Issue 124

It's a sobering thought for any MMA aficionado to think that had things happened a little differently, UFC legend and avid Montreal Canadiens fan Georges St Pierre may have carved his sporting career on the ice instead of in the cage.

“I played hockey and practiced karate when I was young, but my family didn’t have much money,” revealed St Pierre in an interview with the Canadiens official website. “Eventually I could only focus on one sport, so karate was the choice.” 

As mixed martial arts continues to blast its way into the mainstream, the number of professional sports stars crossing over to the cage has snowballed. Now MMA is seeing a growing crop of warriors who used to ply their trades wearing skates while slinging a six-ounce chunk of black vulcanized rubber around an ice surface.

As hockey is infamous for its athletes trading blows when the heat is on, could hockey stars making their way into MMA's biggest promotions be the next big thing?

While Georges St Pierre would follow the MMA path, many hockey stars have discovered their fighting prowess in the rink. In today's hockey game, it's often the enforcers (players revered for their fighting skills) who earn legions of fans by smashing through any opponent who's dumb enough to pick a fight with them.

Naturally, these heavy-handed beasts fit well into the fight game. Perhaps one of the most prominent fighters who has made the crossover from hockey to MMA is former St-Jean Chiefs enforcer Steve 'The Boss' Bosse. The 225lb war machine became one of the most feared men in the North American Hockey League, boasting a ruthless 927 penalty minutes in 129 games. And the heavyweight brawler has proven to be equally as ruthless inside the cage, racking up seven (T)KOs in just nine fights in various Canadian MMA promotions. 

It isn't just minor league players who have swapped their blades for a pair of four-ounce gloves. In May 2007, former NFL right winger Jeremy Yablonski knocked his opponent out in 19 seconds of the first round fighting under the Canadian promotion Extreme Fight Series (XFS). While his next appearance for the promotion saw him knock his opponent out in just 17 seconds of the opener.

Having good experience of brawling on the ice then clearly provides a reasonable ground base for going into MMA, but more and more hockey players are now keen to use MMA training to improve their hockey game. 

Sought after strength and conditioning coach, Jonathan Chaimberg, works with a brace of elite fighters from various sports backgrounds at the Adrenaline Performance Center in Montreal, Canada – ice hockey’s home nation. Perhaps more accustomed to the likes of GSP walking through the gym’s doors ready to fine tune their bodies for combat, Chaimberg is now seeing a growing number of hockey-playing clients wishing to adopt MMA in their training regime.

“The MMA guys have a huge effect on the hockey guys. The hockey players I train love training with them. It motivates them a lot,” Chaimberg says. Although he admits that MMA-centric training isn’t for all of his stick-toting customers, the players he has introduced to training circuits similar to the ones he’s developed for fighters from Team Jackson, Team Zahabi and beyond have embraced the different techniques and exercises. 

While MMA's grueling strength and conditioning demands may be a step-up from what many hockey players are used to, it is for this reason that it benefits so many players says Chaimberg, whose father was a professional hockey player. “In hockey, the work-to-rest ratio is always going to be positive. They never work more than they rest,” he says. “They do short bursts of intense activity followed by a few minutes of rest.

In MMA, like in most combat sports, it’s the opposite. Their work to rest ratio always ends up being negative because they work for five minutes and rest for one.” 

Chaimberg believes although his fighters typically outshine the hockey players in the gym when it comes to straight circuit training, the variance in training volume helps the latter by shocking their systems and taking them out of their comfort zones, and in effect, pushing them through fitness plateaus. 

“The guys I get work hard for me, but because of the differences in work-capacity demands of each sport, they typically don’t work as hard for as long of a duration as the fighters I train. They work a bit more aerobically, so they can work well into the two to five minute range, which is kind of strange since their shifts are usually only a minute, tops. They can go sort of at a medium pace for a longer period of time.

"With MMA guys, they have such a high volume of conditioning from doing things like sparring, wrestling, pad work and jiu-jitsu, they’re getting so much conditioning, hockey players can’t keep up with the pace they go at,” explains Chaimberg. 

He continues, “If it’s a pure one-workout phase where they’re doing things like weights together, the hockey guys can keep up but it depends on the athlete. I train a former NHL player named PJ Stock who doesn’t play anymore, but he had an unbelievable work ethic throughout his career. When he first came to the gym, you would think he would be a very poor athlete, but he is one of the best performers there.

Taking, obviously, power numbers out of the equation, just in pure endurance and strength in the legs he’s a beast compared even to some of the good MMA guys.

