Part 5: Training | SUMMER IN HERISAU

Timo Meier lays on his back with a pad resting under his shoulder blades and another under his feet. An Olympic bar rests above his waist, propped up by a round plate on each side. Meier lifts his right leg, brings his waist to the bar and grips the knurling with his hands. He takes a long inhale and drives his hips into the bar with all of his might.

The bar doesn’t move.

Meier continues driving, his body shaking with intensity. The bar still doesn’t move.

“Five more seconds!” shouts Raphael Schuler as he sits atop one of the plates. Across from him a workout partner sits on the other plate. The combined weight all but assures its immobility. Movement was never the point.

Meier’s breathing becomes erratic. Sweat beads run down his forehead. He continues pushing his left heel into the pad and his waist against the resistance. The bar still doesn’t move.

“Three! Two! One!”

Meier drops his body to the ground and throws his head back. His chest heaving as he gulps for air.

“Now,” Schuler says, “the other side.”

Meier lifts his opposite leg and repeats the bout. The bar never moves, as is intended.

“We’re building power and explosiveness,” says the seated Schuler, a speed and athletic coach who has trained Meier for the past seven years. “We’re doing 85-, 90-, 95-percent effort, trying to produce maximum force.”

The exercise is an isometric movement, meaning the weight isn’t supposed to move, but the muscles are at full contraction. This particular movement is training the hamstrings and glutes – the main muscle drivers in running or, in Meier’s case, skating. The outcome is greater speed, skating economy and explosiveness.

“Obviously, his strength is pretty good. So, he's very powerful, and that's not the biggest goal to work on,” Schuler said of the 6-foot-1, 220-pound winger. “But as he ages, we have to maintain those qualities. But most of the time during the off-season, we work on his speed and his efficiency during the movements, so he can be more effective and efficient also on the ice.”

In between sets, Meier rests while taking sips of water and talking to Schuler. Behind the 29-year-old NHL veteran are walls that feature exposed drywall, graffiti, the occasional hole and some patch work. The walls display an array of incomplete paint jobs of black, white and dark maroon. The ceiling has a collection of exposed vents, pipes, metal columns and hanging wires. The hard, concrete floor has a river-like congestion of intersecting power chords that weave throughout. The only light cascades through one wall of windows. A large speaker blasts Meier’s personal music choices - a blend of European house and EDM. 

This space is known as “The Dungeon.” It sits in the basement of an abandoned former night club that Meier converted into a personal gym. The space is fully equipped with a power rack, bars, dumbbells, cables, weights, kettlebells, lifting machines and conditioning equipment.

There’s no air conditioning or fans. The only reprieve coming from an open window. Certain rooms in the basement have no lighting at all and require flashlights or floodlights. The Dungeon even has a bomb shelter room, a remnant from World War II that features a vault door and thick cement walls. Meier hung punching bags in this lightless shelter safe space.

“This room is good for when I’m angry,” he smiles.

To liven up the space, Meier hung three of his jerseys on the wall to cover some graffiti: Devils, San Jose Sharks and Team Switzerland. The jerseys rest on hangers that are attached to the wall with a nail. Simple. Fitting.

Below the jerseys is a black power rack. Meier crouches slightly to position his body underneath the safety bar, the protruding metal handles resting over his shoulders. He straightens his stance, lifting the bar off the rack and transitioning the entirety of the weight under his posture. He takes a step back; the multitude of round plates collected on each end rattling in song. Meier straightens his arm to squeeze the steel columns and places one leg behind him. With control, he lowers his back knee to the ground. Once his knee touches he pushes his front foot into the ground and raises the immense weight against the force of gravity and elevates to his upright position. He repeats the movement once more before switching leg position and doing two reps on the opposite side. With each set, more plates are added until the bar can no longer accommodate further addition.

“It was the first week we did some more intense split squats, so we had to find where he stands, and ramp up the weights,” Schuler said after the training session.

Along with the isometric single-leg hip thrusts and split squats, Meier works other strength movements like dumbbell bench press, weighted TRX suspended rows and rotational single-arm cable rows.

“I like to combine those lower- and upper-body exercises with some exercises like neck training or shoulder work, just from a prehab perspective,” Schuler said. “And then we always do some connecting stuff like rotationals where we connect the lower legs to the upper body. So, every movement for an athlete is kind of total body. You have to bring the force from the ground to the skate to the puck. So, that's how I like to structure the training and what we did today.”

The day before training in the Dungeon, Meier was also with Schuler. That time they were outside working on a soccer field under the burdening sun. Cones were set up to mark various distances. Meier ran through a series of bounds, jumps and sprints.

“I think we can separate the physical capabilities of sprinting. This kind of physical capability, you can definitely train off ice, and it will translate to on ice,” Schuler said. “So, we worked a lot on his speed off ice, and also on ice, and then try to incorporate some movement skills.”

During this period in mid-July, Meier is in his third week of off-season training. His first week happened to coincide with his family vacation. But duty calls. So, despite being away and on vacation with his family, Meier carved in some work out time to begin his off-season program.

The first two weeks are mostly focused on getting the body moving again, although Meier and most professional athletes still remain somewhat active in the off-season. By the third week, the training starts to get more intense. 

“(Those sessions were) the third week we worked together this off-season,” Schuler said. “So, it was around 90, 95 percent. And of course, we have to ramp up."

