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My son is a 16 year old hockey player. He is tall, thin and wants to gain weight for hockey. What would you suggest?
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If he wants to gain weight for hockey he should set aside about three hours a week specifically for that goal. At 16 years of age it is relatively easy to gain lean muscle mass. It takes a combination of increased caloric intake and training with the right exercises. The quickest gains come from training the leg and back muscles hard and these are also important for hockey. Stick with basic multi-joint movements for gaining functional lean body weight. These are exercises where the muscles are worked as a group rather than individually. Multi joint movements for the legs would be squats, leg presses, hacks squats, lunges, etc. where the movement involves both the hip and knee joints and works the quadriceps and hamstrings together. He will not experience much of a muscle gain on a leg program that consists mainly of leg extensions and leg curls. Great movements for back would be chin-ups, lat pulldowns, cable rows, t-bar rows, etc. These exercises work the largest part of the back muscles. Do not overdue it on chest as these muscles can quickly become overdeveloped for hockey...the goal is functional muscle for your sport. The routine should also consist of a bit of arm work. These muscles are directly worked when the torso is being trained so they do not need alot of work. A great way to set this up would be train on a two day split, three days a week. This means splitting the body in half, training half on one day and the other half on the next training day. Train three days a week on non-consectutive days. Keep the workouts short, about one hour each and focus on form and getting stronger. As he gets stronger the weight gain will come in the form of functional muscle if and only if he is taking in enough quality calories. This is best acheived from 4-6 meals a day spaced equally apart. It will not matter how hard he trains...if he is burning off more calories than he is taking in he will not gain.
Try and keep this separate from any kind of hockey skill training. This can be done after or on separate days. If the main goal of the weights is an increase in functional bodyweight it takes specific training to do this. By combining the two in the same hour it would be hard to generate the intensity needed to cause the muscles to grow.
Terry Adams ISSA Certified Trainer
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