Feature Story
Learning rink sense: what works, what doesn’t
Let’s Play Hockey
Columnist
The difference between Wayne Gretzky and
less productive wannabe’s was clearly his unparalleled rink sense. This was demonstrated every game of his life
in two ways: his ability to anticipate the next play before it even started and
his creative decision making.
While it is commonly known that the
greatest of all time has certain well-defined abilities, it seems incongruous
that coaching philosophy hasn’t been shaped more by this knowledge. The
prevailing trend is to ignore the process by which rink sense is learned — not
even bothering to study the question. Instead, we are content to believe that a
player either has rink sense or doesn’t, and not much can be done about it.
Thankfully, scientists have stepped into
this void. Recently Jennifer Kahn wrote in Wired Magazine about Dr.
Peter Vint, a research biomechanist
with the U.S. Olympic Committee, who is studying precisely how anticipation or
rink sense is acquired
(www.wired.com/science/discoveries/magazine/15-06/ff_mindgames).
Using some pretty creative research
techniques (you may want to read about), Dr. Vint tested world-class tennis players and novice amateurs
to determine how early in an opponent’s service motion they could anticipate
the direction and spin of the serve. Not surprisingly, they found that the best
professionals knew one-third of a second before the racquet made contact with
the ball, where the novices did not know until after contact.
More importantly, they found that
instruction regarding anticipation did not help — and if the professionals were
consciously trying to anticipate the direction and spin, they could not.
However, if they were distracted by trying to anticipate the speed, they were
better able to anticipate direction.
In other words, anticipation works best
when we are not thinking about what we’d like to anticipate.
Further research by Dr. Vint and other groups has shown that in a sport like hockey – which is all
about read and reaction – unstructured scrimmage or play activities are the
best way to improve the ability to anticipate.
So now we’ve come full cycle. The
scientists have confirmed what we’ve known all along. A young Wayne Gretzky
acquired those special instincts by playing unstructured hockey games in his
back yard. In fact, all great players have told us that unstructured pond
hockey scrimmages were their best learning experiences. Yet coaching bibles
have steered us toward structured drill-oriented practices.
Of course there is a lot to be learned
through structured drills, because skating and other skills require rote
repetition — by the hour — year after year. But the most important skill — rink
sense — must also be practiced by the hour.
Scrimmages are just as important as
skill-oriented drills. Scrimmages in small areas or on full ice — sometimes
planned by the coach to incorporate specific teaching points, sometimes totally
unstructured — are critical for the development of read-react skills.
Instead, coaching has moved toward
teaching structured systems, creating robots who might
be in all the right places at the right time, but are totally brain dead when
they get there. This is not to say that developing systems is not a good start
toward getting individuals to play together as a team.
But too much practice time spent on
systems — too much structure — is likely to diminish the chances for players to
acquire Gretzky-like rink sense. The
best coaches find a balance.
Bud Grant, former Minnesota Viking coach
knew that too much structure — even in football, a sport that is by nature
highly structured — might stifle the creativity needed to produce winners. His definition of a great teacher (coach) was
one who created the environment for students to learn, then allowed them to
experience it on their own.
Grant’s greatest student might have been
Fran Tarkenton, the last of the creative play-calling
quarterbacks in the NFL. Tarkenton actually drew up
some pass routes on the dirt in the huddle — then scrambled around the
backfield eluding defensive linemen while he found the open receiver
downfield.
This read-and-react ability was developed
in exactly the same way Gretzky developed his – unstructured creativity.
Jack Blatherwick, Ph.D., is a physiologist
for the