Today’s Colin Timberlake Training Inspiration is a man who has followed in the footsteps of NHL greats such as Craig Ludwig and become a specialist in one of the most painful and dangerous jobs in professional hockey: elite shot blocker.

Ryan Johnson presently excels in one of the least glamorous jobs in the NHL, defensive forward. It is a job that doesn’t bring in scoring titles or high-paying product endorsements, but it is essential to team success and Johnson has become one of the league’s top defensive specialists.

He has also shown remarkable durability and pain tolerance, as last season he played for over six weeks with a broken foot, and also played games with a broken finger (which required surgery at the end of the season).

As of this writing, Johnson has played in 12 season and over 600 games (and counting), with his solid fundamentals and work ethic ensuring that he will add significantly to these totals.

Notably, this past summer, Johnson ran the Duluth Marathon in under four hours, an excellent performance, and he participated in this endeavour to raise money for cancer research after recently losing his father to the disease.

TODAY: TBD (Fast Tempo, 90 Second Rests)
and CARDIO

TBD

TRAINING NOTES

Total Sets (TBD): TBD

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©2010 colintimberlake.com. All Rights Reserved.

Today’s Colin Timberlake Training Inspiration is a man who passed the impressive ironman streaks of Trevor Linden and Don Lever to set the Vancouver Canucks team record for consecutive games played.

Brendan Morrison played in 542 consecutive games after joining the team, not only setting a club record, but becoming the NHL’s active ironman in the process. When his streal ended, his 542 straight appearances marked the 11th longest stretch in NHL history.

Morrison has, at the time of this writing, played in over 700 games during 12 seasons, during which he has scored over 500 points. The majority of his career has been spent with Vancouver, where he became recognized as one of the best players in team history before signing with Anaheim in 2008.

During the course of his streak, Morrison showed a virtually unmatched ability to play through pain, often requiring extensive treatment in the offseason.

On one occasion, he left the ice after being injured and losing teeth, only to return and contribute to the overtime goal that won the game.

Morrison has also played for Team Canada in three World Championships, winning gold in 2004 and silver in 2005.

TODAY: TBD (Fast Tempo, 90 Second Rests)
and CARDIO

TBD

TRAINING NOTES

Total Sets (TBD): TBD

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Today’s Colin Timberlake Training Inspiration is a man who was, during a long stretch of losing seasons, one of the few bright spots for a Vancouver Canucks team that endured two decades of futility in the 1970s and 1980s.

In his first full season with the team, Tony Tanti set a club record with 45 goals in a single season. As it turned out, this was one of five straight seasons with 39 goals or more for the Canucks, and he quickly became one of the team’s career scoring leaders.

Tanti was the epitome of consistency in Canucks colors, guaranteed to be a scoring threat and providing a large component of any threat the Canucks held of winning games.

He only played 697 games over 11 seasons in the NHL, being out of the league by the age of 28, though he would go on to a second career as a star player in Europe. In his 697 NHL games, Tanti scored 287 goals and 560 points.

TODAY: TBD (Fast Tempo, 90 Second Rests)
and CARDIO

TBD

TRAINING NOTES

Total Sets (TBD): TBD

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Today’s Colin Timberlake Training Inspiration is a man who entered the NHL as a late first round pick by the Vancouver Canucks, an organization with a relatively shoddy draft history over the last 20 years. As a result, he had the weight of both hopeful expectations that he would turn around a futile trend as well as the general assumption that he would be a draft failure like many before him.

It was only through exceptional and daily hard work that Ryan Kesler would lift the weight of these assumptions and skate out from under them to become one of the most valuable players and greatest draft picks in Canucks history, including being named the team’s MVP last season from a roster that included the Sedin Twins and perennial All-Star Roberto Luongo.

Kesler is only six years into his NHL career, but the trend has been consistent improvement on a yearly basis, to the point where he scored 26 goals and 59 points last season, making him and exceptional offensive contributor despite being the team’s best checking forward.

His defensive prowess was recognized league-wide when he was named one of the three finalists for the Frank J. Selke Trophy, awarded each year to the NHL’s best defensive forward, a rare recognition of the players who are willing to do the thankless tasks and the dirty work in the corners.

