A Hockey-Specific Seminar…FINALLY!
A couple weeks ago I attended the Boston Hockey Summit, a hockey-specific seminar hosting collegiate and professional strength and conditioning coaches, physical therapists and hip surgeons, and a professional power skating coach. This was right up my alley!
My hope is that more of these seminars will pop up across the country and that more youth hockey coaches will start to attend. I hate to say it, but most youth programs are completely in the dark with regards to how to develop their athletes…and the lights are getting dimmer.
Michael Boyle gave a great presentation outlining why year-round hockey is a horrible choice for development. This is in strong opposition to the current theme of early specialization. The take home message was clear: To develop an elite athlete, they should play multiple sports through high school, and follow a well-designed training program. I understand it’s hard for youth coaches to really have the knowledge to put together a comprehensive training program for an entire team. That’s one of the reasons I spent the time to put together my hockey training course!
Over the next week I’ll go over some of the other great ideas I took from the seminar. Hopefully I’ll see you there next year!
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This makes a ton of sense. You hear of the European players having played soccer and hockey in their lives. I think this is a great way to cross train! I don’t have kids but this does make sense.
18.06.2009, 4:00 pmHi Kevin,
19.06.2009, 2:14 amI’m a swiss youth hockey peewee coach and I really appreciate and agree with your off-ice youth athletic development, multiple sport philosophy. Of course I purchased your hockey training course, read it very carefully and still work with it!
Few questions about recovery rests between reps of core stability drills (e.g. planks, bridges, parner perturbations), what about 30 sec, is it too low?
And so called “short” sprints of 15 – 40 yards? Are 2 minutes too much for such sprints ? (kids dislike to wait for resting time…).
And what about agility? always 1 to 8 ratios?
Thank you wery much for giving me some adwice.
Looking for gain the most of your knowledge about youth athletic development resources because I really believe in it.
Unfortunately Switzerland is so far out from such summits like in Boston and so on…
Here you have to battle with incompetent, old-fashioned mentality (year round hockey, stickhandling-shooting limited off-ice training that increases disbalance…, and, as Jack Blatherwick would say, “in a barrel” confined thinking…).
Waiting for your ideas and suggestions from the Boston seminar…
Best regards
Diego
Hi Diego. That old-fashion mentality isn’t unique to Switzerland! Most of youth training is still in the dark ages now. There are a few people that get it, but most youth hockey coaches are volunteers who don’t have a background in exercise science or kinesiology and rely on “how they were trained” to train their kids.
To answer your questions: 30s rest for core exercises is fine. 2 minutes rest for a 15 yard sprint is likely too much, but may be reasonable for a 40 yard sprint. You’re right that kids become antsy if they are waiting too long. I’ve found the best way to deal with this issue is to put them in lines so the rest interval is built in or have them do non-fatiguing “side-work”. The same holds true with agility drills. Rest interval guidelines look great on paper, but are hard to implement with larger groups. Hope this helps.
22.06.2009, 5:00 pm