Schuler will slowly increase the intensity week after week, either with heavier loads, more volume or using other training modalities.

“During the off-season, I like to start with everything right from the first week,” Schuler said. “So, we do some speed work in the first week. We do strength, endurance, mobility stuff, especially the speed training is very important for him. He needs that to improve his efficiency and also how he feels on the ice. And what usually a lot of athletes do, they wait until eighth, ninth, 10th week to start training all the speed. And for me, we need that time to ramp up the intensity. So, obviously we don't start in the first week with all-out 40 meters. But we kind of align everything every week, and then we ramp up the intensity over the course of the off-season.”

The intensity isn’t the only thing that evolves over the course of the summer. The movements and exercises also will adapt as training camp starts to inch closer.

“Over the off-season of 12, 14 weeks, we also transition from more general stuff to more specific stuff,” Schuler said. “At the beginning of the off-season, we like to use off-ice sprints more often, then we transition more to on-ice sprints, for example.”

Schuler tests Meier at the beginning of the off-season and at the end of their summer program to assess his improvements, something he can also compare year-over-year. But ultimately, Schuler believes his job is to see those elements translated onto the ice.

“When you work with an athlete like Timo, and he goes back to the team, it's super nice to see him just with the team on the ice, and then he texts me, ‘Hey, I feel good,’” Schuler said. “And that, for me, is the biggest goal, just to give him the opportunity to be ready for the team, to be ready for the season. And at the end, when I see him perform on the ice - I know there are so many other factors you have to consider - but it's super nice to see him performing on the ice.”

Meier started to lightly jog on the soccer field under the oppressive sun. As he passed a cone on the ground, his speed increased into a light run. As he passed a second cone, his light run transformed into an all-out sprint. After passing a final cone, he began to decelerate and began walking slowly toward his starting position. Halfway on the return he happened upon a half-inflated soccer ball. He began juggling it on his toes. He glanced up at a vacant soccer net.

“Watch this,” he said. “Top right corner.”

Meier swept his leg with force and ticketed the ball into the net – bottom left corner.

“This is why I stuck with hockey,” Meier smiled.

“That’s because there’s no air in the ball,” Schuler laughed.

Meier continued his walk back to his starting position. He planted his cleated foot into the turf and assumed a runner’s stance. Schuler, wearing a hat, thick sunglasses and a shirt that read “SPEED is KEY”, joined him at the starting line.

“Go!” Schuler commanded. Meier began his light jog to run to full sprint.

“I've worked with a lot of athletes over my years,” Schuler said, “and I almost find the best athletes in the world, like Timo, they have those abilities to, during a training session they are super focused when they have to do their 30(-second) max all-out air bike stuff, or their 10-second gym exercise, whatever it is, a five-second sprint. And after those five seconds, they can be super relaxed. You can joke with them, and they can get back in that focused mode.”

The greatest characteristic trait that Schuler believes separates the average professional athlete from the elite level professional athlete comes down to intrinsic motivation.

“It's pretty easy to work with Timo, because he's such a hardworking guy,” Schuler said. “I can't remember a session where he came to the session and wasn't motivated. He always wants to do more. So, the only thing I have to do, I have to be careful that he doesn’t do too much.”

“I think the way I play the game, the way my strengths are, I really need to put in the work in the off-season,” Meier said. “I really take pride in this, and I think it's also a fun challenge. It's big for me to come back into the season in the best shape I can be. So, I have to put in a lot of work in the summer, but I enjoy that part as well.

“You’ve got to be healthy, take care of your body, and it's a good time in the summer to do that, and then really lay the base to go start the season with a lot of confidence knowing that you put in all the work.”

For any coach, they’d rather have to reel an athlete in than try to find a way to motivate them to work. Schuler has learned to admire Meier’s drive over the years.

“I would say he's an inspiration for me as a coach,” Schuler said. “To see how much he can get out of just his mentality, his training. I mean, obviously if you're an athlete, you love playing your sports. So, Timo loves playing hockey. But I've never felt like he hates training four, five, six times a week outside the hockey rink because he has this bigger goal of improving his play.

“So that's very inspirational for me.”

Meier sat on an assault bike for the final exercise of the day, the conclusion of over 70 minutes of exhaustive training. It was eight rounds of interval sprinting, 30 seconds on, 30 seconds off on the bike. After this, his training would be complete.

Schuler stood next to Meier with a stop clock in hand. At each “Go!”, Meier would begin a full sprint, arms pushing and pulling the handles, legs churning the pedals. At each “Stop!”, Meier would halt activity and focus on breathing and bringing his heart rate as close to baseline as possible before the next bout of sprints.

On the opening few intervals, Meier exploded with a high-level of work output, expressed through the bike’s spinning fan blades that produced a whizzing noise that overpowered the music from the massive speaker. 

By Rounds 5 and 6, Meier’s pace was starting to slow as fatigue set in. By Rounds 7 and 8, nearly all his energy capacities had been taxed. Meier pushed with whatever he could muster, grinding through pain to the finish.

“Stop!” Schuler instructed one final time to end the day’s work.

Meier dropped his head to the handles and took a couple deep breaths. He raised his head and looked at Schuler, “that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Schuler confirmed.

Meier replied with a smirk: “That’s all you got?”