Kesler represented Team USA at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, where he played a critical role in the Americans earning a hard-fought silver medal and going to overtime against Team Canada in the gold medal game.

TODAY: TBD (Fast Tempo, 90 Second Rests)
and CARDIO

TBD

TRAINING NOTES

Total Sets (TBD): TBD

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©2010 colintimberlake.com. All Rights Reserved.

Today’s Colin Timberlake Training Inspiration is a man who was not only one of the few scoring bright spots for the Vancouver Canucks during an era of perpetual losing and weak offensive output, but also one of the most accomplished competitors in the history of international hockey.

Petri Skriko was a scoring star with the Canucks in the 1980s, piling up four straight 30-goal seasons, including a 38-goal and 78-point campaign in 1985-86.

Skriko would only play in nine NHL seasons, scoring an impressive 183 goals and 405 points in only 541 games, but at least as impressive were his credentials as an international hockey ambassador on the ice.

He was one of the finest players in all of Finland prior to his move to the NHL, and he twice represented his native country on Olympic ice, retiring from Olympic competition with 15 points in 14 career games.

He would finish up his pro career in Denmark, where over the course of six seasons with Herning IK, he would compile 210 goals and 503 points in only 230 games.

All pretty good for a guy was drafted almost as an afterthought in the 8th round (157th overall) of the 1981 NHL draft.

TODAY: DAY OFF

A brief rest period of a few days, one I really should have taken when I changed up my routine and tempo…

TRAINING NOTES

Total Sets (Body): Zero

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©2010 colintimberlake.com. All Rights Reserved.

Today’s Colin Timberlake Training Inspiration is a man whose NHL career began with an enormous impact, but whose role on the team now is the role most of us face in our gym and fitness battles: training and practice.

Andrew Raycroft emerged into the NHL with the Boston Bruins in the 2000-01 season, but had played so few games that he was still a rookie in 2003-04, when he became the team’s starting goaltender and won the Calder Trophy as NHL rookie of the year by earning 29 victories, 3 shutouts and a 2.05 goals against average in 57 games.

Two years later, Raycroft would become one of the league’s biggest workhorse goalies, playing in 72 games for the Toronto Maple Leafs and setting a career high with 37 wins, placing him among the league leaders in the category.

After a brief stop in Colorado, Raycroft now finds himself the backup goaltender for the Vancouver Canucks, and in a supporting role to possibly the biggest workhorse goalie of them all, Roberto Luongo. On a team with Luongo, the backup plays 10 games per season if he is lucky, and that means his job is to step onto the ice after extended periods of time without real-game action.

It is thus up to Raycroft to find the focus to treat practices and training sessions with a level of intensity comparable to game play, if he is going to maintain the edge required to play at a high level and not show visible rust during the infrequent appearances as Luongo’s backup.

With a winning record so far, to go with a 2.39 goals against average and a .908 save percentage as a Vancouver Canuck, Raycroft’s focus is paying off and allowing him to contribute to the team and participate in one of the strongest goaltending tandems in the NHL.

TODAY: DAY OFF

Well, I guess it’s kind of fitting that on a training day where my inspiration was a backup goalie for Roberto Luongo (who plays virtually every game)…I took the day off from the gym…

TRAINING NOTES

Total Sets (Body): Zero

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©2010 colintimberlake.com. All Rights Reserved.

Today’s Colin Timberlake Training Inspiration is a man who has, despite a good measure of talent and a record of good performance at the NHL level, spent the vast majority of his career embracing the Crash Davis-like role of mentoring up-and-comers at the minor league level.

Having played in parts of 10 NHL seasons, but with all but one of those seasons involving less than 20 appearances on the ice, Baumgartner was recently called up by the Vancouver Canucks from the AHL’s Manitoba Moose to bolster an injury-riddled blueline as the team pushes for the division championship down the stretch.

This has followed a strong minor league season for Baumgartner, where he just appeared in the AHL All-Star Game as captain of the Canadian All-Star Team for the league, and scored a goal in the game.

In the 2005-06 seaon with the Vancouver Canucks, Baumgartner appeared in 70 games and accumulate 34 points while going +11 on the season (on the ice for 11 more even strength goals for his team than against). Numbers like that, especially in today’s game with fewer and fewer scoring defensemen (especially who can be a plus-player to boot), will generally net a player a multi-year contract at the NHL level.

