Thanks for the responses guys!! Glad you guys can appreciate what hockey does to your body! I've asked a similar question on other forums and all I got for responses were condescending and telling me to squat 3-5x a week and to suck it up/eat more/sleep more. There isn't a cookie cutter routine or situation for everyone.
Pikehunter, if I did go with such a workout as your suggesting, what would it look like (just the gist of it)? In my opinion, my most lagging features are my chest and my shoulders. Due to the routines I was previously doing I've been mainly focusing on lower body before now. I'm actually looking very awkward atm with my upper body lagging so far behind.
Well, I am probably not qualified to recommend specific workouts, but I will share my opinions from another ectomorph. You have to understand that anyone will tell you if you 'split' your efforts, you will get so-so results. What I mean by this is that playing hockey with the genetics you've been dealt means you must be willing to sacrafice some of your muscle-gaining aspirations during your playing days. Based on your ht./wt. I would assume you have a super fast metabolism. Hockey, as I said above is brutally demanding in a cardiovascular sense. This eats up calories and reserves that you could put towards recovery from resistance workouts. Unfortunately, that means that you're muscular weight gain results will be diminished. It's just how things work.
For many years, I was frustrated by my lanky build and slow weight gain progress. It wasn't until I realized just how many extra calories I needed during the season just to try to protect the muscle I had that I began to make some progress. I ate like a horse and always made sure I had plenty of liquid carbs in my system during practice and games.
The bottom line is that when hockey slowed down for me and I ate and trained right...I put on some quality weight (no secret there). The hard part is sacraficing the body you may want for a game you love. To me, while I wish I could've been a bit more muscular in high school etc., I would never trade the wonderful experiences that hockey gave to me; fond memories with friends and competitive memories and achievements that i'll have forever. I doubt another 15lbs. would have given me that back then. I don't know how old you are, but if your between 15 and 23, do yourself a favor and SAVOR these days. They go by so quick and this is likely the only time in your life when people will truly care about your hockey. High school, travel and college competition is a true gift. Make sure you appreciate it.
For what it's worth, I utilized Mike Mentzer's Heavy Duty principles back when I was playing. While there are some definite flaws in his theories long term, I felt the brief, less frequent workouts he employs helped me to save more of my reserves for the overall workload I was incurring each week and it helped me maintain and even gain a little each season. HST is similar in it's concept not to "trash" the trainer's CNS, so just pick a small, balanced group of good upper body exercises that give the best bang for the buck and
forget thighs during the season! I can't stress this enough! Don't ignore those calves though. They can take a beating. When you're season ends (if it ever does), put those quads/hams at the front of the training line. Good luck.
