In a page torn straight from the “Really Freaking Cool” file, the Buffalo Sabres revealed yesterday that all week, their prospects in attendance at the team’s summer development camp will be waking up at 4:30am to work out and train with Navy SEALs on the shores of Woodlawn Beach.
Yesterday’s workout was pretty standard, consisting of a brisk swim in the lake followed by squats, pushups, and crunches, of which, according to Mikhail Grigorenko, the players did “like a thousand.” Today’s workout was more unique, involving two gigantic logs and, to quote Corey Fienhage, “not dropping them.”
The workouts are as much mental training for the players as physical. Here’s what Luke Adam had to say about it, courtesy of Sabres.com:
“It’s a lot of mental training. I don’t know if it’s as much a hockey player as it was a person,” explains Adam. “They said ‘we’re not training you from the neck down; we’re training you from the neck up.’
While the 39 attendees will hopefully be in better physical and mental shape thanks to the grueling workouts, my personal favorite part of the SEAL training regimen is that the SEALs are forcing the Sabres prospects to conform to military standards of etiquette and protocol, including making their beds in the morning and cleaning up after themselves at the end of meals. According to Luke Adam, every extra water bottle left out after Sunday’s dinner cost the prospects anywhere from 50 pushups to 100 squats.
While they might not win the Cup this year, you can bet that the Sabres will have the NHL’s tidiest locker room.