It earned Baumgartner a pink slip and only 13 games split between two different teams the next season, his last NHL icetime until big league injuries provided an opportunity to reward the man for his perseverance and dedication to the game. After years of mentoring prospects, Baumgartner is back in The Show.

In addition to his 132 NHL regular season games, Baumgartner has added 969 games in the minors and juniors, making him one of the most experienced active defensemen in professional hockey.

TODAY: CHEST (3-3-3 Tempo, 90 Second Rests)
and CARDIO

FLAT DUMBBELL FLYES (5 sets)
30 x 8
40 x 5
40 x 5
40 x 4
40 x 4

FLAT DUMBBELL PRESS (3 sets)
40 x 5
40 x 5
40 x 5

DECLINE DUMBBELL PRESS (3 sets)
40 x 5
40 x 5
40 x 5

INCLINE DUMBBELL PRESS (3 sets)
40 x 5
40 x 5
40 x 4

STATIONARY BIKE
- Resistance 10/25
30 Minutes / 12.14 Miles / 399 Cal

TRAINING NOTES

Total Sets (Chest): 14

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©2010 colintimberlake.com. All Rights Reserved.

TODAY’S TRAINING INSPIRATION:
DON LEVER

Today’s Colin Timberlake Training Inspiration is a man who, for many years, held the Vancouver Canucks team record for the longest ironman consecutive games streak.

Don Lever played in over 400 straight games for Vancouver, after they drafted him 3rd overall in the 1972 NHL entry draft.

Years later, he would be barely passed by Trevor Linden and Brendan Morrison, both of whom were the NHL’s leading ironmen when they set their new team records.

Don Lever not only displayed a virtually unparalleled degree of durability and willingness to play through aches and pains, but also a high degree of leadership that, during his career, saw him named the team captain of both the Canucks and the New Jersey Devils.

Lever played in 15 seasons between 1972 and 1987, during which he broke the highly respected 1,000-game barrier, closing out his career with 1,020. During this stretch, he netted 313 goals and 680 points, making him a highly notable offensive contributor of his era, especially considering that he played most of his career with offensively challenged teams.

He played in the 1982 NHL All-Star Game and notched a career-high 38 goals in 1974-75.

As is often the case with players who display great leadership in their athletic career, Don Lever transitioned well to coaching. He was an assistant coach with the Buffalo Sabres for 12 years, and has also served several more years as an NHL assistant coach and an AHL head coach.

His coaching resume includes a 43-28 season with the Hamilton Bulldogs in 2006-07, where his team won the AHL championship.

TODAY: DAY OFF!

A brief little recuperation day…

TRAINING NOTES

Total Sets (Body): None

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©2010 colintimberlake.com. All Rights Reserved.

Today’s Colin Timberlake Training Inspiration is a man who has defied the skepticism of many fans and hockey “experts” and developed himself into one of the most durable and effective players in the entire NHL.

When Henrik Sedin and his brother Daniel were drafted 2nd and 3rd overall by Vancouver in the 1999 NHL draft, they were soon dubbed the “Sedin Sisters” by critics who had little appreciation for their skilled but unphysical style of play.

Talented but scrawny, Henrik Sedin scored between 29 and 42 points in each of his first four years. What the critics didn’t realize was that this gradual scoring development was the tip of the iceberg, and beneath the surface, the Sedins were developing their games and their bodies to become true NHL stars.

Within a couple years, the Sedins had gone from twigs to tree stumps and have shown an incredible ability to endure punishment due to their intense physical training and superior conditioning.

Currently the owner of the NHL’s second-longest active ironman streak, at about 500 consecutive games, Henrik is also sporting one of the more impressive streaks of all time and is on pace to soon eclipse the Canucks’ team record.

In Henrik’s second four-year-stretch of his career, he has consistently scored between 75 and 82 points, clearly establishing himself as a league star and bona fide first-line player.

But most impressive of all, he has jumped to an entirely new level once again this season. At the midway mark of the 2009-10 campaign, Henrik Sedin is leading the entire NHL in scoring, on pace to not only shatter the 100-point mark but on pace to set a new Canucks record for points in a season.

