Photography by Brian Green

By now everyone knows the story. Roberto Luongo, star goaltender and captain for the Vancouver Canucks, strained the adductor muscle in the left side of his groin while attempting to block a shot fired off early in the Canucks’ game against the Pittsburgh Penguins on November 22, 2008.

It has been a long five weeks, and it looks like we’ll be waiting a bit longer.

Officially, the Canucks have said that Luongo’s injury is a “strain,” not a “tear,” and Luongo himself has said that he feels fine in most every position he gets into, except the one he needs most to block shots in the net.

The Canucks have dismissed the rumour that Luongo’s injury will keep him out for the entire season but are unable to predict with any certainty when he might be healed well enough to play, saying instead that they continue to evaluate his progress “week to week.”

Hockey injuries are routine, of course, but this isn’t your average injury. Luongo still ranks first in NHL goaltenders in shutouts this season  

Many speculate about even worse consequences. On December 31, 2008, Tom Hawthorn suggested in the Globe & Mail that the outcome of British Columbia’s provincial election in May and the success of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games may ride in part on the progress of Roberto Luongo’s adductor.

This is big.

The single greatest shred of hope for Vancouver’s fans is that Luongo is one of the hardest-working players in the league. His training and nutrition in the off-season are unparalleled, and that alone improves his chances at a speedier recovery than anything the Canucks’ impressive medical resources could do for him.

Luongo spoke with IMPACT about his off-season training and nutrition prior to his injury.

Six days a week, Luongo works out with his Florida trainer Manuel Mair. Four days are devoted to weight training and speed work, focussing on plyometrics. Wednesdays and Saturdays are cardio days, involving at least forty-five minutes to one hour of cardio. Luongo does some form of cardio every workout day, but on cardio days, it’s longer and more intense.

“I ride the bike, sometimes at a steady pace, sometimes I do sprints. Same thing with the treadmill: sometimes I run about four miles or sometimes I do intervals, whether its sprints or on an incline.... [O]r I’ll do an elliptical ride for about forty-five minutes.”

Strength training, for Luongo, does not involve a lot of heavy lifting. Rather, “it’s a lot of stuff that puts you in an unbalanced position on a Swiss ball or a foam pad—one-legged on a foam pad—with a high volume of repetition,” he explains. “Usually we go fifteen to twenty reps on each side for two sets of whatever exercise we’re doing—a bicep curl or a one-arm press on a Swiss ball—whatever it is, usually it’s about twenty reps. So the weight is not usually heavy, but it’s more about repetition.”

Luongo values the speed of his workout above any particular exercise or drill. “There isn’t a lot of rest,” he says. “As soon as I’ve done one drill, I go to the next one. It’s like a superset. With a superset it’s like four drills into one. So one drill might be a lifting, and then we move right away to a quick-feet drill.”

Stretching is arguably more important for goaltenders than any other player on the team, and Luongo’s stretching routine will be crucial to his recovery. When he was uninjured, Luongo stretched before and after workouts between ten and fifteen minutes, using a foam roller, but he admitted that he was more focussed on improving his VO2max than his flexibility.

Luongo described one of his favourite drills for improving reaction time: He stands facing a wall ten feet away. His trainer stands behind him and throws a small blue racket ball at the wall. Luongo has to catch it when it bounces off the wall. He says it’s harder than it sounds.

“He’s going to change the spot behind me, so I don’t really know where he is,” he says. “He’s going to come up from anywhere, and I just have to do the best I can to catch it.”

Like so many other top athletes, Luongo has learned that the best performance is only possible with the best diet. He describes his summertime diet as “very strict,” including a lot of brown rice, sweet potatoes, fish, chicken, vegetables, and only water.

“I don’t use any salt or sugar, no nothing, so it’s very, very bland,” he says, ”but you know for a few months out of the year you have to make that sacrifice to get as lean as possible.”

During the season, Luongo’s pasta meals would normally increase, as he expends so much energy in practices and games; however, his injury has likely forced him to resume a summertime diet.

Luongo continues to practice with the team and work out so that he will remain strong and lean when he returns to the ice. Let’s hope he’s healthy and back in the net soon.

About the Author

Jay Winans is the editor of IMPACT Magazine.