Fans who took time out of their Thursday morning to come to the Scottrade Center and watch the latest crop of Blues prospects practice at the development camp were in for a bit of a surprise today. In what sounded like a cross between a microphone sound check and a hearing doctor’s test (”Raise your left hand when you hear the tone”), they got to see players skate from goal line to goal line. Repeatedly. In minutely faster increments. Again and again. All timed to an incessant “beep” over the PA system that queued another lap down the ice.

soundfile2 (click to listen)

Blues’ strength and conditioning coach Nelson Ayotte explained that each “stage” of the test ran for one minute with the initial stage timed out to a pace of 3.5 m/s (kind of a relaxing stroll down the ice). Every stage thereafter increased in pace by 0.2 m/s. The first few stages were leisurely, but it didn’t take long for the pace to catch up and after about 10 or 11 stages, the 5.7 m/s (12.75mph) speed required eliminated most of the players. The tones just kept on coming. “Beep!…Beep!…Beep!”

The test was based on a research paper out of the Université du Québec à Montréal and Université de Montréal titled “An On-Ice Aerobic Maximal Multistage Shuttle Skate Test for Elite Adolescent Hockey Players.” It found that “aerobic metabolism in ice hockey represents one-third of the total energy requirements, which is by no means negligible.” Based on what stage a player can advance to in the shuttle skate, their maximal aerobic power can be determined.

soundfile (click to listen)

“Don’t worry that the instructions are in French,” Ayotte says about the brief warnings before each stage. “The ‘beeps’ have been translated into English beeps.”

Blues left wing prospect Vladimir Nikiforov advanced farther in the test than others in his group, reaching stage 12.5.

I think those cramps will come out before the “Beeps!” stop reverberating in their heads.