Feature Story
Coaches win by the way they conduct practice
Let’s Play Hockey Columnist
One of the most important jobs of a coach
— at any level — is to ensure that each practice is challenging and
constructive. There is no better reward for motivated athletes.
However, at the youth level, many kids
are not yet highly motivated, and most have not experienced firsthand the
connection between hard work and improvement – the sheer joy of learning.
It would seem to this novice – having
never coached at a level where players need help tying their skates – that one
of the primary lessons must be to make this connection obvious. Practices must
always be about improvement – not necessarily entertainment. Kids should know –
and coaches should remind them a hundred times – how much better they’ve gotten
at a certain skill.
I’m advocating constructive practices,
not necessarily entertaining ones, because there is a growing trend toward
making youth hockey as entertaining as a TV show, increasing the glitz at
games, passing out trophies to consolation losers in weekend tournaments,
singling out individuals as if they did it themselves, making practices “fun” by
adding games that don’t resemble hockey — all in an effort to entertain.
As if hockey should be in competition
with TV.
Please don’t misunderstand; I’m not
saying entertainment is bad. I’ve seen great coaches at every level, and no two of them do it the
same way. Some are entertainers; some are not. Some believe in a lot of variety
– day-to-day or minute-to-minute; some might stick with the same drill for 45
minutes, boring a casual observer to tears. Some yell; others talk quietly;
some say very little.
Some believe that players should laugh in
practice; others are dead serious and their players wouldn’t think of laughing
– at least when the coach is looking.
However, one of the common denominators
is that every great hockey coach is absolutely passionate about practice –
passionate enough to plan for hours – and excited to get on the ice and
orchestrate improvement. This is where a great coach makes a difference. Kids
are pretty darn good at having fun on their own – at finding entertainment – at
laughing.
But even the most motivated players are
not often capable of practicing constructively without coaches. As they get
older, some might practice very hard – even to the point of overtraining, but
it is simply not in the nature of most players to practice skills uncomfortably
– the way those skills are likely to be tested in a game.
This is what the old Soviet coaches like Anatoli Tarasov did better than
most. They constantly pushed players out
of their comfort zone – not just in practicing at a faster pace, but elevating
the comfort zone of every skill. When players could shoot, then they were
pushed to shoot in awkward situations — the way it would be in the most intense
games. Multi-tasking: stickhandling while skating and
looking for other players to cross paths.
Consider how often in practice a player
is forced to shoot before he/she is completely comfortable – before dribbling
and coasting to get ready. Stop to think about the drills we design where the
shooter is skating straight at the net from the neutral zone. In a game,
practically no shot will be made under these comfortable conditions. Instead,
the shot will have to be released instantly after making a quick cut to the
side to gain some space from the D.
If players are left to their own practice
habits, they will choose to shoot within their comfort zone. It’s much more fun
to impress friends with a wicked hard shot when you’re skating straight toward
the net. If players made the choice, shooting practice would be dropping a
bucket of pucks 20 feet out,
winding up, transferring body weight and leaning into the
shot.
While learning, of course, there must be
thousands of shots under these comfortable conditions, just like skating skills
must be practiced slowly and perfectly before picking up the pace. There must
also be simplified stickhandling drills before doing
it while skating at top speed.
However, all skill learning is
sequential, and eventually the coach must elevate the comfort zone, or players
would rarely be able to get shots off in games. Tarasov
said in each of his books, “Players did not like this (pushing them out of
their comfort zone). They complained to the coaches, but we told them this is
the way it would be. We are not here to entertain you.”
Then the coaches made practices even more
uncomfortable — sometimes tripping players as they skated past them — sometimes
dulling the edges of skate blades — but always pushing them into more stressful
situations in practice. Then the games would be comfortable for the Soviets and
stressful for their opponents.
We are not here to entertain you. I don’t
think that line will make it into HOCKEY MOM’S publication.
Constructive … that’s the operative word; not entertaining. The critical coaching step is thorough planning. If coaches
have a clear picture before practice exactly where the improvement should come,
players will feel the difference by the end of the hour. This is the first step
in learning the simple equation: Fun = Improvement.
Jack Blatherwick,
Ph.D., is a physiologist for the