He’s one of the best guys I would have on a conditioning or circuit routine, which is amazing.”

Chicago-based former hockey player Matt Kristufek is a current MMA fighter and a certified personal trainer. He shares Chaimberg’s view that MMA is a level up from hockey in terms of strength and conditioning. Since turning his focus to MMA training he has noticed a shift in his endurance levels, but explains that he plans to reverse-engineer some of the aspects of the programs he has developed for his hockey players to re-introduce some of the techniques he utilized in his previous athletic career to his own personal training regime.

“It’s funny to see how adaptive different kinds of training techniques are. I notice that my endurance ratio has really changed since I stopped playing hockey and training for it,” says Kristufek.

I used to get a second wind in the middle of a round, when a lot of other guys would fade. I think I got that from hockey – just from being able to keep that long endurance going and still come up with some explosiveness when needed.

I’ve been away from hockey a little too much, but I’m kind of going back to training the way I used to when I was still playing. I’m using it the other way now,” Kristufek says. 

“One thing I got away from doing was a lot of basic muscle-group exercises. I do a lot of full-body workouts training for MMA and a lot of circuit training where I use a lot of full-body movements and I got away from just focusing on specific muscle groups for every day. I noticed a little bit of weakness in my game, so I’m going to try to go back to my old routines I did when I was playing hockey and switch it up a bit.”

With both sports effectively lending their training to one another, could we see hockey stars hitting the big leagues in MMA? While promotions such as the UFC and Strikeforce have yet to play host to major-league hockey stars, Chaimberg believes it could happen in the future.

“At the moment, there aren't any guys who've competed in both sports from a young age. Maybe eventually we’ll see that, but not for a few years,” he says. “Also, the off-season doesn’t really afford hockey players the time to train in MMA. Even if they wanted to fight after they make it to the pro level in hockey they’re still doing their strength and conditioning and their land training through the summer.”

While a future of former NHL stars entering the UFC may not be imminent, the symbiotic relationship that allows athletes from both sports to improve their game is sure to spur more and more crossovers.

Yet with hockey playing host to a range of characters that are tanked-up on macho bravado, there will be those who believe the transition to MMA will be an easy one.

Chaimberg says as long as his prospective hockey-playing customers want to accept the help he can provide them, and are willing to check their attitudes at the door, the potential for improvement is limited only by their hard work and natural athletic ability.

However, on the rare occasion that he gets players who think they are wasting their time training at his facility, he says he has a solution that quickly and effectively adjusts their attitudes.

“Normally I’ll give them an easier workout their first time in the gym after I assess them. If I see that they want to improve and they are humble, I’ll give them exactly what they want and need to do without pushing them over the line. Sometimes when a guy comes in with an attitude – some of the younger guys whose agents tell me to go hard on them and break them in – we have to adjust their attitudes a bit and break their spirit to get them in line.

"I’ll pair them with someone who will outwork them and they’ll be on the floor in minutes from trying to keep up. It’s funny to see how shocked they are when I put them up against a female wrestler or a young kid and have them try to keep up and they get blown away,” he recalls with a smile. 

“Some of the guys I’ve gotten are hotshots who are stars wherever they go. If you break them down mentally right away by making them push sled and make them throw up, it puts them in line so you can get serious. Some come from environments where they think they can do anything. They come in like, ‘You can’t break me. I can do anything these guys can do.’ No matter how good of shape you’re in, as soon as the lactic acid levels in your body get to a certain level, you’re going to get sick. Your body’s natural reaction is to try to get it out by any means possible.

"Some guys can push through the symptoms like headaches or nausea, but it makes some guys run for the bathroom or forces them to throw up uncontrollably. We have buckets all over the gym for that very reason.”

MMA VS ICE HOCKEY

If you were to pit an MMA athlete against a hockey player it'd be fair to say that the one who (officially) fights for a living would come out on top. But what if the hockey player weighed 80lb heavier than the MMA fighter? In 2010, UFC welterweight champion Georges St Pierre went some way in answering this question when he took on 270lb monster and former Montreal Canadiens enforcer Georges Laraque in a wrestling match.

"The problem is Georges [Laraque] believes I am like a tomato you can grab at the supermarket and you can lift it and do what you want," said St Pierre. "He's going to find out that it's not that easy." 

While Laraque, then 33, believed his huge weight advantage would offset St-Pierre's strength in wrestling despite no collegiate wrestling experience, St Pierre proved why he is considered one of the best wrestlers in MMA.

