Play Your Game.com - Peter Twist - Improving Player Development

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      About Peter Twist

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SportConditioning.ca

By Peter Twist
MPE, BPE, CSCS

© 2001 Peter Twist

Peter Twist is President & CEO of Twist Conditioning Inc and the former Coach of Conditioning & Player Development for the Vancouver Canucks. He has authored dozens of articles on athlete development in scientific journals, written two books on conditioning and is currently finishing a third on core stability. Peter Twist runs weekly sport-specific conditioning camps for professional athletes, high school students, and adult recreational athletes, as well as one-on-one training and team clinics. He can be contacted through www.sportconditioning.ca or 604-904-6556.

The Canadian hockey community continues the debate over how to better develop hockey players. The answers are obvious. Some, such as a reduction in games and an increase in practice time, will prove challenging to implement, but some are 100 % within your control.

In the name of competition, kids are streamlined into hockey at too young of an age, at the expense of other sport activities and spontaneous play. Add too many games and too little practice time to the equation, plus factor in time consuming sedentary hobbies like television, video games, and computers, and at best the result is a decent hockey player who is an average athlete. Without a tremendous base of well-rounded athleticism, kids have a low ceiling of improvement potential.

But even with more practice time, repetitively rehearsing hockey skills without the very physical tools these skills draw upon will yield few results. Sport-specific conditioning is part of the solution. While the goal of hockey excellence is a great motivator for kids to buy into fitness, which will positively affect all aspects of their life, do not confuse hockey-specific conditioning as "fitness". There is a huge difference between becoming fit and hockey-specific conditioning, and a huge difference in how to get fit and how to develop an athlete!

Combine hockey-specificity with an intense work ethic and you will enjoy the benefits of what I see every summer - players who make more improvement in 3 months than they do the rest of the year combined! Hockey conditioning should accomplish five things:

Develop hockey fitness (which, for example, includes your anaerobic sprinting energy system, not just training aerobically like a marathon runner).
Improve overall athleticism.
Build the very physical attributes that skills and tactics draw upon.
Transfer gains onto the ice to improve actual game performance.
Enhance other aspects such as mental strength and work ethic.

Include drills that artificially enhance athleticism, to give kids the power, agility, dynamic balance, coordination, quickness, hand-eye reaction skill, footwork and other attributes they are missing. Then prescribe exercises designed from an analysis of hockey itself, with similar movement patterns, joint angles, velocities, work-to-rest-ratios and many other variables that make an exercise "hockey-specific". This type of conditioning utilizes small equipment such as medicine balls, reaction balls, lateral movement tubing and micro hurdles. On the ice, I utilize modified scrimmages, varying net positions and rules to force players to think a better game and become more creative. No up and down the wing. No dump ins. My modified 4-4, 3-3, 2-2 and even 1-1 scrimmages demand cycling, high speed puck control, and give and goes. It is a continual attack and defend sequence, attempting new one-on-one tactics.

These training tools and modified scrimmages produce hundreds of challenging and fun drills and reward players with improved game skills! Good hockey players can accelerate their development and optimize their on-ice performance by training specifically for the demands of ice hockey. I have seen too many hard working players who could have achieved more if they had the knowledge of true sport-specific conditioning.

It is extremely rewarding to continually hear from players who send word of their rapid improvement. My latest coaching philosophy in my summer hockey camps is "There are no limits!" - which one of my players proclaimed after I encouraged him just to "push the limits". He is obviously a good student who has changed not only his conditioning and hockey abilities, but also his attitude, work intensity and expectations for what is possible! There are no limits!

Most limitations are self-imposed. The minor hockey and junior hockey systems, both skewed towards games and game outcome versus intrinsic reward motivators and development, are poorly structured for improving hockey players but certainly not 100 % at fault. Parents have a choice as to what activities they enroll their children in. All of the options for activities and lifestyle and drills and exercises are completely within your control. Parent's decisions are likely made more difficult in that the majority of their peer's kids will enroll in spring leagues and summer tournaments, playing games year round. I always remind myself that following everyone else usually only results in average - you are better to go with what you truly feel is best.

You can play hockey games 12 months of the year or play for the winter season and add in three or four different activities as well. You can follow the norm and enroll in regular hockey, playing too many games and touching the puck for about 90 seconds a game, or you can enroll in a 3-on-3 league for one year to enhance your skating, puckhandling and creativity. You can register for spring leagues and summer tournaments, or to you and keep that time to participate in other sports, pick up games plus spontaneous play to develop well rounded athletic skills. You can spend hours each week becoming a good video game player or even go to a fitness center and build generic strength and fitness, or you can participate in specific speed, quickness, agility and balance drills to become a better athlete and hockey player. The choice is no one's but yours. The answers are within your control.

I highly encourage you to push yourself outside of your comfort zone as you implement drills and programs. The drills must be scientifically designed, but it is also how you attack and soak up each day and how you extend yourself in each workout that will ultimately determine your success or failure. Most importantly, structure the year's schedule to give kids the best chance to improve and to allow them enjoy the process. Experiencing the process of striving towards lofty goals is the ultimate reward for most.