What Smash Coach does for hockey players
Smash Coach is a training app for adults who play sport. You tell it the sports and classes you already do, and with Pro or during your trial its coach plans the strength, conditioning and mobility sessions that go around them, in one weekly plan: for a hockey player, around your club training night and your fixture, not on top of them. The coach is AI, not a person.
It does not coach the game itself: no drills, no stick skills, no tactics and no team selection. Your club coach and your captain own all of that. This page covers the part that happens away from the pitch, using what published research says about adult club hockey, which is less than you might hope. Where the research runs out, the page says so and gives our view, labelled as ours.
When do adult club players get hurt?
A useful summary for club players is a 2020 systematic review of 26 studies of youth and adult recreational field hockey. In adults, the highest lower-limb injury rate it reported was hamstring injuries in pre-season, at 0.75 per 1,000 athlete exposures. Most injuries, in adults and in youth, were sustained in games rather than training: 7.87 per 1,000 athlete exposures in adults. The review found no studies on why hockey players get hurt, and only one tested prevention programme, a warm-up for youth players.
Do not read any of those numbers as precise. A 2018 review of 22 prospective studies, from school-aged players to international tournaments, found injury rates ranging from 0.1 to 90.9 per 1,000 player-hours, and the studies differed too much to give one figure; the authors suggest different ways of defining and recording injuries may be part of the reason. What it could say is that the lower limbs were the most affected.
A survey of 1,474 Australian players aged 14 and over, juniors included, about the 2023 winter season gives a sense of scale: 52.8% reported at least one injury that season, and the knee was the body part most often injured.
What does pre-season need?
Our view is that two things follow for the gym. The highest lower-limb rate that review reported for adults came in pre-season itself, so the hamstring work starts before club pre-season training does, and is in place well before the first fixture, not built during the opening weeks. And it has to start early enough that its own soreness has gone before pre-season sessions get hard.
Soreness is the catch. A review of delayed onset muscle soreness found it most common at the start of a season, when athletes return after a spell of reduced activity, and after eccentric work, where the muscle lengthens under load, or any exercise you are not used to. Soreness can reduce range of motion and peak torque, which is the last thing you want in your first game. The review advised bringing eccentric or new exercises in progressively over a week or two, at the start of the season or during it.
After that, strength needs load. The 2026 American College of Sports Medicine position stand, an overview of 137 reviews in healthy adults, found that strength improved with heavier loads, at 80% of your one-repetition maximum or more, and that training to the point of failure did not consistently change the results. It recommends progressive training: a little more over time, as you adapt.
Whether strength work protects you is a separate question. The strongest general evidence is a 2014 review of 25 trials in 26,610 people across many sports, in which strength training cut sports injuries to under a third and stretching showed no effect. A 2018 review of six trials in 7,738 people aged 12 to 40, adolescents included, found that more strength training went with lower risk. Neither was a hockey study.
Nordic hamstring curls have been strongly recommended for this in earlier reviews. A 2021 reappraisal of the trials behind that advice found the preventive effect inconclusive, mostly drawn from trials at high risk of bias, with at best a conditional recommendation for soccer. Our view: hamstring strength is worth having for a sport of repeated sprints, but no single exercise is a guarantee.
Why does hockey load the low back?
Hockey is played bent over a short stick, and the low back notices. In a 2024 cross-sectional survey of 194 UK Premier and Division One players, 38 of them aged 16 to 18, 44% reported non-specific low back pain, with links to factors such as age, playing position, drag flicking and heavy lifting at work. A survey like that shows links, not causes. If your back hurts during or after hockey, see a physio or a doctor: a training page cannot diagnose or treat it.
What the gym can do is build the trunk and hips that hold that posture through a whole match. Our view is that a hockey player's strength work should include a hip hinge, single-leg work and trunk exercises that resist bending and twisting. That is a training choice for the sport, not a treatment for back pain, and the 2020 review found no tested prevention programme for adult recreational hockey at all.
How much gym holds you through the season?
Once fixtures start, the job changes from building to holding. The clearest data come from football, not hockey. In a 2011 study of 14 professional footballers who had lifted twice a week through a 10-week pre-season, the seven who kept one session a week held their strength and 40 m sprint for the first 12 weeks of the season. The seven who dropped to one session every two weeks lost leg strength and sprint speed. That is a small group of professionals in another sport, so read it as a sign that holding takes less than building, not as a dose for you.
Hockey training and matches are hard running, and lifting alongside them still builds strength. A 2022 review of 43 studies in healthy adults found that combining aerobic and strength training did not blunt gains in maximal strength or muscle size. Explosive strength was the exception: it was blunted more when both were done in the same session than when they were at least 3 hours apart. The wider science is in running and lifting.
How hard you lift matters too. In 10 resistance-trained men, sets taken to failure slowed recovery for 24 to 48 hours compared with stopping short at the same volume. With a training night and a fixture in every week, our view is that stopping short of failure is the better trade in season, and the ACSM review found that failure did not consistently change outcomes anyway.
The day before a fixture gets one paragraph here. A short, light, familiar session is the safe default, and the evidence for doing more is thin. The full answer is on the gym the day before a match.
Is there a hockey warm-up programme?
Yes, from the Netherlands, though it has only been tested in players aged 10 to 17. Warming-up Hockey was developed with experts in hockey and injury prevention, aimed at young and adult recreational players. It has a preparation phase of agility and cardiovascular warm-up exercises, movement skills such as stability and flexibility, and hockey skills with speed and strength work. In a feasibility test with 35 young players and 7 coaches it was cut from 16 to 12 minutes, and a match-specific warm-up was added (how it was developed).