In a five-minute round St Pierre tossed Laraque around like a rag doll, power slamming him to the floor, much to the amusement of his friends sitting cage side. 

A deflated Laraque had this to say following the fight: “Even the worst UFC fighter that there is would beat me because of their training. It’s so much harder than anything I’ve ever seen. I’m a fighter, so I know how hard they work and I know how hard it is to go against someone.”

HOW MMA HELPS ICE HOCKEY

While most of us wouldn’t associate the sport of ice hockey with mixed martial arts, renowned Montreal, Quebec-based strength and conditioning coach Jonathan Chaimberg has been able to effectively integrate many of the practical facets of MMA training he uses to condition fighters into the regimes he has individually crafted for the pro-level puck handlers he trains.

Chaimberg, who is responsible for helping maximize the physical performance potential of a laundry list of top MMA fighters – most notably UFC welterweight champion Georges St Pierre – says the key is identifying and tailoring the routines to suit the player’s specific performance needs and weaknesses.

“Hockey players’ legs are normally their main source of strength and power – not with my guys, but with your typical hockey player. When I get them, they’re usually very strong when it comes to leg strength, but their upper bodies, especially when it comes to pulling exercises, are typically pretty weak, so we try to fix that,” Chaimberg explains.

“MMA guys are generally more well rounded when it comes to overall power, strength and conditioning. I find that hockey players tend to lack the pure power that my MMA guys have.” 

Jonathan Chaimberg, a former national-level wrestler-turned-trainer, is known to employ a wide range of cutting-edge techniques and exercises including weighted sled pushing and dynamic hurdle and box jumps to utilize muscle confusion and ensure that his clients’ bodies don’t plateau.

However, sometimes Chaimberg says one of the best way to finish up a circuit is to go old school and have his hockey players put on a pair of five-ounce gloves and bang out several reps.

“I like putting gloves on them and having them do ground 'n' pound tabatas (an interval-training cycle of 20 seconds followed by a ten-second rest) on a heavy bag on the floor or on a hanging heavy bag. Upper body-wise, they don’t usually use a lot of work capacity, so I like to start working on that early on.”

Besides employing a MMA-specific circuits like focus-pad training and bag drills, Chaimberg relies on a number of traditional exercises which he has prescribed his fighters over the years to help sure up his hockey players’ deficiencies as well. 

“When Georges first came to me after his loss to Matt Serra, I was blown away by the fact that a guy who was the world champion was as weak as he was in many of the exercises I had him do like chin-ups and bench press.

It was because he didn’t focus on improving his strength in those areas, which is what we did right from the first day we worked with him. It was amazing how quickly he progressed,” Chaimberg recalls.

“It’s the same with the hockey guys I train. They are typically very weak when it comes to pulling, so I have them work at improving their strength in that area by doing exercises like chin-ups and inverted rows.

We want them to develop better power and we try to fix any of the imbalances they have.”

Matt Kristufek, a former standout player whose NHL aspirations were quashed by the 04’ lockout which saw displaced pros bump guys like him from their respective minor-league rosters, turned to MMA training originally for its fitness benefits.

Eventually, the desire to compete again prompted him to trade in his hockey gloves for MMA mitts. Now 2-0 as a professional fighter, Kristufek who is former UFC heavyweight champion Andrei Arlovski’s main training partner in Chicago, also happens to know a thing or two about strength and conditioning.

A certified personal trainer who also teaches MMA classes, his client list, like Chaimberg’s, includes an equal mix of fighters and hockey players. Kristufek says that his experience of making the transition from the ice to the cage has given him a unique understanding of the training needs of both athletes and has helped him come up with training programs blending some of the same techniques with some sports-specific exercises for each. 

“One of the things I noticed when I started myself, and the hockey players I train can attest to this as well, is I noticed there were muscles I didn’t even know I had. 

Looking back, I can’t even point them out, because it was just everything – my whole body was a different kind of sore. MMA requires a different kind of cardio and I was very well trained in hockey. 

I had some of the best trainers you could get and they put me through all sorts of things most hockey players wouldn’t go through, so I had a little advantage there, going into it,” recalls Kristufek.

“I really believe that the full-body training is very similar in the two sports, compared with other sports. I’ve been doing circuit training, nervous system training since I was ten years old for hockey and it’s very similar to what BJ Penn started a couple years back. In both sports you have to train for endurance, flexibility, strength, all at the same time. 

You have to be explosive, but in other sports, you either depend on a lot more endurance, or a lot more power, but not the mixture that hockey and MMA have.”