The Harvard Hulk crushes competition

TORONTO -- When Danny Biega returns to school in September he might have a new nickname on campus: The Harvard Hulk.

While Taylor Hall and Tyler Seguin did most of the talking as the highly-sought-after top prospects at the recent NHL draft combine, it was Biega who did the heavy lifting. The 18-year-old was one of the best performers, having finished first out of a 100 other prospects in most of the upper body tests including grip strength in both hands, bench press, push/pull strength and a power test using a four-kilogram ball.

Hall passed on the fitness test at the combine with the easy-to-appreciate alibi of having played a long season that ended five days before the combine with a second straight MVP award at the MasterCard Memorial Cup. Biega took full advantage of his season ending a couple of months earlier to properly prepare for himself.

“If you’re training someone for a combine, it’s like training them for a test and you want them to study for that test,” Harvard hockey team strength and conditioning coach Tim Mullen, who designed Biega’s program, said recently. “So it was designed to get him better for those specific tests.”

It worked. Biega finished in the top 10 of at least 17 of the NHL’s 31 tests, making him by far, one of the fittest prospects for the June 25 entry draft. But this defenceman’s buff bod didn’t come easy, when you consider he spent an average of five days a week working out in the gym.

And we’re not talking about a speedy program featuring eight-minute abs.

“Oh, no, no,” Biega, who’s projected to be selected in the second round, said with a laugh. “With warm up and everything else, anywhere between two to three hours a day.”

He blew away the competition in the grip tests - 185 pounds with his right hand and 175 with his left - and finished first in the bench press by doing 20 reps with 150 pounds on the bar, an exercise he’s been perfecting all season long.

“On the bench press I would do close to 12 or 13 sets in a day at different weights and percentages of my body weight,” said the six-foot, 191-pound defenceman. He thinks his work on the bench press might have helped his overall upper body strength the most, because it wasn’t just targeting one area for improvement.

“You’re not specifically working just your pecs, you’re working your shoulders, your arms, your wrists and all-round,” said Biega.

With two of his three brothers also playing hockey at Harvard, Biega would get some healthy competition when his siblings would push him to become bigger and better.

“Growing up we would always train together and every summer we always train together,” said the native of Pointe Claire, Que., located on the outskirts of Montreal. “So when one person does 16 chin-ups, the next guy has to do 17 or 18, so it’s a constant competition and that’s definitely helped me out strength-wise I would say.”

Biega said he’d work out roughly four days during the week with older brother Michael, 21, and the rest of his Harvard hockey teammates, and then again on Saturdays with eldest brother and Crimson captain Alex, 22, a Buffalo Sabres prospect.

“Alex was a senior this year so he wasn’t training with the team, so I’d go and train with him,” said Biega, who admits Alex is the strongest of the four brothers. “He didn’t necessarily do the same things I did, but we kind of worked together.”

On Saturdays – his combine-specific workout day – he’d do a number of things the average gym rat might consider extreme, like harness himself to a pole to create resistance for his long jumps, doing chin-ups wearing a 50-pound belt, or weighing himself down with chains while doing push-ups – all this after completing sets of the bench press.

“We’d throw some chains on the back and do two or three sets,” said Biega nonchalantly of his push-up routine.

The kind of chains you’d use to lock up a bike?

“No, like big yacht anchoring chains,” he explains with a laugh.

“Yeah, outside of athletes, there probably aren’t a lot of people doing that,” added Mullen.

Mullen said Biega’s workouts were completely optional, and he was most impressed with the way the defenceman balanced his time between brawn and brain.

“This was happening during his exams and his reading period time,” said Mullen. “Danny did all this while studying for his final exams and writing his final papers at the most prestigious school in the (United States).”

Because the training centre at Harvard doesn’t have the Wingate Test, which measures anaerobic power, Mullen had to be creative. Instead, he developed an exercise where Biega would pull a sled filled with three 45-pound plates using a thick 15-foot rope. He’d then have to push the sled back to extend the rope and run back to pull it again to mimic the fatigue and increased resistance you would get from cycling on the Wingate machine.

“It’s only a short amount of time (30 seconds), but if you were to do it and go through it, by the time you finish it’s as close to death as you want to get,” said Mullen. “Most normal people never get themselves close to as hard as they can go, because your mind says, ‘there’s no reason for you to do this’ so your body starts to shut down a little bit. With these (athletes) here, they go past that point and once you get past that point, even 10 or 15 seconds, it’s excruciatingly hard.”

Biega said the Wingate was definitely the most difficult portion of the combine, though the VO2 Max test – which measures oxygen intake - was only slightly better.

“That was hard, there was no oxygen going to your muscles so they cramped up and I puked after that one,” said Biega of the Wingate. “I think they expect you to vomit. If you don’t vomit, you’re doing something wrong.”

On days he worked out, Biega would eat five or six meals, though it was difficult to juggle the serving times at his campus cafeteria with his training and school. Thankfully for him, he’s not a picky eater.

“Being at school it’s a lot of (cafeteria) food and a lot of egg whites, I would get my protein from that,” said Biega. “I’m not necessarily too strict with what I eat, I try to listen to my body and eat whatever it’s craving, but not too much of anything.”

And if you thought the No. 46-ranked skater in North America would find solace from his daily workouts at night with a relaxing evening at the dorm, well you don’t know Biega, because his pre-bedtime routine consisted of push-up contests with his roommate, John Collins, an offensive lineman on the Harvard football team.

“It was just a constant thing to do push-ups every day and I think it helped,” said Biega. “We would have a piece of paper on the wall and every day we would do them together and follow the tempo the combine uses and then we’d record it on the wall. And mind you, this is when I got the combine invite so maybe two months or so, so it was a lot of days of push-ups. It was a lot of fun.”

Fun times, for sure.

DANNY BIEGA’S THREE TIPS FOR A COMBINE FIT BODY:

1. FIND A GOOD PROGRAM: “My strength coach really made me a great program, so I have to give credit to him because he helped me get through it and just having a good program really helps. You have to find good program, there are a lot of trainers out there and a lot of people who say they make good programs, but you really have to do your homework and make sure it’s what you’re looking for.”

2. TRACK YOUR PROGRESS: “Marking down your progress is definitely another thing that helps. Just trying to increase the weight and the repetitions every weekend just to see that you’re getting stronger and to see your improvements.”

3. SET GOALS: “Setting goals for yourself helps too, but they have to be realistic.”

Sunaya Sapurji is the Jr. Hockey Editor at Yahoo! Sports. She can be reached at: sunaya@yahoo-inc.com