Its test was a non-randomised study in youth teams: 291 players aged 10 to 17, with mean ages of 11.5 and 12.9, over one season. The injury rate was lower in the teams that used it, but not by a statistically significant margin; the time lost to injury per 1,000 hours of hockey was lower (the youth study). A later evaluation of the national roll-out found that most coaches did not use it at every session. We found no trial in adults.
Our view: a structured warm-up is worth the 12 minutes or so this one takes, and the published programme shows what one contains. Just know that the evidence behind it comes from teams with mean ages of 11.5 and 12.9, not from adult club hockey.
Which hockey do you pick in the app?
Pick Field Hockey; the other hockey in the sport list is ice hockey. If your sports stack already shows a plain Hockey, that one is ice hockey too: remove it and add Field Hockey. Setting it up takes three steps:
- On You, under SPORTS STACK, tap + ADD. The list is split into SPORTS and GROUP CLASSES, and searching is quicker (add a sport).
- Choose Fixed days and tap your training night and match day: each day you pick is one session a week. Then set your usual session length. If your days move about, Flexible lets the app pick the days instead (sport settings).
- Tap Save. Changes are not live until you do.
At the top of the sport's settings is a line about what field hockey does to your body; with Pro or during your trial, that is what your coach is working around.
With Pro or during your trial, your coach plans your strength, conditioning and mobility around those days and the rest of your week, and saving a change to them rebuilds your plan around the new shape of your week. When one week's fixture moves, reschedule that session and it stays where you put it; one move does not reshuffle the week (move or delete a session). On the free plan, hockey's own sessions still go on its days, but your coach is paused, so the rest of your plan stays as it is.
Coming back after years away? England Hockey's Back to Hockey sessions are run by clubs for people who have not played for several years or are playing for the first time, with skills and small-sided friendly games in a social, informal setting. Add Field Hockey on the nights you go, and build the gym work up gently, for the soreness reason above.
A hockey season, phase by phase
In England Hockey's East region, the adult leagues run from September to March, with a gap over Christmas. The dates below are East Hockey's proposed 2026-27 adult league dates; other regions publish their own, so check your league. East Hockey set this season's first league week for 12 September 2026, so the pre-season row is for next summer. The gym column is a general example drawn from the sources on this page, not a programme and not what Smash Coach will plan for you.
| Phase | When (East region, 2026-27) | What the evidence says | Gym focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pre-season | Before the first league week on 12 September 2026 | Adults' highest lower-limb injury rate: hamstrings in pre-season. New and eccentric work brings soreness; bring it in over 1 to 2 weeks. | Start before club pre-season training begins: build hamstring, hip and trunk strength. Add new exercises gradually, then heavier loads as you adapt. |
| Early season | 12 September to late October | In 14 professional footballers, one session a week held pre-season strength and sprint for 12 weeks. | Hold what you built rather than chase new numbers. |
| Mid-season | November to 5 December, the last league week before the break | Sets to failure slowed recovery for up to 24 to 48 hours in 10 trained men. | Keep the loads heavy, the sets short of failure and the sessions short. |
| Winter break | No league weeks between 5 December and 9 January, apart from slip dates on 12 and 19 December | Soreness is most common when training resumes after reduced activity. | Our view: a window for a harder strength block or a proper rest. Build back gradually before 9 January. |
| Second half | 9 January to the last league week on 20 March 2027, before the Easter weekend | As early season: holding takes less than building. | Hold again. Anything new goes in gradually. |
Inside a week, the same sources shape a general example around a Wednesday training night and a Saturday fixture. Swap the days for your own; the logic is distance from the fixture, soreness and stopping short of failure.
| Day | Hockey | Gym (general example) | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Saturday | Fixture | Nothing | Most adult injuries come in games; the match is the week's hardest session. |
| Sunday | None | Rest, or an easy walk | Our view: recovery first. |
| Monday | None | Upper body and trunk, if your legs are still sore | After hard, soreness-inducing work, train the less affected body parts. |
| Tuesday | None | Main strength session: hamstrings, hips, trunk and upper body, heavy, stopping short of failure | Heavier loads build strength; failure slows recovery for up to 24 to 48 hours; four days before the fixture. It is also the day before training night, so keep the exercises familiar: new and eccentric work bring the most soreness. |
| Wednesday | Club training night | Nothing extra | Our view: training night is a hard session in its own right. |
| Thursday | None | A shorter second session: upper body, trunk and light single-leg work | The WHO asks adults for muscle-strengthening activity on 2 or more days a week. |
| Friday | None | Rest, or a short, light, familiar session | See the gym the day before a match. |
More for team-sport players
- The gym the day before a match: what a light session looks like, and what volume, new exercises and soreness cost you.
- Tournament weekend: planning the week around several games packed into two days, staying warm between them and the days after.
- Sleep after late games: what the studies say about a hard evening session that ends close to bedtime.
Every other sport, and how long a match tires you, is on the sports page.
Around your hockey, in the app
Turn on Coach warm-up and cool-down in Field Hockey's settings, and with Pro or during your trial your coach writes a short warm-up and cool-down around your hockey sessions, when it plans that part of your week (sport settings).
In the gym, workout mode walks you through a session one step at a time, counting your sets and your rest, and a move done on each side, such as a single-leg exercise, runs as a left step and then a right step. It works on the free plan. Exercises are shown as clean illustrations: the movement on a plain background, with nothing extra. The team is exploring video and moving images (exercise illustrations).
If a hamstring, a knee or your back starts to complain, report an injury or a fatigue flag, from Cleared to Serious. With Pro or during your trial your plan is rebuilt around what you report. It is a training tool, not a medical service, and it points you to a physio or a doctor.