Herb Brooks' former players suffer from insomnia in their middle age, brought on by the torture of on-ice conditioning drills, called "Herbies."

"It was hell," recalls Bill Baker.  "(But) our teams were the best-conditioned in the country, without question.  I will never forget his practices.  I can remember falling down those stairs to the locker room afterwards, because my legs could no longer stand."

"Our big joke was that we would get out of shape on the weekends, because we had games instead of practices."

Twenty-five years after his last bout of "Herbies," Reed Larson remembers the feeling as if it were yesterday, "It just came down to hard work with that guy.  Actually, he worked us harder when we were playing well, and backed off when we weren't.   We would sweep a series and he'd skate us to death on Monday and Tuesday."

Of course, Brooks' legendary conditioning regimen accomplished much more than physiological conditioning.  A unique mental toughness was developed after months of endless skating drills. Baker puts it this way, "We knew no one was going to out-skate us in the third period.   That's for sure."

Because Brooks played ten years of international competition and coached against the superbly conditioned Russian teams, there was a knowledge built more from gut feelings than from books.  "If you aren't in shape, gentlemen," Brooks warned his troops in the middle of a two-hour skate, "you can't compete with the Soviets.  No bleeping way."

Like every great coach, Herbie made many decisions by feel - - from his gut instincts.  "You can't condition your team on a bike," he would say. "Cardiac!" (he always prefaced his important points this way at 6 am, just to make sure I wasn't sleeping on the other end of the phone line).  "This is not a track meet, and you don't get in 'hockey-shape' by running.  I don't care how far you run."

The interesting thing is how accurately his gut instincts reflected the scientific research.  Several investigators have verified that hockey conditioning can't be done - - at least it can't be done exclusively - - on a bike or on the track.  Howard Green and co-workers from the University of Waterloo, Canada, demonstrated this with an ingenious battery of tests for aerobic fitness before and after a college season.

Note: College hockey players were divided into two groups.  One group (the controls) simply did the usual format of practices and games, while another group supplemented practices with three 45-minute workouts on a bike each week.  Before and after the season, both groups performed two tests on a bicycle and two skating-endurance tests with Douglas bags on their backs to collect expired gas.   Heart rates were monitored with telemetry and respiratory parameters were evaluated from the contents of the Douglas bags (Daub. et.al. 1983.  Specificity of physiologic adaptations resulting from ice hockey training. Med.Sci.Sports).

Two years before these tests, Dr. Green had recommended that aerobic bicycle workouts be added two or three times per week, because he and many other investigators had found that fitness levels were not maintained from regular-season hockey practices and games.

In this 1983 study, however, they showed that bicycle workouts had no cardiovascular or respiratory benefit when measured on the ice - - only a slight benefit when measured during a bicycle test.

Amazing.  An entire college season supplemented with three rigorous 45-minute workouts per week at 70% of maximum.  That's a lot of extra work, and yet there was no endurance benefit while skating.

The group which rode bikes for the season, however, did show small cardiovascular improvements when tested on a bike, while those who did not ride during the season showed none.  This is an example of training specificity; that is, the more your training simulates the actual sport, the greater chance it will transfer to the sport.

Brooks was right. "You can't get in shape for hockey on a bike."

Does that mean there is no reason to run or bike?  Actually there are plenty of benefits to running and bicycling for cardiovascular fitness - - if the same results cannot be attained on the ice. Consider the two extremes of the age spectrum.

For older NHL'ers the season is long, travel is brutal, injuries take a tremendous toll, and stress of competition causes total burnout in seven months.   In the summer, these players need to cross-train.  That is, they should get away from hockey, toss their skates in the closet, and maintain cardiovascular fitness by biking, jogging, swimming, or anything but skating.

Younger players, however, need to skate by the hour much of the off-season, because skating improvement is critical to their development.  For them, cardiovascular fitness can be improved by using appropriate intervals on the ice.

For in-season conditioning, speed and endurance are best developed on-ice.   However, there is an important qualification for young players whose skating skill is in the formative stages.

Youngsters should never skate "Herbies."  Never.

Skating the lines (and back to the original goal line each time) takes about 40-50 seconds.   Lactic acid builds up halfway through a "Herbie" and this interferes with good mechanics.  Muscles simply do not function well once the acid is present in large quantities, and skating beyond this point of fatigue forms a relatively permanent bad habit.

When we push kids through tough skating drills, in which the work:rest ratio is poorly planned, we are inadvertently teaching poor skating mechanics.

With college or Olympic players, skating mechanics are so ingrained at a younger age, that doing "Herbies" for an hour might not adversely effect their skill.  However, it is not a good way to increase speed at any age, and Brooks made sure the majority of practice time was spent at high tempo with quality repetitions.

This is what is meant by "HOCKEY ENDURANCE."