And with brother Daniel injured for much of the early part of the season, the accomplishment is all the more staggering when one considers that much of it was achieved without his regular linemates.

TODAY: CHEST (3-3-3 Tempo, 90 Second Rests)
and ABS (Fast Tempo, 90 Second Rests)
and CARDIO

FLAT DUMBBELL PRESS (5 sets)
50 x 6
50 x 5
50 x 4
50 x 4
50 x 4

FLAT DUMBBELL FLYES (3 sets)
50 x 3
50 x 3
50 x 3

INCLINE DUMBBELL PRESS (3 sets)
50 x 3
50 x 3
50 x 3

DECLINE DUMBBELL PRESS (3 sets)
50 x 4
50 x 3
50 x 3

HANGING BENT LEG RAISES (4 sets)
x 16
x 16
x 16
x 16

HANGING BENT LEG OBLIQUE RAISES (4 sets)
x 16
x 16
x 16
x 12

SWISS BALL SIT-UPS (2 sets)
x 10
x 10

5K RUN
- 21:45 (8.5 / 9.0 mph)

TRAINING NOTES

Total Sets (Chest): 14
Total Sets (Abs): 10

Pretty decent workout today. My 3-3-3 tempo is really playing out like 5-5-5 the way I am doing it in practice, so I should probably just call it like it is. But instead, I’ll just make a note that my 3-3-3 is extra-strenuous this time around.

The middle 3 count I am always holding the weight at the point of highest tension, so in a chest press or flye, it isn’t when the weight is lifted to its peak, it is when it is lowered to the horizontal.

This tires you out quicker and reduces the amount of weight you can do but also makes every single rep and exercise in control and serious muscle stimulator.

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©2010 colintimberlake.com. All Rights Reserved.

Today’s Colin Timberlake Training Inspiration is a man who has shown that hard work and study of your field, whatever your goals, can leader to greater fruits than simply being born with a high degree of innate talent.

Alain Vigneault was a man who was born with just barely enough talent to make it to the NHL if he studied the game and worked tirelessly at his craft.

The result was 42 NHL games over two seasons with St. Louis Blues, with one goal scored in each season. To a man like Wayne Gretzky, it would have been an embarrassing couple of seasons. To Alain Vigneault, it was the absolute maximization of his potential to skate on NHL ice.

He was a positionally sound defenseman, known for playing a physical and fearless brand of hockey. His style of play earned him the nickname “Bam Bam.”

Former players like Don Cherry, Marc Crawford and Pat Quinn made it to the big leagues by the same means – hard work, accumulated knowledge and intense play – and like them, Vigneault took the work ethic and leadership that had allowed him to become a solid hockey player, and used them to become an extraordinary hockey coach.

Vigneault went from playing to coaching at a remarkably young age – 25 – after five years of professional and junior hockey, during which he played in 327 games. He toiled as a coach in the junior ranks for several years before getting a shot as an assistant coach at the NHL level in 1992.

Since then, he has built upon each opportunity as it has been presented, culminating thus far in his twice being a finalist for the Jack Adams Award as the best coach in the NHL (2000 and 2007). Vigneault won the trophy in 2007 with the Vancouver Canucks, for a season in which he led the team to its best regular season record in its history (49-26-7).

As of the end of the 2008-09 season, Vigneault had coached 512 regular seasons games, sporting a record of 242-204-35-31, totals to which he continues to add.

TODAY: SHOULDERS (3-3-3 Tempo, 90 Second Rests)
and CARDIO

ARNOLD DUMBBELL PRESS (3 sets)
30 x 7
30 x 7
30 x 5

DUMBBELL LATERAL RAISE (3 sets)
15 x 5
15 x 5
15 x 4

DUMBBELL FORWARD RAISE (3 sets)
15 x 3
10 x 5
10 x 4

BENT OVER REAR DELT DUMBBELL FLYE (3 sets)
15 x 4
15 x 4
15 x 4

5K RUN
- 24:40

TRAINING NOTES

Total Sets (Shoulders): 12

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©2010 colintimberlake.com. All Rights Reserved.