performance at Tappara ice hockey club. Marko studied Sports Science at the University of Jyväskylä in Finland, and has also worked at the Pajulahti Sports Institute, a High-Performance Training Center.

Joel Wenning Customer Success Manager, Firstbeat

Joel Wenning is a Customer Success Manager at Firstbeat. He is a certified exercise physiologist, and one of our most experienced CSMs at Firstbeat, having supported elite and professional sport organisations from the top leagues like NHL, NFL, NBA, MLS and PL for 4 years now. He works with clients across the globe, helping teams translate physiological training-load data into practical decisions.