hockey butt<\/a> is real.<\/p>\n\u201cQuads and booty,\u201d Reaves, with a smile, says of just about everybody in the league.<\/p>\n
You can understand, then, why many NHLers are delighted with the way pants style is evolving. The quad gods can breathe again.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s got legs<\/p>\n
It wasn\u2019t long ago that skinny pants were in. This did not make Jonathan Aspirot happy. The 6-foot, 212-pound Boston Bruins defenseman has always been more of a bulldog than greyhound.<\/p>\n
\u201cBig issue trying to fit into those,\u201d says Aspirot, 26. \u201cIt would fit in the legs. But it wouldn\u2019t around the waist. Just super big.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fellow Bruins defenseman Andrew Peeke is designed similarly. He is 6-3 and 214 pounds.<\/p>\n
Peeke had completed his junior year at Notre Dame when he signed his entry-level contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets on April 1, 2019. The Lululemon gear he wore out in South Bend would not do if he wanted to fall in line for then-coach John Tortorella. The pro defenseman needed professional clothes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mary Ruth, Peeke\u2019s mother, advised her son to go to Macy\u2019s. He tried on multiple suits. Peeke called his mother back. He had a problem.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve got to help,\u201d Peeke says. \u201cI don\u2019t know what I\u2019m going to do. These things are going to rip.\u201d<\/p>\n
Peeke, 28, is a defense-first defenseman. The Blue Jackets drafted and signed him to lean on opponents. Down-low muscle, the kind that strains unforgiving pants, was required.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, we need upper body. But it\u2019s not the be-all and end-all if you\u2019re not shredded. There\u2019s different kinds of builds upper-body-wise,\u201d Peeke says. \u201cBut the consistent thing is everyone has strong legs, strong butt, all that stuff. It\u2019s just kind of the way hockey is.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is so even for naturally skinny players. Mason Lohrei is 6-5 and 218 pounds. Gaining weight used to be an issue. But even the 25-year-old Bruins defenseman had the typical hockey player\u2019s dilemma.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was so hard to fit in pants,\u201d Lohrei recalled of fashion in the slimmer era. \u201cI\u2019m tall and skinny.\u00a0 But my legs are a little thicker here. Never could find anything that didn\u2019t look like leggings on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
The typical NHLer is not built like a marathon runner. The latter is lithe and lanky. The former is stout and stocky, all glutes and quadriceps from summers of lunges and step-ups and trap bar deadlifts and seasons of skating. Every NHLer is an anaerobic animal optimized for 45-second full-gas efforts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It begins at the bottom.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat,\u201d Carolina Hurricanes strength and conditioning coach Bill Burniston says of a hockey player\u2019s lower body, \u201cis where you generate all your power from the ground up.\u201d<\/p>\n
Summer gains<\/p>\n
Burniston\u2019s charges prepare for each season by proceeding through four offseason phases: baseline, eccentric and isometric movements, strength, power.<\/p>\n
Phase 1: The priority is good health. Even after some downtime, a player may need foundational work at the start of the offseason. Otherwise, he will not be ready for the stresses of later phases.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t want to train guys that have some type of deficit,\u201d Burniston says. \u201cWe want to make sure we get them back to their baselines. Really, the first phase is more of general conditioning.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phase 2: Eccentric and isometric training, Burniston explained, is meant to strengthen tendons, ligaments and joints. This sets the table for Phase 3 and its large-muscle attention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
An eccentric exercise, such as a slowly lowered front squat, lengthens muscle under tension. An isometric exercise strengthens a muscle without changing its length.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll go into a split squat, and we\u2019ll try to pull the bar up as hard as we can where it doesn\u2019t move,\u201d Burniston says of a typical isometric movement. \u201cWe\u2019re moving against an immovable object into creating as much force as we can for maybe eight seconds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phase 3: The players shift to heavier weights to promote strength. The players continue with eccentric and isometric movements. Burniston also likes to incorporate Copenhagens, which are movements that target the groin.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re emphasizing glutes and quadriceps,\u201d Burniston says. \u201cWe want to make sure our ankles are strong. We\u2019ll work on some isometric work there, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Phase 4: By now, the players have gone back on the ice while continuing their gym work. Speed becomes a centerpiece. During on-ice sessions, Burniston likes to use the 1080 Sprint, a device that provides resistance to underscore explosiveness.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo we can do some resistive sprinting with our players on the ice,\u201d Burniston says. \u201cWhich seems to be helping quite a bit.\u201d<\/p>\n
