Hi! My name is Laura Bowman and I play for the Penn State Women’s Ice Hockey Team. This is the first year that I will be playing as a D1 collegiate athlete!  The reason for this blog is to give my readers an insight into a hockey players mind. Giving them my perspective and thoughts about different topics involving hockey. The first topic, and the topic included in this post, is the pre-season for athletes, hockey players specifically.

Pre-season is a time that athletes are pushed to their limits. It is the perfect opportunity for us to improve our skills before executing them during the season. No true athlete takes preseason off, unless seriously injured and unable to participate, and even then they do all they can to improve around their injury.

Many people know that off-season for hockey players is during the summer. The main difference between off-season and pre-season, is that off-season you aren’t with your entire team and trainers; it is up to you to work as hard as you can to improve.

This past off-season I was lucky enough to have a teammate to condition and work out with. Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday her and I would go to a hockey training facility to lift. Every Thursday and Tuesday we would wake up at 5:30am and do our sprints before work. Once we got to school training ramped up even more! Every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday we wake up at 6am before our 8am classes to go lift at the East Area Locker Room with our trainer. Every Tuesday and Thursday we wake up at 5:30am to run sprints, push sleds, and compete in relays.  Every Saturday we are allowed to pick either conditioning or lifting. Sunday is our only day off. The conditioning and lifting during the pre-season is much harder than during the off-season because the activities themselves are much more demanding and you have your trainers and teammates watching and counting on you.

Two girls on my team right now are injured, but that doesn’t stop them from participating, and if they can’t do a training activity they do a different activity to make up for it. One girl has a sprained ankle so she is unable to run during our conditioning on Tuesdays and Thursdays. While we were doing our sprints I looked over to her in the corner and every time I saw her she was moving and training just as hard as we were even though she couldn’t sprint with us. Another girls has bad hips so she is also unable to do sprints with us in the mornings, but she hops on a stationary bike in the dome with us and is sweating just as much as we are after the work out. No one takes unnecessary time off, because if they do they will fall behind.

As you can see pre-season is a time for athletes to improve their skills greatly and push themselves to their limits. It isn’t a vacation for us, where we just sit around anticipating for the season to start. Although we are anticipating and waiting for the season to start we work our butts off to pass the time. That way when the season begins we are prepared to compete at our best.

Thanks for reading my entry about pre-season for ice hockey players!