Coaches, Take Your Dryland Warm-Ups to the Next Level
In my last post, I wrote about the importance of making sure that pre-game warm-ups look like the hockey game that is about to be played. Whenever you are preparing for a game, you need to keep this in mind. Let’s take this concept one step further and...
Coaches, Try This for Your Team’s Next Pre-Game Warm-Up
The video above does a great job of explaining this game. Just throw some hockey tape on your players' helmets to designate teams and you can easily make this your team's next pre-game warm-up. If you’re looking for a great way to improve the quality of your...
Treat Every Training Session Like a Balanced Meal
When successful hockey players step in the weight room, they’re getting the sports performance equivalent of a balanced meal. By that I mean that they’re getting all of the nutrients (IE, training stimuli) they need to improve their performance on the ice. When...
10 Ways to Make At-Home Skills Training More Game-Realistic
Getting extra training outside of team practice is important to reaching your goals. But training at home can often be repetitive, solitary and frustrating. You put in lots of hours, but don't see that much improvement in real games. Below are 10 simple and effective...
Hard Skill Sports vs. Soft Skill Sports
In this blog post, I'd like to take a deep look at one of the key "talent tips" from Daniel Coyle's The Little Book of Talent. Coyle is the author of both the in-depth book The Talent Code and the summary of tips known as The Little Book of Talent. Both books have a...
Robust Skills vs. Resilient Skills
Preface: The idea of robust vs resilient skills is something that I learned about through an interview on The Talent Equation Podcast with Ted Suihkonen, skills coach for Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in the KHL and owner of Suihkonen Hockey. The interview can be found here and...
Hockey Mythbusters Vol. 1
Introduction Spend enough time in the game of hockey and you're likely to hear a few. I've come across so many over the years that I couldn't even fit them all into one article! In "Hockey Mythbusters" I'll be taking a look at (and doing my best to debunk) every...
What Does “Skill Progression” Really Mean?
Note: Many of the ideas presented below were first brought to my attention by other coaches who deserve credit here. These coaches include Derek Miller, skills coach for the Ottawa 67’s of the OHL and founder of Next Gen HKY; Dean Seymour, skills coach for the Regina...
10 Things Hockey Players Can Do Right Now to Make the Most of Time at Home
Eventually the rinks will reopen; games and practices will start again. The world might never be quite the same, but eventually we will get back to hockey. In 6-12 months, will you look back on this time and ask yourself, “did I do enough?” In some ways, the current...
Coaches, Take Your Dryland Warm-Ups to the Next Level
In my last post, I wrote about the importance of making sure that pre-game warm-ups look like the hockey game that is about to be played. Whenever you are preparing for a game, you need to keep this in mind. Let’s take this concept one step further and...
Coaches, Try This for Your Team’s Next Pre-Game Warm-Up
The video above does a great job of explaining this game. Just throw some hockey tape on your players' helmets to designate teams and you can easily make this your team's next pre-game warm-up. If you’re looking for a great way to improve the quality of your...