Throughout each phase, Burniston reminds his players to balance training with proper recovery and nutrition. They will not optimize their gym time if they don\u2019t rest and fuel. Golf, fishing, barbecues and snoozing are encouraged, not just suggested.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s not the hour you spend in the gym. It\u2019s what you\u2019re doing the other 23 hours,\u201d Burniston says. \u201cIt\u2019s how you conduct yourself away from the gym, away from the ice. It\u2019s your sleep. It\u2019s your nutrition. All those pieces play big parts in your success. If coming into the gym was the only thing you had to do to put on that kind of mass, a lot of people would be doing it. Because a lot of people spend time in the gym. But it\u2019s the other things you\u2019re doing that really make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n
Aspirot considers himself an offseason workout fiend. He likes the Desmotec, a specialty line of equipment designed to optimize eccentric movements.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re on the Desmos every day,\u201d Aspirot says. \u201cWe\u2019re training legs three out of five days a week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strength, power and explosiveness are offseason priorities. But given the intensity, volume, precision and stimulus of an NHLer\u2019s training, hypertrophy is practically a natural byproduct. Mikey Eyssimont is no exception.<\/p>\n
The Bruins forward hits it hard during the summer. He likes heavy back squats, even though some players have gone away from them because of the strain on the back and hips.<\/p>\n
By late summer, the 6-foot, 195-pound Eyssimont is at his largest. This will be an issue.<\/p>\n
Eyssimont is getting married in August. The Bruins forward will be wearing a custom tuxedo. But he has to wait until the latest possible window for his fitting.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have a suit supplier that\u2019s going to make me a new custom suit,\u201d Eyssimont says. \u201cBut I can\u2019t do that yet because my wedding\u2019s at the end of the summer, which is when I\u2019ll be my biggest and strongest. So if I size myself now for my tux, then it wouldn\u2019t fit.\u201d<\/p>\n
No suit, no problem<\/p>\n
Eyssimont has had good luck with Levi\u2019s 505 and 550 jeans. But when he buys pants off the rack, he usually has to buy them with the waist one size larger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it fits your butt,\u201d Eyssimont explains. \u201cThen you get them tailored to fit the waist.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Peeke arrived in Columbus, older teammates steered him toward Paige, a brand that makes stretchy jeans. They instructed him to buy suits from State & Liberty, which specializes in athletic builds.<\/p>\n
Now, a player can get away without owning a suit at all. The players are free of the dress code<\/a> that ruled the NHL. Not only that, the days of skintight jackets and pants are over.<\/p>\n\u201cWhat is definitely not in,\u201d Mitch Moxley, a Wirecutter writer covering men\u2019s style, says, \u201care super-tight form-fitting pants and suits.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Fulk, Europe was the locus of today\u2019s relaxed progression. Widespread use and consumption of social media, Alpern noted, alerted customers to different shapes. Regular scrolling, swiping and liking nudged men to the point where they felt they had permission to experiment with roomier pants. Everyone was doing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think a lot of men are aware of context and occasion,\u201d Alpern says. \u201cThey are oftentimes trying to ascertain how to show up in a smart way that they can feel confident, that they feel doesn\u2019t break the norm of the working environment like an office place. Men enter an office space and tend to want to go with the flow to feel confident within that environment.\u201d<\/p>\n
There has also been a shift toward higher rises, which Bonobos incorporated into its classic fit, primarily because of aesthetic preferences: higher waist, room in the thighs, fuller legs.<\/p>\n
At the same time, advances in materials and manufacturing technology have produced pants with four-way stretch. A pair of linen pants made with modern materials, for example, lets them stretch up and down and left and right. Older pants could only stretch in one direction.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt allowed us to tweak our fits even further and further refine them, just because it provided an additional level of comfort that a two-way-stretched twill fabric wouldn\u2019t have allowed,\u201d Fulk says. \u201cThat also has become a preference. There\u2019s fit optionality. But there\u2019s also optionality in amount of stretch that any given fabric has.\u201d<\/p>\n
All of this \u2014 stretchier materials, roomier pants, striking of the dress code \u2014 qualifies as an NHLer\u2019s renaissance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI buy a little loose,\u201d Bruins forward David Pastrnak says. \u201cDefinitely back in the day, five, 10 years ago, what was in was really skinny jeans. That was hard. Now it\u2019s way more comfortable.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The origin story of Bonobos, the menswear company launched in 2007, can be written with one body part…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[95,105,5,4,168],"class_list":{"0":"post-550373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-boston-bruins","9":"tag-culture","10":"tag-hockey","11":"tag-nhl","12":"tag-san-jose-sharks"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116386627863483980","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}